The Nemesis Program (Ben Hope) (33 page)

Roberta turned to the keyboard and started tapping. ‘How’d you spell that? Hold on, got it.’

‘Okay, now feed the coordinates through to the main system so I can set a fresh course.’ Moments later, the gadgetry showed up the data on the panel in front of him.

‘We may have a problem,’ he said.

Roberta gulped. ‘Uh, I thought we already had a problem.’

‘That was the old problem of what would happen when we reached the air command base,’ he said. ‘This is the new problem of what’s going to happen
before
we get there.’

‘Before?’ she said, puzzled.

‘We left India with just enough fuel to get to Medan,’ Ben said. ‘But Pekanbaru is two hundred miles further inland. We can’t go that far.’

She blinked. ‘What happens then?’

‘The plane can’t stay up without fuel,’ he said, looking at her.

‘You mean … we’re going to
crash?
’

Ben clenched his jaw. ‘Only if they don’t shoot us down first.’

Chapter Forty-Eight

Minutes passed without anyone speaking, then more minutes. By now they had overflown the Sumatra coastline and were heading inland over the undulating green landscape. Here and there scattered buildings, small towns, industrial installations and swathes of decimated tropical forest passed under the shadow of the little ST-1 and its hulking escorts.

‘You have to
do
something,’ Daniel finally groaned in a shaky voice.

Ben activated the radio again. ‘This is Sierra Indigo four-two-nine-oh. We’re getting low on fuel here. Request to divert course to a nearer landing site. Come back. Over.’

Moments later the message came back.
‘Negative, Sierra Indigo four-two-nine-oh. Proceed on course as instructed. Over.’

‘That might be a little easier said than done, boys,’ Ben muttered, looking at the dwindling fuel gauge.

There was a tense silence in the cockpit that lasted a long time. Roberta was gripping the arm rests of the co-pilot seat so tightly that her fingers were white. Daniel was pacing nervously up and down the passenger aisle, chewing at his nails. Ben stared fixedly ahead in silence as his mind raced frantically. All the while, the F16s remained steadily either side, guiding them inexorably away from their original flight path. After thirty more fraught minutes, Medan passed by, far out of sight, several miles to the northeast.

And soon afterwards Ben’s blood went a little colder as he saw that his fuel calculations had been all too accurate – his last chance of a margin of error was gone. The gauge was dropping lower and lower into the danger zone with every passing minute.

They weren’t going to make it.

He tried the radio one more time. ‘Unable to reach destination. I repeat, unable to reach destination. Require alternative landing within’ – glancing at the constantly-diminishing fuel readout – ‘within ten miles. Situation urgent. Over.’

Once again, the inflexible reply rasped in his earpiece.
‘Sierra Indigo four-two-nine-oh, you have been warned. Any deviation off course will entail serious consequences. Over.’

‘Well?’ Roberta asked breathlessly.

Ben shook his head. ‘They won’t play ball. They think we’re pulling a trick on them, and they know we can touch down in places they can’t. We make one false move, they’re going to assume we’re taking evasive action and they’ll open fire.’

‘Oh, Jesus. There has to be something we can do. What’s that beeping?’

The amber warning light that had been flashing for some time on the instrument panel was now pulsing an angry red.

‘Critical fuel alert,’ Ben said. ‘This is it. Daniel,’ he yelled over his shoulder, ‘for Christ’s sake, stop pacing and buckle yourself into a seat back there.’

Roberta had tears of terror in her eyes. ‘Ben—’

‘We’re going to be fine,’ he said, keeping his own rising fear out of his voice. He glanced down out of the cockpit window. A solid green canopy of trees was racing by in a blur beneath them. All around were rolling hills and deep wooded valleys. He’d lost track of their position. All he knew was that there was nowhere to touch safely down. Nowhere at all …

That was when the port engine stuttered, coughed and then died. The left-side propeller was suddenly, horribly, static. The high-pitched beeping seemed to become more shrilly insistent. The red light flashed like a pulse of pain. Ben felt the shocking imbalance of the crippled aircraft through the controls and wrestled to stop the left wing from dipping downwards.

‘Oh my God!’ Roberta gasped. A cry of panic came from the rear as Daniel huddled in his seat.

