Catacombs

by John Farris

  "It tore my heart out," she said simply, and blotted at tears on her lashes. She sat quietly for a time, looking out at the blurred pale bush passing below, the copter's streaky shadow, a herd of white-striped antelope on the run, veering one way, then another, as stylish in movement and spacing as a chorus line. Talking hurt her throat. The chill of their modest altitude gripped her and she shuddered; she wasn't wearing anything except a grimy blue nylon flight jacket that fit her like a shortie nightgown. Jade was still buck naked and unconcerned about it.

  "Matt!"

  Jade moved forward to the copilot's seat. Lem pointed out what looked like a permanent camp on the shaded bank of a sand river. There were two frame buildings, bungalow size. Behind the bungalows was a long shed with a metal roof and a livestock corral. Opposite the corral was a landing strip with a gasoline pump and a 350-gallon silvery tank with a BP shield emblem on it. A single-engine biplane that looked like a crop duster was staked down just off the landing strip. In front of one of the bungalows a pickup truck and a safari wagon, called a combi, were parked.

  Jade signaled to Lem to set the helicopter down. They had only about a quarter of a tank of fuel left.

  Jade and Raun, each carrying a Kalashnikov, walked along a path from the landing strip to the bungalows. There was low water along the river track, flashes of sun, the bracing scent of leleshwa leaves on the cool evening wind, blood lilies in the dusty yard. No one had come out to see who they were or what they were up to. Raun smelled food and salivated.

  There was a sign by the track in front of the bungalows. U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, it read. UGALLA CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL.

  "Home sweet home," Jade murmured.

  They followed their noses to the second bungalow, went up the creaking steps to the verandah and through a screen door.

  Inside, four men and two women were eating. They ranged in age from thirty to sixty. They were all white. They broke off their conversation and looked up warily. Two black houseboys and a cook peeked around the jamb of. the kitchen door, and vanished like smoke. Ten seconds later they were herded in at the point of Lem Meztizo's rifle. Lem had them sit cross-legged on the floor with their hands on top of their heads.

  The leader of the research team, a man with a bald liver-spotted head and a white handlebar mustache, relaxed his grip on the edge of the table and said, "We don't have much money here. Petty cash. And some equipment for studying the mating cycles of tsetse flies that you wouldn't be much interested in."

  "May I ask your name?" Jade said politely.

  "Donald McKenzie, Duke University."

  "Mr. McKenzie, despite what we look like we're not thieves, murderers, or escaped crazies. There are good reasons I can't establish just who we are, or what we're doing here. But if you have a radio–"

  "We do."

  "–I want to give you an encrypted message to relay to the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania. The message will be transmitted to the Operations Center at the State Department in Washington, and then to the White House Communications Agency. If you'll be patient and stick by your radio for an hour or so, we should have a reply confirming the urgency of our requirements and requesting your full cooperation. Do you know anyone in Washington?"

  McKenzie raised an eyebrow, looked at the other faces around the table. A thin man who couldn't control his twitching lips said, "My c-college r-roommate is an undersecretary at H.E.W. C-C-Collins P-Patterson."

  "You come along too," Jade said, "and we'll get Mr. Patterson on a radio hookup for additional verification."

  "Hold on," McKenzie said. He stared at Jade with bright shrewd eyes. "I don't know who you are. Refugees from a damn nudist camp, is what it looks like. But you're Americans, in trouble, and I guess we can help, all right. I'll send your code message. In the meantime you'd be doing us a kindness to put those damn guns away. We don't have guns ourselves. The six of us together couldn't overpower one of you, if it came to that. Now, the girl there looks half starved. So let's all try to act like sensible adults. We'll get you into some clothes and fix you something to eat."

  Jade returned their stares with a slightly glazed, thoughtful expression. Then he took the rifle, put the safety on, and leaned it against one wall. Lem and Raun did the same. Jade stepped forward and offered his hand to McKenzie. They took each other's measure, and smiled.

  "This must be my lucky day," Jade said. Raun didn't know whether to laugh or hit him.

  Chapter 29

  DODOMA

  Kilimanjaro International

  Airport, Tanzania

  May 23

  Oliver Ijumaa spent the better part of two days in Dodoma, a city with severe growing pains on the Central Plateau of Tanzania.

