by Ryan, Chris
‘Well, guess what. If our intel is correct, Cruz has just landed in a remote area of tropical rainforest in the south of Senegal, about fifty miles from the Gambian border. I rather doubt he’s heading there on holiday. You need to follow him.’
Zak, Raf and Gabs all smiled at Michael’s sudden change of tune.
‘It’s going to be a tight landing, Raphael. They’ve set down in a small deforested stretch about a hundred metres long. It’s the only place to land for about fifty miles around, and it’ll be dark by the time you get there. Are you up to the job?’
Raf thought for a moment. Then he turned to Gabs. ‘We’ve got parachutes, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Can you tandem in with Zak?’
She looked over her shoulder. ‘What do you say, Zak? Fancy a night jump? I promise not to get you caught in the jungle canopy.’
Zak couldn’t help feeling a twist of anxiety. He’d never parachuted before, and this was hardly the time and place for a beginner.
‘What about . . .’ He almost said the word ‘Malcolm’ but stopped himself just in time. He nodded, but the decision was already made.
‘Send me the coordinates,’ Raf spoke into the radio. ‘We’re on our way now.’
6
HOP AND POP
SUNDAY, 02.00HRS
Night had fallen. The moon was full – a huge milky disc to the south – but it didn’t give them much light to see by. Zak could only make out the geography of the continent below from occasional clusters of twinkling lights. Tiny villages, larger cities, roads and, occasionally, rivers passed beneath them. Many of the smaller settlements did not even register on Raf’s GPS screen, which glowed dimly in the darkness.
At Gabs’s instruction, both Zak and Malcolm had felt underneath their seats. Under Zak’s seat was a freefall parachute, and also a small emergency survival tin. Zak checked its contents: a new cigarette lighter, waterproof matches, a couple of pieces of magnesium strip, two candle stubs cut down to an inch, sticking plasters and antiseptic wipes, a roll of gaffer tape, a long reel of fishing twine – all in a watertight metal tin about 5cm by 10cm. The items under Malcolm’s seat were bulkier: a long coil of thin, tough rope; a six-inch knife with a broad blade; a Leica spotting scope for observing things in the distance; a notebook and pencil. Zak scooped it all up and loaded it into his rucksack.
‘We’re about ninety minutes away,’ Raf said quietly.
Gabs looked over her shoulder at Zak. ‘OK, sweetie,’ she said. ‘Listen carefully. The reason we need to parachute in is that Raf can’t possibly land this plane during the hours of darkness without any visual on this tiny landing strip. We’ll need to light some fires to indicate where he has to set the aircraft down.’
‘And you’ll need to do it quickly,’ Raf added. ‘We’ve barely got enough fuel as it is. I won’t be able to circle for long.’
‘I’ll be wearing the chute,’ Gabs continued. ‘You’ll be strapped to my front, facing forward. Raf’s going to get us to about two thousand feet above the canopy, then we’re going to hop and pop.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Hop out of the plane and pop the chute immediately. We’ll be too low to allow ourselves any freefall. Raf, what’s the wind state?’
‘We’ve got a stiff south-westerly. It’ll probably change as we lose height. I’ll keep you posted.’
‘We’ll need to take that into account as we jump. But otherwise, Raf will try and get us directly over the coordinates of the landing zone. You OK with all that?’
‘I guess so,’ said Zak.
In truth, there was an urgent question in his mind. Why didn’t Gabs parachute in by herself? Was it just because they needed to build these signalling fires quickly? Or was there something more to it than that? Raf was clearly about to attempt a very dangerous landing – at night time, and into an area not designed for landing planes. Nobody had said as much, but there was a high risk of injury, even death. Were his Guardian Angels planning for that eventuality? It wasn’t just that they’d never get Malcolm to jump out of a plane. Had they silently made the decision that in the event of an accident, Zak’s strange friend was the least important member of their group?
He glanced sideways at his companion. Malcolm looked nervous. But then, he’d looked nervous since the moment he’d set eyes on the plane. Perhaps he hadn’t had the same thoughts as Zak.