‘I can hold it,’ Ben said through gritted teeth. But he knew he couldn’t. The gauges were in a flurry. The aircraft was losing altitude and no force on earth could keep its nose from slanting downwards in a shallow dive. The alarm was piercing his ears. He smashed the red warning light with his fist, but the shrill beeping kept on.

Then the starboard engine cut out too. Ben turned to stare in grim dismay at the stalled propeller.

In the awful silence, the ST-1 began to fall out of the air.

Ben’s radio earpieces were immediately buzzing with warning commands to stay on course. He tore the headset off and flung it away. His heart was icy cold. Every muscle in his body locked tight. They were going down and there was nothing he could do.

The stricken aircraft skimmed the treetops in a steepening dive, raking the upper branches with a violent crackling that sounded like the belly of the fuselage being ripped away. Then suddenly, just as it seemed they were about to plunge into the thick of the trees and be dashed to pieces in a fireball of exploding aviation fuel, the green canopy that was rushing up to meet them disappeared. In its place a vast, panoramic stretch of water came into view up ahead, twinkling in the sunlight and dotted with small islands.

Now Ben realised where he was. Lake Toba. A hundred kilometres long and thirty wide. The largest volcanic lake in the world, site of an enormous eruption seventy thousand years ago. He’d read about it once. Just never thought he’d have to ditch an aircraft into it.

This was it. Their one chance of survival. How slender a chance, they were about to find out.

‘Brace yourselves!’ he yelled.

Seeing their captive break off course, the F16s took instant action. With lightning agility and a deafening sonic boom from their jets they peeled off and looped upwards, barrelling over, then came arcing back at terrifying speed towards the stricken turboprop. Inside their cockpits, the pilots were arming their weapons, ready to blast their target to pieces.

Ben barely even registered the jets streaking into attack position. All he could see were the sun-dappled waters of the lake hurtling towards him. He fought to keep the nose of the falling aircraft at a shallow angle to lessen the impact.

Getting closer … closer. Racing across the water, almost touching.

Roberta screamed.

And then they hit.

Chapter Forty-Nine

The force of the crash landing hurled them harshly against their seatbelts as the aircraft’s nose cleaved the lake like a bullet and the cockpit windows were plunged underwater. For a fraction of an instant Ben thought he’d touched down at too steep an angle, and that they were going to flip over and break apart.

But no, the plane’s nose surged up and they managed to stay level, their wings ploughing the surface in a storm of white spray. The roar of the water bursting against their sides was enormous and it seemed impossible for the juddering aircraft to hold together. Out of the cockpit window, Ben caught a glimpse of one of the lake’s volcanic islands looming horrifyingly close towards them as they skimmed across the water, and braced himself for the crunch against the rocks.

It never came. The crashed plane quickly slowed to a halt a few metres from the island and the churned-up surface of the lake settled around it, immediately beginning to suck it down. Still half-stunned, Ben looked down and saw the water pouring into the cockpit, rising fast.

He hammered his seatbelt release button with his fist and twisted round towards Roberta, who was hanging limp against her belt, her eyes half shut. The warm, foaming water was up to the instrument panel now, the electricals sparking and popping as they shorted out. Ben released Roberta from her belt and shook her by the shoulders. Her eyes opened and looked at him.

‘Are you all right?’ he yelled, but his words were drowned out by a deafening screeching roar as the F16s swooped down low over the lake and passed right overhead, holding their fire. In an instant they were gone, two black specks streaking into the distance.

Roberta nodded. ‘I’m okay,’ she murmured.

Now that they hadn’t been pummelled to pieces by rotary cannon munitions, Ben focused on getting himself and Roberta safely out of the sinking aircraft. And Daniel, too. He was struggling in a panic to release his seatbelt clasp as the water level gained. Ben opened it for him and hauled him roughly out of his seat. ‘Move,’ he grunted. Spotting his old green bag, he grabbed it and slung it over his shoulder. He and that bag had travelled a long way together and he wasn’t about to be parted from it, even if it hadn’t contained the best part of fifteen thousand euros.

The front of the plane was going down first. Already the cockpit was almost completely submerged, and the mid-section of the slanting fuselage was thigh-deep as they waded towards the hatchway. Ben yanked the emergency lever and shouldered the door open against the weight of the water. Torrents cascaded in through the open hatch. Ben grabbed Daniel and the Swede was forced out first with a squawk and a splash. Then, keeping a tight grip around Roberta’s waist, he jumped with her into the tepid water.

