Star of Africa

Chapter 37

One of Khosa’s men hauled the rope ladder aboard and flung it carelessly into a corner. The fat one with the shotgun slammed the hatch shut, and then they all stalked forward to fill the four remaining seats at the front of the facing rows while the fifth made do with the floor.

The pilot had had his orders. He worked the controls and the turbine screech grew even more deafening inside the bare metal fuselage as the helicopter broke out of its hover and wheeled and banked away, nose down and tail up under acceleration, carving upwards into the sky and pressing rapidly on towards its unknown destination. Unless Khosa had an aircraft carrier cruising somewhere off the east African coast, Ben presumed they were heading for land. There was none of that for fifteen hundred miles to the south, when they would hit Madagascar. None of it for over three thousand miles due east until Sumatra, and north would take them straight back towards Oman. In any case, the Puma’s fuel capacity wouldn’t allow for a fraction of that distance, especially taking into account the large quantity that Khosa must have already burned up in searching for them over thousands of square miles of ocean. The chopper must be pretty much running on fumes by now, which strongly supported the logic that they must be heading west, back to the Somali coast.

Except that neither Khosa nor his men were Somali. That implied that their ultimate destination lay further inland. Ben had the map of Africa pretty well imprinted on his memory from all the times he’d been deployed there, back in the day. Neighbouring Kenya was the nearest of the Swahili-speaking countries. The furthest away was probably Zambia, though the southern tip of Mozambique lay as far to the south as Johannesburg. An enormous distance away, half the length of an enormous continent. There was no way to know the answer, except to wait and see.

But to passively await whatever fate Khosa had in store for them all was something Ben had no intention of doing. Glancing across the narrow aisle at Jeff and Tuesday and seeing the looks on their faces, Ben knew that both of them were thinking exactly the same thoughts as he was.

Whatever we find up there, we’ll deal with it.

Nobody spoke. The noise levels inside the helicopter would have made conversation impossible anyway. Ben looked at Jude and tried to catch his eye so that he could say, or mouth, something reassuring like ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’ But Jude seemed lost in another world, slumped in his seat with the same thousand-yard stare directed at the green metal wall opposite him.

Ben was worried about Condor. He wasn’t at all well, and had lapsed back into unconsciousness. As the pilot shifted course a few degrees and the aircraft banked a little to the right, Condor suddenly pitched forwards. Before anyone could stop him, he slumped right out of his seat and flopped to the bare metal floor like a sack of washing. The nearest of the guards rose half to his feet, pointing his weapon as if ready for the sick man to spring up at him with a knife.

‘Our friend is injured,’ Ben told the guard in Swahili, yelling to be heard. ‘He needs a doctor.’

The guy just stared at Ben, then shrugged as if it were nothing, and sat back down. Hercules and Gerber helped Condor back to his seat, watched closely by all five guards. ‘You’re gonna be fine, bud,’ Gerber shouted in Condor’s ear. ‘Hang in there, you hear me?’ Whether Condor heard or not, it was hard to tell.

The chopper thudded on. Sea miles passing beneath them. The old Puma had a never-exceed speed of 147 knots, or 169 miles per hour. Its cruising speed was 134 knots, equating to 154 miles per hour. Still pretty damn fast, even if the pilot took it easy for the sake of fuel economy. By Ben’s very rough calculations, the Somali coast couldn’t be more than an hour away. If his guess was right, Khosa was planning on landing as soon as possible, to refuel or else to transfer his prisoners to some other form of transportation.

Either way, when they landed they were sure to be met by more of Khosa’s troops. Ben couldn’t believe that the African had come looking for them with just five soldiers and one helicopter. The RV could be with ten more men, or it could be with thirty, or more. And as much of a slackly trained raggle-taggle militia as they might be, the kind of force that real soldiers would laugh off, it would be a lot harder for Ben, Jeff and Tuesday to deal with upwards of thirty or forty men than with just five, plus Khosa and the pilot.

That knowledge was in Jeff’s expression, too. They both knew that if they were going to make a move, it had to be sooner rather than later.

