Recoil (30 page)

I rolled on to my back to recover.

‘You OK, Nick? You hurt?’

I waved at Silky to stay where she was.

The guns above us gave another burst.

‘Stop! Stop! Save ammo!’ I kept doing the cut-throat sign at them, trying to get their attention. Sam was right – the LRA fucks were probably just probing patrols, assessing our defences, maybe drawing little sketch maps to make it easier for them to plan tonight’s big event. Maybe I was giving them too much cred, but I’d survived this far by assuming always that my enemy was better than me.

I pulled out my kangaroo: 120 minutes till last light.

I stayed on my back, still trying to get my breath, keeping one eye on Silky, holding up my hand to stop her moving.

‘Tim! Tim!’

‘Wait! Wait there!’

We were never going to hold a long and meaningful conversation across the chasm of the valley entrance.

Crucial straightened the rag-doll leg and brought it in line with the good one. Tim howled like a dog. They could probably hear him on the other side of the river. He gasped short, sharp breaths as he tried to fight the pain.

Crucial spoke soothingly. ‘It’s OK, it’s all right, take it. There’s nothing we can do here. Just take the pain.’

There was something Tim was more concerned about than pain. ‘The bag . . . the bag . . .’

I moved my hand behind me, feeling for the strap. ‘Crucial, we’ve got medic kit here.’

Crucial didn’t turn. ‘I need surgical gloves – find some.’

Tim’s screams had been too much for Silky. She was well out of cover, hobbling across the valley floor. ‘No! Stay there! Stay there!’

She wasn’t listening.

There was no time for a debate. I got up and started running as fast as she could with her bad foot trailing.

‘Fire! Fire!’ I screamed at the guns.

My head was going at a hundred miles an hour but my legs were only doing fifty.

I held a hand out as I ran. ‘Come on! Come on!’

She was nearly halfway before they worked out what I wanted and the rounds started hitting the treeline again.

I stopped with my hand outstretched, like a relay runner waiting for the baton. I got hold of her hand, pulled it towards me, bent down and hoisted her cleanly over my shoulder.

I staggered back to Crucial on adrenalin power.

11

‘You think this is a game?’ I dumped her behind Crucial, who was still kneeling over Tim. He now had the gloves on and was getting stuck in.

Silky crawled round him, and looked horrified at the mess of blood and bone that confronted her. She burst into tears. ‘
Oh, my God
 . . .’

She needed to get a grip on herself.

‘God can’t do anything for him,’ I muttered.

Crucial glared up at me: maybe he didn’t like his boss being given a hard time. ‘She’s a doctor. She can take over.’ He stepped aside and pulled off the gloves. ‘You and I have things to do, Nick.’

Silky knelt the other side of Tim, taking deep breaths to regain control. He tried to comfort her, smiling up at her through the pain, mumbling that everything was OK. Was it fuck . . .

I dived into the bag. ‘We got any fluids in there, Crucial? Any giving sets?’

‘Nothing like that. Just medicines and dressings.’

Silky got to work. ‘Tim, I’ve got to arrest the bleeding, OK?’

His femoral artery wasn’t severed or litres of the stuff would have been pouring out of his leg, but if he kept leaking like this he would eventually go into shock and die.

Crucial had already stopped the worst of the fluid loss by wrapping bandages tightly round the wound. The binding would also help immobilize the fracture. Tim could have done with a few plates of chips to get a bit of lard on him, something for Crucial to apply pressure to. There was too much bone and not enough meat.

‘Nick, we have to go. You have a claymore to make, I have to get more ANFO, man.’

Silky had already made a bandage tourniquet and fixed it round Tim’s thigh. She fed a bit of stick through the loop and started to twist.

I looked around. All the sangars were now stood-to, the guys inside hyped up and eager for anything to shoot at.

‘We’ve got to get him up to the tents.’

Silky gave a last twist. They should only be applied for fifteen minutes max, then you have to let some blood through or all the good tissue below the tourniquet will be at risk. Oxygen starvation can cause the death of the limb. What you get then is a very bad smell, followed by amputation – if you’re lucky.

