scratched his head before he admitted, "Fifteen hours."
"Has Big Dolly got that sort of endurance?" Nicholas wanted to know.
"Extra tanks. Seventy-one thousand kilos of fuel. Even with the load you
have given us, we can get there and back without refuelling." He was
interrupted by the huge hangar doors rolling open, and a heavy truck
being driven through. "That will be Fred and Sapper now." Jannie swigged
the last of his coffee and hugged Mara. She giggled, and her bosom
quivered like a snowfield on the point of an avalanche.
The truck parked at the far end of the hangar, where. an array of
equipment and stores was already neatly stacked, ready for loading. When
Fred climbed down from the cab, Jannie introduced him to Royan. He was a
younger version of the father, already beginning to spread around the
waist, and with an open bucolic face, more like a Karroo sheep farmer
than a commercial pilot.
"That's the last truckload." Sapper came around the front of the truck
and shook Nicholas's hand. "All set to begin loading."
"I want to take off before four 'clock tomorrow morning. That will get
us into our rendezvous at the optimum time tomorrow evening,'Jannie cut
in. "We have a bit of work to do, if we are going to get some sleep
before we leave." He gestured to the pallets waiting to be loaded.
I wanted to get some of the local lads to give a hand with the loading,
but Sapper wouldn't hear of it."
"Quite right," Nicholas agreed, "The fewer who are in on this, the
merrier. Let's get cracking."
The cargo had been prepacked on the steel pallets, secured with heavy
nylon strapping and covered with cargo netting. There were thirty-six
loaded pallets, and the canvas packs containing the parachutes formed an
integral part of each load. This huge Cargo would require two separate
flights to ferry it all across to Africa.
Royan called out the contents of each pallet from the typed manifest,
while Nicholas checkd it against the actual load. Nicholas and Sapper
had worked out the loads carefully to ensure that the items that would
be required first were on the initial flight. Only when he was Certain
that each pallet was complete in every detail id he signal to Fred, who
was operating the forklift. Fred ran the arms into the slots of the
pallet and lifted it, then he drove it out of the hangar and up the ramp
of the Hercules.
In the hold of the enormous aircraft, jannie and Sapper helped Fred to
position each pallet precisely on the rollers and then strap it down
securely. The last part of the cargo to go aboard was the small
front-end-loading tractor.
Sapper had found this in a secondhand yard in York, and after testing it
exhaustively declared it to be a "steal'. Now he drove this up the ramp
under its own power, and lovingly strapped it down to the rollers.
The -tractor made up almost a third of the total weight of the entire
shipment, but it was the one item that Sapper considered essential if
they were to complete the earthworks for the dam in the time that
Nicholas had stipulated.
He had calculated that it would require a cluster of five cargo
parachutes to get the heavy tractor back to earth without damage. Fuel
for it would of course present a problem, and the bulk of the second
cargo would be made up of dieseline in special nylon tanks that could
withstand the impact of an airdrop.
it was after midnight before the aircraft was loaded with the first
shipment. The remaining pallets were still stacked against the hangar
wall awaiting Big Dolly's return for the second flight. Now they could
turn their full attention to the farewell banquet of island specialities
that Mara had laid out for the ' in the tiny Africair office.
"Yes," Jannie assured them, I she's also a good cook," and gave Mara a
loving squeeze as she rested her bosom on his shoulder, leaning over him
to refill his plate with calamari.
"Happy landings!" Nicholas gave them the toast in red Chianti.
"Eight hours between the throttle and the bottle," jannie apologized, as
he drank the toast in Coca-Cola.
They lay down their clothes to get a few hours' sleep on the bunks
bolted to the bulkhead behind the flight deck, but it seemed to Royan
that she was woken only a few minutes later by the quiet voices of the
two pilots completing their pre-take-off checks, and the whine of the
starters on the huge turbo-prop engines. As Jannie spoke on the radio to
the control tower, and Fred taxied out to the holding point, the three
passengers climbed out of their bunks and strapped themselves into the
folding seats down the side of the main cabin. Big Dolly climbed into
the night sky and the lights of the island dwindled and were swiftly
lost behind them. Then there was only the dark sea below and the bright
pricking of the stars above. Royan turned her head to smile at Nicholas
in the dim overhead lights of the cabin.
"Well, Taita, we are back on court for the final set." Her voice was
tight with excitement.
"The one good thing about being forced to sneak about like this is that
Pegasus may take a while to find out that we are back in the Abbay
gorge." Nicholas looked complacent.
"Let's hope that you are right." Royan held up her right hand and
crossed her fingers. "We will have enough to worry about with what Taita
has in store for us, without Pegasus muscling in on us again just yet."
They are on their way back to Ethiopia," said von Schiller with utter
certainty.
"How can we be certain of that, Herr von Schiller?" Nahoot asked.
Von Schiller glared at him. The Egyptian irritated him intensely, and he
was beginning to regret having employed him. Nahoot had made very little
headway in deciphering the meaning of the engravings on the stele that
they had taken from the monastery.
The actual translation had offered no insurmountable problems. Von
Schiller was convinced that he could have done this work himself,
without Nahoot's assistance, given time and the use of his extensive
library of reference works.
It comprised, for the most part, nonsensical rhymes and extraneous
couplets out of place and context. One face of the stele was almost
completely covered by columns of letters and figures that bore no
relation whatsoever to the text on the other three faces of the column.
But although Nahoot would not admit it, it was clear that the underlying
meaning behind most of this had eluded him. Von Schiller's patience was
almost exhausted.
He was tired of listening to Nahoot's excuses, and to promises that were
never fulfilled. Everything about him, from his oily ingratiating tone
of voice to his sad eyes in their deep lined sockets, had begun to annoy
him. But especially he had come to detest his exasperating habit of
questioning the statements that he, Gotthold von Schiller, made.
"General Obeid was able to inform me of their exact flight arrangements
when they left Addis Ababa. It was very simple to have my security men
at the airport when they arrived in England. Neither Harper nor the
woman are the kind of people that are easily overlooked, even in a
crowd. My men followed the woman to Cairo-'
"Excuse me, Herr von Schiller, but why did you not have her taken care