He broke the surface and shielded his head as burning debris plummeted out of the sky all around them and plunged into the water. Lopez burst from the river alongside him, her long black hair snaking down her shoulders and streaming with water as she shielded her face from the onslaught and shouted to Ethan.
‘We’ve gotta get out of here!’
‘The Icon’s down there!’ Ethan pointed.
The aircraft remained where it was, shielded from the blast by the steep banks alongside the river. Lopez kicked out and began swimming for the aircraft as Ethan heard the jet coming around for another pass, this time in the opposite direction. Already he could see towering flames roaring through the rainforest, thick black smoke coiling up into the gray sky above as the napalm bombs being dropped by the aircraft incinerated the forest below.
Ethan swam to the Icon’s port side and dragged himself up onto the shore as Lopez yanked the mooring line away from the tree. They hauled open the canopy together and climbed into the cockpit as Ethan glanced up into the sky and saw the jet wheeling around for another pass.
‘They’re coming back,’ Lopez said.
Ethan leaped into his seat as Lopez kicked off the shore with one boot and the Icon slid backwards into the green water. She jumped in alongside him and pulled the canopy down as Ethan fired up the engine and turned the little aircraft around with a healthy stab of rudder and throttle.
‘He’s lining us up!’ Lopez shouted as she saw the jet fighter rocketing in toward them.
Ethan slammed the throttle wide open and the Icon surged away from the shore as he saw a tiny speck drop from the jet fighter’s wings and it pulled up sharply, vapor trails spiralling from its wingtips.
‘Incoming!’
The Icon accelerated across the water and away from the shore, and Ethan glimpsed the slender projectile rocket across the sky behind them and plunge into the forest barely a hundred yards from their position.
‘He’s still hitting the forest!’ Lopez said. ‘We need to get out of here while we can!’
The dense jungle nearby was ripped apart by a blossoming fireball that burst from the banks of the river and soared above the water, and the Icon was hurled sideways as the shockwave hit them.
***
XXV
Ethan pushed the control column all the way to the right in an attempt to stop the aircraft’s wings from flipping over under the blow and the Icon skittered this way and that on the water rushing beneath its wings. Burning debris rained down across the water around them and clattered against the canopy as the Icon reached full power, billowing streams of flame flickering across the sky as the tiny aircraft blasted clear of the explosion.
‘We’re at full power!’ Ethan shouted above the engine noise. ‘She won’t lift off!’
Lopez craned her neck around and searched the sky for any sign of the fighter jet as the clouds of smoke and tongues of flame receded behind them.
‘I can’t see him!’ she shouted.
‘He’ll be there,’ Ethan replied grimly as he looked ahead and saw the river arcing around in a bend to the right.
He knew that there was no way that they could take the bend at full power, and so he eased back on the throttle and the Icon settled down more heavily into the water.
‘You’re slowing down!’
Ethan eased the aircraft around the bend in the river, affording Lopez a better view aft.
‘Jesus,’ she uttered, ‘they virtually nuked the place.’
Ethan glimpsed walls of flame and smoke as the forest burned fiercely in the wake of the attack. There was no way that whoever cultivated this particularly horrible form of life would want it to get out of control, and the only way to achieve that was to utterly destroy it once the experiment had been completed. Fire will destroy it, Arando had confirmed before he too had been obliterated in the attack.
The river twisted back around to the left and as Ethan turned he saw in the far distance a line of white foam, the river churning its way over a series of rapids.
‘Er, we’ve got a problem,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ Lopez replied, ‘and it’s right behind us.’
Ethan looked over his shoulder and saw the jet fighter sweeping around in a turn low over the forest, banking steeply as it turned toward them, vapor trails twisting from its sharply raked wings again like white streamers rippling against dark gray clouds in the distance.
Ethan knew that the Icon’s white fuselage and wings would be an easy spot for a fighter pilot against all this green water and forest. He looked at the distant rapids.
