Chapter One

The helicopter ground to a halt, the front end pitching upwards. The lights had failed, the cabin would be in darkness if it wasn't for the sunlight streaming in from the cockpit. For a moment there was silence. Then Caldwell heard the sound of movement above him.

His gun was in his hand by the time the prisoner appeared framed in the sunlight, but Caldwell found that it was too heavy to lift. His forehead was bleeding, he realised, where a metal box from the overhead locker had caught him.

Christian was kicking at something in the cockpit, something Caldwell couldn't see. The impact was enough to shake the whole of the helicopter, or what was left of it. They were the only two people left alive, Caldwell instinctively knew that. Christian wasn't even hurt.

He tried to say something, but was too weak.

Out of his vision, the cockpit door slammed open. Caldwell heard Christian scramble out of the cockpit and down the fuselage of the helicopter. He heard a pair of heavy boots crunch down into the soft earth outside. Caldwell tried to move, but he couldn't.

The Doctor tried to keep pace with Bernice as she raced towards the woods. A vapour trail was scored across the sky, a thick black line pointing the way to the crash site. There was a column of smoke rising up the edge of the orchard, but there hadn't been an explosion. Now they were through the wicket gate, it was only a hundred yards across an open field to the crash site.

A rabbit hopped out of his way, no longer concerned by the devastation strewn around its habitat. The helicopter had hit the hillside at an angle, doing an equal amount of damage to itself and the orchard. It had punched a hole through the woodland, leaving everything else unscathed. As he and his companion entered the new clearing, the Doctor could trace its bone-jarring path down. The rotor blades had sliced the treetops before cleanly breaking off - as they were designed to - and embedding themselves in the thicker trunks. The fuselage had continued hurtling forwards, even with the rotors gone, but had become tangled in the branches. The main body of the helicopter had twisted its way through the large trees before dropping to the earth. By the time it reached the bottom it hadn't been travelling very fast: virtually all its momentum had been absorbed by the trees. The air was full of the smell of charcoal and burning rubber. It had pitched diagonally, with the port side higher and the cockpit highest of all. The port engine, the one that was now facing upright, wasn't fully ablaze, but smoke was billowing out of it. The ground was littered with pieces of twisted metal.