ACCLAIM FOR ALEX RIDER:

“Explosive, thrilling, action-packed – meet Alex Rider.”

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“Horowitz is pure class, stylish but action-packed … being

James Bond in miniature is way cooler than being a wizard.”
Daily Mirror

“Horowitz will grip you with suspense, daring and cheek –

and that’s just the first page! … Prepare for action scenes as
fast as a movie.” The Times

“Anthony Horowitz is the lion of children’s ­literature.”

Michael Morpurgo

“Fast and furious.” Telegraph

“The perfect hero … genuine 21st century stuff.”

Daily Telegraph

“Brings new meaning to the phrase ‘action-packed’.”

Sunday Times

“Every bored schoolboy’s fantasy, only a t­ housand times

­funnier, slicker and more ­exciting … genius.”
Independent on Sunday

“Perfect escapism for all teenage boys.” The Times

“Addictive, pacey novels.” Financial Times

“Adults as well as kids will be hooked on the adventures of

Alex Rider … Harry Potter with attitude.” Daily Express
 Titles by Anthony Horowitz

The Alex Rider series:

Stormbreaker
Point Blanc
Skeleton Key
Eagle Strike
Scorpia
Ark Angel
Snakehead
Crocodile Tears
Scorpia Rising
Russian Roulette
Never Say Die

The Power of Five (Book One): Raven’s Gate

The Power of Five (Book Two): Evil Star
The Power of Five (Book Three): Nightrise
The Power of Five (Book Four): Necropolis
The Power of Five (Book Five): Oblivion

The Devil and His Boy

Granny
Groosham Grange
Return to Groosham Grange
The Switch
More Bloody Horowitz

The Diamond Brothers books:

The Falcon’s Malteser
Public Enemy Number Two
South by South East
The French Confection
The Greek Who Stole Christmas
The Blurred Man
I Know What You Did Last Wednesday
 For JW – with thanks

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used
fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information
and material of any other kind contained herein are included for
entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for
accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.

First published 2017 by Walker Books Ltd

87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Text © 2017 Stormbreaker Productions Ltd

Cover illustration © 2017 Walker Books Ltd
Trademarks Alex Rider™; Boy with Torch Logo™
© 2017 Stormbreaker Productions Ltd
The right of Anthony Horowitz to be identified as author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This book has been typeset in Officina Sans

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,

transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in
any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, taping and recording, without
prior written permission from the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-4063-7705-7
ISBN 978-1-4063-7783-5

www.walker.co.uk
 CONTENTS
1 Thin Air 9
2 One of the Family 28
3 From Lima with Love? 41
4 Back to Siwa 56
5 Nightmare Land 73
6 Freeze-frame 93
7 The Onion Route 110
8 Peppermint Tea 122
9 Quicksilver 135
10 Fire and Water 149
11 Two Red Roses 163
12 Cement Shoes 180
13 Needle Point 196
14 Back Home 215
15 Under Surveillance 231
16 Steel Claw 246
17 Into the Dark 265
18 Smoke City 280
19 Never Say Die 302
20 Break-out 317
21 Downhill All the Way 333
22 The Midnight Flyer 354
23 Nightshade 368
 THIN AIR

Fifty thousand people had come to the Suffolk Air

Show on the east coast of England. But only one of
them was there to commit murder.
It was the end of August, the last week of the
summer holiday. The schools were closed and whole
families had taken advantage of the fine weather
to arrive at the old airbase, less than a mile from
the sea. They had strolled around vintage planes
from the First and Second World Wars: single-seat
biplanes parked next to Spitfires and Hurricanes.
That morning, the Red Arrows had put on a d­ azzling
display, twisting and criss-crossing each other in
the sky before swooping down, trailing plumes of
red, white and blue. There had been fly-pasts by the
Tornado GR4, the two-seat attack aircraft that had
been used in Iraq and Libya and by the Lightning
II Joint Strike Fighter, one of the most sophisti-
cated and – at one hundred million pounds – one
of the most expensive aircrafts in the world.
The grounds were packed with simulator rides,

