Star of Africa

Chapter 33

The distant twin-engine drone of an aircraft jerked Ben from his reverie, and he jumped to his feet and shielded his eyes with the flat of his hand to peer up at the sky. There it was, a tiny coloured speck tracking steadily above the horizon.

‘Shit, that what I think it is?’ Hercules said, and stood up so abruptly that his weight made the raft tilt.

‘Easy! You want to tip us over?’ Gerber warned him. ‘Flinging your lardy ass around like a hippo.’

‘You callin’ me fat, homes?’ Hercules said in a hurt voice.

‘Won’t be for long, if we don’t get rescued any time soon.’

‘Fuck you, man.’

Jude, Jeff and Tuesday joined Ben in waving their arms and yelling at the tops of their voices to try and attract the attention of the faraway pilot. The speck against the sky didn’t grow any larger. The engine drone gradually died away. All they could do was stare in dismay as the plane shrank to a barely visible dot and then disappeared altogether.

‘Well, that’s that,’ Jeff said, scowling up at the empty sky with his face screwed up against the sun’s glare.

‘They’ll be back. We’ll see them again soon,’ Jude insisted. ‘Or someone. It’s got to happen.’

‘It’s a big ocean,’ Gerber said.

But Jude was right. They did see someone again soon.

It was less than an hour later when they heard the sound of the second aircraft. It wasn’t the flat drone of a plane, but the thump of a helicopter. And it wasn’t just a speck bypassing the horizon, but coming their way and growing louder every minute.

They waved their arms and flapped their brightly coloured life jackets in the air and shouted until they were hoarse, but it was unnecessary. The chopper pilot had spotted the raft, and was heading straight for them. As it got nearer, Ben could see it was a large helicopter, like one of the now-obsolete Westland Sea Kings that had been coming to the end of their RAF service life when he was a young soldier. It would have plenty of room on board for all of them.

But something about it bothered him. He wasn’t sure what. Not yet.

‘Are those coastguard colours?’ Jeff asked, standing at his shoulder. Ben was no expert, but he didn’t think they were. In America, USCG choppers were generally bright red. In Britain, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency painted their fleet in red and white livery. The same was true of France. The old RAF air sea rescue Sea Kings had been high-visibility buttercup yellow, while in developing countries like Africa, where the fleets tended to be provided by United Nations, the standard colour was UN white. It was hard to tell from this distance with the sun’s glare behind it, but the helicopter coming towards them now looked like some kind of military drab olive green to him. He said nothing, kept watching its approach.

‘Condor! Condor!’ Gerber shook his friend’s shoulder, rousing him excitedly. ‘We’re gonna get out of here. We’re saved. You’re gonna be okay!’ Condor managed a weak smile and a croak.

Hercules and Jude exchanged a jubilant high-five, both grinning irrepressibly and dancing about the raft like kids. ‘Boy, is it gonna be good to feel solid ground under my feet again,’ Hercules laughed. ‘Hear that, Murph? We goin’ home, lil’ brother.’ The parrot looked distressed by the gigantic roaring green monster eagle looming overhead. Hercules held out a finger and Murphy hopped onto it, grasping it tightly with lizard claws and flapping his wings. Hercules gently folded him into the big side pocket of his jacket, where the bird seemed content to ride with just his head peeking out.

The thudding roar of the helicopter filled the air as it drew closer and settled into a hover, the downdraught from its rotors whipping up little white crests of foam off the water and making the raft’s plastic sheet bivouac crackle and flap.

That was when Ben realised what he was looking at. It wasn’t a United Nations helicopter. And it wasn’t any kind of official coastguard rescue chopper, either. It was even older than the scarred Russian dinosaur of a seaplane that had carried him, Jeff and Tuesday from Hobyo. An ancient French Aérospatiale Puma medium transport/utility helicopter that had probably begun its long, hard military service life in the late sixties. It looked exactly like one of those countless thousands of aircraft that were thrashed and abused mercilessly as workhorses for decades on end in their countries of origin before being sold off as obsolete surplus and frequently ending up in the cobbled-together fleets of tin-pot Third World dictatorships and the like. It was painted in nondescript military matt green, but with no markings of any kind on its beaten-up fuselage. A ragged line of old bullet holes ran along its length, where it had been strafed by machine gun fire, once upon a time. Its side hatch was open. Black men with guns were crouched at the mouth of the hatch, looking down at them.

Coastguard rescue helicopters didn’t go armed. Not as a rule.

But then, it wasn’t here to rescue them. Not as such. Ben realised that now.

The chopper came down lower, sending up a blast of spray off the sea.

‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ Tuesday yelled over the roar.

From the co-pilot’s cabin window, a familiar face grinned down at them. Gleaming white teeth in an ebony face that looked like a vision from the centre of hell.

Jean-Pierre Khosa had said he’d be back. And now he was.