Dead in the Water (22 page)

“
She must be fucking wonderful in bed if you’re shelling out three grand just to see her again.”

“
Oh come on, she’s twenty years younger than me.”

“
You should be so lucky.”

“
It’s not like that.”

“
So why are we chasing after her?”

“
I ask myself the same question,” says Jeremy.

“
And?”

“
Duty. Guilt. Responsibility.”

“
And a little bit of sex. You fancy her. You’ve fallen for your mate’s daughter. So? What’s so wrong with that? Live with it Jez. Good on yer, chum.” Jeremy makes noises which are supposed to sound like he’s ridiculing the very idea; but part of him is reacting in the way he did when he was thirteen and his sister suggested he had a girlfriend. “Anyway, Jez. Whatever. I think you and your woman are heading in the right direction.”

“
I wasn’t planning on leaving.”

“
You’re more bonkers than I am then. I’m staying ‘cos this is the best place for the old
Tin Duck
to pay her way. And you bet that’s what she’s gonna do the next few weeks. When anarchy breaks out, money comes out of hiding.”

“
I don’t doubt it,” says Jeremy.

“
But if I were you, I’d clear off. Get your ass outta here while you can.”

“
I’ll get Rachel out. Then I’ll think about it.” And Terry drops out of the conversation as he studies his instruments. The sun has risen, and they’re about to cross the Orinoco, nearly a mile wide at this point.

“
This is Captain Sullivan speaking. We are now in airspace above Amazonas. We shall shortly commence our descent to Puerto Ayacucho. Please ensure your seatbelts are tightly fastened as we may well experience some turbulence…. Am I glad to be flying
The Tin Duck
and not some bloody double-decker bus of an airliner. This is why I love the amphib. We got problems, we could put her down there.” He is pointing to the great inland sea that is the River Orinoco. “She may not be beautiful, friend, and she certainly ain’t speedy, but she sure is versatile.” He tinkers around with his instruments and tries to call up Puerto Ayacucho. There’s no response, but this seems neither to surprise nor bother him. He throttles back a little, and the plane begins a slow descent. When he’s satisfied with the trim, he proclaims: “Sunrise over the rain forest. Always a fine sight.” And he leans forward so that Jez can get a better view out of over the port wing.

“
Beautiful,” says Jeremy, genuinely impressed.

“
I never get tired of that. Soft hearted Romantic at heart, that’s me.”

“
So
I’ve
heard.”

“
Oh yeah?” And they both laugh, perhaps a measure of how much they’ve relaxed in each other’s company over the past couple of hours. They enjoy the view for a while, before Terry announces: “I think the Yanks are getting uneasy.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
The transport plane. One of Uncle Sam’s private armies, is my guess. The oil companies have had their own private armies working here for years now. Suits me fine – you can make good money out of those guys. But things are getting outta hand, aren’t they. A bit of instability’s good for business, sure. But there’ll be some folks saying this has gone too far. … So it’s my guess Uncle Sam’s putting his foot down.”

“
I thought you said it was an unmarked plane.”

“
Indeedy doodle. Uncle Sam hasn’t been invited to the party. Never much bothered him in the past. But these days. Oh no. Sending in the GIs to gatecrash is not the done thing at all. So he has a word with a private contractor.”

“
An American military contractor?”

“
An American company. Multi national workforce. Mercenaries to you and me. Sign of the times, eh.”

4
1
Westminster, London

Mark is never late for work. The dead radio clock on the bedside table triggers a nervy flutter of adrenaline, even before he glances at his watch. Flustered by the fallibility of his own body clock, he puts on yesterday’s clothes, grabs his mobile, takes a carton of fruit juice from the fridge, ignoring the water that has pooled in front of the freezer.

Trying to catch up with himself, he runs down stairs. Opens the door. And stops, assailed by the stench of excrement and the sight of pavements and roadway strewn with garbage and covered in a film of oily shit-coloured mud drying in the unfamiliar morning sunshine. The air is already hot, the square steaming. This pleasant haven of prosperity in a secluded part of West London has become a stinking sewage pit.

