No Man's Land - A Russell Carter Thriller (16 page)

5

The helicopter shook and vibrated, plunging toward the choppy water a thousand feet below but closing fast.

Peacock yanked back on the cyclical stick and the chopper jerked upward like a parachute had shot out its backside, slowing their fall.

He worked the controls with fierce determination and concentration.

Back and forth. Left and right.

Carter noted that the helicopter decelerated further, but to give them a decent chance of survival, Peacock needed to level out their dive. The helicopter’s belly rather than its nose needed to hit the water first.

Peacock pulled the stick back hard, flaring the helicopter’s rotors and creating upward pressure on its body. Their downward velocity slowed and the wounded bird’s nose lifted to a healthier forty-five-degree angle.

Three hundred feet from the water, Peacock slammed the stick forward, releasing the flare of the rotors. The stored energy in the blades pushed against the force of gravity, restoring the angle of the hull and bringing it practically parallel to the ocean.

Peacock had one move left. He raised the collective stick, slowing their fall even further.

Carter had to hand it to Peacock. It’d been a brilliant piece of flying.

Peacock took a final slug of scotch. In a few short seconds they’d smack into the brick wall of water.

“Brace for impact,” Peacock said over the headphones.

“Thanks for the tip,” Erina replied.

Carter clenched his neck muscles to stop his head from whipping forward on impact.

An instant later the underbelly crashed into the hard surface of the water. The excruciating sound of shrieking, twisting metal filled their ears.

Carter was hurled forward against his four-point safety harness, then thrust back into his seat.

The helicopter bounced once.

Twice.

It shuddered, then came to a stop.

A quick glance out the window told Carter the hull was intact and the buoyancy floats had activated. They’d crash-landed on the far side of the rocky headland, out of sight of the group of armed Indonesians.

Water started to flow into the cockpit. He unbuckled his seatbelt.

“Erina, you okay?” he asked.

“All good here,” she said, unbuckling her belt. “But what are we going to do with Peacock?”

Carter turned toward the pilot. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The force of impact had dislodged the Johnnie Walker from his lap, breaking the bottle and thrusting it upward into his neck. Blood poured out of the jagged cut and down his front.

Carter checked his carotid pulse and said, “Nothing can be done for him. He’s dead.”

Erina bent over Carter and looked at Peacock.

“Shit, what a mess,” she said. “Ironic that the bottle got him in the end.”

“At least he got us down and we don’t have to figure out what to do with him.”

“That double-crossing drunk just delivered us safely into the hands of the enemy. So much for flying under the radar.”

Water continued to pour into the cockpit.

“Come on,” Carter said. “We need to get out of here before the bird flips.”

6

Djoran lay flat on his belly at the edge of the rocky cliff, squinting in the harsh sunlight, praying to God for guidance.

The wounded helicopter bobbed up and down in the choppy water below, about a hundred and fifty yards from shore. He assumed it was Erina, Thomas’s daughter, and his man Carter – despite the fact that he’d been told they would be arriving by jet ski.

The sun reflected off the transparent bubble, making it impossible for him to tell whether the people inside were alive or dead.

Though he’d prayed for their arrival, he dared do nothing to help. If he exposed himself and the clan’s men captured him, there’d be no one to help Kemala, Thomas and Wayan.

It was almost like God was punishing him for praying for a specific outcome.

Djoran had devoted his life to Sufism. His religion had taught him to transcend the physical world, detach from all desires and live on a spiritual plane. Yet here he was on Batak Island caught up in a life-and-death struggle for a cause he believed in.

It didn’t make sense, but Djoran had learned many years ago that nothing in the world made sense and all one could do was follow one’s heart and pray for divine guidance. God and his heart had led him to this point.

The helicopter door swung open.

Djoran saw a woman look around and then dive into the water, followed by a man. Both carried a small pack on their back.

They started swimming toward shore, stroking fast and smooth as if they were in an Olympic hundred-meter final.

The helicopter’s nose dipped under the water, lifting the rear end to near vertical.

In a blur of movement the great bird flipped over and crashed onto its back, submerging the rotors and exposing its landing gear.

