Bodyguard: Ambush (Book 3) (19 page)

Scanning the disorientating tangle of thick
vegetation, Connor was forced to agree. His only objective had been to escape the
gunmen, so he’d paid little attention to the direction they’d run in. A
potentially critical error of judgement. He
should
have been thinking like a
bodyguard, assessing the situation at every point and noting their escape route. Now
they were completely lost in unfamiliar and dangerous territory with no back-up.

Henri stumbled over a branch and Connor
caught his arm to stop him falling. Wheezing heavily from their mad dash through the
jungle, the boy’s face was pale and sweaty and his lips had a worrying blue
tinge.

‘Where’s your inhaler?’
asked Amber as Connor guided her brother over to a fallen tree and helped him to sit
down.

‘
Poc … ket
,’ he
rasped.

Amber fished it out
for him. Henri grabbed it as if he was drowning, immediately taking two puffs. A minute
went by and he was still clawing for breath. Panic welling in his eyes, he inhaled
another two doses.

‘Calm down, Henri. Slow steady
breaths,’ soothed Amber, gently stroking his arm. ‘We’re safe now. You
can relax.’

Gradually Henri’s wheezing eased and
his lips regained their colour. Closing his eyes, he leant forward, his head in his
hands.

‘Will he be all right?’ asked
Connor, aware that a severe asthma attack could be fatal.

Amber nodded. ‘He just needs some time
to recover.’ Her gaze fell to Connor’s chest and her pale green eyes widened
in alarm. ‘You’re bleeding!’

Connor glanced down. The patch of blood on
his T-shirt had blossomed. Gingerly lifting up his T-shirt, he peeled away the sodden
cloth from his skin. A bullet had clipped his side, leaving a long gash. His T-shirt,
while stab-proof, offered no protection from a 7.62mm high-velocity bullet, and blood
seeped steadily from the wound. As soon as he examined the injury, his brain registered
the damage and pain rushed in.

Grimacing, Connor put down his Go-bag and
extracted the first-aid kit.

‘Let me do that,’ said Amber,
taking the kit from him and insisting that he sit down.

Tired and hurting, Connor did as she
instructed. Using an antiseptic wipe, Amber cleaned away the blood.

‘Ouch, that
stings!’ he said, wincing.

‘Don’t be a baby,’ she
chastised, inspecting the wound. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. I think the
bullet only grazed you.’

She took out a gauze pad, placed it over the
gash and applied pressure. ‘Hold that there.’

Connor kept the pad in place as she found
some dressing tape and a bandage. ‘How come you know what to do?’ he
asked.

‘I’m a junior rock-climbing
instructor. First aid is part of the training.’ She wrapped the tape round his
midriff several times, securing the gauze pad and stemming the bleeding. ‘That
should do it.’

Connor found a spare shirt in his Go-bag and
put it on. Amber then turned her attention to the cut above his left eye.

‘So, what do you think happened back
there? Why were they trying to kill us?’

‘They were trying to kill President
Bagaza,’ replied Connor. ‘We just happened to be in the way.’

‘Who’d do such a thing? He seems
like such a nice man.’

Connor shrugged. ‘Any number of rebel
groups in Burundi. My operational brief listed at least four active militia units who
oppose him. But I’m guessing it’s the ANL, led by a man known as Black
Mamba.’

‘Who?’ said Amber, discarding a
bloodstained wipe and covering his cut with a plaster.

‘You really don’t want to know.
But he’s notorious for
using child
soldiers. And some of the attackers today were kids our age.’

Amber’s mouth fell open in shock.
‘
Kids?
’

Connor gave a grim nod. ‘My turn to
fix you,’ he said, finding another antiseptic wipe from the first-aid kit.

‘I can’t believe kids were
shooting at us with machine guns! Do you think –’ Her lower lip began to tremble
and her eyes flicked briefly to Henri before she managed to whisper, ‘Do you think
they killed our parents?’

‘Hold still,’ said Connor,
gently dabbing at the cut on her quivering lip.

