Free Deadfall: Agent 21 by Chris Ryan Page A

metres away when it exploded.
    The force of the blast threw them several metres forward. They landed on the ground with a solid, painful thump. Zak immediately scrambled round to look back at the Cessna. It was a huge, orange blaze, and the heat pumping out of it was ferocious. Zak squinted. He could see neither Raf nor Gabs, and a knot of panic twisted in his stomach.
    ‘Gabs . . .’ he breathed. ‘Raf . . .’ And then he screamed at the top of his voice. ‘
Gabs! Raf!
’
    ‘They might be dead,’ said Malcolm, his voice weak and croaky, but his words typically blunt.
    ‘
Shut up, Malcolm!
’
    Zak edged nearer to the flames. He winced at the heat, but couldn’t quite bring himself to edge round to the other side. He was afraid of what he would find.
    And then he saw them. Two figures, silhouette black, emerging around either end of the burning plane. Gabs to his left. Raf to his right. As they grew nearer, he saw that their faces were covered in soot and dirt. Raf had a swollen bruise on his left cheek.
    Their faces were serious, yet calm.
    But they looked like they meant business.
    Gabs used the light of the burning Cessna to tend to any wounds Raf and Malcolm had sustained. They were surprisingly few. Raf’s face was only bruised; while Malcolm had a more serious cut on his elbow, where his clothes had torn and something had sliced a gash about five centimetres in length. It was bleeding badly. Gabs tore a strip from his shirt and used that to bind the wound tightly. The blood flow stopped after a couple of minutes of pressure, but it would clearly need constant attention.
    The Cessna had burned down to a smoulderingskeleton of metal and the small signalling fires were just a memory. It was very dark.
    In one way, Zak thought, that was a good thing. The noise of the air crash had been bad enough, but nothing was more likely to announce their presence here than a blazing aircraft. But it also made him feel vulnerable. There were sounds nearby in the jungle that he hated. Slithers and squawks, all of them magnified by the darkness. None of his training on St Peter’s Crag had prepared him for jungle wildlife.
    He patted down his jacket. The torch he had modified back in the warehouse was there, but it wouldn’t give them any light now.
    Fortunately, Raf had it covered. He drew a thin Maglite out of one of his pockets. Its beam cut cleanly through the darkness. ‘Have you still got that gaffer tape?’ he asked Zak.
    Zak nodded and reached inside the survival pack for the roll of tape. He handed it over to Raf, then watched as he placed the Maglite on top of Gabs’s assault rifle and fixed it there with several loops of tape around the body of the weapon. He raised the rifle and embedded the butt into his shoulder. Then he shone it in the direction of the second aircraft that Zak had almost forgotten about, hidden at the end of the landing strip and half covered by the encroaching rainforest.
    Cruz’s plane? It had to be.
    ‘Gabs,’ Raf said. ‘Keep an eye on Malcolm. Zak, come with me.’
    They walked silently towards the aircraft. ‘What are we looking for?’ Zak asked.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Raf replied. ‘I’ll tell you when we find it.’
    This aircraft was in a much better state than the Cessna. Zak reminded himself that it had probably landed before nightfall. The pilot hadn’t been flying blind. And yet there was something about it. An aura. Zak felt nervous just approaching.
    ‘The doors are still open,’ Raf breathed, pointing his torch at them. They were ten metres away and, with a sudden, sick feeling in his gut, Zak thought he could see, through a cabin window just behind the open door on the right, a figure still sitting at the instrument panel.
    He grabbed Raf’s arm. ‘I see it.’
    They approached carefully, with Raf keeping the assault rifle and Maglite firmly pointed straight ahead.
    They reached the open door.
    Zak looked in.
    He caught his breath.
    The pilot and co-pilot