Prologue

A tinge of fear blunted the morning. Early starts were the worst, the day longer to invite omens. The pre-dawn rise from his stiff military cot knotted the young airman’s stomach into a leaden fist of tension. He was not one for premonition but today felt different, bleak under a sky of wakening sunbeam. The hard mattress kept away dreams from home, dead arms doing little to lighten his mood. Breakfast gulps of caffeine ingested with doses of nicotine did little to break it up. Daybreak sorties were needed for the light, the same light that could map out the flying silhouette from a mile away for all to see. The growing morning sunshine drew out beads of sweat as he waited anxiously beside the wired window. A narrow corridor with framed maps and a cheap water-stained Monet copy provided little distraction outside the colonel’s airless pre-fab office. The single plastic fan circulated stale sweat and flakes of tobacco ash around, collecting from ashtrays overflowing with the stubs left by anxious pilots. He used the time to floss nervously with a bamboo splinter lying to hand. All too soon he would be presented with the deepening furrows permanently etching themselves into the colonel’s forehead. The past month was a black one. Two more eager pilots were missing. Jez, a wide grinning optimist from the cattle fields of Utah, was the latest AWOL. No more would his pale receding matt of hair attract the vicious rays of the sun. Gone right off the radar; his opaque pearl dot vanishing forever. Never now could Jez bed that sweet-smelling valley girl with the rhythmic hips he dreamed of. Any youthful excitement the small group of airmen felt for covert flying was long blurred by the reality of just how shit it could all fall apart. Search and rescue expectations could be left in the hangar with all the other notions of aviation health and safety. They weren’t supposed to be flying so much as a kite, let alone any probing kit capable of snapping pictures two miles beneath.

Within minutes he was back out in the heat negotiating a tight airstrip to allow the powerful twin engines to suck his aircraft high enough to disguise all markings. He allowed his racing mind to touch down before his tightening grip squeezed the controls to bring the craft airborne. Irrigated paddy fields and rural towns quickly gave way to dense jungle. Below, the tall South East Asian trees cloaked many hidden mysteries, the thick canopy smothering crack-shot enemies and concealing far-flung forgotten towns reached through a labyrinth of unmarked tracks. At 3,000 feet the postcard-seductive cloak of green looked more menacing than tantalising. He chewed on the same ulcerated wall of his mouth he was used to tasting these past six months, a new tickle of blood tipping his tongue as he settled into the flight.

Up above the plush carpet of green the young pilot’s concern was to keep alert and try to exercise the mind. Fear boosted the senses, chiselling a clear view of the drop below. He knew that with time his body would tire, that the fuel fear gave would fall away. Round trips could take some hours, especially when straying a few clicks over the border. Radio silence prevailed in the high altitude. There were no airwaves open to air traffic control guidance; no clipped English accent to welcome him back from international airspace. Most traces of danger were buried far below, miles from the cockpit and a whole world from his closed environment of magnetic dials and recycled air. With the risks of war hidden amongst the trees and ditches he needed to remain humanly aware of each danger, to try to use his fear. Rarely did he glimpse any tracer smoke. Amid the clouds a serious attitude mattered most, the need to remain professional and not become detached from the pitched battles fought far below. Peering through the reinforced cockpit glass all he could make out was a mass of dark trees pushing every horizon, punctured only by strutting cliffs and hostile mountains. Before volunteering, each recruit knew there were few clearings providing any safe oasis to land. None long enough to nose down unharmed. Even if luck brought him a paddy field or cleared strip of muddy road a small raiding party would soon take him. Flying across guerrilla-saturated jungle rated as bad as the going could ever get. Forget the Pacific airborne fleet: this was far worse.

The enormous size of the jungles brought an unpredictable natural chaos stretching across countless plains and boundaries. Much of it lay un-charted, too dense and remote to mark down on a map. Too bloody dangerous! Few had need or desire. The main inhabitants were a scattering of hardened tribesmen and lawless scavengers, those with no choice.

Article 56 in the aircrews’ introduction manuals made the risks clear enough for any unlucky souls forced to bail out above the tree-line. Even without a military directive he knew the dank forest seeped danger. The Black Ops guys knew best; many practically lived in netted hammocks surrounded by flies and snipers. They knew that sense of lingering unease the further you strayed from the gravel tracks skirting the trees; away from domestic security, away from camps or hostels. The place carried the scent of death; old traps primed for swallowing legs, venomous snakes and exposure. The animals came in packs, scavenging for all they could find. A half-crushed airman crawling from a hidden pit scored highly on their menu.