As Amber sought a response from him, her
eyes welled up and a tear rolled down her cheek, washing a thin line through the blood
and dirt smearing her skin. Connor wiped it away. In truth, he thought it was highly
unlikely that Laurent or Cerise had survived the ambush. Their Land Rover was a total
wreck and if by some miracle they’d escaped the crash unhurt, then the gunmen
would have shot them down, just like they had the ranger. But Connor also realized that,
if Amber and Henri were to survive this ordeal, they needed to hold on to the hope that
their parents were still alive.

‘I didn’t see their bodies. So
there’s a good chance they escaped like us.’

‘Really?’ said Amber,
brightening. Connor could tell she was desperate to believe him.

‘The crucial thing now is for us to
get to the lodge and contact Buddyguard.’

‘But won’t this Black Mamba head
to the lodge too?’
said Henri,
who’d been listening the whole time, his breathing having finally returned to
normal.

‘That’s a risk we’ll have
to take. The lodge is the only property for a hundred miles and has the only means of
communication … unless either of you have a mobile phone?’ he added hopefully.

Henri shook his head. ‘Not allowed
one.’

‘Sorry,’ said Amber with a
regretful smile. ‘Left mine in the bedroom.’

‘Then we’ve no other
option.’

Connor packed away the first-aid kit and
shouldered his Go-bag.

‘But how do we even know which
direction to go in?’ asked Amber, waving her hand round the shadowy jungle.

Connor pivoted on the spot, trying to get
his bearings. There were no obvious paths, no visible landmarks, and the sun was
obscured by the canopy above. And they couldn’t retrace their steps for fear of
encountering the gunmen. He glanced at his watch. Sunset was less than an hour off. It
would be dark soon and then they’d have absolutely no chance of finding their
way.

Conscious that both Amber and Henri were
waiting for him to make a decision,
relying
on him to take command, he was
about to make a wild guess when he looked again at the G-Shock Rangeman watch that
Charley and Amir had given him for his birthday. It barely had a scratch on it. Amir was
right; the watch was indestructible. He silently thanked them for their inspired gift as
he rotated the bezel and switched to compass mode.

‘From what I
remember, the viewpoint lay north-east of the lodge and we’ve travelled more or
less west,’ he explained to Amber and Henri. ‘So, all being well, we just
follow the compass south and we’ll find the lodge.’

‘Are you sure we’re going the
right way?’ asked Amber, panting from the exertion of their trek.

The jungle had thickened and progress had
become painfully slow as they tramped through dense undergrowth and clambered over
rotting tree trunks. Mosquitoes buzzed in their ears, a constant irritation despite
having doused themselves with insect repellent. In the treetops, monkeys chattered
unseen and leapt from branch to branch, sending leaves falling like rain on to the earth
below.

Connor wiped the perspiration from his brow
and checked his compass again. It was proving impossible to keep to a straight bearing
as trees, ferns and vines choked the jungle floor, forcing them to constantly alter
course.

‘We need to head to higher
ground,’ he said. ‘Work out where we are.’

Coming across an animal trail, he led them
upslope. The light was fading fast and the jungle was being swallowed by shadows. Soon
they wouldn’t be able to see each other, let alone their pursuers. Henri, his eyes
darting towards any strange sound or movement, was becoming more and
more scared, and he didn’t protest when his sister
took his hand. The terrain beneath their feet grew rockier as they ascended towards a
small ridge, the trees thinning as they climbed. Suddenly, as if emerging from a deep
dive, the canopy parted to reveal an indigo-blue sky, the first stars of night blinking
in the heavens.

Standing atop the rocky ridge, Connor was
able to look out across part of the Ruvubu Valley. Using his binoculars, he tried to
spot any familiar landmarks. The sun, a ball of fiery orange, was burning low on the
horizon, giving him true west. To the south, the Ruvubu River wound lazily through the
valley basin. And, off to the east, he could make out the craggy peak of Dead
Man’s Hill. The dried-out riverbed where the ambush had taken place was hidden
from view by the trees, but Connor was able to work out the lodge’s rough
direction from a single dark line that cut across the savannah. With so few roads, the
main dirt track stood out like a scar on the landscape.

