In two big steps, Davis was at the opposite side of the cabin securing the cargo door. An engine coughed to life as another bullet smacked into the cabin. The old aluminum skin was no match for high-velocity rounds. When Davis reached the flight deck, Boudreau was cranking the starboard engine, running the port side up to power. His hands were flying over the levers.
“I found Achmed,” Davis shouted.
“Where?”
“I’ll tell you later! Go!”
The airplane was positioned well at one end of the strip, pointed straight down the open runway. Score one for Boudreau’s forethought. Davis felt a surge as both engines roared to full power, but the sound wasn’t loud enough to overcome the crackle of small-arms fire. Rain began smacking the windshield, big fat drops that sounded like stones as they hammered the Plexiglas. The picture outside was madness, a dozen child soldiers wasting ammunition, officers shouting and waving directions as they tried to keep order. Davis caught a glimpse of Achmed, still crouched next to the hut. He was banging on the breech of his weapon like it had jammed.
“I hope you got that cargo door closed,” Boudreau shouted. “She don’t fly too good with it hanging.”
“I got it,” Davis said, falling into the right seat as the airplane bottomed out on a pothole.
They were gaining speed, bouncing over water-filled ruts. The tree line at the end of the clearing was tall and coming on fast.
“Flaps to twenty,” Boudreau ordered.
Davis found the lever and yanked it into the right notch. He watched the gauge as the flaps drove slowly to the commanded position, and hoped it would provide enough lift. The trees were getting closer, seeming to grow taller every second. The visibility was increasingly obscured as thickening sheets of rain pelted the windshield. Davis checked the airspeed indicator and saw eighty knots, barely accelerating. They were committed to a takeoff, no room to stop. The airplane was going to go over the trees or into them.
Boudreau pushed forward on the control column, and the nose of the airplane fell ever so slightly. Then he pulled back and Davis felt the nose inch upward, but the trend was mushy and unconvincing. He sensed the landing gear lift up from the dirt, but then drop again and bounce. The gunfire was no longer an issue — that was behind them — but the trees out front would kill them just as surely. He looked over and saw Boudreau fighting the controls. He wished the skipper would give an order, come up with some long-forgotten trick to save the day. He didn’t say a thing.
A hundred yards from the treeline, the main gear lifted again, but it wasn’t going to be enough. The forest canopy filled the windscreen. It looked almost black now in the thickening downpour, a massive shadow a hundred feet high. The angle of escape was impossible. Maybe you could do it in an F-16, stand on your tail in full after-burner. But never in a vintage DC-3. Davis looked for a soft patch in the green-black wall, ready to grab the controls and steer toward it. He saw nothing but jungle, thick and impenetrable.
Then, seconds from crashing into the forest, the airplane was struck by something else.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Thunderstorms, for all their apparent chaos, are quite predictable in design. In the downpour stage, air and water rush down from a central column, hit the earth, and flow uniformly outward in a shape resembling an inverted mushroom. At the base are horizontal wind flows known as microbursts, sudden gusts that can reach hurricane force. Davis knew all about the phenomenon because it had caused any number of spectacular aviation disasters. A gust of wind, though, irrespective of severity, is a relative event. One that comes from behind your airplane causes a loss of airspeed, never a good thing when close to the ground. The gust that struck at that moment, fortunately, was quite the opposite.
Davis watched the airspeed indicator jump from ninety knots to a hundred and fifty in a matter of seconds. This increase in airflow gave the airplane all the aerodynamic purchase it needed, and it seemed to levitate as if riding on some invisible elevator. Davis felt a mild impact as they clipped something, and then the world disappeared in a gray curtain of swirling cloud and rain.
Boudreau reverted to the instruments, flying blind, and Davis did the same. He paid particular attention to the altimeter. Two hundred feet above the ground and steady. Then a torturously slow climb. Three minutes later they had a thousand feet between their wheels and the jungle.
An ashen Boudreau looked over, and said, “Landing gear up.”
Davis reached for the gear handle, but paused.
“Did it sound to you like we hit something?”
“Yeah,” Boudreau said, “I heard it.”
“There might be a tree branch hanging from one of the gear assemblies. If we retract it now we might damage something, maybe break a hydraulic line.”
Boudreau pointed to the fuel gauge. “Yeah. But if we don’t lift it, then we leave all that drag hanging. She’ll run out of gas before the next station.” He grinned and repeated, “Landing gear up.”
The captain was right. Davis pulled up the landing gear handle and held his breath. Everything seemed to work.
“There, see?” Boudreau said. “They don’t build ’em like this anymore.”
Davis said nothing.
The flight to Kampala, Uganda, took two hours. Boudreau parked the airplane at a fixed base operator, or FBO, that was already hosting a handful of private jets. A guy holding two orange batons directed them to a parking spot and shoved chocks under their wheels, and within seconds of shutting down a fuel truck pulled up.
Once everything had been secured, Boudreau threw down the boarding stairs, had a short conversation with the fueler, then motioned for Davis to join him. They’d flown the last hop at eight thousand feet — down in the dirt by modern standards — yet even at that altitude the air in the cargo bay had gotten cooler and dryer. So when Davis stepped out onto the ramp, the humidity wrapped around him like a wet blanket.
“Time for a BDA,” Boudreau said.
BDA was Air Force for “battle damage assessment.” In the fighter world it was an inspection you performed after you departed a combat zone. You’d join up close and look over your wingman’s airplane for damage. But in a big airplane you didn’t have a wingman, so the BDA had to wait until you landed.
Boudreau pointed up, and Davis saw two bullet holes high on the fuselage. “I don’t think we’ll be anywhere near the record,” the skipper said in mock disappointment.
“What’s the record?” Davis asked.
“Ninety-one.”
“Ninety-one bullet holes?”
“Well, not all of ’em was from bullets. There was some shrapnel damage too, a rocket propelled grenade, we think.”
Davis thought, What the hell am I doing here? He said, “Terrific.”
After a full circle around the airplane, Boudreau announced, “Seventeen.”
“Not even close. Should we go back and try again?”
Boudreau grinned.
As he looked over the airplane, Davis was struck by what wasn’t going to happen. There would be no corporate incident report or diplomatic complaint. No police investigation or insurance claim. Not even a safety inquiry. He and Boudreau would top off with fuel, then fly back to Khartoum. Tonight a mechanic would put some aluminum speed tape over the bullet holes, and tomorrow the airplane would be back in service.
Boudreau leaned into the right main landing gear well. He came out with a handful of vines that had been tangled around the strut. “There’s a service door missing,” he said. “Ripped right off the damned hinges.”