by Andy Lucas
‘If they detonate, you will die just as surely as the rest of us,’ argued Pace, sensing he was telling them the truth. ‘They must be stopped.’
‘My helicopter will be here any minute,’ Cathera reasoned quietly. ‘It will take us all out of the blast zone in good time. None of us will die.’
‘Let’s hope your pilot doesn’t have any technical problems then,’ said Baker ruefully. He knew enough about the lethal effect of a dirty bomb to realise the devastation that six detonations would wreak on the practically virgin forest. ‘The radioactive material will render a wide area uninhabitable for centuries. A clean up team wouldn’t be able to cleanse the area easily because of the multi-layered nature of the forest,’ he explained to Pace. ‘Plant and animal life will die off, or be horribly mutated over time, as the water and food chains become compromised. The river will spread irradiated plant and animal matter downstream, delivering a more diluted dose of radiation over a massive area.’
‘And that’s just the plutonium,’ Cathera beamed. He’d made sure that each bomb had a double surprise. Pace shot him an inquisitive look just as an image of the skull and crossed bones flashed into his mind. He had forgotten all about it.
‘The powder. What is it?’ he barked.
‘What powder?’ asked Baker.
‘An extra kick, nothing more,’ gloated Cathera.
‘Tell us,’ ordered Baker harshly. ‘I have nothing to gain by keeping you alive. We can flag down your helicopter and James can fly us out himself if your pilot tries any heroics.’
‘It makes no difference now, I suppose,’ Cathera conceded. ‘Anthrax.’
‘You are crazy,’ breathed Baker softly. ‘Why would you use such an agent?’
‘Each cylinder is programmed to start dropping five kilograms of anthrax powder when it’s one mile out from the final co-ordinates. It will add to the damage and hamper any clean up operation,’ he explained matter-of-factly.
‘Wouldn’t the radiation destroy the anthrax spores?’ asked Pace.
‘I don’t know. Anthrax is nasty stuff. It can survive for hundreds of years in its natural state. And in powdered form, it would be inhaled by local wildlife long before it became dormant. When you breathe the stuff in, mortality rates are nearly one hundred percent, even with antibiotics. Wildlife would simply be eradicated but there would be a period of several days between exposure and death. Infected animals could spread it far and wide.’
‘You have just destroyed hundreds of square miles of invaluable rainforest in your own country. How can that possibly help you achieve any aim?’ asked Pace, confused.
‘It wasn’t me,’ Cathera muttered. ‘No, it will be blamed on international terrorists and I will use it as a springboard to challenge for power again, with the people on my side this time. The government will be painted as an incompetent failure. I will make sure of it,’ he said snidely. ‘I plan to lead this country, one way or another.’
‘One bomb would do. Why six?’
‘The bigger the disaster, the more ammunition I will have,’ reasoned Cathera. ‘It is far enough from a major city to prevent serious harm to voters but the world’s love of the rainforest means I will have a political stick to use against the current government.’
‘Unless you happen to be one of several thousand native Indians that inhabit the infected areas,’ argued Baker.
‘Ah, but they don’t vote,’ hissed Cathera. ‘No loss there.’
In the distance, the growing buzz of an approaching aircraft could be heard.
‘Just what I need,’ Pace said, his features suddenly breaking into a soft smile. ‘You don’t mind if I borrow your ride?’
24
Cathera gawped helplessly, along with the pilot and co-pilot, as his escape helicopter took off without him; an elderly but serviceable Westland Gazelle, sporting the vivid purple livery of a Manaus helicopter rental company, easing itself back into rapidly darkening skies.
The 592 horse power Rolls Royce Astazai IIIN engine shook off the ties of gravity with distain. Recently reconditioned, the power throbbed through the control stick in Pace’s hand and he felt a sense of calm wash over him as he settled back into the familiar territory of a pilot’s seat. Twisting open the throttle, he eased it upwards to increase the speed of the machine’s ascent as rain began to speckle the cockpit glass.
