The Seventh Scroll

reached from one side of the narrow overgrown strip to the other. Ja

touched her down short, and she blew out a long rolling cloud of brown

dust behind her as he put the engines into reverse thrust.

Big Dolly went barrelling past the clump of acacia, and Ja

them from the high cockpit. The moment he had bled off enough speed, he

stood on his footbrakes and rudder bar. Big Dolly spun around in her own

length and came roaring back down the strip towards them, her loading

ramp begi

Fred was waiting in the open hatchway, and he ran down to'help Sapper

and Nicholas with the wounded men on the litters. It took only a few

minutes to carry them up the ramp, and then they started loading the

ammunition crates. Even Royan gave a hand, staggering up the ramp with

one of the lighter crates clutched to her chest.

A mortar shell exploded a hundred and fifty yards beyond the parked

Hercules, and then half a minute later a second shell fell a hundred

yards short.

"Ranging shots," Nicholas grunted, picking up a crate under each arm and

ru

"They have us in their sights now," Fred shouted. "We have to get out of

here. Leave the rest of the cargo. Let's go, GoV

There were only four crates still lying under the NMI-, MOrJL

spreading branches of the acacia, and both Nicholas and Sapper ignored

the order and ran back down the ramp.

and raced back.

They snatched up a crate under each arm "Me ramp was starting to rise

and Big Dolly's engines roared as she began to taxi out. They hurled the

crates over the tailboard of the rising ramp and then jumped up to grab

a handhold and pull themselves aboard. Nicholas was the first up and

reached down to haul Sapper in.

When he looked back, Tessay was a small, lonely figure under the

acacias.

"Give Mek my love and thanks," he bellowed at her.

CY

ou know how to contact us," she screamed back.

"Goodbye, Tessay' Royan's voice was lost in the blast of the great

engines, and the dust blew back in a sheet over Tessay so that she was

forced to cover her face and turn away. The ramp hissed closed on its

hydraulic. rams, and cut out their last glimpse of her.

Nicholas put an arm around Royan's shoulders and hustled her down the

length of the cavernous cargo hold and into one of the jum seats at the

entrance to the cockpit.

"Strap yourself in!" he ordered, and ran up the steps to the cockpit.

"Thought you had decided to stay behind," Ja

without looking up from his controls.

"Hold tight! Here we go."

Nicholas clung on to the back of the pilot's seat as bank of Ja

Fred between them pushed forward the throttle levers to full power, and

Big Dolly built up speed until she was careering down the strip.

Looking over Ja

camouflage battledre.ss amongst . Some of them the thorn scrub at the

end of the runwa raced tow huge aircraft as it ards were firing at the

them.

"Those popguns aren't going to hurt her much," Ja

tough old lady." And  - lifted her grunted  into the air.

They flashed over the heads of the enemy troops on the ground, and

Ja

"Welcome aboard! folks, thank you for flying Africair.

Next stop Malta," Ja

oh! Where did this little piss-cat come from?"

Directly ahead of them the Jet Ranger rose out of the thick scrub on the

banks of the Nile. The angle of the helicopter's climb meant that the

approaching Hercules was hidden from the pilot's view, and he continued

to rise directly into their path.

"Only five hundred feet and a hundred and ten knots on the clock," Fred

shouted a warning at his father from the right'hand seat. "Too low to

turn."

The jet Ranger was so close that Nicholas could clearly see Tuma Nogo in

the front seat, his spectacles reflecting the sunlight like the eyes of

a blind man, and his face freezing into a rictus of terror as he

suddenly saw the great machine bearing down on them. At the last

possible moment the pilot put his aircraft over in a wild dive to try to

ear It  nose of the approaching Hercules. It seemed impossible to avoid

the collision, but he managed to bank, the lighter, more manoeuvrable

machine over until it rolled almost on to its back. It slipped under the

belly of the Hercules, and the men in the cockpit of Ja

barely felt the light kiss of the two fuselages.

However, the helicopter was flung over on to its nose by the impact,

until it was pointing straight down at the earth only four hundred feet

below, While Big Dolly flew on, climbing away steadily on an even keel,

the pilot of the et Ranger struggled to control his crazily plummeting

machine. Two hundred feet above the earth the turbulence thrown out

astern by the massive T56,A-15 turbo-prop engines of the Hercules, each

rated at 4900 horsepower, struck the helicopter with the force of an

avalanche.

Like a dead leaf in an autumn gale she was swept away, spi

end, and when she struck the ground her own engines were still squealing

at full power. On impact the fuselage crumpled like a sheet of aluminium

cooking foil, and Nogo was dead even before the fuel tanks exploded and

a fireball engulfed the jet Ranger.

As soon as Ja

around on her northerly heading, and they could look back over the wing

at the Roseires airstrip falling away behind them. The column of black

smoke from the burning helicopter was tar-thick as it drifted away on

the light westerly wind.

"You did say they were the uglies?" Ja

us, then?"

nce Ja

and they were over the open deserted Sudanese plains, Nicholas went back

into the main hold.

"Let's get the wounded settled down comfortably , he an unbuckled their

safety belts suggested. Sapper and Roy and went back with him to attend

to the men lying where haste of the their litters had been dumped during

the getaway from Roseires.

After a while Nicholas left them to it and went forward  flight deck. He

to the small, well-stocked galley behind the soup and sliced hunks of

fresh bread opened some ca

refrigerator. While the tea water boiled, he found his small emergency

pack, and took from it.the nylon wallet which contained his medicines

and drugs. From one of the vials he shook five white tablets into the

palm of his hand.

In the galley he crushed the tablets to powder, and when he poured tea

into two of the mugs he stiffed the powder in with it. Royan had enough

English blood in her veins never to be able to refuse a mug of hot tea.

After they had served soup and buttered toast to the wounded men, Royan

accepted her mug from Nicholas gratefully. While she and Sapper sipped

their tea, Nicholas went back to the flight deck and leaned over the

back of Ja

"What is our flying time to the Egyptian border?" he asked.

"Four hours twenty minutes,'Ja

"Is there any way that we can avoid flying into Egyptian air