Hellfire (10 page)

The engine died. Rain hammered on the roof of the car. ‘What the fuck have you done now?’ Tony shouted from the back.

Danny wound down his window. One glance was enough to tell him what had happened. The dip in the road had flooded. It was like a fast-flowing river bisecting the road. They were stuck in the water, which reached at least a metre and a half up their vehicle. It was five metres from the higher ground where the road was dry, but there was no way they were getting out of here without any help.

Danny’s mind immediately turned to the mechanical winch at the front of the vehicle. ‘We need to winch out!’ he called above the noise of the hammering rain. ‘There must be a river nearby that’s broken its banks – this flooding’s going to get worse. Ripley, keep the wheel. You two follow me.’

They couldn’t open the doors because of the depth of the water. Scrambling out of the windows was their only option. Danny brought his personal weapon with him, slung over his shoulder with the barrel slightly submerged as he crashed down into the fast-moving swamp. As his feet hit the bottom, the vehicle shifted a few inches towards him.

‘We’ve got to hurry!’ Caitlin shouted over the thunderous sound of elements. Her face and hair were already soaked. ‘The current’s strong enough to take the vehicle with it!’ As she spoke, she stumbled in the water, and fell up to her shoulders. But Tony was right there, grabbing her with one strong arm, and getting her back on to her feet. She nodded gratefully at him, then stood firmly in the water, withstanding the current.

Danny pushed his way through the water to the front of the vehicle. There were other reasons to move fast, other than the current. If a jungle river had burst its banks, it could bring anything with it. Debris, crocs, even hippos. They needed to get out of there as quickly as possible.

The winch itself, fitted to the front of the vehicle, was submerged. Danny plunged his hands under the water and found the end of the winching cable. It had a carabiner at one end, which he tugged firmly, then started to wade across the current to the far side.

He stopped. Figures were emerging through the driving rain. Four of them, walking abreast. Distance: twenty metres.

Danny looked left and right. Tony and Caitlin were on either side. They had raised their rifles, and had crouched down slightly in the water to present less of a target.

The Range Rover shifted again. Half a foot this time. Danny estimated that they had less than a minute before the current swept it away.

The four figures had stopped. Danny waded forward. ‘Keep me covered!’ he shouted. ‘Any sudden movements, drop them!’

He tugged the cable and moved forward. Ten tricky paces later he was emerging from the flood. Mud covered his saturated clothes, but the rain soon sluiced it away. He manoeuvred his personal weapon with one hand so that it was covering the four figures, but now he was closer he could make them out a bit better. They were all African. Two women, one man, and a child. ‘Don’t move!’ Danny roared at them. ‘Stay where you are and don’t move!’

He quickly identified a sturdy tree eight metres away on the left-hand side of the road and dragged the winch cable towards it. He looped the cable round the tree, then clipped the carabiner back round the cable. He gave it a precautionary tug, then turned back and gave Ripley a thumbs-up. There was a sudden, high-pitched grinding sound above the rain as the cable went suddenly taut. The Range Rover shifted its angle in the water so it was facing the tree, then slowly started to move forward.

Tony and Caitlin flanked the vehicle, still keeping low, their weapons still aimed at the four figures. Danny kept the butt of his own weapon pressed hard into his shoulder and approached them through the rain. He reduced the distance between them to ten metres. They didn’t move. They stood, bedraggled and quite motionless. Danny saw that one of the women had her arm around the man’s shoulders. The man was holding his own right arm across his stomach, as though it was broken.

Only when Danny took a couple more paces forward did he see that the man’s right hand was missing.

He looked back again. The vehicle was out of the ditch, but huge quantities of water were still gushing from underneath the chassis. Caitlin was untying the winch cable and Tony – hair and face dripping, clothes drenched – was striding up to the four figures, weapons still raised. ‘Get out of the fucking road!’ he shouted at the Africans. But as he spoke, the man’s knees went and he collapsed to the floor. The woman holding him wailed, and the kid ran towards Danny, seemingly oblivious to his weapon, and tugged on his clothes.

‘Help us!’ she cried. ‘My father need medicine! Help us!’

