Dark Heart (10 page)

‘We probably should have,' snapped Anastasia. ‘Your friends have killed our friends – killed them and eaten them. And taken our students as slaves and soldiers. We need fewer like you, not more!'

‘But we do not slay our enemies,' said Ado simply. ‘We love them. And we do good to those that hate us. It is what Father Antoine said.'

‘Father Antoine,' answered Anastasia brutally, ‘was the first to die.'

‘Anastasia!' Celine's gentle voice came from beside the Russian's foot. The tone of the word was that of a parent chiding a child. But instead of berating her, Celine simply said, ‘I'm thirsty.'

Celine was too weak to sit on the seat beside the outboard, but some cautious wriggling soon had her resting at a slight angle with her back against the curve of the side and her wounded shoulder in the shade of the seat above her. Anastasia scooped handful after handful of sweet water from the river and fed it to her friend – and Ado did the same for the soldier at her feet. The Russian woman at last took the opportunity to look around and get a clearer measure of their wider situation.

The river had narrowed again, but it was still the better part of a kilometre wide. Because it had narrowed, it was flowing more swiftly, but still smoothly, between walls of green vegetation trailing down over banks that only revealed themselves every now and then. On their right, the occasional glimpses of red earth seemed to be smooth and slick, sloping back gently, like the bank beneath the chapel back at the compound. On their left there were steeper red mud walls that once or twice attained enough height to count as cliffs. And above increasingly lengthy sections of these, the jungle appeared to have been cut back, so that Anastasia began wracking her brains trying to remember if there was some kind of a roadway up there. And, if there was, where it might lead to.

‘Citematadi,' said Celine when Anastasia broke down and finally asked her. ‘The city may still be a long way off, and there isn't anything much there in any case.'

‘Nothing at all,' added the young soldier. ‘We were there not long ago. There's nothing in Citematadi.'

There was silence for a moment, then Ado said, ‘My name's Ado. That is Celine and the woman with the gun is Anastasia. What's your name?'

‘Esan.'

‘Esan? That's not a name, it's a number.'

‘It's the name the general and Ngoboi gave me when I became a Soldier of Christ the Infant. When I became a man.'

‘Let's not ask how he became a man,' said Anastasia wearily. ‘It'll have involved killing, eating and raping if last night was anything to go by . . .'

That bitter observation crushed the boy to silence, but it also had an unexpected consequence. ‘Anastasia! The others!' Celine was suddenly sitting upright, her movements enough to make the boat rock dangerously, her eyes wide with shock and bright with fever. ‘We have to go back! We have to help them!'

‘We have to help ourselves first,' answered Anastasia sharply. ‘And there's no going back. Not for the moment at least. Mind you,' she added, ‘when I do go back I want to go in there, as the Americans say, like
gangbusters
!'

‘We can help them,' insisted Ado. ‘We can pray for them!'

That idea seemed to calm Celine a little, and she and Ado began to pray quietly together. In the meantime, the less spiritual Anastasia set about checking over the outboard, all too well aware that they were going to need more than the power of prayer. And pretty soon, too. For it seemed to her that the river was gathering pace, with a strong current running over to the left, at the foot of those red mud cliffs. And that current was sucking the rowing boat faster and faster over towards the high-walled southern bank. But the engine was no AK and she had had no experience at all in making them work. ‘Look,' she said at last. ‘Does either of you know anything about outboards? Or anything about motors at all?'

‘I do,' answered Esan unexpectedly. ‘I have worked with Captain Ojogo. He is in charge of transport for the army. He has trained me in all sorts of matters to do with engines.'

Anastasia looked at the other two. Celine frowned, hesitating, but Anastasia had no idea whether that was because she didn't trust the soldier or because her brain was slowed by shock and fever. Ado nodded decisively. And that was what made the difference.

It took longer to untie Esan from the oars, loosen his hands – though not his feet – and help him along the length of the boat – all the while keeping the AK trained on him – than it did for him to get the motor started. Then, as he sat back down in the bottom of the little craft, balancing Celine, with his shoulders at the bow, Anastasia tried to take them in a smooth arc away from the relentlessly approaching shore.

