Dark Heart (31 page)

But now it was her turn to give a shout of shock. For no sooner had the door eased back an inch than Ngoboi himself burst in through it. The only thing that stopped absolute pandemonium was the fact that the familiar figure of Ado followed the weirdly dressed form inside. Then, even as Bonnie Holliday fought out of her soaking disguise – though not out of her life-saving blue body armour – Esan stepped in too. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Ado and the fact that she accepted him ensured the other girls did as well. The two of them started organizing the girls' escape at once, even as Sanda appeared with half a dozen men and twice as many extra guns.

‘I may have spoken too soon,' he gasped. ‘Things are hotting up out here. Squad One and Richard seem to have driven them back from the technicals but there's still a good deal of increasingly well-organized resistance. Some of these soldiers of Christ the Infant have been well trained and very well equipped. We may have to barricade ourselves in here, hunker down and wait for the colonel's men to follow Captain Mariner's T80 in.'

Bonnie joined Anastasia at the door. ‘We need to get whoever's in charge. General Nlong or Ngoboi,' Anastasia calculated. ‘Where did he go?' she asked. ‘The other Ngoboi? He has to be someone powerful. Did you see where he went?'

‘Into the chapel,' answered Bonnie.

‘Shit!' spat Anastasia. ‘That means he went after Celine. And from the look of things the chapel's not going to be a safe haven for long. Rain's easing but the roof's still burning. We have to get over there!'

But even as she spoke, the doorway of the distant chapel filled with figures. Wreathed in smoke, like something out of a nightmare, Ngoboi led a tight group down the steps and on to the level of the compound itself. The white coat of the doctor and the soiled white robes and coifs of the nuns caught the light behind the weird, raffia giant and the masked faces of the two helpers who had danced with him. It also gleamed against the blades of the matchets and the barrels of the guns that a number of them appeared to be carrying. The unmistakable figure of Moses Nlong stood at the heart of the group, taking Saddam Hussein's infamous ‘wall of bodies' technique to new heights.

‘I can take out that bastard Ngoboi,' grated Anastasia, raising the long Sig semi-automatic to her shoulder and taking aim. ‘That'll be a start . . .'

‘STOP!
Anastasia, hold your fire
!'

Mercifully, the Russian woman had broadcast her thoughts as she spoke them into the battlefield comms headset. And Richard's voice answered, shouting almost painfully in her earpiece. Then ‘HOLD YOUR FIRE!' was bellowed in English and Matadi as Richard repeated the order over the T80's loudspeaker system.

Richard had also seen the group come out of the chapel, but he had been able to use the T80's enhanced vision equipment to zero in for a maximum illumination close-up. Instantly suspicious that the Poro god's costume included the headpiece once again, he calculated that whoever had originally been wearing it might well have had the time – and the cunning – to change. But Richard had no idea what the man who had shot Bonnie actually looked like. His face could well be one of those crowded around the familiar face of Moses Nlong.

He eased the T80 forward slowly now, leaving Squad One to mop up the blazing ruins of the army's hopefully defunct motor pool, keeping a close eye on the group as they shuffled away from the blazing chapel, searching first of all for Celine. She was the lynchpin. The others would have a good idea of what was going on immediately around them. The medical team from Malebo, the nuns whose names he did not know. But only Celine was likely to have the wider view that was vital; only Celine would recognize friends as well as enemies.

But even when he managed to identify her, it would need some kind of a small-scale surgical strike to get her away from Nlong and his men unscathed. A T80 main battle tank was capable of many things, but a small-scale surgical strike was not one of them.

Then he thought of Bonnie. Bonnie had seen the other Ngoboi without his headdress – at point-blank range. And that thought became important, suddenly, as he realized Celine was not amongst the little group he had under enhanced observation. Which meant she was either still in the chapel – or she was in the costume of Ngoboi or one of his masked attendants. It was impossible to calculate which was more likely because he could make neither head nor tail of what General Nlong and his men were up to. Always assuming that any one of them had thought further than the immediate imperative of simply getting as safely as possible out of the burning building – even though under the circumstances that was like getting out of the frying pan and into the fire. Could this stand-off be part of some wider, cleverer plan? Did he have time to work it out if it was?

