Cherub: New Guard Part 19

'These are 450 CRF dirt bikes,' James explained. 'Almost indestructible. Top speed is only around a hundred and thirty kph, but they're built with high ground clearance and fat tyres that make them good on the kind of terrain we'll encounter in northern Syria. These are stock Hondas for training purposes, but for the mission we'll be making a few adaptations so that they're better able to carry equipment, and a custom gear setting to give us a higher top speed on open roads.

'To begin, I'd like those of us who've ridden before to help me get motorbike virgins used to the controls with a few gentle runs. After that, we'll take a little cross-country ride out to meet Tovah, who'll be taking the second leg of the afternoon's training.'

As the most experienced riders, James and Lauren took the lead, showing the others how to fit protective clothing and use the voice-operated microphones inside their helmets, before sending them off for an experimental ride back and forth along the single-track road that ran between the hostel's main admin building and the dock where supplies got landed.

With clear skies and a mid-afternoon temperature touching twenty degrees, James led riders with varying degrees of confidence along a dirt track. Kyle moaned that his shoulders hurt, and almost inevitably Leon, Daniel and Alfie earned James' wrath, first by starting a race, then by charging across a stream and soaking Kerry and Capstick.

The last kilometre took them down a steep dirt footpath to the edge of the strip where their plane had landed the day before. James opened his throttle and there was a deafening wail as the other bikes and their dusty riders took off in a plume of exhaust. After turning a gentle arc, they stepped off bikes on the part of the landing strip that jutted into the sea.

Tovah was waiting. She had a bright yellow pick-up filled with equipment, and a strange contraption on the ground. It looked like a two-man bobsled, but it had rubber wheels set wide apart at the back and a third directly below its bullet-shaped nose.

'Gather round,' Tovah said, as she thumped on the carbon fibre tub. 'Here's a question for all of you. Imagine that you've driven or parachuted into enemy territory under cover of darkness. But getting away won't be so easy, because you've blown up the local oil well and rescued a pair of engineers. There's only one road in or out of the area, and there are half a dozen Islamic State-controlled checkpoints between your b.u.t.ts and the Turkish border. The question is, how do you get away?'

As Tovah spoke, she hit a plastic catch, opening up the tub. Within a few seconds she'd reached inside, pivoting and telescoping various carbon fibre struts. She clipped a Plexiglas screen to the outside of the tub, flipped out a control stick, and finally pulled a cord, activating a compressed-air cylinder that rapidly turned sagging nylon into an eight-metre aerofoil wing.

'The PX1 was jointly developed by US and Israeli special forces,' Tovah explained. 'It has a range of two hundred kilometres with a payload of a hundred and fifty kilos. It flies at around a hundred kilometres per hour if there's no headwind, makes less than eighty decibels of noise from a distance of fifty metres and since it's small and mostly made of carbon fibre, it's invisible to all but the most advanced forms of radar. Now, who wants to come for a ride with me?'

James stepped up and Tovah nodded.

'I thought he was too heavy,' Alfie noted.

Tovah smiled. 'He needs to be lighter for a hundred-kilometre mission flight,' she explained. 'But we'll get him off the runway for a little demo.'

James took a helmet and went to sit in the rear pa.s.senger seat, but Tovah told him to go up front before helping him fix the five-point harness.

'This one's a trainer,' she told James, as she straddled a seat close behind. 'I've got duplicate controls in the back.'

James was looking at three smartphone-sized instrument screens and a dozen switches and b.u.t.tons.

'Where are the rocket launchers?' he joked.

Tovah's voice came through a microphone in his helmet. 'Guess which one you press first?'

James saw a circular red b.u.t.ton marked start directly in the control stick between his legs. When he pushed it there was a barely perceptible whirr from the engine above his head.

'Now go to menu, launch, take-off and set parameters to three and weather to good.'

James followed the instructions until the left-hand display flashed up a green go sign.

'Now gently raise the throttle lever, which is down on your right.'

The little propeller behind Tovah's head grew noisier as the microlight plane started rolling.

'Good,' Tovah soothed. 'Now all the way up, full throttle. And when you see sixty kph on the speed dial, you need to gently pull the control stick towards yourself.'

James wasn't exactly sure where the speedo was, but the microlight had been designed for special forces rather than professional pilots and the screen started flashing yellow as soon as he hit sixty.

'Is this too much?' James asked, feeling the control stick shudder as the nose began to lift.

'All good,' Tovah said. 'Now watch your alt.i.tude. The island rises, so unless you want to hit a hillside, you need to bank gently left once your alt.i.tude hits seventy metres.'

James had been on plenty of pa.s.senger planes, but the microlight was completely different, with the ground vanishing below, windscreen almost touching his face, open sides, tiny engine between his legs and the barest thrum from the propeller.

'This is so cool,' James said, banking the tiny plane as he looked down at the others and their motorbikes shrinking to insignificance.

'Now throw the stick left as hard as you can,' Tovah said.

