Ghost Flight

4

‘MR JAEGER!’ The call rang out, cutting through Jaeger’s dark thoughts.

‘Mr William Jaeger. Yes, I remember you, you coward. And as you see, I have the boy.’ A massive hand reached down and pulled Little Mo up by the roots of his hair, until he was balanced on the very tips of his toes. ‘He has one minute left to live. ONE MINUTE! You white bastards show yourselves, NOW! Or this boy takes a bullet between the eyeballs!’

Jaeger locked eyes with Raff. The big Maori shook his head. ‘Mate, you know the score,’ he whispered. ‘We show ourselves we damn the entire village – ourselves and Little Mo with it.’

Wordlessly, Jaeger flicked his eyes back to the distant figures. Raff was right, but the image of the kid dancing on his tiptoes as the big commander gripped him punched into Jaeger’s brain. It flipped his mind back to a long-buried memory – to a remote mountainside and a shredded, knife-torn length of canvas…

Jaeger felt a massive arm upon him, powerful; restraining. ‘Easy, buddy, easy,’ Raff whispered. ‘I mean what I’m saying. Show yourself now, we’re all dead…’

‘The one minute is up!’ the commander screamed. ‘COME OUT! Now!’

Jaeger heard the sharp, steel-on-steel clatch-clatch of a round being chambered. The commander whipped his pistol up, shoving the muzzle hard into Little Mo’s temple. ‘I COUNT FROM TEN. Then, make no mistake, you British bastards, I fire!’

The commander was facing the sand dunes, flashing his torch across the tussocks of grass and hoping to spot Raff and Jaeger.

‘Ten, nine, eight…’

A new voice rang out over the darkening beach, the childish cries cutting across the commander’s words. ‘Sir! Sir! Please! Please!’

‘Seven, six, five… Yes, boy, plead to your white friend to save you… Three…’

Jaeger felt his big Maori friend pinning him to the mud, as his mind darted in horror between distant memories: to a savage attack on a dark and frosted mountainside; to blood amongst the first winter snows. To the moment his life had imploded… To right now; to Little Mo.

‘Two! One! IT IS FINISHED!’

The commander pulled the trigger.

A single muzzle flash threw the beach into stark light and shadow. He loosened hold of the boy’s hair, letting the tiny body crumple to the sand.

Jaeger turned his head in agony and pressed it tight against the mangrove roots. Had Raff not been restraining him, he would have burst out of hiding, knife and sharpened stake at the ready, murder blazing in his eyes.

And he would have died.

He wouldn’t have given a damn.

The commander barked out a series of staccato orders. Camouflaged figures dashed in all directions, some back into the village, others to either end of the beach. One came skidding to a halt at the edge of the swamp.

‘So, we continue with our little game,’ the commander announced, still searching in all directions. ‘And so we fetch the next child. I am a patient man. I have all the time in the world. I am quite happy to shoot every last one of your pupils, Mr Jaeger, if that is what it takes. Show yourself. Or are you the poor white coward I always thought you were? Prove – me – wrong.’

Jaeger saw Raff make the move. He stole forward silently, gliding through the mud on his stomach like a giant ghostly snake. For the briefest of moments he glanced over his shoulder.

‘Want to go in a blaze of glory?’ he whispered.

Jaeger nodded grimly. ‘Speed. Aggression…’

‘Surprise,’ Raff completed the mantra.

Jaeger slithered forward, following the path that Raff made. As he did so, he marvelled at the big Maori’s ability to move, to hunt, silently – like an animal; a natural-born predator. Over the years Raff had taught Jaeger so many of those skills: the total belief and the focus it took to stalk and kill.

But still Raff remained the master; the best there ever was.

He melted out of the swamp like a formless shadow, just as another hapless child was hauled on to the beach. The commander started booting the child in the guts, his men grinning at the cruel spectacle that was unfolding.

It was now that Raff seized his moment. Enshrouded in the darkness, he stole towards the lone guard nearest the swamp. In one swift move he slipped his left arm around the sentry’s neck and mouth in an iron chokehold, blocking off any possibility of a cry, jerking the chin upwards and to the side. At the same instant his right arm snaked around in a savage thrust, sinking the blade of his knife up to the hilt through the man’s throat, before punching forward to slice through the artery and the windpipe.

