Defender: Intrepid 1 Page 11

  Sprinting at his absolute limit, weighed down by an ammunition belt, radio gear and utter fatigue, Morgan knew there were few options left. If he failed he would be left behind to be butchered by the marauding soldiers of Le Conseil de la Liberation des Peuples Africains. Rebel gunfire and explosions rained around him, this time close enough for him to feel the shocking heat from successive blasts sear across his back. Whether he lived or died now was completely out of his control.

  Morgan leapt at the helicopter.

  CHAPTER 24

  Alex Morgan soared as if in slow motion as the chopper, inches from his grasp, was lifting off.

  Inside the imperiled refuge of the cargo hold, the evacuees all stared hopelessly out at him. As one, their faces willed him aboard, but could scarcely disguise their own desperation to survive. There was nothing anybody could do for him.

  Mortars peppered the tarmac and fuel farm, sending fists of shrapnel to punch through the helicopter’s fuselage, striking at the passengers inside. A mighty ball of fire erupted from the first ruptured fuel storage tank, and columns of flame burst out dangerously close to the retreating helicopter. The force of the blast catapulted Morgan forward with an unexpected intensity. Just short of the door, he crashed heavily on top of the metal cowling over the port-side rear wheel, as it scooped him from the air.

  “Alex!” Ari felt her heart sink. She’d never seen anybody be subjected to so much and just keep going. The intensity and shock of it was overwhelming. “Oh God!”

  Morgan’s impact against the aircraft was sudden and severe, wrenching his torso viciously at the waist. The remaining AKM magazines in his ammunition vest rammed into his outstretched flank, cracking ribs. But somehow he kept his grip. He grappled desperately for a handhold on the anti-slip top of the wheel cowling as pain engulfed him. It was excruciating. It would get worse.

  Avoiding the exploding fuel storage tanks at the very moment that Morgan made contact with the chopper, Steve Kruger yanked the stick hard to starboard. The twin Turbomeca Makila A1 turbine engines of the Super Puma responded with a surge of power and height. The wounded chopper leant hard to starboard, bringing the port side – Morgan’s side – around to face skyward for just a few precious seconds. It was what Morgan needed to stay on. He knew that this was his only hope for survival, and as he clung on tight, the G-forces fought to peel him back off. Clawing at the smooth, polished metal with nothing but sunshine and the clear blue sky on his back, he found a foothold on the cargo-door step and kicked off, propelling himself upward, hard against the fuselage, but still curled across the wheel cowling.

  Kruger pulled the chopper from the center of the firefight and the ground fell away instantly beneath them, rushing by in an endless blur of rusty powder. Morgan dragged himself upright on the wheel cowling, knees bent, body braced, with only the white-knuckled fingers of his outstretched left hand curled tenuously inside the lip of the cargo door. His legs were spread wide and his chest pressed hard against the fuselage. A few feet above him, the huge rotor blades sliced relentlessly through the air, buffeting his body with every deafening revolution. The force of the downwash battered and tore at his grip, determined to prise him free, while exhaust fumes from the engines denied him the precious few gasps of oxygen needed to fight back. His face began to ripple, his raw eyes and ears blasted by the onslaught. Morgan forced his face away from the engine exhaust port just long enough to catch his breath and, with the helicopter hurtling along at breakneck speed, his head bounced against the red-hot steel of the fuselage. Through the menacing blades of the tail rotor set against the retreating sky, Morgan saw that they were finally free. He could also see the burning wreckage of Pallarup, and the swarming green and brown mass of rebel troops congregating to bring down the fleeing chopper.

  Then the pain in his ribs attacked, agonizing in its intensity. Morgan could feel the vicelike grip of dizziness and nausea, dragging him down toward unconsciousness. As Kruger was forced into wildly evasive maneuvers to evade the rebel guns, Morgan knew it was only a matter of time before he would lose his purchase and be thrown to his death.

  “Alex!” Stanley yelled from the door against the overpowering chaos of engine noise, rotor slap and gunfire. “Step across and get your leg inside the door, son. I’ll pull you in.” With that, Stanley reached out to Morgan from the door and, with a hand the size of a baseball catcher’s mitt he clamped down hard, gripping the ammunition vest on Morgan’s left shoulder. “I’ve got you,” Stanley cried, “step across.”

