The helicopter dropped with the swiftness of a bird killed in mid-flight. They held on, straining against the seat belts that crisscrossed their torsos.
Without her harness, Sara tumbled over and over around the interior until she held on to a safety harness that was attached to the floor.
‘Crash positions!!’ screamed a voice from the cockpit.
She looked up from the gridded metal floor to see the two facing rows of men grab the back of their heads and pull them into their laps.
Then there was quiet. An eerie silence, on to which was layered a faint whistling sound.
She twisted her head and looked out through the front cockpit window.
An urban landscape of greys and blacks was hurtling towards them, indistinct, shuddering. Dark-grey lines juddered across the canvas created by the front window. She realized they were office buildings. They were close enough to the ground that she could see the vague shapes of the people in the windows watching.
Tiny details embedded themselves in her mind.
Spinning dials on the dashboard …
Blood-bleached knuckles gripping steering paddles …
The faintest whispers above her of what sounded like prayers …
The green of a playing field lurching and bouncing towards them … the sunlight refracting off the surface of a canal, sparkling like a line of crushed diamonds … less than a hundred feet away now …
The helmets of the two pilots pressing themselves right back against their seat, feet jamming on the floor …
A muffled cry, ‘NOW!!’
Hands pulling back on control sticks with every ounce of force they had …
Her legs sliding across the floor as the helicopter tail tipped back …
And then there was an almighty crash, as her body was shaken with world-ending violence.