Zambezi

by Tony Park

  ‘That I don’t need.’

  ‘Willy’s all right. He’ll be all nerves for the first day, but once you get him out into the bush you’ll see why he’s rated the best hunter in these parts.’

  ‘I’m counting on it.’

  ‘I’ll take her down a bit, see what we can see before I turn back for the landing,’ Westcott said into his headset microphone.

  ‘Buffalo!’ Crusher Calvert exclaimed, seeing a stretch of verdant flood plain peppered with black dots.

  The animals started to run at the sound of the droning engines. ‘Big herd. Maybe three or four hundred.’ Rob levelled out and banked away so as not to disturb the animals overly. ‘Black death, they call them.’

  ‘So I understand. I’m gunning for one on this trip. A big bull.’

  ‘Good for you. I’d rather face down a lion than be charged by one of them. Elephant in the river, over there.’

  Calvert nodded as the wide, silvery expanse of the Zambezi came into view. Four elephants – all mature bulls judging by the length of their tusks and big rounded heads – were grazing on a reedy island near the Zambian shore.

  ‘That’s all hunting concessions you can see across the river in Zimbabwe. Mana Pools National Park is on the opposite bank to where we’re heading. You’re much better off on this side of the river these days, General.’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’

  ‘Yes, you’re safe as houses over here, Crusher.’

  Hassan released half of the deep breath he had drawn. He felt the adrenaline surge through his veins.

  He would remember this moment for the rest of his life. The rest of his life, of course, might only be a matter of hours.

  The tone was loud and strong in his ear. He aimed for the port engine. He squeezed the trigger and felt the heat on his cheek, heard the roar of the launch motor. The missile sprang from the tube.

  John Wozak bumped his head on the little Perspex window at the back of the aircraft as he flashed his head back around. Something on the ground had caught his eye. He pressed his cheek against the Perspex to peer down at the stretch of riverbank they had just overflown. It had looked like a puff of dust. But now he saw a streaming tail of smoke led by a fiercely burning bright light as the missile’s motor ignited.

  ‘Missile!’ he screamed.

  Westcott had been preparing to turn to port, to head back for his run-in to the airstrip. Someone yelled something from the rear compartment. Most likely one of the secret service types had seen his first elephant in the bush below. He looked back over his shoulder.

  The agent was yelling at him and pointing out the rear window.

  ‘It’s a fucking missile!’ the man screamed. ‘Left-hand side!’

  Westcott caught a glimpse of the smoke trail through the rear passenger window. He had been fired at before by a surface-to-air missile. That telltale stream could be nothing else. He cut the throttle and stamped hard on the left rudder pedal, pushing it to the bulkhead.

  The Comanche rolled on its back. Westcott ripped back the control wheel and the plane dropped sickeningly.

  Calvert’s head slammed into the window on his left. ‘What the … ?’

  ‘Brace yourselves!’ Westcott bellowed. He pushed the wheel full forwards, steepening the dive angle. It was a dangerous move, even at two thousand feet above the ground, but he had no alternative. By turning left, towards the oncoming missile, Westcott hoped he would mask the heat signature from the engine on that side of the aircraft.

  ‘He has seen the missile,’ Juma said, observing the violent manoeuvre through his binoculars.

  Hassan was not in the mood for pessimism. ‘He’s too late.’ However, he held his breath as the missile slowly came about and followed the aeroplane down. Had the pilot been flying a jet fighter his instinctive actions might have saved him, but the Comanche was a commuter.

  ‘It is going to hit!’ Juma cried.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hassan.

  The control wheel shuddered in Westcott’s hands as the missile warhead, a payload of more than a kilogram of high explosive, detonated just short of the hot exhaust, sending thousands of tiny shards of metal into the engine, wing and fuselage. A flash of brilliant light seared the white-painted aluminium skin of the aircraft. Arms went up in front of faces in a vain attempt to ward off the heat and deadly shrapnel. The boom of the detonation over the screaming whine of protesting engines assaulted the passengers’ eardrums. Shrapnel and pieces of the port engine burst out, as the ragged remains of the metal cowling peeled away in the slipstream. Most of the debris went aft, but splinters of aluminium, nuts, bolts and tiny components blew every which way at the moment the grenade-sized warhead at the tip of the missile erupted.

