“You know,” he said after a few moments. “I’ve kidded you a lot about your job over the years, and told you you have to work your fingers off just to stay in the same place — you have the real Red Queen’s Race. But sometimes I envy you. It’ll pass in a few minutes, but I’m envying you right now.”
“That’s a first. You mean you’re disenchanted with your job? I thought you loved those AID jaunts, hopping all over the globe and dishing out the dollars. What’s up, have they stopped treating you like royalty all of a sudden?”
“Not quite.” His tone had changed. I realized that he had not listened to me, and was only able to reply from an instinct as to what I must have said to him.
“What’s wrong?” I looked at the instrument panel.
“She’s not handling right.” He was frowning at the gauges also. “Everything shows as though it’s fine, but it’s not. She’s yawing, and I can’t trim her to correct it. The hell with this, I’m going to take her back to Heathrow. Call in and request an emergency landing for us.”
I reached for the radio, but before I could make connection it became irrelevant. The helicopter lurched sickeningly to the right, levelled for a moment as Leo struggled with the controls, then swooped sideways again, vibrating madly.
“I can’t hold her at all,” Leo grunted. His face was tense and flushed with exertion. “We’ll never make it to Heathrow. What’s down there on your side? I’ll have to try and slip her that way and straighten us when we’re really low.”
Off to my right I could see a dizzying pattern of fields and roads, leading a mile or two ahead to the more heavily built-up area of East Reading .
“As soon as you can,” I shouted, still concentrating on the ground. “It gets worse the further we go. We’re better off here than nearer the town.”
Leo did not speak, but I heard his grunt of effort. The air was rushing past us and the helicopter was rolling and yawing crazily as we lost altitude. At three hundred feet we straightened for a moment. I could see a hedge, a muddy pool, and a plowed field, and beyond that the line of a major road with houses on the other side of it.