The Devil You Know

Action guy Nick Kismet
takes on...

The Devil You Know

An 8-Chapter Turbo-Charged Takedown!

What Has Gone Before: On the observation deck of the Empire State Building, Kismet keeps a rendezvous with a lady journalist, Tecla, who is searching for information regarding the secret society Prometheus. Suddenly, they are attacked by helicopters! Tecla is abducted! Desperately, Kismet leaps off the building, trying to grab a rope dangling from one chopper...86 floors above the city street!

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Episode 3:
A Long Drop

IN THE INSTANT OF TIME IT TOOK for him to traverse from building to rope, the helicopter moved, increasing the distance by half again as much. There was a moment of panic as gravity asserted its overwhelming superiority and snatched him down, then abruptly the rope was in his hands.

He hugged it to his chest and kept his arms bent to absorb the inevitable shock when his full weight settled against his grip. The rope swung wildly beneath the helicopter and he could feel the rough fibers burning against his palms. Instinctively, he tried to lock the rappelling line between his feet to ease some of the strain on his upper body, but his shoes clamped together on empty air. He tried again but the rope simply wasn’t there.

As his muscles began to burn from the exertion, he risked a glance down, trying to locate the elusive cord. Then, to his utter dismay, he saw an inch-wide strip of electrical tape around an equally short piece of nylon-sheathed rope, poking from just below his clenched fists.

The curse that escaped his lips was snatched away by the wind as the helicopter pirouetted overhead and began to move off, holding the left wingman position in formation with the others. The milling figures on the observation deck shrank into the distance, as the dark emptiness high above the city engulfed him. On the rope above him, one of the commandos was transferring into the open door of the aircraft, while his counterpart was steadily winching himself higher on the line depending from the opposite side.

The forward motion of the helicopter appeared to be causing the paramilitary operators no real difficulty, but for Kismet, literally at the end of his rope, it was like trying to hang onto the slippery tail of a frightened animal. If he couldn’t quickly find a way to relieve some of the strain from his arms… He didn’t even want to think about that eventuality. The ferocious wind tore at his clothes and whipped his necktie against his exposed face. He managed to catch the offending article between his teeth, and from that minor triumph there was a spark of inspiration.

He pressed his mouth to his hands and succeeded in trapping the tie under his thumb. Without releasing his death-grip on the rope, he managed to work a loop of the silk fabric around the line, securing it with a half hitch. Once more using his teeth, he twisted the knot until it was tight on the climbing line. Then, with more haste than caution, he released the hold of his right hand and transferred it to the tie.

He half-expected his desperate scheme to fail at that moment; the silk would be too slippery to hold or too fragile to bear his weight and he would find himself in a final, fatal free fall. But lady luck threw him a bone; the knot held.

Before the invention of mechanical ascenders, which were essentially a titanium handle with a small cam that would lock into place on a rope and slide only in one direction, mountaineers used a more basic method to hold their place on the line: the Prussik. The prescribed technique was to tie a length of cord around the belay line in a girth hitch, which could then be loosened and advanced up the rope, while the free ends of the cord were tied into hand or foot loops. Kismet’s field-expedient twist of silk was a far cry from anything taught in climbing school, but it was enough to ease some of the strain on his arms.

The flying formation moved diagonally across midtown toward the East River. Kismet could make out the distinctive slab-like dimensions of the UN building looming just to north, and dead ahead, the twinkling lights of vehicle traffic on the massive span of the Williamsburg Bridge. The pilots had dropped the helicopters a few hundred feet since departing the Empire State Building, but the increasing airspeed suggested that the final destination lay somewhere on the other side of the river. Even with his improvised handhold, he could not hope to hang on to the rope much longer. He had to get inside the helicopter.

He relaxed his hold on the knot as shoved it up the rope until his arm was fully extended. The makeshift Prussik made the task easier, but it still took raw muscle strength to make the climb. In a matter of seconds however, he had progressed far enough to wrap the line around one of his legs and lock it in place between his feet, and for the first time in what seemed an eternity of effort, he was able to rest first his right, then his left arm.