‘We’ll never make it into the air before we get there,’ Lopez said. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’
‘We’re too heavy,’ Ethan agreed, then looked at her. ‘Would you mind jumping out?’
Lopez shot him an appalled look, then scowled as the saw the humor in Ethan’s eyes.
‘How can you joke at a time like this?!’
‘Who said I was joking?’
‘You get out before I throw you out!’
Ethan smiled as a new idea crossed his mind and he looked down at the controls. He saw what he needed and flipped a switch.
‘Here goes nothing,’ he said, and opened the throttles wide once more.
The Icon accelerated gamely across the smooth water, racing toward the rapids ahead, churning white water tumbling into an abyss beyond and likely laced with black rock that would shatter the Icon’s fragile hull in an instant.
‘I hope to hell you know what you’re doing!’ Lopez said as she gripped the edges of her seat and began to try to push herself backwards into it, as though she could somehow escape their fate.
Ethan focused in on the airspeed indicator as he selected half flaps, the throttle pushed to the firewall and the Rotax engine screaming close behind him. The other gauge he watched closely was the fuel gauge, and suddenly Lopez realized what he had done.
‘You’re dumping gas?!’
‘It’s no good to us if we’re dead,’ Ethan shot back, ‘and it’s a short flight home.’
Lopez craned her neck back once again and almost screamed. ‘He’s right on us!’
Ethan risked a glance back behind them and he saw the fighter sweep in low over the trees, following their path down the river as it screamed toward them, and he saw the fighter’s nose suddenly vanish behind flickering lights.
‘He’s firing!’
Ethan saw the water to one side of the Icon suddenly churned by a blaze of twenty millimetre rounds that smashed into the river and swept in toward him as the fighter pilot dragged his line of fire onto the Icon.
‘Hold on!’ Ethan yelled.
The rapids loomed before them and Ethan saw a gap between ragged chunks of damp, black rock. He nudged the rudder to the right and aimed for the gap as the cannon fire ripped into the water just feet from the Icon’s fuselage, and then the aircraft’s nose hit the rapids and Ethan hauled back on the stick and shut off the fuel dump valve.
The Icon soared off the surface of the water and the airspeed plunged as she clawed her way briefly into the air. The cannon fire shot ahead of them, the fighter pilot taken unawares by the Icon’s sudden loss of airspeed, and the jet roared overhead and shot away over the jungle as Ethan pushed hard on the control column and the Icon’s nose fell away.
The aircraft plunged toward the turbulent rapids below, her engine still at full throttle as Ethan retracted the flaps and let the airspeed build in the shallow dive. The swirling green and white water loomed up toward them, but freed from the surface friction of the river the Icon’s airspeed rocketed and at the last moment Ethan gently eased back on the control column and the aircraft levelled out barely three feet above the churning river and began to climb slowly into the misty air.
‘Jesus,’ Lopez uttered, her heart hammering in her chest.
The Icon climbed away from the river, the engine labouring to lift the aircraft in the dense and humid air, but as they climbed so the temperature began to drop. Etha
n knew that the lower temperature meant denser air, and as if by magic the Icon’s rate of climb increased.
‘Where is he?’ Ethan asked as they climbed out above the jungle.
Lopez looked around them but she could see nothing. ‘I lost him in the mist.’
Ethan nodded and headed for the nearest cloud bank he could find.
‘We’ll do the same, ‘cause we won’t stand a chance against his guns.’
Lopez shook her head. ‘He’ll wait for us, we can’t make it all the way back to the coast.’ Ethan guided the Icon toward the clouds. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure. He’ll run out of fuel before we will, so he can’t stay out here forever. Besides I recognized the aircraft type, a MiG–17 Fresco that must belong to the Madagascan Air Force.’
‘They’re in on this?!’ Lopez uttered in shock.
‘The government likely isn’t,’ Ethan cautioned, ‘but in an out–of–the–way country like this I don’t suppose it’s hard to bribe a few personnel.’
Lopez kept searching the skies but she couldn’t see the enemy jet anywhere.
