hills.
Jannie would need to fly straight and level for five miles under full
flap and with the loading ramp down.
"Cutting it fine," Mek remarked, as they surveyed the rugged slopes and
frowning peaks that surrounded them.
"Can your fat friend fly?"
"Fly? He is half-bird,'Nicholas told him.
They moved down the valley to check the placement of the flares and the
markers, The markers consisted of crosses of quartz stones laid out down
the centre of the valley floor, and they would be highly visible from
the air.
Sapper was up at the head of the valley. They could see him there on the
skyline as he moved around, setting out his smoke flares to mark the
approach to the drop zone.
When Nicholas turned around and looked in the opposite direction, he
could see the two women sitting on a rock together at the far end of the
valley. Sapper had already helped them to set up their flares. These
would mark the far limit of the zone, and give Jannie a mark for his
climb out of the valley.
Nicholas then turned his attention back to Mek's men as they finished
laying out the stark white quartz markers.
Once these were all in place, Mek ordered the area to be cleared. Then,
lugging the radio, they climbed up to join Sapper on the high ground at
the head of the valley. Mek helped Nicholas string out the aerial. Then
Nicholas switched on and adjusted the gain carefully before he thumbed
the microphone.
"Big Dolly. Come in, Big Dolly!'Nicholas invited, but the static hummed
and whined.
"They must be running late." Nicholas tried not to let his disquiet
show. Jannie will be coming straight in from Malta on this run. After
the first drop he will go back to your base at Roseires and pick up the
second load. With luck, both loads should all be dropped before noon
tomorrow.
"If the fat man comes at all," Mek remarked.
Jannie is a pro," Nicholas grunted. "He will come." He held the
microphone to his lips, "Big Dolly. Do you read?
Over."
Every ten minutes he called -out into the empty echoing silence. Each
time his call went unanswered he had visions of Sudanese MiG
interceptors racing in with their missiles cocked and locked, and the
old Hercules plunging earthwards in flames.
"Come in, Big Dolly!" he pleaded, and at last a thin, scratchy voice
floated into his headset. "Pharaoh. This is Big Dolly. ETA forty-five
minutes. Standing by." Jannie's transmission was terse. He was too much
of an old hand at the smuggling game to give a hostile listener time to
fix his position.
"Big Dolly. Understand four five. Pharaoh standing by." Nicholas grinned
at Mek. "Looks like we are in business after all."
Mek heard it first. His ear was battle-tuned. In this i land, if you
wanted to go on living it paid to pick up any aircraft long before it
arrived. Nicholas was out of training, so it was almost five minutes
later that he picked up the distinctive drone of the multi-props echoing
weirdly off the Cliffs of the gorge. It was impossible to be certain of
the direction, but they shaded their eyes and stared into the west.
"There she is." Nicholas redeemed himself as he spotted the tiny dark
speck, so low as almost to blend into the background of the escarpment
wall. He nodded at Sapper.
Sapper ran out to his flares and fussed over them briefly. When he
backed away they bloomed into clouds of dense marigold-yellow smoke that
drifted out sluggishly on the light breeze. The smoke would give Jannie
the strength and direction of the wind, as well as his orientation for
the drop zone.
Nicholas lifted his binoculars and gazed towards the other end of the
narrow valley. He saw that Royan and Tessay were busy with their flares.
Suddenly crimson smoke billowed from them, and the women ran back to
their original position and stood staring up at the sky.
Nicholas called softly into the microphone. "Big Dolly.
Smoke is up. Do you have it visual?"
"Affirmative. You are visual. For what you are about to receive may you
be truly thankful." Jannie's South African accent was unmistakable as he
uttered the cheerful blasphemy.
They watched the aircraft grow in size until its wings seemed to fill
half the sky, and then its profile altered as the great wing flaps
dropped and the ramp below its belly drooped open. Big Dolly slowed her
flight so dramatically that she seemed to hang suspended on an invisible
thread from the high African sun. Slowly she came around, banking
steeply as Jannie tined her up on the smoke flares, dropping lower and
still lower, headed directly at where they stood.
With a savage roar that made all three of them duck, she passed so low
over their heads that it seemed she would wipe them off the crest.
Nicholas had a glimpse of Jannie upwarliov peering down at him from the
cockpit, a fat smile on his face and one hand raised in a laconic wave,
and then he was past.
Nicholas straightened up and watched Big Dolly sweep majestica Ily down
the centre of the valley. The first pallet dropped out of her and
plunged earthwards, until at the last moment its parachutes burst open
like a bride's bouuet. The fall of the heavy container was arrested
abruptly.
It. dangled and swung, and seconds later struck the floor of the valley
in a cloud of yellow dust and with a crash they could hear up on the
ridge. Then two more loads dropped from her, and they too hung for a
moment on their chutes before they slammed in.
Big Dolly's engines howled under full throttle and her nose lifted as
she bored for height while she passed over the crimson smoke clouds, and
then climbed out of the deadly trap of the valley. She came round in
another wide turn and lined up for the second run. Once again the
pallets dropped out of her as she roared over the quartz markers and
then climbed out over the end wall of the valley, skimming the rocky
spikes that would have clawed her down.
Six times Jannie repeated the dangerous manoeuvre, and each time he
dropped three of the heavy rectangular loads. They lay strewn down the
length of the valley, shrouded by the tumbled white silk of their own
parachutes.
As Jannie climbed away from the last pass, his voice echoed in
Nicholas's earphones. "Don't go away, Pharaoh!
I will be back." Then Big Dolly lifted her belly ramp like an old lady
hoisting her knickers and headed away westwards.
Nicholas and Mek ran down into the valley, where the monks were already
jabbering and laughing. around the pallets. Quickly the two of them took
control, sorting the men into gangs and directing them as they broke
down the loads and carried them away.
Nicholas and Sapper had planned that the pallets should be dropped in
the order that their contents would be needed. The first pallet
contained canned and dried food, all their personal effects and camping
equipment, along with those other little creature comforts that Nicholas
had allowed, including mosquito nets and a case of malt whisky. He was
relieved to see that there was no leakage from the precious case: not
one of the bottles had been broken in the drop.