Recoil (40 page)

‘Roger that. What am I hitting?’

‘A fire group on the southern lip of the valley – that’s your port as you approach. Roger so far?’

‘Roger that.’

The engine noise was drowned as two more RPGs kicked off.

‘We’re waiting for the main attack, probably from the valley entrance – four hundred east of the marker. They’ll be moving up the valley. Roger so far?’

‘Roger that. What are they carrying, man? Anything I need to know about?’

‘We’re taking small arms, no RPGs yet. No light or heavy guns. The only tracer so far is ours.’

‘Roger that.’ His tone was still completely relaxed. No wonder he’d survived in this business so long. ‘OK, I’m coming. Just make sure I can see that marker, man. I need something to get me on line. Wait out.’

I was putting the sat phone down when he screamed, ‘Nick! Nick! Did you get Standish? You tell him what I said?’

‘Yes – and more.’

‘Roger that, be there in fifteen.’

Sam yelled, ‘Here we go!’

He fired a long burst, fifteen plus, into the beaten zone as bodies poured into the valley.

More fire came from the high ground, covering the assault group. A pair of RPGs kicked off to our right and I saw Crucial sprinting to the other trench.

‘Silky!’ I yelled, so loud even the LRA would have heard me. ‘The plunger! Push the plunger!’

I looked down into the valley and waited, but nothing happened.

‘Silky! Hit the fucking plunger!’

I got more rounds down, then saw the cordite spark up in the gloves, and finally the slabs, burning like big fuck-off sparklers.

‘Come on . . . come on . . .’

A couple of seconds later, the diesel ignited.

6

I aimed down into the valley entrance and squeezed off twenty rounds as more bodies streamed through. There must have been two hundred of the fuckers swarming towards us, ghatted up and wanting to kill everything in their way.

My right hand was on the pistol grip; my left gripped the phone tight against the butt so the display was almost in my eye. I fired another burst. My face juddered as the working parts slammed backwards and forwards 800 times a minute. My ears rang.

Tracer floated down into the killing area and the rounds spread out into their beaten zone.

I adjusted fire slightly left and squeezed the trigger again. Bodies dropped, but the wave kept coming. I now had to squint against the sun that had just tipped the horizon.

Crucial screamed and two more RPGs kicked off, flying towards the fire group. The knoll was shrouded in a cloud of backblast smoke that mirrored the black diesel fumes belching sky-wards from the drum.

My link was coming to an end. I grabbed another belt and it snaked from the ammo box. I attached it to the last few rounds still on the gun, and carried on firing.

Sam grabbed the spare gun. ‘Stoppage! Stoppage!’

He slammed back the cocking handle and squeezed the trigger. His head jerked in unison with the working parts, as if he was having a fit.

I fired another long burst and felt the heat of the weapon wash over my face and hands. Crazed screams and shouts rolled ever closer.

Most of them were kids. I tried to focus to keep my mind on range and keeping a good sight picture as they ran forward and I cut them down.

I saw green. The LED on the phone was glowing.

I pressed receive as another two RPGs kicked off and Sam’s gun thundered alongside me. I crouched down in the trench and jammed a finger in my other ear.

‘Nearly there, man.’

7

I yelled into the phone, ‘The diesel’s burning. A big fuck-off column of smoke. Where are you?’

Nothing.

I scanned the skyline, hoping to see wings, fuselage, a pair of reverberating 23mms – but the sun was still too low.

‘Where are you?’

‘Shut up, man. I’m concentrating . . .’

Lex would be searching the western horizon, looking for the marker before he adjusted his bearing.

‘OK, got it, I see it. You still want me to hit the lip – or that fucking LRA tsunami coming up the valley? I don’t have an ammo store in the back. It’ll be one or the other.’

‘The lip – take out the fire group.’

‘Coming in. Stand by.’

I heard him talk to the gunner on his intercom as I sprang back up. I hoped the fucker had steered clear of the wacky-baccy this time round.

‘Cease fire!’ I yelled over to Crucial. ‘No more RPGs! Lex is coming in!’

Bodies kept pouring into the valley to bolster the assault wave and we kept hosing down the front of it.

Bodies fell. Some ran in panic, but most kept on coming.

A new sound filled the air. Lex was ahead of us at about 400, the glass bubble on the nose moving from right to left. The wings dipped as he turned and lined up on the lip, then there was a rattle and a roar as the pair of 23mm cannon kicked off like Gatling guns.

Red tracer poured down from Donald Duck’s bill like molten steel spilling from a blast furnace.

8

Small volcanoes of mud erupted into the air with the impact of the rounds, and bodies tumbled from the high ground. Survivors ran for cover. There was no more firing.

I grabbed the phone. ‘On target, on target! The LRA have advanced three hundred since you fired.’

I spun back towards the valley, adjusted my sights to 300, the minimum setting, and aimed a little low. I was feeling more confident with every burst, until I heard Crucial yell.

‘Contact rear! Contact rear!’

He’d swung through one-eighty with his AK and was firing behind.

We had the runners from the fire group streaming down from the high ground.

Sam jerked his head round and assessed. ‘I’ll keep forward – you take them, you take them!’

I grabbed my gun by the carry handle and swung it round on to the edge of the backblast channel. There must have been twenty, thirty of them coming down the hill at us, forty metres away and closing.

I squeezed off short, sharp bursts. Some went down but the rest kept coming.

The first wave screamed on to the flat of the knoll, no more than twenty away, so close I could hear the squelch of mud under their feet.

They dropped their empty weapons, and pulled gollocks.

