The Smoke Jumper (54 page)

‘Listen,’ Connor said. ‘If this was Elizabeth and one of those beautiful daughters of yours, wouldn’t you do the same?’

‘I don’t know how to use a parachute.’

‘Well, there you go. I don’t have that excuse.’

‘How long since you last jumped?’

‘Awhile.’

Connor asked him to let Lawrence know that he would come back for him as soon as he could and if for some reason he couldn’t, to make sure that the boy was reunited with his brother. Geoffrey promised.

‘I remember you talking about this woman when we first met all those years ago. You must still love her very much.’

It was pitched as a question and Connor hesitated for it was as momentous as any he had ever been asked. Yet he felt he owed his friend the truth.

‘Always have and always will,’ he said simply.

Kriel reappeared carrying a stained canvas bag and when he dumped it on the floor it sent up a cloud of dust.

He grinned. ‘Been a long time since anyone had call to use it.’

Connor asked for a flashlight and when Kriel found him one he carried the bag outside and unpacked it. He hooked the end of the parachute to the wall and stretched it out to examine it. It was a basic but steerable emergency bail-out system with a twenty-six-foot conical canopy and an old-style cotton and canvas harness that had seen better days. He checked every one of the twenty-two gores and found only a couple of small holes, then followed the lines down to the connector links and the risers. It wasn’t great but it was good enough. Kriel stood with his arms folded, leaning against the door frame and smirking as he watched.

‘Hope you’re not going to get all picky on me.’

‘It’ll do. Is there a reserve?’

Kriel laughed. ‘I wouldn’t worry, bro. You’ll probably get shot before you hit the fucking ground.’

‘I’ll take that as a no.’

While Connor carefully repacked the chute, Kriel went back inside and when he reappeared he had a 9mm automatic holstered at his hip and was carrying a semi-automatic rifle and a black nylon jacket which he tossed to Connor.

‘Put that on. You’d be hard to miss wearing that fucking shirt.’

Twenty minutes later they were taxiing along the runway in an unmarked Cessna 206. All but the front two seats had been removed, presumably to make space for the contraband it normally carried. There was a cargo door at the rear of the starboard side, so jumping out wasn’t going to be as tricky as Connor had expected.

They took off to the south with the black expanse of Lake Victoria stretching away to nothing below them. Then on tilted wings they circled around and headed north with the lights of Kampala to their right shimmering and winking through the hot night air. It was the first moment of stillness that Connor had allowed himself since the phone call to his mother and he realized that in his obsession to reach Julia and Amy, he hadn’t yet spared proper thought for his lost friend Ed now lost forever. And as the lights of the city suburbs faded and disappeared behind them and the little Cessna nosed its way north into the ominous night, he felt sorrow surge within him and settle like a leaden weight in the hollow of his chest.

The branches of the flame trees scraped against the top of the bus as it passed beneath them on its way up the driveway and the noise was so loud and shocking that some of the children sitting on the upper deck cried out in fright and ducked as if they expected the roof to lift off like the lid of a can.

Julia was sitting with her arm around Amy in the rearmost seat at the top of the stairway. Through the window to her left she saw the shadowed shapes of the fruit bats erupting from the mango trees and when she looked back she could see Peter Pringle’s determined face at the wheel of the truck behind. Most of the children and staff were on the bus but the rest sat crammed in the open back of Pringle’s truck. Behind that were two smaller trucks with all the cooks and maids and kitchen boys but all that Julia could see of these were the swaying stacks of luggage roped to their roofs. The center’s four security guards had been allocated one to each vehicle.

When the bus reached the convent gates it had to stop for the road outside was a seething river of panic and confusion. Most of the refugees were walking or running and there were cars and trucks and vans weaving among them with their horns blaring and people clinging desperately to their sides and roofs, lashing out and kicking at others who tried to climb aboard. Julia watched a man trying to ride a bicycle, a baby squirming and screaming in one arm and two frenzied chickens flapping upside down from his belt. Oblivious to all and thundering past through the pall of illumined red dust that swirled above the chaos came the retreating army trucks packed with soldiers, the weary and the wounded, the shell-shocked and the dead.

