Star Of Africa Part 24

Ben was woken by the sounds of activity outside. He opened his eyes and sat up, stiff and aching. The first light of dawn was creeping in through the doorway.

Another day. Ben already knew it wasn't going to be a good one.

The night sentries were gone, replaced by a fresh guard of Khosa's men standing inside the building and another three outside, all cradling rifles in their arms except for the fat soldier with the shotgun, who seemed to be in charge. The middle of his face was plastered with a dressing, and to Ben's pleasure the bruising had spread outwards from his busted nose and his eyes had swollen to the size of pears. He could barely open them wide enough to shoot vengeful looks at Hercules, who was still sleeping on the floor a few yards from Tuesday and Gerber. Jeff was already awake, sitting against a wall. He gave a dark smile. 'Morning, chief. How was your night?'

Ben gathered himself up to his feet and approached the doorway, watched every step by the guards. Outside in the red dawn, the soldiers who weren't on sentry duty were busily refuelling the Dakota from the second tank on the truck trailer. The whole base was swarming with preparation for the onward journey.

'How about getting us some coffee?' Ben said to the fat soldier, but all he got in reply was a surly look. Then the nose picker came bustling into the building, shouting, 'Awake! Awake! Up! Up!' His English vocabulary might have been limited, but he could use it to good effect.

Within moments, the five prisoners were hustled outside. Hercules yawned and stretched his big arms, then very deliberately pa.s.sed within a step of the fat soldier, paused to give him a contemptuous stare and then suddenly tensed as if he was about to hit him again. The fat soldier flinched away like a beaten dog. Five rifles were instantly pointing at Hercules and the air was filled with nervy shouting and yelling.

'Easy, brother,' Gerber said softly, putting a hand on Hercules's broad back. Hercules gave the fat soldier a nasty smile and then walked on through the doorway.

The burning heat of the new day hadn't started bearing down yet, but it soon would. Stepping into the dawn light, Ben saw that Jude was already outside, flanked by the two exhausted-looking guards who had evidently been sitting awake all night watching him like hawks, kept awake by their terror of what their commander would do to them if the prisoner escaped. By comparison to them, Jude looked as fresh as a daisy.

Eat when you can, drink when you can, sleep when you can.

Jude was learning.

Moments later, Khosa himself emerged from the relative luxury of his own quarters, smoking another of his long cigars as his personal guard gathered round him. The General looked in high spirits, issuing commands here and there, rubbing his hands in expectation of an eventful and productive day ahead and surveying with satisfaction the bustling activities of his troops.

Even the most basic forward operating base runs on a minimum of kit. The men were busy collecting it all together into a stockpile next to the plane. Weapons, crates of ammunition, jerrycans, the portable cooking stove, pots and pans and mess tins and oil lamps, the medical first aid kit from which the fat soldier's dressing must have come, the folding table and chair from Khosa's quarters, plastic water jugs, more crates containing food and sundry other supplies. Soldiers were swarming like ants up and down the ladder to and from the open hatch of the Dakota, loading all the gear on board.

Ben walked across the compound towards Khosa, who saw him coming and turned. He smiled, smoke jetting from his nostrils.

'Did you sleep well, soldier?'

'Like a baby,' Ben said. 'I've been thinking, General. If we're going to be soldiers in your army, then you have to equip us.'

'I cannot allow you to be armed, soldier. I am not yet so sure I can trust you.'

'I was thinking more along the lines of bootlaces,' Ben said, pointing at his feet. 'As well as uniforms. Jackets, at the very least. We need five of them. For me, for Jeff, for Jude, for Tuesday and for Gerber. Hercules already has one, and I don't think you'd have anything in x.x.xL size anyway.'

Khosa considered Ben's request with a grave nod, and then gave a sharp command to one of his personal guard. The soldier scurried over to the stockpile by the Dakota, rummaged through a crate and came scurrying back a few moments later with a set of laces and an armful of green and brown clothing. The uniforms were a mix of plain khaki and disruptive-pattern camouflage combat jackets that might have been raided from any cheap and nasty army surplus store in the world. Khosa inspected them before pa.s.sing them on to Ben. 'This is good thinking, soldier. Now you are becoming one of us. I am pleased.'

'Get them on,' Ben said as he handed the clothing out to Jude and the others. 'It's going to be a long and chilly flight.' The one he picked out for himself was a DPM pattern jacket. It was old and tatty and greasy to the touch, but it had all the right b.u.t.ton-down pockets in all the right places. You never knew what you might have to conceal in there, when the opportunity came.