9
NEVER SAY DIE

motorbike displays, drones, face-painting and fair­­­

ground stalls. Everyone was having a good time.
As with every public event in the UK, an exten-
sive, almost invisible security net had been put in
place. It was impossible to stop and search all the
cars but CCTV cameras recorded every arrival and
every number plate was instantly checked. People
might notice police and even a few sniffer dogs
moving among them. These were a common sight.
But they would be unaware of the plain-clothes
policemen, many of them with concealed weap-
ons, mingling with the crowd. In fact the Joint
Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) had met in their
offices close to the Houses of Parliament just a few
days before and had agreed that the threat level at
the Suffolk Air Show would remain at MODERATE.
They weren’t expecting any trouble.
And so nobody paid very much attention to the
woman who arrived just after three o’clock. She
had driven into the car park in a Ford Transit van
which, according to the Automatic Number Plate
Recognition system, belonged to the St John
Ambulance service. This is the country’s lead-
ing first-aid charity and, indeed, the woman was
dressed in the green and black uniform of a local
volunteer. She was carrying a nylon bag marked
with a white cross which, if opened, would reveal
medicine and bandages.
She was short and round-shouldered with dark
red hair that had been cut so badly that it stuck

10
 Thin Air

out straight on one side of her head and curled in

on the other. There was something quite aggres-
sive about the way she walked, like a boxer about
to enter the ring. She was overweight, b­ reathing
heavily, with beads of sweat on her upper lip.
She had a lot of make-up on but it did nothing to
make her more attractive, sitting uselessly on her
leathery skin. As she walked, she put on a pair of
cheap sunglasses. They concealed the smouldering
­violence in her eyes.
There was a separate entrance leading into the
airbase, reserved for paramedics, technicians,
organizers … anyone working at the event. She
stopped and showed a pass which identified her
as Jane Smith but this was not her real name. Nor
had she ever worked for the St John Ambulance
service. The security man at the gate might have
wondered why she had arrived so late in the day,
when the Air Show was almost over. He might have
asked her why she was alone. But he was tired
and he was looking forward to getting home. He
glanced at her pass and waved her through.
He didn’t even look inside the bag.
The woman’s real name was Dragana Novak. She
was forty-six years old and until recently she had
been a lieutenant colonel in the Serbian Air Force;
a high-flyer in every sense of the word. Her career
had ended following a drunken fight with another
pilot. He had been twice her size, but even so, she
had put him in hospital. In fact he was still there.

11
NEVER SAY DIE

Inevitably, there had been a court martial and she

had been looking at an uncertain future – perhaps
returning to the turnip farm where she had been
brought up. That was when she had received the
telephone call. There was a unique job opportu-
nity. It would pay two hundred thousand pounds
for two days’ work. Was she interested?
Dragana didn’t need to think for a minute. She
had met her contact in a local tavern in Belgrade
where she had tucked into her favourite dish of
sarma – spicy beef wrapped in cabbage leaves
– washed down with a large glass of rakija, the
local plum brandy. The man, who had never given
her his name, had told her what was needed. It
was a tricky operation that would demand all her
skills. Dragana hadn’t asked any questions. All she
cared about was the money. It was more than
she had been paid in her life.
She was still dreaming about jewellery, fast
cars and expensive chocolates as she made her
way past the various exhibition stands, the bars,
the fast-food outlets. People were already drifting
towards the seats for the last flying display of the
afternoon. For many of them it was the high point
of the entire show. The aircraft was sitting out on
the tarmac, patiently waiting for the pilot to walk
over and take the controls. Dragana stopped at
the barrier that ran the full length of the runway
and took out a pair of binoculars. Without remov-
ing her dark glasses, she raised them to her eyes.

12
 Thin Air

Slowly, unable to help herself, she smiled.