When the crowd caught sight of the St. Mary’s convoy a score or more came running and yelling and waving their arms and as the bus started to move out into the road they screamed and hammered on its sides and Julia could hear the security guard and Sister Emily below fending them off and telling them again and again that there was no room. Amy was quaking with fear.

‘Mommy!’

‘It’s all right, honey. It’s all right.’

It wasn’t of course and perhaps it never would be but there was nothing else to say. The girl had been so brave while they packed their things and helped everyone else get ready to leave. Julia stroked her hair and felt her burrow deeper and cling more tightly.

The bus was on the road now and George the gardener, all alone down there in the cramped driver’s booth with his hand planted on the horn, was steering Gertrude south through the parting waves of people. Julia looked back again and saw Pringle and the other trucks pulling out of the gate and following. And beyond them now, for the first time, she saw the flash of exploding shells. Far away to the north the horizon seemed aglow with fire.

There was a clatter of footsteps on the metal stairway and Sister Emily emerged, beaming as if they were all on some exotic school outing. In a cheery voice she asked the children how they were doing and why on earth they were all so quiet. The children all turned around in their seats and stared at her but only a few murmured in reply. Unfazed, she looked around at Julia and saw Amy sheltering under her arm and she made a face that was sad and funny and sympathetic all at the same time.

‘Amy, I think we need a song. What do you think we should sing?’

Amy gave a small shrug but didn’t say anything. Sister Emily persisted.

‘How about one of those English songs you taught us all? From your
Lion
film. No? Then what about the Purple Submarine?’

‘Yellow.’

Sister Emily frowned. ‘Are you sure? I think it was purple.’

‘It was yellow!’

‘Oh well, maybe you are right. Anyway, how about that one?’

Sister Emily had clearly forgotten the tune and she looked at Julia to give a lead. And because Julia’s singing talents had always been a favorite source of mirth and mockery for her daughter, she had only to sing a few bars before Amy began to grin and then to giggle. Then Christine and Thomas sitting nearby started to giggle too, not just at Julia but at Sister Emily who had the hang of the tune but not of the lyrics. On every chorus she gave the submarine a different color, and this made Amy sing ever more loudly to correct her until gradually, row by row, the other children joined in and before long the lower deck was singing too.

Even as she sang, Julia was aware that their contrived merriment was of course a kind of denial, for the children’s eyes were now all turned in upon each other and not upon the fleeing crowds below who waved and clamored for help as the bus rumbled by. But, as Ed used to say, what was wrong with a little healthy denial? Her duty was to those she could help and most of all to Amy. And as she watched the singing lift the children’s spirits she began to feel stronger herself. When the song was done they sang another and then another and when she looked over her shoulder Julia could see that Pringle and his passengers were singing too.

It would be all right, she told herself. They would all get through.

 

The night at first was clear and the stars undimmed by a moon now carved to a sliver. They flew without lights and for the first hour kept high with the land unfurling far below, the grassland gray and the jungle black and the great still waters of Lake Kyoga gleaming like obsidian.

They sat side by side with Connor on the right and the lights of the instruments glowing between them and glinting dully on the barrel of Kriel’s rifle now clamped above his head. They wore headsets so that they could talk above the roar of the engine but they rarely did except when Kriel pointed something out and told him the names of the places they passed.

As the lights of Lira fell away to their left and the land to their right grew more barren, they saw clouds ahead and Kriel said that Connor should count his blessings, for had the sky stayed clear they would have been too easy a target and he would have had to jump while they were yet a long way off. He asked where he had learned to use a parachute and Connor told him.

The clouds were coming on a light wind from the west. The first to arrive were fluffed like cotton and separate and Connor watched their shadows on the arid gray land and the shadow of the plane passing among them. But as they traveled farther north so the clouds began to thicken and darken and join and from away in the west came the flicker of lightning.