Ninety minutes passed very quickly. In what seemed like no time at all, Zak felt the Cessna losing height and Gabs started strapping on her chute, then turned back to look at Zak again. ‘OK, sweetie,’ she said. ‘It’s cramped in here, but you’ll have to sit on my lap while I strap you to me.’
In other circumstances, the way in which Zak and Gabs struggled to strap themselves together might have been comical. In truth it was deadly serious. There was no margin for error. When Raf banked the plane, Zak knew that he was positioning the aircraft over the drop zone and he felt a burning nervousness in his guts. He’d always known that parachuting was a skill he’d have to master, but he never reckoned he’d have on-the-job training like this.
Talk about being thrown in at the deep end. Like, 2,000 feet deep, and nothing to break his fall if anything went wrong.
‘We’ve got a weak northerly,’ Raf announced. ‘I’ll fly just south of the landing strip. Sixty seconds till target.’
‘Ready, sweetie?’ Gabs breathed.
‘As I’ll ever be,’ replied Zak.
‘Then let’s step outside, shall we?’
Zak stretched out his palm to shake Malcolm’s hand. Malcolm didn’t take it, but looked nervously out of the window.
‘Go!’ Raf hissed urgently.
From their awkward sitting position, Gabs stretched out her arm and slid open the side door of the Cessna. The sudden roar of the air outside was deafening, and Zak felt his hair blowing all over the place with the rush of wind. He felt his stomach lurch with sudden anxiety. This had only been meant to be a simple surveillance operation. How had it come to this?
‘Move carefully!’ Gabs shouted. ‘We need to stand on the landing wheel and grab hold of the diagonal crossbar that leads to the wing.’
‘OK!’ Zak yelled back. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
Walking gingerly in tandem, Zak and Gabs eased themselves out of the plane. The rush of air was even fiercer here as they positioned themselves over the landing wheel. Gabs reached out to grab the diagonal crossbar while Zak took deep breaths to steady his nerves. He tried to look down. Now that they were closer to the earth, the moonlight gave them a bit more to go on, and Zak could just make out the canopy of the rainforest, though he couldn’t really tell how high or how thick it was. To the north-west, maybe a kilometre away, he could see a faint, silvery reflection of moonlight in a narrow river that snaked lazily away from them. Other than that, the terrain appeared featureless from up here. There was certainly no sign of a landing strip.
He just had to hope Raf was navigating properly.
‘Thirty seconds!’ Raf’s voice was just audible above the noise.
Twenty seconds.
Ten.
‘Go! Go! Go!’
Without hesitation, Gabs hurled them both from the edge of the aircraft.
For the first couple of seconds, Zak felt like he’d left his guts behind. He was hurtling blindly through the darkness, and struggled with a weird mixture of fear and exhilaration.
But almost immediately, he felt as if he was being yanked from above. He and Gabs had suddenly stopped accelerating and now were drifting more leisurely towards the ground. A sudden sense of peace almost took Zak’s breath away. The only noise was the distant grind of the Cessna’s engine somewhere far behind and above him, and the thumping of his heart.
He scanned the rainforest canopy below as they drifted downwards. Sure enough, about thirty metres to the north, there was a deforested strip – a band of darkness among the trees. It was difficult to see where its edges began, and from up here, Zak could tell that it was
no more than three hundred metres, probably less.
As they fell, he felt Gabs shifting her weight behind him. Their angle of descent altered slightly. Now they were directly above the landing strip with no more than 300 feet to go.
Two hundred feet.
A hundred.
The sound of the Cessna circling was even more distant. A different sound hit Zak’s ears – an animal’s piercing shriek rising out of the thick rainforest below. He didn’t know what it was, but it chilled him anyway . . .
‘Start walking!’ Gabs shouted. ‘Like coming off an escalator.’
They were almost on the ground. Zak moved his feet and immediately felt earth beneath them. Only when he found himself running to keep up with himself did he realize how fast they had been moving through the air. They ran together for maybe ten metres before coming to a halt, while the chute wafted down onto the ground behind them. He felt Gabs’s arms around his waist, unbuckling the straps that held them together. When they were undone, she turned and quickly started gathering the billowing mass of material into her arms.
