Free Hostile Territory (A Spider Shepherd short story) by Stephen Leather Page B

me. I get paid either way.’ He shrugged carelessly. ‘Anyone who doesn’t want to fly with me can stay here.’
    ‘No, we’ll fly in it, providing you think you can get it airborne with all of us and our kit on board,’ said Shepherd.
    ‘We have a lot of fuel on board which we need to get us to Freetown but the only way to find out is try, yes?’ said Jerzy. He grinned. ‘Shall we make a wager?’
     ‘I don’t suppose you brought any food with you?’ Geordie said. Jerzy shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t think you would have.’ Geordie gave a theatrical sigh, threw his bergen into the Hoplite and clambered aboard. ‘Come on then you guys, chop chop. If we get a move on we might just be in time for an all-day breakfast at a Freetown greasy spoon.’
    ‘I can see that being a receipe for disaster,’ said Jimbo. ‘I think I’ll stick with ration packs.’
    ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ laughed Jock, slapping him on the back. The two men followed Geordie into the back of the helicopter.
     Shepherd sat up front with the pilot and the initial frost between them soon thawed as Jerzy went through his preflight checks. ‘What brings you to Sierra Leone?’ Shepherd asked.
     ‘When the Cold War ended there wasn’t much demand for ex-military helicopter pilots back home so I thought I’d try my luck in Africa,’ said the pilot. ‘Until recently I was earning a reasonable living ferrying airline passengers between the airport and the capital. The airport’s at Lungi on the north side of the Sierra Leone River, Freetown’s on the opposite bank. There’s no bridge so passengers heading for the city either have to take a ferry or a very long road detour - about 180 kilometres - and the roads are far from secure. Anyway, the unrest and the Civil War here has cut the number of civilian flights - and the number of people on them - so that I’m lucky to see one or two passengers a month these days. So until the British Army arrived, I’d been whiling my time away in Freetown, making a dollar where I could, but mostly drinking too much beer and watching satellite TV whenever there wasn’t a power cut. But now I’m - how do you say it? - back on Easy Street because I have a contract with the British Army. They don’t have enough helicopters to support their operations, so I fill in for them where I can.’
    ‘So you’re a mercenary?’
    ‘A mercenary?’
    ‘A soldier for hire.’
    Jerzy laughed and slapped his leg. ‘That’s what I am,’ he said. ‘A soldier for hire.’
    There was a whining sound from the turbines as he pressed the starter, then the engines coughed like a heavy smoker clearing his lungs and rumbled into life, belching out diesel fumes.  Jerzy shifted the lever into flight idle and the rotors began to turn, slowly at first but accelerating rapidly into a blur of motion as the downwash whipped up such a storm of sand and dust that the beach disappeared from view. His gaze flickered across the gauges, then he gave a thumbs up to Shepherd, and raised the collective. The helicopter lifted on its springs with an almost human groaning sound. Even though they’d been carrying minimum kit, the four passengers on board were stretching the Hoplite to its limits. The helicopter rose painfully slowly, struggling to break free of the ground effect. It juddered in the downwash, its engines screaming and its airframe vibrating so hard it sounded as if it was shaking itself apart.
    ‘Bloody hell!’ Shepherd said. ‘Good thing we’ve been on starvation rations for a fortnight. If we hadn’t lost a few pounds, I don’t think we’d have got airborne at all.’
    ‘Jimbo’s just shat himself if that’s any help,’ said Geordie.
    The rotors eventually bit into cleaner air and the noise and juddering decreased as the helicopter rose sluggishly from the beach and wheeled away towards Freetown. Looking down, Shepherd could see the scorch marks and devastation as they flew over the