Ten minutes later, Ben's boots felt rea.s.suringly tight again, the fuel pump had stopped pumping and it looked as if the old Dakota was ready for its long flight inland. Khosa issued his final orders to his air crews. Six men clambered into the Puma and the two Bell Iroquois, a pilot and co-pilot apiece. Khosa climbed the ladder to the aeroplane's hatch and disappeared inside, followed by the Dakota pilot. Ben glimpsed the General through the co-pilot window of the c.o.c.kpit, his eyes hidden behind mirrored shades and the cigar clenched in his teeth, talking animatedly to the pilot as the guy busied himself flipping switches and powering up the aeroplane.

Things moved quickly from there. The three helicopter turbines started up with a triple out-of-phase whine that grew into a lazy whap-whap-whap and then into a howling chorus as the rotors slowly picked up speed. Then one after another, the Dakota's engines gave a wheezing cough from their starters and a puff of smoke, and then the big three-bladed propellers began to crank into motion. The clattering drone of the plane mingled with the rising howl of the choppers, until the whole base was filled with noise and wind and dust and the rich smell of exhaust fumes and, to Ben, the familiar tension and antic.i.p.ation of an airborne squadron preparing for action.

The prisoners, now six again, now all clad in military jackets, were forced at gunpoint up the ladder and through the Dakota's hatch. The aeroplane's interior closely resembled that of the Puma that had brought them here, but on a much larger scale. Just like before, they found themselves being herded into a bare metal fuselage of bolted-together sections with exposed seams and fitted with facing rows of fold-down seats. Just like before, they were made to sit with the fat soldier, the nose picker and the skinny guy close by, guns at the ready, eyes never leaving them. Only this time, they were six and not seven. And this time, they were surrounded by a far greater enemy presence. Minus the half dozen men on board the choppers, minus Khosa and the pilot up front, that still left nearly thirty heavily armed soldiers to contend with. Ben and Jeff exchanged the same glances they had exchanged on board the Puma. But this time around, there was going to be no chance of taking over the aircraft in mid-air. No chance whatsoever.

The rumble and vibration of the engines resonated through the whole aircraft as the Dakota began to roll. The engines revved up to takeoff speed and Ben felt the acceleration press him sideways in his seat. It was a b.u.mpy ride, and the faster the Dakota lurched and hammered over the uneven ground the b.u.mpier it got, until they were being jolted out of their seats and everyone was clinging on tight to whatever support they could find.

Then, just as it seemed as though the lumbering dinosaur would never get off the ground, the crazy b.u.mping ride suddenly smoothed off and Ben felt the stomach-sinking sensation as the Dakota gathered the wind beneath its wings and its wheels left the ground. And they were airborne.

Chapter 49.

The droning, clattering flight went on and on. Even if it had been physically possible, there wouldn't have been a lot of scope for conversation. An hour pa.s.sed. With no window to see out of, and with the overwhelming noise of the Dakota's engines and the whistling blast of cold wind rus.h.i.+ng through the draughty, unpressurised interior, Ben could only wonder whether the choppers were managing to keep pace with them, or whether the Dakota had already left them far behind.

For the same reason, Ben could only imagine the landscape pa.s.sing by below, gradually changing as they progressed westwards for another interminable hour, and then another again. They must have covered at least six hundred miles by now. Almost certainly avoiding major centres of civilisation, which wasn't a hard thing to do in Africa. From the dust bowl of Somalia to the great plains of Kenya, overflying shanty towns and thatch-hut villages and rivers and the tail end of the great migrations of teeming herds of wildebeest and zebra as they drifted towards the Serengeti in Tanzania before the worst of the rainy season began. Then further westwards and southwards, over sweeping savannas and into thickening forest so dense that a man could wander lost for days, weeks, and barely ever see daylight squinting through the canopy of trees far overhead. Then further still, sc.r.a.ping the high western plateaus that soared over three thousand metres before they sloped down to the vastness of Lake Victoria, like an inland sea the size of Ireland, the source of the White Nile River, where giant herons and eagles glided over the water, and sh.o.r.e villagers fished the way they had been fis.h.i.+ng for a thousand years, and hippos bobbed and basked in the water, and Nile crocodiles as huge and ancient as dragons lurked in the reeds and hunted through the depths. Then onwards, and onwards, heading inexorably towards the verdant heart of what the early colonial explorers had dubbed 'the Dark Continent'. Much of it still as dark and dangerous, in some parts infinitely more dangerous, than in the time of Livingstone and Stanley.

