Empire of Gold

  Again, Valero’s face revealed what he thought of the odds of success, but nevertheless he turned the plane to follow the river, easing back the throttle to give himself more time to react to the waterway’s turns as he dropped lower.

  The high trees along the bank blocked Eddie’s view of the Mirage. He felt a moment of hope. If they couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see them – and the fighter’s radar would also struggle to detect them through the trees.

  But all the pilot had to do to find them was head for the river and look down to spot the white cross of the Caravan.

  Valero made another turn. Eddie kept watching the sky. The high wing, which had made the Caravan the ideal choice for surveying the ground, now blotted out part of his view. How long before the jet reached them? The Mirage was a supersonic fighter, but even at subsonic speeds it could cover the distance in under two minutes—

  Osterhagen made a startled noise as the wingtip thwacked a branch. Eddie winced, but there was no damage beyond a green stain on the paintwork.

  Valero slowed the Cessna still further, holding it just above stalling speed. Even so, the plane was still tearing through the jungle at over seventy miles per hour. The river weaved, the rainforest rising on each side like green walls.

  Walls that were closing in.

  ‘There is not enough room,’ Valero said urgently.

  Eddie was still scouring the sky. ‘Stay low as long as you can. If it goes past us, we might have a chance—’

  ‘I can see it!’ Macy cried.

  ‘Is it going past us?’

  Her voice was simultaneously angry and terrified. ‘Whadda you think?’

  ‘Oscar, climb!’ Eddie roared. Stealth was now worthless; they needed room to manoeuvre. ‘Macy, what’s he doing?’

  ‘Coming right at us!’ she shrieked over the engine’s howl as Valero pulled up sharply.

  Eddie finally saw the Mirage again, sunlight flaring off its cockpit canopy. It was approaching head-on. The Caravan would be fixed in its gunsight, the slow-moving aircraft an easy target—

  Twin flashes of fire beneath the fighter’s fuselage. Glowing orange dots seemed to drift towards him, but he knew all too well that the cannon fire’s apparent laziness was just an illusion. ‘He’s firing!’ he yelled.

  Valero responded, flinging the Cessna into a hard rolling turn. Loose items bounced around the cabin. A loud crack came from the roof as an aluminium panel split under the stress. Eddie lost sight of the Mirage, but knew the shells were still incoming—

  Bright streaks flashed past the windows like meteors. ‘He missed!’ cried Osterhagen.

  ‘Let’s hope he keeps missing!’ Eddie strained to hold himself upright as the Cessna wheeled round. The Mirage came back into view. Closer. The guns flared again. ‘Oscar!’

  Valero changed course again, climbing . . .

  Too late. Some shells seared past – but others hit home. Two fist-sized holes exploded through the starboard wing. Macy screamed as a piece of shrapnel scarred the window beside her.

  Valero struggled with the controls. ‘Can you keep it in the air?’ asked Eddie, trying to see the damage. Something was coming from the wing. Smoke?

  No. A red liquid, sparkling in the light of the falling sun.

  Fuel.

  The Venezuelan saw it too. He cursed in Spanish, eyes flicking over the instruments. ‘I can’t stop the leak.’ The wing tank had been punctured top and bottom by the cannon shells; no way to shut off the flow.

  ‘The plane!’ Macy cried, instinctively ducking. Eddie saw a flash of camouflage green and brown rushing at them—

  The Mirage blasted overhead with an earsplitting scream, the Cessna crashing violently through its wake. The jet had come in too fast, unable to slow enough to match the weaving transport’s speed. Instead, it ignited its afterburner with another sky-shaking roar and powered into the distance.

  Eyes wide, Osterhagen watched it thunder away. ‘He’s leaving,’ he gasped.

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Eddie replied grimly. The Mirage was making a long, sweeping turn, the pilot about to swing back round . . . and fire a missile. ‘Can we get to Caracas without that fuel tank?’ Valero shook his head. ‘Shit! How much fuel’s still in it?’

