Defender(39)

With an overwhelming sense of reprieve, hands came from everywhere, patting him in welcome. Morgan's entire body was on fire, but as he reclined in the surreal peace of Arena's unexpected embrace, he was swiftly dragged back to reality by the flashing red lights of the cockpit instrument panel. He let out a long, exhausted laugh.

"You bastard, Morgan," Arena reproved. "I thought we were going to lose you."

"No way," he began between deep breaths. "It'd take more than that to get rid of me. Anyway, you'd miss me too much."

With that, Morgan got to his knees, took Arena's face in both hands, released her with a smile, shook Stanley's hand, then burrowed his way through the throng and up to the cockpit.

At the controls, Mason's expression was grim. Morgan didn't like it. "Steve, what now?" Morgan yelled.

"Don't ask," came the languid South African drawl of the pilot. "If you've finished horsing around, crawl up here and get into the copilot's seat."

Morgan eased his way cautiously into the cockpit, carefully avoiding the cyclic in the centre of the seats. To knock it would only complicate things further, if that were possible. By the look on Mason's face, it wasn't. "When I got up this morning, I should have just shot myself in the head and been done with it," Morgan said as he slumped into the seat, grabbing at his ribs. "This day couldn't have turned to shit any more if

we'd wanted it to."

Mason didn't reply, just motioned for Morgan to put on the spare radio headset. Once the headset was on, he flipped the talk switch to 'ICS'. Mason and Morgan could now speak directly to each other without the others on-board, or anyone on outside frequencies hearing them.

"So, what's going on, mate?" Morgan asked breathlessly.

"Fuel leak," Mason replied, "We must have taken a hit in a fuel line somewhere when those bastards were shooting at us."

He was still inspecting the instrument panel. The persistence of the flashing red lights was disturbing and the evacuees were agitated. Looking back at them, Morgan could see it. There was no more exhilaration at finally getting everyone on-board and away from the danger. That moment had passed. Instead they were silent. They knew something was wrong, seriously wrong.

"What's the prognosis?" Morgan asked.

"Well, at this point it's not pouring out. The gauges are staying pretty level and we don't seem to be losing fuel at a rate that should worry us. We just have to pray that we can keep enough on board to get us back to Cullentown. I refuelled at Pallarup before we started this sortie, so we should have about 800 Ks up our sleeve, give or take. Normally I'd put her down somewhere straight away. But out here, in the middle of nowhere and with the bush full of CLPA and any other variety of lunatic you'd care to mention, we'd all be dead before sundown, and you don't even want to think about what they'd do to the women."

"Agreed," Morgan replied. He looked back to Arena, sitting in the cargo hold, watching his every move. He smiled. She didn't smile back. It seemed she could already read him well enough to know something was seriously wrong. In the few days he'd been in-country, Morgan had heard enough about CLPA barbarity to last him ten lifetimes. Mike Fredericks had relayed a story to Morgan and Arena about driving through a local village one morning when he and Sean Collins had come across a cluster of distraught locals standing and kneeling around the body of a dead woman and her baby at the side of the road. Collins had leapt from the truck even before Fredericks had pulled over, and after a brief exchange with the locals, Collins discovered that the dead woman had been slashed across her torso and the unborn baby ripped from her womb. The barely coherent locals explained that she had been murdered because rebel soldiers had been betting on the child's sex.

''I'll go tell everybody what's happening," Morgan continued, "they should know."

"Go ahead," said Mason, 'Tve got more on my mind than a 'This is your Captain' speech."

"Rather you than me, Steve. Just keep flying this bucket and get us back to Cullentown in one piece."

"Roger that," Mason replied. "Alex, if any of them :pray, tell 'em now would be a good time."

Morgan grinned and, slipping the headset down around his neck, turned back to break the news.





CHAPTER 26





"Mike, check these bastards out. They're everywhere."

Taking cover on the rooftop of the Francis Hotel, Adam Garrett, a former Royal Marine, tossed the battered Zeiss binoculars across to Mike Fredericks. Stabbing a dirty, gloved finger into view, he directed Fredericks' gaze to the battle now raging to their north. "If we don't get out of here, they'll be crawling all over us by sundown."