The victory was short lived. Ten meters away, framed in the open door of the helicopter, the commando that had preceded him on the same line was peering down intently. With the wind in his eyes, Kismet couldn’t make out any distinctive facial characteristics, but he could see a wicked grin splitting the man’s face. With exaggerated slowness, the commando drew an enormous fixed-blade knife from an inverted sheath on his vest and laid the edge against rope.

Kismet lurched into motion, shinnying to the half-way point before the man could complete a single saw stroke, but it wasn’t enough. There was no way he was going to reach the helicopter before his foe completed the grim task. On the other rope, the second commando had worked his way to the level of the skids beneath the aircraft and was struggling to pull himself inside.

Kismet released his foothold and arched his back, then kicked at the empty air. His body arced under the tail boom but didn’t have enough momentum to reach his objective. He tucked his legs to his chest as the pendulum swung back. Faint tremors rippled through the line as the knife blade split, first the protective sheath, then began parting the braided fibers beneath. Kismet knew he wouldn’t get another chance.

As the second arc brought him back under the airframe, he released his grip from the Prussik and flailed blindly for the second rope. When the heavy line bounced off his forearm, he curled it to his body and clutched it in his fist. Before he could release the first line however, it went slack then abruptly wrenched him downward; the commando had succeeded in cutting it, and the strands that had moments before been Kismet’s only lifeline were now a fifteen kilogram anchor pulling him toward the murky waters of the East River.

He let go without a second thought, and wrapped both his free hand and both legs around the secured rope, but his necktie was still knotted around the untethered line. It yanked hard against his neck, cinching tight both the half-hitch around the rope and the four-in-one at his throat.

He struggled with the more immediate threat, the noose around his neck, but could not even insert a finger between the silk swath and his shirt collar. The pressure against his carotid artery was considerable but he could still breathe. Abandoning the idea of freeing himself from the stranglehold, he instead grasped the severed rope and wrapped it loosely around his body. It was enough for a momentary respite; moments were all he had left.

Without the added security of the Prussik, Kismet found himself once more fighting gravity and fatigue. Yet, for all his exhaustion, he was incrementally winning the battle. The underbelly of the helicopter was tangibly close and he could almost touch the landing skids with his fingertips.

A little closer....

A face appeared above him and this time he was near enough to see the beads of perspiration on the man’s forehead. The commandos grim smile was not as confident as before, but the determination was still there. So was the knife.

Close enough!

Kismet brought his feet up as high as he dared, clamped them tight on the rope, then thrust his body toward the skid. Although it meant releasing the rope, he stretched out arms and locked his hands together around the metal frame beneath the helicopter. The commando, busy with trying to cut away the second rope, reacted with a start and fumbled the knife. The glinting steel clattered off the skid mere centimeters from Kismet’s knuckles then vanished into the darkness. An unheard oath crossed the man’s lips as he leaned out into the night. Kismet now saw an automatic pistol in his right hand; the barrel was lined up with his head.

“Oh, no you don’t!” grated Kismet.

He arched his body again, and like a gymnast on parallel bars, brought his feet up over his head. At the apex of his swing, he brought his legs together, trapping the gun arm between his ankles. He felt a burst of heat against his calf as the weapon discharged and expelled scorching gas through the fabric of his trousers, but that was the limit of injury he sustained from the shot; the bullet whistled away impotently into the night.

The gunman didn’t get a second chance. With the man’s arm still snared, Kismet wrenched himself away and took the commando with him. Realizing too late what his foe was doing, the man flailed desperately at Kismet’s leg, but succeeded only in pulling off his left shoe. Then he was gone.

Kismet didn’t spare a thought for the falling man; there were still at least two more on the helicopter eager to finish the job their lost comrade had begun, and for his own part, he was still a long way from safety. He wrapped his legs around the skid and repositioned his hands in order to advance toward the door.

