Shalima on the other hand, looked sulky and disgruntled. She didn’t keep still for a moment but wriggled in her seat without bothering to look out of the window. Amie could sense the animosity radiating across the narrow aisle between the seats and reckoned that even if she asked, Shalima was simply waiting to give someone a mouthful of invective. She turned back to admire the splendour of the savannah below as it stretched for miles and miles into the distance.
They’d been flying for almost an hour, when Edward turned in his seat and pointed to the river below.
Amie nodded. While most rivers looked the same, especially from the air, this one looked wide enough to be the one they’d crossed. She indicated inland and the plane banked, climbed several feet higher in the sky and followed the silver ribbon as it snaked west.
They were on the camp almost before they knew it. The rectangle of tents was still there and they could see only one truck parked to the side. They resembled small toys from a children’s game. They could also see several figures running to and fro shading their eyes as they peered up at the plane.
They flew on past, and Edward leaned across to shout something to the pilot who shook his head. Edward was insistent and it developed into a huge argument. The pilot kept shaking his head and Edward kept shouting at him, until they banked again, and Amie realised they were going to fly back over the camp, this time, much lower. Her stomach lurched and she squeezed her eyes shut wishing she was anywhere but here.
In the meantime, Edward had pulled out a camera and was busy zooming in towards the camp.
Amie glanced at Shalima. She looked alarmed and even Ben was sitting up straighter. As they approached the tents for the second time, there was a whistling sound followed by a loud bang and the plane lurched violently in the air. More projectiles flew past them as they flew over and then away from the camp.
The passengers were terrified. Ben was shaking as he clung to the seat in front of him. Shalima looked scared out of her wits, and was bent over in the brace position, while Amie tightened her seatbelt, hoping it was the right thing to do. She was too scared to look out of the window and too scared not to. Briefly they glanced at one another and Shalima was praying rapidly under her breath.
The only passenger whose attitude hadn’t changed, even a little, was Edward. He sat calmly in the co-pilot seat as if nothing had happened - as if getting hit by a bullet or a missile from an enemy camp while flying over it in a small plane, was quite normal. If Amie had stopped to think about it, she would now be convinced he had ice running through his veins and not blood like everyone else.
Even though Amie enjoyed flying, and liked aeroplanes, she didn’t want to die in one. The thought of crashing, and falling from the sky like a stone, was one of those nightmares stored in the unconscious part of the brain but never truly considered.
The pilot was struggling to control the aircraft as it began to dive towards the ground. He banked to the left and cleared the river flying towards Apatu, and for several moments he got it back under control as they skimmed over the ridge on the opposite side of the water, crossed the valley and made for the second range of low hills where the women had taken shelter in the cave.
They were flying more slowly now, as the pilot pulled back on the throttle, and Amie could only hope and pray they didn’t land too close to the camp.
The first engine died, and the plane tipped to one side as they came up to the next high ridge. A few seconds later, the second one suddenly ceased. After the screech and clatter of the dying engines, the quiet was deafening. They were gliding, and no one broke the silence as the ground came up to meet them. The pilot skimmed over the next high ridge, and the plane lost more height as he aimed for the long stretch of level ground, that formed the middle of the valley.
“Hold on! Brace yourselves!” yelled the pilot.
Amie stopped breathing. She was praying to the God she still didn’t believe in they’d make it down in one piece. Their speed had dropped, and the pilot was controlling the descent, and although the ground still rushed up to meet them, it was at a slower and steadier rate.
There was a terrifying bang and the plane veered violently to one side, just as the wheels crashed onto the ground. The landing gear sheared, the undercarriage grated over the rock-strewn ground, and the nose of the plane ploughed into two massive boulders bringing it to a complete standstill.
Despite the seatbelt holding her in place, and her hands clutching the seat in front till her knuckles turned white, Amie was flung backwards and forwards like a rag doll. The webbing of her seatbelt dug painfully into her hips and she hung sideways out of her seat.
The plane was now resting at forty-five degrees, its nose crumpled like a piece of tissue paper. Tiny pieces of glittering glass from the front windscreen sprinkled the cabin, scattered around them like an ice storm.
16 AFTER THE CRASH
Amie hung suspended in the air, the weight of her body pulling her seatbelt so tight it was impossible for her to undo it.
Ben was the first to recover. He pushed Amie up towards what was left of the plane’s ceiling, released the buckle and caught her when she fell onto the sloping floor. She was trembling all over and lay curled up for several minutes.
Shalima had managed to wriggle free, and was checking herself for any injuries. Her movements were jerky and uncoordinated.
They were all in shock.
Amie struggled to stand, but the roof had caved in and she was only able to shuffle a little way to the front, to where the door had blown off. The nose and cockpit had crumpled like a large piece of bent tin foil and she could see that neither Edward nor the pilot had survived.
A shaft of metal protruded from the pilot’s neck and Edward’s body had been crushed between what was left of the front part of the plane and the unforgiving boulders.
“We’d betta get the bloody hell outta here,” said Shalima in her left ear. “If them soldiers think they’ve shot us down, they’ll be over here pronto. Go on, get a move on,” and she pushed Amie towards the gaping hole where the door had been.
