More bullet impacts, this time against the fuselage. One of the portholes blew out — then the cabin hatch burst open and fell away behind the plane. Strutter screamed in terror.
Eddie clung to a structural spar as the slipstream tried to drag him out after the hatch. The horizon tipped sharply, the Antonov now in a steepening plunge. The engine note rose in pitch.
Boodu braced his feet against another spar and swung again, Eddie ducking just in time to avoid a machete blow to his face. The blade clanged against the hull above his head. He retaliated with a punch, but only caught the Zimbabwean’s shoulder as he drew back the machete for another attack.
A churning sensation in Eddie’s stomach told him that he was in freefall. The Antonov was picking up speed in its dive.
Which gave him a new dimension in which to fight.
Boodu slashed at him — but Eddie had already kicked away and shot towards the ceiling, grabbing a flapping cargo strap and using it to somersault himself around. The plane’s occupants were now effectively in zero-g, the Antonov’s power dive matching the speed at which gravity was dragging them down. From Boodu’s expression of shock — and sudden nausea — it was something he had never experienced before.
Eddie had, however. He kicked off again and propelled himself at the Zimbabwean like a missile. Before Boodu could react, the Englishman had ploughed into him, sending both men tumbling weightlessly across the hold. He drove a punch into Boodu’s face, breaking his nose. Globules of blood whirled in the air. Another powerful blow, then he grabbed the African’s arm and tried to pry the machete from his grip.
The engine note changed again, the cabin spinning around them as the plane turned. They were running out of sky…
Eddie finally broke Boodu’s hold on the machete — as Maximov pulled up, hard. No longer in freefall, the two men crashed heavily to the deck. Gravity went from zero to double as the An-2 continued its roller coaster ride. The machete slammed down with sledgehammer force, embedding its tip an inch into the floor beside the open hatch.
The ground outside was frighteningly close—
An explosion of dust whirled into the cabin as the Antonov pulled out of its headlong dive mere feet above the plain and began another steep, rolling climb. Eddie and Boodu, still grappling, slid back down the hold…
Straight at the hatch.
Eddie realised the danger and let go of Boodu, clawing at the spars. He snagged one with his fingertips, but lost his grip almost immediately and continued to slither towards the opening. Boodu, just ahead of him, screamed as he fell into nothingness—
And caught the back edge of the frame, dangling outside the ascending aircraft.
Eddie flailed his arms helplessly, sliding out into the void…
His left hand slapped against one of the wrecked hinges. He grabbed it. Torn metal cut into his palm, but he had no choice but to cling on as his free hand hunted for purchase—
Boodu’s hand clamped around his throat.
The militia leader pulled himself higher. Choking, Eddie looked down at him, seeing his face twisted into a defiant snarl. Behind the Antonov’s tail, the pursuing Alouette came into view as it climbed after the biplane. ‘If I die,’ Boodu roared into the wind, ‘so do you, Chase!’
He squeezed harder, trying to force Eddie away from the hatch. The hinge’s sharp edges dug deeper into the Englishman’s hand. He tried to push Boodu back down, but didn’t have enough leverage. Instead, he groped inside the cabin for a handhold…
His fingers found sharp, thick metal.
The machete!
He tugged at the handle. The blade shifted, but didn’t come loose, still stuck in the floor like a crude Excalibur. Boodu dug his thumb harder against Eddie’s windpipe, hauling himself higher. Another few inches and he would be able to get an elbow over the edge of the hatch to pull himself inside.
A last desperate yank — and the blade came free.
Supported by only one hand, Eddie swung further out of the hatch. Boodu shot him a look of triumph — which abruptly vanished as he saw what his opponent was holding. ‘No, don’t!’ he cried.
‘
He brought down the machete in a savage slash — and lopped the Zimbabwean’s clutching arm off at the wrist.
With a horrible shriek, Boodu plummeted away in the Antonov’s wake—
And fell into the helicopter’s rotor blades.
The lower half of his body burst into a thick spray that repainted the olive-green military camouflage in a gory red, the upper smashed screaming through the cockpit windows. The Alouette slewed round, rapidly losing height — then hit the ground and exploded in an oily fireball.
Eddie stabbed the machete into the plane’s side and dragged himself back into the cabin as the Antonov levelled out. He lay gasping for several seconds before realising that Boodu’s severed hand was still gripping his neck. He pulled off the appendage and was about to toss it through the hatch after its former owner when he took in the ring on its finger, the emerald still gleaming in its gold setting. A moment’s thought, then he wedged it in a seat frame and staggered to the front of the compartment. Strutter was still clutching his chair, petrified. Eddie leaned into the cockpit. ‘TD! Are you okay?’
Maximov had the controls, hunched in the co-pilot’s position with a look of laser-beam concentration. Beside him, TD was very pale, her left hand tightly squeezed around her bloodied right biceps. ‘Not — really,’ she managed to say through her pained grimace. ‘Oh, God, it hurts!’
‘Let me see.’ He carefully lifted her hand. She cried out, but he saw enough of the injury to know that it wouldn’t be life-threatening if she got prompt medical attention. ‘Okay, it’s okay,’ he said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘Just keep hold of it. We’ll fix you up when we land. How far to the border?’
She squinted at the instruments, then out of the window. ‘We’ll be… across it in a minute.’
‘I have question,’ said Maximov, gripping the controls so hard that the tendons stood out on the backs of his hairy hands like brake cables. ‘How do we land? I don’t know how to fly!’ He gave Eddie a hopeful glance. ‘Do you?’
‘Nope — it’s been on my to-do list for about five fucking years!’ He looked back at TD. ‘Can you talk him through it? I don’t want to have been in
She managed a feeble smile. ‘No problem. Another reason I bought… an Antonov. If you turn into the wind, the stall speed is… zero knots. So much lift it can just — float down.’
‘You’re kidding.’ Another attempt at a smile through her pain. ‘You’re not. Wow. I guess Russian stuff isn’t as crap as I thought.’
‘Hoy!’ Maximov protested.
Eddie grinned and retreated into the main cabin. Strutter’s look of rictus terror had finally relaxed, and he was hesitantly loosening his seatbelt straps. ‘I’d keep ’em fastened,’ Eddie warned him. ‘This might be a bit bumpy.’
Twenty minutes later, the Antonov was on the ground, in more or less one piece. Eddie had radioed ahead to alert the reception committee that they needed medical help; it turned out that no fewer than three of the waiting Zimbabwean expatriates were doctors, educated professionals being high on the list of targets for the government’s thugs. Two of them took TD to the nearby bush farmhouse for emergency treatment. The third wanted to check Eddie’s injuries, but he had business to attend to first.
Maximov followed the Englishman from the plane. ‘That was easy!’ he crowed. ‘Maybe I should become pilot,
Despite TD’s claims, the An-2’s touchdown had been far from feather-light. Eddie tried to crick the stiffness out of his sore neck and spine. ‘You might need a bit more practice.’ Maximov laughed.
‘Mr Chase?’ Waiting for Eddie was Japera Tangwerai, one of those whom he had helped escape from Zimbabwe several years before. Although she was only in her early thirties, the lines of stress and loss on her face made her appear middle-aged, for she had seen nearly her entire family murdered by Zimbabwean militia forces. Her only surviving child, a boy now eight years old, looked up at Eddie nervously from behind her skirts. ‘What happened? Did you free the prisoners from Fort Helena?’