  Valero checked a gauge, the needle of which was slowly but steadily dropping. ‘Four hundred litres, and falling.’

  Eddie thought for a moment, tracking the distant Mirage as it turned. ‘Head away from him, and take us up,’ he ordered.

  Valero stared at him, confused. ‘What?’

  ‘Up, take us up – we need all the height we can get!’ He unfastened his seatbelt as Valero put the Cessna into a climb, heading northwest.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Macy demanded as he stood.

  ‘The emergency kit – where is it?’ The yellow plastic case had contained the first aid supplies used to patch up Becker, and more besides. He spotted it at the back of the cabin and slid down the sloping floor to retrieve it.

  The glowing dot of the Mirage’s afterburner cut out. ‘Eddie, the jet’s turning,’ warned Valero.

  ‘Just keep climbing!’ Eddie opened the case. Inside were a Very pistol and several distress flares. He loaded one and snapped the breech closed, then looked through the window. The fighter was coming back towards the Cessna. ‘Okay, Oscar. Can you dump the fuel from the knackered tank?’

  ‘Yes – but why?’

  ‘Get ready to do it! Level out, and turn so he’s directly behind us.’

  ‘But that’ll make us a really easy targ— Oh,’ said Macy, regarding him with sudden hope. ‘You’re going to use the flare gun to decoy the missile!’

  ‘Nope,’ said Eddie, shaking his head. ‘That only works in movies. We need something a lot hotter!’ There was a small hatch opposite the main door; he unlocked it and swung the top section upwards. Wind shrieked into the cabin – along with the stench of fuel, the leaking avgas swirling in the vortex created by the plane’s wing.

  Macy’s hope was replaced by appalled disbelief. ‘You’re going to blow up the fuel? What happened to the whole us-not-blowing-up thing? We’ll go too!’

  ‘Not if I time it right.’ The Mirage was moving in behind them, now some miles distant – the ideal range for a heat-seeking missile. ‘Oscar! Dump the fuel when I say, then head for the ground.’ The jet disappeared behind the tail. ‘Now!’

  Valero, with considerable trepidation, pulled the fuel-dump lever.

  The plumes of red-dyed avgas streaming from the holes in the wing were joined by a much denser spray as the main valve opened. The needle on the fuel gauge plummeted. Eddie leaned out of the open hatch, the slipstream tearing at the back of his head as he searched for the Mirage. The dark dot was directly astern. He readied the flare gun—

  Another flash of fire from the jet, this time beneath a wing. A line of smoke trailed behind a white-painted speck. A heat-seeking missile, either an American Sidewinder or a French Magic, but it made no difference – neither would have any trouble locking on.

  The missile closed in a sweeping arc. Travelling at over Mach 2, it would take just seconds to reach its target.

  Fuel was still gushing from the dump valve. Eddie held his breath, feeling droplets soaking his skin. If he fired too soon, Macy’s fear would be realised – the igniting fuel vapour would consume the plane and its passengers.

  And if he fired too late, they would be dead anyway . . .

  The deluge stopped, the tank empty but for the last dribbling dregs.

  He pulled the trigger.

  The pistol bucked, the flare spiralling into the dissipating red cloud. For a moment nothing happened . . .

  Then the sky caught fire.

  Flames spread like an exploding star, greedily swallowing up the drifting fuel. Searing tongues lashed after the Cessna, trying to reach the last morsels in its ruptured wing. Eddie threw himself back into the cabin as a wave of heat hit the plane.

  The missile was an R550 Magic, carrying a fragmentation warhead of twe
lve and a half kilograms of high explosive wrapped in frangible steel. Its infrared seeker was overwhelmed by the fireball, the heat source of its target’s engine lost amidst a much bigger, hotter signal. It ran through its programmed options in a millisecond. Target lost at close range: only one response.

  Detonate.