‘We’re a little off
course,’ he admitted, directing their gaze to a midpoint in the distance.
‘That’s where the lodge is. Somewhere on the other side of that
ridge.’

Amber squinted into the twilight. ‘How
far do you think?’

‘At this pace, half a day’s
walk, I guess, maybe more.’

Amber glanced at her brother, who was
wheezing again from the climb. ‘We need to rest,’ she said.

Connor looked at both Henri and Amber. They
were all tired, hungry, hot and thirsty. They’d been running on adrenalin and
shock for the past hour. Now that was beginning to
fade, their bodies were crashing. He nodded in agreement.
Finding a patch of clear ground, they sat down and Connor retrieved the water bottle
from his Go-bag. Barely a couple of gulps remained. He offered the bottle to Amber, who
let her brother drink first. Then, after taking a sip herself, she handed it back.

Despite his own thirst, Connor waved the
bottle away. ‘You have it.’

‘No,’ insisted Amber, forcing it
into his hand. ‘No heroics. You need it as much as we do.’

Connor drank the last dregs, the warm water
wetting his mouth but doing little more. Only now did it hit him that they were in a
survival situation.

Running from the gunmen was just the start
of their problems. The main threat to their lives came from being in the wilds of Africa
without food, water or weapons.

Colonel Black’s departing words rang
in his ears:
It’s always best to be prepared for the worst, especially in
Africa
. In light of their current situation, Connor thought that the colonel
had never said a truer word and wished now he’d spent more time studying the SAS
survival handbook he’d been given.

Recalling that the right equipment could
make the difference between life and death, Connor emptied his Go-bag and took stock of
their resources. He’d lost the most crucial item – his smartphone – back at the
crash site, but he did have a small first-aid kit, empty water bottle, binoculars,
malaria tablets, sun lotion, insect repellent, a Maglite, a single energy bar,
sunglasses with night-vision
capability and,
still attached to his belt, his father’s knife.

‘What’s that?’ asked
Henri, pointing to a blue tube in the bottom of the bag.

Connor fished it out and smiled, glad of
Bugsy’s foresight. ‘A Lifestraw,’ he explained. ‘We just need to
find water and we can all drink safely.’

With one key survival factor half-solved,
Connor asked, ‘What do you have in your pockets?’

Amber produced a cherry-flavoured lip balm,
a packet of tissues and a hairband. Henri had a couple of sweets and his inhaler. Hiding
his disappointment at such meagre offerings, Connor opened the energy bar and divided it
up between the three of them. ‘Not much of a dinner, I’m afraid, but
it’s better than nothing.’

The oat bar was gone in one bite, only
serving to remind them of how hungry they actually were.

‘Is this edible?’ Connor asked,
half-joking, as he picked up the lip balm.

‘Tastes nice and keeps your lips
soft,’ replied Amber, ‘but not an ideal dessert.’

Henri offered his two sweets to Connor and
his sister.

‘Save them,’ said Connor,
smiling at his generosity. ‘We’ll be needing them for breakfast.’

Dusk was falling fast. Even with his
night-vision sunglasses and a small torch, Connor knew that it would be foolish to
negotiate the jungle at night.

‘We need to find a safe place to
sleep,’ he said, repacking everything into his Go-bag.

‘We’re
not going back to the lodge?’ Henri asked with an anxious glance at the gloomy
jungle surrounding them.

Connor shook his head. ‘Too dangerous.
It’s best we hole up somewhere until daw–’

A rustle in the bushes alerted Connor to
something approaching. He put a finger to his lips, urging Amber and Henri to remain
silent.

The rustling drew closer. To Connor’s
ears, it sounded like more than one person, all converging on the ridge. The gunmen had
caught up with them fast! But no doubt they had trackers with them.