Hell Island - Matthew Reilly [16]
‘Bigfoot! Let’s move! Time to get out of here—’
All of a sudden, their fighter started rocking wildly.
Schofield spun in his seat. ‘Shit! They must have climbed up the side of the ship!’
The rest of the ape army—nearly 300 gorillas— was now climbing up and over the outer edges of the elevator platform!
They swarmed around the plane, clambered up onto it, shook it, hit it, fired at it.
Schofield closed the Tomcat’s canopy a split second before it was hit by gunfire. Made of rein-forced Lexan glass, the canopy was capable of deflecting high-velocity air-to-air tracers, so it could handle this small-arms fire, even from up close.
But then one clever gorilla climbed into the towing vehicle that was attached to the Tomcat and started it up.
‘Aw, no way, that just ain’t fair . . .’ Bigfoot breathed.
Covered in rampaging apes and now pulled by the towing vehicle, the Tomcat slowly started moving . . .
. . . toward the edge of the elevator!
‘They’re going to tip us over the side!’ Bigfoot exclaimed.
Indeed they were.
The Tomcat rolled toward the edge of the elevator, six storeys above the waterline.
As it did so, the apes on its back started bailing off it, jumping clear. They knew what was about to happen.
‘Ah, Captain . . .’ Bigfoot said. ‘Any ideas?’
‘Yeah. Buckle up.’ Schofield was already strapping on his seatbelt.
‘Buckle up? How’s that going to—oh!’ Bigfoot clutched at his belts, started clasping them.
The towing vehicle came to the edge of the platform and the ape driving it bailed out just as the towing vehicle tipped over the edge, now hanging from the Tomcat’s front landing gear.
The ape army did the rest. They pushed the F-14 until its front wheels lurched off the edge and the entire plane—with Schofield and Bigfoot in it—fell, off the carrier, plunging ninety feet straight down to the water far below.
The instant the Tomcat fell off the edge, the canopy of the fighter blew open and the F-14’s two ejection seats shot up out of the plane.
The ejection seats—with Schofield and Bigfoot on them—rocketed up into the sky above the air-craft carrier while the Tomcat went in the opposite direction, the plane falling in a clumsy tumbling heap down the side of the boat and into the water, where it landed with a great splash and immediately began to sink.
Schofield and Bigfoot flew high into the air before they disengaged their flight seats and initiated the parachutes that were attached to their seatbelts.
As the two of them floated back down to the earth, they scanned the huge force of apes on the deck of the carrier. They looked like an army of ants swarming over the aft runway.
Then suddenly Hail Mary gunshots started to zing past Schofield’s head, tearing through his chute.
‘Where to now?’ Bigfoot asked over the UHF.
Schofield pursed his lips, thinking fast. His eyes fell on the chunky CH-53 Super Stallion in the centre of the flight deck.
‘It’s time to even the score a little. Follow me.’
He angled his gliding flight back toward the carrier, toward its mid-section.
Schofield touched down on the middle of the flight deck. Bigfoot landed a second after him, not far from the catapult launch controls.
The apes charged forward, roaring, firing, rampaging.
‘Stay here,’ Schofield ordered before racing across the open deck to the massive Super Stallion.
Hunched in the pouring rain, he did some-thing near the front of the chopper out of Bigfoot’s sight before he came back round and charged into the chopper via its forward right-side door, slamming the door shut an instant before the gorillas arrived, banging on the side of the chopper, massing around it.
Inside the Super Stallion, Schofield hustled into the cockpit, shutting its door behind him, locking it.
Watching from the outside, taking cover behind the on-deck launch controls, Bigfoot was confused.
What was Schofield doing?
But then something even more confusing occurred.
The rear loading ramp of the Super Stallion folded open.
Naturally, the apes stormed it, fifty of them rushing inside, hungry