Vicious Circle (56 page)

‘What would happen if you came in to land without clearance?’

‘I don’t know. I have never tried it. He would probably shoot the living daylights out of me with those fifty-calibre cannons they have mounted at each end of the runway.’

‘Thank you, Yuri.’ She stood up.

‘Now that we are friends and we understand and trust each other, how about you cut these things off my wrists?’ he pleaded.

‘We don’t understand and trust each other that much,’ Nastiya told him regretfully.

‘Well, at least you could get me something to drink,’ he suggested. ‘Whatever that drug was you hit me with, it has made me very thirsty.’

‘I’ll get you a glass of water,’ she said.

‘I was not thinking about water.’ Yuri’s tone was aggrieved and she laughed and went to the galley and returned with a bottle of vodka.

‘You are the most beautiful and kindest woman I have ever met, but I can’t drink unless you free my hands.’

‘Yes, I am truly beautiful and kind,’ Nastiya agreed. ‘But I’m not stupid.’ She carried a drinking straw in her other hand, and she squatted beside him and placed one end of it between his lips. Then she dipped the other end into the neck of the bottle. Yuri sucked and swallowed several mouthfuls before she removed the straw from his mouth to allow him to breathe.

‘You aren’t really married, are you?’ he demanded in a voice still hoarse and ragged from the raw spirit.

‘Didn’t you notice this?’ She flirted her ring in front of his eyes.

‘
Da,
I saw it, but I hoped that it was just camouflage, to keep the wolves away,’ Yuri told her seriously. ‘Please tell me that you love me as much as I love you, Nazzy darling.’

Nastiya threw back her head and laughed delightedly. ‘Poor Yuri Volkov! You have missed your vocation. You could get a job in the Moscow State Circus. They always need clowns,’ she said. ‘Here is your reward for trying so hard.’ She stuck the drinking straw back in his mouth.

*

To maintain radio silence, Nella overflew the Zara No. 13 airfield at low level to announce their arrival. By the time she had come around, lined up with the runway and lowered the undercarriage, Paddy O’Brien had paraded the entire Cross Bow contingent on the perimeter to welcome the Condor.

Nella settled the monstrous aircraft onto the landing strip as lightly as a virgin’s kiss. Then she taxied back and with a burst of the port engines and opposite wheel brakes pirouetted the gigantic Condor like a ballerina onto the hardstanding, before she dropped the rear loading ramp.

Finally, she shut down all four engines and in the sudden silence Paddy’s men burst out cheering and threw their caps high in the air as they swarmed forward to the foot of the loading ramp to welcome the two heroines.

Paddy O’Brien was the first man up the ramp to find Nastiya. Bernie Vosloo was only two paces behind him. The two men embraced their wives with delight and relief. The confused and terrified Thai prostitutes were shepherded down the ramp and in an almost avuncular manner loaded into the back of a waiting truck.

‘You have your orders, Sergeant,’ Hector warned the non-com he had put in charge of their guard detail. ‘If any one of your men interferes with these kids, I’ll personally break his balls.’

‘I’ll see to it they behave themselves, sir.’ The sergeant saluted, but he looked wistfully at some of the pretty prisoners before his men whisked them away, still wailing and weeping, to the detention block where they would be placed securely behind bars to keep them out of sight and mind of the fifty or so testosterone-charged young rams that made up the Cross Bow task force. In a fight Hector would not hesitate to place his life in the hands of his boys, but when it came to libidos he would trust none of them even if they were trussed up in a chastity belt.

Hector turned his attention to Paddy and Nastiya, who were still locked in each other’s embrace. ‘When you come up for air, Nazzy, I would like a word with you.’

She looked at him over her husband’s shoulder. ‘Go ahead, Hector. I can do two things at once. Talk to me; I am listening.’

‘What have you done with the Condor crew?’

Nastiya gave him a long-suffering look. ‘Why is always you must pick the wrong time, Hector Cross? Okay, come with me. I show you. But first I tell you that, for money, Yuri Volkov the head pilot will cooperate. He has been badly treated by Johnny and Carl and he strongly disapproves of their sexual orientation.’

