Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization

NINE

As Cole called out the pre-flight safety procedures, Mills performed the checks. He was excited and a little nervous. They were all surprised that the old man had agreed to take the birds up in this weather, but they’d flown in worse. Just about. Although right then, he couldn’t quite remember when.

“Battery. Generator. Cold start.”

Cole was their pilot. The word ‘Outcast’ was stencilled on his helmet, and Mills didn’t think anything could be more appropriate.

His own nickname was Love Child. It was probably less apt, from what little he could remember of his parents. When they weren’t fighting they were fall-down drunk, and often both at the same time. This was his real family, here and now, and he had never belonged anywhere more fully.

The turbines powered up, and Mills peered out at the storm still battering the ship. “What’d the old man get us into this time?”

“Nothing he wouldn’t do himself,” Cole said, nodding to their left. Packard was pacing around and performing pre-flight visual checks on his own Huey, helmet already on and ready to fly.

“Yeah, well,” Mills said, “there’s probably a lot of stuff that man would do I want no part of.”

Mills watched deckhands loading the final crates and supplies onto the choppers, then retreating from the flight deck. Most of the crew were already strapped into their allocated aircraft, and Randa sat behind them, their only passenger. He nursed a film camera in his lap. He seemed excited, and had already filmed the men going through their flight preparations. He said very little.

Packard was the last of the Sky Devils to board his bird.

“Ship’s turning into the wind,” Cole said. Waves smashed against the ship’s starboard side, then slowly started breaking straight over the bow as the captain turned the vessel to face the storm. Each wave impact shuddered through the ship, and they could even feel the judders on board the choppers.

“We’re really doing this,” Mills said.

“It’s easy,” Cole said. Mills thought he was probably trying to reassure himself.

Randa strolled quickly towards his waiting helicopter, Brooks on his heel. This was it. Against all the odds, this expedition was about to lift off, and once they’d punched through the clouds to the island there would be no turning back. It felt like all his life had come down to this.

“We did ask to arm those helicopters,” Brooks said. “Shouldn’t they know why?” Randa felt a surge of anger towards the younger man for breaking the moment, but he didn’t let it show.

“And raise an alarm? It’s purely a precaution, Brooks.” He slapped Brooks’s back and climbed aboard the chopper, turning to watch him, San and Nieves boarding another chopper piloted by Slivko.

He was relieved that at least he could enjoy the flight without Brooks complaining in his ear.

As deckhands untied the last of the securing lines, Conrad and Weaver ran crouched low towards Slivko’s chopper. Conrad spied Randa on the Huey with Cole and Mills, while Brooks, San and Nieves were on the Landsat aircraft. He realised that he and Weaver were late, the last two to board. That would likely raise suspicions.

Weaver pointed her camera everywhere, recording the departure even though the storm threatened to wash them all overboard. He had to admire her determination.

Once on Slivko’s helicopter they strapped themselves in and slipped on headsets. Weaver ensured her camera bag was stowed and secured beneath her seat, and she kept one camera in her lap, strapped around her left wrist.

Conrad checked his seatbelt several times.

“Come on,” Weaver said, “this is the fun part.”

“I have a preference for solid ground,” he said. “Water, at a push. Open air…?” He waved his hand from side to side.

Packard’s voice came over the radio. “Time to put on another show for the ants. Hold onto your butts, and follow my lead.”

Through the chopper’s windshield, Conrad saw Packard’s aircraft lift off, shake a little in a sudden gust, then drift away to starboard, climbing all the while. Slivko’s chopper shook as it lifted from the deck, buffeted by high winds and with blown spray and rain strafing the fuselage like machine-gun fire.

Conrad clasped his seat arms until his fingers hurt.

Six years before, he’d been in a chopper that had gone down after striking a flock of birds over Malaysia. He was the only survivor. He’d lain there for three days with the remains of the crew slowly rotting around and onto him, before rescue came. A regular soldier would have received a citation or medal for that. All he’d had was a debrief and four days’ medical leave before heading back into the field. Just because certain behaviour was expected of you didn’t mean it came easy.

“Fox Leader to Fox Group,” Packard’s voice crackled. “Grab some altitude and let’s get in formation.”

“He’s in his element,” Weaver said. She was right, Conrad could hear it in the colonel’s voice. This was his world.

“Combat spread,” Packard said. “Keep visuals. Fox Five, let me know when you’re closed.”

“Fox Five in the slot,” Cole’s calm voice replied.

“We’re gonna lose visuals, but hold course. It’s nothing we haven’t done before.”

“Comforting,” Conrad said. Looking from the side windows he could see the cliff face of the massive storm front as they approached it. Rain slashed across the windows, and twisting in his seat, he could just see the Athena behind them and below, slowly performing a wide turn as it headed away from the storm to hold position in calmer seas. Part of him wished he was still on board.

A bigger part of him—the part that kept him out here even though the war was over, the part that sought to tease death again and again for reasons he had never been able to explain—looked forward to what was to come. Once they were safely down on land, that was.

He turned back in time to see Weaver undoing her seatbelt.

“Weaver, what the hell—”

“Places to go, people to see,” she said, pushing forward between the pilot and co-pilot’s seats. They both glanced back at her. Slivko rolled his eyes and turned his attention forward again, scanning instruments and bracing himself as they approached the intimidating storm front.

