Rogue Element

Given the situation, Joe thought it an odd question. ‘I could do with a holiday,’ he said.

‘No, I mean, do you feel sick at all?’

‘I’m alright,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘If we don’t get out of here soon the wildlife will kill us even if the soldiers don’t.’

Joe swatted ineffectually at the miasma of insects around them. A couple of mozzies landed on his arm. He squashed them against his skin, leaving a smear of blood. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘know what you mean.’

Joe looked up at the violently swaying canopy. ‘Must be blowing a gale up there.’ It was breathless as usual at ground level. A cloud drifted across the sun and took the ferocious burn out of it. Joe unshouldered his rucksack and dug around for a bottle of water. They were all empty.

‘I’ll carry that for a bit if you like,’ said Suryei, holding her hand out for the rucksack. Joe thought about protesting, but then handed it over. Joe swung his axe through the air a couple of times. It felt good to have unrestricted movement, and he was now used to the weight of this souvenir from the 747. It had become his link with reality, reminding him that there was a world out there that he’d been wrenched from only days before. His axe. He swung it again. It was actually a pretty useful weapon, as one of the soldiers he’d introduced to it could attest. He swung it again and felt a vague primal surge.

‘Er, Conan?’ Suryei was looking back at him impatiently from the edge of some thick, chest-high grass. ‘Can we go now?’

Central Sulawesi, 0834 Zulu, Friday, 1 May

A red light illuminated. Minus one minute to the drop. It had been a good twenty minutes since the LM had helped the men locate their ropes and loop them into their wrap-racks. The MAG would fast-rope down together in one wave. It was necessary to get the soldiers out and off quickly so that the V22 could leave the area pronto. Hovering stationary over the drop zone would make it an easy target for forces equipped with portable, hand-held Stinger missiles, or even just well-aimed rifle fire.

The designated LZ approached, the coordinates of which had been nominated by Wilkes and punched into the Osprey’s nav com. The pilot repositioned the switch that fixed the angle of the nacelles on the wingtips and they began to rotate to the vertical. The Osprey’s flight computers countered the aircraft’s natural tendency to alter its altitude as the thrust vectors changed, feathering the aircraft’s control surfaces to maintain level flight. The resultant forces slowed the aircraft, bringing it to a hover twenty metres above the swirling canopy. Total flight time from the Kitty Hawk: just one hour and fifty-five minutes.

The Jump Jets cruised high overhead, sweeping the area for bandits, conserving fuel. They were capable of hovering with the V22, behaving like helicopter gunships, but only for the briefest period. In hover mode, the AV-8’s wings provided no lift whatsoever, so an enormous amount of fuel was burned to keep the aircraft aloft. Besides, there was no point putting more aircraft than necessary in the hover position vulnerable to ground fire. The pilots hoped the EA-6B Prowler had done its job, blinding Indon radar. Three Super Hornets might well be orbiting fifteen minutes away but if a flight of F-16s jumped them now, they’d be thirteen minutes too late.

The wind made it difficult to maintain position. The Osprey slid left and right, bobbing high and low as thirty-knot winds knocked it about. Wilkes gave his men the signal and they leapt forward into the air from the V22’s ramp. From the ground, the soldiers might have looked like baby spiders jumping clear of their mother. Their heavy packs swung below them, attached to their abseiling harnesses with karabiners, so that the weight of their gear didn’t hinder their control and manoeuvrability, or break their legs when they hit the ground.

The men dropped to the canopy and hung suspended above it. They lowered themselves slowly through the uppermost leaves and branches until they could see a clear path to the ground fifty metres below. When each man was satisfied that his progress wouldn’t be impeded, their journey down continued.

Suddenly, a wind gust that would have measured more than forty-five knots lifted the Osprey several metres and shouldered it aside. The men, still attached to their ropes fastened to the buffeted aircraft, were pulled through branches like floss through teeth.

Kevin Gibson was unlucky. He was threading his way through the fork in a heavy branch when his rope pulled him up, then dropped him. The fork caught the lower lip on his helmet as he fell through the narrow opening. The additional weight of his pack hanging from his abseil harness ensured that his neck snapped cleanly, cutting his spinal cord. Gibson wouldn’t have had time to notice anything amiss before St Peter was giving him his room number.