In the Palace of the Khans by Peter Dickinson

two machines. They have had to drop back clear of our turbulence, but are making good progress. In about ten minutes we will be over the lake.”
    The helicopter bounced on. Any moment he’d be needing a sick-bag. Just in time, the ride eased. The cliffs either side receded and they were over open water. Out of the right-hand windows, across the aisle, he could see the shoreline, a narrow band of tumbled boulders and above that a forested slope rising to a craggy ridge, and way beyond that mountains, with the massed clouds of the earlier storm piling against their peaks, and the sluicing rain below.
    He turned the other way and saw that the gusts that had been buffeting them to and fro were only the outriders of the next instalment of the storm. That had almost reached the shoreline, a heavy cloud-mass riddled with lightning blinks and bearing below it an impenetrable curtain of rain. In the brief lull before its onset the helicopters were racing for the landing place.
    The President was talking to the pilots again. He switched to English. “We are unlikely to arrive at the pad before the rain reaches us, and in any case a dry-ground landing in this wind would be extremely dangerous in fully laden machines. There is a sheltered wharf a few hundred metres below the pad. You can both swim …? We will jump from the helicopter as near to the wharf as we can safely hover. Two soldiers will go first to help us ashore, then you, Nigel, you, ambassador, and myself. The remaining soldier will follow. The pilots will endeavour to land the helicopter at the pad, and if they judge it too dangerous will return and ditch and then swim ashore. Take nothing with you that will impede your exit. If the machine is forced to ditch we will salvage it later. Do not inflate your lifebelt until you are standing at the door and ready to jump.”
    They flew joltingly on over the churning water until the rain hit them. It was as if the helicopter had flown into something solid. A clattering crash, a violent sideways slam, a stammer in the steady rotor-racket, a roar from the engines, a sense of falling …
    Nigel crouched into emergency again and waited for the impact of splashdown, but the helicopter staggered on, its nose tilted downward. It couldn’t last. He remembered how frail it had looked compared to the hulking Sikorsky. Surely no machine ever built could take such a battering for long …
    The movement changed, with the fuselage roughly level, but swaying erratically left and right. A soldier clawed his way past him. Then another. Me next, he thought. He straightened, felt for the belt-buckle and waited for the signal. The first soldier fiddled with a panel in the door and passed it to the second one, who slotted it into the seat across the aisle from Nigel. Inside the compartment it had covered was a large black rubbery package. The first soldier unfastened straps and heaved it clear for the other one to open the door. Rain sluiced in and a spume-laden gust buffeted round the cabin. The soldiers dragged the package to the doorway and tugged at a couple of toggles either side of it. It was already inflating as they shoved it through the opening.
    The first soldier stepped into the doorway, paused for a moment judging the drop, and stepped out. The second one followed. Nigel unbuckled his seatbelt and rose as the remaining soldier brushed past him. The man reached the doorway, glanced out and down, and beckoned him forward. His father gave him a thumbs-up as he passed, and rose to follow. The nose of the helicopter bucked like a leaping salmon, flinging him backwards. A hand grabbed his elbow and stopped him falling.
    â€œThanks,” he gasped idiotically as the President hauled him up, not letting go till the soldier by the door had got hold of his other elbow and dragged him to the doorway. He copied what the first two men had done, gripping the doorposts either side and poising himself in the entrance with the