  Dodoma, primarily an agricultural center and wine-growing region, was gradually being transformed into the seat of Tanzania's government. A new parliament building had been erected, and the National Housing Corporation had put up some large apartment buildings for government workers. New construction made the task of getting around the inadequate streets by car formidable; a dust haze hung over the hot city and everywhere people were listless and irritable, staying indoors as much as possible.

  Oliver took advantage of the circumstances by running errands for members of the medical missionary societies having their combined annual meeting in the city. He picked up quite a few extra shillings this way, enough money to purchase a second-hand white shirt and used sneakers for his abused feet, and two pairs of socks. He had been told it could get quite wet and cold on Kilimanjaro at night, so he prudently invested in a yellow slicker with a drawstring hood to keep the rain off. That left him with just enough money for sandwiches and beer. He slept nights in Emma Chase's car and pestered her remorselessly to use her good offices to provide him with transportation the rest of the way to Kilimanjaro.

  On the afternoon of adjournment she brought to him a tall Englishman in ragged bush drill and dilapidated penny loafers. He was a little taller than, and almost as skinny as, Oliver himself.

  "This is Phillip Goliath. He is a zoologist, with an obsessive interest in the rutting instinct of lesser kudu. He is returning to Arusha this afternoon by way of Kilimanjaro."

  Oliver, in his ecstasy, did a little springy dance. Phillip Goliath grinned at him.

  "I have told him something of your own obsession and predicament. Naturally his sense of fair play was outraged."

  "I hope you get the bugger, Oliver. I'll help you if I can. Kilimanjaro airport is quite near the mountain."

  "Walking far?"

  "You can reach the lower slopes in half a day."

  "One warning before I leave you in Phillip 's care. He is a stupendously bad pilot, with an utter disregard for the demands of gravity."

  Goliath grinned complacently and took Oliver's arm.

  "We just have time for tea before we depart."

  Tea was at the Dodoma Hotel. There, with a zoologist's passion to uncover the minutest truth about the subject under observation, Phillip Goliath soon had the full story of Oliver's travail.

  "You've never been to the mountain? You've no idea where these explorers were mucking about?"

  Oliver shook his head in bewilderment.

  "Kilimanjaro's sheer size is against you from the start. And there have been rumblings, there might be a lava flow. Oh, there's plenty of danger. I bloody wish I could go with you, but I'll be fired from my post and lose my grant. Well, I've some gear in the plane you might find useful. An old sleeping bag and an ice ax, belonged to a chum of mine. But he won't be back for it–he's still hanging from the Eiger in a rather inaccessible location. Let's be off, shall we?"

  Phillip Goliath's airplane was one of the famous old staggerwing Beeches, circa 1940. It still had the original engine, but it was a far cry from the pristine models that nowadays fetch one hundred thousand dollars or more from well-heeled aviation buffs. This one had a propeller that was too short to take advantage of the available 310 horses. It was patched and rusted and missing a good
many instruments, such as the altimeter.

  "I always know when I've strayed above ten thousand feet anyway," Goliath said cheerfully. "I get a little short of breath and my nose starts to bleed." He slammed his plane through some tricky air currents at the western edge of the Masai Steppe and grinned. when Oliver clutched his seat with both hands and moaned.

  "I've crumped her twice," Goliath shouted. "Rebuilt her the last time from the ground up. Had a hell of a time figuring what goes where. It's only the hard lesson in life you profit from. And where else in the world can you have the freedom to be a self-taught flyer?"

  A little before seven o'clock Oliver had his first look at Kilimanjaro, nearly cloudless in the northern sky as they approached the airport on the Sanya Juu plain. The ash-tainted snowcap of Kibo was glazed red by the sun, and there was a low boil of smoke like a funereal boutonniere on the rim.

  Oliver, although he had been warned, was depressed by the breadth of Kilimanjaro, from the wheat-covered slopes in the northwest to the coffee plantations south, the hundreds of square miles of forest belt and windy moorland.

  "Suppose I should get on the radio and let the tower know I'm coming in," Goliath grumbled. "Otherwise there's all kinds of flak. Hello, hello? Kilimanjaro tower? Do you read me?"