This was what she had come to steal.
The American-built Sikorsky CH-53E is also
known as the Super Stallion and there’s really
no helicopter in the world that’s quite like it. To
look at, it’s hard to believe that it can fly at all.
For a start, it’s huge: as tall as a three-storey
building and longer than three London buses
standing end to end. It’s also surprisingly ugly,
bolted together as if the designers had never
actually had any plans.
The Super Stallion can fly – at two-hundred
miles an hour – and what makes it special is that it
can carry an enormous load. It is the workhorse for
the United States military, capable of lifting six-
teen tonnes of cargo. When the Americans mount
an assault, it can transport a platoon with enough
weapons to obliterate an entire army. How does
it even get off the ground? Part of the answer is
the fact that it has no fewer than three hugely
powerful turboshaft engines. It also has g­ igantic
titanium-fibreglass rotor blades, twenty-four
­
metres in diameter. Most helicopters have just four
blades. The Super Stallion has seven.
Dragana Novak examined it, running her eyes
over the grey-painted fuselage, the cockpit, the
tail rotor. The Serbian Air Force couldn’t possibly
afford a machine like this, but Dragana had briefly
flown one when she was on a training exercise
with the United Nations and still remembered the

13
NEVER SAY DIE

thrill it had given her. In less than thirty minutes’

time, it would be hers. She had no children. She
had never married. But right now, looking at the
helicopter, she felt its power reaching out to her
and knew that she was completely in love.
It was time to move. Everything had been plan­
ned down to the last second and she had been
shown exactly where to go. There were several
hangars on the other side of the runway but two
buildings dominated the airfield closer by, both of
them left over from the last war. One was the con-
trol tower. The other was a low, red-brick building
with about twenty evenly-spaced windows and
several doors. This had been an office complex but
it was being used to house the pilots and techni-
cians during the show, with changing rooms, rest
areas and a cafeteria at the far end.
Hoisting her medicine bag over her shoulder,
Dragana strolled towards the entrance where two
more uniformed officials were standing behind a
conveyor belt that fed into an X-ray machine –
exactly the same sort of device that could be found
at any airport. First, visitors would have their cases
and carrier bags scanned. Then there was a metal
detector which everyone had to pass through.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m here to see Sergeant
Perkins.” She had spent five years studying in
London before qualifying as a pilot and spoke good
English, but with a heavy accent that made her
seem as if she disliked everything she was saying.

14
 Thin Air

“Why?” The officials glanced at each other, puz-

zled. They had been here all day and this was the
first time they had seen her.
Dragana smiled, showing grey teeth, discoloured
by wine and cigarettes. Her right hand slipped
into the pocket of her jacket. “He has a headache.
I have some aspirin for him.”
Of course the story was ridiculous. The two men
should have rung the control tower to get con-
firmation. But just like the guard at the events
gate, they came to all the wrong conclusions. This
was a single woman. She was wearing a St John
Ambulance uniform. It was the end of the day,
almost the end of the entire event. What p­ ossible
harm could there be? “All right,” one of them
said. “Your bag has to go through the machine
and remove any metal objects from your pockets.”
“Of course.” Dragana placed the medicine bag
on the belt and watched as it was carried slowly
into the machine. She knew that there was noth-
ing inside to cause any alarm. Next, she stepped
through the metal detector and smiled to herself
as the light flashed green. She collected her things
and continued on her way. This was going to be
even easier than she had thought.
She made her way down a long corridor with a
wooden floor and old-fashioned hanging lights.
A few people passed her but didn’t give her a
second glance. Again, the uniform saw to that. She
came to a door at the end and knocked politely.

15
NEVER SAY DIE

“Come in!” With just two words, she could

detect the American accent.
There were two men sitting in the room, both
wearing flight suits. Sergeant Brad Perkins was in
his early thirties but looked much younger: clean-
shaven, fair-haired, with blue eyes. He had recently
graduated as a pilot from the US Army Aviation
Center at Fort Rucker in Alabama and this was one
of his first deployments. He was a little annoyed to
find himself not just in England but in some place
he’d never heard of. Suffolk? Where the hell was
that? There was a co-pilot sitting with him, also
American, about the same age, drinking Coke.
Dragana didn’t know his name. Nor did she care.
“How can we help you?” Perkins asked.
“Well, actually, you can die.” Dragana had
taken an unusual-looking gun out of her jacket
pocket. It was white and made of ceramic, which
was why it had passed unnoticed through the
metal detector. She squeezed the trigger twice.
The gun used a small chamber of compressed air
to fire not bullets but plastic needles, each one
tipped with tetrodotoxin, one of the deadliest
poisons on the planet. Tetrodotoxin, or TTX as
it’s known, is a neurotoxin found in certain fish
and octopuses and is extremely fast-acting, shut-
ting down a person’s nervous system in minutes.
Perkins struggled to his feet but died before he
was halfway there. His partner tried to say some-
thing, then collapsed.