A whole different world.

Khosa's world.

As Ben watched the hours tick by on the face of his watch, he was working out the logistics of the journey in his mind. Fully fuelled and not exceeding its cruise speed too recklessly, the DC-3 Dakota was good for a range of maybe fifteen hundred miles, perhaps longer if it had been fitted with the extra-large tanks that many of the old workhorses had. Those could extend their range by as much as another five hundred miles or more, enough to take them all the way to their final destination. If indeed the three choppers had followed them from Somalia, there was no way they could make even a third of the ultimate distance without taking on more fuel. They would have already had to land long before now. Which implied that Khosa would already have everything set up waiting for them in advance, planning for the choppers to make the journey in several well-orchestrated hops. The more Ben learned about the man, the more disconcertingly aware he became of how much smarter and more organised he was than Ben had first reckoned on. That wasn't a rea.s.suring thought to hold in your mind when where was nothing else to think about and nothing you could do to make a difference.

Another hour dragged by, then another. Going by the Dakota's typical cruise speed, that meant anything up to two hundred more miles travelled for each full rotation of the minute hand on Ben's watch. They must have covered something like a thousand miles by now. Ben closed his eyes and revisited his mental map of Africa. If his idea of Khosa's flight plan was anything close to accurate, that distance would have taken them over Lake Victoria. Beyond Kenya into Uganda, as Khosa had intended, taking a line approximately midway between the Ugandan capital of Kampala, to the north, and the Rwandan capital of Kigali, to the south. The journey must be nearly three-quarters over by now. Ben wasn't looking forward to its end.

He opened his eyes and gazed across the aisle between the rows of seats. Jude, sitting facing him, was fast asleep. Good for him. Gerber and Hercules, the same. Jeff was sitting staring into s.p.a.ce, apparently lost in whatever thoughts were knitting his brows into deep corrugated ridges of anxiety. Tuesday's eyes were closed, but judging by his posture he was awake, conserving his energy, staying calm.

To the left and right of them, many of Khosa's soldiers were managing to remain much more alert even after all these hours in the air, and Ben knew why. They all had dilated pupils and were as jumpy as a hardcore caffeine addict after four pints of Turkish coffee. They were chewing khat, an amphetamine-like stimulant derived from a flowering plant widely found across the Horn of Africa and even more widely used to stay mentally zoned in at times of great stress or boredom. Ben had tried it once in Sudan, didn't get on with it, and resorted back to his time-honoured tobacco. Along with tremors and constipation, its side effects could include manic or even psychotic behaviour.

Shut in a flying coffin with thirty potential psychopaths armed with loaded a.s.sault rifles. Things just kept getting better.

But only a few short minutes after that, even those not chewing khat suddenly had a much better reason to become wide-eyed and alert.

The steady monotonous drone resonating through the Dakota had abruptly changed in pitch. First there was a wheeze, followed by a strange kind of death rattle, both clearly audible over the roar of the wind. Then came a peculiar sensation as if someone had turned the balance k.n.o.b on a sound system all the way to one side, directing all the signal through only one speaker. Like going suddenly deaf in one ear. At the same moment, the aircraft started juddering and shuddering as though it had hit air turbulence.

Ben knew from experience that air turbulence was unlikely to be a problem below the high troposphere, between about 23,000 and about 39,000 feet up. Which in the former case was right on the Dakota's maximum service ceiling, and in the latter case far exceeded it.

And that, along with the strange and sudden change in sound pitch that had coincided precisely with the jerky motion that was making the aircraft lurch like a drunkard through the air, was enough to tell Ben they hadn't hit turbulence at all.

He wasn't the only one thinking it. Tuesday had opened his eyes, and he and Jeff were staring right at him. They knew it, too.

The old Dakota had just lost one of its engines.

It wasn't cause for total panic. Not yet. A Dakota could still fly on a single engine, like the one that had made the eleven hundred miles from Pearl Harbor to San Diego back in 1945 with one propeller out of action. Even on one wing, like the one that had collided mid-air with a Lockheed bomber and still made it safely home. The loss of an engine didn't seem to worry the soldiers unduly. Maybe the old machine had played this trick on them before. Maybe this happened all the time.

But when a second wheezing rattle was followed moments later by eerie silence except for the roaring, howling rush of wind streaming past the fuselage, it was clear that the situation had just changed dramatically for the worse.

Because there wasn't a Dakota yet built that could fly on no engines at all.

Chapter 50.