The colossal electrical storm has dumped vast quantities of water on South East England; many areas of London have had as much as twenty centimetres of rain. The sewers have backed up; raw sewage mixing with surface water and rubbish from overturned wheelie bins. In the past twenty years or so most basements in the square have been converted into self-contained apartments. Every one of them is flooded.

The emergency services have not only had to deal with domestic flooding: there have been several serious lightning strikes; and numerous domestic fires during the night, as people woken by the storm resorted to candle light. One of the finest oak trees in Regents Park has been blasted apart, and now lies split in four, each great limb marking the points of the compass. The coastal towns of Sussex have suffered the most destructive flooding, where water running off the South Downs over ground sodden with weeks of rain has caused the kind of sudden surge not seen in England since the Boscastle floods in the summer of 2004.

Meteorologists can be found on every television and radio channel discussing the extreme and unusual conditions which gave birth to the storm, explaining why it lingered over the southern Home Counties for so long, and pedantically pointing out that ‘the perfect storm’ had actually been numerous different storms; and that, as so often with such large scale natural disasters, it’s a product of what they are calling the Crucible Effect: the convergence and accumulation of different elements, smelting a series of relatively minor ‘weather events’ into a grand catastrophe.

Most underground lines are flooded; and getting a taxi is impossible. Walking to work isn’t easy. Although the Thames has not burst its banks in London itself, numerous streets are blocked off to cars and pedestrians alike; and the fetor of putrefying waste lingers poisonously in the heat. The famous Bulldog spirit that the English draw on at times of crisis, which was evident in many work places in the aftermath of the bombings last week, is noticeably absent from Cowley Street – as are half the staff. Those who are at their desks seem morose; none of the usual chattermongers has gathered around the water cooler to swap stories. Despondency and dread hang darkly in the air. Even Ba, who, of course has managed to make it in, is subdued.

Once ensconced at his desk, there is little he can do except prepare for his meeting with Angela Walker and finish off his article for
The Guardian
. In spite of the crisis and his feeling of exhaustion, he manages to be efficient and productive, the Mark Boyd of old. Then in comes Ba with his mid-morning coffee, bringing with her the news that Angela Walker is going to be spending most of the day visiting those places worst hit by the storms. She is not going to be able to see him today.

4
2 The Tin Duck

They have descended down to 5,000 feet and the sun is well up into the sky, though wisps of cirrus are already beginning to form in the distant South East above the mountainous areas of Amazonas where the Orinoco rises. Conversation has dwindled in the past quarter of an hour as Terry has fiddled with the radio and made adjustments to his course. “You know where you’re sitting, Jez? I never let passengers sit in the co-pilot’s seat. I told you that, didn’t I.”

“
I’m flattered,” says Jeremy.

“
You’re missing my point.”

The welling fear in Jeremy’s stomach convinces him that he’s glad he’s not had a full meal in the last twelve hours. Then suddenly the aircraft plummets as they hit a powerful down current, and there is no time for him to ask what Sullivan’s point actually might have been.

“
Turbulence, pal. Nothing to worry about. The back end of wave.”

“
Uh?” he mumbles, yawning with nausea.

“
A band of wave lift. And we just hit the back end of it. We just lost the best part of a thousand feet in ten seconds. Best keep your eyes open, pal,” says Terry. “Gonna be a little bumpy. Not uncommon in this part of the world. The heat of the sun, the mountains. Unstable air. Not often that bad at this time of day. Live and learn, eh. Keep your seat belt on, you’ll be fine. Just don’t do a runner. And if you’re gonna throw up, use one of these.” He tears a black plastic bin bag off a roll beside his seat. “You gone quiet on me, Jez.”

Jeremy nods, closing his eyes again as the lids become heavy and another wave of nausea floods through.

