So Jonathan had retreated into his own thoughts. He had long been aware that he was one of those people who are condemned to think concurrently rather than consecutively. For instance, he was comparing the greens of the jungle with the greens of Ireland and reckoning that the jungle beat Ireland into a cocked hat. He was remembering how in army helicopters the ethic had been to sit on your steel helmet in case the bad guys on the ground decided they would shoot your balls off. And how this time he had no helmet ― just jeans and sneakers and very unprotected balls. And how as soon as he had entered a helicopter in those days, he had felt the prickle of combat start to work in him as he sent a last goodbye to Isabelle and hugged his rifle to his cheek. And how helicopters, because they scared him, had always been places of philosophical reflection of the corniest kind for him, such as: I am on my life's journey, I am in the womb but heading for the grave.
Such as: God, if you get me out of this alive, I'm yours for ― well, life. Such as: Peace is bondage, war is freedom, which was a notion that shamed him every time it took him over, and had him casting round for somebody to punish ― such as Dicky Roper, his tempter. And he was thinking that whatever he had come for, he was now approaching it, and Jed would not be earned, or worth earning, and Sophie would not be appeased, till he had found it, because his search was for-and-on-behalf-of both of them.
He stole a look at Roper, sitting across the aisle with his head back and his sleep mask on, and it occurred to him that until recently their relationship had been of a rather formal kind ― health, passports, company structures, menus, Dan and so on ― and that if they had been German they would still be calling one another
And that he had never seen anybody riding into a battle zone in a sleep mask.
He stole a look at Langbourne, seated behind Roper reading his way through a lengthy contract, and he was impressed, as he had been in Curaçao. by the way Langbourne sprang to life as soon as he caught the whiff of cordite. He would not say he liked Langbourne the better for it, but he was gratified to discover that there was something on earth apart from women that was capable of rousing him from his supine state ― even if it was only the advanced techniques of human butchery.
"Now, Thomas, don't you let Mr. Roper fall into any bad company," Meg had warned from the steps of her plane as the men humped their luggage to the waiting helicopter. "You know what they say about Panama: it's Casablanca without the heroes, isn't that so, Mr. Roper? So don't you-all go being heroes, now. Nobody appreciates it. Enjoy your day, Lord Langbourne. Thomas, it's been a pleasure having you aboard. Mr. Roper, that was not a seemly embrace."
They were climbing. As they climbed, the sierra climbed with them until they entered bumpy cloud. The helicopter didn't like cloud, and it didn't like the altitude, and its engine was wheezing and braying like a bad-tempered old horse. Jonathan put on his plastic earmuffs and was rewarded with the howl of a dentist's drill instead. The air in the cabin turned from ice-cold to intolerable. They lurched over a coxcomb of snowcaps and flipped downward like a sycamore seed until they were flying over a pattern of small islands, each with its half-dozen shanties and red tracks. Then sea again. Then another island, coming at them so fast and low that Jonathan was convinced that the clustered masts of the fishing boats were about to smash the helicopter to pieces or send it cartwheeling down the beach on its rotaries.
Now they are splitting the earth in two, sea one side, jungle the other. Above the jungle, the blue hills. Above the hills, white puffs of gun smoke. And underneath them roll the ordered ranks of slow white waves between tongues of dazzling green land. The helicopter banks tightly as if dodging unfriendly fire. Square banana groves like paddy fields merge with the sodden moorland of Armagh. The pilot is following a sanded yellow road leading to the broken-down farmhouse where the close observer blew two men's faces off and made himself the toast of his regiment. They enter a jungle valley; green walls envelop them as Jonathan is overcome by a dreadful need of sleep. They are climbing up the hillside, shelf by shelf, over farms, horses, villages, living people. Turn back; this is high enough. But they don't. They continue until zero is upon them and life below untraceable. To crash here, even in a big plane, is to have the jungle close over you before you hit the ground.
