Daring Dooz (The Implosion Trilogy (Book 2)) (22 page)

Chapter 50

‘We’ve done 3,000 miles in 15 minutes!’

They were all struck dumb. It was
impossible.

‘Look,’ said Mrs Hathaway, ‘we can think
about this later. I’m going to bank to starboard and drop down to 200 feet, I
don’t want to see MiG-15s in the mirrors again, thank you very much.’

As soon as the manoeuvre was done, and
they were heading due west into the mouth of the mighty river, she began to
think things over.

‘Michael? James? What do you think was
happening back there?’

Jim tried to make amends for passing out
during the final fall.

‘I think it was about a very daring
lady, pulling two media has-beens out of a very dangerous situation. You saved
our lives.’

Mick controlled the urge to vomit, and
thought he’d add a bit of realism - although how ‘real’ it was, was definitely
open to doubt.

‘Tuck your bibs in, ladies and gents,
and try this. I can remember a TV special on the Bermuda Triangle, where this
bloke was flying a light plane near Florida, and, on a nice clear day, he ran
into a strange cloud formation and it turned into a tunnel. Same as us - no
controls, no instruments, just cut off in a foggy tunnel. Afterwards, I think
he called it an electronic vortex.’

‘You should get out more,’ said Jim,
with a smirk.

This was not because he disagreed. It
was because he’d seen the same programme and wished he’d said what Mick had
said.

‘And,’
said Mick, there was a time warp - when he came out
of the vortex, he’d lost around 30 minutes...’

‘And he was 100 miles further on than he
should have been,’ said Jim trying to muscle in on Mick’s act.

Mrs Hathaway ignored the muscling.

‘But what happened with us was
much
stranger - our watches haven’t
changed, but we’ve gone from the Caribbean to the Amazon, in a quarter of an
hour!’

‘And what about those big bangs and
white flashes,’ said Jim. ‘That one when we went in, I thought it was the
missiles hitting us.’

‘But it wasn’t, my empty little toilet
duck,’ said Mick, ‘because we got the
same
sound and light blast when we got fired out.’

As no one had anything more to add, they
flew on in confused silence. Mick and Jim felt it was right for them to stay
and keep Mrs Hathaway company. Jim might be a grovelling creep, but he’d been
correct. They
were
two media
has-beens. She
was
a daring lady. It
was
a very dangerous situation. And she
had
saved their lives.

*

Just like Mick and Jim’s geography
textbooks had told them, the Amazon was huge and went on for miles, as did the
lush green jungle on either bank. They followed the main river, then a variety
of tributaries, each one, in turn, getting narrower, although compared with,
say, the Thames opposite the Shard, they were still gigantic.

From 200 feet, they had a pretty good
view of the banks.

‘Shout if you spot Sting,’ said Jim.

It wasn’t much of a joke, but it was the
best of the trip. Which gives you an idea of how the time dragged.

They were flying directly into the sun,
and Mrs Hathaway put on her Ray-Ban Aviators. She looked like Tom Cruise in Top
Gun, only better.

Eventually, the light began to fade.

‘Only a few minutes to go,’ she announced.
‘We’ll land upstream and anchor there for the night. After
all
that’s gone on, I need a good night’s sleep. Then, tomorrow
morning, we can float a couple of miles downstream to our rendezvous with
Daring Dooz Challenge Three.’

After all that had gone on, Mick really needed
a rendezvous with a couple of dancers from the Golden Legover. But if that
wasn’t available, and it wasn’t, a night up poo-poo creek would have to
suffice.

She banked the Catalina in a graceful, wide
arc and brought the plane into a perfect landing, dead centre on a dark,
slow-moving river that must have been about 200 yards across.

Jim looked out of the cockpit window
with a mixture of relief and wonderment.

The sun was backlighting the early
evening mist, and the lush green vegetation had a beautiful, golden tinge.

‘Look, look,’ said Jim, ‘fabulous
colours. You know, like that green-goldy effect they used in...’

