David Gilman - The Devil's breath

Max couldn’t see the runway anymore, it had slipped below the propeller, and it felt as though the plane was sitting back on her tail. The bloody wind snatched at him.

“Keep it straight! Don’t drop that wing. You are just about to touch down.”

The hum of tires on concrete vibrated through his seat.

“Great, you’re down, keep it straight and close the throttle completely!”

He pulled the lever all the way out. The propeller began to slow.

“Your tail wheel is on the ground, you can apply brakes gently. Well done! Raise the flaps and taxi in. Looks like you’ve got a welcoming committee.”

Max saw Kallie’s plane soar upwards to come around again and make her own landing. Mother Earth. Solid, unyielding. Welcome home, everybody.

The engine died, the last gasp of fuel spluttering, and then silence. For a moment he couldn’t move, but then he saw the men running from the jet; they were dressed in assault gear. Then someone yanked open the door and eager hands reached in for him.

“All right, son, bit of a blinder, eh? Good one.”

A cockney accent. What was its owner doing here? He didn’t have time to figure it out.

“My mate’s in there-” Max began.

Another man. Scottish. “Aye, don’t you worry about him, we know he’s hurt.”

The men passed him from one to the other down the line, until he stood clear of the plane and watched as one of them clambered in and began easing!Koga out.

Someone familiar looking was walking towards him. Max stared. It couldn’t be. Mr. Peterson!

“No!” Max yelled, turning back to the soldiers who had put!Koga on to a folding stretcher. He hadn’t gone through all of this to fall into Peterson’s hands.

One of the men grabbed him, not roughly but with enough strength so that Max knew he couldn’t compete with him. Everything seemed to give way inside him. He’d lost. Max almost cracked up.

It made no sense.

Kallie’s plane landed and stopped in a very short distance; Mr. Peterson was standing in front of him, a big smile on his face, and the men in black were carrying!Koga to the twin-engined plane, where a man with a wild beard sat in the cockpit, shouting for them to hurry.

The world had finally gone mad.

Max went down on his knees.

He saw Mr. Peterson frown, saw his mouth shaping his name.

And couldn’t stop himself falling into blackness.

Something moved in the darkness.

He was sitting cross-legged, as if he were a small boy in school assembly, except that there was no one else with him. What he could describe only as a dark wind rustled the blackness, like silk being brushed by air. His father’s face became almost visible, yet Max felt no great compulsion to reach out to him. His father smiled, nodded approvingly, and faded back into the undulating night.

A silent streak of lightning tore across the darkness, exposing a massive walkway, like a bridge through the night sky. It was sheathed in dull moonglow, and Max watched himself running along it. He looked strange. Filthy, shorts torn, his hair matted and wild, and he was running harder and faster than he could believe possible. Running towards a gaping hole in the night. A dark cave in a black night. It made no sense. He watched as he collided with a force that repelled him, like a glass door that didn’t break, heard his own cry of fear, and saw himself disappear over the edge into oblivion.

And the vision disappeared.

Max sensed another movement.

The jackal.

It loped towards him, swaying gently, until finally it stopped, sniffed his face and sat down, as before, on its haunches, facing him directly. Its eyes gazed into his own and, without surprise, Max heard it speak.

“You are Brother of the Night,” it said.

And licked his face like a dog with a puppy.

“Are you all right? Max? Are you all right?” a voice called, erasing the dream, merging the rhythm of the words.

Someone had stuck superglue to his tongue. It felt like Velcro when he peeled it off the roof of his mouth. He opened his eyes.

“Max! You idiot! You stupid idiot! You’re alive!”

Sayid?

Sayid jumped up and down like a lunatic. “I got airsick, I was puking in the loo when you were coming in to land. I had to clean up the mess. You’re alive. You’re crazy, man!”

Max groaned and eased himself up from the bed someone had put him on.

“Sayid. What the hell’s going on?”

Sayid took Max’s arm, hauled him to his feet, and dragged him outside. Three helicopters, armed soldiers and the assault troops who had dragged him and!Koga out of the plane stood with Mr. Peterson, who seemed to be in charge.

And then Kallie stepped out of the other building and smiled at him. That gave Max a really good feeling.

“Oh, so you’re back in the land of the living,” she said as she stepped towards him and kissed him on the cheek. Her lips almost touched his, but he reckoned that as his mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage his cheek was probably her better option.

“Where’s!Koga?” Max asked, the fog clearing from his brain.

“He’s in the operating room now. We don’t know much more. Not for a while.”

Max looked at the gathered men. “Mr. Peterson is in on this?”

Sayid smiled. “He’s been on your side all along. And we got the info you sent.”

“Why don’t you get cleaned up and eat, then Sayid and I can tell you everything,” Kallie said.

Max shook his head. “Do you mind?” And he pointed to the water bottle in her hand. She passed it to him and he drained it. “Look, I can’t even start to tell you what happened to me and!Koga, but those men look as though they know what’s going on. And I have to get back to my dad.”

Kallie failed to hide her uncertainty.

Max flung the empty bottle down. “I know he’s alive! He has to be!”

“Max, don’t. There’s gonna be a lot of violence when those blokes attack Shaka Chang,” Sayid said.

“I hope so,” Max told him, and walked towards Mr. Peterson.

* * *

A blast of air pummeled his skin as he sat on the rim of the helicopter’s doorway. They were going in for the attack on Skeleton Rock.

Mr. Peterson had argued the case for him being present when the soldiers said they didn’t want a kid getting in the way. It was Max, he reminded them, who was the reason they were all there, and it was Max who knew his way in and out of the fort. If they wanted any kind of target appreciation, then Max was the one who could give it them. And once Max had told them how he got into the fort, through the Devil’s Breath, the men smiled. That was too tough, they had laughed, even for the SAS.

Time and weather were against them.

The helicopters flew low and fast, but the rain still stung Max’s legs. The Namibian soldiers had told them that in less than an hour the mightiest of storms was going to break over the mountains. The helicopters would be unable to fly, and there’d be flash floods that would swamp the ground. Then there could be no attack.

So, there wasn’t going to be time to go in through any back door; they would assault the main building, with Mr. Peterson and Max with two of the SAS soldiers and four Namibian desert troops going straight into the main hangar. The other helicopters would have two SAS men in each, leading the local soldiers.

Priority one-stop Shaka Chang.

Priority two-rescue Tom Gordon.

It had to be that way. Thousands of lives were at stake.

The Namibian and South African governments had already sent troops to the dam, but nobody knew whether they would get there in time, nor whether Shaka Chang had any kind of remote device to open the dam’s gates. And even if he realized his plan had been discovered, he could still commit an act of vengeance and disappear.