David Leadbeater - Caribbean Gold

Alicia waved across the water at Crouch’s pilot. “Fire her up!”

Jensen’s last seaplane, the fourth, was also winding her engines up now and Alicia motioned Healey inside and then to the controls.

“Not sure about this crazy idea!” he cried.

“Two are better than one,” she answered back.

Healey jumped inside and slammed the door at his back. The water around them was scattered with struggling and dead mercs, all heading for the fourth plane, a surviving dinghy, or even to shore. One of the dinghies floated in a heap, riddled with bullets.

“Jensen’s not even here,” Russo was saying. “They’re fleeing and it’s now a rout.”

“He got what he came for,” Alicia said, “and decided not to hang around.”

“Man’s a pirate all right. Through and through.”

Alicia shook her head slightly, watching Healey and the other pilot through the glass of the cockpit. The man looked like he was ready to take off. Their other plane was taxiing through the waves, faster and faster. Healey goosed the throttle and shot forward. Plumes and showers of water arced through the air. Alicia strapped in as Healey poured on the speed and then took off right behind their other seaplane with Crouch and Caitlyn aboard. As soon as they were level the soldiers unbuckled and readied their weapons. Both enemy seaplanes were out of sight for the moment, but Alicia expected them to return.

Unless they decided to run.

Doubtful , she thought. The battle had been hard-fought so far.

They banked and came around, their vision suddenly filled with an approaching plane. Healey dove fast and Alicia lost her balance, falling to one knee. The eyebrow she arched toward Healey said it all.

Healey grimaced. “Saved your life.”

“Just check the rearview mirror next time, eh?”

They came around, and Alicia caught a momentary glimpse of all four seaplanes leaning through the air, making wide turns and attempting to hold onto their bearings. As the planes leveled out, rifles and handguns popped out of windows and some of the more adventurous men opened doors and slithered onto the pontoons. Alicia shook her head at the two that weren’t anchored inside.

“Death wish.”

Healey took a target and came alongside. Alicia zeroed in on the pilot, but the buffeting winds and shifting metal hull sent her shot wide. Still, other targets were hit as the two planes blasted past each other. Russo, alongside her, winced to see a man fall and end up dangling from his harness beneath the plane.

“Poor bastard.”

Alicia said nothing, but tended to agree. They might be enemies, these men, but nobody wanted to see them suffer. She watched Crouch’s plane scream alongside the other enemy craft, propellers whining, engines screaming, and saw windows blown out on either side. All four planes descended toward the rippling waters as if wary of the next pass and adding odds to their chances of survival.

Alicia steadied her aim with the window frame, wedged her body into the small space as best she could, and breathed easily. The peril, the skies, the entire Caribbean faded away until it was the gun barrel and her target. She fired hard as the other plane approached, bullets raking the cockpit and sending the pilot slamming back into his seat.

Instantly, the seaplane veered toward them, the pontoons growing bigger, men at the windows increasing in size. Healey jerked the controls violently, gaining space. The tip of a wing slammed past the bottom of their hull, shredding metal like paper, and then fell away, the enemy plane falling like a rock. Healey’s eyes were wide.

“Ah, shit, that’s bad.”

Alicia turned on him. “How bad?”

“We’re definitely gonna crash, I just don’t know how bad.”

“Bollocks.”

Alicia watched Crouch and the other pilot engaged in an aerial dogfight, bullets strafing the skies. Loud pings and the wrench of metal could be heard even over the plane noise. The seaplane they’d shot down hit the waves at that moment, even as Healey struggled, bits of white wing and nosecone, propeller and rear wing shredding and grinding away. The craft somersaulted and then started to sink slowly; several pairs of arms and shoulders visibly swimming away.

“Hey, that’s encouraging.” Russo squinted down.

“Not for us, dumbass,” Alicia grated. “They’re daft enough to sit down there and wait for us.”

Russo shrugged. “I think, by now, they’ll all have figured out Jensen left them behind.”

“Let’s hope.”

“Shut up,” Healey said then. “And strap in. We’re doing this right now.”

As Alicia scrambled to find a seat the young soldier lost a good chunk of altitude, sending her stomach soaring. The blue expanse of the sea appeared in all their horizons as Healey leveled off.

He turned them toward the beach.

“What if you overshoot?” Russo grumbled.

“Then we’ll be deader than we would be if we hit the waves wrong.”

“Your friggin’ pilot manner needs some work, kid.”

Healey hauled back on the controls, leveled out the pontoons and cut the engine. The floats hit the relatively flat water hard, skipped, then came down again. Alicia felt like she was fighting her seatbelt, jerked back and forth, ribs bruised and chafed where the material ground against her. The plane skipped again, losing a lot of momentum, and then ran up the beach, furrowing in hard. The final jounce shook every bone in her body and made her teeth rattle, but the craft came to a sudden stop and they were all still alive.

Unbuckling and leaning forward, she clapped Healey hard on the shoulder. “Well done, Zack.”

“No worries.”

Immediately shrugging off the landing and the tension, the soldiers acted fast, focusing on the next potential events where mercs might even now come after them. Alicia flung open the doors of the plane and leapt down, gun up. Russo followed suit on the other side and Healey scrambled after them.

The beach was empty, the waters clear. No mercs lay in wait for them.

Alicia looked to the skies. “Oh fuck, here comes Crouch.”

Alicia almost ducked as the seaplane carrying Crouch and Caitlyn zoomed overhead and whipped the tops of trees as it rose, closely followed by the second merc craft. Alicia was quick to raise her gun and fire up into the dirty metal underside, ripping several holes as it passed by. Russo was a second slower but just as effective.

Healey flexed his fingers, shrugged his shoulders and looked for his gun.

“C’mon, Healey,” Alicia growled. “Get your bloody act together.”

The wry glare showed just how shook up he was.

Above, Crouch’s seaplane looped around and once more skimmed the trees. Alicia saw the pilot’s face and then the sudden angle of descent.

“Oh hell, he’s landing.”

“They’ll be sitting ducks!” Healey cried.

“They know that. Something must be damaged.” Alicia quickly cast around for an answer, saw an intact dinghy and raced for it. “Keep on hounding the mercs’ plane!”

She raced off, but at that moment the mercs’ plane itself roared overhead, and made Alicia almost pull up. The angle of descent was beyond harsh, the beach itself was beckoning. She reasoned that at least one of their bullets must have caused a great deal of damage. Smoke billowed from the engine.

A man jumped, landing hard in the shallows, and lay unmoving as Alicia watched. The plane then nose-dived into the beach, huge shards of it breaking off and catapulting toward the sea where it would sink and lie and eventually merge with all the old shipwrecks. More men claimed by the depths. An explosion and a fireball sent her diving to the ground. The groan of wreckage and not survivors told her the cost of the crash.