Slowly the helicopter started sliding under the water.

Ten seconds later all that was left were a few bubbles.

From the other side of the headland two outboard engines started up.

Djoran turned toward the sound.

Eight men sat close together in two overladen boats, chugging slowly toward the crashed helicopter.

It would take them less than two minutes to reach the headland.

He glanced in the direction of the two swimmers, halfway to the beach by now, and willed them to go even faster.

7

At exactly the same time on the other side of the island, Thomas’s eyes snapped open. He was in a cement cell, flat on his back on a hard wooden bench, his wrists and calves locked in iron manacles.

He looked up through the grille of the high solitary window above. The sun broke through a cloud and shone in his eyes. The angle of the light told him it was midafternoon.

Something caused his heart rate to quicken. Carter was nearby – he was sure of it.

A psychic thread had connected them ever since Carter first slouched into his Bangkok dojo, an undisciplined, troubled teenager with a prodigious gift for the martial arts.

Their bond had been instant – yet they differed in so many ways.

Thomas’s mother had been a Chinese aristocrat; his father an American philanthropist. They had given him a life of privilege, and his upbringing had been rooted in Eastern religion and philosophy.

Carter’s father had abandoned him, and his mother was a drug addict. The chaos of his childhood could have destroyed the sensitive young boy, if not for his innate strength of character.

Thomas had worked hard over many years to help Carter find his center, quiet his demons and harness his talents. Though he’d been disappointed when Carter had left the order, he’d always known he would come back to the fold. The order was Carter’s spiritual home, and Thomas had been both father and mother to him.

A groan came from the adjoining bench, where Wayan, also restrained by iron manacles, drifted in and out of consciousness.

Earlier that morning four of Samudra’s men had beaten them with wooden batons and then chained them up like dogs.

Wayan had abused their attackers, causing them to give him an even harsher beating. They’d delivered vicious blows to his head and body.

Thomas, who had watched it, powerless to intervene, suspected they’d fractured the boy’s collarbone and jaw, as well as creating severe internal injuries.

Since the beating, they’d been left in the cell without food or water, suggesting Samudra considered them already dead.

The naive courage of the young man’s gesture had made Thomas want to weep. He saw Wayan, like Carter, as a surrogate son.

His fears for Wayan, the probable collapse of the order and the seemingly inevitable failure of his life’s work had taken their toll on his spirit. Despair had engulfed him – a feeling he had hardly known, till now.

If Carter was nearby, most likely Erina, his courageous and headstrong daughter, was near too, but even that thought failed to lift his mood. Stopping Samudra and his jihad should have been their number-one priority, not rescuing him and Wayan. They should’ve recognized that his and Wayan’s fate was ultimately unimportant, and that they were needed elsewhere. By listening to their hearts and not their heads, letting their feelings master them, they had failed him.

He adjusted his position slightly on the unforgiving wooden bench. His left ankle, which he suspected was fractured, screamed at the movement. Two broken ribs made breathing painful.

He let out a deep sigh.

The situation appeared hopeless. Even if Carter and Erina succeeded in freeing them from the cell, their actions, like Wayan’s, would most likely prove nothing more than a brave but futile gesture.

8

Carter and Erina ran down a dirt track through the jungle, Carter in front, their feet creating a rhythmical beat as they matched strides. A dense canopy of vines and leaves whipped them as they charged through.

Five minutes earlier they had reached the shore, sprinted across the narrow beach and burst through an opening in the dense vegetation, seconds before the approaching motorboats rounded the nearby headland.

The heat and humidity were intense, but their wet clothes clung to their bodies, providing some respite. Carter felt a heady mix of adrenalin and endorphins, a result of having survived the helicopter crash.

His plan to rescue Thomas and Wayan that night and get back to Bali by the next day, 28 December, now seemed impossible. Without the helicopter, they were going to have to come up with another way to get off the island.

Erina was behind him, not only keeping pace but pushing him to go faster. They’d covered a little over three hundred yards when they came to a clearing. He raised his right hand.