‘We need to get over to them,' Anastasia insisted. ‘They're not going to stand there for ever.' She opened the door, preparing to step out.

‘Wait!' ordered Richard. Luckily. For a machine gun opened up instantly, sending a line of bullets out of the shadows to splinter the wood of the door and the walls beside it. The sniper was cut off mid-attack as Mako's men came pouring in through the hole Richard had cleared for them. But his short-lived assault served as a potent warning.

‘Anastasia. It's Richard. I'm coming to get you,' Richard said brusquely. ‘Use the tank for shelter. And Sanda and his men can guard your rear.' He rolled the T80 up to the door and split the screen so that he could see straight ahead and to the left of the massive vehicle at the same time. On one half of the screen, the group of figures hesitated beside the chapel. On the other, the doorway loomed, a massive shadow sliding over it as the tank came between the hut and the blazing building. Half a dozen figures burst out into the protective shadow. Anastasia's voice called, ‘Go!' and Richard obligingly eased the tank forward at walking pace.

‘Bonnie. Richard here. Can you see the man who shot you?'

‘Not yet. What are they doing?'

‘Running out of time, unless there's something going on I haven't worked out yet. What in hell's name could they be waiting for? Mako. Mariner. What are your men encountering?'

‘Not much resistance. Only Squad One are facing any stiff opposition. I'm sending support round to them now. There are still some diehards out in the bush there. Did you take out all the technicals and four-wheel drives?'

Richard never answered. For at that instant the brick-built generator house exploded.

T
here was a dazzling flash, a detonation that reduced even the thunder to startled silence, and darkness fell once more as all the security lighting died.
Damn!
thought Richard. He had underestimated Nlong or Ngoboi or whoever was in charge. There had been a plan in place after all. His mind raced through seeming infinities of implication in the instant that it took him to hit the T80's searchlight control. A beam of pure white light slammed across the shadowed compound to the point where the group from the chapel were beginning to scatter. Ngoboi and his two helpers were running towards the shattered generator house – one helper apparently more reluctantly than the other. General Nlong lay stretched out on the ground and the harsh light showed how terribly damaged his right leg was – a fact that had been hidden by the press of bodies around him. The supine general gave a spasmodic twitch. His chest seemed to burst open. The white-coated nuns and nurses around him leaped back. The left-looking half of Richard's screen showed Anastasia taking aim for a second shot. Already too late, by the look of things, to be delivering the
coup de grâce
. The taller of the nuns came forward and knelt for an instant at his side as though in prayer, her face half hidden by her coif. Or was it a wimple? Richard was no expert on the headgear of nuns.

If the general was out of the picture – had always been out of the picture – then that put Ngoboi back in the frame as the mind that was marshalling this mayhem, thought Richard. And ‘marshalling' was the right word. The resumption of the headdress was a clever double bluff. For whoever was giving the orders holding the remnants of the Army of Christ together must be using a battlefield communications system like their own. And the headdress hid that fact for those few vital moments. And as he completed these lightning calculations, he knew what was coming next. ‘Anastasia! It's Ngoboi after all. Can you see him?'

‘No. He's vanished into the—'

Anastasia's sentence was cut off by a pair of Toyota Hilux technicals that roared in past the ruins of the generator house. The only flaw in the well-executed surprise seemed to be that they switched their headlights on. Ngoboi was framed against the brightness. Anastasia squeezed off a shot at once. The tall god staggered, but ran on doggedly. Then the two technicals slewed round in front of him, protecting him with their bodywork as the men in the back of one swung a pair of heavy machine guns towards Richard's tank, while those in the other zeroed in what looked to Richard suspiciously like a French Milan anti-tank missile. That explained what happened to the generator hut. ‘Gunner! Get out!' he ordered brusquely. ‘ATM zeroing in on us.'