A mile above the trees he mastered the controls with the confidence only ex-military aviators could show. His youth belied experience. Civilian training or logged flying hours didn’t include live ammo discharges. Like his assorted collection of eccentric colleagues he was chosen because of countless sorties over the unforgiving terrain. It was airspace he knew, flying zones he zigzagged daily on sorties kept to an exclusive few. The pay was good, inflated by the danger and need to be bloody wary, the money often pumped into a high-octane lifestyle adopted to blur away panic attacks.

The colonel’s instructions for that morning looked promising. He was to keep to one of the quieter sectors. Zone Three flights generally involved high-level photography. Inquisitive lenses produced grainy images of scenes played out far below. Today’s task was a little different; dropping a canister containing some rare Russian document. Who would want such transcripts out here was beyond him. He knew they weren’t intelligence scripts or frontline orders. These were dropped in black bundles. Weapons or medical drops he could understand, bare essentials of jungle skirmishes. Paperwork, on the other hand, written in Russian - there was something in that he might never know.

The coordinates for despatch were very precise and he fully intended to drop down just low enough so that the mile-high cross winds wouldn’t take the weighted canister far from its expectant audience far below. Soon it would be gone, then to hell with it. His curiosity would wane - it always did. Back later to a chilled bourbon, poured over ice in the chaotic mess beside the tarmac. Homely posters and pictures of family to surround him, his own patch of Asia. Not long now.

The young pilots were happiest with sorties in Zone Three. They talked it up as the long-straw bet. Most would grope for the mission tags that might take them that way. If you kept a high altitude then trouble stayed away. You might have to take a dip for any drop, but little more. This was no hero stuff, he didn’t volunteer for that. The problem was that relaxation could set in, more so after smoking strong local grass washed back with the bourbon, his night-time poison born from loneliness and boredom. A temptation was to take in the view and get on with the flying, doing little more than maintaining a steady speed and course. It was so easy to lose that alertness, the essential requirement for combat. If things went wrong with your eye off the horizon the unexpected happened, most of it bad. This was exactly how it now caught him. There was no preparing you for a ruptured fuel-line. Debris probably became lodged in an inlet, maybe a bird, causing an edge to be pushed back into the pipes. Something very sharp must have caught the line; the rubber was reinforced and reliably strong. With the high-octane fuel pumping over the heated engine fins, it was seconds before billows of dark smoke indicated an engine fire. Within a heartbeat the flames had taken hold, severing all control and rendering the plane into a fierce dive. The drone of the engine broke into a stutter, briefly trying to jumpstart, before terminally stalling.

Crashing down in the jungle was the one thing that spiked their heads with naked fear. They could live with much else, so long as it was an each-way bet on making it back. Here every tree represented a sharp pike intent on impaling him to his leather seat. A bowel-clenching descent would rush him to instant death, where treetops and branches could rake and spear the fuselage, rupturing the fuel tank as the plane tore through their midst. The stalling engine was a solid kick to the spine. Black smoke seeped through the vents, clogging his nostrils with the pungent smell of burning rubber. His nemesis was violently unfolding.

The vibrations running through the controls jerked his hands free. Clenching harder, he fought to hold on and steer the plane as far as possible. Pressure pushed back his cheek muscles and brought bile to the back of his throat. All of his senses confirmed the worst whilst his mind raced with the intense surge of adrenalin; he was going to die and probably die fucking horribly. If he survived the initial impact, the chances were that he would sit strapped to his seat and fry. He had to decide whether he should take his chances crash-landing the crate or bailing out. A scan of the horizon gave little comfort. There were no roads, no rivers, just trees. Staying with the plane probably meant suicide, but little alternative remained. Time had moved too fast, leaving the option for bailing out redundant. He gripped the controls, clenching his teeth, unaware that his tongue had been pinned between two nicotine-streaked molars. As the landing gear clipped the tip of the first great Asian Rosewoods, now parallel with the flight-path, he half wondered why he was not dwelling on his life, his young daughter overseas. Wasn’t that supposed to happen? He wanted so much to see the best clips of those closest to him play back in his mind’s eye. No tunnel of light beckoned him to walk into lasting peace, no close relative to lead him home. Nothing. Just a black vortex crashing towards him as his body fell numb. Death was rarely heroic.