The three crew members of the Condor willingly gave Hector their parole, and he ordered the restraining cable ties to be removed from their wrists and ankles. There was already a dearth of accommodation for the assembled task force. However, the Russian pilots were allocated a tent of their own. It was highly unlikely that they would attempt to escape. They had no inkling of where they were, or in which direction or at what distance their freedom lay. Nevertheless, Hector posted a pair of sentries to ensure that they honoured their promise.

Hector was not prepared to take the same chance with the nubile black air hostess. He wanted her also to be kept out of striking distance of any of his men. He billeted her in a room in the main block, adjoining Paddy and Nastiya’s spartan accommodation, where the Cross Bow troops would venture at their peril.

Before Yuri Volkov was escorted to his tent Hector walked with him out into the desert. Out of earshot of his colleagues, Hector negotiated an agreement with Yuri for his full cooperation. Then Hector took him back to the communications room and placed him in front of the radio set. He handed Yuri a typed sheet on which was set out exactly what he had to relay to Carl in Kazundu. Then Hector sat beside him with his hand on the breaker switch, poised to kill the transmission if Yuri deviated in any detail from the script in front of him.

It took almost twenty minutes to raise the communication centre in the throne room of Kazundu Castle, and there was another delay while Carl Bannock was summoned by the duty officer.

He came on the line at last. ‘Where the hell are you, Volkov? You are almost six hours overdue, you stupid asshole.’

‘I am very sorry, sir.’ Yuri’s tone was cringing and obsequious. ‘We had a total radio failure five hours out from Bangkok, and I was forced to divert to the airport at Abu Zara City to effect repairs.’

‘Are you out of your dense skull? Your nearest airport was Male in the Maldives, or even Sri Lanka or Mumbai,’ Carl Bannock raged with frustration. ‘Why did you wander so far off course, you idiot?’

‘Mr Bannock, sir, Abu Zara is the nearest centre in Asia or the Middle East that has spares for our Swiss EX12 AYRAN Transistor.’ Yuri knew he could baffle Carl with technical jargon.

There was a brief silence on the air and then Carl snarled the question. ‘What is your estimated delay, Volkov, you prick?’

‘In excess of seventy-two hours if you want me to wait for the repairs to the radio, sir. That doesn’t include actual flying time.’

‘Did you pick up those passengers from Bangkok?’ Carl went off at a tangent.

‘Yes, sir, Mr Bannock! They are all here with me.’

Hector imagined Carl steaming with lust to get his hands on his little sex toys. Yuri was grinning as he also savoured the moment, but he continued in a tone of voice both contrite and eager to please. ‘I can fly without radio and be in Kazundu in less than ten hours, if you give the word, Mr Bannock, sir. Naturally I will not be able to initiate the usual radio procedure on my approach to Kazundu.’

‘Control will never let you take off from Abu Zara without radio comms, you stupid old bugger!’

‘I can arrange it, sir. I have a contact in control, but it will cost some baksheesh. He is asking one thousand dollars US.’

‘Okay, Yuri Volkov, pay him and then get your unsavoury Russian buttocks down here pronto, do you hear me? I should fire you, you doddering old fart.’ The radio contact was cut abruptly.

‘Now I understand why you love and respect your boss so heartily, Yuri.’ Hector stood up and patted his shoulder. ‘You did a good job of convincing him. I want you and your crew to confine yourself to this base until I return from this mission. Then I will pay you the amount we have agreed on. After that I will fly all three of you to Dubai to catch a flight to wherever in the world you want to disappear. I might even pay for your air tickets.’

*

Hector and Paddy had planned the complicated loading schedules of the Condor carefully. Those troops and equipment that were to be first out on the Kazundu airfield had to be last into the Condor here at Zara No. 13.

Even so it took almost two hours from when Hector made the ‘Go’ decision to when Bernie and Nella Vosloo between them lifted the heavily loaded Condor’s wheels off the airstrip and she roared up into the moonlit sky. At fifteen hundred feet above the desert Bernie brought her around onto a south-westerly heading, to cut across the Great Horn of Africa and from there to head a touch west of south for Lake Tanganyika and the kingdom of Kazundu on its western shore.

Hector had timed the take-off carefully to ensure their arrival over Kazundu an hour after sunrise. It was a compromise. If they arrived as soon as there was sufficient daylight for a safe landing, then it was highly likely that Johnny and Carl would not leave their beds to come down to the airstrip to greet their Thai guests. The best scenario was to have the two targets standing on the airstrip when the tail ramp of the Condor dropped and the Cross Bow men came boiling down it.

