Recoil (23 page)

It was good to see that God’s best mate still knew his stuff. But I still thanked fuck I wouldn’t be here when the whole thing kicked off. However good the theory, he still needed lots more manpower to keep the fire going. Even counting Standish’s patrol, there’d be no more than a hundred bayonets. If the rapper was right, four hundred bad guys were already heading our way, with a whole lot more coming up to crash the party from the south. It would be hard enough for me, Silky and the two surveyors to stay out of their way, let alone persuade them to keep their distance.

The top of the knoll was like a scene from a First World War battlefield. Another bunch of miners were in the midst of digging four fire trenches overlooking the valley. Half a dozen or so tents had been pitched in the mud, and the whole area was criss-crossed by lopped branches, which I guessed was the closest these boys could get to duckboards.

I saw Sam pacing up and down on the far side of them, with the Iridium glued to his ear. I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up a hand to shut me the fuck up. As I got closer I could hear the news wasn’t good.

‘How many down?’

His eyes narrowed.

‘That’s bad, really bad. He’s here now . . . OK.’

Sam passed me the sat phone. ‘Standish.’ He strode to the edge of the knoll, yelling a series of instructions in the closest he got to English. Another voice translated.

‘Hello.’

Standish sounded out of breath. His voice moved from a bass roar to a treble squeak as he ran. It was like listening to a roadie tuning up a sound system before a rock concert.

‘Listen in. We’ve just hit a large LRA group ten K east of you. They’re not heading for the mine, they’re still heading north. They must be planning to link up first. You could hit more groups coming up from the south. Nothing’s changed, though. No surveyors at the airstrip – no lift out.’

Whatever else you could say about Standish, success clearly hadn’t changed him. He was still a selfish shit.

The phone went dead and I homed in on Sam. He was standing with three guys at the edge of the knoll, pointing up the west side of the valley. As I got closer, I could see the boy sitting on a branch at their feet. The rope was no longer round his neck but secured his left hand to his left ankle instead. His right leg was tethered to a stake in the ground. With his free hand he was scooping rice out of a rusty old can.

Sam issued clear and concise instructions as to where he wanted a set of new sangars; the ones they were already making had to be binned. As I closed in on him I saw two Chinese guys perched on cots in the nearest tent. One was round and chubby, the other tight and gaunt, but both pairs of eyes were as big as saucers. They had weeks of growth on their chins, but it was sparse, like wispy black beansprouts. There were two Louis Vuitton carry-on bags at their feet, and four RPG launchers on another cot behind them. The rounds were stacked in wooden boxes alongside.

Sam spun round. ‘Why so long? The kids down there yet?’

I nodded and jerked my thumb down the valley towards the ragtag bunch of villagers and Mercy Flight stragglers. ‘Standish won’t like it. Coffee shop for the stupid . . .’

Sam handed over his sat nav. ‘He’s got more to worry about right now. The patrol’s completely down, apart from him, Bateman and two others, and one of them has gunshot wounds.’

‘Tooley get dropped?’

Sam nodded. ‘At least now we’ll be able to tell them apart.’

Suddenly I understood why he was moving the sangars around. There weren’t going to be enough bayonets to fill them. He had to change the arcs of fire and spread the guys even more thinly across the ground.

‘Have you heard the fire out there? It’s getting nearer, mate.’

Sam looked down the valley and into the trees. ‘Aye. Could be probing patrols, to see if we’ve got anything out there, could be a few lads heading north, stupid enough not to know where they are, or so ghatted out of their skulls they don’t care.’ He turned back to me. ‘Whatever, it’s nothing compared to what’s coming our way.’

I could see the tension in his face.

‘Where’s the girlfriend?’

‘Silky’s down there, in that re-entrant they’re all heading for.’ I gestured in the direction of the two Chinese guys. ‘Surveyors?’

He nodded.

A black plastic jerry-can sat outside the furthest tent.

The water was brackish with chlorine but I gulped it down, careful not to let any pour down the side of my mouth. Wasting this stuff is a worse sin in the field than dumping in front of someone while they’re eating.