  The missile was less than a hundred metres from the Cessna when the warhead exploded, sending red-hot shrapnel out in all directions. Most of the chunks of metal hit nothing . . . but only a fraction had to strike their target to score a kill.

  The Caravan’s tail shredded as if hit by a shotgun blast. Other sizzling shards ripped through the wings and fuselage.

  One hit Valero above his ear, tearing away a chunk of flesh and hair. Blood splattered the windscreen.

  He slumped, unconscious. The Cessna’s descent steepened, beginning to roll.

  Eddie slid across the rear of the cabin as the plane tilted. ‘Eddie!’ Macy screamed. ‘Oscar’s hit!’ He hauled himself up and half ran, half fell down the aisle to clamber into the copilot’s seat. Rows of dials and gauges gazed meaninglessly at him. ‘One of these days,’ he gasped as he took hold of the control yoke, ‘I’m going to learn how to fly a fucking plane!’

  He turned it like a steering wheel in the hope that it would counter the roll. Smoke trailing from its tail, the aircraft staggered back to a wings-level attitude – but still with its nose pointing down at the rainforest. The altimeter he understood, at least: two thousand feet.

  Falling fast.

  He pulled back the yoke, trying to level out. Nothing happened, the control refusing to move. ‘Oh, bollocks,’ he muttered as he tried again, harder. It gave slightly, then locked again. The damage to the Cessna’s rear had jammed the tailplanes. ‘Oh, bollocks!’

  Fifteen hundred feet. He jerked the yoke in an attempt to free it. The plane responded slightly, producing a faintly nauseating roller coaster sensation, but the controls remained stuck.

  But to have worked at all, they still had to be connected to the tailplanes. The problem was a physical obstruction, something preventing them from moving. Maybe they could be forced free . . .

  One thousand feet—

  Eddie planted his feet firmly against the instrument panel. Macy watched in frightened bewilderment as he gripped the yoke with both hands. ‘Everyone hold tight!’ he warned as he pulled at the control, simultaneously pushing with all the strength in his legs – trying to force the tailplanes to move through sheer brute force.

  The yoke creaked. It seemed to give, but only a little. He pulled harder, aware that if he tore the handgrips clean off their mount, they were all doomed.

  Five hundred—

  ‘Come on!’ he rasped, face twisted with effort. The jungle was rapidly approaching. Three hundred feet. Every muscle trembled as he strained. The glass of a dial cracked beneath his foot.

  Two hundred—

  Something snapped. The yoke suddenly broke free, the tailplanes slamming upwards to their full extent. The aircraft pulled out of its dive . . .

  Not quickly enough.

  The jungle’s tallest trees stretched up well over a hundred feet above the ground. Even as the Cessna levelled out, it was still heading inexorably into the thick canopy—

  Branches and leaves disintegrated as the propeller carved through a treetop like a chainsaw. Eddie wrestled with the controls, still trying to pull up, but the plane hit another tree, branches clawing open the Cessna’s skin.

  The towering trunk of an emergent redwood rose above the canopy ahead. Eddie shoved down a rudder pedal, but even had the controls been fully responsive there wasn’t time to turn away—

  The tree scythed past less than a foot from the fuselage’s left side, slicing off the port wing at its root. Fuel erupted from the tank inside it as it crumpled. The Cessna’s tail, still smouldering, hurtled through the spray – and ignited it. The wing blew apart, an oily mushroom cloud roiling up through the foliage.

  What was left of the plane dropped towards the ground, the mangled tail now aflame. ‘Brace!’ yelled Eddie, grabbing his seatbelt straps and bending into a crash position—

  The Caravan hit on its belly, the impact tearing away the wheels and buckling the hull. The propeller blades bent as they churned through the earth. The starboard wing clipped another tree and was ripped in half, the fuselage skidding onwards in a huge spray of soil and rotting vegetation. The windscreen shattered, dirt filling the cockpit. Jutting roots tore at the aircraft’s belly as it crashed over them with a terrible screeching sound.