‘Nice landing,’ she said. ‘A great first jump, sweetie. Now let’s get to work.’
The landing strip was narrow – no more than forty metres, which was, Zak estimated, only a few metres wider than the wingspan of the Cessna. Raf was going to have his work cut out. He looked up. He could hear the aircraft, just, but couldn’t see it. The trees of the rainforest, which were a good fifteen metres high in places, must have been blocking his line of sight . . .
‘Find dry twigs,’ Gabs ordered Zak. ‘Leaves, anything that will burn. Stay out from under the jungle canopy, though. The vegetation will be wet there. Hurry, Zak, we don’t have much time.’
He bent over and started feeling the ground. Bone dry. By the faint light of the moon, he looked around. The split branch of a tree lay about three metres away. He gathered it up, then continued to hunt.
It took three or four minutes before he had a small pile of combustible material. It was brittle twigs, mostly, and large, parched palm leaves that crumbled to fine powder if he wasn’t careful with them. He stopped for a moment when he heard the noise of the Cessna get louder. Suddenly it roared overhead. Its lights made Zak wince, but he had noticed a slight change in the sound of the engine. It sounded lower, as though it was gurgling.
‘He’s almost out of fuel!’ Gabs shouted. ‘We can’t wait any longer. Bring what you have over here.’
Zak gathered his kindling and fuel up in his arms, then ran the fifteen metres to where Gabs was standing. They were about thirty metres from the eastern end of the landing strip.
‘We need four fires,’ Gabs instructed briskly, ‘two sets, both opposite each other. They need to be at the edge of the landing strip so that Raf can see where the rainforest starts. Two need to be at the very end so he knows how much distance he has, two more about halfway along so he has line of sight when he comes down at an angle. Do you have the survival kit from the plane?’
Zak nodded and pulled it out of his pocket.
‘Leave me a candle stub and some waterproof matches. You take the rest.’ She pointed east. ‘You do the two fires at the end. That way. Go!’
Zak ran. He felt a cold twinge of nervousness prickle down his spine. The Cessna hadn’t sounded good at all. Raf needed to land. Soon.
The landing strip didn’t stop suddenly. The vegetation simply grew gradually thicker. Zak stopped about ten metres in front of an area where the brush was beginning to grow back. Beyond that point he was vaguely aware of another large, immobile shape. Somewhere at the back of his mind he knew this must be Cruz’s aircraft, and a voice told him to be on high alert. But his priority was getting Raf and Malcolm down safely. He divided his fuel into two piles, one at either edge of the landing strip. Then he removed the survival kit that he’d taken from the Cessna, and used the lighter to light a candle stub, then set this to the dried leaves. They immediately crackled and smouldered.
Zak resisted the temptation simply to pile all the rest of his fuel on top of this kindling. Patience, he told himself. You’ll only smother it. He gradually fed the smallest twigs into the burning leaves. When they started to take, he laid slightly larger ones in a wigwam formation over the tiny blaze. Only when the flames were licking thirty centimetres into the air did he add the final, larger branches. Then he sprinted to the opposite edge of the landing strip and did the same thing all over again.
He looked back. Gabs’s fires were already burning. They were small, but the bright orange light was intense in the thick darkness. Their four fires were burning.
And not a moment too soon.
Zak saw the Cessna banking in the air, then turning so that it was facing directly towards him, along the length of the landing strip. It was difficult to tell, because its lights were very bright, but it looked as if the plane was skimming only metres above the tops of the canopy, and its wings were wobbling turbulently.
The engine coughed and spluttered and the Cessna lost a couple of metres of height. Zak felt his skin prickle with anxiety. The engine started turning over again, but Zak could tell just by the sound of it that the fuel tank was almost empty. He backed away from the landing strip, up against the edge of the rainforest. The Cessna was over the landing strip now, perhaps 250 metres from his position. It was below the level of the trees.
But something was very wrong.
The nose of the Cessna was pointing downwards. If the aircraft didn’t straighten up, the nose was going to hit the ground before the landing wheels.
‘Straighten up!’ Zak barked in terror, even though he knew nobody could hear him. ‘Straighten up!’
