Assegai

‘Interesting times ahead for all of us,’ he told himself. He had not yet considered the nub of the problem. If everything worked out as he hoped the Assegai would come down the Rift Valley from the north. She would not be flying higher than ten thousand feet above sea level: her crew would be in danger of oxygen starvation if she flew higher than that for any extended period.

There was no possibility that Graf Otto could bring the monster down the centre of the valley without being spotted by the network of bright-eyed chungaji. Leon would have ample warning of his approach, certainly enough time to get the Butterfly airborne and into her patrol station. ‘But what happens then?’ he asked himself. ‘A gunfight between the two of us?’

He laughed at that ludicrous notion. From the illustrations he had seen of the airship, the Assegai would be armed with at least three or four Maxim machine-guns, which would be served by trained German airmen from a stable firing platform. Taking them on from the Butterfly, with his two Masai armed with service rifles, would be a novel means of committing suicide.

He had been able to beg two hand grenades from Hugh Delamere, and had a vague idea of flying above the Assegai and dropping one on top of her great domed hull. There would be two and a half million cubic feet of highly explosive hydrogen in her hull and the resulting fireball would be spectacular. As the grenades had only a six-second delay after they co

‘There must be a better plan than frying myself,’ he murmured ruefully. ‘I just have to find it before I run out of time.’ According to Eva’s last cablegram from Switzerland, there were only five days to go before the Assegai was due to leave Wieskirche. ‘I haven’t even had a chance to test the feasibility of the new landing strip. We must go to Percy’s Camp tomorrow to fetch the Butterfly and bring her here.’

Leon decided to sleep that night at Lusima’s hut and head down the mountain at first light the next day. He and Lusima sat side by side at the fire, sharing a bowl of cassava porridge for di

‘The little flower is worthy of that love,’ Lusima agreed.

‘Yet she has gone from me. And I despair that I will ever see her again.’

‘You must never despair, M’bogo. Without hope we are nothing.’

‘Mama, you spoke to us once of a great silver fish in the sky that brings fortune and love.’

‘I grow old, my son, and more often these days I speak great stupidity.’

‘Mama, that is the first and only stupidity I have ever heard you utter.’ Leon smiled at her, and she smiled back. ‘It comes to me that soon the fish you do not remember will take to the sky.’

‘All things are possible, but what do I know of fish?’

‘I thought in my own stupidity that, as my mother, you might be able to tell me how to catch this fish of fortune and love.’

She was silent for a long time and then she shook her head. ‘I know nothing about the catching of fish. You should ask a fisherman about that. Perhaps one of the fishermen of Lake Natron might teach you.’

He stared at her in astonishment, then slapped his forehead. ‘Fool!’ he said. ‘Oh, Mama, your son is a fool! Lake Natron! Of course! The fishing nets! That’s what you were trying to tell me!’

Leaving Loikot and Ishmael on the mountain, Leon and Manyoro hurried to Percy’s Camp. He wanted to keep the load on the plane for landing on the mountain to a minimum.

From Percy’s Camp they took off almost immediately for Lake Natron. This time Leon took no chances with another landing on soft ground: he put the Butterfly down safely on the firm surface of the soda pan. He and Manyoro bargained with the chieftain of the fishing village and finally bought four lengths of old, damaged netting from him, each roughly two hundred paces long. As they had not been used recently they were dust-dry, but even so, the weight taxed the power of the Butterfly’s Meerbach engines. Leon had to make four separate flights to the makeshift landing strip on top of the mountain, carrying one net at a time, each landing a challenge to his skill as a pilot. He had to bring the Butterfly in fast to keep her just above stall speed and made a heavy touch-down that strained the landing gear to its limit.

By the afternoon of the second day they had all four nets laid out on the open ground. They sewed them together in pairs so that finally they had two separate nets, each about four hundred paces long.

There would be no opportunity for practice or experiment with packing and deploying the nets. They would go straight into action against the Assegai, and had only one chance of unfurling the nets successfully. Leon hoped that, with the first attack, he might be able to entangle the propellers of the airship’s two rear engines and slow her down to the extent that he had time to return to Lonsonyo landing strip and load the second length for another attack.

One of the many critical aspects of the scheme was to pack the net so that it would unfurl from the bomb bay and stream out behind the Butterfly in an orderly fashion. Then, once Leon had entangled the airship’s propellers in the mesh, he had to be able to release the net from its retaining hooks before the Butterfly became snarled up in it. He had to be able to break away cleanly. If he failed to get clear, his aircraft would be dragged along tail-first behind the stricken airship. Her wings and fuselage would be broken up by the u

By the evening of the fourth day the Butterfly stood at the head of the short strip of cleared ground with her nose pointed down the slope, the cliff face falling away abruptly at the end of the runway. Twenty porters waited in readiness to throw their combined weight behind her and give her a push start down the slope.

At dawn and dusk each day Loikot had stood on the heights of Lonsonyo and exchanged shouts with his chungaji companions across the length and breadth of Masailand. It seemed that the eyes of every morani in the territory were fastened on the northern sky: all hoped to be first to spot the approach of the silver fish monster.

Leon and his crew sat under a crudely thatched sun-shelter beside the fuselage of the Butterfly. When the call came they could be at their stations in the cockpit within seconds. There was nothing they could do now but wait.