ou know how to contact us,' she screamed back.
'Goodbye, Tessay' Royan's voice was lost in the blast of the great
engines, and the dust blew back in a sheet over Tessay so that she was
forced to cover her face and turn away. The ramp hissed closed on its
hydraulic. rams, and cut out their last glimpse of her.
Nicholas put an arm around Royan's shoulders and hustled her down the
length of the cavernous cargo hold and into one of the jum seats at the
entrance to the cockpit.
'Strap yourself in!' he ordered, and ran up the steps to the cockpit.
'Thought you had decided to stay behind,' Jannie greeted him mildly,
without looking up from his controls.
'Hold tight! Here we go.'
Nicholas clung on to the back of the pilot's seat as bank of Jannie and
Fred between them pushed forward the throttle levers to full power, and
Big Dolly built up speed until she was careering down the strip.
Looking over Jannie's shoulder' Nicholas saw the vague shapes of men in
camouflage battledre.ss amongst . Some of them the thorn scrub at the
end of the runwa raced tow huge aircraft as it ards were firing at the
them.
'Those popguns aren't going to hurt her much,' Jannie . 'Big Dolly is a
tough old lady.' And - lifted her grunted into the air.
They flashed over the heads of the enemy troops on the ground, and
Jannie set her nose high in the climb attitude.
'Welcome aboard! folks, thank you for flying Africair.
Next stop Malta,' Jannie drawled, and then his voice rose sharply, 'Oh,
oh! Where did this little piss-cat come from?'
Directly ahead of them the Jet Ranger rose out of the thick scrub on the
banks of the Nile. The angle of the helicopter's climb meant that the
approaching Hercules was hidden from the pilot's view, and he continued
to rise directly into their path.
'Only five hundred feet and a hundred and ten knots on the clock,' Fred
shouted a warning at his father from the right'hand seat. 'Too low to
turn.'
The jet Ranger was so close that Nicholas could clearly see Tuma Nogo in
the front seat, his spectacles reflecting the sunlight like the eyes of
a blind man, and his face freezing into a rictus of terror as he
suddenly saw the great machine bearing down on them. At the last
possible moment the pilot put his aircraft over in a wild dive to try to
ear It nose of the approaching Hercules. It seemed impossible to avoid
the collision, but he managed to bank, the lighter, more manoeuvrable
machine over until it rolled almost on to its back. It slipped under the
belly of the Hercules, and the men in the cockpit of Jannie's plane
barely felt the light kiss of the two fuselages.
However, the helicopter was flung over on to its nose by the impact,
until it was pointing straight down at the earth only four hundred feet
below, While Big Dolly flew on, climbing away steadily on an even keel,
the pilot of the et Ranger struggled to control his crazily plummeting
machine. Two hundred feet above the earth the turbulence thrown out
astern by the massive T56,A-15 turbo-prop engines of the Hercules, each
