Who Do You Trust?

Which was today’s job description. Survey the hot-spot island, make a lightning check of the land for incinerated pits or half-hidden, telltale pockmarks, and bring back footage to give the government—and the media, if those in power didn’t want to know. Give the disaster-hungry rumormongers the irrefutable proof of what the world didn’t want to know about.

Mass graves of the militia’s victims.

Like the ones he’d found and filmed in thick forest close to the Albanian border. The ones that still gave him nightmares. The dead faces still wearing looks of terror—begging for help that never came. Pleading for their lives as they were mercilessly gunned down, old and young, women and babies—

But not the young girls. They had a worse fate.

Damn, I’m getting too old for this.

He lowered the plane by the nose through clashing, roiling clouds, until the altimeter hit four thousand feet. No weapon possessed by Tumah-ra’s cheap, gung-ho militia boys could bring him down from this high; but just one photo of an Australian plane here would destroy any chance of a peacekeeping force in Tumah-ra. The recent spy charges against the two Aussie CARE workers in Bosnia left the bloody taste of suspicion in the minds of paranoid dictators. The militia, the real rulers of Tumah-ra now, would jump on their current puppet boys in government to get rid of all international interference, and more innocent people would die.

So go in fast, get the shots and fly out faster.

But the weather and Tumah-ra’s roughneck terrain shot his ambitions to hell. Lightning flicked around him. Rain pummeled the wings. Wind slapped the plane in the face, jerking it back, up and to the side. Clashing storms between hills, half-torn jungle and the sudden rise of slumbering volcanoes turned the flight into a crazy game of dodge-ball hide-and-seek.

What was the bloody use of killing himself, staying at this altitude? He had to drop right down, even if the local crazies started taking potshots at him—and they would if they saw his gray kangaroo mascot on the tail. After East Timor, Aussies were about as welcome in rebel-run Tumah-ra as a dose of black plague.

Let ’em try to kill him. He wasn’t about to die now. This was his last Nighthawk mission.

With a little smile, he pressed his fingers to his lips and touched the picture taped to the panel. A nearly three-year-old photo of his precious Matt and Luke, the last time he’d seen them. “I’m coming for you, kids. Hang in there. I’m coming home.”

Rain pounded on the wings. A clap of thunder hit right over the plane. Down and forward he pitched like a bat out of hell—and another volcano loomed in front of him. “Damn!” He pulled back on the throttle and circled the clouds—and he all but ran into a long hill standing above the streaming jungle like a dank bald head, at an altitude a slingshot could pick off. If some half-baked sniper in the jungle aimed at his fuel tank—

But he had to take the risk. For on the eastern end of the hill, half-hidden by a canopy of trees outside the thatched-hut village of Ka-Nin-Put, he found it: the best footage op he would ever get. He pulled on his special goggles, similar to night-vision lenses, so he could see clearly. “Oh, my sweet godfather,” he breathed.

It was worth a Pulitzer Prize. The UN would have to send in a peacekeeping force after seeing it. He didn’t want to take the shot—wouldn’t if he had his way—but he had no choice. Circling the hill for the best angle he got a clear view, aimed out the powerful, high-tech digital camera built into the underwing, and started taking footage that the world would soon see.

A child standing on the edge of a gaping hole: a rough manmade crater half-filled with broken bodies.

She couldn’t be more than four. Her dress was ragged, filthy, hanging from a malnourished body covered in sores and scratches. Mud poured in from the torn lip of the crater as the torrential downpour dissolved the earth around her. She stood still, wailing the same words over and over—probably cries for the dead parents who lay in that hole beneath her.

Within minutes she would fall in and join the body count.

Where to land? Damn it, why didn’t Anson get him a Harrier, or at least a chopper? A jet or bird could V/STOL—do a vertical short landing and takeoff in almost any weather conditions—in seconds. Even in this tough bush plane, his chances of landing safely were almost zip in this downpour. If the ground collapsed, he’d take the kid out instead of saving her.

“Holy Hannah, this is suicide!” But he looped the hill in a mad circle for the approach, like a kamikaze on a death mission.

The hill was a strange, bare swathe about a mile long and two hundred feet wide. If the plane were bigger, he’d never be able to land or turn for takeoff. In this rain the only way to do it was to land at the other end and make a run for her, hoping like hell the militia were hiding somewhere out of the insane weather.

He patted the console. “C’mon, Bertha, we can do it!” He released the throttle, eased the wheel forward, pulled out the landing gear and flew straight over the child, touching ground a scant twenty-five feet from her. The wheels skidded on the sodden ground. He had only one chance at this. “Work! Come on, Bertha, work!” He pulled back on the throttle, easing the brakes to stop the plane fishtailing.

The trees rushed to meet him. He needed turning space—oh, God, Matt and Luke, his precious boys—he couldn’t die now, not when he finally had the chance to have his kids with him again—

Then a tire tripped on a lump of rock; Bertha slowed with shocking suddenness, and Mitch hit the brakes too hard in reaction. His body slammed against the wheel; he heard a crack in his lower chest, then felt stabbing, searing pain.

Forget the pain. No time to think! He scanned the land. Fifty feet turning space, max. He locked the brakes, grabbed his assault rifle, a coil of rope and ran.

With every step more ground dissolved beneath his feet. Holes and jagged cracks appeared. He fell, got up and stumbled on, dragging in ragged breaths of agony.