But what seemed like a big step forward proved very nearly disastrous. Anastasia had never handled an outboard before and she couldn't get used to the counter-intuitive way it seemed to work. To go right, she had to push the handle left, and vice-versa. All too swiftly she found that her attempts to break out of the current were simply pushing them more firmly into its rapidly tightening grip. The red cliffs of the shore seemed to exercise some kind of magical attraction for the little vessel. The persistent beating of the late-morning sun on her unprotected head simply added to the gathering feeling that things were slipping out of control.

She had not panicked last night because she had felt confident with the AK-47; because she was focussed on rescuing Celine. She came close to panic now because she did not understand the boat or feel that she was really in control of it. But this time she was completely responsible for Celine and her continued welfare. Not to mention Ado and this strange boy-soldier. And it occurred to her now at the worst possible moment that if the boat went over, the tied-up boy would drown at once and Celine would not even be able to swim for safety with her shoulder in the state it was.

So when a tongue of the shore suddenly appeared, stuck out in a low, curving hook that seemed little more than a sandbar just above the racing surface immediately ahead of them, she pulled the outboard's rudder-arm firmly in to her side without a moment's hesitation and ran the boat hard up on to it.

R
ichard ran up the gangplank on to Captain Caleb Maina's command with almost boyish excitement. Unable to stop himself, he trailed his fingers along the sleek vessel's side as he moved, making a deep and personal contact. The neat, spare ship reminded him vividly of Heritage Mariner's
Poseidon
, for she was also basically a corvette. The immediate difference was that, as he reached the top of the companionway and turned to step aboard, he could see that on
Otobo
's foredeck there was a 125mm naval gun in its grey-white pillbox housing instead of the bright yellow deep-sea exploration vessel
Neptune.

A glance upward past this showed Richard enclosed bridge wings and the blank one-step design of the bridge-house front was pretty similar to
Poseidon
's too. He had time to look around, for as he stepped down on to the weather deck at the head of the companionway, he was met by a small armed guard led by the man who was clearly the ship's security officer – who handed him a plastic-coated ID badge complete with photo to pin on his lapel before allowing him to proceed. While he did all this, the captain waited courteously a few steps ahead. Then they were off.

Aware of Robin, almost equally excitedly striding along at his shoulder, also securing her ID, Richard followed Captain Caleb along the familiar weather deck and in through the bulkhead door into the dark coolness of the air-conditioned bridge house. The captain swung round at the foot of the companionway, his long eyes crinkling into a smile. ‘I believe I may rely on you to know your way around,' he said. ‘Now that you have your IDs, please feel free to proceed up to the command bridge while I return to the companionway and see to the greeting and disposition of the other, less shipshape, guests. This is A Deck, of course. The command bridge is on D. My watch officer, First Lieutenant Sanda, is waiting to show you around. Mr Asov will join you immediately, I'm sure, and I will be up in a moment.'

Richard needed no further bidding and went leaping up the stairway with Robin close behind. As Caleb Maina guessed, their experiences aboard a range of vessels made the layout of this one almost second nature to them. They pounded up three decks, therefore, then on up the final short flight to the command bridge itself.

The bridge was busy, if not actually crowded yet, thought Richard. There were perhaps a dozen stations in an angular horseshoe, most of them facing forward so that their occupants could look over the flat computer screens and through the angled clearview along the foredeck. A quick scan showed him all that he had expected to see, as they grouped astride the central ship's handling system – the one that replaced the binnacle, helm and engine room telegraph handles on older vessels. He leaned over and half whispered to Robin, ‘Computer-enhanced navigation systems, pilot and electronic chart systems, collision alarms, weather monitors, ship's system monitors, engine room slave monitors, sonar, several weapons control systems, echo sounder, GPS . . . Most of them 3D by the looks of things, like the Doppler radar.'

‘I see it all,' she answered. ‘And that must be communications away to the port. Speed and engine monitors on the starboard. It looks like a modern, integrated, top-of-the line system to me.'

As Richard nodded, a wiry young man with ‘SANDA' embroidered on a badge sewn to his white shirt pocket turned from his position at the helmsman's shoulder and smiled welcomingly. ‘She's pretty impressive, don't you think?'