Next to him, perfectly comfortable with the man at the controls, Baker checked the compass and marked off a series of bearings on a large paper map, having managed to persuade Cathera to divulge the exact destination co-ordinates for each of the flying bombs.
Turning on the wipers, Pace brought the helicopter up to a height of one thousand feet and hovered expertly. Both men wore the standard flying earphones, with wire microphone sticking out in front of their mouths.
‘Which way to the first one?’
‘Take a bearing of one eight five degrees.’
Pace pushed the stick forward and the helicopter moved off from its hover, slowly picking up speed as its rotor blades thrashed at the moist air. The weather closing in was the last thing on either of their minds.
Pace pushed the engines to their maximum speed of 150 mph – they had to catch six bombs and they barely had an hour left to do it.
‘Any idea what we’re going to do with these model airships when we catch up with them?’ Baker asked, not looking up from his map.
Pace did have the glimmerings of an idea but thought it best to spare him the details until the last minute. He just shrugged. ‘I’m working on it.’
‘Work harder,’ Baker quipped. ‘At this speed we should overtake the first one in two minutes, if Cathera’s information is correct.’ He had no doubt that it would be because when he’d left Hammond guarding the prisoners, he had openly instructed him to shoot Cathera if they radioed back that the information was false. A pair of walkie-talkie radios found in the helicopter guaranteed the ground and air operation stayed in touch.
Visibility dived, along with the clouds, and very soon the helicopter was struggling through heavy rain and rolls of thickening cloud. Pace had wanted to have a clear two hundred feet height advantage on the airships, to help with spotting them in the failing light, but he had to descend to match their eight hundred feet altitude in order to stay below the cloud.
Just then, the first target airship appeared through the wiper-cleared glass in front of Pace, barely a thousand feet ahead. Despite the worsening conditions, the little electric motor was pushing it along at a steady 5 mph. Pace checked his watch. They had fifty-three minutes before detonation. Taking up a hovering station a few feet off its port side, Pace sucked in a breath and forced a grin. Baker felt any shred of enthusiasm drain out of him as he recognised the physical preparation for delivering bad news.
‘Okay, what’s the plan?’
‘I fly, you hang out of the cockpit and snag the cylinder.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘What do I do with it if I manage to get hold of it?’
‘Bring it inside and put it on the back seat. Then we’ll go and get the rest of them.’
An ordinary person would have baulked at the thought of risking life and limb, high above the canopy, to recover lethal nuclear and anthrax bombs from hanging balloons, and would have screamed at the idea that they should be stockpiled inside the helicopter with them. Baker was not an ordinary man. He assessed the risk and knew there was no alternative, so he set about planning how he needed to go about it.
Pace had brought along a good supply of nylon rope from the mine and Baker wasted no time in constructing himself a secure chest harness, leaving about sixty feet of rope left, with one end knotted tightly to his DIY harness.
‘I can’t stay level with it,’ said Pace, wrestling the controls to retain his creeping hover as a gust of wind sprung up to rattle his windows. ‘The wash from the rotors will blow the airship away from us if I get any closer. I’ll have to hover above it and get you to climb
down onto the balloon, slide down the gas envelope and then make a grab for the device.’
‘Walk in the park,’ Baker breezed. ‘I’ll tie on to the skids and double up the rope. That should give me about thirty feet to play with. Is that enough?’
‘Perfect,’ Pace replied. Keeping the helicopter under control, in a growing wind, without affecting the model airship with his downwash would be very tricky but that was his problem. Baker had enough to worry about. ‘You’d better get going.’
Ditching his headset, Baker grabbed the spare walkie-talkie and gave a quick wave before popping open the door and disappearing outside. The door slammed closed but not before the cockpit was soaked by a strong gust of rain-filled wind.
