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He twisted it. Gently. Sure enough, the engine noise increased and changed in pitch. And the helicopter lifted off.
Then it began to spin. The helicopter drifted toward the bow, toward the superstructure while the tail spun the helicopter like a top, clockwise.
Like a Tilt-A-Whirl.
Pedals. Had to use them to…
The helicopter stopped spinning clockwise. It hesitated. Then it began to spin counterclockwise.
Sanjit was distantly aware that several voices were screaming. Five kids in the chopper. Five screams. Including his own.
Pedals again. And the helicopter stopped spinning. It was still drifting toward the yacht’s superstructure, but now it was doing so backward.
He twisted the collective all the way, all the way, baby, and the helicop
ter shot upward. Like a ride Sanjit had been on in Las Vegas once. Like the helicopter was on a string and someone was yanking it toward the clouds.
Up and over the superstructure. Sanjit saw it pass beneath his feet.
WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
The rotors had hit something. Bits of wire and metal poles flew away. The yacht’s radio antenna.
The helicopter was still rising and still drifting backward toward the cliff.
The other thing. The watchamacallit the cyclic the stick the thing near his right hand grab it grab it do something something something push it forward forward forward. Spinning again! He’d forgotten the pedals the stupid pedals and his feet couldn’t find them now and the helicopter had spun 180 degrees and with the cyclic tilted forward was now zooming straight for the cliff wall.
It was maybe a hundred feet away.
Fifty feet.
In a split second they would be dead. And there was nothing he could do to stop it happening.
Diana ran across the overgrown lawn. Caine was ahead of her, faster, she had to catch him.
The sound of the helicopter engine was growing louder, closer.
Caine stopped at the edge of the cliff. Diana reached it, panting, a dozen feet away from Caine.
In a flash Diana understood what Sanjit had been hiding. Far below a white yacht lay crumpled against the rocks. A helicopter struggled aloft, spinning crazily this way and then that.
Caine’s face formed a wicked smile.
Penny was just laboring up behind. Bug, well, he might be there, too. No way to know.
Diana rushed to Caine. “Don’t do it!” she cried.
He turned a furious face to her. “Shut up, Diana.”
As they watched, the helicopter spun again and surged toward the cliff.
Caine raised his hands and the helicopter stopped moving forward. It was so close that the rotor hacked apart a bush that clung to the cliff face.
“Caine, don’t do this,” Diana pleaded.
“What do you care?” Caine asked, genuinely puzzled.
“Look! Look at them. They have little kids in there. Little children.”