Foot by foot, the ST-1 slipped underwater behind them as they struggled the short distance to the island. Ben pulled Roberta clear of the water and went back for Daniel, who was floundering a few yards away, gasping and choking. As he dragged him bodily up onto the black lava rock, Ben glanced back to see the tail of the ST-1 disappear with a final gurgle and a surge of bubbles.

The three of them sat on the rocks, dripping. Above them, the volcanic island loomed a hundred feet up, patchy vegetation and trees shading them from the sun.

‘There goes Ruth’s plane,’ Roberta said wistfully, gazing at the spot where the aircraft had sunk.

‘Yup,’ Ben said.

‘It was worth a lot of money, wasn’t it?’

‘Yup,’ he said again.

‘Don’t suppose there’s any chance of getting it out of there, is there?’

‘Nope.’

‘I guess we’re stranded here now,’ she said glumly. ‘Who knows when anyone might come to pick us up.’

Ben scanned the sky. ‘I don’t think we’ll be waiting long. Those pilots will have radioed in to report that we went down. The military won’t waste time coming to scoop us up.’

Daniel had gone very quiet, sitting with his arms clasped around his knees.

‘What do we do? Make a break for it?’ Roberta pointed across the lake. ‘It wouldn’t be a problem, if I could swim.’

‘Not much point in trying,’ Ben said. ‘Even if we could all make it across to the other side, we wouldn’t get far before they caught up with us.’ He felt in his sodden pockets, took out his cigarettes and tossed the saturated mess away with a sigh. Turning instead to his bag, he undid the straps and took out the components of the AR-15 rifle. The plastic-wrapped stacks of banknotes at the bottom of the bag were still dry.

‘You’re going to make your stand here?’ Daniel said, like a line from a movie, looking up with a frown as Ben got to his feet holding the dismantled weapon.

Ben smiled coldly. ‘I’m not expecting a whole regiment of crack troops,’ he said. ‘But even so, I don’t think we’d come out of it so well, do you? The last time we were in a fight, you ran away.’ He stepped up onto a large, flat rock that overhung the shore and hurled the rifle’s curved black magazine as far as he could into the lake. It hit with a splash, followed by two more splashes as the weapon’s lower and upper action segments went the same way. ‘Now your pistol,’ he said to Daniel, extending his hand for the Colt Commander.

‘I lost it in the crash,’ Daniel said.

Ben nodded. ‘Fine. Then all we can do now is wait.’

They didn’t have to wait long. Less than half an hour went by before the silence of Lake Toba was broken by the thump of an approaching helicopter. Ben shielded his eyes and looked up to watch it coming: an obsolete French Aérospatiale SA 330 Puma troop transport in Indonesian Air Force markings. Like most of the tin-pot military forces of the world, the Indonesians cobbled their armament together out of whatever old iron other nations cast off.

The helicopter descended into a low hover fifty yards from the island, creating a broad circle of choppy water. An outboard dinghy splashed down from its open hatch and four soldiers were lowered on board toting their Pindad assault rifles. The dinghy sped towards the island.

‘For better or worse, here we go,’ Ben said, standing up.

The soldiers piled out onto the shore, weapons shouldered. Ben, Roberta and Daniel were forced at gunpoint into the dinghy. The outboard rasped them back to the hovering chopper, where a rope ladder dangled for them to clamber up.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ Ben said in Roberta’s ear over the noise of the rotor blast. She smiled uncertainly, then brushed her wind-tousled hair away from her face and unexpectedly leaned forward and kissed him before grabbing hold of the swaying ladder.

Ben felt helpless and anxious as he watched her climb up towards the waiting hands of the soldiers who pulled her on board the Puma. Daniel was next, Ben last, prodded in the back by a rifle barrel. One of the soldiers snatched up his green bag. The ladder was retracted, the dinghy winched up; then the helicopter climbed, turned and flew away towards the command base at Pekanbaru.

Chapter Fifty

After forty minutes in the air, the military Puma came whirring down to rest on a helipad within the razor-wire perimeter of the air force base. The soldiers had been laughing and joking among themselves for most of the way and paying little attention to their three captives. Ben was more and more certain that they’d be released after little more than a routine questioning, made to fork out for an emergency visa and maybe a fine or two, and given some dire warnings about ever flying without permission within Indonesian airspace again.