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.The fingers locked and prepared to heave sideways.Beaumont ignored the danger, concentrating on what he had to do.The rifle came down from high up, hammered down on the Russian's forehead, and the force of the downstroke was so great that the butt rebounded.The hand locked round his ankle relaxed, the head flopped sideways and the man lay still as Beaumont bent down and heaved him over on to his stomach.The impact points - jaw and forehead - were now in contact with the ice, so when they found him - if they ever found him - it would look like an accident, an accident caused by the Russian tripping and smashing his face down on the iron-hard ground.He took an even bigger risk now: he started running again.He had counted about twenty men coming out of the machine and they had to be spread over a rabbit warren of ravines, so probably the arrangement was that when one of them located the fugitives they would open fire to bring the others running.He was still running when he turned a corner and a sheet of light came into view.He had reached the exit - the open ice was ahead.The roar of the waiting machine's rotors blasted his eardrums coming inside the ravine and he saw it barely a hundred yards away, its double fin facing him, the pilot's cabin looking the other way.It was a point he had noted from the ridge crest and he had been praying the pilot hadn't swung his machine round.He hadn't.And there was no guard waiting at the edge of the ice.It didn't surprise Beaumont; when you have twenty men at your disposal and you go in to capture a group of four men you'd hardly anticipate that one of them would be mad enough to head straight for the machine.Beaumont headed straight for the machine.He looped his rifle over his shoulder and began walking at a moderate pace towards the rear of the helicopter.It seemed a crazy thing to do, to walk slowly, but Beaumont was gambling on elementary psychology in case the pilot inside the cabin did look behind him.Reflexes moved fast when jerked into action - the sight of an armed man running across the ice towards the machine would provoke one reaction in the pilot.He would pull the lever, take the machine vertically off the ice.A five-second job.Beaumont kept walking slowly, coming closer to the submarine killer.Beaumont was fairly confident now that he was going to make it; although his fur hood and parka hardly matched the security men's outfit it was similar - similar enough when seen by moonlight through the ice-rimmed dome of a helicopter.As he neared the machine, as the deafening drumbeat increased in decibels, every nerve in his body was screaming at him to run, to cover the last fifty yards before the pilot turned his head.Beaumont kept walking at the same even pace, coming up directly behind the old-fashioned-looking tail, the kind of tail.biplanes had once sported.Unlooping his rifle, he walked past the tail, climbed up and hammered with his gloved fist on the misted dome.The vibration shuddered him and nothing happened.He beat with his fist a second time and then the window slid open.The rifle went inside at the same moment as warm air wafted in his face, the muzzle pointed at a helmeted figure who had jumped back into his seat behind the controls.'Get out! Come on! Get out - quick!' Beaumont shouted in Russian and jerked his head to show the pilot what he wanted - with the drumbeat going full blast the pilot probably couldn't hear a word.Beaumont leaned in through the window, jabbed the rifle muzzle hard into the pilot's side.The Russian had goggles down over his eyes but Beaumont had the impression he was young, maybe in his late twenties.Young enough to be a hero.The pilot's right hand moved towards a lever.The lever, Beaumont guessed instantly, would elevate the helicopter.Suddenly the machine would be climbing and he would be suspended in mid-air, maybe jerked off to smash on the ice below.'Don't try it.!' To drive the message home he rammed the muzzle harder into the pilot.The Russian stared sideways and Beaumont read the man's mind.He had guts: he was checking the weapon, wondering whether he could survive the bullet.The calibre must have scared him: his hand moved away from the lever.'Get up! Up! Up!' Beaumont jerked his head and the pilot disconnected his headset and slid carefully out of his seat.Something in the pilot's stance warned Beaumont.The Russian paused halfway out of his seat, crouched like a cat, the lenses of his goggles catching the light from the instrument panel so his eyes were invisible.'Come on,' Beaumont snapped, 'hurry it up.' The Russian came closer as Beaumont withdrew the rifle, cuddling it under his-arm, his finger still inside the trigger guard as he used his other hand to press down the door handle, to slide it open.The pilot spread his hands in a slow gesture of surrender.But the heroics weren't over yet.The pilot came slowly through the doorway and then he was very close to Beaumont.He turned, as though obeying Beaumont's gesture for him to drop to the ice; then, still crouched under the whirling rotors, he grabbed for the rifle, a reaction the Englishman had anticipated.Beaumont slammed down the butt, struck the Russian on the shin, and the pilot grabbed for the door frame to regain his balance.Holding on to the frame he straightened up on one leg.He came within range of the steel blades of the lower rotor.They beheaded him.Still crouched and clinging to the window frame, Beaumont was stunned with horror.He swallowed bile.The corpse was below him on the ice.Dark spots flecked the ice around the huddled heap.The head had been hurled God knew where by the whipping blades
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