The headlights picked out Ngoboi's helpers for an instant longer – just enough time to see that the reluctant one had torn off her mask to reveal Celine's face. The other one was running along the headlight beam towards her when Anastasia's rifle spoke for the fourth time. The pursuer went down and Celine staggered away into the shadows.

Richard hit the coaxial the instant Celine was clear, flicking the automatic fire toggle, even as he began to scramble out of the tank on the heels of the gunner. ‘Clear the tank area,' he ordered as he went. ‘If that missile hits she'll go up like Guy Fawkes . . .'

Then he was out into the stinking humidity of the battlefield, drenched in perspiration at once running forward at Anastasia's shoulder, fighting to get to the protection of the hut before the missile hit his tank. The hammering of the coaxials persisted, sending tracers towards the pair of Toyota pickups, disorientating, confusing – with luck even killing – the men with the missile. They all bundled into the shelter together just the very instant that Richard's hope for good fortune failed. The Milan hit the tank full-on and blew the turret off. Anyone inside it would have died. Even those, like Richard, safely in the hut, were half deafened and shaken by the shock wave. But the power of the explosion was mostly directed away from them so that was all they suffered. Except for Richard whose right ear was pierced by Robin's shriek of ‘
RICHARD!
' the instant that the tank went up.

‘It's OK,' he grated. ‘The gunner and I got out.'

‘Bloody man!' she spat, as Richard pulled himself up off the floor. But she sounded satisfyingly relieved.

The hut was almost empty. Sanda and his men had spirited the girls out of the back door by the look of things. Richard, Anastasia and Bonnie picked themselves up, rubbed the dust from their eyes and ran outside. They swung right at once, heading for the technicals' headlights. It was only after he had taken half a dozen strides that Richard realized he was at the heart of a little phalanx of well-armed women and girls, all in black. A phalanx of girls and one tall, powerful-looking youth. All naturally black-faced. Narrow-eyed. And no one was smiling. No wonder they were all but invisible out here in the stinking darkness. He didn't need to ask where they were going or what their objective was. Anastasia was here to get Celine and she wasn't the sort of person who changed her mind too easily.

‘Now I understand what your shrink meant about penis envy,' he growled.

‘What?' gasped Anastasia, distracted.

‘I'm the only one here who hasn't got a gun.'

‘You'll get over it,' she laughed.

‘I'll probably be scarred for life . . .'

The technicals snarled away from the ruins of the generator house, following their headlight beams towards the palisade and the river. Trying to trap the fleeing Celine, thought Richard. Unless they had another trick up their sleeve.

Speculation and conversation died then, because the first of the technicals caught the figure of the fleeing Celine in its headlights. She staggered to one side, seeking the shadows at once.

But the tall nun who had apparently prayed over Moses Nlong's corpse stepped into the light, with one arm round Celine. And the gun that had failed to kill Bonnie Holliday pressed to her head. The technicals braked hard, skidding to a halt just in front of the two women. ‘Run!' gasped Richard. ‘Faster!' He realized with a sickening lurch that a battlefield communications headset could go under a coif or a wimple as easily as it could go under Ngoboi's headdress. Ngoboi had been a triple bluff after all.

‘That's him!' wheezed Bonnie as the face beneath the wimple caught the light. ‘That's the guy that shot me!'

‘Anastasia. Can you get a clean shot?'

‘Not from here.'

‘Then we need to get closer. Fast.' He reached down as he ran and scooped up the dark red mud at his feet. It smelt of iron as he smeared it over his face. It was almost hot against his skin. It reminded him, in all sorts of ways, of blood.

‘Colonel Mako? How are things going on the broader front?' he wheezed.

‘Squad One are still finding it hard going, even with more men coming round as back-up. The other men are moving through the camp in standard pincer, but the GPS shows you, Bonnie and Anastasia in the last army stronghold in the compound itself. I'd say they're setting up a line of retreat into the bush where we'll never find them.'

‘Looks like someone else has taken command now that Moses Nlong is no longer with us,' said Robin. ‘Someone with some military nous.'

‘Correct. And he's got Celine Chaka.'