Craig slowed the truck, and Sarah shouted through the window, "Soldiers coming! Big trouble! Warn everybody!
Go into the bush! Hide!" Craig had not thought that far ahead. The retaliation of the Third Brigade on the local population would be horrific. He accelerated through the village and the airstrip was a kilometer ai head the tattered windsock undulating on its pole at the far end. The Cessna was circling low overhead. Craig saw Sally-Anne lower her undercarriage and start her turn onto final approach for the landing.
"Look!" said Tungata harshly, and another aircraft came roaring in, from their 1it-hand side, low and fast, another much larger, twin-$ngined machine. Craig recognized it immediately.
It was an old Dakota transport, a veteran of the desert war in north Africa, and the bush war in Rhodesia. It was sprayed with non-reflective anti-missile grey paint and it was now decorated with the Zimbabwe Air Force round els The main hatch just abaft the wing root was open, and there were men poised in the opening. They were dressed in camouflage jump smocks and helmets. The bulky bundles of their parachutes dangled below their buttocks. Two of them were in the hatchway, but others crowded up close behind them.
"Paras!" shouted Craig, and the Dakota banked steeply towards them and passed them so low that the blast from the propellers churned the tops of the standing maize in the field beside them. As the aircraft flashed past them, Craig and Tungata simultaneously recognized one of the men in the hatchway.
"Fungabera!" Tungata snapped. "It's him! As he said it, Tungata threw open the door at his side and clambered up the outside of the cab to reach the ring mounted machine-gun. Despite his size and weakness, he was so quick that he reached the gun and swung it and got off a long burst before the Dakota was out of range. Tracer flew under the Dakota's port wing, close enough to alarm the pilot, and make him throw the aircraft into a tight climbing turn.
"They are climbing up to drop altitude!" Craig shouted.
Surely Fungabera had seen and recognized the blue and silver Cessna. He would have realized that it was the escape plane and that the truck was heading for a rendezvous at the airstrip. His paratroopers could be more swiftly deployed by dropping, than by landing the Dakota. He was going to drop in and seize the airstrip with his par as before the Cessna could take off again. A thousand feet was safe drop altitude, but these were crack troopers. The Dakota levelled out on its drop run five hundred feet, Craig estimated, and they were going to make the drop down the length of the airstrip.
The Cessna was just coming in over the fence at the far end of the strip. As Craig glanced back at her Sally-Anne touched down and then taxied at speed down the strip towards the racing Toyota.
Above the airstrip the tiny figure of a man fell clear of the lumbering Dakota and the green silk parachute flared open almost instantly. He was followed in rapid succession by a string of other par as and the sky was filled with a forest of sinister mushrooms, poisonous green and swaying gently in the light morning breeze, but sinking towards the parched brown turf of the airstrip.
The Cessna reached the end of the strip and swung around sharply in a 180-degree turn. Only then did Craig realize that Sally-Anne had been far-seeing enough to assess the danger and urgency, and that she had landed with the wind behind her, accepting the hazard of the r approach speed and the longer roll-out in order to be able immediately to turn back into the wind for her take-off which would be with a full load, and under attack from the par as
On the cab, Tungata was firing up into the sky, measured controlled bursts, hoping more to intimidate the descending par as than to inflict casualties. A man dangling on swinging parachute-shrouds makes an almost impossible target.
Sally-Anne was leaning out of the open cockpit door, shouting and waving-them on, already she was running up her engine to full power, holding the Cessna on the wheel brakes. They bumped over the verge of the runway and Craig swung the Toyota into a brake-squealing skid, parking so as to screen and protect the aircraft and themselves while they Tade the transfer.
"Get out," he yelled4 at Sarah, and she jumped down and ran to the aircraft. 4;ally-Anne grabbed her arm and helped her swing up and tumble into the back seat.
On the cab, Tungata fired a last burst with the heavy machine-gun.
The first three par as were down, their green parachutes rolling softly in front of the light breeze, and Tungata's bullets kicked dust amongst them. Craig saw one of the par as fall and drag away loose and lifeless on his shrouds. Craig grabbed the AK 47 and the bag of spare ammunition and shouted, "Let's go, Sam. Let's go!" They ran to the Cessna, and Tungata, weak and sick, fell at the steps, and Craig had to drag him to his feet and shove him up.
Sally-Anne let go d-te brakes before Tungata was aboard, and Craig ran beside the Cessna as it gathered speed.
Tungata fell into the back seat beside Sarah, and Craig jumped up and got a hold. Though he was hampered by the AK rifle and bag, he dragged himself into the front seat beside Sally-Anne.
"Get the door closed!" Sally' Anne screamed, without looking at him, all her attention on the strip ahead. The dangling seat-belt was jammed in the door and Craig wrestled with it as they built up to rotation speed. Craig managed to extricate the strap and slam the door closed.
When he looked up, he saw paratroopers sprinting forward from the edge of the strip to intercept the Cessna.
It did not need the shiny general's star on the front of his helmet to identify Peter Fungabera. The set of his shoulders, the way he carried his head, and the fluid catlike grace of his run were all distinctive. His men were spread out be hind him they were almost directly ahead of the Cessna, only four or five hundred paces ahead.