16
 Thin Air

Dragana put the gun away and went over to the

two men. Sergeant Brad Perkins stared up at her
with empty eyes. He was the smaller of the two,
about her height. She reached down and unbut-
toned his uniform.
Ten minutes later, she walked out of the build-
ing, now dressed in a flight suit and carrying a
leather folder. Nobody stopped her as she reached
the Super Stallion and climbed inside. The ground
staff had been expecting two men, not a lone
woman. And she was a few minutes early. But still
nobody challenged her. After all, she looked as if
she knew what she was doing. She was dressed for
the part. And the very idea that somebody might
be about to steal a gigantic helicopter in broad
daylight was so bizarre, so outrageous that nobody
even considered it.
And so Dragana was completely relaxed as she
slipped on a set of headphones and strapped her-
self in. Quickly, she ran her eye over the various
gauges, checking the fuel levels. She flicked on
the master battery, the avionics and the fuel valve
master, then watched as the seven huge blades
began to turn, picking up speed until they were
no more than a blur. Even with the headphones,
she was deafened by the engines. She rested her
left hand on the collective control, then leaned
over and adjusted the throttle. She could feel the
downdraught underneath her, beating down onto
the tarmac at ninety miles an hour.

17
NEVER SAY DIE

“Stallion One. You are clear for take-off…”

The voice came from the control tower; a young
man, very English, stupidly cheerful.
A final check. She had reached proper operating
rpm (revs per minute). Using the throttle and the
foot pedals, she steered the Super Stallion along
the runway, gently guiding it. This was the moment
she loved, when this huge machine belonged only
to her. She found herself whispering to it in her
own language, urging it to obey her command.
As they left the ground she thought briefly of
the two men she had killed. She had no pity for
them. After all, she was a military officer who had
been trained to kill people although she had never
had the opportunity until today. Ten minutes in
the air and two hundred thousand dollars in the
bank. She would have killed fifty more people for
that. She reached out and pressed on the cyclic
lever, bringing the nose of the helicopter down
and urging it on. The Super Stallion shot out
beyond the coastline and over the sea.
“Stallion One. Turn left heading zero five zero
and ascend flight level one hundred, over.”
The man in the control tower was still jabbering
in her ear. Of course she wasn’t going to do what
he said. In fact, he was beginning to annoy her.
She reached down and switched the volume off.
Then she turned right.
It would be obvious almost at once that some-
thing was wrong. The path of the helicopter would

18
 Thin Air

be traced by primary and secondary radar systems.

Very soon, there would be a red alert at the Air
Traffic Control centre at Swanwick. It might have
happened already. They would know that she had
strayed from the agreed flight path and was not
responding to their commands. They would already
be tracking her. There were dozens of satellites in
outer space and they would be directed to watch
her every move. And of course, the Super Stallion
was filled with communications equipment, which
she had been unable to neutralize and would be
transmitting even now. She loved the helicopter.
It belonged to her. But she couldn’t stop it giving
the two of them away.
Timing was everything. She had memorized the
exact route she had to take and made the necess­
ary adjustments. The grey surface of the North
Sea was beneath her but now she brought the
­helicopter round, travelling south. Looking out of
the window, she saw the port of Felixstowe, the
cranes and gantries lined up along the docks, the
two rivers – the Stour and the Orwell – ­stretching
inland. She checked her course and accelerated,
sweeping low over the pier and the seafront. She
knew she would be seen but that didn’t matter. In
a way, it would help.
The field she was looking for was just east of
the A12, the road that led from Suffolk to London.
There was a scattering of buildings, an abandoned
farm. She had already been shown the maps and

