Ghost Flight Read Free

making that flight. The airport: that’s where he’ll grab us. He’ll have a reception party waiting. He’ll claim I busted you out of Black Beach, but he recaptured us. That way, he gets two paydays – one from us, and a second from the President.’
    Jaeger shuddered. It was the President of Bioko – Honore Chambara – who’d ordered his arrest in the first place. A month or so back there had been an attempted coup. Mercenaries had seized the other half of Equatorial Guinea – Bioko being the country’s island capital – the half that lay just across the ocean, forming part of the African mainland.
    In the aftermath, President Chambara had rounded up all foreigners on Bioko – not that there were many. Jaeger had been one of them, and a search of his digs had turned up the odd memento from his time as a soldier.
    As soon as Chambara had heard, he’d figured Jaeger had to be in on the coup; their man on the inside. Which he wasn’t. He was here in Bioko for an entirely different – and innocent – set of reasons, but there was no convincing Chambara. On the President’s orders, Jaeger had been thrown into Black Beach Prison, where Major Mojo had done his best to break him; to force him to confess.
    Jaeger slipped on the shades. ‘You’re right – we’ll never make it out of here via the airport. You got a Plan B?’
    Raff threw him a look. ‘Way I heard it, you were here working as a teacher. Teaching English. At a village in the far north of the island. I paid them a visit. A bunch of fishermen there figure you’re the best thing that ever happened on Hell Island. Taught their kids to read ’n’ write. More than President Chugga ever did.’ He paused. ‘They’ve readied a canoe so we can make a break for Nigeria.’
    Jaeger thought about it for a second. He’d spent close to three years on Bioko. He’d got to know the local fishing communities well. The journey across the Gulf of Guinea by canoe – it was doable. Maybe.
    ‘It’s thirty klicks, or thereabouts,’ he volunteered. ‘The fishermen do it now and then – when the weather’s set fair. You got a map?’
    Raff gestured at a small flight bag lying at Jaeger’s feet. Jaeger reached for it, painfully, and rifled through the contents. He found the map, unfolded it and studied the lie of the land. Bioko lay in the very crook of the armpit of Africa – a tiny island thick with jungle, no more than a hundred kilometres long by fifty kilometres wide.
    The nearest African country was Cameroon, lying north and west of there, with Nigeria set further to the west again. A good two hundred kilometres south lay what had been, until recently, the other half of President Chambara’s domain – the mainland part of Equatorial Guinea – that was, until the coup plotters had seized it.
    ‘Cameroon’s closest,’ Jaeger remarked.
    ‘Cameroon? Nigeria?’ Raff shrugged. ‘Right now, anywhere’s better than here.’
    ‘How long till nightfall?’ Jaeger queried. He’d lost his watch to Chambara’s thugs, long before he’d been dragged into his Black Beach cell. ‘Under cover of darkness, we might just make it.’
    ‘Six hours. I’m giving you one hour max at the hotel. You spend it scrubbing all that shit off, and necking water – because no way are you gonna make it unless you rehydrate. Like I said, big day still to come.’
    ‘Mojo knows which hotel you’re staying at?’
    Raff snorted. ‘No point trying to hide. Island this size – everyone knows everything. Come to think of it, reminds me a bit of home . . .’ His teeth flashed in the sunlight. ‘Mojo won’t cause us any trouble – not for a good few hours. He’ll be checking if his money has cleared – by which time we’ll be long gone.’
    Jaeger drank the bottled water, forcing gulp after gulp down his parched throat. Trouble was, his stomach had shrunk to the size of a walnut. If they hadn’t beaten and tortured him to death, the starvation diet would have done