  Stu Wardley, John Wozak’s partner, had left his seat and was leaning over the other man trying to see the missile. A dislodged bolt shot through the skin of the aircraft like a bullet and continued flying and tumbling through Wardley’s right eye and out the back of his skull. Wozak reeled to one side as Wardley’s body bounced off him, brains and blood gushing from the empty eye socket and grotesque exit wound as the man crashed into the carpeted floor of the aircraft.

  Mike Treble had been sitting in front of Wozak. A piece of aluminium cowling the size of a man’s hand sliced through the fuselage and tore a furrow across Treble’s dark-blue business shirt, laying open his heart and lungs. He died a few seconds later.

  John Wozak felt for a pulse on Wardley’s blood-drenched neck. There was none. The agent’s brains covered the floor of the aircraft, which was also slick from the massive volume of blood that had gushed from Treble’s wound. Wozak swallowed rising vomit. He took the Glock nine-millimetre pistol from his shoulder holster and pulled back the slide, cocking it and chambering a round.

  Someone had killed his partner and had attempted to assassinate the man in their charge. He would be ready for the bastards if they showed up to finish the job they’d started.

  ‘I’ll go back and help the guys,’ Calvert yelled to the pilot above the tortured whine and thump of flapping metal. The aircraft was vibrating so much he could barely get the words out.

  ‘Sit down!’ Westcott barked. It was an old tradition, founded in commonsense, that on board an aircraft the pilot outranked any passenger. ‘Strap into your seat, as tight as you can. Brace for impact! There’s nothing you can do back there until we land.’

  Calvert took another look out the window and nodded. He fastened the lap and shoulder straps of the inertia belt into the housing below his belly and said a quick Hail Mary.

  The warhead had taken off the left aileron and a sizeable chunk of the wing. Westcott turned, but was gentle on the rudder. Too much and he would create a spiral dive from which there’d be no recovery at their height. He checked the airspeed again and fought to keep the fine balance between stalling and losing too much altitude. He pulled back on the wheel a little and kept his right foot down hard on the corresponding rudder pedal, to compensate for the massive torque being created by the remaining engine. He kept the power up and set the right propeller pitch to full fine. Westcott had to find somewhere to land and it was clear to him now that he wouldn’t make the airstrip. That left only the river.

  Westcott keyed the microphone switch on the wheel and said, ‘Mayday, mayday, mayday, Comanche niner-juliet, delta-alpha-romeo, sierra-oscar-alpha. Engine failure. Ditching in the Zambezi River, thirty kilometres east Chiawa. Five souls on board. Hit by a surface-to-air missile. Repeat…’ He reiterated the call as he busied himself for the landing. He would have to glide in. He went through the checklists. Before shutting down the fuel and electrical systems, he lowered the flaps. ‘Brace yourself, General. We’re going into the drink.’

  ‘You’re doing fine, Rob. What are our chances?’

  A stupid question, the pilot thought. ‘I’ll get us down in one piece, Crusher. Let’s just hope someone gets to us before the hippos and the crocs.’

  ‘We’ll make it.’ Calvert forced a smile. Under his br
eath, he said, ‘Glory be to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit…’

  ‘Stop!’ Hassan yelled to Juma, pulling out his binoculars from the pouch on his web gear.

  He and Juma had run for the concealed Land Rover as soon as they saw the missile strike the engine of the Comanche. As planned, Juma had followed the track away from the launch site down towards the river. The private road paralleled the riverbank and afforded good views up and down the Zambezi from a number of carefully chosen lookout positions.

  Hassan caught sight of the stricken aircraft. ‘He’s making for the river. I knew he would.’

  Hassan had thought through what he would do if he found himself in the pilot’s unenviable position. The turn back to the original landing strip would be too tight – impossible to make with the destroyed engine and damaged controls. Unless the pilot located Hassan’s own airstrip and made for that, he would probably try to ditch in the river. In either case, he would deliver General Donald Calvert, dead or alive, into Hassan’s waiting hands. In the case of a third eventuality – the aircraft crashing somewhere in the bush – Hassan’s plan was to return to his own airstrip and take off with Juma in his ultralight. Using a GPS, he would mark the position of the downed aircraft, land, and drive or walk to the crash site.

