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He dropped through the opening, and helped Ndebele descend. The man sucked air through his teeth when his broken foot brushed against the ground under the prison.
“You okay?”
“I think maybe when the time comes I will ask you where you got your artificial leg. I don’t think I will have this foot much longer.”
“Don’t worry, I know a pretty good doctor.”
“He can’t be that good if you lost your leg.”
“Believe me, she is—she only started working for me after my original was blown off.”
Together they struggled through the tunnel that allowed the constant desert winds to desiccate the human waste that once fell from above and eliminate the need for emptying slop buckets.
The confines were tight and they had to crawl on elbows and knees in the dirt. Juan led them to the eastern side of the prison, closest to the airstrip. Fortunately, the wind was at their backs so the blowing sand didn’t scour their faces. It took five minutes to reach the perimeter of the building. The sunlight glaring through the opening was especially bright after the dim confines of the penitentiary. The two men lay side by side just short of the opening.
Cabrillo keyed his radio. “Beau Geste to Lawrence of Arabia. Can you hear me, Larry?”
“Five by five, Beau,” Linc answered back. “What’s your situation?”
“I have the native guest with me now. We’ve made it to the exterior wall. I’m looking at the airstrip. Give me fifteen minutes to secure the primary target and come pick us up. Our boys will know to make a break for it when they see the plane.”
“Negative, Beau. From the looks of it our allies are taking a hell of a pounding in there. They won’t last fifteen minutes. I’m coming in now.”
“Then give me ten minutes.”
“Chairman, I ain’t foolin’. You don’t have it. If we don’t come in now there won’t be enough of Mafana’s men left to count on one finger. This wasn’t a suicide operation. We owe it to them to cover their retreat.” Even as Linc spoke, the big cargo plane arrowed out of the sky. “I’ve also just gotten word from Max that our situation has changed somewhat.”
By landing now, Linc had forced Cabrillo’s hand. Moses would never make it to the airstrip unaided. Juan would have to carry him. The plane was too vulnerable on the ground to wait for him to return to the prison and rescue Geoffrey Merrick. And as soon as Mafana and his men began their retreat from the prison, the guards would swarm after them in hot pursuit. Without aerial cover they would be slaughtered out on the open desert.
As for whatever change Max Hanley was talking about, Juan would have to trust that his second in command had a much better grasp of the overall operational picture.
The old de Havilland Caribou was an awkward-looking aircraft, with a rudder that was as tall as a three-story building and a cockpit hunched over a blunt nose. The high wings allowed for it to carry a large payload for its size and also to make incredibly short takeoff and landing runs. The particular aircraft Tiny Gunderson had rented was painted white, with a faded blue strip running the length of the fuselage.
Juan saw that his chief pilot had lined up on the runway for his final approach. It was time to go.
“Come on,” he said to Moses Ndebele and crept out from their position under the prison. The sound of gunfire in the courtyard was muted by the building’s thick walls, but it still sounded as though a thousand men were in a fight for their lives.
When both men were on their feet Juan transferred his H&K to his left hand and stooped to lift the African leader over his shoulder. Ndebele was a tall man, but years of imprisonment had shrunk him to little more than skin and bones. He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds. Normally Cabrillo wouldn’t have had a problem carrying such a burden, however, his body was exhausted by hours of unrelenting abuse.
Juan straightened his legs, his mouth a tight, grim line. Once he had Ndebele settled on his shoulder he took off in a loping gait. His boots sank into the sand as he jogged, taxing his quivering legs and aching back with every pace. He kept a wary eye on the side of the prison where the entrance doors were located but so far none of Mafana’s men had tried to flee. They remained engaged with the guards, knowing that the longer they gutted it out the better chance their leader had of escaping.
The seventy-foot-long twin-engine cargo plane touched down when Cabrillo was halfway to the landing strip. Tiny reversed the pitch of the propellers and gunned the motors, kicking up a veritable sandstorm with the prop wash that completely obscured the aircraft. The maneuver cut the distance he needed to land to less than six hundred feet, leaving more than enough room to take off into the wind without backtracking to the end of the runway. Gunderson feathered the props so they no longer bit into the air but barely cut power to the 1,500-horsepower engines. The airframe shuddered with unreleased energy.
Motion to Juan’s left caught his eye. He glanced over to see one of Mafana’s trucks emerge from the prison. Men in the back continued to fire into the courtyard, while the driver raced for the plane. Moments later the other three trucks appeared. They weren’t going anywhere near as fast. The rescuers were trying to further delay the guards from breaking out.
Juan turned his attention back to the Caribou. The cargo ramp was coming down, Franklin Lincoln standing at its very tip with an assault carbine in his hands. He waved Juan on but kept his attention focused on the approaching truck. There was another black man with him, one of Mafana’s men whom Juan had sent to rendezvous with the plane the night before.
The ground under Cabrillo’s feet firmed as he reached the gravel runway and he put on a burst of speed, adrenaline allow
ing him to ignore the pain for a few minutes more.
Juan reached the plane and lurched drunkenly up the ramp a few seconds before the lead truck braked just beyond the edge of the ramp. Doc Huxley was waiting with her medical cases. She’d strung saline drip bags to a wire running along the ceiling, the cannulas ready to replace any blood the fighters had lost. Juan laid Ndebele on one of the nylon mesh bench seats and turned to see what he could do to help.
Linc already had the truck’s rear gate open. There were a dozen wounded men strewn on the floor and over the sound of the roaring engines Juan could hear their agony. Blood drizzled from the tailgate.
Lincoln lifted the first man out and carried him into the aircraft’s hold. Ski was right behind him, lugging another of the wounded. Mike and Eddie carried a third between them, a great bear of a man with blood saturating his pants from the thighs down. Juan helped an ambulatory man step to the ground. He cradled his arm to his chest. It was Mafana, and his face was ashen, but when he saw Moses Ndebele sitting up against a bulkhead he cried out in joy. The two wounded men greeted each other as best they could.
Back at the prison, the remaining trucks from the original convoy took off into the desert, their wheels kicking up spiraling columns of dust. Moments later, two other vehicles emerged. One of them started after the fleeing four-wheel drives while the second turned for the airstrip.