19
NEVER SAY DIE

photographs and had studied them so many times

that she recognized the location instantly. She
noticed a few cars parked around the edge.
She knew that there would be half a dozen men
waiting for her to complete her short journey.
And there was her target. She saw it from two
thousand feet and immediately began her descent.
It was a rectangular block of steel lying flat in
the grass, a landing pad, just big enough for the
helicopter to fit onto. Three thick metal hoops had
been welded into the steel, one at the top and two
below, forming the shape of a triangle. This was
the difficult part. The Super Stallion had three huge
wheels. Each one had to be positioned right next to
the hoops. Otherwise, the plan wouldn’t work.
There was no way that Dragana was going to fail.
She was in command of the helicopter and it would
do everything she asked. It weighed fifteen thou-
sand kilograms but she brought it down as gently
as a falling leaf. For a few seconds she hovered
over the metal plate, then dropped. She felt the
hydraulics take the great weight and immediately
flicked the engines off. The rotors began to slow
down. Already, the men who had been waiting for
her were running forward, carrying with them fixing
devices that looked remarkably like wheel clamps,
the sort of thing the police used to immobilize cars.
Nobody hesitated. Dragana got out of the
cockpit and walked over to one of the cars.
­
At the same time, the men were kneeling

20
 Thin Air

underneath the helicopter, locking the wheels to

the three hoops. The clamps they were using were
made of ­ magnesium alloy, the lightest and the
strongest metal in the world.
It took them two minutes. Before they had even
finished, Dragana Novak had already left the field,
sitting in the back of a fast car, on her way to
London. The Super Stallion was securely locked
in place. It was only thirty miles from the airfield
where it had been stolen.
One of the men had a remote control device
with two buttons. He waited for a signal, then
pressed down. At once, hydraulics hidden beneath
the metal slab sprang to life and slowly, inch by
inch, the slab began to rise. It was like the lid of a
trapdoor opening in the ground, even though there
was nothing underneath it. The Super Stallion
tilted backwards, the cockpit pointing up.
Finally, it was vertical. The next part of the
operation could begin.

“And then?”
Sitting in her office on the sixteenth floor of
the building in Liverpool Street, London, the Chief
Executive of the Special Operations division of MI6
examined the report that had just been pressed
into her hands.
It was only three weeks since Mrs Jones had
been appointed head of Special Operations, mov-
ing into the office that had once been occupied

21
NEVER SAY DIE

by her boss, Alan Blunt. Slim and dark-haired, she

was ­wearing a black suit with only one piece of
jewellery: a silver brooch shaped like a dagger.
She looked exhausted. From the moment Blunt had
resigned, she had felt the weight on her shoulders,
understanding what it was like to be respon-
sible for the security of the entire country. And
now this! There had been problems, fears, dangers.
But this was the first real crisis she had encoun-
tered since she had taken charge.
There were four men facing her across the desk:
two from Special Operations and two others in
uniform, from the regular armed forces. She had
addressed her question to her Chief of Staff. John
Crawley had been with the service for as long as
anyone could remember. He had once been an
extremely effective field agent. In fact it was said
that in just one year, three rival organizations had
tried to recruit him while three more had tried to
assassinate him. Now, with his thinning hair, his
tired eyes and his very ordinary appearance, it was
all too easy to underestimate him. That would be a
serious mistake.
“The helicopter went out to sea, heading
towards the Continent,” he explained. “Our first
thought was that it was being taken to Russia.
But then, after travelling four and a half miles, it
turned south and headed back towards the coast.
It was tracked by the Air Traffic Control centre pri-
mary and secondary radar systems from Swanwick.

22
 Thin Air

It was last seen flying over Felixstowe. And then it

vanished into thin air.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I say, Mrs Jones. It was tracked
by our satellite systems. We have the signal from
its own transponder. And then nothing.”
“So where did it go?”
Crawley shook his head. “We have absolutely no
idea. It may have crashed into the River Orwell.
That seems most likely. But we’ve already got
­people on the scene and there’s no sign of any-
thing whatsoever.”
Mrs Jones turned to the man sitting next to
Crawley. “Do we have anything from the site?”
The second agent was the youngest person in
the room, in his late twenties, black, with very
intelligent eyes and hair cut close to the scalp.
He was smartly dressed with a crisp, white shirt
and bright tie. He moved slowly as the result of
a gunshot wound which he had suffered recently,
on duty in the Timor Sea. He had recovered with
amazing speed and had insisted on returning to
work. Mrs Jones liked him. It was she who had
recruited him from the SAS and brought him under
her wing. His name was Ben Daniels.
He opened a laptop and tapped a button. At
once, an image appeared on a seventy-two-inch
screen, mounted on the wall. “All the data shows
that the helicopter came down in one of these
fields,” he said. “We tracked it right up to the