‘She is indeed,' boomed Max Asov, as he bounded up the steps behind Robin. ‘But she doesn't stand a chance against my Zubr!' He held up a Benincom cellphone. ‘Just tell me when to unleash the dogs of war. Though sharks would be more appropriate, I think. You reckon Shakespeare would approve? Sharks of war?'

‘I beg to differ, sir,' riposted Sanda easily, disregarding all the Shakespeare stuff. ‘She stands a very good chance against your hovercraft. You have not taken into account the twin caterpillar 3616 diesels or the variable pitch propellers . . .'

‘Delivering, what, twenty-five knots? Thirty? My craft tops fifty. Even with a T80U main battle tank in her cargo hold. She'll run rings round you!' He nudged Richard knowingly. Richard realized right from the start that Max's war-game had started as soon as he stepped aboard. Phase one was psyching out the opponent.

‘Perhaps,' allowed the Lieutenant, losing just a little of his bonhomie. ‘But only because this is a game, sir. In a real encounter, I assure you our 125 millimetre gun and the RIM 116 missile system—'

‘Got several of those and then some. Or would have if this was for real!' exulted the Russian, cheerfully turning this into a game of ‘Mine is bigger than yours' as phase one of his war-game evolved into phase two. ‘And four missile defence systems to go with them. Your 125 millimetre gun is pretty impressive, though, especially in the face of my poor little 30 millimetre Gatlings. It is the same size as the gun on my T80 Tank, in fact. But I have several Gatlings, though I see you have one of them yourself mounted at the rear beside your helipad. Very useful when you turn tail and run for cover! My Ogons are 140 millimetre, though. And I have minelayers too. Guns are just so old-fashioned, aren't they? Even guns with a twenty kilometre range. And I still say that speed and manoeuvrability will have the edge . . .'

‘We'll see,' concluded Captain Caleb, as he came up on to the bridge himself. ‘We'll see.'

Twenty minutes later, all necessary formalities complete and the dockside rapidly diminishing behind them, Caleb ordered, ‘Full ahead both, please, Mister Sanda. You know the heading.' The lieutenant, back at the helmsman's shoulder, nodded and repeated the order, which the helmsman echoed in turn. And the corvette
Otobo
surged towards thirty knots. Richard was bouncing on the balls of his feet with excitement and Robin grudgingly felt his contagious enthusiasm beginning to infect her too.

‘Just say when you want the war-games to begin,' said Max, at Richard's shoulder, his eyes fixed on the warship's battle displays – in which the Zubr featured sizeably and centrally, as it wallowed apparently powerlessly beside the Sevmash freighter which had brought it here. ‘You just need to say the word,' he emphasized, pressing his cellphone to his ear. ‘I can call Captain Zhukov any time you want . . .'

‘Very well.' Caleb turned. ‘Gentlemen,' he announced formally in English to the bridge. ‘We are at war.'

What Max said to Captain Zhukov was lost in the clamour of the emergency stations alarm that Sanda set off on his captain's word, but the effect on the huge Zubr hovercraft was electrifying. It simply vanished from the displays.

Richard looked up, hardly able to believe his eyes. Away ahead, the Sevmash freighter sat solidly, as though painted against the hard blue sky. But the Zubr was no longer anywhere near her. Clearly Captain Zhukov had not merely readied his toothless weapon systems, he had inflated the hovercraft's skirt and put the massive fans on idle. And on Max's word he had gone to full astern. Without any water resistance to drag at a keel that hardly broke the surface, he had gone from dead stop to fifty knots in a heartbeat. Fifty knots in the opposite direction to the one he was expected to be heading in. It was simply astonishing.

‘Incoming!' called one of the men stationed in front.

‘Hard left,' ordered Caleb and
Otobo
heeled into a screaming turn towards the distant delta. Running across the incoming swell, she started to pitch and roll as the one motor pushed her hard forward while the other pulled her hard back. She had an impressively tight turning circle, but inevitably she was fighting the physics of being half submerged in a way the hovercraft would never have to do. ‘Deploy countermeasures,' Captain Caleb concluded his order. ‘Gun. Do you have him?'