9

The biggest, ugliest of the front runners zeroed in on me like removing my head from my shoulders was his only mission in life. I fired from point-blank. He was so close, I almost had to kneel to get the elevation up to him.

His mud-splattered face was set in a frenzied snarl as he raised his blade.

I gave him a big burst and his gollock clattered into the fire trench. His blood gushed over my face as he buckled over the gun barrel and started to sizzle.

Sam turned to back Crucial as I heaved the body off the gun and tipped him into the mud. His flesh smelled like scorched crackling.

There was another blur of movement from my left. I dipped down to grab Sam’s AK and snapped back up in the aim.

A rope flailed behind his leg as he ran.

‘Sunday! Stop!’

Crucial had a stoppage and dropped from view to change mags.

Sam stepped up his fire.

I flicked the safety lever down and fired the whole magazine to cover the boy as he ran in blind panic towards the track.

Finally, out of ammo, I dropped the weapon and scrambled out of the trench after him.

10

The LRA coming up the valley were so close I could make out which football clubs they supported, and tell the men from the boys. But I couldn’t let Sunday go. I couldn’t let the poor little fucker slip through my hands.

It took just a few strides to catch him up behind Silky’s fire trench and jump on to his back. We both fell into the mud.

He scrabbled and bucked to get free, screaming in panic as rounds pinged over our heads. I pinned him by the shoulders, got hold of his wrists, and dragged him towards Silky.

‘It’s OK, Sunday, come on!’

His eyes looked like they were about to jump out of their sockets. He wasn’t going to come quietly.

I screamed for her: ‘Help me, help me!’

I half jumped, half fell the last few metres towards her.

A man came tearing towards us in cut-down jeans and a seriously distressed Bob Marley T-shirt. A gollock jerked in his hand like someone had just connected him up to the national grid.

I pulled Sunday towards me and rolled into the backblast channel. His eyes were fixed on mine.

Feet splashed mud against my neck and I could smell the crazed fucker’s rancid breath as he bent over me, gollock raised. His sweat dripped on to my face as he swung the blade.

11

An AK fired a rapid burst from behind him, and the guy piled into me, arms outstretched, flattening us against the mud.

I struggled free.

Tim lay behind me, fighting the pain after dragging himself off the cot. He still gripped the weapon, his face showing the same grim determination with which I held on to Sunday’s bony little wrists.

I knelt down and held his face between my hands. ‘It’s OK. You’re safe.’ I smiled. He stared back, not understanding a word. But maybe he felt it.

Sam was going ballistic. ‘Where are you, Nick? Come on!’

I threw Sunday over my shoulder, and legged it back to my position. I wasn’t going to let him feel abandoned.

Sam was firing forwards and bodies were piled in front of him. His tracer didn’t even have time to ignite as it hammered into others, less than a hundred away. His gun pointed down the knoll and he was almost lying across the front of the trench to get the line of fire.

I dropped Sunday into the trench next to me.

Sam sprayed another burst into the frenzied incomers. ‘We’re losing it, Nick!’

I grabbed the sat phone. ‘Lex, you still got your fuel on board?’

‘Always, man.’

‘We got them a hundred away and closing. Listen in.’ I told him what I needed.

‘Roger that, man. Orbiting right. Coming in from the west.’

‘I don’t give a shit about that, mate – just get here.’

They scrambled up the slippery knoll. Some still fired weapons as they climbed, others brandished gollocks.

I killed men and kids in wellington boots and trainers, jeans and shorts. All of them screamed, so high and so loud they seemed oblivious to our guns. We dropped them like targets in a video game, and as soon as they fell, others immediately took their places.

12

The An12 came in fast and low.

The ramp was down, and a succession of blue fifty-gallon drums of aviation fuel tumbled down it and out of its arse. I caught a glimpse of the loadie as he yanked frantically on webbing straps to release even more.

I didn’t wait for them all to fall, just fired into whatever was already in the mud. The one-infour would do the rest.

Some of the drums had taken bodies with them into the mud. High-octane fuel spurted from the holes I’d drilled and three of them ignited, one after the other. As soon as there was enough heat, the fuel gases would expand and rupture the casing, and we’d get all the explosions we needed.

Crucial was up with a launcher. He had a better idea. ‘Cover! Cover!’

I ducked into the trench as he kicked off a round into the valley.

Death came quickly to anyone within forty metres as the RPG detonation ignited the fuel and the shockwave vaporized it into an instant fireball.

The heat washed over us as another round kicked off.

The screams from burning bodies below us were drowned as the second round set off a chain reaction.

We jumped back up to man the guns, but this time there was nothing to fire at.

Human torches blundered into each other as flames engulfed the front half of the valley. The rest was filled with survivors running for their lives.

Lex was high in the brilliant blue sky, sunlight flashing off his wings. I brought the phone to my ear. ‘We’re not taking fire.’

‘After that I should fucking hope not, man.’

He couldn’t resist a little victory waggle as the aircraft banked and roared back up the valley.

Not even the cicadas disturbed the shocked silence around us. The devastation was almost too much to take in. Bodies were scattered around our fire trenches by the dozen, but down there, among the flames and smoke, they were strewn like trees after a hurricane.

I turned to Sam as the choking cloud enveloped our position.

Crucial was still in his trench, holding his hand to his mouth. ‘I lost a diamond!’ Blood dribbled over his fingers. ‘I lost one of my diamonds!’

Budget-size heads popped up over the parapets of the two trenches. RPG propellant still burned in the mud behind them and the smell of cordite drenched the air.

Silky emerged from her trench and I did a plunger mime and a thumbs-up.