Wilbur Smith - Assegai

‘Suck in!’ he shouted, and primed the carburettor. The machine seemed as eager for the hunt as he was. The engines caught and fired on the first swing of the propeller. While he waited for them to run up to full operating temperature he peered up at the sky. From the clouds he saw that a stiff breeze was coming in from the ocean, blowing straight down the short, narrow runway. It was the perfect wind for take-off. It seemed as though the gods of the chase were already smiling on him.

Loikot and Ishmael climbed into the cockpit, and when Manyoro scrambled up behind them, it seemed as though there was not enough space for all of them. He eased open the throttles and the Butterfly rolled forward. The Masai porters on the wing-tips swung her around to line up on the runway and then, as he opened the throttles wide, they shoved with all their strength on the trailing edges of the wings. The Butterfly accelerated away swiftly, but not swiftly enough, for she was still under her flying speed as they came to the end of the runway and the cliff face dropped away. Leon’s instinct for survival warned him to stand hard on the wheel brakes and save them from the plunge, but he went against it and kept all the throttles pressed hard up against the stops. The engines were howling in full power, and at that moment he felt a stronger blast of air hit his face. It was a freak, a stray unlooked-for gust. He felt it get under the Butterfly ’s wings and give her a gentle lift. For a moment he thought even that was not enough. He felt one wing drop as she staggered on the edge of stalling and forced her nose down mercilessly. He felt her bite into the wind and suddenly they were flying. He kept her nose down as his airspeed rocketed to a hundred knots, then eased back on the control wheel. She climbed away gamely, but he was panting with fear. For a moment they had been on the verge of death.

He put the fear behind him and looked ahead. They all saw it at the same time: the enormous silver fish gleaming in the early sunlight. He thought he had been prepared for his first sight of her, but he discovered he was not. The sheer size of the Assegai astonished Leon. It was several hundred feet below the Butterfly and had almost passed their position. A few minutes more and they would have lost her for ever. But the Butterfly was in a perfect position for him to close with her. He was above and behind her, sitting perfectly in her blind spot. He pushed the nose down and went for her. As he closed with her swiftly she seemed to balloon in size until she filled his entire field of vision. He saw that one of the forward motors was already out of commission, the propeller standing upright as rigidly as a sentry on guard duty. The two rear engines were mounted in their gondolas just below and abaft the passenger and cargo cabin. He was so intrigued that he almost forgot to give his crew the order to deploy the entangling net.

He knew that this was one of the most critical moments of the plan. It would have been so easy to entangle his own tail skid or landing gear as the net spread out behind him. But the easterly monsoon wind pushed its heavy folds gently to one side so that they streamed out perfectly four hundred feet behind the Butterfly . He let her slide down the side of the airship’s gas chamber, overtaking slowly until he was flying level with the observation cabin and command bridge.

It came as a shock to see live human beings behind the glass windows. Somehow the airship had seemed to have a monstrous life of its own, entirely divorced from anything human. Yet there was Graf Otto von Meerbach only fifty feet away, glaring at him with an expression of outrage, his mouth working silently as he shouted obscenities that were lost in the thunder of the engines. Then he spun around and ran to man the machine-gun mounted in the angle of the bridge.

Leon froze with shock when he saw Eva standing behind the German. For an instant he was looking into her deep violet eyes as she stared back at him in bewilderment. Graf Otto was working the loading bolt and traversing the fat water-cooled jacket of the gun towards him. Leon roused himself and put the wing of the Butterfly hard over just as Graf Otto fired the first burst. The tracer bullets arced out towards him, but Leon cut sharply across the front of the airship’s control bridge. The burst of tracer flew high and behind him.

The Assegai ’s two rear engines were hanging down vulnerably below the keel. Leon glanced back at the long line of netting trailing behind the Butterfly , and then, judging the relative angles and speed of the two aircraft finely, he dragged the net across the spinning propeller blades of the airship’s engines. They snatched up the folds and wound them almost instantly into tight balls that smothered them. It had happened so quickly that he was almost taken off guard.

‘Let fly!’ Leon screamed at Manyoro, who reacted swiftly, heaving with both hands on the release handle. The retaining hooks opened, allowing the heavy rope to drop away cleanly, an instant before it could pluck the Butterfly from the sky. The airship’s huge fishtail rudder brushed their upper wing as it passed over them. And then the Butterfly was free and clear. Leon brought her around and climbed back into the position above and behind the Assegai , keeping in her blind spot. The burst of tracer from the Maxim machine-gun had come too close. He would not make that mistake again.

He watched smoke billow from the airship’s rear engines. The netting and heavy drag lines were so deeply tangled in the propeller bosses and other moving parts that both had seized up and cut out. The Assegai was no longer responding to her helm. The single forward engine did not have the power to hold her against the cross-wind of the monsoon and she began to pay off sharply and drift straight for the rocky cliff face of Lonsonyo Mountain. The helmsman was running her with the throttle wide open and the strain was too much. Now the surviving engine started to blow blue smoke from under her cowling as it overheated.

Graf Otto ran across the control room, grabbed the helmsman by the shoulders and flung him aside. He crashed into the window head first and dropped to the deck, blood pouring from his broken nose. Graf Otto seized the wheel and looked up at the cliffs. They were only half a mile away, at least a thousand feet below the summit, and the only way to avoid colliding with them was to inflate the gas chambers to their utmost and take her up as fast as she would climb and try to skim over the top. He reached for the valve control and pulled it wide open. Instead of a rush of hydrogen squealing through the inlet pipes, there was a weak hiss, and although the airship shuddered, she rose only sluggishly.

‘Hydrogen tanks are flat!’ he screamed with frustration. ‘We blew off all the gas in the desert, fighting against the khamsin. We’ll never make it. We’re going to run full into the cliff. We’ll have to jump! Ritter, get out the parachutes. There are enough for all of us.’

Ritter led a rush for the storeroom behind the bridge and they started to fling the parachute packs through the door into a pile on the deck. There was a panic-driven scramble as the men fought over them. Graf Otto shouldered them out of his way and grabbed one in each hand. He ran back to Eva. ‘Put this on.’

‘I don’t know how to do it,’ she protested.

‘Well, you have about two minutes to learn,’ he told her grimly, and slipped the harness over her shoulders. ‘As soon as you’re clear of the airship you must count to seven, then pull this cord. The parachute will do the rest.’ He pulled the straps of the harness tightly across her chest. ‘As soon as you hit the ground, open these buckles and get rid of the chute.’ He buckled on his own parachute and day pack, then dragged her to the doorway, which was already blocked with men fighting to get out.