  Which suddenly lessened.

  Eddie clung to the straps, eyes shut tight. The plane was still moving – but the ground beneath it was somehow cushioning its passage. The bumps continued, but muffled, fading as the plane slowed . . .

  And stopped.

  The bent hull tipped back with a thump. Eddie wiped away mud and cautiously opened his eyes. They were indeed stationary. His arms ached where the straps had cut into them, and there was a horrible bruise across his stomach from the steering yoke. He flexed his hands, then his feet. Nothing broken.

  Valero had fared much worse. Unconscious, he had been unable to protect himself, flailing as the plane ploughed through the trees. Two of his fingers were bent back at unnatural angles, and blood streaked his face where he had hit the controls. Becker, equally helpless, had come off better; secured in his seat, he was now slumped over the armrest, moaning softly.

  ‘Ow, God . . .’ a female voice whispered. Eddie staggered to his feet. Osterhagen sat bolt upright, eyes squeezed shut and breathing loudly and rapidly. Macy, meanwhile, had her head against the window, grimacing.

  Eddie staggered to her. ‘Macy! Are you okay?’

  ‘I dunno . . . ’ She tried to stand. ‘Ow, that hurts – wait, if it hurts . . . ’ She rolled her head to clear the dazed fog from her mind. ‘I’m not dead?’

  Eddie half laughed. ‘No, we’re alive. That means I’ve survived two plane crashes in less than a year. Fuck me! Don’t know if that means I’m really lucky or really unlucky.’ A feeble smile briefly turned up her lips, which he returned. ‘We need to get out of the plane, though. Something’s burning.’ He faced Osterhagen. ‘Doc. Doc! Can you hear me?’

  Osterhagen’s eyes snapped open, darting about wildly before settling on Eddie. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘On the ground, and that’s good enough for me. Are you hurt?’

  ‘Only bruised, I think. But my neck is very painful.’

  ‘Whiplash, but I doubt you’ll get the chance to sue anyone for it. Okay, you and Macy get Ralf out of the plane. I’ll get Oscar.’

  They released the injured men from their seats and hauled them through the main hatch. The reason for the plane’s relatively soft landing became clear; they were in a marsh, boots sinking inches deep into the soft muck. Eddie looked at the plane, seeing smoke curling from the tail, then searched for more solid ground. There was a broad hump of earth not far away. ‘Lie them down on that,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll—’

  A deep rumble shook the rainforest. The Mirage. It was still out there.

  Hunting for them.

  Osterhagen searched the patches of sky visible through the canopy. ‘Where is it?’

  Eddie turned, listening. The jet growl was loudest back along the channel gouged out of the jungle by the careering plane.

  And still getting louder . . .

  He glimpsed movement above the trees to the southeast. The Mirage was circling. But not overhead. He realised why; the exploded port wing had sent up a column of thick black smoke.

  And from a fire that large, the pilot might assume that the entire plane had blown up.

  The Mirage came round for another low, slow pass. Even something the size of the Cessna slashing through the all-encompassing canopy would only have left a small scratch; the pilot wouldn’t be able to spot more than a few scraps of wreckage through the trees.

  Or so Eddie hoped. He waited, the engine roar growing louder. Another brief fla
sh of something large and deadly above . . .

  And gone. The thunder faded as the Mirage accelerated away, heading northwest. Back to the airbase.

  ‘Think they’ll come back?’ Macy hesitantly asked.

  ‘Not in a jet,’ said Eddie. He carefully lowered Valero. Macy and Osterhagen put Becker beside him. ‘They might send a chopper or a foot patrol, but I reckon that pilot thinks we’re dead. The wing made a pretty big bang. And speaking of which, better grab what I can before the rest of the plane catches fire.’ He hurried back into the wreck, re-emerging with a handful of charts, Becker’s hat, a torch and a plastic bottle of water. ‘Couldn’t find the first aid kit – it must have been sucked out of the hatch.’