ordinary man. He did not try to lead but men wanted to follow him anyway. He did not try to impress others but others wanted to be like him.’
‘My report describes him as a trained killer. Is that how you yourself would describe him?’
‘Would you describe a gentle breeze as a killer? But a tornado is also just a wind . . . Stratton was like a welcome breeze most of the time. But he could also become a tornado.’
‘How did he come into it?’
Victor grinned. ‘In a spectacular fashion,’ he said, taking a final drag from his cheroot before tossing it into the fire. ‘He arrived the same way he left . . . Like an eagle . . .’
Chapter 1
A Hercules transport aircraft thundered low over the jungle, gracefully following the contours of the rolling peaks and troughs of the forest canopy as dawn broke over the distant horizon. The plane’s sand-coloured fuselage, free of any identifying markings, was not as old as the paint job made it look. The propellers purred robustly as it banked easily onto a new heading and levelled off towards the rising sun.
As the tailgate motors whined the two large doors separated, the upper one folding into the fuselage, the bottom one lowering to form a level platform.
Stratton, wearing camouflage clothing, with a holstered pistol on his belt and a parachute on his back, stepped from inside the dark interior onto the ramp. The wind tousled his unkempt dark hair and he looked down at the jungle speeding past several hundred feet below. The dense forest spread beneath him like a vast undulating carpet, with distant rocky hills on one side and a series of table-top plateaus on the other. He tried to clear his mind and enjoy the spectacular view but he couldn’t. There was too much to think about.
He hooked the butt of a short black M4 carbine to a clip at his shoulder so that the barrel pointed down and secured it to his waist with a bungee. Meanwhile the crew extended a section of parallel rollers that looked like a large ladder from inside the cabin to the end of the ramp and quickly clamped it to the floor. The loadmaster, wearing headphones, strode out to Stratton and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘One minute!’ he shouted.
A crewman handed Stratton a helmet while another placed a heavy camouflaged backpack at his feet. Stratton buckled on the helmet, turned the pack upside down, stepped through the shoulder straps, pulled the pack up in front of him and clipped it to his belt harness. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly to help ease his growing tension. It was always the same, he thought. The only time he remembered ever being totally indifferent about a jump had been when he was doing half a dozen a day, and only then by around day three of the jump schedules. Otherwise every time he’d pulled on a chute and stood on a ramp ready to go he had experienced butterflies to some degree. Stratton wasn’t the daredevil type but then again, if the odds of survival were in his favour and, most particularly, if the reason for jumping was good enough, he would go for it. But he had every excuse to feel a tad uneasy about this jump. It was a LALO - low altitude, low opening - and it was above jungle. That would never become routine.
A heavy crate one metre wide by two metres long emerged from the hold on the rollers and was brought to a stop on the edge of the ramp where a block prevented it from falling off. Strapped to its top was a large chute with a static line attached. Half a dozen similar containers were rolled out behind it.
‘We gotta standby!’ shouted the loadmaster, his voice echoing over speakers throughout the hold.
Crewmen took up their positions alongside the crates. A plastic bag shot out from somewhere inside the cabin and spiralled away in the slipstream.
‘Secure that trash!’ shouted the loadmaster.
A series of bright red lights flashed on around the ramp. The crewman on the end of a safety line crouching by the lead container, his clothes flapping furiously in the turbulence, gripped the restraining block.
One of the men leaned close to Stratton. ‘You’re one crazy son of a bitch!’ he yelled.
Stratton ignored him. He fitted his goggles and braced himself for what was coming next. The guy was perfectly correct but not