  “Right!” Morgan yelled back, rousing his senses. “On three.”

  Stanley nodded. Morgan felt the big man’s paw bite even more securely about the vest at the top of his arm as they both braced for the move. Inside, two other men held onto Stanley.

  “One!” they yelled together.

  “Two!”

  Kruger was instinctively looking for an answer to a sudden eruption of warning lights and sirens on the instrument panel. As well as his immediate concerns over remaining airborne with rapidly failing hydraulics, now the “low fuel” warning light was flashing along with clear signs that the transmission, too, was failing. Kruger knew that the machine would soon lose all ability to function and there was little time to get the once state-of-the-art Eurocopter back on the ground in one piece.

  “Three!” came the simultaneous bellow.

  Morgan lunged at the door, releasing the tenuous hold he had found, and for that split second of transfer from the wheel cowling to the door, he lost all contact with the helicopter. He was suspended in space, his life literally in John Stanley’s hands.

  Kruger saw the rocket-propelled grenade ripping through the sky, directly across the helicopter’s path just in time.

  Kruger knew averting disaster with no flares or any other counter-measures onboard was where the serious flying part started. He put the Puma into a 70-degree bank to port, dumping the collective and heading for some dirt. He knew the ground was his best chance. Kruger pulled three Gs and using aft cyclic, he established an arc in the opposite direction of the rocket attack. What the pilot didn’t know was that as the helicopter was already passing through an altitude of just over 1000 feet, the spent rocket was at the limit of its range and, having reached the apex of its trajectory, was now tumbling uselessly back to earth. But the extreme maneuvers he’d used to avoid it almost finally put his prized beast out of her misery. With the added Gs and loss of hydraulics, it was taking all Kruger’s effort to keep the dying Puma alive long enough to get them to safety. Turning his attention to the instrument panel, Steve Kruger caught sight of a man flat on his belly in the cargo hold, hanging from his waist outside of the door with the rest of the evacuees on him like a rugby scrum.

  “What the fuck’s going on back there?” Kruger barked.

  “It’s Morgan,” somebody cried, “he’s fallen.”

  Underneath the chopper, Morgan dangled from Stanley’s arm. Stanley, straining above him, held on firm, trying to pull Morgan up to the edge of the door.

  “Don’t drop me, John,” Morgan bellowed, an endless stream of red and gray rushing by hundreds of feet below him. “I’ll come back to bloody haunt you, I swear.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Stanley yelled back down. Then Stanley felt somebody scramble over his legs and, looking left, saw Ari jostling into position beside him.

  “John?” she yelled.

  With a nod to her, Stanley bellowed, “Ari’s gonna grab your other arm, then we’ll haul you in. OK?”

  “OK!” Morgan shouted back. “But hurry, I think I’m going to pass out.”

  Suspended beneath the helicopter by one arm, the full length of his muscular frame stretched to capacity, his cracked ribs threatened to wrench apart with every roll and turn in flight. Over the engine noise, the wail of the slipstream and the shouting, the chaos of the cockpit found its way down to him. Jesus! More trouble? Kruger’s flying had become erratic. The pilot was obviously fighting another problem. Morgan’s mind raced, searchin
g for any notion of what emergency might now be confronting Kruger at the controls. The helicopter began to yaw and Morgan swung uncontrollably, still clinging for life to the folds of Stanley’s tough canvas sleeve. He knew Stanley had him securely, but the prospect of a mechanical fault onboard, had Morgan wondering humorlessly if he wasn’t better off taking his chances outside.

  The chopper felt as though it was about to drop from the sky.

  “Alex!” called Stanley. “Take her hand.”

  Morgan looked up to see Ari’s big blue eyes as she was stretching down to grab for him.

  “Come on!” she cried. “Take my hand.”

  Morgan reached up with his right arm and Stanley began to swing him from side to side across to Ari’s waiting grasp. His ribcage screamed as it expanded to make the grab, the bones tearing at his insides. But after half-a-dozen gruelling attempts, their arms finally locked solid. Stanley and Ari instantly heaved upward, launching Morgan straight over them and into the cargo hold.