‘Amélie.’
said Mick cleaning his camera lens.

‘Right! With...’

‘
Audrey Tautou,’
he
yawned.

‘Cheers,’ said Jim.

‘You know, Mrs Hathaway,’ said Jim. ‘You
may think I’m an ignoramus, but I love beautiful environments like this. It
brings out the poet in me - that, and beautiful French women. In fact, one of
the first poems I ever wrote was about Joan of Arc.

‘Yeah,’ said Mick, it started, “There
was a young girl called St Joan...”’

‘Gentlemen please!’ she said, ‘here’s
the manual, learn how to drop the anchor - I have to phone Aubrey.’

She left them to their task, and moved
to the blister area where she made herself comfortable in one of the seats.
There was a good signal. She dialled Aubrey’s number. Roberto answered.

‘Look, Gisele, you have to stop phoning.
Billie-Jo was just one of those
things
...’

‘It’s Mrs Hathaway.’

Realising he had just torpedoed his
chances of any romantic liaison with the lovely Tallulah, Roberto turned his
attention to giving his bass-playing buddy, Aubrey, some advanced warning.

‘Oh, Mrs
Hathaway
, hi, good evening.’

Aubrey, who was reading
Tonal inversions in reggae bass lines - why
make it easy?
shook his head, violently.

‘I’m afraid Aubrey is out.’

‘Out? I thought you’d arrested him.’

‘He got parole.’

‘How?’

‘Well, as Chief of Police, I set the
rules round here,’ he said limply.

‘How is he?’

‘Fine. Fine.’

It was awkward. Roberto realised this
was getting nobody, anywhere. Time to shuffle the deck.

‘And how are
you
? Mrs Hathaway?’

‘Fine.’

Silence.

Roberto looked daggers at Aubrey, who
made an exaggerated, pleading face, before returning to his book.

‘And how’s the trip going?’

‘We’re here.’

‘
What
!’
cried Roberto, ‘you can’t be!
How?
’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Hathaway, ‘we did what
you said, you know, nice and level at 200 feet, and then...’

‘What?’

‘We were attacked by MiG-15s, firing
rockets, then we were sucked into an electronic time-warp vortex, bombarded
with high-voltage discharges for 15 minutes, got spat out at 20,000 feet and
fell about 15,000 feet without controls, before we eventually got the engines
started and then realised we’d covered 3,000 miles in a quarter of an hour.’

‘Eventful, then.’

‘Somewhat. But before I go, will you do
one thing for me?

‘Anything.’

There was a pause.

‘Tell Aubrey, he would really have
enjoyed it - such a pity he chickened out.’

Chapter 51

Mrs Hathaway awoke to a strange sound.
It was the sound of her own breathing.

She sat up in her seat and looked out of
the blister. It was 6am and still dark. The Catalina was swaying very gently. She
decided to rest for a little while longer.

An hour later, the noises started. Deep,
strangulated, guttural reverberations followed by bubbling, spitting sounds.
She pressed her nose to the Plexiglass and squinted into the semi-darkness to
see what was going on. Probably she was only half-awake, because it took her
about a minute to realise she’d been woken by Mick and Jim snoring in the
cockpit.

She dozed for another half an hour until
the jungle came to life. There were squeals, whoops, howls, monkey calls and
some noises which defied description, echoing from bank to bank. There was mist
on the river, and a weak sun from the east. She washed, then selected some
clothes from the flight cases provided by Giles. A sleeveless, grey t-shirt, ultra-brief
leather shorts and calf-length jungle boots. There were also some rather
strange leather thigh straps containing some not very pleasant looking knives.

Jim appeared about ten minutes later. He
looked a bit rough, but was multi-tasking, scratching his stubble with one hand
and his belly with the other. He straightened up rapidly when he saw Mrs
Hathaway.

‘Bloody hell! Lara Croft’s up the jungle
again!’ he said with genuine appreciation in his voice.

‘Good morning, James. As usual, I have
no idea what you’re talking about.’