Outside, Baker got down to business. He was a dab hand at covert operations and had rappelled into enemy territory countless times while serving with the SAS, so balancing on the skids of a moving helicopter was not a new experience. Shrugging off the rain and ignoring the wind that tugged at his clothes, he knelt down and tied the loose end of the double-looped rope securely to one of the landing skids.
Satisfied that it would hold, he gripped the rope as close to the skid as possible and allowed the rest of the loop to fall into space. Then, carefully, he lowered himself down, hand over hand, until he reached the end. Releasing the rope so that he hung by his harness, legs swinging over emptiness, he used the radio to tell Pace that he was in position.
Immediately, the helicopter edged up and over the tiny airship.
Very slowly, Pace bled height, one foot at a time.
Baker was suitably impressed at the piloting skills on show as he was quickly dropped onto the taut skin of the model blimp. Sliding down the rain-slicked material as Pace dropped lower, he made a grab for the cylinder beneath, catching it easily. Unhooking it from the eyelet welded to the base of the gondola, he was pleased to find it very light. Then he had another thought and radioed it to Pace.
‘We don’t have time for me to keep climbing up and down with these things!’ he shouted to be heard above the noise of the wind and rotors. ‘I can tie each one on to my harness. They don’t weigh a lot. That way I can stay at the end of the rope and you can just head off to the next one!’
‘Sounds good.’ Pace agreed because it made sense. Leaving his friend to dangle at the end of the rope, he snatched up the map and zeroed in on the projected position of the next airship, altering course and accelerating as fast as the machine would allow. Below, buffeted and wet, Baker had nothing to do but wait until they reached the next airship.
During those minutes he turned his attention to what to do with the cylinders once he snared them. He was not a bomb disposal technician, so any attempt he might make at disarming them would have to be very simplistic. Baker had hoped there might be an abort switch on the device itself but a quick examination turned up nothing. It was a sealed unit. Cathera had made sure that disarming his bombs would not be an option.
Over the next half an hour, their plan ran smoothly and Baker ended up with five of the six devices tied to his harness. Though individually they were light, together the combined weight pulled down on the harness rope, digging the cord painfully into his chest and shoulders.
Ignoring the pain, Baker got on with the job. Checking his watch, he noted they had barely twenty minutes left before detonation but he had not forgotten the cylinders were programmed to start releasing anthrax dust a mile before they reached their target co-ordinates, which equated to about twelve minutes. That left only eight minutes before the ecological disaster would start. He took a second to remind Pace but found the pilot needed no reminding.
Grimly focused on jockeying the helicopter through increasingly stormy skies, Pace also had to contend with the fact that fading light had now transformed into full darkness. Not only was he flying the helicopter to the limits of its capability, but he ended up having to knock out his side window so he could stick his free hand out, holding a torch, that he shone in front of the helicopter to try and spot their final airship. If it wasn’t such a dreadful situation he might have laughed.
With six minutes to go, his wavering torch beam finally picked out a flash in the sodden darkness, as torchlight was reflected back off of the skin of the last airship. Wasting no time, he flung the helicopter into position above it, whipping the nose up sharply and switching from virtually full speed to a dead hover in a vicious movement that smashed him hard against his seat harness.
Fortunately, he was unable to hear the string of expletives issued by Baker as the soldier was slammed bodily against the side of the envelope, bouncing off a few feet before swinging back. Winded but functioning, he grabbed for the cylinder but missed. Mindful of the time but experienced enough not to panic, he lunged at it again. This time his fingers clasped tightly around the cold metal casing of the device and he rapidly dislodged it from the gondola, making it fast to his harness.
‘Got it!’ he shouted into the walkie-talkie. ‘Let’s go!’
‘Where to? We only have five minutes before these things start spraying dust,’ Pace shot back.
‘I have an idea that might work,’ Baker’s voice came crackling back over the radio, ‘but you have to get this thing back to the mine before our time runs out. Can you do it?’
Pace made a quick mental calculation of distance and direction, even as he was wheeling the machine around in the sky. It would be very close. At full speed, they might just get back there in four minutes.