'Seriously?' James asked.

'Do it,' Tovah ordered.

As James threw the stick a red square flashed on the screen and the words Input Modified.

'The PX1 has the same kind of avionics you'd find in a large airliner,' Tovah explained. 'If you aim for the ground, or try and do a barrel roll, the computers will override the input. You'll be taught how to fly in override mode and do things like emergency landings, but for regular flying, you take off, program your destination into the GPS, then sit back. The only time pilot input is needed is for landing, and take-offs from short or uneven runways where you need to correct for b.u.mps.'

'It feels so natural,' James said, marvelling at the sunlight catching the ocean, but also feeling vulnerable in a way he never had in a regular plane.

'Now let's finish the circle and take her back to the strip.'

'Can I land it?' James asked.

Tovah laughed. 'We'd normally spend six weeks training special forces to fly PX1s. I've got to do you guys in four, but I still think it's best if I land until you've had a few goes in a simulator.'

'Can we master these in four weeks?' James asked.

'At least one hour in the air every day,' Tovah said. 'Double that with the simulators, and there's a fair bit of book learning and maintenance to learn too. So it won't be easy, but you seem like a smart bunch so I'm fairly confident.'

30. STRUCTURE.

Four weeks later James and Kerry had taken off from Gibraltar at sunset and flown a hundred and thirty kilometres east over the Mediterranean. A hop in a microlight was fun, but two hours were gruelling. Harnessed to an unpadded seat, blasted by wind and with nothing to do but occasionally check fuel status and confirm their positon to Tovah back at the summer hostel.

Dark came soon after take-off. Driving rain and lightning had the decency to wait until they were ten kilometres from the island. Having started with their flight computer predicting sixty kilometres of reserve fuel, unexpectedly strong headwinds had put this down to eighteen by the time Kerry sighted the glow of the hostel landing strip through her rain-pebbled visor.

'Shall I radio?' James asked, from the rear seat.

'Go for it,' Kerry said, as a great flash of lightning lit the sky and turned their fragile air-filled wing electric blue. 'The rain's worked through my suit and it's running down my neck.'

'Be glad to see the back of these tubs,' James said, then he pressed his communication b.u.t.ton. 'Control, this is Golf Echo Five. I have visual on landing strip, approximately four and a half thousand metres. Are we clear to land, over?'

Tovah's voice came back through the headset, as James thought he glimpsed Ryan and Kyle's distinctive yellow wing a few hundred metres ahead through the rain.

'Negative, negative, Golf Echo Five. Your landing site has been redesignated. You are clear to proceed to landing site 4B. Can you confirm that you have coordinates?'

's.h.i.t,' Kerry moaned to James. 'In this weather!'

Besides the giant tarmac runway, Tovah had selected several sites on the island, enabling crews to practise the kind of rough-terrain landings they could expect on the actual mission.

'Fuel coverage is down to fifteen kilometres,' Kerry blurted. 'Tell Tovah.'

James did what Kerry said, but Tovah gave the answer he was expecting: Fifteen kilometres' fuel was more than enough to make an attempt at landing site 4B, then circle back to the main landing strip if it didn't work out.

'She's taking the p.i.s.s,' Kerry snapped.

To keep up compet.i.tion, Tovah consistently ranked the pilot skills of the five Currents and five Crustys. Kerry consistently came up fourth or fifth in the rankings, but site 4B was her jinx. The first time she'd landed there, she'd had to make three attempts. First she'd come in too high, and on the second attempt a gust knocked her off course. The next time she'd had no problems on approach, but one of the rear wheels had hit a rock, ripping the tyre off its rim, causing jarred spines and minor damage to the underside of the carbon fibre tub.

'Just land on the main runway,' James suggested. 'Tovah will moan, but I just wanna get dry ASAP.'

But Kerry didn't share James' rebellious nature. 'I don't back off,' she told James. 'Program the coordinates.'

James wiped moisture off the little screen in the back of Kerry's seat and used gloved fingers to dial up the coordinates of site 4B.

'Can you see that on your screen?' James asked.

'Roger,' Kerry said, as she flipped a switch to take manual control for landing.

The microlight swept over the brightly lit main landing strip, close enough for James to envy two gliders already safely on the ground. James had never had to make so much as a second pa.s.s on any of thirty-plus landings, and suspected Tovah would have let him skip this extra challenge if he'd been at the controls.

Kerry gained height as the microlight banked right over the hill at the island's centre.

'Visibility's horrible,' Kerry complained, wiping her visor for the thousandth time that night.

It was too dark to see anything other than the outline of the ground. 4B was a kilometre from the main landing strip. Less than a minute at flying speed. They skimmed over the hostel buildings at seventy-five metres. Kerry flipped on a xenon landing light in the nose as the unlit gra.s.s strip came into a view cut up by streaking rain.

James thought Kerry was a touch low as they approached. But the speed and angle were good and the wind which could cause problems for even the most experienced pilot in a plane weighing less than its pa.s.sengers had temporarily died down.

