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Pitt atching the solitary dark speck in the northern sky turn into a sleek jet aircraft He leaned forward, screwing up his eyes against the bright blue glare The stranger was one of the new executive jets built by the British-fast, reliable and capable of whisking twelve passengers halfway around the world in a matter of hours without a fuel stop Pitt barely had tier was painted an ebony black froe of vision traveling in the opposite direction

"What did Fyrie do for an encore?" he asked

"Mined ht in an offshore oil field in Peru to name a few

There were no ers, no subsidiaries Kristjan built Fyrie Liical exploitation, nothing else"

"Did he have a family?"

"No, his parents died in a fire when he was very young All he had was a twin sister Don't really know much about her

Fyrie put her through a finishing school in Switzerland, and, so rumor has it, she later became a missionary somewhere in New Guinea Apparently her brother's fortuneto-" Hunnewell never finished the sentence He jerked sideways facing Pitt, his eyes staring blankly, hisout Pitt barely had time to see the old man slulass bubble encircling the cockpit shattered into a thousand jagged slivers and fell away Twisting to one side and throwing up an ar wall of cold air, Pitt momentarily lost control of the helicopter Its aerodynamics drastically altered, the Ulysses nosed sharply upward, al Pitt and the unconscious Hunnewell violently against their backrests

It was then Pitt becae aft of the seats The sudden uncontrolled unner aboard the black jet had been caught off guard, adjusting his trajectory too late and sending most of his fire into an empty sky Is slow steed withUnable to , thearound in a hundredand-eighty-degree turn for another assault The bastards must havefro the helicopter on a level course, a near impossible task with a two-hundred- at his eyes He throttled down, trying desperately to reduce the unseen force that pinned his body against the seat

The black jet swept by again but this time Pitt was ready for it He pulled the Ulysses to an abrupt horizontal stop, the rotor blades frantically beating the atht vertical climb

The dodge worked The pilot of the jet roared under Pitt, unable to bring the ed to shake his attacker, but it was only a question of ti bag of tricks

Pitt didn't kid himself There was no escape; the battle was too one-sided The score was seven to nothing in favor of the visitors, with only a few seconds left to play in the fourth quarter A grim smile wrinkled around Pitts eyes as he lowered the copter to a bare twenty feet above the water Victory was hopeless, but there was a slight chance, an infinitesiht, for a tie score He studied the inkblack aircraft as it jockied for the last pass There was nothing left now but the h the thin aluminum skin of the Ulysses Pitt steadied the small defenseless craft and hovered as the jet dove like a concrete bird, directly toward him

The gunner, laying prone and firing out an open cargo door, played it cool this ti for the narrowing gap to carry thee of death was only thirty yards away now Pitt braced hiht up into the attacking plane, the helicopter's rotor blade!

shattering as they sliced through the jet's horizontal stabilizer Instinctively Pitt flicked the ignition switch off as the turbine engine, without the drag from the rotor, raced wildly mid the howl of tortured metal Then the racket stopped, and the sky was silent except for the wind that whistled in Pitts ears

He snatched a glance at the strange jet just before it crashed into the sea, nose first, it's tail section hanging like a broken arm Pitt and the unconscious Hunneeren't much better off All they could do was sit and wait for the crippled helicopter to drop like a stone nearly seventy feet into the cold Atlantic water

When the crash came, it was much worse than Pitt had anticipated The Ulysses fell on its side into the Iceland surf in six feet of water, a scant football field length frolanced off the door fraonizing shock of the icy water jolted him back to dizzy wakefulness Waves of nausea swept over hi To hell with it and drifting off to sleep for the last time