As she saw him, a big-built man in fatigue greens—damn Anson for insisting on the khaki fatigues and dark face paint for jungle cover like the militiamen!—coming at her with a rifle, the child cried, “Ima! Tatay!” and scrambled away. The lip of the crater imploded with the impact, and she toppled into the hole in a shower of mud and rocks.

Throwing the rifle back, Mitch dived toward her, landing on the fast-decaying lip. He threw the rope to the wailing child, cowering near a pile of bodies. Dear God, what if this happened to his boys? Had Matt and Luke cried out for help on a forsaken Sydney street after they’d found their mother’s lifeless body? Who had been there for them? “Take it, little darlin’!”

Big, almond-shaped eyes looked up at him. Her hands reached out to the rope, then fell. A river of mud showered over her head; she started to sink beneath its weight. “Please, darlin’, let me help you!” he cried desperately.

She just stared. Her teeth chattered under the onslaught of cold mud and constant rain. The ground shifted beneath him. He had seconds to gain her trust before they both died. Damn, why hadn’t he learned to speak more than the most basic Tagalog for this mission? But then, those who’d done this to her spoke her native language—they were her own people. “Australia,” he called down, thudding his throbbing, burning chest. “Me. Australian.”

She blinked, slipped further. Her head tilted sideways.

“I know I don’t look it; my face and hands are painted, and I’ve got brown skin, anyway, God knows from who. But I’m not one of them!” He knew his babbling was downright stupid, since she couldn’t speak English; but he said it again. “I’m not one of them. I’m Australian!” He controlled his voice to as soothing a pitch as she could hear. Yelling wouldn’t make her understand him better if she’d never heard the word; it would only remind her of the half-assed genocidal jerks who’d taken her family from her.

The child stared unblinking; then her hand moved to her lips, mimicking eating, a questioning look in those lovely dark eyes.

“Yes, darlin’, that’s it. The people who fed you last week!” Cudgeling his brain, he could think of only one way to convince her. He sang, “‘Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free.’”

She slowly smiled, and started humming the national anthem the Vincent Foundation workers had taught her.

Mitch shook the rope. “C’mon, darlin’. Let’s get outta here.”

She looked down into the hole. “Ima. Tatay.” A sad little chant; a baby’s farewell. Then, thank God, she grabbed the rope.

He half slipped into the hole pulling up even her slight weight. Wrapping the rope around his waist, he crawled back along the crumbling earth, taking her with him inch by excruciating inch. The rain poured down, and the mud kept sliding on top of her, half drowning her tiny body. “Don’t let go of the rope, little darlin’. Hang on!”

A sudden scream; Mitch toppled backward with the lack of weight on the rope, and he knew he was out of miracles.

Three times, handhold by foothold, he inched back, giving her the rope, moving back. He couldn’t even lean forward far enough to show her how to loop the rope over her wrist; his weight would collapse the hole on her.

The fourth time, when he’d all but given up hope, a tiny head appeared above the rim; then her shoulders; then, like giving birth, she slid from the gaping maw headfirst into his hands.

He grabbed her, snatched up the rifle and ran for the plane, stumbling through holes, sliding in mud, holding her safely in his arms, taking the falls on his knees and back.

Three hundred feet to go—two hundred—one-fifty—

A jagged streak of lightning touched ground between him and the Maule.

Oh, my God, not now—Matt, Luke, my beautiful boys, I’m so sorry! So damned stupid, taking risks with his life now! But what choice had he? How could he leave this suffering child to die?

But the fork of lightning hit water, riding on the stream away from him. “Thank you, God,” he breathed, knowing how close they’d both come to being a charred heap of ash and cinders. He stumbled into the Maule, put the child in the passenger seat and buckled her up. She cringed and whimpered, shivering violently. “It’s okay, little darlin’!” He threw a thermal blanket over her, tucking it in tight. “That’ll keep you warm till we get above this freak-show weather.” He rummaged in his backpack, found a half-eaten Snickers and handed it to her. She stared in amazed delight, then shoveled it into her mouth as if afraid he’d snatch it back. Once she’d swallowed it, she gave him a timid smile. “Go for it, little darlin’. There’s plenty more where that came from. C’mon, let’s sing.” Though he dredged his brain for what few songs he’d learned in his stark childhood, only one came to mind. “D’you know this one? ‘Doh, a deer, a female deer…’”

There was only one way to get skyward in this hellhole of lightning, mud and water. The grave. The pit of death, which probably held the kid’s own family, was their only chance at life. If he could get enough speed up, he could use the hole and the falling slope of the hill as a pathetic sort of launching pad. Like a glider, they might just take off. Or not.

Only a psychopath would attempt this liftoff…or Mitch McCluskey. He grinned to himself. They won’t believe it, not even at work. Crazy Skydancer does it again.

The rain pounded down. The lightning kept streaking in jagged paths all around them. The sound of crashing thunder filled the cockpit. The child screamed, covering her ears. Mitch gritted his teeth and propelled the Maule forward, trying to avoid pits and puddles. The needle moved like a slug around the speedo, but he couldn’t afford to go faster in case he buried them in mud. Twenty-five knots. Forty. Forty-five…halfway down the crumbling runway…62…64…68. Water swirled around the plane in flying fountains from beneath the spinning wheels—but thank God, they kept moving, not digging in deeper in a self-made hole.

Moving. Still moving—

“Come on, Bertha, we need 79. We can get there!” He patted the console again in grim encouragement as they hit the three-quarter point. Seventy knots. “Come on, baby, we can do it…73…74…”