Njinga was breathing hard and was on the point of exhaustion from her madcap flight, but she still had access to a dwindling reserve of energy. The fact that the peak wasn’t yet crawling with Huntsmen troops gave her a spurt of hope and a minor injection of fresh strength, even though the sounds of battle and gunfire were intensifying in the forest behind her.
‘Off my back!’ she yelled into Jun’s mind. ‘We’ve arrived!’
Jun needed no further prompting, and he hopped off Njinga’s back, his thin legs trembling violently from the effort of gripping her flanks, and his body aching and stiff from the jarring ride. Once he had dismounted, Njinga transformed back into her human form, standing naked in front of the teen, who blushed furiously and hastily turned his face away.
‘Don’t act like a fool, kid,’ she said, dashing with brisk purpose in her stride over to a pile of sticks and broken tree boughs. ‘Help me uncover this crate, hurry!’
Jun, biting his lower lip and making a point of staring at the ground, his gaze self-consciously averted, hurried over to Njinga and started helping her to move the sticks and tree limbs. Hidden beneath them was a large metal crate, painted in camouflage colours. As soon as they had moved enough boughs to expose the top of the crate Njinga opened it. Inside were four black wingsuits, four pairs of goggles, as well as four black body harnesses, which had large Velcro patches along the entire front of their torsos, and plastic clips around their upper thigh and upper arm areas. Njinga yanked out a wingsuit, a pair of goggles and a harness. She tossed the harness to Jun, who almost fumbled the catch but managed to hold on.
‘Put it on,’ she instructed as she began to climb into her wingsuit. ‘Velcro goes in front, by your chest. Slip your arms and legs through those loops. Move it!’
While she and Jun were putting their equipment on, William and Chloe burst out of the trees. Chloe’s face was pale and her gaze almost vacant, and she stumbled off William’s back, staggering and lurching as if she was in a trance.
‘I … I shot someone,’ she muttered, speaking to nobody in particular. ‘I shot … I think … I think I killed someone.’
Nobody paid any heed to her ramblings; there was no time to comfort or console her. The instant William shifted out of his tiger form, Njinga – who was now fully clothed – tossed him a wingsuit. While he was putting it on Njinga spoke, her words laced with urgency.
‘How far behind are the others?’
Before he could answer, the protracted jackhammering thunder of Zakaria’s M60 drummed with deathly madness behind them. It sounded as if the gorilla and his charge were close; perhaps only two or three hundred yards away.
‘Close enough,’ William grunted, stepping into the wingsuit and pulling it up over his naked body. Before he could say anything else, the sharp crackles of multiple bursts of M-16 fire indicated that Hunstmen troops were closing in – a lot of them.
‘I’ll see you at the lake, brother,’ Njinga said. ‘And by the Great Mother, I hope we see everyone else there too.’ With tears rimming her eyes she ran over to William and gave him a quick, tight squeeze, and then she hugged Chloe too. ‘You’re a good kid Chloe,’ she said, her voice cracking, ‘and I pray that you make it outta this okay. Just do everything William says, okay?’
With tears streaming down her cheeks and her lower lip quivering, Chloe could only nod as a sob, feeling as large as a baby’s fist, tightened in her throat. Njinga handed Chloe a harness and then ran back over to Jun.
‘Come on kid!’ Njinga shouted, taking Jun’s hand. ‘This way, move it!’
She scrambled up the sphinx-like boulder formation, dragging Jun behind her and almost yanking his arm out of its socket in her haste to get to the top of the rocks. William, meanwhile, hurried over to the crate to get out Lightning Bird’s wingsuit and Daekwon’s harness, pulling Chloe along with him.
‘Hurry lass,’ he urged, ‘get your harness on. That Velcro bit goes over your chest. Quickly, quickly now.’
Up on the head of the sphinx, Njinga and Jun stood on the edge of the precipice. Njinga pulled the goggles down from her forehead over her eyes, and stood with her arms and legs outstretched, as if she was already in flight.
‘Press your chest against mine, like you were gonna give me a big hug,’ she said to him. ‘Get that Velcro stuck to mine nice an’ tight.’ Jun, staring apprehensively down the thousand-foot drop, nodded and stepped up to her, pressing the large Velcro patch on his chest against the one that on her wingsuit. ‘Now,’ Njinga continued, ‘clip your leg clips into mine, yeah, that’s it, and now your left arm. That’ll be enough to hold you up. Listen Jun, while we’re flying, you must not move at all; be totally still, okay? These wingsuits are very sensitive to movement, an’ we’re gonna be flyin’ low enough that any mistake could be the last one you or I ever make, you got it? Just be still, don’t move, don’t do anythin’, okay?’
Jun, who had clipped himself in, gave her a nod in response. His face was mere inches from hers; it was the closest he’d physically been to another person for a very long time. He was trying to put on a brave face, but the fear in his eyes was plain enough to perceive. Njinga had no time to coddle him or reassure him about what they were about to do, though; she herself didn’t even know if this was going to work. Faced with