  CHAPTER 25

  Morgan catapulted headfirst into the cargo hold, the others cheering. Winded and bloodied, barely able to speak, he heard a cross between a sob and squeal and realized Ari had softened his landing.

  For a few seconds they both lay dead still, a tangled heap on the floor of the cargo hold, exhausted beyond words. Ari grabbed Morgan, holding him tightly around the head and shoulders, then gently she eased him around, cradling his head to her breast, tears of relief streaming down her cheeks. The magnitude of what they had just been through, and what they were yet to experience as they escaped to Cullentown, intensified the utter relief she felt that they had survived even this far. Morgan’s tenacity in the face of crippling odds was a beacon of hope to them all.

  With an overwhelming sense of reprieve, hands came from everywhere, patting him in joy and congratulations. Morgan’s entire body was on fire, but as he reclined in the surreal peace of Ari’s unexpected embrace, he was swiftly dragged back to reality by the flashing red lights of the cockpit instrument panel. He let out a long, exhausted laugh.

  “You bastard, Morgan,” Ari reproved, laughing too as the adrenalin released. “I thought we were going to lose you.”

  “No way,” he said between deep breaths. “It’d take more than that to get rid of me. Anyway, you’d miss me too much.”

  With that, Morgan got to his knees, took Ari’s face in both hands, then released her with a crooked smile. He shook Stanley’s hand, and then burrowed his way through the throng and up to the cockpit.

  Without a word, Stanley lunged at Turner and tore his laptop from his grasp. He hurled it out of the open cargo hold door then crashed one huge callused fist hard into Turner’s jaw, knocking him out. Nobody said a word.

  At the controls, Kruger’s expression was grim.

  “Steve, what now?” Morgan yelled.

  “Don’t ask,” came the languid South African drawl of the pilot. “If you’ve finished horsing around, crawl up here and get into the co-pilot’s seat.”

  Morgan eased his way cautiously into the cockpit, carefully avoiding the cyclic in the center of the seats. To knock it would only complicate things further, if that were possible. By the look on Kruger’s face, it wasn’t.

  “When I got up this morning, I should have just shot myself in the head and been done with it,” Morgan said as he slumped into the seat, grabbing at his ribs.

  Kruger didn’t reply, just motioned for Morgan to put on the spare radio headset. Once the headset was on, he flipped the talk switch to ICS. Kruger and Morgan could now speak directly to each other without the others onboard, or anyone on outside frequencies, hearing them.

  “So, what’s going on, mate?” Morgan asked breathlessly.

  “Fuel leak,” Kruger replied. “We must have taken a hit in a fuel line somewhere when those bastards were shooting at us.”

  He was still inspecting the instrument panel. The persistence of the flashing red lights was disturbing and the evacuees were agitated. There was no more exhilaration at finally getting everyone onboard and away from the danger. That moment had passed. Instead they were silent. They knew something was wrong, seriously wrong.

  “What’s the prognosis?” Morgan asked.

  “Well, at this point it’s not pouring out. The gauges are staying pretty level and we don’t seem to be losing fuel at a rate that should worry us. We just have to pray that we can keep enough onboard to get us back to Cullentown. I refueled at Pallarup before we started this sortie, so we should have about five hundred miles up our sleeve, give or take. Normally I’d put her down somewhere straight away. But out here, in the middle of nowhere and with the bush full of CLPA and any other variety of lunatic you’d care to mention, we’d all be dead before sundown, and you don’t even want to think about what they’d do to the women.”

  “Agreed,” Morgan replied. He looked back to Ari, sitting in the cargo hold, watching his every move. He smiled. She didn’t smile back. It seemed she could already read him well enough to know something was seriously wrong. In the couple of days he’d been in-country, Morgan had heard enough about CLPA barbarity to last him ten lifetimes. Mike Fredericks had relayed a story to Morgan and Ari about driving through a local village one morning when he and Sean Collins had come across a cluster of distraught locals standing and kneeling around the body of a dead woman and her baby at the side of the road. Collins had leapt from the truck even before Fredericks had pulled over, and after a brief exchange with the locals, had discovered that the dead woman had been slashed across her torso and the unborn baby ripped from her womb. The barely coherent locals explained that she had been murdered because rebel soldiers had been betting on the child’s sex.