  When he had the formalities out of the way Goliath flew straight in and at rather a steep angle. Oliver stared in fascination and dread at the runway rushing up beneath the nose of the staggerwing and averted his gaze. To his right, three hundred feet below and a quarter of a mile away, a JetRanger helicopter was parked on the apron near the terminal building. Three men and a woman were walking from the building to the copter. The three men carried a large assortment of baggage. Two of them were black, the other white.

  Oliver's sharp eyes singled him out. He had shoulders out of proportion to the narrowness of his body, and a wild shock of black hair. The woman also was unforgettable, though Oliver had only a glimpse of her reddish short hair, the cast on her right arm.

  He clawed at the glass of the window as if he were trying to throw it open.

  "Errrrikkkaaa!"

  "What? What's that?" Goliath said, distracted from the landing he was trying to make.

  "There is Erika! There is him, stealing my gold, he!"

  "Just a moment, just a moment." The little plane leveled off with a wobble of wings, touched down, bounced on its large front wheels, came down again one wheel at a time as Goliath sought to keep the craft in a straight line down the runway.

  "Bloody old dame flies well enough, but she's a bitch to control on the ground," he said, applying the brakes gingerly. "Here we are! Now what's the ruckus?"

  Oliver was pounding his shoulder, pointing back at the terminal.

  "Erika! Erika!"

  "Are you certain? Let's just pull off on the taxi strip, then, and go have a look."

  On the radio Oliver heard Tiernan Clarke's voice as he contacted Kilimanjaro tower; he tried to leap out of his seat without unfastening the lap strap. He shook the whole plane.

  "It's him, is it? Uh-oh, they're departing. Can't roll along any faster, Oliver, she ground loops too easily."

  From half a mile away they saw the JetRanger rising above the tarmac. Oliver clutched the sides of his head in dismay. The helicopter was stationary for a few moments, then turned in the direction of the mountain and flew away.

  "No, no! Erika!"

  "Of all the rotten luck. And my fuel reserve is low." Goliath took a fast look at Oliver's devastated expression, made up his mind, turned back to the long runway, swung the Beechcraft into the wind.

  "November Kilo Tango Juliet Bravo, what are you doing?" the air traffic controller demanded.

  "Nipping down to the corner for a bloody loaf," Goliath mumbled, and failed to reply to the tower's inquiry. He applied power, and took his foot off the brakes.

  "They have a couple of miles on us and their cruising speed's a bit faster than we can manage," Goliath said as they sped snarling down the runway. "I dare say they can climb higher in that JetRanger. Still, we'll give it our best shot and hope they don't run us dry in some vertical spot. See him, Oliver?"

  "Yes."

  "Good, we're off." At almost as steep an angle as he had landed the staggerwing. Two hundred feet above the ground he banked sharply and the plane juddered and faltered momentarily, not having enough airspeed to support the maneuver. Goliath put the nose down and the plane shot ahead. The cabin was filled with a hot golden light.

  "Yes, I have them too. They look to be at six thousand feet and climbing. That little cloud of dust, or whatever it is at the summit, seems to be growing. Little blue veins of lightning in it. God, it's a wonderful time of evening to fly! Just look around you, Oliver. The beauty of this land is like a narcotic. Who was it said 'Life reveals itself only in retrospect'? You see I figure, Oliver, if I stuff myself with living now, I'll be the wiser for it in my old age. Expect to need all that wisdom too; I won't. have any money. If I hadn't met you this afternoon, I'd be missing all this. We'll just tag along back here; reckon we won't lose them if the light holds out."

  Two thirds of the way to the summit the engine of the Beech began to labor as the small propeller failed to take a satisfactory bite of the thinning air. They saw the running lights of the helicopter winking against the dark face of Kibo a little below the glacier, at about sixteen thousand feet. The boiling upstanding cloud from the caldera now blotted out a fourth of the sky overhead, and there was a haze of fine ash at this altitude. The sun was going down; they were buffeted by strong winds. Goliath winced anxiously and tried to climb as the copter disappeared from view.

  "Well, that's it," he said with a slight frown. "They've set down somewhere under the glacier." He wiped blood from his upper lip and nose and pleaded with his old dame.