It is said that the experience of war is defined by long periods of mind-numbing inactivity, interspersed at random intervals by brief, sharp periods of intense terror. Ben could pretty much testify to the wisdom of that old saying. It was about to be proven true yet again.

When the second engine cut out, three things happened. First, total shocked silence as every one of Khosa's men on board sat there frozen and speechless, rooted to their seats as the seconds ticked by and all ears strained for the sound of the engines cutting back in again. Then, mayhem and panic. Soldiers springing from their seats and yelling and screaming and waving their arms in terror, while others curled up and tucked their heads between their knees.

Thirdly, the awful sensation of weightlessness as the aircraft began to fall from the sky.

Amid the chaos, Jeff flashed Ben a crazy grin. Maybe they wouldn't have to wait for the right moment after all.

Ben launched himself out of his seat and grabbed hold of Jude, who was suddenly very awake and looking around him with wild eyes. 'Hang on tight!' Ben yelled in his ear. But there was very little to hang onto as the plane went into a gliding nose-dive. Nothing to do but count down the seconds until impact.

Ben fought his way through the frenzied crush of Khosa's men and ran down the centre aisle towards the c.o.c.kpit. He saw the pilot desperately yanking on the controls as he struggled to bring the Dakota's nose up. Through the twin panes of the split windscreen he saw a blanket of green rus.h.i.+ng towards them. The plane was plummeting at a steep angle towards what looked like an unbroken canopy of treetops stretching as far as the eye could see, maybe four hundred feet below and closing fast.

Three hundred feet and dropping.

Two hundred feet and dropping.

The pilot had both feet braced on the control panel and both hands on the stick as he hauled with all his might to get the flaps down and create as much lift under the wings as he could, while bringing down their airspeed by whatever margin he could for the inevitable crash landing. The plane's electricals were still working fine. A light was glowing in the instrument panel to indicate that the undercarriage was lowered. Cl.u.s.ters of dials and gauges were going crazy. Sweat was pouring down the pilot's face and his teeth were clenched.

Jean-Pierre Khosa just sat calmly in the co-pilot's chair and puffed on his cigar as if nothing were happening.

One hundred feet and dropping. Ben could almost make out the individual leaves on the branches of the trees hurtling towards them. Then, down there below the green canopy, half-screened by the treetops, he glimpsed a tiny meandering ribbon of ochre brown. At first he thought it was a muddy river. A full second later, he realised it was a dirt road.

The pilot had spotted it too. He was desperately trying to steer the stalled aircraft towards it.

Seventy feet and dropping. But not dropping as fast now. The pilot was winning his battle to keep the Dakota's nose up, though only by a few critical degrees. Airspeed was falling. The flaps were cranked down as far as the pilot could muscle the lever. The dirt road grew larger in the window, appearing like a narrow ravine flanked on both sides by tropical forest, just barely wide enough to squeeze the plane into without ripping off both wings and smas.h.i.+ng the aircraft into a thousand fiery pieces.

Fifty feet.

Forty.

Thirty.

Jude. Ben turned away from the c.o.c.kpit and rushed back along the aisle, fighting his way through a wall of bodies.

He was halfway there when the impact knocked him off his feet and he went sprawling backwards.

CRUNCH.

The plane hit the dirt road with a violent slamming jolt that shook it from nose to tail, bounced and then came back to earth harder still in a wild b.u.mping slithering skidding ride that seemed to go on forever. The tunnel of the fuselage twisted one way, then twisted the other. It felt as if the whole landing gear had been ripped off, wheels, struts and all. As if the whole aircraft was coming apart at the seams. A deafening cannonade of hurtling rocks and stones and dirt pelted its underside.

Then, at last, the plane's momentum was spent and its brakes brought it to a b.u.mping, lurching halt. Then a stunned silence, before the wild cheers and the whooping broke out.

Ben called Jude's name and heard Jude's voice reply, then Jeff's. He shoved and elbowed his way through the melee to get to them. Tuesday had a bleeding cut above one eyebrow and Gerber and Hercules were badly shaken up. Jude and Jeff were both without a scratch. It seemed a miracle that none of them had been hurt.

Neither, apparently, had any of Khosa's people. That seemed less of a miracle to Ben. A broken arm here, a sprained wrist or cracked collarbone there, anything to compromise the enemy's strength however minutely, would have made his work that little bit easier down the line.