The engine coughed again – and the Cessna plummeted. There was a horrific grinding noise as the propeller hit the ground.
The aircraft lights died. Suddenly, Zak was watching everything silhouetted only by the light of their tiny fires. The grinding noise doubled in intensity and Zak’s ears went numb as he saw the dark outline of the Cessna flip over in the air. It moved incredibly quickly, as though time had suddenly doubled in speed, then came crashing upside down onto the ground.
It still had momentum, and scraped along the landing strip with horrific speed. Sparks flew up from where the top of the aircraft touched the ground. Zak heard himself shouting – ‘NO!’
Half of him wanted to run towards the Cessna. The other half wanted to cringe backwards into the safety of the rainforest. In the end he did nothing. There was nothing he could do, except stand and stare as the crash-landed plane ground to a sudden halt.
Almost silence.
The engine was dead. There was just the crackle of the signalling fires.
And the sudden patter of Gabs’s feet as she sprinted towards the crash site from the other end of the landing strip.
‘Get them out!’ she yelled. ‘Quickly!’
As if suddenly brought to life, Zak thundered towards the plane. He could smell burning. By the time he reached the plane, Gabs was already on the other side, pulling open the door next to Raf’s pilot seat. Zak yanked open a door on his side and peered into the interior of the aircraft.
Malcolm was still strapped into his seat – upside down, of course. In the darkness, Zak couldn’t even see if he was conscious. He grabbed Malcolm’s shoulder and shook it. ‘Are you OK?’
Malcolm groaned.
Relief flooded over Zak. He fumbled in the dark to unbuckle Malcolm. His companion tumbled from the seat, but Zak was ready to catch him, even though the sudden weight made the muscles in his arms burn. ‘Get him away from the aircraft!’ Gabs shouted. ‘There’s still oil in the engine, petrol in the fuel lines. It could blow at any second.’
‘Can you walk?’ Zak hissed.
‘I think so,’ said Malcolm.
Zak put him down onto his feet, then wrapped Malcolm’s right arm over his shoulder. Together, they hurried away from the Cessna.
They were only ten metres away when it exploded.
The force of the blast thre
w them several metres forward. They landed on the ground with a solid, painful thump. Zak immediately scrambled round to look back at the Cessna. It was a huge, orange blaze, and the heat pumping out of it was ferocious. Zak squinted. He could see neither Raf nor Gabs, and a knot of panic twisted in his stomach.
‘Gabs . . .’ he breathed. ‘Raf . . .’ And then he screamed at the top of his voice. ‘Gabs! Raf!’
‘They might be dead,’ said Malcolm, his voice weak and croaky, but his words typically blunt.
‘Shut up, Malcolm!’
Zak edged nearer to the flames. He winced at the heat, but couldn’t quite bring himself to edge round to the other side. He was afraid of what he would find.
And then he saw them. Two figures, silhouette black, emerging around either end of the burning plane. Gabs to his left. Raf to his right. As they grew nearer, he saw that their faces were covered in soot and dirt. Raf had a swollen bruise on his left cheek.
Their faces were serious, yet calm.
But they looked like they meant business.
Gabs used the light of the burning Cessna to tend to any wounds Raf and Malcolm had sustained. They were surprisingly few. Raf’s face was only bruised; while Malcolm had a more serious cut on his elbow, where his clothes had torn and something had sliced a gash about five centimetres in length. It was bleeding badly. Gabs tore a strip from his shirt and used that to bind the wound tightly. The blood flow stopped after a couple of minutes of pressure, but it would clearly need constant attention.
The Cessna had burned down to a smouldering skeleton of metal and the small signalling fires were just a memory. It was very dark.
In one way, Zak thought, that was a good thing. The noise of the air crash had been bad enough, but nothing was more likely to announce their presence here than a blazing aircraft. But it also made him feel vulnerable. There were sounds nearby in the jungle that he hated. Slithers and squawks, all of them magnified by the darkness. None of his training on St Peter’s Crag had prepared him for jungle wildlife.
He patted down his jacket. The torch he had modified back in the warehouse was there, but it wouldn’t give them any light now.