  ‘Back to the bush camp. Quickly!’ Hassan ordered. ‘We’ll pick them up in the boat.’ His flatbottomed game-viewing boat, equipped with two forty-horsepower outboard motors, was fuelled and waiting at the satellite encampment.

  Time was of the essence now. Hassan assumed the pilot would have got a mayday message away and that rescuers would soon be on the way, by boat and, probably, by helicopter. He figured he had an hour, at the most.

  Rob Westcott took a final glance over his shoulder into the cabin. ‘Get that man strapped in!’ he yelled at John Wozak, noticing the other agent lying on the floor.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Wozak called back. He had to yell to be heard over the incessant noise of wind whistling through the punctured fuselage. ‘So’s Treble.’

  ‘Strap them in anyway’ Westcott shouted over his shoulder. The last thing they needed was a couple of hundred kilograms of human flying around the cockpit when they hit the water.

  ‘Mother of God,’ Calvert muttered.

  They were headed down the centre line of a straight stretch of the river. Westcott eased back on the wheel. He’d kept the airspeed a little high, conserving some energy for the flare so that he could control the point of impact with the water rather than simply smacking the aircraft down.

  The surface of the river rippled from the slipstream of the aircraft as it raced along, metres from the water. A flock of herons took flight as the shadow loomed over them, and a startled bull elephant wallowing in the shallows flapped his ears and trumpeted loudly in a show of mock anger. The pachyderm decided this was one intruder not worth taking on and hastily ran away.

  From his military training, Westcott knew it was too risky to bring the aircraft down tail first, as doing so would either bring the nose down too hard, causing them to submarine, or would make them skip like a stone across the water’s surface. ‘I’m going to dig the right wing into the water to slow us, General,’ he said to Calvert. ‘Hold tight – it’s going to be hard on your neck when we hit. We’ll spin hard on impact.’ Westcott was thankful now he’d gone to the expense of installing five-point harnesses for both pilot and front-seat passenger. They’d need all the restraint they could get.

  ‘Brace!’ he called again over his shoulder into the rear cabin. It was the best he could do. He registered the sight of blood on the ceiling and carpet. No time to think about that now.

  Westcott brought the aircraft down a little fast, flaring it several metres above the water. Luck hadn’t deserted him completely. There was a straight stretch in the river around five hundred metres in length filling his windscreen. The controls were getting heavy He allowed the Comanche to sink towards the water. His airspeed was just above the stall, the control wheel shuddering. The water whipped past his side window, sun flashing off the ripples. The plane was still travelling at a hundred and forty kilometres an hour. He sideslipped the aircraft, trailing the right wing, lowering it towards the water. It skipped once, striking the ripples. The impact rang through the airframe like a sledgehammer. The leading edge of the wing hit again and dug into the water. The aircraft spun through two hundred and seventy degrees, partially ripping the right wing away.

  Crusher Calvert felt as though his neck had snapped as the aircraft slammed into the water. His body was flicked like a bullwhip, his head smashing into the window again and then flicking forwards, stopping just inches from the instrument panel in front of him as the safety harness cut painfully into his shoulders and belly.

  A bow wave surged up beside them and then washed back over the nose of the Comanche.

  Suddenly the aircraft was still, the tail rising up as water covered the front. With a sickening lurch the aeroplane righted itself again, the tail splashing back down into the river. They were level and floating – for the time being. Westcott shook his head. His mind reeled. He realised the tremendous G-forces created by the spinning landing had caused him to black out for a few seconds. He tried the radio again but it was dead. His shoulders and gut hurt where the seatbelt had dug into him on impact, but other than that, he seemed all right.

  ‘General! Crusher, are you OK, man?’ Westcott was shocked at the red smear on his passenger’s temple.

  ‘I’m OK,’ Calvert said weakly. He wiped the stickiness from his head and inspected his fingers.

  ‘Banged my head against the side door when we hit. Neck’s a bit sore, but I’ll be all right. How you doing, John?’ he croaked back into the cabin.

  ‘I’m fine, sir. Where’s the raft, the lifejackets?’ Wozak demanded of the pilot.