Khosa emerged from the c.o.c.kpit, unruffled, still calmly smoking his cigar and clutching the GPS navigation device Ben had seen on his table back at the base in Somalia. Khosa quickly marshalled his men, issuing commands left and right. The hatch was opened and the ladder lowered to the ground for everyone to disembark. The six prisoners were made to lead the way, then shoved and prodded to one side and held at gunpoint while the rest of the soldiers came rattling down the ladder and crowded beside the Dakota. The air was heavy with the scents of the forest around them, mingled with the tang of hot oil and hot exhaust.

Up close, what had looked from the air like a dirt road was nothing more than a rutted track. Even before the emergency landing had carved long, deep trenches in the loose soil, it would have taken a four-wheel-drive vehicle and a fairly committed driver to negotiate.

Ben looked up at the sky, s.h.i.+elding his eyes from the searing midday sun. As he'd fully expected, there was no sign of the helicopters. No sign of anything, except the track winding away through the trees, one very grounded DC-3 and thirty or more soldiers milling around and checking their weapons for damage, lighting cigarettes, bantering and joking among themselves like tough guys and trying to act as if they hadn't just moments ago been screaming in panic for their lives.

'Where the h.e.l.l are we, anyway?' Jude asked.

'Somewhere hot and damp, is all I can tell you,' Tuesday said.

'I think we're in Rwanda,' Ben said. 'Which puts Khosa still an awful long way from home.'

'One thing's for sure,' Jeff said, pointing at the Dakota. 'If he's going to get there any time soon, it won't be in that.'

But Khosa seemed to have different ideas. Once the last of his troops had clambered down to the ground, he ordered for the boarding ladder to be moved from the hatch and leaned up against the port wing. At his command, one of the soldiers climbed up the ladder and walked along the wing to peer into the circular mouth of the engine cowl, as if he could figure out what the problem was just by gawking at it.

The engine yielding no immediate diagnostic clues, the soldier hurried back to clatter a few rungs down the ladder, until his head was just below the level of the wing and he was able to crane his neck and examine the huge aluminium fuel tank attached to its underside. He hung off the ladder with one hand, reached up and prodded around, then drew his machete from his belt and used the flat of the blade to give the nearest end of the tank a judicious tap. It produced a telling, hollow-sounding clang.

Empty.

Problem solved. Or diagnosed, at any rate.

It looked as if the Dakota hadn't been fitted with those longer-range fuel tanks after all, Ben thought.

'Just as I reckoned,' Jeff said. 'Silly b.u.g.g.e.rs kept on flying until they ran clean out of gas. Anyway, that's the least of their worries now. Look at that wheel.'

Ben had already noticed it, because it wasn't easy to miss the fact that the whole aircraft was listing to one side on its undercarriage. The starboard wheel had hit a rock on landing, hard enough to explode the monster balloon tyre, which was now hanging in black shreds from a naked steel rim buckled badly out of true by the impact. But it wasn't just the wheel. The whole hydraulic strut was bent out of shape, causing the out-of-balance tilt. Until the old Dakota received some serious attention in a well-equipped workshop, it wasn't going anywhere again. Not even if they'd had five hundred yards of gla.s.s-smooth concrete runway to take off from.

'Looks like it's Shanks's pony for us,' Jeff said. 'Whoever the f.u.c.k Shanks was.'

Ben had to smile at that thought, knowing Jeff was right. They'd have no choice but to progress on foot. It wasn't the idea of a long march in the hot sun that made him smile, but the knowledge that maybe Khosa wasn't that organised, after all. And a long march on foot might just present the six of them with unexpected opportunities. Escape, for one.

The soldier climbed sheepishly back down the ladder to where Khosa was waiting for him at its foot, arms crossed and no longer looking as placid. The guy was shaking his head and spreading his arms and shrugging his shoulders and offering all kinds of excuses as his commander stood glaring at him.

'Who's he anyway, the unit mechanic?' muttered Jeff, who didn't understand Swahili. 'Not much cop, if he is.'

'Sounds like he was in charge of refuelling the plane,' Ben said.

'Wasn't exactly his fault, though, was it?' Jeff said. 'Pilot should've been watching his gauges. a.s.suming they work.'

'Still, I wouldn't like to be in his shoes,' said Gerber.

Hercules gave a snort. 'Like we give a s.h.i.+t what happens to the guy.'

But nothing could quite prepare them for what did happen to the guy, three seconds later.

Khosa waited in silence for the man's excuses to dry up. The soldier just stood there, cringing, shoulders slumped, head hanging in mortification. Then, still without a word, Khosa drew the .44 Magnum from his holster and in a rapid sweeping motion he raised it up at arm's length and shot the man once, point-blank range, right in the middle of the face.