  "Just another couple of hundred feet, you can do it, sweetheart, you goddamned well will do it for me." To Oliver he said, "I've a splendid idea. See the bare place just ahead? That's the saddle between Kibo and Mawenzi peaks. It's possible to land an airplane there; at least I've heard of one bush pilot who pulled it off. But he had a few hundred more hours in the air than I do. I shall be very disappointed with myself if I don't give it a try, having come this far. While we still have the light I'll just set her down and put you off with your gear. Then if I take off at full power I think I can climb high enough toward the scarp to sight the helicopter. When I have done, I'll wag my wings so you'll know where to climb in the morning."

  Goliath looked at his gauges, including one that told him his oil pressure was on the low side and another that his fuel wasn't stretching.

  "Hmmm. A good teacupful left, I suppose. Wind seems to come from several directions at once. Just like Serengeti at certain times of the day. We'll just crab right on down then, no use beating around the bush. Here we go." Oliver swallowed hard and lay back in what appeared to be a faint. "Two . . hundred feet . . . one hundred . . . and . . . fifty . . . and . . . bloody . . . Guinness . . . Book . . . of . . . Records, I'll bugger all!"

  The Beech, as if suddenly unsupported by the air, came down hard enough to blow a tire, but didn't, rebounded from the short tough grass and patches of scree, barreled down an irregular alley of giant lobelia. Goliath applied extreme rudder to avoid a towering rock pile, steered into more of the thick grabbing grass, touched the brake lightly several times. The plane wallowed and slid across the undulant saddle and stopped seven hundred feet after touchdown. Just ahead of them was a depression like a gravel pit, twenty feet deep.

  There was sweat on Phillip Goliath's forehead and more blood on his upper lip, which ran down his chin when he smiled.

  "Just between you and me," he allowed, "that was a spot of luck. We took a walloping, didn't we? Oh, well. Let's see if there's damage."

  He inspected his plane thoroughly, paying particular attention to the struts, then frowned at the mist of ash building up on the windshield. The light was fading quickly from the sky, the snows of Kibo.

 
"Sorry to drop you and run," he said to Oliver, wiping a finger across the glass, "but this sort of thing is not so good for internal combustion engines. Best of luck. Keep your eye on me when I climb up there." He pointed to the three-sided, in slanting gash in the rock below Kibo peak, where they had last observed the helicopter.

  Oliver had made a small pile of the sleeping bag, ice ax, and three small plastic water bottles. He was wearing his hooded yellow slicker. He stepped forward, grasped Phillip Goliath's left hand with his two hands, and hung on wordlessly, gazing into the younger man's eyes.

  "Working for you, every day of my life. No pay."

  "Oliver, that isn't necessary. I've had loads of fun. Looks as if it'll be three against one up there, do watch yourself."

  Goliath climbed back into the plane. The engine roared. Goliath brought the nose around as Oliver lifted the tail, and then he took off the way he had come, with a wave of his hand.

  The staggerwing had trouble picking up speed in the grass; it rose, just missed some tall lobelia, fell back into the saddle, bounced, and rose again a little higher into the air, perhaps sixty feet. Oliver watched it crawling for altitude in the darkening sky, wing-tip lights flashing. His fists were clenched. Goliath flew toward the basaltic crag of Mawenzi, the noise of the engine fading quickly. Then he banked and came back, well above Oliver's head. He was climbing toward the scarp, rising to meet the down-shifting cloud of gases and ash from the crater. Oliver stopped breathing.

  He saw the Beech catch the light of the dying sun, just for a moment; high up against the chiseled gash in the rock it glowed as if it were incandescent, and the wings dipped in acknowledgement of the hidden helicopter. Wind brought tears to Oliver's eyes. He couldn't hear the popping hum of the plane's engine anymore. As he watched, the left wing dipped too low. Goliath attempted to level off, to glide, and then the plane just plunged out of the sky, powerless, and was torn to pieces on the jagged slope of the mountain.

  There was no noise of crashing, no fire, no sign of Phillip Goliath's "old dame" or of Phillip himself: the happiest man Oliver had ever met, and one of the bravest. Oliver continued to stand there, his chin lifted, choked with tears, the wind whipping the drawstrings of the slicker's hood painfully across his cheeks.