For several seconds Raff gripped the stricken sentry, as his life drained into his lungs, drowning the man in his own blood. Silently, he lowered the body to the sand. An instant later he was back at the swamp, the dead man’s assault rifle gripped in hands thick with blood.

He crouched low, widening the narrow exit for Jaeger.

‘Come on!’ he hissed. ‘Let’s go!’

Jaeger sensed the movement from the corner of his eye. A figure had materialised out of nowhere, his assault rifle rising to aim, Raff bang in his line of fire.

Jaeger left fly with his knife.

The movement was instinctive. The blade whispered through the dusk air, twisting as it flew, and sliced deep into the figure’s guts.

The gunman screamed.

His weapon went off, but the shots sprayed wide, punching wildly off target. As the echoes of the gunfire died away, Jaeger rose and sprinted forward, wooden stake raised in one hand.

He’d recognised the gunman.

He leapt, slamming the spear into the man’s chest. He felt the sharpened stake split apart ribs and slice through muscle and sinew, as he forced it in with all his strength. By the time he’d grabbed the fallen man’s assault rifle, he had him pinned to the sand – the stake driven clean through the side of his chest and shoulder.

Major Mojo, Jaeger’s erstwhile tormentor, was screaming and writhing like a stuck pig – but he wasn’t going anywhere, that was for sure.

In one smooth move Jaeger lifted the rifle, flicked off the safety and opened fire. The muzzle spat burning bursts of tracer, as rounds ripped through the darkness.

Jaeger aimed for the torso. Head shots were fine for a day out on the ranges, but in a live firefight you went for the guts every time. It was the biggest target, and few ever survived a stomach wound.

He swept his weapon across the beach, seeking out the figure of the commander. He saw the village kid struggling to break free, and darting into the safety of the nearby palm grove. Jaeger unleashed a savage burst, and watched the commander turn and run. He saw his tracer fire tearing up the commander’s heels and ripping into his torso.

He sensed the fear and indecision ripple through the enemy’s ranks as their leader went down, screaming in fear and in the agony of his death throes.

They were like a decapitated snake now.

This was the moment to seize the advantage.

‘Mag change!’ Jaeger yelled, as he grabbed a full magazine from his former jailer’s pocket and rammed it home. ‘Go! Go! Go!’

Raff needed no second urging.

In an instant he was on his feet, charging forward, screaming out his war cry, Jaeger hammering out the covering fire. As the dark, fearsome Maori giant tore ahead, Jaeger saw the first of the enemy break and run.

Raff made thirty yards, then sank to his knee, opening up in a barrage of aimed shots. He yelled at Jaeger in turn: ‘GOOOOOOOOOO!’

Jaeger rose from the sand, weapon in his shoulder, all his pent-up rage and fury focused into the fight. He sprinted forward, only his eyes and his bared teeth showing white among the dark film of swamp filth that coated him from head to toe, thundering across the open beach, his muzzle spitting fire.

Within moments, the last of President Chambara’s soldiers had broken rank and run. Raff and Jaeger chased them through the palm grove with aimed bursts, until not a single enemy figure was visible anywhere.

Seconds later, the dark stretch of sand had fallen silent – apart from the groans of the dying and the wounded.

Wasting no time, the two men sought out the chief’s canoe and dragged it towards the surf. The big, thick-skinned dugout was unwieldy on dry land, and it took all their strength to manhandle it into the waves. They were just about to push off when Jaeger signalled Raff to wait.

He scuttled through the waves and crossed the beach to where a figure lay pinned to the blood-soaked sand. He wrestled the wooden stake free, hoisted the wounded man on to his shoulders and returned the way he’d come, dumping the semi-conscious form of his jailer in the centre of the craft.

‘Change of plan!’ he yelled at Raff, as they ran the vessel deeper into the surf. ‘Mojo’s coming with us. Plus we head east and due south. Chambara’s men will presume we’ve pushed north, for Cameroon or Nigeria. It’ll never cross their minds we’ve gone the opposite way, back into their country.’

Raff leapt aboard the canoe and reached to help Jaeger. ‘Why would we head back into President Chugga’s hellhole?’

‘We make for the mainland. It’s twice the distance, but they’ll never think to follow. Plus it isn’t Chambara’s territory any more, remember? We link up with the coup plotters and take our chances with them.’

Raff grinned. ‘Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora! Let’s bloody go!’

They paddled the boat further out to sea, Jaeger taking up the chant, and were quickly swallowed by the moon-washed darkness.