‘A Sword to a Fool’ – Joel Green
Blake Drysdale is back! The sardonic smuggler returns in a thrilling second adventure. This time, Blake and his crew are on the hunt for a missing child and find themselves dragged into a globe-spanning battle to survive against the mysterious Paragon Group.[image error]
Accused of murder and with a price on their heads, Blake and his team must go underground to discover the sinister motives of an unseen enemy. Their search takes them from the jungles of South America to war-torn Rhodesia and through Cold War Europe on the trail of answers, salvation and some damn money.
***
Blake dropped down into his seat and took the controls while Sally frantically dialled the radio back and forth.
‘We are an unarmed civilian transport,’ she repeated. ‘Hold your fire!’
It made no sense – the Rhodesians shouldn’t have been able to respond to their incursion so quickly.
A spray of tracers arced beneath the Bride and Blake put her into a sharp turn before banking back and returning to his previous course. One of the pursuing aircraft overshot his position and flashed ahead, pulling up into a steep ascent. Blake didn’t recognise the jet’s markings but knew the type; a single-seat, swept-wing fighter with a cut-off nose housing the intake for the engine.
‘That’s a MiG-17!’ he said.
‘Fascinating!’ Sally snapped.
‘No, you don’t understand, the Rhodesian Air Force doesn’t fly MiGs. I don’t know who these guys are, but they’re not from around here.’
‘Well, whoever they are, we’re lucky.’
‘Lucky!?’ Anton shouted incredulously from behind.
‘Sure,’ Sally said. ‘They’re not loaded for fowl. If they were carrying air-to-air missiles we’d already be on the deck.’
Another burst of cannon fire cut the air past the Bride and they heard the metallic punch as one of the rounds bit into her somewhere behind. Missiles or not, Blake thought, even at full throttle the lumbering amphibious transport wasn’t anywhere near fast or manoeuvrable enough to out-dance a pair of Soviet fighter-jets. Sooner or later they would be cut to pieces and he could see no obvious way out.
‘Felix,’ he said, ‘take that assault rifle from Anton, poke your head out the hatch on top and see what you can accomplish from there.’
‘You’re kidding.’
Blake performed a hard banking turn and pitched the nose down, dropping toward the sparse forest below. ‘Certainly not,’ he said. ‘Give ‘em plenty of run. Wait ‘til you can see the whites of the bastards’ eyes, and aim for the intake.’
Felix took the rifle uncertainly and headed back with Anton following behind to help secure his legs as he took his impromptu gunner position. Blake had no illusions that they’d be able to down two MiGs with a single magazine of rifle ammunition, but they had to at least make the attempt.
He jigged again and again heard the sharp bite of steel being punched through as the pursuing jets fired short bursts at the slower aircraft, picking at the Bride at their leisure. A fuel pressure warning for the starboard wing tank went off and Blake knew they were bleeding. Then he could hear the report of the rifle discharging single shots from behind. One of the fighters blasted across above them, close enough to rock the Bride, and Blake wondered if Felix had actually managed to score a hit and scare the bandit off. Blake dove down into a valley and tried to put some terrain in between himself and the pursuers. It was a hopeless notion as one of the jets descended out of the sun and raked the Bride with rounds the deadly cacophony was accompanied by the sudden stench of hot oil and the rudder pedals went limp beneath Blake’s feet. The rifle fired off again.
‘We’ve lost yaw control,’ he said as the Bride shuddered and slewed. The tail assembly was likely mangled but he still had his elevators for the time being.
‘Oil pressure’s gone in the starboard engine,’ Sally reported, and Blake glanced out the side to see the big prop, high on the wing, stutter to a screeching stop and almost tear itself from the spindle in the process. The engine nacelle belched black smoke and the first tongues of flame. The aircraft immediately screwed to the right from the suddenly asymmetrical thrust and with the rudder gone, Blake could do nothing to compensate except to bank lazily. They began to lose altitude and Blake and Sally shared a glance, both knowing what would come next.
Blake turned to his controls.
‘One last time, old girl,’ he muttered under his breath, unheard above the shrieking of wind through bullet holes. ‘You’ve got one more in you. I know you have. You can save us one last time.’
***
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“The 2nd Blake Drysdale novel is even better than the first one.”