I lowered the jerry-can and took a breath. ‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers.’

He gave me a tight smile. ‘Listen, you’d better get yourself in gear. The bridge is still open until Standish turns up.’

I took a last couple of gulps onboard, then moved across to a blackened aluminium cooking pot sitting on a bunch of stones above a smoky fire. I lifted the lid to discover a thick, lumpy sludge of brown rice. I picked up one of the old tin cans lying beside it and helped myself to a scoop.

‘Get them back to the strip, Nick, and sort your girlfriend out. But promise me you’ll think about the offer. It’s important to me.’ He pointed to the kid. ‘And believe me, it’ll matter to him and his mates. His name’s Sunday, by the way.’

I chewed another mouthful of the gritty brown stuff from the pot and looked out over the hive of activity in the valley. ‘You reckon you’re going to be all right here?’

‘We’ve got good positions. I guess we’ll have to fight and see. I’m not leaving the kids to those animals, and I’m certainly not leaving them to Standish, so it’s all quite simple, really. We win or die. You go do your job – but think about what I said. We’d make a great team . . .’

He beckoned the two Chinese guys and they came out of the tent, both clutching their carryons. I scooped another canful of gloop out of the pot and pointed at their hand luggage. ‘No – get rid of it.’

They looked at me and each other, then at Sam.

‘They don’t understand,’ Sam said. ‘Just point and shout a lot like they do.’

I put the lid back on the pot, then pulled a bag away from one of them and shoved it on the ground. ‘No bags.’ I turned to Sam. ‘Let’s hope we’re not all history by the morning, yeah?’

‘Too right, son.’ He did his best to produce a grin. ‘If we are, someone up there has quite a lot of explaining to do.’

You don’t shake hands and hug at times like this. You save that sort of shit for reunions, weddings and funerals.

I started down the hill. After a few paces I checked behind me. Sam was back doing what he did best, soldiering, and Yin and Yang were waffling away as they unzipped their bags. By the time I’d reached the valley floor they were sliding down the hill behind me, pockets bulging.

3

I carried on down the valley with Yin and Yang stumbling behind. I caught sight of Crucial up on the high ground to my left, inside one of the sangars. He was pushing a long thin branch into the ground; it looked like it had just been gollocked off a tree. A soldier stood alongside, a bundle of similar branches in his arms. At first I thought it must be some sort of camouflage, then realized they were arc-of-fire stakes, sited each side of the sangar. Crucial wanted to make sure that when these boys squeezed the trigger, they didn’t take out some of their own.

As I walked on, a young head emerged from a hole in the ground in front of me, carrying a lump of rock the size of a watermelon. A couple of old guys sat and broke it into baggable lumps with two-pound ball hammers.

A volley of shouts in French came up from the valley entrance and people started running. Seconds later, the ground rumbled and shuddered under my feet. A mass of logs and wood shrapnel bounced into the air and I dived to one side, ready for an attack. Then I looked around. Everybody else had gone back to work. Life went on; they must be blowing another hole.

As the rumble subsided, I heard an urgent yell from Sam, up on the knoll. I couldn’t make out what it was about, but he was pissed off big-time.

I carried on to the re-entrant. Some of the sick from Nuka were still straggling in along the valley floor. Silky and a couple of MF guys were immediately alongside them, doing their caring and sharing bit. Tim was further back, putting a blanket over an old woman who lay motionless on the ground. He finished off by drawing the end over her head.

I walked through the throng to Silky. ‘We’re leaving.’

She didn’t bother looking up. ‘What? We can’t move them again.’

There was no more time to fuck about. I gripped her arm to let her know I’d drag her out of there if I needed to. ‘Otherwise you’ll die here. I’m taking you to Rwanda, to safety.’

Tim approached, his face etched with concern.

I pointed a finger. ‘You can shut the fuck up before you start.’

But he still kept coming. I let go of her and headed his way, part of me wanting to front him and see what he would do. It wouldn’t be difficult to blow him over.