Danny made the decision to lower his weapon. Tony kept his engaged as Danny strode up to the collapsed man, then crouched down beside him.

‘What happened?’ he shouted through the rain at the woman who was still holding him.

‘Boko Haram!’ the woman cried. ‘They come to our village.’ She pointed back up the road. ‘They kill many people. We run away, but they stop us in the road. They do this.’ She indicated the severed wrist.

Danny stood up. Ripley was out of the car, two metres behind him. ‘We can’t wait,’ he said. ‘And the old boy’s fucked.’

Danny nodded. Ripley was right. ‘Get back to the car,’ he told both men. Ripley jogged back towards the vehicle, but Tony loitered. Caitlin was trying to turn the vehicle’s engine over. It coughed and spluttered several times, but burst into life on the fifth go. Ripley took his place in the back, but as Danny approached the car with Tony, the kid, who had followed, started tugging on his clothes again. ‘Please, mister. We need medicine. We need help.’

Danny paused for a moment. A voice in his brain told him to ignore the child. Any medical supplies they left for the wounded man would be wasted: with an injury like that, out here, he was going to die, if not of blood loss then of infection. But then the kid tugged at him again with her desperate little hands. ‘Please mister,’ she begged.

He thought of Clara. She would help the kid, no question.

He wiped the streaming water from his face, then ran round to the back of the Range Rover and opened the boot. From inside his pack he pulled a small medical kit and withdrew some sterile bandaging.

Tony joined him. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he said. ‘We might need that.’ He tried to grab the medical equipment, but Danny snatched it away. ‘A few fucking bandages isn’t going to do anything for him,’ Tony said. ‘He’s a goner.’

‘It’ll make the family feel like they’re helping.’

He walked round to the front of the car, knelt down and handed the sterile bandaging to the kid. ‘That’s all I have,’ he lied. From the corner of his eye he could see Caitlin watching him from inside the car, her lips parted again.

The child gave Danny a wide-eyed stare of gratitude. Danny looked over his shoulder towards the mother, who was standing a couple of metres away. ‘Have you seen any other white men on the road?’ he asked. And when she looked at him a bit perplexed, he pointed at the skin on his hand. ‘White skin, like mine?’

She glanced left and right, then nodded nervously.

Danny stood up. ‘With Boko Haram?’ he asked. ‘The white men were with Boko Haram?’

She nodded again, then held up two fingers. ‘Two men,’ she said. She held up her hands, wrists touching. ‘Tied,’ she said.

Danny felt a surge of relief. He exchanged a look with Tony, then walked round the kid to get closer to the woman. ‘When?’ he said. ‘How long ago?’

The woman thought for a moment, then held up three fingers. ‘Three hour,’ she said.

‘Shit,’ Danny hissed. A quick calculation put the hostages in Chikunda at 09.00 – earlier than Danny had previously estimated. Danny and Tony immediately turned back to the car, but suddenly the woman grabbed Danny’s arm. ‘Don’t go that way,’ she said. Her bloodshot eyes were wide open with warning. ‘There are bad things that way . . .’

He shook her off, followed Tony back to the vehicle and climbed in. ‘Go,’ he told Caitlin. She moved off. The African family stood by the side of the road and solemnly watched them leave. The woman was muttering to herself. As they passed, she stared directly into Danny’s eyes and shook her head. He saw her mouth the words ‘bad things’.

‘You shouldn’t have given away our fucking supplies,’ Tony muttered from the back.

Danny didn’t feel a moment’s regret. ‘Floor it,’ he told Caitlin. ‘Two tied-up white guys were on this road three hours ago. I reckon they’ll make it to Chikunda by 09.00.’ He glanced at Tony in the rear-view mirror. There was no hint of an apology in his face. He almost looked pissed off that Danny had been right.

‘At least we know they’re still alive,’ Caitlin said.

Danny shook his head. ‘Wrong. We know they were alive three hours ago. If they were planning to execute the hostages in Chikunda, there’s a good chance they won’t fuck around. We might be too late.’

‘Bad news for you if we are,
boss
,’ Tony muttered.