Shalima was right, they didn’t have time to sit and recover and tend to the cuts and scratches. They needed to leave as fast as possible. They were in great danger.
Despite Shalima’s urging, Amie gaped at the mangled bodies, she knew she would never erase those images, but another thump on her back from Shalima galvanized her into action. She staggered towards the exit, crouching down to avoid the sharp shards of metal and the broken glass until she reached the exit.
The plane had crashed head on and slewed to one side. It was only a short drop to the ground, and although Amie’s knees were as wobbly as jelly, she jumped and hit the earth hard.
Ben dropped down beside her, but there was no sign of Shalima. Amie peered up at the open doorway and wondered what she was up to.
“Come on,” she shouted. “What are you doing? It was you who told us we don’t have much time. They’ll be here any minute.”
Shalima appeared in the hatchway, dragging the large case and the other two bags Edward had brought onto the plane.
“Thought these might come in useful,” she replied, passing them down to Ben, who had recovered faster than Amie.
She went back inside and called out to Amie. “Want yer packed lunch as well?”
Amie giggled, shock was setting in. They’d just survived a fatal plane crash and Shalima was thinking of lunch. Right now, her stomach was somewhere near her mouth, and food was the last thing she wanted.
Shalima dropped down onto the ground behind her, carrying the packed lunch, which Amie now suspected had been packed for three people with enormous appetites, a knapsack full of water bottles and three blankets she had found behind the seats at the rear of the plane.
“We must go.” Ben glanced nervously back the way they’d come. “We will take the two small cases and the water. Leave the rest, it will only slow us down. We must get over this ridge and down through the next valley as fast as we
can.”
Shalima ignored him and clung on tightly to the blankets.
They scrambled up the opposite slope. On the ridge Amie stopped and looked back. “Are we quite sure they’re both dead?” She was ashamed she hadn’t checked.
“As dodos,” Shalima replied. “No one could’ve survived hitting them rocks head on.” Briefly Amie wondered, for the second time that day, if Edward had had family somewhere. Who would mourn him?
“We must hurry,” Ben glanced at the sky.
“Don’t panic, they ain’t sure we’ve gone down,” Shalima was a lot more cheerful now, more her rumbustious self.
“No. Look.” Ben pointed to the sky where a flock of vultures was circling lazily overhead. “The birds will tell them.”
Shalima craned her neck. “Oh, yeah, right.”
They scrambled down the ridge and set out across the floor of the second valley making for the other side as quickly as they could.
By the time they crested the top of the next range of low hills, they were exhausted. Going down the other side was a lot easier and they made better progress, until Ben stopped to wrench a branch off a tree.
“What the eff are you doing now?” Shalima snapped.
“Covering our tracks,” Ben replied glaring back at her. As they walked, he swept the ground behind them.
“Wait,” said Amie, “if I carry the case and the knapsack, you can work more quickly.”
“Thanks.” Ben handed them over.
“These guys ain’t that good at tracking.” Shalima sneered, shifting Edward’s laptop bag from one shoulder to the other. “This‘ll slow us down big time!”
“How do we know that?” Amie snapped back. Already she was struggling under the weight of the food, the bag containing the water bottles and the second small case. “You’re more likely to know, they trained you, remember? Did you have lectures in tracking?”
“No.”
“And do you want them to catch us and do whatever they want with us?” Amie was angry.
“No,” Shalima repeated, “but I wanna get away from here as fast as possible. Hell, gimme one of those bags,” and she grabbed the smallest one from Amie.
“We all do,” Ben said, but he still took his time bringing up the rear sweeping the branch leaves over the faint tracks they’d made in the dust.
By now the sun was high in the sky, and the landscape shimmered in the heat. In the second valley there was little cover, a few low bushes scattered around and the ever-present acacia trees. They laboured on in silence, sipping sparingly from the water bottles.
Amie’s breath became ragged as the sweat poured down her face, stinging her eyes before dripping under her collar and trickling down her chest. Her clothes clung to her like a second skin and she took short, deep breaths as she put one foot in front of the other and plodded on.
There was little sign of wildlife in the valley, but Amie could imagine pairs of eyes peering down at them from the ridge behind. She wanted to ask Shalima how she had disabled the truck and how quickly the soldiers could make repairs. Hopefully, the fanatics had no transport and were still at least three valleys behind them. She tried to take her mind off her aching body by calculating how far they’d flown before they’d crashed, and how long it would take the soldiers to catch up with them in the truck or on foot. Every time she added it all together, she came up with a different answer, until she just gave up and plodded on.
Peppered with rocks and boulders the next ridge was agonizingly high. Shalima was first over the top, and dropped her load, and slithered back to give Amie a hand as she slid on the loose scree. Ben brushed away the last signs of their footsteps.
To their relief the vegetation in the next valley was denser, with large areas of shade. Ben pointed to a grove about a third of the way across and suggested they make for that and rest up.
The trees may have looked close from high up, but for each step they took, they appeared to get further away. At long last, as the sun lost its heat, they flopped down under the trees.
Their luck was holding, no lions or rhinos, no soldiers or elephants. They rummaged in the bags for food and drank deeply from their water bottles.