It grew darker, and the chopper began to vibrate. It was a disconcerting sound and feeling, and Conrad was about to comment when they plummeted as if into a deep, dark hole.

Then the aircraft started to dance and shake through the air.

Weaver was taking pictures. Not of the outside, Conrad noticed, but of Slivko and the pilot as they nursed and jockeyed the Huey, recording their treacherous journey in stills that would speak volumes. Just visible for brief periods through the storm-lashed windscreen, he could see the flashing lights of the rest of the formation.

“You must have lived through worse than this out in the jungle,” she shouted back to Conrad.

The helicopter hit another downdraft. Conrad clasped his seat even harder.

“‘Lived’ being the operative word.”

“Dear Billy,” Slivko said. “Today I saw a hurricane and flew right into it.”

“Dear Billy,” Mills’s voice continued over the radio, “have you ever looked into the darkness and felt the cold hand of death squeeze your guts until you can’t feel your legs?”

Conrad tried to get into the jovial mood but he couldn’t. He knew this was battlefield humour, brother humour, and he was no part of this tight-knit group of warriors. The ‘Dear Billy’ thing was a private joke between them, part of the bonding gel that kept them close even when they couldn’t see each other and there was a storm striving to force them all apart. It would have kept them close in battle, too, while bullets and rockets flew.

He sometimes wished he had someone he could ‘Dear Billy’ with.

He glanced at Weaver, but she was trying to frame a photo through the windshield with the pilot’s face and helmet also in view. Looking for the shot no one had ever taken.

Maybe she’ll find it on this expedition, he thought, and a strange, gloomy foreboding settled over him. He didn’t think it was anything to do with his nervousness in the air. It was all about what might be waiting for them ahead and below, down on the ground that no one had yet explored.

“Compass is all over the place,” someone said in his ear.

Packard replied, “Fox Leader to Fox Group, switch to inertial navigation. And remember the story of Icarus, whose father gave him wings made of wax, and warned him not to fly too close to the sun. But the exhilaration was too great, and Icarus flew higher and higher until his wings melted and he fell into the sea. Gentlemen, the United States Army is not an irresponsible father. They have given us wings of white-hot, cold-rolled Pennsylvania steel.”

“Very poetic,” Conrad muttered, not sure if anyone heard him.

Moments later they broke through. The buffering and battering ceased as quickly as it had begun and fresh sunlight streamed through the windows, diffracted through streaking rain and dazzling Conrad for a few moments. His grip on the seat handles lessened.

“Hey, Conrad. Our holiday’s begun,” Weaver said.

“Now let’s take it down, low and level,” Packard said.

Conrad opened the Huey’s side door and air rushed in, thunderous and loud, but the views it revealed were staggering.

The ocean rolled below, a deep blue and shaded with varying depths. Jagged white lines marked where reefs hid below the surface. Ahead of them, the waters broke against the shores of the massive island appearing out of the mists.

Conrad caught his breath. It was so strange, entering a storm and emerging on the other side to be confronted with such a scene. Stunningly beautiful, an untouched and unknown place exuding wilderness, it was almost intimidating. If everything Randa said was true, then this was a secret place, perhaps never before visited by humankind.

Sweeping beaches ended where dark jungle began, and inland there were tree-covered hills and mountains, sharp ridges, and the wounds of deep ravines, hidden from sight and immune to sunlight.

Weaver leaned across Conrad, paused for a moment to look, and then started snapping some photos. She glanced sidelong at him and grinned.

“Aren’t you afraid of anything?” he asked.

“Clowns.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

The helicopters roared over the coastline, and below them the jungle might have been a million years old. This was primeval. There were no signs of mankind’s influence anywhere—no roads, clearings, buildings, or power lines. No indications of deforestation, footpaths, or communities. Conrad glanced behind them and saw leaves shaking in their wake, flocks of birds rising and scattering in shock at these new, noisy invaders. The ground rose sharply, then fell away again into a deep valley, its bottom marked by a dark channel that might have been a river, might have been an even deeper drop into darkness.

The island extended to their left and right, and ahead it rose inland towards a range of mountains and ridge lines. It was massive. Conrad had no idea that a place like this could have existed in the world without anyone knowing about it. The realisation made him feel small and insignificant. It was a feeling he often welcomed and revelled in, because being lost in the world was the place that he found most comfortable. But a location like this could make you feel lost in yourself. He was not a spiritual man, but he suspected some prayers were being whispered amongst the soldiers and civilians on this expedition right now.

“Fox Leader to Group,” Packard said. “Split into two groups. Survey your zones. Let’s get to work!”

Conrad held on tight as his Huey tilted and split to the right, dropping with two others into a valley and following a roaring river upstream. The sound of their rotors was even louder here, bouncing back from the steep valley walls to make a haunting echo. He couldn’t help thinking that they were disturbing somewhere tranquil and quiet.

Weaver seemed entranced, framing photos through the open doors. He wondered what she saw through the camera that he could not, and he promised to ask her about that when they had a chance.

Over the radio Chapman said, “Stick one prepared for landing.”

So this is when they start dropping bombs, Conrad thought. Now we’ll see what this place is really like.