Page 55 of King’s Ransom

‘Two . . . one . . .’

Whack!

With a sharp blast, the fourth and final strap detached and the helicopter—with me and Mrs Yasmina King inside it—slid off the top of the skyscraper.

Sitting in the cockpit beside the dead body of the pilot, I looked around in horror as the whole chopper slid, slowly and inexorably, off the top of the building.

I glanced up at the slowly turning rotors above me.

‘Come on . . .’

In about one second, my landing skids would come completely free of the roof’s edge, at which point, we’d be done for, since the helicopter would go vertical and all it could do then was fall.

Then—gloriously—the rotors engaged, the slow-turning blades firing up, becoming blurs of speed.

And abruptly my chopper was alive.

The landing struts kept sliding and . . .

. . . came free of the roof . . .

. . . just as I engaged the throttle . . .

. . . and the aircraft lifted gently into the air, hovering a few feet out from the rooftop.

‘You did it!’ Yasmina King shouted.

‘You did it!’ Audrey shouted over the phone.

‘I did it!’ I shouted, even though it was taking all my concentration to keep flying the helicopter.

It was, after all, my first official time flying a real one.

‘Hey, Audrey,’ I said. ‘I need to hang up now. Gotta focus.’

‘No problem.’ She rang off.

A minute later, flying very slowly and cautiously, I landed the chopper back on the rooftop helipad.

I powered it down and when the rotor blades finally stopped, I climbed into the back seat and peered at the remote device attached to Mrs King’s seatbelt buckle.

‘Can you release me?’ she asked.

Her eyes were glassy. She’d definitely been drugged, presum­ably so she could be brought up here without any struggle, much like Cassandra had said had happened to her. It was a good bet Winnie Tan had also been immobilised in this way.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Let me try something. I couldn’t try it before since it would’ve triggered our fall. Let’s see if I can interfere with this thing’s RF signal.’

I held my cell phone close to the device and rang Audrey’s number.

(It didn’t matter what number I called. I just needed the phone to create a small electromagnetic field around the device to disrupt its radio frequency signal. This is the same reason airlines ask you to use Airplane Mode while flying.)

Then I quickly reached forward and unclipped the buckle.

To my relief, it came free without any kind of explosion and I whisked Mrs King out of the chopper.

Outside, the FBI agents flocked to her side. Heidi, who had held Mrs King’s son, Alexei, in her arms since he’d been found in the pantry, carried the boy over to his mother.

I stepped away from the chopper, sweating and gasping.