Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Supremacy

'Snake Lady, we've completely lost you! Can any retard on that mission read an air map?'

Yes, I can read one very well, Saigon. Do you think he'd go up with my team trusting any of you? Goddamnit, that's my brother down there! Fm not important to you but he is!

'You're crazy, Western man!' yelled the pilot . 'In the name of the spirits, this is a heavy aircraft and we're barely over the treetops!' 'Keep your nose up,' said Bourne, studying a map. 'Dip and grab altitude, that's all. '

That is also foolishness!' shouted the co-pilot . 'One downdraught at this level and we are into the forests! We are gone!

'The weather reports on your radio say there's no turbulence anticipated-'

'That is above? screamed the pilot . 'You don't understand the risks! Not down here?

'What was the last report out of Jinan?' asked Jason, knowing full well what it "was.

'They have been trying to track this flight to Baoding,' said the officer. They have been unable to do so for the past three hours. They are now searching the Hengshui mountains... Great spirits, why am I telling you! You heard the reports yourself! You speak better than my parents, and they were educated!'

Two points for the Republic's Air Force... Okay, take a hundred and sixty degree turn in two and a half minutes and climb to an altitude of a thousand feet. We'll be over water. '

'We'll be in range of the Japanese! They'll shoot us down!'

'Put out a white flag – or better still, I'll get on the radio. I'll think of something. They may even escort us to Kowloon. '

'Kowloon? shrieked the flight officer. 'We'll be shot?

'Entirely possible,' agreed Bourne, 'But not by me,' he added. 'You see, in the final analysis, I have to get there without you. As a matter of fact, you can't even be a part of my scene. I can't allow that. '

'You're making positively no sense!' said the exasperated pilot.

'You just make a hundred and sixty degree turn when I tell you. ' Jason studied the airspeed, calibrating the knots on the map and calculating the estimated distance he wanted. Below, through the window, he saw the coast of China fall behind them. He looked at his watch; ninety seconds had passed. 'Make your turn, Captain,' he said.

'I would have made it anyway!' cried the pilot . 'I am not the divine wind of the Kamikaze. I do not fly into my own death. '

'Not even for your heavenly government?'

'Least of all. '

Times change,' said Bourne, his concentration once more on the air map. Things change. '

'Snake lady, snake lady! Abort! If you can hear me get out of there and return to base camp. It's a no-win! Do you readme? Abort!'

'What do you want to do, Delta?'

'Keep flying, Mister. In three more minutes you can get out of here. '

'That's me. What about you and your people?'

'We'll make it. '

'You're suicidal, Delta. '

'Tell me about it... All right, everyone check your chutes and prepare for cast off. Someone help Echo, put his hand on the cord. '

'Deraisonnable!'

The airspeed held steady at close to 370 miles per hour. The route Jason chose, flying at low altitude through the

Formosa Strait – past Longhai and Shantou on the Chinese coast, and Hsinchu and Fengshan on Taiwan – was something over 1435 miles. Therefore the estimate of four hours, plus or minus minutes, was reasonable. The out islands north of Hong Kong would be visible in less than half an hour.

Twice during the flight they had been challenged by radio, once from the Nationalist garrison on Quemoy, the other from a patrol plane out of Raoping. Each time Bourne took over communications, explaining in the first instance that they were on a search mission for a disabled ship bringing Taiwanese goods into the mainland, for the second a somewhat more ominous declaration that as part of the People's Security Forces they were scouting the coast for contraband vessels that had undoubtedly eluded the Raoping patrols. For this last communication he was not only unpleasantly arrogant but also used the name and the official – highly classified – identification number of a dead conspirator who lay underneath a Russian limousine in the Jing Shan Bird Sanctuary. Whether either interrogator believed him or not was, as he expected, irrelevant. Neither cared to disturb the status quo ante. Life was complicated enough. Let things be, let them go. Where was the threat? 'Where's your equipment?' asked Jason, addressing the pilot.

'I'm flying it!' replied the man, studying his instruments, visibly snaking at each eruption of static from the radio, each reporting communication from commercial aircraft . 'As you may or may not know, I have no flight plan. We could be on a collision course with a dozen different planes!'

'We're too low,' said Bourne, 'and the visibility's fine. I'll trust your eyes not to bump into anybody. '

'You're insane? shouted the co-pilot.

'On the contrary. I'm about to walk back into sanity. Where's your emergency equipment? The way you people build things, I can't imagine that you don't have any.'

'Such as?' asked the pilot.

'Life rafts, signalling devices... parachutes. '

'Great spirits'

'Where?'

The compartment in the rear of the plane, the door to the right of the galley. '

'It's all for the officials,' added the co-pilot dourly. 'If there are problems they are supplied. '

'That's reasonable,' said Bourne. 'How else would you attend to business?'

'Madness. '

Tin going aft, gentlemen, but my gun will be pointed right back here. Keep on course, Captain. I'm very experienced and very sensitive. I can feel the slightest variation in the air, and if I do, we're all dead. Understood?'

'Maniac!'

'Tell me about it. ' Jason got up from the deck and walked back through the fuselage, stepping over his roped-up, splayed-out prisoner, who had given up the struggle to free himself, the layers of dried blood covering the wound at his left temple. 'How are things, Major?'

'I made a mistake. What else do you want?'

'Your warm body in Kowloon, that's what I want. '

'So some son of a bitch can put me in front of a firing squad?'

That's up to you. Since I'm beginning to put things together, some son of a bitch might even give you a medal if you play your cards the way you should play them. '

'You're very big with the cryptics, Bourne. What does that mean?'

'With luck, you'll find out. '

Thanks a lot!' shouted the Englishman.

'No thanks to me. You gave me the idea, sport. I asked you if, in your training, you'd learned how to fly one of these things. Do you remember what you told me?'

'What!'

'You said you only knew how to jump out of them. '

'Holy shit!'

The commando, the parachute securely strapped to his back, was bound upright between two seats, legs and hands tied together, his right hand lashed to the release cord.

'You look crucified, Major, except that the arms should be extended. '

'For God's sake, will you make sense!'

'Forgive me. My other self keeps trying to express himself. Don't do anything stupid, you bastard, because you're going out that hatch! Hear me? Understood?'

'Understood. '

Jason walked to the flight deck, sat on the deck, picked up the map and spoke to the flight officer. 'What's the check?' he asked. 'Hong Kong in six minutes if we don't "bump into anybody". '

'I have every confidence in you, but defection notwithstanding, we can't land at Kai Tak. Head north into the New

Territories. '

'Aiya!' screamed the pilot . 'We cross radar! The mad Gurkhas will fire on anything remotely mainland!'

'Not if they don't pick you up, Captain. Stay below six hundred feet up to the border, then climb over the mountains at Lo Wu. You can make radio contact with Shenzhen. '