With that in mind, Ben and Jeff struck up an urgent back-and-forth dialogue, the way that only two people who knew each other so well and were tuned to the very same wavelength could. The conversation was all contained in tiny shifts of head carriage and body language and eye movements that would have been all but undetectable to anyone watching them, but it was as clear and precise as if they’d been two top brass officers discussing military strategy across a table in a war room, with maps and charts spread out between them and little models placed here and there to denote the movement of enemy troops.

Jeff’s eyes said, The clock is ticking, mate. Now or never.

Ben’s said, I know.

Jeff’s said, We can do it. So are you up for it?

What about Tuesday?

We make our move, he’ll follow us. Trust him.

All right. But it’s got to be quick.

It’ll be quicker than quick.

Ben cast a quick glance down the aisle at the soldiers. All five of them were relaxed and off their guard. The four who were seated were twiddling their thumbs like bored commuters on their regular subway train ride to the office. The one sitting on the floor had his AK butt-down on the floor between his feet, with the barrel resting loosely against his shoulder. He had a finger up his nose and seemed entirely focused on retrieving and eating whatever he could ream out of his nostril. Not the most finely tuned fighting unit Ben had ever seen. Which potentially made things very much easier, if this was to have any chance of a favourable conclusion.

Ben’s eyes darted back to meet Jeff’s. All right. You take the nearest one on the left and use his gun to shoot the fat one at the end of your row. I take the nearest one on the right and use his gun to shoot the skinny one at the end of my row.

Jeff’s chin rose and fell by about half a millimetre. That’ll work.

Ben’s eyes said, That just leaves the nose picker on the end. Whoever’s finished with the others first gets to him before he gets to his rifle. Agreed?

Jeff threw a discreet look in the nose picker’s direction, and the nasty twinkle in his eyes said, He won’t be a problem.

Ben took another glance, this time up the narrow aisle and through the hatch into the cockpit. Khosa and the pilot were still talking. Eyes front, completely distracted by whatever they were looking at through the windscreen. Ben looked back at Jeff and gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod that was as expressive as if he’d jumped to his feet and screamed, ‘Fuck it, let’s do it.’

Jeff nodded back. It was agreed. For a few seconds the two of them prepared themselves, mentally and physically, to explode into action. Each had his own way of handling it. Jeff was winding up like a steel spring, as intense as a racehorse waiting for the gate to open on Derby day. Ben’s own heartbeat was dropping. His muscles relaxing. A familiar calm descending on him, in the certain knowledge that he would move fast, and hit hard, and strike with accuracy. Getting the weapons from the guards was theoretically going to be the hardest part, and the biggest danger was from the fat one’s shotgun. One blast from that thing could kill all of them. But surprise was on their side. Once the five were permanently out of action, it would just be a question of getting to Khosa before Khosa could draw that big revolver of his and get his bulk twisted round in the co-pilot’s seat to be able to get off a shot. A lot depended on Khosa’s speed of reflexes and combat readiness. Risky, but not impossible. Not by a long stretch. Ben didn’t foresee too many problems there. As for the pilot, he’d have a gun to his head before he’d fully registered what was even happening.

Hijack complete. Five seconds from start to finish. Six, on the outside.

Ben felt ready. He moved his right hand to his right knee and splayed three fingers. On my count of three.

Jeff nodded.

Ben mouthed, ‘One’.

Jeff waited.

Ben mouthed, ‘Two’.

Tuesday was watching them with huge eyes, understanding that something was about to happen, and holding his breath. He knew. He could feel it. He’d been there before. It was the pulse-pounding moment before the eruption into all-out balls-to-the-wall combat, when the lips were dry and the whole body was tingling and the senses were ready to burst with anticipation of the green light and the command GO GO GO, from which there was no turning back. Adrenalin running so thick and fast through your blood that you could taste it, just one of a whole hormone cascade pushing alertness and reflex speeds through the roof, pumping blood to the skeletal muscle, preparing the body to ignore pain and injury, dilating the pupils to draw in maximum light. Excitement and terror intermingled into a heady cocktail like no other sensation on earth.

Ben pursed his lips to mouth, ‘Three’.

Then something happened that nobody had expected.