Authors: Chris Ryan
Tenth Man Down (16 page)
The second casualty’s crew-cut, mouse-coloured hair was a mass of blood; the top of his skull was pulp.
‘Instantaneous,’ went Whinger. ‘Big impact. Flung on to a rock. I guess this guy was the pilot.’ He pointed at the breast pocket, still full of ball-point pens. Then he added, ‘South Africans. They must be.’
‘Yeah.’ I looked at the big, heavy whites, with legs like tree trunks. What else but Afrikaaners?
The smell of avgas was stronger than ever.
‘Let’s get out,’ I said. ‘Leave ’em.’
Just as I spoke, a noise came from the plane.
‘Shit!’ exclaimed Whinger. ‘There’s some other bastard in there.’
He started towards the fuselage.
‘You’re not going in there!’ I snapped.
‘I fucking am!’
A second later he was hauling himself up into the cabin through the open door.
‘It’s a woman!’ he shouted. ‘Hanging in the straps.’
‘Alive or dead?’
‘Alive.’
‘Cut her down, then. But for Christ’s sake, hurry.’
I heard him grunting with effort as he hauled himself upwards. On the ground, I watched fuel dripping from the port wing. The sun was beating down. If one piece of glass from a smashed light focused it, grass might start to smoulder, and in a flash the whole wreck would be alight. Whinger and the woman would be roasted. So would I, if I stayed where I was.
Every instinct told me to get back. I withdrew three or four paces, then heard Whinger cursing. I thought, I’ll give him another ten seconds, then fuck off. But suddenly, he said, ‘Coming down. Catch her.’
Legs clad in sand-coloured slacks appeared, dangling from the cabin. I ran in and grabbed them. A second later I had a woman’s soft, inert body in my arms. I turned and stumbled away, half running, moving as fast as I could. I’d made about ten steps when
whumf!
a hot blast hit me from behind. I tottered forward another yard or two, then fell on to a patch of bare ground, coming down on top of the casualty.
whumf!
a hot blast hit me from behind. I tottered forward another yard or two, then fell on to a patch of bare ground, coming down on top of the casualty.
I looked back. The aircraft was a ball of flame. Between it and me stood Whinger. He too was on fire, all down his right side. Suddenly he began to run, or tried to. He tripped over a rock, fell, struggled up, set off again, yelling and screaming. I’d seen this before and knew what to do. Guys on fire always run like lunatics, and you’ve got to stop them, cut off the air. Leaving the woman, I ran at him, dropped him with a rugby tackle and rolled on top of him, smothering the flames. Still he was yelling like a madman, fighting me, fighting the fire, fighting everything in creation. I held him tight, rolling over and over until the flickering flames were out.
Boom!
Up went one of the tanks – thank God the one on the wing furthest from us. A fresh burst of fire seared up. Shooting out at ground level, it ignited the clothes of the man with the severed neck.
Up went one of the tanks – thank God the one on the wing furthest from us. A fresh burst of fire seared up. Shooting out at ground level, it ignited the clothes of the man with the severed neck.
‘Get up! Get up!’ I shouted. ‘Run!’
Holding on to each other, we staggered clear of the fireball. ‘That way!’ I pointed. ‘Keep going.’
Whinger reeled away and collapsed on the deck. I darted back to the woman, lying stretched out on the ground. Even at that distance from the plane the heat was ferocious. Grabbing her by the hands I dragged her after me, face up, her backside bumping over the rough grass.
I found Whinger sitting on the ground, doubled up, holding his head in his hands, cursing all out. I left my burden and ran to him.
‘How is it?’
At first he didn’t make any sense. He was, like, ‘Shit!’ and ‘Fucking hell!’ But while he was sounding off I got a look at him and saw he had burns up his right forearm and the right side of his face. The hair on his arm had gone, and the skin looked red and raw. There were scorch-marks all down the right leg of his DPMs. In several places flames had burned through the material, and I could see blackened skin underneath.
As the shock wore off, he became more rational and started to laugh in reaction. ‘Fuck me!’ he went. ‘That was a near one.’
Looking closely at him, I saw that his right eyelashes and eyebrow had been singed off. Blisters were already forming round his temple and on top of his head. I pulled a water-bottle out of my belt kit and poured the contents over him, in the hope that it would keep the swelling down.
‘How’s your vision?’ I asked.
‘Seems okay.’
‘Close your left eye. Look at me. What am I doing?’