‘Maybe he’s gone.’
Ethan was about to take the chance that she might be right when something appeared from the clouds dead ahead and a stream of tracer fire rocketed past the Icon’s wings.
‘Incoming!’
Ethan banked hard right and the Icon veered away from the onrushing gunfire as the MiG shot past at high speed. G–Force pushed them down into their seats as the Icon turned tightly, and then Ethan levelled out and looked back over his shoulder.
The fighter was climbing steeply toward the gray sky, her swept wings arcing over gracefully as the pilot turned back toward them.
‘Slashing attacks,’ Ethan said through gritted teeth as he gripped the controls more tightly. ‘We’re just damned lucky that he doesn’t appear to have missiles.’
Lopez swivelled in her seat and saw the fighter descend back down toward them at terrific speed.
‘Here he comes!’
Ethan made to move the control column, but then he had a better idea and he relaxed in the seat. He looked ahead and he knew that they would never make the safety of the cloud banks before the jet fighter’s bullets tore into the Icon, and therefore into both of their bodies. They would be shredded in an instant and the aircraft would tumble from the sky in pieces to fall into the dense jungle, and who knew how long it would take for anybody to find their remains, if they ever did. Nobody involved in this attack was going to report the incident.
‘Turn, damn it!’ Lopez snapped at him.
Target fixation. The words drifted unbidden through his mind as he recalled the Gulf War. There had been occasions when fighter pilots had fixated on a target so much that they had literally flown their aircraft into the target itself. Snipers had focused so much on long range shots that they hadn’t noticed the ranks of enemy soldiers advancing on their position.
Ethan weaved the Icon lethargically about the sky as he descended toward the forest, trying to give the impression that he was attempting to evade the attack but instead looking for somewhere down below to land on the river.
‘Ethan!’ Lopez snapped as she grabbed his collar. ‘We, are going, to die.’
Ethan looked over his shoulder at the onrushing MiG, one hand on the controls as he waited for the inevitable sight of the bullets rocketing toward them. With his free hand he reached down and twisted the rudder trim to one side.
The little Icon pivoted in the air, her nose shifting to the right slightly.
‘What are you doing?’ Lopez asked.
‘Spoiling his aim,’ Ethan replied. ‘Get ready, we’re leaving.’
‘We’re what?!’
The Icon was still five hundred feet above the river as the MiG descended in behind them. Ethan twisted his shoulders and craned his neck as he saw the jet line up and then a burst of cannon fire ripped toward them.
Ethan did not touch the controls, and in a heartbeat of terror he saw the bright tracer rounds rocket it seemed directly toward his eyes. Then the bullets flashed past the Icon with scant feet to spare, and Ethan hit the fuel dump gauge once again and pushed forward on the control column.
The Icon descended sharply, trailing a cloud of fuel vapor behind it as the MiG rocketed overhead and climbed sharply away. As soon as it was past them, Ethan reached across and pulled a bright–red lever as he pulled back on the throttles.
The emergency safety parachutes deployed with a loud double–bang and the Icon slowed to a halt in mid–air, Ethan and Lopez thrown forward in their harnesses as the jungle canopy loomed ahead of them. In an instant the Icon crashed down onto the tree tops, her wings collapsing as the aircraft settled at an awkward angle amid the dense branches, leaves and vines.
‘Go, now!’
Lopez pushed the canopy open and clambered from the cockpit, the sound of the jet aircraft’s engine echoing around the forest as she climbed clear of the Icon and hurriedly began climbing down the tree.
Ethan clambered out of the cockpit and grabbed one of the emergency flares as he scrambled onto the tree. He pulled the flare and tossed it into the cockpit, smoke and flame spitting from the device as he clambered down in pursuit of Lopez, who was almost on the forest floor.
‘Run!’
Ethan jumped down behind her and dashed away as he heard the jet engine rocket closer, and then a deep brrrr sound. Bullets smashed through the canopy above them and hammered the forest floor as Ethan hurled himself down alongside a large tree trunk and Lopez rolled into deep undergrowth.