“
Ladies and gentleman, thank you for flying with
Sullivan Air Taxis
. We hope you have had a pleasant flight. If you look out to starboard, that is your right hand side ––”; he’s cut short as the plane hits another fierce downdraft and is immediately tossed back up again, a ping pong ball on a fountain. Sullivan’s insistence that the floatplane is about as stable as you can get is of little consolation to Jeremy as he retches into the bin bag, just as they hit sink yet again.

“
You getting the willi-waws, Jez? Ride it, pal.” With one hand Jeremy holds tight on the bin bag, a child clinging to his comfort blanket, with the other he tries to wipe his face. Then they start bouncing again and there’s a bang from behind them in the cabin where the fuel cans are stored. Jeremy looks across. Sullivan had been grinning, a teenage boy taking his kid brother on a scary fairground ride. Until now. “Something loose back there.”

“
What?”

“
Fuck knows, pal. You gonna throw up again?”

“
Hope not,” mutters Jeremy.

“‘
Cos if you are, do it now. You’re going to need both hands. Trouble with this low-altitude turbulence – it’s so fucking unpredictable.” The plane seems to have got a whole lot smaller in the past five minutes. “We got seventy odd gallons of fuel back there in those cans, Jez. The only time there’s too much fuel on board an airplane is when it’s on fire. Right? You got me?”

“
Right.”

“
Thing is we’ve got something banging about back there, and you only need one spark… You following me?”

“
Yes.”

“
Well, undo your seatbelt and get back there. Find out what’s making that noise. And make damn sure all those cans are properly tied down.” Jeremy does not consider himself to be a brave man, but he doesn’t hesitate. Even as he unbuckles the straps, the plane hits yet more rough air, and he is thrown upwards, banging his head on the roof of the cockpit. “For Christ’s sake, Jez. Hang on to something. We don’t want you smashing a window. Cost a fortune to replace that. Grab onto something that’s fixed down. And not me.” Adrenaline surging, he eases himself from the co-pilot’s seat, clutching the bin bag with one hand and a bulkhead with the other. “Forget the fucking bag. Just keep your eyes open man.”

As the plane shoots up another couple of hundred feet and his body weight momentarily doubles, his hold on the bulkhead is firm and although his knees buckle, he stays upright. He kneels down, and grabs hold of the stays on one of the seats they left in place; it feels safer close to the floor. And there, by the seat, is a primitive Indian figure of a black panther about eighteen inches long, carved from dark hardwood and much heavier than it looks, perhaps a souvenir bought by one of Terry’s earlier passengers and forgotten after a similarly troubling descent. If this is what has been banging around, then his task is done. He wedges his legs under what he hopes will soon be Rachel’s seat so he can use both hands to secure the carving. The air has become more consistently rough, though less violent, more like bouncing along a badly pot-holed track in an unsprung cart than a white knuckle theme park ride. He puts the carving in a locker with a Red Cross on the door, wedging the panther between a First Aid box and a stow bag containing inflatable life jackets.

“
Terry,” he shouts.

“
You found it?”

“
There’s a smell of petrol back here.”

“
Are the cans secure?

“
I think so.”

“
Then get your ass back here, pal. I got clearance to land.”

Jeremy staggers into the cockpit, clinging to anything he can grab for a handhold, as the aircraft bounces, shudders and rattles its way towards the ground. Soon after he has strapped himself back in, the runway at Puerto Ayacucho comes into view ahead of them, a mile and a half concrete rectangle – just as Terry described it: a grass strip to which someone sent bulldozers and concrete mixers to create a parody of a modern airport. Terry has begun the approach and is focused on keeping to the glide path. Without taking his gaze from the instruments, he asks, “You OK?”

“
I’m fine,” says Jeremy weakly.

“
Good. … You’re bleeding. You know that?” He notices blood on his shirt, puts his hand tentatively to his forehead. The warm tickly stuff on his right cheek is flowing from a cut on his forehead.