Tim was out of it. His face was screwed up, eyes shut tight, teeth clenched. He could only take so much; now and again he’d let out a whimper, and claw at the mud with his fingers.

Crucial rattled off another set of instructions. His orders were relayed round the valley and sangars stood down. The squaddies sat back and lit up.

He turned to me. ‘You need to finish the claymores.’

‘These two need to get up to the tents.’

‘I’ll see to it – but until I get back, you’ll have to shift the bags yourself. No one will want to go out there.’

‘Apart from you?’

He turned and ran back into the valley.

Silky was in the process of easing Tim’s good leg towards the bad one. It obviously hurt like fuck, but that wasn’t his main priority right now: his patients were. He gripped her arm. ‘We need to get to them, and soon . . .’

She stroked the sweat from his face. ‘Soon.’

She started bandaging his legs together. Tim could be moved to a safer place now – though it wouldn’t be where he expected.

I went over to them. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go. Crucial’s getting a couple of the boys to move you.’

She concentrated hard on what she was doing with the tourniquet, but I got a nod.

As I turned away, Tim croaked, ‘Nick?’

‘What?’

‘Thank you.’

Silky looked up and gave me the kind of smile I’d have walked across hot coals for ten days ago. Who knows? Maybe I still would. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank you. For everything . . .’

Fuck that. There wasn’t time for medal ceremonies. I picked up my AK and yelled at the gunners up ahead to warn them I was on the move.

12

It wasn’t hard to find a site. Every inch of the place had been dug into at one time or another. I started humping the bags myself, following a route that took me past Silky and Tim, past the mound and on to the entrance. The dugout was six or seven metres up the hillside, and only a little smaller than the one I’d already prepped.

Crucial bellowed at the ANFO boys in the valley to start shifting more bags and metal up to me. No one looked too happy at the prospect.

I screwed up my eyes and hoicked another bag on to my back. It wasn’t my aching body I was worried about – the adrenalin would take care of that – it was the constant banging inside my head.

Fuck the LRA, fuck child soldiers, fuck everyone. I was in my own little world too. I just wanted this over and done with, and to be out of here.

Next time I came down, Crucial was standing over Tim and Silky.

Tim was ready to be shifted.

I nodded at Crucial. ‘Let’s get him up to the tents.’

‘No, Nick.’ Silky got to her feet. ‘We want to go back to the villagers.’

Tim’s voice came in at ankle level. ‘I can still help them.’

‘Silky . . .’ I looked down at Tim. ‘And you . . .’ I pointed past the growing pile of ANFO bags. ‘Very soon there’s going to be a ton of shit pouring through that gap. You need to be up by the tents with us.’

Silky was shaking her head even before I’d finished. ‘We understand what might happen, Nick. That’s why we’re not going to leave these people.’

Sam appeared at the run with four squaddies, all gulping oxygen and sweating. ‘What do you think this is? A debating society?’ He glanced at Tim. ‘OK?’

Tim nodded.

‘Up to the tents, then. What good are you to anyone down here? Any casualties will be brought up to us. Your arms are still working, so you can sort them out up there. Both of you, no questions.’ He pointed at me. ‘And you get those devices in, soon as.’

‘Standish here yet?’

‘Aye, just.’ He pointed at Crucial. ‘Give him a hand. I’ll sort these two out.’

The two of us set about hauling the ANFO up the slope on our own.

The bags weighed a lot more than their original fifteen kilos, once the diesel had been added, and each seemed to weigh a bit more than the last. Crucial was on autopilot, shouldering bag after bag, but I knew what was on his mind.

‘Have you thought about staying, Nick?’

‘Fucking hell, mate, I haven’t had time to shit, let alone think. Besides, now’s not the time. Let’s get on with this.’

We got to the dugout and dumped the bags in layers, as before.

‘You know what, Nick? It’s always the right time to talk about doing some good.’

