Tim Lebbon - Kong - Skull Island

His own nickname was Love Child. It was probably less apt, from what little he could remember of his parents. When they weren’t fighting they were fall-down drunk, and often both at the same time. This was his real family, here and now, and he had never belonged anywhere more fully.

The turbines powered up, and Mills peered out at the storm still battering the ship. “What’d the old man get us into this time?”

“Nothing he wouldn’t do himself,” Cole said, nodding to their left. Packard was pacing around and performing pre-flight visual checks on his own Huey, helmet already on and ready to fly.

“Yeah, well,” Mills said, “there’s probably a lot of stuff that man would do I want no part of.”

Mills watched deckhands loading the final crates and supplies onto the choppers, then retreating from the flight deck. Most of the crew were already strapped into their allocated aircraft, and Randa sat behind them, their only passenger. He nursed a film camera in his lap. He seemed excited, and had already filmed the men going through their flight preparations. He said very little.

Packard was the last of the Sky Devils to board his bird.

“Ship’s turning into the wind,” Cole said. Waves smashed against the ship’s starboard side, then slowly started breaking straight over the bow as the captain turned the vessel to face the storm. Each wave impact shuddered through the ship, and they could even feel the judders on board the choppers.

“We’re really doing this,” Mills said.

“It’s easy,” Cole said. Mills thought he was probably trying to reassure himself.

Randa strolled quickly towards his waiting helicopter, Brooks on his heel. This was it. Against all the odds, this expedition was about to lift off, and once they’d punched through the clouds to the island there would be no turning back. It felt like all his life had come down to this.

“We did ask to arm those helicopters,” Brooks said. “Shouldn’t they know why?” Randa felt a surge of anger towards the younger man for breaking the moment, but he didn’t let it show.

“And raise an alarm? It’s purely a precaution, Brooks.” He slapped Brooks’s back and climbed aboard the chopper, turning to watch him, San and Nieves boarding another chopper piloted by Slivko.

He was relieved that at least he could enjoy the flight without Brooks complaining in his ear.

As deckhands untied the last of the securing lines, Conrad and Weaver ran crouched low towards Slivko’s chopper. Conrad spied Randa on the Huey with Cole and Mills, while Brooks, San and Nieves were on the Landsat aircraft. He realised that he and Weaver were late, the last two to board. That would likely raise suspicions.

Weaver pointed her camera everywhere, recording the departure even though the storm threatened to wash them all overboard. He had to admire her determination.

Once on Slivko’s helicopter they strapped themselves in and slipped on headsets. Weaver ensured her camera bag was stowed and secured beneath her seat, and she kept one camera in her lap, strapped around her left wrist.

Conrad checked his seatbelt several times.

“Come on,” Weaver said, “this is the fun part.”

“I have a preference for solid ground,” he said. “Water, at a push. Open air…?” He waved his hand from side to side.

Packard’s voice came over the radio. “Time to put on another show for the ants. Hold onto your butts, and follow my lead.”

Through the chopper’s windshield, Conrad saw Packard’s aircraft lift off, shake a little in a sudden gust, then drift away to starboard, climbing all the while. Slivko’s chopper shook as it lifted from the deck, buffeted by high winds and with blown spray and rain strafing the fuselage like machine-gun fire.

Conrad clasped his seat arms until his fingers hurt.

Six years before, he’d been in a chopper that had gone down after striking a flock of birds over Malaysia. He was the only survivor. He’d lain there for three days with the remains of the crew slowly rotting around and onto him, before rescue came. A regular soldier would have received a citation or medal for that. All he’d had was a debrief and four days’ medical leave before heading back into the field. Just because certain behaviour was expected of you didn’t mean it came easy.

“Fox Leader to Fox Group,” Packard’s voice crackled. “Grab some altitude and let’s get in formation.”

“He’s in his element,” Weaver said. She was right, Conrad could hear it in the colonel’s voice. This was his world.

“Combat spread,” Packard said. “Keep visuals. Fox Five, let me know when you’re closed.”

“Fox Five in the slot,” Cole’s calm voice replied.

“We’re gonna lose visuals, but hold course. It’s nothing we haven’t done before.”

“Comforting,” Conrad said. Looking from the side windows he could see the cliff face of the massive storm front as they approached it. Rain slashed across the windows, and twisting in his seat, he could just see the Athena behind them and below, slowly performing a wide turn as it headed away from the storm to hold position in calmer seas. Part of him wished he was still on board.

A bigger part of him—the part that kept him out here even though the war was over, the part that sought to tease death again and again for reasons he had never been able to explain—looked forward to what was to come. Once they were safely down on land, that was.

He turned back in time to see Weaver undoing her seatbelt.

“Weaver, what the hell—”

“Places to go, people to see,” she said, pushing forward between the pilot and co-pilot’s seats. They both glanced back at her. Slivko rolled his eyes and turned his attention forward again, scanning instruments and bracing himself as they approached the intimidating storm front.

It grew darker, and the chopper began to vibrate. It was a disconcerting sound and feeling, and Conrad was about to comment when they plummeted as if into a deep, dark hole.

Then the aircraft started to dance and shake through the air.

Weaver was taking pictures. Not of the outside, Conrad noticed, but of Slivko and the pilot as they nursed and jockeyed the Huey, recording their treacherous journey in stills that would speak volumes. Just visible for brief periods through the storm-lashed windscreen, he could see the flashing lights of the rest of the formation.

“You must have lived through worse than this out in the jungle,” she shouted back to Conrad.

The helicopter hit another downdraft. Conrad clasped his seat even harder.

“‘Lived’ being the operative word.”

“Dear Billy,” Slivko said. “Today I saw a hurricane and flew right into it.”

“Dear Billy,” Mills’s voice continued over the radio, “have you ever looked into the darkness and felt the cold hand of death squeeze your guts until you can’t feel your legs?”

Conrad tried to get into the jovial mood but he couldn’t. He knew this was battlefield humour, brother humour, and he was no part of this tight-knit group of warriors. The ‘Dear Billy’ thing was a private joke between them, part of the bonding gel that kept them close even when they couldn’t see each other and there was a storm striving to force them all apart. It would have kept them close in battle, too, while bullets and rockets flew.

He sometimes wished he had someone he could ‘Dear Billy’ with.

He glanced at Weaver, but she was trying to frame a photo through the windshield with the pilot’s face and helmet also in view. Looking for the shot no one had ever taken.

Maybe she’ll find it on this expedition , he thought, and a strange, gloomy foreboding settled over him. He didn’t think it was anything to do with his nervousness in the air. It was all about what might be waiting for them ahead and below, down on the ground that no one had yet explored.