‘On our way,’ he informed Baker, committing them to the man’s plan on trust. ‘But what happens when we get there? Sarah and the others are at the mine. Shouldn’t we be heading the other way?’
‘There isn’t time and we can’t let these devices pollute vast tracts of forest. We have to contain the blasts and the material.’
Suddenly, like a light-bulb flicking on inside a dark skull, Pace hit upon the same idea that Baker had. ‘The shipping container?’
‘Exactly,’ said Baker’s disembodied voice. ‘Those shipping containers are made from heavy steel and are usually air tight when sealed. If we can get the devices inside and close the doors, most of the material should be contained. Maybe,’ he added, just to show that he wasn’t certain of success.
‘At least it’s a plan,’ growled Pace, opening the throttle as wide as possible and draining every last drop of speed from the engine. As though nature was determined to mock them every step of the way, the darkness was suddenly lit by a succession of brilliant lightning bolts, arcing across the sky so close to the helicopter that they threatened to blind him. A lightning strike now would spell disaster.
Down on the ground, they did not hear the helicopter approaching until it was nearly on top of them. Sarah, now awake but still groggy, waved hand torches wildly as Pace hurtled in at break-neck speed. Hammond had been hurriedly told of the plan over the radio and had moved the whole group up to the container, whose open doors now offered their one slight hope of salvation.
Cathera and the two aircrew sat on the mud outside the container. Sarah covered them with the pistol while Hammond took her torches and continued waving both in the air, guiding the helicopter in right on top of the container.
There were only thirty-nine seconds to go as the helicopter braked to a sudden hover just above the container and Baker appeared from the darkness, dangling on the end of the rope, with all six devices tied tightly to his harness. So accurate was Pace’s judgement that Baker’s feet kissed the ground only a few feet in front of the doors. But there was no time left.
‘Knife!’ he bellowed at Hammond, who was already forewarned and stepped forward to slice through the nylon rope above Baker’s head. Released from the helicopter, Baker turned and grabbed the knife from Hammond, breathlessly checking his watch at the same time. Barely ten seconds remained before they would all be smothered with anthrax dust.
His mind made a decision and his body moved in a blur. It was a calculated risk but what the hell. Slicing through the rope harness with thr
ee swift cuts, Baker leaped to one side and grabbed Cathera by the scruff of the neck, yanking him powerfully up off of the ground, despite the weight of the bombs gripped in his other hand.
Too late, Cathera had the sickening realisation of what was about to happen to him. He opened his mouth to protest but Baker dragged him over to the open doors of the steel container and tossed the smaller man inside, together with the deadly bombs. Turning back to Hammond, he dragged one of the heavy doors closed and reached out for the other one. Hammond helped him with the second door and the clang of steel on steel was followed by the quieter bangs of bolts being securely slid into place. The fate of the despot inside was forever sealed.
By the time Pace had put the helicopter down on the main compound and run back up the muddy trail, Sarah was openly in floods of tears while still keeping the frightened pilots covered with a wavering gun. Hammond was crouched down, sitting on his heels in front of the container, grinning knowingly to Baker. Pace saw the doors were closed and looked around for Cathera.
‘I had no choice, sorry. He just wandered in front of me,’ smiled Baker. ‘Poor man. Such a shame.’
‘Pity we can’t get him out,’ Pace muttered sarcastically. ‘He will be sorely missed.’
‘By now it will be filled with anthrax dust. He’s already as good as dead and the detonations will mercifully finish the job,’ said Hammond.
‘Will the container even cope with six explosions?’ Pace asked quietly. ‘If they blow open the container, all this will have been wasted effort.’
‘Even if the shell is compromised, most of the plutonium and anthrax will stay inside. A clean up team could make the area safe with minimal damage to the eco-system. But,’ he added, ‘any local leakage will still kill us if we stay.’
‘Then let’s get the hell out of here,’ sighed Pace. His body was aching with fatigue and his head suddenly felt very heavy on his shoulders.