The second commando stuck his head and arms through the door, his face a mask of unbridled rage. Despite his fury, which likely stemmed from witnessing the demise of his comrade, the man had learned from the mistakes of the other; he lay prone on the deck of the aircraft so that Kismet wouldn’t be able to easily knock him from his perch. Cradled in his hands was a compact VZ61 Skorpion machine pistol.

Kismet thrust his head beneath the airframe as 7.62 mm rounds sprayed from the muzzle of the Czech-manufactured weapon. A few of the bullets chattered against landing skids and Kismet could feel vibrations of kinetic energy beneath his fingers. While his current position kept him just barely out if the gunman’s line of sight, Kismet had no intention of remaining where he was. The success of his earlier maneuver had bolstered his confidence, and the thought of further acrobatics no longer filled him with paralyzing dread. When the gunman fired again, Kismet was nowhere to be seen.

The commando was still peering through the door, searching the night for a glimpse of Kismet’s body spiraling down to the a watery fate, when the latter pulled himself through the opposite door and into the relative safety of the helicopter. The pilot caught a glimpse of Kismet and shouted something into the microphone at his lips. The commando, who like the pilot wore a headset, twisted around frantically, but Kismet was faster. He chopped the edge of his hand into the nerve cluster at the base of the gunman’s neck, then ripped the Skorpion from his paralyzed fingers. A second blow, this time with the still smoking barrel of the machine pistol, bludgeoned the man unconscious.

Before the pilot could react, Kismet threaded his way into the cockpit and took the empty seat on the right. He aimed the gun at the pilot and shouted to be heard over the deep thrum of the rotors. “Change of plans.”

The pilot threw him a defiant grin, then jerked the cyclic control stick to the right. Kismet was just reaching for his tie in order to free himself from the Prussik knot which still bound him to the rope, when the helicopter turned on its side. The Skorpion fell from his grasp as both hands reflexively grabbed for any available handhold, and the discarded weapon smashed into the Plexiglas windscreen, followed an instant later by Kismet himself.

A look of horror contorted the pilot’s face as the unmoving form of the second gunman slid through the open hatch and plummeted into the night; his attempt to rattle Kismet had inadvertently sealed the fate of his comrade. Too late, he tried to wrestle the cyclic back in order to level the craft but it refused to budge.

It was only then that Kismet realized the object he had grasped, purely as a reflex, was the second control stick, and his weight, now suspended almost vertically from the stick, was holding the helicopter in a fixed bank. The rotor blades narrowly missed the tail boom of the other trailing helicopter in the formation as the out-of-control chopper veered to the south.

Kismet released his hold on the cyclic, and as the pilot righted the aircraft, he dropped easily back into the co-pilot’s chair, and in the same motion scooped up the discarded Skorpion and drew a bead on the pilot’s forehead. “Let’s try that again!”
The man regarded him contemptuously. “If you shoot me, who will fly? You?”
Something about the man’s arrogance prompted Kismet to do something admittedly rash. “Why not?”

The pilot’s eyes widened in disbelief for an instant as Kismet reached across and clouted him with the barrel of the machine pistol, then he slumped forward against his harness restraints. Kismet immediately tossed the Skorpion aside and gave his full attention to the redundant control system on his side of the cockpit.

Even that brief moment, where the trained pilot’s hand had slipped from the cyclic stick, had been enough to permit the helicopter to be knocked off course by the vagaries of wind currents. Kismet steadied the cyclic, while at the same time grasping the collective pitch control stick to his left and feathering the throttle.

Nick Kismet was not a pilot. While he had flown in helicopters more than a few times and made a point of observing how the crew of those aircraft interacted with their environment, he had never sat in the co-pilot’s seat and never taken the controls. Strangely, he felt no sense of panic; only a grim satisfaction at having wiped the pilot’s smile off his face.

“Okay, Nick. Time for your first flying lesson.”

Back to Episode 2 :Assault on the Empire State Building
On to Episode 4 :Chopper Down

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The Devil You Know and the character of Nick Kismet are copyright by Sean Ellis. It may not be copied without permission of the author except for purposes of reviews. (Though you can print it out to read it, natch.)