Crucial jumped down from the high ground and landed between us. ‘Nick, hey, it’s OK.’

Tim walked round Crucial, ignoring the pair of us completely. ‘You should go, Silke.’ He spoke softly to her. ‘It’s dangerous and it’s only going to get worse.’ He swung to face me. ‘I have a duty of care here. The miners, the LRA, everybody’s done enough damage to these people over the years. I’m not going to desert them now. But you’re right. She must go.’

I turned back to Silky, annoyed at Tim for being so fucking honourable.

He placed his hands gently on her shoulders. ‘It’s futile staying. Please, go.’ His hands stayed where they were a while longer. Finally, she lowered her head and nodded. They hugged, then he turned and walked into the crowd. Clearly he wasn’t big on goodbyes either.

‘Good, let’s go.’

I shoved the tin can at her as she took one last look behind her. ‘Get this down you while we’re moving.’ I grabbed her hand and headed for the river.

Crucial yelled after us, ‘Wait, man, the bridge – they’ve already blown it.’

‘We’ll get over, mate, don’t worry.’ I tightened my grip. ‘And I’ll think about what you said, yeah?’

I gave Yin and Yang a nod and they fell in behind us.

4

The bridge had all but disappeared. The only bits left standing were two log piers on each bank. Sections of the main span were strewn along the track. Sam’s guys were making it as difficult as they could for the LRA to cross the river. Unfortunately, either things had got a bit out of hand, or the translation was crap, because they’d sparked up too early.

I pulled out the sat nav. It was a small, handheld Magellan unit encased in dark green armoured rubber. These things normally took a few minutes from cold to tune in and find satellites. When it was ready, I’d key in the airstrip way-point.

I studied the thirty metres of river that separated us from the other bank. The rain-swollen, surging torrent was the colour of the valley, and we were going to have to cross it at some point. But not here: it was too wide, too fast. The only thing that cheered me up was the thought that Standish would have to cross it the other way.

I turned to Silky as she forced down the last mouthful of sludge and placed the empty can to one side of the track. ‘There a bridge in Nuka?’

She shook her head. ‘If there was, they’ll have dealt with it by now, won’t they?’ She eyed Yin and Yang, who were standing there like a couple of dickheads, chatting away to themselves, pockets bulging with whatever they’d retrieved from their Louis Vuittons. ‘Who are they?’

‘Surveyors. I guess they cost too much to train to get dropped.’

‘Speak English?’

She was looking at them but I shook my head at the same time as they did.

‘They destroyed the village. I hate them.’

It wasn’t time for a debate. ‘OK, listen, I need your help.’ It felt good to stick my work head back on. I told her about the airstrip, its connection to the mine, how far away it was and why we were heading there.

‘If we hit any of the LRA, you’ve got to do exactly as I tell you, OK? You’ll get scared, it’s natural, but that’s different from flapping. Don’t do that, just get on with whatever I tell you to do. It’s our only way out of here.’

The ground sloped gently upwards for about twenty metres, then steepened. I pulled the bergen from my back and dumped it. It wasn’t as if I needed the shelter sheet to keep dry, or even had any food, water or dry clothing inside.

The Magellan still hadn’t got a fix but I started to follow the river south anyway, upstream, away from Nuka. We still had to cross it. Then the thing could ask its mates up in space where we needed to go.

I stayed four or five metres in from the track. The bank would be a natural route for the LRA to follow. In the jungle, rivers are roads, and big rivers are motorways.

Weapon in the shoulder, safety lever down two clicks to single shot, I navigated our way through the bush, using the cover to keep us out of sight from the bank.

My eyes scanned the jungle, but my mind kept veering away from the job in hand. What would happen to us when we got back? She hadn’t been overwhelmed to see me, and she was only with me now because Tim had had enough brain cells to know what was what. If it was over, then fuck it – I might as well come back here and take up Sam’s offer. Maybe helping the odd kid stay on the rails would help me get over it.