  “I’ll go tell everybody what’s happening,” Morgan continued, “they should know.”

  “Go ahead,” said Kruger, “I’ve got more on my mind than a ‘This is your captain’ speech.”

  “Rather you than me, Steve. Just keep flying this bucket and get us back to Cullentown in one piece.”

  “Roger that,” Kruger replied. “Alex, if any of them pray, tell ’em now would be a good time.”

  Morgan grinned and, slipping the headset down around his neck, turned back to break the news.

  CHAPTER 26

  “Mike, check these bastards out. They’re everywhere.”

  Taking cover on the rooftop of the Francis Hotel, Adam Garrett, former Royal Marine, tossed the battered Zeiss binoculars across to Mike Fredericks. Stabbing with a dirty, gloved finger, he directed Fredericks’s gaze to the battle now raging to their north. “If we don’t get out of here, they’ll be crawling all over us by sundown.”

  Fredericks snatched the binoculars from the air and grimly surveyed the area surrounding their hotel. “What a disaster!”

  Troops – mostly untrained conscripts drawn from local militias loyal to the elected government and struggling to resemble an army – were fighting futile running gun battles against the seemingly unstoppable rebel force of Baptiste’s CLPA. The rebels were advancing through the streets of Cullentown, cutting a red swath through the startled conscripts. Pitched battles had broken out across the city. Dismembered bodies littered the streets amid pools of blood. Locals were fleeing the capital en masse, herding their children ahead of them.

  With a string of expletives, Garrett pointed to the street below. Fredericks saw a trio of young men, no more than boys, attacking an old woman, savagely hacking at her with machetes. Garrett’s weapon was up and into his shoulder. He let off a burst into the middle of the boys, but missed. They scattered, not knowing where the rounds had come from. Somehow the old woman had survived having her hands all but cut off and began dragging her mutilated body into the shadows of a burning building. Everywhere else, buildings and vehicles were ablaze. Flames leapt high into the air. Fires raging out of control spewed vast pillars of smoke into the sky, forming an oppressive black canopy, shrouding the city in darkness. At the rate they were advancing, the rebels would reach the hotel within t
he hour. The government’s army was as good as finished, and Cullentown as good as lost.

  Baptiste had launched the coup d’état at dawn, and only an hour ago the rebel troops had stormed the parliament. In the absence of Namakobo, the vice-president and senior ministers had been rounded up, taken out into the public square and then shot through the head by Baptiste himself. It took only minutes to gain executive control of the country. Domestic security arrangements collapsed. The local army and police dissolved, many of them running off to join the rebels. Anarchy reigned – and it wasn’t even midday.

  Crouching on the roof of the Francis Hotel with a ringside seat to history, Fredericks knew he and his team had been called in too late. With the UN unwilling to act preemptively, the atrocities had been mounting day after day, month after month.

  Fredericks knew that, despite a fixed contract with a watertight agreement on objectives and timeframes – and a healthy percentage of the country’s diamond mining interests as inducement – it was more out of a sense of moral obligation that Chiltonford’s board of directors eventually agreed to send in a team of advisors to help train the local army to fight the rebels. The establishment of a rudimentary Special Forces group with a ‘shoot and scoot’ mission, along with a crash course for selected army officers in counterinsurgency operations, had been about as much as Fredericks and his team could do. They’d achieved moderate success in a year. Despite the loss of two men in the process, they had reestablished and retrained the army, and managed to protect the country’s rutile and diamond mining operations. Until today.

  The reported assassination of Namakobo had changed everything, literally overnight. Now, with the president apparently dead and the army in tatters, the Chiltonford crew were in it up to their necks.

  “How the hell did we manage to get ourselves stuck in the middle of this?” Fredericks said, finally dropping the binoculars from his gray eyes. He ran a weary hand over his face and hair. “The US Marines aren’t even ready to start the evacuation yet,” he added, waving a dismissive arm in the direction of the US warship anchored 20 miles out to sea.