Mick popped his equally unshaven
features round the corner.

He made a flamboyant gesture with his hand. It wasn’t
very impressive. Imagine the Sherriff of Nottingham after a heavy night out on
the mead, scratching wax out of his ear, then with a spiralling hand, trying unsuccessfully
to locate his codpiece.

 
‘Good,
morrow, Mithreth Croft, and how be-eth thee this fair God-given morn.’

‘Your clothes are in your trunk.
Michael. I’ll go and check the cockpit, while you two get yourselves ready.’

‘Please thy self-eth,’ said Mick, ‘Juth
tryin’ to injectuth a little humour.’

‘That wasn’t very funny,’ said Jim, as
Mrs Hathaway left.

‘Pith off, varlet,’ said Mick.

Morning pleasantries over, they washed
shaved and dressed themselves in what turned out to be matching, designer, khaki
tropical wear.

‘We look like we just failed an Indiana
Jones look-a-like competition,’ said Jim.

‘More like Tweedledum and Tweedledee
meet King Fucking Kong’s trainer.’

‘So we’re happy with the sartorials?’

‘Absolutely. Let’s get the rubber dinghy
out, and whack the gear in.’

‘Gear?’ said Jim, ‘at
this
time in the morning?’

‘Professionalism, my little sachet of
rancid moggie grub, professionalism. That’s what we’re here for.’

‘Professionalism!’ hissed Jim. ‘You call
this
professional
?’

‘No,’ said Mick, ‘I call this £200,000.
I call this no sleeping in newspapers on the beach. I call this no saving up
for frozen sausages. I call this no idea where Uncle-bleedin-Jocelyn scarpered
to.’

‘Where’s the dinghy?’ said Jim.

‘It’s not dinghy time,’ shouted a voice
from the cockpit. ‘It’s get the anchor up time.’

So they pulled up the anchor. Mrs
Hathaway engaged the rudder and slowly turned the Catalina to head down stream.

Mick and Jim joined her in the cockpit. The
animals had got over the excitement of a new day dawning, and it was weird,
slipping silently through the mist. After a couple of minutes, they could make out
a wooden pier, jutting into the river. At the end of the pier, they could just
make out the rotting remains of a small boat.

‘Here we are,’ she said, checking her sat
nav screen.

‘We’ll overshoot slightly, drop the
anchor and take the dinghy.

So that’s what they did.

‘Use the oars,’ she said. ‘This is the
back of beyond, and we don't know who or what might be waiting for us.’

 
Mick and Jim both thought this was a good
idea, but wished she hadn't phrased it in quite that way.

As Jim rowed round the Catalina, they
could see exactly what was waiting for them. Mick switched the camera on. Mrs
Hathaway breathed deeply. Through the mist, they could just make out the lone
figure of a man, standing on the end of the pier. He was motionless and looking
straight towards them. It was a little brighter now, and they could make out some
details.

He was, obviously, a local. He was slim
and naked, apart from a-loincloth and several necklaces. He had jet-black hair
in a ‘pudding basin’ haircut, and eyes that caught the rays of the morning sun.
He carried a long wooden stick and an air of authority.

Despite all her preparation, Mrs
Hathaway, had not given a thought to what she should say, if she got into this
sort of situation. For all she knew, she could have been set up to meet the
head of some international logging company with a hard hat, check shirt, Chinos
and Cat boots.

She stood up in front of the dinghy.

‘Er, we come in peace,’ she called.

Mick and Jim instinctively kept their
heads down, in case there was an attack from the riverbank vegetation.

The man was silent. There was still no
movement.

‘We - come - in - peace,’ she repeated,
slowly.

He stared down at them. The mist
continued to swirl. The dinghy nudged the pier.

‘My name is Miss-is Hath-a-way.’

Suddenly, he moved forward, crouched down
and, with a big grin, held out a bottle, and returned the greeting.

‘Nae borra, hen! Fancy a wee dram o’
Glenfiddich?’