We could stack them maybe three high – if we used the time and he stopped waffling. ‘Let’s get on with this, eh? We ain’t got that long, mate.’

We scrambled back down the slope. All this pious talk was really starting to get to me. ‘Mate – you talk about good, but you know what’s being mined here. Do these fuckers even get paid?’

‘Of course – two dollars a sack.’

‘Not bad for something that sells for four hundred.’

Crucial bristled. ‘Hey, listen, if this was an LRA mine they’d get nothing. They’d be working at gunpoint, and they’d get shot if they weren’t working hard enough. That doesn’t happen here. These guys get to feed their families. Sam and I had to fight to make that happen.’

‘Another Standish cost-cutting initiative?’

We hefted another bag each. Even with fifteen kilos plus on his shoulder, he managed a shrug.

We attacked the hill once more. ‘But doesn’t it make you angry? These people living in shite while fat bastards like Stefan rack up millions?’

‘I just worry about the kids, Nick. I know what’s happening to them. I know what they’re going through. The rest of it, I can’t do anything about. All I can do is what I’m doing. I can’t change the world, but I can do something for this bit of it.’

I didn’t think I had any more fluid in me to sweat. I leaned against the stack of bags and gulped air. There were about thirty-five of them now, and it would be last light soon. We had to get a fucking move on.

Crucial’s sermon hadn’t improved my headache, and I had to wipe white foam periodically from my lips. He and I looked like a couple of rabies victims. We needed fluid urgently, but not as urgently as we needed to finish the claymore.

We started to shovel, but Crucial wasn’t giving up on his pitch. ‘I was like Sunday. I was taken from my village, used and dehumanized, Nick. Turned into a killer.’

‘Sunday tell you that?’

‘He’s not talking yet. His mind’s too numb. We get the kids to draw pictures to start with – it’s the only way they can express themselves. Most of them draw the same thing. They draw the LRA attacking their village, then they draw themselves being taken away. Sunday has drawn his hut being burned, and then being forced to shoot his parents.’

‘You kill yours?’

He held his shovelful of mud in mid-air for a moment, but said nothing. It was all the answer I needed.

‘What about the kids coming in tonight? How do you feel about hosing them down?’

He nodded slowly. ‘I know you’ve killed children, Nick. I was there, remember? It was a very big thing for Sam, also. That’s why he’s here now. It tested his faith. How could the Lord let such a thing happen?’

This God stuff wasn’t what I was after, and he knew it.

He lifted his crucifix and kissed it. ‘If I have to kill to save life, then I must. But it is not easy for me, man. The worst thing of all is condemning a child to death through no fault of his own. I will have to live with that until I meet my God. Then it will be between Him and me.’

I carried on shovelling. Part of me envied his certainty about the pearly gates. I wouldn’t be seeing them. My ticket was for totally the opposite direction.

There was a lull in the waffle, but I knew he still hadn’t finished. ‘Nick, the only thing you can do is what Sam and I do. Help us to help them. Then maybe, God willing, you’ll be at peace.’

I let my spade do the talking for a moment or two. The kid’s shot-away face flashed through my head and the prospect of doing it again tonight made it stay there a few seconds longer than I would have wanted. ‘Listen, mate, if we don’t get these fucking claymores done, you’ll be having that meeting a whole lot quicker than you want . . .’

13

It took the best part of an hour to finish the digging, get the metal in and the claymores set and prepared. The sun had never won its fight with the cloud, but could still be seen trying to break through as it dipped towards the end of the valley.

I had run det cord from both dugouts. They met behind the mound where Tim had been dumped. The two lots were of different lengths, with one running across the valley entrance and the other up to the higher ground on this side. Differing lengths could sometimes cause problems; ideally, they should be the same so there’s simultaneous detonation. But these claymores were so far apart it wasn’t as if the first one kicking off a nanosecond before the other would dislodge or compromise its mate. And to any LRA within reach, it would be one big, fuck-off bang.