Juggernaut

Soon it dipped to the horizon, then went below it at a sharp angle. I tried to force another fraction of speed out of the labouring car. The plane reappeared briefly and I wondered if it had actually touched down and bounced. Then it was gone again and a surge of dust swirled up ahead.

My hands wrenched this way and that to keep the car from slewing sideways in the earth. I brought it joltingly through a small screen of thorn bushes and rocked to a halt, and we looked downhill towards the misshapen hulk that had been airborne only moments before., We piled out and started running. The danger of fire was enormous. Not only would the plane erupt but the bush was likely to catch fire, and we all knew it. But there was no fire as yet, and the plane was miraculously upright.

As we got to the plane a figure was already beginning to struggle to free himself. The plane was a six-seater, but there were only two men visible inside. Our men clambered up onto the smashed wing and clawed at the pilot's door. The water tanker was lumbering towards us and Sadiq's troops were nearer still; I waved the oncoming vehicles to a halt.

'No further! Stay back! If she burns you'll all be caught. No sparks – don't turn your ignition off,' I shouted. 'Wilson, you and Burke start laying a water trail down towards her.'

As one of the big hoses was pulled free and a spray of water shot out, the door was pulled open and the two men inside were helped out. I ran back to the car and brought it closer. One of the plane's occupants seemed to be unhurt; two of our men were steadying him but he appeared to be walking quite strongly. The second was lolling in unconsciousness, carried by Grafton and Ron Jones. As they came up to my car I recognized both new arrivals.

The unconscious man was Max Otterman, our Rhodesian pilot. The other was Geoffrey Wingstead.

Max Otterman was in a bad way.

He'd done a brilliant job in bringing his plane down in one piece, upright and more or less intact, but at a terrible cost to himself. His left arm was broken, and he had contusions and cuts aplenty, especially about the face in spite of goggles and helmet. But there was something more drastic and this none of us was able to diagnose for certain. He recovered consciousness of a sort in the car as we drove him and Geoff Wingstead back to the rig site, moving as gently as possible. But he was obviously in great pain and kept blacking out. We got him bedded down in the rig's shade eventually, after letting Bishop have a good look at him. Bishop had first aid training and was pretty useful for day-to-day rig accidents, but he didn't know what was wrong with Otterman, apart from being fairly sure that neither his neck nor his back was broken.

It was the most worrying feature so far of a very worrying situation.

Wingstead was in good shape apart from one severe cut on his left shoulder and a selection of bruises, but nevertheless both Bishop and I urged him to take things very carefully. He saw Otterman bedded down, then sank into a grateful huddle in the shade with a cold beer to sustain him.

The men tended to crowd around. They all knew Geoff, naturally, and it was apparent that they thought a great deal of their boss. Their astonishment at his unorthodox arrival was swamped in their relief at his safety, and curiosity overrode all.

Presently I had to appeal to them to leave him for a while.

'Come on, you guys. He doesn't exactly want to give a press conference just this minute, you know,' I said. I didn't want to speak too sharply; it would be unwise to trample on their good will. But they took my point and most of them moved a little way off.

Wingstead said, 'I'll have to thank everybody properly. You all did a damned good job, back there.' His voice was a little shaky.

'None better than Max,' I said. 'There's plenty of time, Geoff. Time for questions later too. Just rest a bit first.'

In fact I was aching to know what had brought him up to us, what he knew and what the situation was that he'd left behind him. Kemp and Sadiq should hear it too, though, and one account from Wingstead would tax him quite sufficiently. So I went a little way off, and saw Wingstead's head droop forward as he surrendered to the sleep of exhaustion. I was anxious for Kemp to rejoin us. He seemed to have been gone for ever, and I was eager to give him our latest piece of dramatic news. But it wasn't until nearly noon that we saw Sadiq's escorted car returning, and I walked down the road to intercept them.

'Neil. There's a pack of problems up ahead of us,' said Kemp.

'We haven't done too badly ourselves.'

Kemp's eyes immediately flashed to the rig. 'Problems? Have you been having trouble?'

'I wouldn't quite put it that way. Look, I'm damned keen to hear what you've got to tell, but I guess our news has priority. We've got visitors.'

'Who – the army?'