“Well, we got this far,” Shalima said to no one in particular.
“True, but where do we go from here? Anyone any idea which way we were flying before the crash?” Amie’s voice wobbled on the last word.
“I think it was north,” Ben pointed to the far ridge, “Apatu is that way.”
“I guess that’s the most sensible place to make for then,” Amie said, although she was nervous about what they might find there. “Would it be safe Ben?”
“Safer than being out here,” he replied. “We don’t have much food, or water.”
They sat silently for several minutes then Shalima removed the lap top from its bag and turned it on.
“That’s private!” Amie gasped.
“Says who? Man’s dead ain’t he?” Shalima smirked. “No harm in finding out what he was up to.” She tapped away on the keys. “Ha! Silly bugger. Not even a password. How daft is that?” and she giggled.
While Amie couldn’t resist continually glancing up at the ridge they’d just crossed, she was drawn to look at the screen too. There were hundreds of lists and folders. It would take weeks to inspect them all.
“Bloody hell,” Shalima exploded. “Look here’s all his emails, they’ll tell us summat.” She clicked on the first one. “Bugger, some sort of number code, can’t read a thing. Drat!”
“It has nothing to do with us,” Ben obviously didn’t approve.
Shalima ignored him and continued scrolling through the files, but they all seemed to be in code, rows and rows of numbers, and she couldn’t make head nor tail of them.
Amie ignored her reluctance to delve through something that didn’t belong to her, and opened the small unlocked briefcase. Initially it didn’t look as if there was much inside. She only found a couple of sandwiches, which she shared with the others, and a welcome bottle of energy drink. But there was a wallet containing a wad of British and Ruangan money along with some American dollars. Amie’s curiosity mounted when she spied several driving licenses, all with Edward’s picture on them but in different names. I guess we’ll never know his real name she mused, sorting through the plastic credit cards. She found three British passports, only one in the name of Edward Simmons and two others in different names but with photographs of Edward. There was another bundle of blank passports all from various countries and filled with visas and entry and exit stamps. There was one dog-eared paperback and the last thing Amie found was a memory stick. She handed it to Shalima. See what’s on this,” she said.
Shalima inserted it into a USB port and opened the files. “Ain’t nothing much here,” she grumbled, “only a list of books. Didn’t think Edward was the readin’ kind.”
“Um, nor I. So, what does our secret service agent like to read in his spare time?”
Shalima went down the list. “Boring stuff. Lots of them desperate books we had to read in school, classic things.” She giggled, “’Cept for this one here. A Mills and Boon! I don’t believe it. ‘Love on the Ocean’. Ha ha. Listen to this! ‘Lois falls in love with handsome Josh, but he’s already in love with Leila. Can she get him to love her when his wedding is only four weeks away?’ Stupid git, me mum reads stuff like this.”
Amie looked thoughtful. “Wait a minute. We know that’s a little out of character, but most people wouldn’t, would they? And it’s the same book here.” She held it up and they glanced at the cover showing a curvaceous blonde in one corner gazing up soulfully at a couple in a romantic embrace.
“What do you mean?” Shalima glared hard at her.
“Those emails,” Amie said remembering a film she’d once seen. “You said they were only rows of numbers. Well, what if this unlikely book is the code for that? Page numbers and the line number and the next number for the word.”
“You mean, that poncey book is the key to
what’s in them emails?”
“Yes. Well, it’s worth a try. We could check it out. Let’s start with the latest email and see if we can get it to make sense.”
Shalima insisted on passing the lap top over to Amie while she grabbed the book and found paper and pen from Edward’s other case.
Ben shook his head. “You think you can read his emails from a book?” he asked. “They would be encrypted digitally or something?”
“Sometimes the old ways are the best, and least expected,” Shalima said. “Bet you we can make out the messages this way.”
Amie read out the first groups of numbers and Shalima tried to make sense of them by page, line and words in that order, but it was total rubbish. Next, they tried line, page and word, but that combination only produced garbled nonsense too. It wasn’t until they went for the word, followed by the line and lastly the page that the email made sense.
They were so engrossed in the transcription they barely noticed it was getting dark, but by then they had a good grasp of the contents of the two latest messages.
“Edward was planning to send me back to my parents, hand Ben over to the Togodian authorities and deport Motswezi and the kid!” Shalima was furious.
“But he didn’t say what he was planning to do with me?” Amie asked. She was not sure she wanted an answer.
“No, he don’t mention you. But at least we know now they think the guys have been taken to Libya.”
Amie was totally despondent. “To Libya. We don’t stand a chance of helping them there.” She wanted to cry.
“Don’t see why not,” Shalima said as the battery died on the laptop making more work impossible.
“Don’t be so stupid!” Amie exclaimed, not caring any more if she was rude or if she hurt Shalima’s feelings. “You have some really crackpot ideas Shalima, beginning with your first one of leaving England to go and fight in some stupid Holy War!”
“Lot betta than hanging round the arse end of Birmingham,” snapped Shalima. “You try growing up there and see what it’s like. Any excitement is better than that!”
Amie in Africa Box Set 1 Page 57