‘Blinking,’ said Whinger. ‘You’ve lost most of your front hair as well.’
I reached up and felt short, frizzy ends.
‘Shit!’ I went. ‘But at least your eyes are okay. I’m calling Mart up right away.’
It was Pavarotti who came on the radio. ‘You lot all right?’
‘More or less. See the fire?’
‘We sure can. Any survivors?’
‘One woman, unconscious. Listen. Whinger’s got some bad burns, face, arm and leg. We need Mart up to where we’ve left our pinkie. Quick as he can. He’ll be able to follow our wheel marks. Okay? We’re on our way down. RV there soonest.’
For the first time I took a proper look at our survivor. She was dressed much the same as the men, in bush kit, but with a safari-style tunic and long trousers. As she lay on the ground, she stirred slightly but showed no other sign of coming round.
‘She’s taken a whack on the head.’ Whinger pointed at a livid bruise on her right temple.
I knelt beside her, looking her up and down. With finger and thumb I opened her eyelids on the right side. Her eyeball showed no reaction. Cautiously, I moved her head, feeling with my fingers on the back of her neck. Had she taken a bang on the spinal cord as well? All I could think of was the little Kamangan boy who’d been hit on the head by the truck, and how he died in his mother’s arms. Another head injury. Two more deaths. Two more
white
deaths. Jesus, I thought. This makes it three to the witch doctor. If this woman freaks out, it’ll be four.
white
deaths. Jesus, I thought. This makes it three to the witch doctor. If this woman freaks out, it’ll be four.
Whinger startled me by saying, ‘What do we do, give her a bullet?’
‘Hell, no!’ I stared at him. ‘We can’t do that.’
‘Why not? It might be best for her, as well as for us. She may die anyway.’
‘She may. But also she may not. Until she snuffs it, she’s coming with us.’
‘Fancy her, do you?’
‘Piss off, mate. She’s better looking than you, anyway.’
Yet as I looked at her, I saw she wasn’t that rough – jaw a bit heavy, perhaps, but a handsome, rather Teutonic face. Fine, straight fair hair cut short round the temples and left long on the back of her neck. She had elegant hands, too, no rings, fingernails short but in good nick. I guessed she was about thirty. I ran my hands over her arms and legs, checking for breaks, but couldn’t detect any damage.
Behind us the aircraft was still burning. Cracking, clicking noises kept breaking out, but already the flames were dying down. The blaze had been so fierce that the skin on the fuselage and wings had melted or burned away, leaving the framework twisted, scorched and bare.
‘That’s the finish of any maps or documents they were carrying,’ I said. ‘Their kit’s gone, too. Until our lady comes round, we won’t know where they were from.’
‘They probably put out a mayday call. Somebody may come looking.’
‘I doubt it. Not out here. We’re too far from anywhere.’
I saw Whinger starting to grimace again as the pain got to him, so I said, ‘Come on, let’s go.’
Grabbing a wrist and an ankle, I swung the woman on to my shoulder in a fireman’s lift and started down the hill. With a last look back I noticed how the stony outcrops round the crash site had contained the fire and confined it to a small area. In that broken ground, with dark rocks everywhere, and the relics of bush fires scattered across the landscape, it would be difficult to detect the remains from the air. Only if a spotter plane or helicopter passed dead overhead would the crew have a hope of seeing it – a million-to-one chance in such a vast expanse.
Later that evening I passed Hereford such details as we’d been able to muster.
‘The plane was a Beechcraft twin turbo-prop,’ I told Pete Dickson over the satcom link. ‘Registration G-SAF. That’s all I know about it.’
‘We’ll check it out. What about the personnel?’
‘We could only ID one of the guys. The other didn’t have any documents on him.’
‘Okay. So who’s the one we have?’
‘Surname, Pretorius. Christian names, Hermann Adolf. Born, Bloemfontein, 3 November 1954. Citizen of the Republic of South Africa.’ The passport had been issued in Johannesburg.
When I’d given the date and number, Pete asked, ‘And the woman?’
‘Surname, Braun. Christian name, Ingeborg. Citizen of Namibia. Born Windhoek, 30 June 1969.’
‘Is that all we know about her?’
‘No, there was a business card in her passport. She’s a rep for a firm called SWAG – South West African Game. Seems to be some kind of big-game management service. There’s an address in Windhoek, too.’
‘Okay, let’s have it.’
