Assegai

Leon froze with shock when he saw Eva standing behind the German. For an instant he was looking into her deep violet eyes as she stared back at him in bewilderment. Graf Otto was working the loading bolt and traversing the fat water-cooled jacket of the gun towards him. Leon roused himself and put the wing of the Butterfly hard over just as Graf Otto fired the first burst. The tracer bullets arced out towards him, but Leon cut sharply across the front of the airship’s control bridge. The burst of tracer flew high and behind him.

The Assegai’s two rear engines were hanging down vulnerably below the keel. Leon glanced back at the long line of netting trailing behind the Butterfly, and then, judging the relative angles and speed of the two aircraft finely, he dragged the net across the spinning propeller blades of the airship’s engines. They snatched up the folds and wound them almost instantly into tight balls that smothered them. It had happened so quickly that he was almost taken off guard.

‘Let fly!’ Leon screamed at Manyoro, who reacted swiftly, heaving with both hands on the release handle. The retaining hooks opened, allowing the heavy rope to drop away cleanly, an instant before it could pluck the Butterfly from the sky. The airship’s huge fishtail rudder brushed their upper wing as it passed over them. And then the Butterfly was free and clear. Leon brought her around and climbed back into the position above and behind the Assegai, keeping in her blind spot. The burst of tracer from the Maxim machine-gun had come too close. He would not make that mistake again.

He watched smoke billow from the airship’s rear engines. The netting and heavy drag lines were so deeply tangled in the propeller bosses and other moving parts that both had seized up and cut out. The Assegai was no longer responding to her helm. The single forward engine did not have the power to hold her against the cross-wind of the monsoon and she began to pay off sharply and drift straight for the rocky cliff face of Lonsonyo Mountain. The helmsman was running her with the throttle wide open and the strain was too much. Now the surviving engine started to blow blue smoke from under her cowling as it overheated.

Graf Otto ran across the control room, grabbed the helmsman by the shoulders and flung him aside. He crashed into the window head first and dropped to the deck, blood pouring from his broken nose. Graf Otto seized the wheel and looked up at the cliffs. They were only half a mile away, at least a thousand feet below the summit, and the only way to avoid colliding with them was to inflate the gas chambers to their utmost and take her up as fast as she would climb and try to skim over the top. He reached for the valve control and pulled it wide open. Instead of a rush of hydrogen squealing through the inlet pipes, there was a weak hiss, and although the airship shuddered, she rose only sluggishly.

‘Hydrogen tanks are flat!’ he screamed with frustration. ‘We blew off all the gas in the desert, fighting against the khamsin. We’ll never make it. We’re going to run full into the cliff. We’ll have to jump! Ritter, get out the parachutes. There are enough for all of us.’

Ritter led a rush for the storeroom behind the bridge and they started to fling the parachute packs through the door into a pile on the deck. There was a panic-driven scramble as the men fought over them. Graf Otto shouldered them out of his way and grabbed one in each hand. He ran back to Eva. ‘Put this on.’

‘I don’t know how to do it,’ she protested.

‘Well, you have about two minutes to learn,’ he told her grimly, and slipped the harness over her shoulders. ‘As soon as you’re clear of the airship you must count to seven, then pull this cord. The parachute will do the rest.’ He pulled the straps of the harness tightly across her chest. ‘As soon as you hit the ground, open these buckles and get rid of the chute.’ He buckled on his own parachute and day pack, then dragged her to the doorway, which was already blocked with men fighting to get out.

‘Otto, I can’t do this,’ Eva cried, but he did not argue with her. He seized her around the waist and carried her bodily, struggling, to the doorway. With powerful kicks he booted the two men ahead of him out of the way, and as soon as the doorway was open he threw Eva out. As she dropped away he shouted after her, ‘Count to seven, then pull the cord.’

He watched her fall towards the top gallery of the rainforest. Just when it seemed she must crash into the branches her parachute burst open and jerked her so violently that her body swung on the shrouds like a puppet’s. He did not wait to see her land but stepped out into space and plunged towards the trees.