The MiG’s bullets hit the Icon’s fuselage and the searing heat from the tracers hit the fuel vapor spilling from the dump valve. The Icon exploded in a massive fireball in the tree tops as the MiG rocketed by overhead. Ethan covered his head with his arms as burning debris rained down from the canopy and the roaring of the jet fighter faded into the mountainous distance.
He rolled out from his hiding place and looked up to see the remains of the Icon burning furiously, clouds of thick black smoke spiralling up into the humid sky.
‘Lopez?’ he called out. ‘Are you okay?’
There was no response from the jungle nearby, and Ethan scrambled to his feet and bolted toward the place he had last seen Lopez disappear into the undergrowth. He saw her legs poking from the thick foliage and rushed to her side, reached out for her.
‘Lopez?’
She groaned and he gently helped her up into a sitting position. His hands searched for any sign of injury, but he could find nothing. He looked at her and she scowled back at him wearily.
‘We’d like to thank you for flying Warner Air. Please be sure not to leave anything behind, like body parts.’
Ethan fought to conceal his relief as he helped her to her feet.
‘Hopefully, they’ll think that we’re dead,’ he said.
‘Are you sure we’re not?’
‘You’re complaining, so everything’s normal,’ Ethan replied and orientated himself toward the coast. ‘Come on, we’ve got a long walk ahead of us.’
‘We could use the satellite phone, call for help,’ she said.
Ethan pointed up to the burning remains of the Icon A5. ‘The phone’s up there,’ he replied, ‘but I don’t want anybody knowing we’re still alive. MJ–12 is going all out to finish us off, let’s make them think that the job’s done.’
***
XXVI
Ambila Lamaitso,
Madagascar
‘Sweet Lord above, what happened?!’
Christiano Rabinur stood in the doorway of his office in a ramshackle safe house near the coast, the night air filled with a heady mixture of wild Indian Ocean and dense jungle foliage.
‘We ran into a little trouble,’ Ethan replied.
He stood in the doorway with Lopez, both of them bedraggled and weary, smeared with grime and foliage from their impromptu trek through the jungle.
‘Is my aeroplane all right?’ Rabinur enquired anxiously.
‘Well, it’s techn
ically still airborne.’
Rabinur peered at Ethan suspiciously and then ushered them inside the safe house and slammed the door behind them. ‘You didn’t break it did you?’
‘We’re fine, thanks for asking,’ Lopez uttered, her black hair entwined with soil that hung in thick clumps around her shoulders. ‘We just spent an hour hiding in a mud hole waiting for sundown so we could get here unobserved. How about you quit with the questions and tell me where the shower is before I take what’s left of your airplane and shove it up your as…’
‘Straight up the stairs, turn right,’ Rabinur said quickly. ‘You can’t miss it.’
Lopez stalked up the stairs without another word as Ethan walked with Rabinur into the kitchen, where the agent poured him a glass of filtered water.
‘We came under attack from a Malagasy fighter aircraft,’ Ethan said after he had guzzled two full glasses. ‘I’m afraid the Icon didn’t make it out in one piece.’
‘Mother alive, how will I explain this to General Nellis?’ Rabinur wailed softly, his hands pressed to his head. ‘We only received it last week.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Ethan promised, ‘Nellis is used to me breaking the agency’s toys, I’ll take full responsibility. I need to know how many MiG–17 Frescos the Malagasy Air Force operates?’
Rabinur laughed. ‘One, maybe two,’ he replied. ‘They’re older than the hills and barely get airborne these days.’ His tone became sombre. ‘You think that they were hired out to hunt you down?’
Ethan nodded, draining another glass of water. ‘We need to talk to the pilot of that aircraft. I didn’t get a good enough look to pick out a registration or anything, but if the Air Force only operates a couple of jets then there can’t be many pilots on the island qualified to fly them.’
The Extinction Code Page 17