The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 161
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Tungata searched, and then caught the high silver spark as the sunlight reflected off burnished metal.
"Target identified!" he said, and heard his two loaders move aside softly to avoid the backblast of the rocket.
The tiny speck grew swiftly in size, and Tungata saw that it was tracking to pass less than half a mile to the west of the hillock, and that it was at least a thousand feet lower than it had been on the preceding afternoons. It was in a perfect position for attack. He picked it up in the cross, wires of the gun-sight, and the missile howled lustfully in his earphones, a wicked sound like a wolf-pack hunting at full moon. The missile had sensed the infra-red burn from the exhausts of the Rolls-Royce engines. In the gun-sight the lock-on bulb burned like a fiery red Cyclops" eye, and Tungata pressed the trigger.
There was a stunning whoosh of sound, but almost no recoil from the weapon across his shoulder as it exhausted through the funnel vent in the rear. He was enveloped for micro-seconds in white fumes and whirling dust, but when they were whipped away by their own velocity, he saw the little silver missile going upwards into the blue on the feather of its own rocket vapours. It was like a hunting falcon bating from the gloved fist, going up to tower above its quarry. Its speed was dazzling, so that it seemed to dwindle miraculously into nothingness, and there was only the faint drumming rumble of its rocket-burn.
Tungata knew that there was no time for a second launch. By the time they could re-load, the Viscount would be well out of range.
They stared up at the tiny shiny aircraft and the seconds seemed to flow with the slow viscosity of honey.
Then there was a little flick of liquid silver that distorted the perfect cruciform of the aircraft's wing profile. It popped open like a ripe cotton pod, and the Viscount seemed to lurch and yaw, then steady again. Seconds later they heard the crack of the strike to confirm what they had seen, and a hoarse roar of triumph burst up out of Tungata Zebiwe's throat.
As he watched, the Viscount banked into a gentle turn, then abruptly something large and black detached itself from the port wing, and fell away towards the earth. The aircraft dropped its nose sharply, and the engine noise rose into a shrill wild whine.
Standing in the control tower, staring out through the floor-to-ceiling non-reflective glass window into the mellow evening sky, and listening to the rapid tense exchanges between the flight controller and the Viscount pilot, Roland Ballantyne was held in a paralysing-vice of helplessness and rage.
"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Viscount 782, do you copy, tower?" "Viscount 782, what is the nature of your emergency?" "We have taken a missile strike on our port engine housing. We are engine out."
"Viscount 782, I query your assessment." The pilot's tension and stress flared. "Damn you, tower, I was in "Nam. It's a SAM hit, I tell you.
I have activated -the fire-extinguishers and we still have control. I am initiating a one hundred and eighty-degree turn!" "We will have all emergency standby here, Viscount 782. What is your position?" "We are eighty nautical miles outbound." The pilot's voice cracked. "Oh God!
The port engine has gone. It's fallen clean out of her." There was a long silence. They knew the pilot was fighting for control of the crippled machine, fighting the asymmetrical thrust of the remaining engine which was trying to flip the Viscount over into a graveyard spiral, fighting the enormous weight transfer caused by the loss of the port engine. In the cOntrol tower they were all frozen in silent agony, and then the radio speaker crackled and croaked. "Rate of descent three thousand feet a minute. Too fast. I can't hold her. We are going in. Trees, too fast. Too many trees. This is it! Oh mother, this is it!" Then there was no more.
In the control tower Roland sprang back to the flight planning desk, and snapped at the assistant controller. "Rescue helicopters!"
"There's only one helicopter within three hundred miles. That's your one coming in from Wankie." "The only one, are you sure?" "They have all been pulled out for a special op. in the Vumba mountains, yours is the only one in this zone." "Get me in touch with it," he ordered, and took the microphone from the controller as soon as contact was established.
"This is Ballantyne, we have lost a Viscount with forty-six crew and passengers, "he said.
"I copied the transmissions," the helicopter pilot answered.
"You are the only rescue vehicle, what is your ETA?" "I'm fifty minutes out." "What personnel do you have aboard?" "I have Sergeant-Major Gondele and ten troopers." Roland had planned to rehearse night jump-landings during the return to Wankie. Gondele and his Scouts would be in full combat gear, and they would have Roland's personal pack and weapons aboard.
"I'll be waiting on the tarmac for your pick-up. We will have a doctor with us, , he said. "This is Cheetah One standing by." Janine Ballantyne had the aisle seat, in the second last row on the port side of the Viscount. In the window seat was a teenage girl with braces on her teeth and her hair in pigtails. The girl's parents were in the seats directly in front of her.
"Did you go to the crocodile farm?" she demanded of Janine.
"We didn't get around to it,"Janine admitted.
"They have got a huge big croc there, he's five metres long. They call him Big Daddy," the girl bur bled
The Viscount had stabilized in its climb attitude, and the seatbelt lights went out. From the seat behind Janine the blue-uniformed hostess stood up and went forward along the aisle.
Janine glanced across the aisle, across the two empty seats, through the Perspex porthole. The lowering sun was a big sullen red ball, wearing a moustache of purple cloud. The forest roof was a sea of dark green that spread away in all directions below them, its monotony broken by an occasional pimple of higher ground.
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