If the Condor arrived much later in the day, and if they then became embroiled in a protracted dogfight with Johnny and Sam Ngewenyama’s men, there was a chance that they might find themselves pinned down in a night fight. In the darkness the home side would decidedly have the upper hand.

Now the cards had been dealt and there was nothing left to do but fly on to meet the dawn and the enemy.

Hector was in no doubt as to how he wished to pass the night. However, the only secluded area anywhere on board the overcrowded aircraft was the tiny luggage compartment between the flight deck and the galley in which Nastiya had imprisoned Yuri Volkov. Hector staked this out as his private domain, and as soon as the interior lights were turned down and the men settled for the night he took Jo’s hand and led her there.

There was no lock on the inside of the door, but they jammed it closed with their bodies. The partition walls were thin, but they cared not who heard their cries. There was not enough space for them to lie side by side, but that had never been Hector’s intention. The floor was hard, but to them it felt as soft as a feather bed. The night was long, but for them it was fleeting. They were heading into the valley of the shadow of death, but they whispered to each other only of a long life shared and love everlasting. In the morning they had not rested but they were refreshed and strong, and they believed they were as immortal as their love for each other.

When the alarm of Hector’s wristwatch alerted them they left their hidey-hole and went forward and stood side by side in the doorway of the cockpit. Bernie swivelled around in the left-hand pilot’s seat to greet them.

‘Sleep well?’ He smothered a grin.

‘Marvellous,’ Hector told him. ‘Plain bloody marvellous. How much longer have we got to run, Bernie?’

‘Don’t ask me.’ Bernie shrugged. ‘I’m just the driver. Ask your navigator.’

‘How are we doing, Nella?’ Hector turned to her.

‘Forty-three minutes to destination. That big shiny thing out there ahead of us is Lake Tanganyika.’

Hector and Jo stood side by side, leaning on the backs of the pilots’ seats and peering ahead.

The sun had almost cleared the horizon on their port side and they were flying down a deep valley of tumbling cumulus nimbus cloud. The peaks reached high above their own meagre fifteen thousand feet of altitude which the instruments on the dashboard were recording. The cloud mountains seemed solid as ice, silver shaded with the blue of bruises.

The rising sun cast the Condor’s shadow on the glistening slopes of cloud. Grossly enlarged and distorted, it was surrounded by a gloriole of rainbow colours as it kept pace and station with them.

‘Oh, look!’ Jo cried aloud and pointed over the Condor’s nose. At their own level and directly ahead the dark shape of a fish eagle in flight was backlit by the reflection of the clouds. It was suspended on widespread pinions, seeming to hang motionless. But as the Condor rushed towards it, the bird dropped one wing and plummeted into a slanted dive across their path. It passed so close to their wingtip that they were able to see the glitter of its agate brown eye in the yellow mask of facial skin, and make out the individual feathers in its snowy cap flattened to its skull by the speed of its dive.

‘Oh God, what a magnificent creature!’ Jo cried with delight as the eagle was snatched from their view and swallowed up by the immensity of space.

Far below them the African savannah and forests were dappled with cloud shadow and brilliant sunlight. Directly ahead the burnished silver surface of the lake dazzled them.

Bernie eased back the throttles to begin the descent, and they dropped towards the earth between the glistening cloud slopes. The needles on the altimeter gauges rotated smoothly anti-clockwise and they crossed the north-eastern shore of the lake at nine thousand feet.

‘Twenty-one minutes to destination,’ Nella warned them. Hector took the radio microphone from her and held it to his lips. His voice boomed over the Condor’s internal PA system. ‘Wakey, wakey, gentlemen! Drop your cocks and grab your socks! Twenty minutes to target.’

Below them the lake surface was strewn with thin tendrils of mist. Flights of flamingo hundreds strong flew low over them. The birds followed each other in single file. Upthrusts of warm air lifted them in succession and then dropped them again as they encountered cooler downdraughts, so that they wove undulating pink daisy chains above the lake surface. From the cockpit they watched in awed silence.

‘Fifteen minutes to destination.’ Nella broke the spell.

Almost immediately after her Jo shouted out, ‘There it is! Dead ahead! The castle on the hill!’