Danny ignored the comment, but he couldn’t help remembering what Hammond had said about this being his last chance.

‘We need to get out of our civvies,’ Ripley said. ‘We’re getting too far into the interior. These clothes are no good if we need to camouflage ourselves.’

Danny nodded. ‘When we can,’ he said. ‘But we’re entering enemy territory now. When the rain stops, we’re vulnerable. The kid said that Boko Haram militants stopped them in the road and did that to her father. We can expect another road block up ahead.’

‘And if those bastards have got a taste for cutting things off,’ Ripley said, ‘we want to get to them before they go to work on the hostages . . .’

Not even Tony had an argument with that.

Eyes forward. Senses on high alert. They started to eat up the miles once again.

Six

As they continued north, the terrain on either side of the rough road became more jungle-like. Ripley was right: they were going to need their Crye Precision camouflage gear. At 08.00, they took advantage of a break in the rain to change. Danny was the first to strip quickly out of his wet civvies, shielded by the Range Rover, while the other three formed a defensive semicircle, their weapons engaged. He fitted his kevlar helmet, along with his boom mike and earpiece. There was no hiding the fact that they were soldiers now.

Once he was changed, he swapped positions with Ripley, keeping stag on the road to the north while his mate changed clothes. He could only see about twenty metres ahead before the road curved out of sight. The sun was burning through the clouds and the whole area seemed to hiss as the water evaporated from the verdant terrain.

As he scanned the area, something caught his eye. He had to squint to persuade himself that his eyes weren’t playing tricks. They weren’t. Nailed to a roadside tree, just ten metres away, was a human hand, palm outwards, fingers pointing up. ‘Looks like we found where our road block was,’ he said, pointing at it.

‘Fucking animals,’ Ripley said.

‘They might still be here,’ Tony said, his voice suddenly tense.

‘I don’t think so. That’s a warning. Somebody doesn’t want people heading north.’

Tony was the next to change – quicker than Danny and Ripley had been – and finally Caitlin. As she changed, Danny’s eyes flickered towards the vehicle’s side mirror. He caught sight of her grey base layer, tightly enclosing the curve of her breasts. She suddenly caught his glance in the mirror, and smiled. Danny looked away. He noticed Tony watching him. The men’s eyes met. ‘She was married to a black dude, fella,’ Tony murmured. ‘Won’t be interested in what
you’re
packing.’

Danny let it pass.

Time check: 08.10. Fifty minutes till the revised ETA of Target Red and Target Blue in Chikunda. Danny reckoned the unit was still four hours out. No time to waste. They dumped their wet civvies in a pile by the side of the road.

‘I’ll take the wheel,’ he told Caitlin. She nodded.

At 09.00 they passed through a rough village. Broad swathes of brutal deforestation marked the outskirts. The interior was a shit sandwich without the bread. Breeze-block buildings on either side of the road had fallen into disrepair, and the only vehicles they saw had rusty side panels and missing tyres. It was strangely deserted, too. No kids or pedestrians. Always a bad sign. Just a few curious locals peering from doorways, but not bold enough to step out into the street. On the right-hand side, Danny saw a woman sitting at the threshold of her poor-looking residence. Both eyes were covered with dirty cotton swabs, slightly bloodstained. Even though she couldn’t see, her gaze followed the sound of the Range Rover as it passed.

Danny kept his foot on the pedal. Every second that passed was borrowed time. Their vehicle splashed through puddles and sprayed dirt across the road as it cut through the village. As they left the last building behind, he looked in the rear-view mirror. Perhaps thirty metres behind them, a solitary figure stood in the middle of the road. Danny thought he could make out the shape of a rifle slung across his chest, and he seemed to be holding something to his ear. A phone, maybe.

Eyes back on the road.

At 10.00 hrs they stopped to refuel. By now, the heat and the humidity were immense. Danny felt wetter than he had been after his impromptu swim. The Range Rover was caked in mud and dust, and so were its occupants. Over the next hour, the jungle terrain thinned out a little, but it was still forested on either side as the Range Rover mounted the brow of a hill.