I read it out, and said, ‘Her clothes are a mixture of South African and German. The tunic’s from David Lyndon Classics, the upmarket outfitter in Parktown, Joburg. Slacks from Powder Keg, in Melville. Her boots are Meindl – German.’
‘Got that. What was the location of the crash?’
‘Wait one.’ I knew he’d want that, and to cover ourselves – to make it look as though we were less far south – I’d invented some coordinates that put the site about a hundred kilometres north of its real position. I persuaded myself it wouldn’t make much difference: for the Beechcraft, it would have been only twenty minutes’ flying time. But if the Kremlin realised how far we’d advanced already, they might start pissing about and ordering us back.
I gave the duff gen, and added, ‘When we first saw the plane, it was coming from the east.’
‘Okay. What state’s the woman in?’
‘Still unconscious, but stable. Mart reckons she’ll make it.’
‘Can’t you find a hospital to put her into?’
‘Hospital! You’re fucking joking. There’s no hospital within a million miles. There’s no town, no road, no phone, no power, no water – nothing.’
‘What are your plans for her, then?’
‘Good question. We’ll see what she says when she comes round. If we find out where she took off from, we may be able to call in another plane to exfil her.’
‘How’s Whinger?’
‘Stable also. Mart’s cleaned him up as best he can and given him pain-killers. It looks pretty bad, but it could have been worse.’
I was afraid Pete was going to ask why we didn’t get the woman out by calling in the Kam-Ex Cessna that had lifted Andy’s body. The answer was that I knew we were too far from Mulongwe, but I didn’t want to admit it. Luckily he said nothing on those lines, and I ended the call by asking him to put over any information Hereford could dig out.
The plane crash and its aftermath had delayed us by several hours, and we didn’t make it to the ridge of the hills by nightfall. Not knowing how the land lay on the other side, I didn’t want to go over in the dark, so as dusk was falling our force deployed defensively in a level area just short of the crest.
Whinger was on his feet, but pretty miserable. After Mart had treated him he seemed in reasonable shape, but obviously he was getting a lot of pain, and there’d been an uncomfortable flare-up when Genesis had suggested going back up to bury the bodies and say a prayer.
‘Fuck the bodies!’ Whinger had shouted. ‘I’ve just been fried, and if you come up with any more religious shit, I’m going to fucking drop you.’
The atmosphere was tense all round. I took Gen aside and said, ‘Look, ease off the bible-bashing. You’re starting to piss the guys off in a big way.’
‘Sorry,’ he went, innocently. ‘I didn’t realise I was annoying anyone.’
For the woman, we’d cleared space in the back of our mother wagon and put her in there in an American cot, in case we had to move out in a hurry. Mart had fixed her an IV drip, to keep up the level of her body fluids, and we arranged a rota of guys to monitor her, checking her eyes, making sure her pulse and breathing were okay. We all had the same instinct: to get her out, back to safety, as soon as possible, before her condition started to deteriorate. None of us wanted to be burdened with her. Whinger, who hated Germans on principle, nearly shat himself with rage when he realised that it was a Kraut he’d dragged from the wreckage.
‘She’s not a Kraut,’ I told him. ‘She’s a Namibian.’
‘Bollocks,’ he went. ‘All white Namibians are Krauts. How could she be anything else, with a name like that?’
He knew perfectly well that she was called Ingeborg – Inge for short, almost certainly – but because her surname was Braun, he started straight in, referring to her as Eva, like Hitler’s girlfriend, Eva Braun.
‘Firekin’ roll on!’ he cried, his temper not improved by the stinging of his burns. ‘What do we want with
her
? She’ll bring us nothing but bad luck. Better do what I suggested in the first place: put a bullet through her and leave her for the hyenas.’
her
? She’ll bring us nothing but bad luck. Better do what I suggested in the first place: put a bullet through her and leave her for the hyenas.’
Other books
SOLD TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER by Sam Crescent
Shipwreck by Tom Stoppard
Internal Affairs by Jessica Andersen
Sams Teach Yourself C in 24 Hours by Zhang, Tony.
Mother of Ten by J. B. Rowley
The Best of Fools (Jane Austen Book 2) by Marilyn Grey
The Magnificent Century by Costain, Thomas B.
Woman in Black by Eileen Goudge
Promised Land by Brian Stableford
Master of the Opera, Act 5: A Haunting Duet by Jeffe Kennedy