23
NEVER SAY DIE

last minute but then, as Mr Crawley says, it just

disappeared.” He pointed. “As you can see, there
are some farm buildings, a barn, a windmill and
some houses. There’s a church nearby. The trou-
ble is, none of them are big enough to conceal a
helicopter the size of the Super Stallion … even
if you somehow took off the roof and landed
inside.”
Mrs Jones examined the photographs. There was
indeed a barn – but it was half-collapsed. Could the
helicopter have been buried in the straw? Surely
someone would have checked. She had seen plenty
of windmills in Suffolk and this one was typical:
wooden-fronted with white blades, used for corn
grinding long ago but now abandoned. What about
the church? No. Just as Crawley had said, it was
too small. She looked through the other photo-
graphs. A hill, a haystack, two electricity pylons,
the river. If it wasn’t here, where was it?
“It could have landed on a truck,” Ben Daniels
continued. “That way, it could have been driven
off and we’d have no way of knowing where. You’d
need a very big truck, though.”
“This really isn’t good enough, Mrs Jones.” It
was one of the military men who had spoken. His
name was Air Chief Marshal Sir Norman Clarke and
he was the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, the
second most powerful man in the British Armed
Forces. He was small, bald and angry-looking with
a ginger moustache. He tended to bark every word.

24
 Thin Air

“The Americans aren’t too pleased. They lost two

of their men. Murdered!”
“I can understand that, Sir Norman. But we’re
doing everything we can.”
“We’re clearly not doing enough. We need to
search the area again. And if the Super Stallion
was transported by truck, surely to goodness we
should be able to get some sort of CCTV picture?”
“There’s a rather more serious question we should
be asking ourselves.” It was the other military man
who had spoken. His name was Chichester and he
worked in naval intelligence. He was a very gaunt,
serious man. He spoke slowly, as if he was testing
his every word. “What exactly are they going to do
with the helicopter?” he went on. “Could this be
the prelude to some sort of terrorist attack?”
“It seems unlikely.” Mrs Jones had already
considered the possibility. It had been her first
thought when she heard the helicopter had been
taken. “The Super Stallion only has a range of a
thousand kilometres and although it can carry
machine guns, this one wasn’t armed. It’s a trans-
port vehicle.”
“Yes, of course. But who is transporting what?”
Sir Norman snapped. From the way he was talking,
the whole thing could have been Mrs Jones’s fault.
“The prime minister is extremely concerned,” he
went on. “We’re talking about a massive piece of
equipment here. We can’t just have lost it.”
“We haven’t stopped looking,” Crawley said. “We

25
NEVER SAY DIE

have the police out in full force. Our agents are all
over Suffolk. We’ve managed to keep this out of
the newspapers and we’re on full alert.”
Mrs Jones sighed. Her instinct was telling
her that this had all the hallmarks of a Scorpia
operation. Firstly, the theft had been completely
ruthless. Why had it been necessary to kill the two
American pilots? They could just as easily have
been knocked out. It had also been extremely effi-
cient. And finally, it was completely unfathomable,
a bit like a magic trick.
But that was impossible. The criminal organiza-
tion known as Scorpia was finished. Its members
were either dead, under arrest or on the run.
“We need to go back to the immediate area around
Felixstowe,” she said. “Let’s get divers into the river
and into the sea.” She gestured at the photo­­­­­graphs.
And we need to search here … the farm, the hills,
everything!”
“We’ve already searched it,” Crawley said.
Mrs Jones looked straight into the eyes of her
Chief of Staff. “Then search it again.”

Even as she spoke, MI6 agents were sweeping the

area. It was already getting dark but they had
powerful torches. The beams swept across the grass,
picking out the trees, the electricity pylons, the
empty and derelict barns. They didn’t go into
the windmill. It was too small. There was no point.
Nobody saw that the outer shell was actually

26
 Thin Air

very flimsy, made out of plywood that had been

bolted together very recently.
Nor did they notice that, unusually, the wind-
mill had seven blades.