Skeleton Key

The Cessna had been travelling at one hundred and fifty kilometres per hour. It came to a grinding halt in a matter of seconds, the deceleration throwing all three men forward in their seats. If they hadn‟t been belted in, they would have been hurled out of the front window—or what was left of the shattered glass. At the same time there was a series of ear-shattering crashes as something whipped into the fuselage. One of the wings had dipped down and the propeller was torn off, spinning into the night. Suddenly the plane was still, resting tilted on one side.
    For a moment, nobody moved inside the cabin. The plane‟s engines rattled and stopped. Then Marc pulled himself up in his seat. “What happened?” he screamed. “What happened?” He had bitten his tongue. Blood trickled down his chin. The bag was still open and money had spilled into his lap.
    “I don‟t understand…” The pilot was too dazed to speak.
    “You left the runway!” Carlo‟s face was twisted with shock and anger.
    “I didn‟t!”
    “There!” Marc was pointing at something and Carlo followed his quivering finger. The door on the underside of the plane had buckled. Black water was seeping in underneath, forming a pool around their feet.
    There was another rumble of thunder, closer this time.
    “He did this!” the pilot said.
    “What did he do?” Carlo demanded.
    “He moved the runway!”
    It had been a simple trick. As the plane had turned, Sarov had switched off the lights on the runway using the radio transmitter in his pocket. For a moment, the pilot had been disoriented, lost in the darkness. Then the plane had finished its turn and the lights had come back on. But what he hadn‟t known, what he wouldn‟t have been able to see, was that it was a second set of lights that had been activated—and that these ran off at an angle, leaving the safety of the runway and continuing over the surface of the swamp.
    “He led us into the mangroves,” the pilot said.
    Now Carlo understood what had happened to the plane. The moment its wheels touched the water, its fate had been sealed. Without solid ground beneath it, the plane had become bogged down and toppled over. Swamp water was even now pouring in as they slowly sank beneath the surface. The branches of the mangrove trees that had almost torn the plane apart surrounded them, bars of a living prison.
    “What are we going to do?” Marc demanded, and suddenly he was sounding like a child. “We‟re going to drown!”
    “We can get out!” Carlo had suffered whiplash injuries in the collision. He moved one arm painfully, unfastening his seat-belt.
    “We shouldn‟t have tried to cheat him!” Marc cried. “You knew what he was. You were told—
    “Shut up!” Carlo had a gun of his own. He pulled it out of the holster underneath his shirt and balanced it on his knee. “We‟ll get out of here and we‟ll deal with him. And then somehow we‟ll find a way off this damn island.”
    “There‟s something…” the pilot began.
    Something had moved outside.
    “What is it?” Marc whispered.
    “Shhh!” Carlo half stood up, his body filling the cramped space of the cabin. The plane tilted again, settling further into the swamp. He lost his balance then steadied himself. He reached out, past the pilot, as if he was going to climb out of the broken front window.
    Something huge and horrible lunged towards him, blocking out what little light there was in the night sky. Carlo screamed as it threw itself head first into the plane and onto him. There was a glint of white and a dreadful grunting sound. The other men were screaming too.
    General Sarov stood watching. It wasn‟t raining yet but the water was heavy in the air. There was a flash of lightning that seemed to cross the sky almost in slow motion, relishing its journey.
    In that moment, he saw the Cessna on its side, half-buried in the swamp. There were now half a dozen crocodiles swarming all over it. The largest of them had dived head first into the cockpit.
    Only its tail was visible, thrashing about as it gorged itself.
    He reached down and lifted up the black container. Although it had taken two men to carry it to him, it seemed to weigh nothing in his hands. He placed it in the jeep, then stood back. He allowed himself the rare privilege of a smile and felt it, briefly, on his lips. Tomorrow, when the crocodiles had finished their meal, he would send in his field workers—the macheteros—to recover the banknotes.