'Forty metres,' James said, as he watched the strip come into view.

He leaned over slightly so that he could see Kerry's hands on the controls, and she seemed calm. It was only when they were thirty metres from touchdown that he realised that Kerry was too low, perhaps overcompensating for previous attempts where she'd landed hard.

He thought they'd ridden their luck, but five metres from touchdown, James heard a sharp crack. He glanced behind, realising that they'd clipped tree branches. The microlight pulled violently to the right. Kerry had to make a split-second decision, between throttling up and flying around or risking a sideways landing.

She chose full throttle, but the shattered branches had splintered the inflatable wing over their heads.

'It's ripped,' James shouted. 'You've gotta land it.'

The ground happened before James finished his sentence. The combo of Kerry applying power and uneven lift from the ripped wing caused the plane to jolt violently sideways. The undamaged portion of the wing caught the ground, ripping off the main strut holding the wing in place and sending the carbon fibre tub into a pirouette.

James' back jolted as the now wingless plane did a 180 before finally touching down. His neck snapped back and his knees banged the seatback. Kerry screamed as the tub hit the ground sideways, tearing up the gra.s.s strip and ripping off two landing wheels.

'Kerry,' James shouted, squeezing his intercom b.u.t.ton. 'Mayday, mayday, mayday. Hitting hard!'

Sodden gra.s.s got ploughed up, acting as a natural brake. One of the carbon fibre wing struts snapped, showering James with shards. The screen in front of him went dark and he lost all sense of orientation until he felt a crash of shrubbery, followed by the tub smashing brutally into a tree stump.

'James, what's going on?' Tovah shouted.

When he opened his eyes, James realised that the carbon fibre tub had come to rest against a tree. He was strapped in, facing the ground. There wasn't any pain, but when he looked around the back of Kerry's seat, he saw her slumped unconscious, with her legs trapped inside the microlight's deformed nose.

'Get someone out here,' James shouted, as he fumbled with his safety harness. 'Kerry's hurt and I think it's bad.'

Down at the landing strip, Kyle and Ryan were just hopping out, high-fiving after a textbook landing. Lauren and Bruce had landed a few minutes before and stood under a canopy, folding their deflated wing, as Tovah charged out of the control hut.

'Mayday up at 4B,' she shouted. 'James and Kerry.'

Looking shocked, Lauren went for one of the dirt bikes and almost set off, before realising that Bruce was trying to mount behind her. While Lauren and Bruce bolted, Kyle hurried inside the hut and grabbed an emergency medical pack.

'You want me to come with?' Ryan asked, as Kyle pulled the pack up his arms and straddled the nearest bike.

'Secure the wings,' Kyle shouted.

A strong gust had already caught their ultra-light plane and Ryan charged over to stop it tipping as Kyle set off.

Bruce clutched Lauren's waist for dear life as the pair sped helmetless up a gravel path. They skirted the perimeter of the Olympic pool, then blasted up a narrow dirt track with only a small headlight showing the way. Bruce tried to console himself with the idea that Lauren was a professional driver, but kept getting horrible mental images of his skull smashing on trees she was missing by centimetres.

When they reached 4B, Lauren saw a gouge where the plane had landed. There was only moonlight and she had to pull up and aim her headlight to spot the tub resting against the tree, nose first.

'You OK?' Lauren asked, as she approached her brother.

James was stuck a metre and a half up. He'd got his helmet and harness off, but one of the wing struts had bent across his lap, stopping him from dropping out.

'I'm pinned,' James explained breathlessly.

Lauren reached under the tub, opened a flap and pulled a lever designed to shut off fuel supply to the engine. The buckled strut was detachable, but Bruce realised James would fall face first and his first-aid training kicked in.

'Before I release you, can you move your fingers and toes?' Bruce asked.

'I'm not paralysed,' James shouted anxiously. 'Just release the d.a.m.ned thing and start helping Kerry.'

'What about your neck?' Bruce asked. 'Do you have full movement?'

'She's unconscious,' James shouted. 'I'm fine.'

A second light came from Kyle's bike, and a Land Cruiser driven by Capstick was approaching via a wider path a couple of hundred metres off to the side. Bruce released the collar holding the strut in place, then worked with Lauren, helping James slide out, lowering him to the ground and helping him stumble away from the remains of the plane.

James was ghost white and panic breathing. He moved to help Kerry, but Lauren wagged her finger.

'Sit down until you've been looked at,' she ordered.

The tub rested nose-first against a shattered tree, with Kerry slumped sideways in the pilot's seat. Bruce and Kyle decided it would be easiest to attend to Kerry if she was flat on the ground, so the pair grabbed the propeller mount and gently lowered the tub to the ground.

'Tree's a goner,' Kyle said warily, as he looked at a huge gash in the trunk and roots sticking out of the ground. 'But if it falls it'll fall away from us.'