23
I kicked all the shit further back to clear a space and opened the shutter. A gale rushed in. It was like standing at a station with an express train thundering past. I tried sticking my head out. My face got buffeted like I was in freefall. I couldn’t see through my streaming eyes.
I pulled my head back in. All the wrappers from the field dressings and all other bits of crap were caught in a whirlwind around me.
Mr Lover Man had taken my place between the cockpit seats. He shouted at Joe: he wanted to know what was happening. He followed Joe’s pointing finger to the Skyvan on our right. Then he looked back at Genghis working on Tracy.
I cleared more shit out of the way. I wanted a good stable platform for the weapon.
Mr Lover Man tilted his head so he didn’t bang it on the top of the fuselage and stormed towards me. Joe gave me the heads-up in my cans. ‘He doesn’t like you, man. He’s fucking mad. Those hands are massive. Be careful.’
I came forward to meet him. I wanted metal fuselage between me and the sky in case he got weird and tried to chuck me out.
I pulled one of the cans off my ear. ‘Listen, this is the only way to stop them. We don’t know how much fuel they’ve got. We don’t know if we can outrun them. They might have extra tanks. We don’t know what they’re up to. We don’t know what they’re going to do when we get there. So we’ve got to stop them while we can.’
A big finger jabbed into my chest. ‘You kill Stefan …’ It pressed even harder and his face came closer. ‘I kill
I let him get on with it. Now wasn’t the time. Let him make the threat. If I fucked up, we’d see. I nodded and turned back towards the open door. He was good at jabbing and doing the threats but he wasn’t exactly pushing me out of the way to take the shots himself.
I put the can back on as I reached the howling gap. ‘All sorted. Where the fuck are they?’
I was looking out as best I could, craning my neck beyond the cargo door. All I could see was clear blue sky, and ocean below.
‘They’re still half-right. They’re about half a klick forward and higher.’
‘OK.’
I hauled myself back inside. I braced my back against the fuselage opposite the opening, my knees up and my elbows just inside the creases of the knees so I didn’t have bone on bone. I wanted good firm support for the weapon. Legs pressed together, I got the butt of the AK in my shoulder. As the aircraft bumped and buffeted, I pushed the safety to first click.
I was going to have to be good. The AK was designed to deliver massive firepower by hundreds of thousands of Russians advancing over the plains of Western Europe, brassing up whatever was in their way. The AK is at its best firing short bursts on automatic at ranges below about fifty metres. Beyond that, they go wild.
The calibre of the round was in my favour. The 7.62 was designed to take an enemy down first time and keep him down. If Joe could get me in range, whatever I sent across should punch holes in the Skyvan the size of my fist.
I cocked the weapon and pulled the selector down again, onto single shot. I got back on the mike. ‘Joe, mate, you’ve got to get close and level.’
‘No problem, man. They got any weapons apart from that M4?’
‘We’ll find out soon enough. Make it look like we’re trying to push them towards the land or some shit. I need to find out exactly where the boy is on that thing.’
The revs picked up a notch and I could feel the airframe increase speed. Moments later I saw the Skyvan out of the door. It was forward of us, to the right, and higher in the clear blue sky. We were about a hundred metres away.
‘Get up more, Joe. We need to be at the same level. We need to see through those cockpit windows.’
‘They’ve seen us, Nick.’ Joe’s voice had gone up a notch too. ‘The ramp is coming down.’
24
‘Got it.’
I spotted heads on the ramp as it lowered. I lined up my eye behind the iron sights to check I could clear the left-hand side of the door.
The ramp had gone down halfway. I could see Ant and Dec’s shoulders. They were standing, and they had longs into the shoulder.
I yelled into the mike. ‘Joe! Dive!
The engine screamed as we tipped instantly right. I struggled against the Gs as the horizon disappeared. Then I was sliding towards the door. The ocean filled the hole. The sea was rushing up to meet me.
I spread my legs, trying to get my socked feet across the airframe as some kind of brake. Both heels hit the door threshold at the same moment. I started tipping up vertically from the floor.
Joe levelled it out. I dropped back. The air stank of burnt oil. He must have taken the engine near its limits. We surged beneath the Skyvan and out of Ant and Dec’s weapon arcs.
I checked further down the fuselage. Mr Lover Man and Genghis were holding on to Tracy. Genghis lay over her feet. Mr Lover Man was at his shoulder. They must have had their work cut out keeping her in one piece while Joe did his Red Arrows bit.
I checked back through the cargo door. We were low enough to see the sea. The sun beat down on it and bounced back up into the sky. It was almost blinding.
Mr Lover Man shouted. He was glaring at me.
I gave the calm-down sign I’d been using a lot lately. ‘It’s OK, mate.’
Joe wasn’t impressed. ‘They got more than that fucking M4, man. This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to get above him, come right on top of the fucker, crossing the ramp so we can get a good look inside the cockpit. If that ramp keeps open we can still see inside. You got that?’
‘Sounds good to me.’
‘They’re going to be looking for us now. I’m not going to fucking hang about, man. No way. So keep sharp.’
‘I’m ready.’
‘I’ll be able to check the cockpit as I come in on top of them. That heap of shit couldn’t outrun a fucking wheelbarrow.’
The Cargomaster tipped right, and then we were suddenly climbing at forty-five degrees, gaining height as the engine screamed. Joe hurled the aircraft round in a tight turn. With blue sky and blue sea and no cloud, I had no point of reference with what was happening, apart from my stomach. I had to grab the struts on the side of the fuselage. I moved to the door, grabbed the rear of the frame with my left hand, keeping the weapon down on the floor with my right.
I saw the horizon. Then I caught a glint of silver. Joe completed his manoeuvre and the Skyvan was two hundred feet directly below us. We surged down. I felt the force of several times gravity. The engine was going ape-shit. All the loose crap inside the cargo hold flew around like slow-motion shrapnel. Some got caught in the drag of the door and was sucked out.
I felt the side of my cheek balloon as I tried to look out.
The Skyvan leapt towards us. My eyes felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets. It was like we were doing a kamikaze dive on it until we were fifty feet away, then Joe pulled the airframe left, towards the rear of the target.
He screamed into my cans, ‘The cockpit!
We roared past the open ramp. Ant and Dec, still bollock naked, were kneeling on the threshold of the cargo