They were yet some seventy miles south of Karingoa when they got their first glimpse of the war. With the cover of the clouds they were flying lower now and through a gap they saw the lights of a great many trucks on a straight stretch of road and at once Kriel banked away west and started to climb. The next time they were able to see the road it seemed much more crowded and confused and the lights were moving more slowly. They climbed higher above the layer of clouds and saw to the north a dim red glow which as they flew nearer seemed to spread and intensify. And from his days as a smoke jumper Connor knew what it was.

Soon the canopy of cloud glowed like a vast red cauldron before them and Kriel nosed the Cessna farther to the west to skirt it. A moment later the clouds parted and they saw the town of Karingoa and the swath of flame that fringed it to the north. And even in those few short seconds before the fissure closed they saw the flash of shells and the red and crisscross streaks of gunfire in the sky.

‘I’ve heard of a few fucking stupid ways to die, but this about beats them all. I’ll come around once more and then I’m out of here. If you’re going to bail out, you better get back there.’

Connor looked at the dials and made some rapid calculations. They were flying at a hundred and ten knots at eighteen hundred feet, which was a lot higher than he wanted to be. The chute would be safe from as low as four hundred and the less time he was floating out there for the world to see, the better his chances.

‘How low can you get me?’

‘This is it, bro. They’ve got some big fucking toys down there and Christ knows what in the air. It’s a miracle we haven’t been hit already.’

‘If we went east, we’d have the cover of the smoke. You could get lower.’

Kriel muttered some further obscenity and shook his head but it soon became plain that he was doing just that. And as they circled east around the glowing bowl of cloud Connor unbuckled his seat belt and took off the headset. As he got up from his seat Kriel held up his right hand.

‘Good luck, bro.’

Connor grasped the hand and thanked him.

‘Now get the fuck out of here,’ Kriel said.

Connor made his faltering way back to the cargo door clutching onto anything he could as the plane banked and juddered through the cloud. He checked his harness then squatted down beside the door and took hold of the handle. His heart was pumping hard. He thought of the last time he had jumped, that day on Snake Mountain that now seemed more than a lifetime ago. He remembered how he and Ed had been the last to jump and how Ed’s face had been so pale with worry watching the others go before him and knowing all the while that Julia was somewhere there below them in the flames, just as she was now.

‘Sixteen hundred!’ Kriel yelled.

Connor gripped the handle hard now and planted his feet firmly on either side of the door so that he wouldn’t be sucked out in the rush of air.

‘Okay!’ he yelled. ‘I’m opening up!’

Without looking back Kriel gave him a thumbs-up.

The door ripped open and a moment later Kriel nosed the plane below the line of the clouds and Connor got a first murky view of the terrain he was going to be landing in. They were maybe two miles east of the town now and through the smoke he could see its northern part was well ablaze with the sky glowing fiercely above it. He could see the silhouetted shapes of trucks moving steadily from the north toward it. The smoke and the light of the fire made it harder to see the shadowed land that was closer at hand. He knew the layout of the town well but not the land that lay around it and all he could see of it were inky smudges of jungle and gray patches among them which he figured to be fields.

‘Okay,’ Kriel yelled. ‘We’re at fourteen-fifty. I’ll take you down to twelve hundred but that’s as low as I go. Speed one hundred knots. Get in the door!’

Connor braced himself with one hand above the frame and maneuvered himself into the doorway so that he was squatting with the toes of his boots poking out into the void. His knees were shaking and he shivered and it struck him as strange for although his heart was thumping it wasn’t with fear and the roaring air was warm. Then, in the next instant, he had a sudden and overwhelming sensation that someone was standing beside him and he knew that it couldn’t be Kriel. He turned and looked and saw nothing. But he felt the presence ever more keenly and whether it was real or conjured in his fevered imaginings, he knew without a shred of doubt that it was Ed.