  ‘We don’t carry any. We don’t fly over the ocean so there’s no requirement.’ Westcott was not apologetic. He didn’t need a security guard taking over now – he was still the captain of the aircraft.

  ‘General, I’ll get out and test the depth of the water. I’d like you to wait outside on the wing with Mr Wozak. Can you swim, sir?’

  ‘Yes, I can swim.’

  Westcott undid his harness, opened his door and stepped out onto the wing. The Comanche dipped with the sudden transference of his weight, but it still seemed to be floating. He heard the drone of a motor and raised a hand to his eyes to cut down the afternoon glare off the water. ‘It’s a boat!’

  ‘Hallelujah,’ Calvert said, undoing his harness.

  ‘Sir, I think you should wait there a second until we see who it is. Someone was shooting at us, and we don’t know if these people are friendlies or not,’ Wozak said, squeezing between the general and the empty pilot’s seat to follow Westcott outside. He held his loaded Glock in his right hand.

  Calvert frowned. He wanted to get out of the damned aircraft before it sank or caught fire. He looked out the side window, which had been painted with droplets of brown water, and saw a lowslung speedboat slicing its way towards them. There were two men in green uniforms on board.

  ‘They look like National Parks guys,’ Westcott said, noticing from a distance that both were African and dressed alike.

  ‘I’m not taking any chances,’ Wozak said grimly.

  Hassan bin Zayid had pulled a black ski mask over his face and placed a floppy green bush hat on his head, the brim pulled low over his eyes. To complete his rudimentary disguise he wore a pair of black leather gloves. He sat behind Juma in the ski boat, an AK-47 and a hunting rifle loaded and cocked at his feet. Also in the bottom of the fibreglass hull was the second, unused HN-5 surface-toair missile, a five-litre tin can of gasoline and two marine safety flares. In his right hand he held an automatic pistol with a silencer screwed onto the barrel.

  Juma waved from the boat. ‘Hello! Hello! Are you all right, sir?’

  Westcott cupped his hands around his mouth and called, ‘Who are you? Where are you from?’

/>   ‘Zambia Wildlife Authority’ Juma called back. ‘How many of you are there? Do you have any injured?’

  ‘Two dead, three of us OK,’ Westcott replied.

  ‘Shit,’ Wozak hissed. ‘Let’s wait until he comes alongside before giving the whole the game away, OK?’

  Hassan bin Zayid’s right index finger curled around the pistol’s trigger. The pilot had told him what he needed to know. Juma’s questions were part of their plan, and it had worked. They now knew exactly how many people were on board. Calvert would have one or more hunting rifles, probably stowed in the aircraft’s cargo compartment, and his bodyguards would be armed. Hassan peered around Juma’s muscular bulk to see if he could determine who was alive. He saw the pilot and another man, presumably one of the secret service agents, on the starboard wing. There was a face in the copilot’s window. Even from a hundred metres away he recognised it from scores of televised press conferences, and as many newspaper photos.

  Juma cut the boat’s engines and allowed the craft to drift silently towards the aircraft. ‘Where can I tie up?’

  ‘To the prop, or what’s left of it,’ Westcott replied. He moved to meet the boat, blocking bin Zayid’s view of the young bodyguard.

  Hassan bent forwards, pretending to look for something in the bottom of the boat, so as not to show his masked face just yet.

  ‘Keep your hands where I can see them, buddy’ one of the Americans drawled.

  ‘We are here to help you, sir,’ Juma said.

  ‘Let’s see some ID before you tie up. You in the back, stand up.’

  Hassan bin Zayid rose to a crouch, Juma’s body still shielding him from full view of the bodyguard, and anything else he might try. The man was too damn suspicious for his own good.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Westcott moaned. ‘Let’s get off this bloody plane before -’

  Bin Zayid’s arm flashed up and his pistol coughed twice, both bullets thudding into the pilot’s chest. Blood sprayed across the other man’s body, but the agent raised his arm and instinctively squeezed off two shots from his pistol as the pilot’s body was punched back onto him. The aircraft rocked as Westcott landed on his back on the wing, then slid headfirst into the river. A smear of red on the bright white aluminium skin marked his body’s passage.