They slowed to a stop and stood next to each other, panting hard. He wiped the sweat dripping down his face from his eyes and listened.

The outboard engines had slowed to an idling putter, suggesting the boats following them had arrived at the site where the helicopter went down.

The fact that the bird had sunk without a trace would confuse their pursuers, making them suspect Carter and Erina might have been killed in the crash. But there’d been too little time for them to cover their tracks on the beach. It wouldn’t take long for Samudra’s men to figure out what had happened.

A distant sound caught Carter’s attention above the noise of the engines: the manic excitement of barking dogs.

He and Erina listened for a little longer. The noise intensified. The dogs appeared to be heading straight for them.

Erina pointed west along the track. “There’s a stream about a half a mile that way. I saw it on the map just before we got shot down.”

“You sure?”

“Carter, I may be a woman, but I can read a map.”

—

After roughly six hundred yards the track widened, allowing Carter and Erina to run faster through the dense jungle, away from the village and the sounds of the dogs on the hunt.

To their left, toward the ocean, came the now much louder rumble of two outboard engines. The villagers’ boats had started moving again, most likely patrolling the coast.

To their right the mountain range created a natural barrier that would make it impossible for them to turn inland and outrun the dogs. Finding the stream was their only option.

Carter grabbed Erina’s arm.

“Hold on a sec.”

He’d heard something – sensed it, almost – over the sound of the dogs and the motorboats and the rustling of the trees.

“What is it?”

He put his hand to his ear and pointed into the jungle.

Erina nodded and followed him into the thick undergrowth. They crouched down together, screened from the track by a shield of dense foliage, and listened to the steady beat of approaching footsteps.

He slipped his pack off. “Wait here and be ready to back me up.”

—

Twenty seconds later an Indonesian man with the whippet-thin build of a marathon runner charged around a bend in the path.

He ran past them barefoot, carrying a green cloth pack on his back.

Carter leaped out of the bushes, accelerated down the track after the man and caught up to him in half-a-dozen strides.

The man turned toward him, just as Carter launched himself through the air. He hit the guy with a flying tackle around the ankles and dropped him to the ground with a thud.

Carter wrestled him onto his back, pinned his shoulders with his knees, gripped his throat and clenched his right hand into a tight-coiled fist.

The guy grinned and said in English, “Mr. Carter – I am so very happy to have found you.”

“Djoran?”

“Yes, it is me. So sorry to startle you.”

Carter studied Djoran’s clear brown eyes and the expression on his handsome face. He was struck by the man’s openness and lack of guile.

He released his grip, stood up, put out his hand and pulled the guy to his feet.

Djoran gave him a broad smile. “Thomas says you are a very good man.”

“I have my moments.”

Erina stepped out of the bushes, holding a Glock out in front of her with both hands, pointing it at Djoran’s chest.

“And this is Erina,” Carter said.

He waved for her to lower the gun.

She hesitated, then did so.

Djoran held out his hand.

“I am so very pleased to meet you, Miss Erina,” he said. “I have heard very much about you.”

She shook his hand, but said nothing.

“We’re lucky you found us,” Carter said.

“Not luck,” Djoran said. “God’s will. And I have been watching very carefully. The wise camel driver trusts Allah, but hitches up his camel.”

“Too true,” Carter said. “Now tell me about Thomas and Wayan. Are they okay?”

“They are alive. Being held prisoner in a cell within the compound. And my very dear friend Kemala is under twenty-four-hour guard.”

“Can you take us to them?” Carter asked.

“Hey,” Erina said. “Shouldn’t we first be worrying about the dogs?”

The barking was getting louder and more frenetic.

Djoran reached into his pack and extracted a plastic bag full of bloody raw meat.

“Are you going to feed them?” she asked.

“Not exactly. The meat is full of poison.”

He flung pieces into the bush on either side of the track.

“I hate to hurt animals,” he said. “Even vicious beasts like these Rottweilers. But it must be done.”

He bowed toward the bush, where he’d thrown the meat. “May God bless their spirits.”

Djoran turned to face them. “Follow me, my friends. We must hurry.”