She stood up, still a little wobbly. ‘You think you can rescue your friend?’
‘I have to try,’ he said.
‘And if you cannot?’
The answer to that was obvious enough.
‘I think it’s only fair I should know the plan,’ she said.
Stratton felt like he had to accept her as something of a partner. She had earned that much. He also had an urge to trust her. She was an enemy in some ways, but she was also in the same hole he was. They were after the same thing.
‘The same idea you had. The ship we were on is going to be released. My plan is to recce the Al-Shabaab camp. Whatever happens, from there we head back to the ship. We climbed on to it once, we can do it again.’
The girl nodded as she considered the various phases he had proposed. ‘OK.’
Stratton looked to the skies. The eastern horizon was growing lighter. ‘It’ll be dawn soon,’ he said. ‘We should go.’
He headed up the incline and looked back. She was following. He found the road again and they took it south. He set off at an anxious pace but after a short distance realised he was alone and stopped to look back for her.
She was still trudging along. ‘Give me a moment to loosen up,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep up with you.’
Stratton didn’t doubt it and he moved off. Her determination grew and within a short distance she was walking alongside of him. He gave her a look. She looked right back at him.
The road followed the waterline but on higher ground and for the most part about a hundred metres away from the river. As they walked on, he began to see the strangeness of it all, walking through the Somali countryside with a Chinese Secret Service agent, and a woman to boot, kidnapped by pirates, her ordeal. Then he thought of Hopper and his mind came into focus.
‘I’m thirsty,’ she said.
He was too and they left the track and headed down the slope towards a line of thick scrub. They reached a wall of dense bushes and pushed through. On the other side the ground had levelled out and the roots of the plants had no doubt found the water table. After several metres of difficult progress, they came to the water’s edge.
‘You feeling OK?’ he asked her as she took a drink.
‘Yes.’
‘I want to get to the camp before daybreak,’ he said.
‘I understand,’ she said.
They pushed back through the bushes as quietly as they could, on to the road and walked along it at a faster pace. She was as good as her word and kept up with him.
They had been walking for just over an hour when they saw headlights. They were coming on fast behind them.
‘This way,’ he hissed as he ran off the road on to the plain and down into a small hollow.
She lay beside him. Both watched the vehicle come on.
The sound of the engine eventually broke through the quiet. It was an old truck. It jolted and creaked right by them, swerving left and right around the deep potholes. It kept on going, heading up the plateau, then disappearing over a rise. Stratton got to his feet. The girl stood too and they started walking.
It took a little while to get to the rise. He slowed as they approached and then he ducked just before the top, aware that he would be silhouetted against the skyline. She did the same, stopping alongside him. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing yet.’
They could see the truck again a long way off, bouncing along the road, disappearing at times behind the scrub. Finally it drove over a bigger rise and they could only hear it and see glimpses of its reflected light beams.
Stratton stood upright and looked beyond the point where the truck had disappeared. The wind blew gently into their faces. They could hear the branches of a rugged, stumpy shrub scraping together.
‘It’s stopped,’ he said.
‘I can still hear it.’
‘Yes. But it’s stopped.’ He stepped over the crumbling rocks of the plateau and down the other side of the rise.
The girl followed but more cautiously, watching where she placed her cloth-covered feet. The horizon grew brighter by the minute. The breeze had been fairly cool throughout the night but they knew it would get hotter as the sun came up.
They reached the bottom of the slope and began up the crest of another. It was hard to tell the distance to the top in the near darkness.
When he reached it he lay on his belly to look down the other side.
She did the same.
They were looking into a large depression between the ridge they were on and another far beyond. As the ground descended into the basin he could see the way the dark, stunted trees huddled together. An encampment sat in the middle of the wood. He saw several fires and a sprinkling of oil and electric-powered lamps. Men’s voices drifted up to them on the breeze. They could hear a generator, or perhaps more than one.
It didn’t look like a village. It could have been nomads. They tended to use trucks as much as animals to carry their possessions. But it was too close to where the girl described the Al-Shabaab camp as being. ‘What do you think?’ he said.
‘Do you think we’re ten kilometres from the beach?’ she said.
He looked back at the ocean to be sure. ‘I’d say so.’
‘Then this must be the right place.’
‘They might have sentries on the high ground,’ he said, looking along the ridge and beyond. But he would be surprised if there were any. In fact he would have been impressed.
‘What now?’ she asked.
He could tell she was uncomfortable being there and wanted to get it over with. ‘I need to get a closer look. We should move in now before it gets any lighter, see if we can find somewhere to observe from. If we can’t find anywhere, we’ll have time to get back.’
They heard a cry of some sort from the camp. It had a rhythm to it, like a chant. He recognised it. The Muslim call to prayer just before dawn.
‘Do everything I say. If I go to ground, if I stop, you do the same and without a noise or a word,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘I will.’
He gripped the rifle and, keeping as low to the ground as he could, stepped over the crest and down the other side. The girl moved as he moved, her eyes either on him or the camp.
Stratton stepped slowly and quietly towards a jumble of rocks halfway down the incline and a stone’s throw from the first line of trees that formed the outer perimeter of the camp.
They crouched against the rocks and waited, listening. The voices became louder but he could not understand a word.
‘I don’t like this position,’ he said quietly, looking around them. ‘It will be exposed when the sun comes up.’ He spotted a rocky outcrop further along the plateau with more of an overlook to the camp.
He set off, keeping low, careful not to disturb the loose ground. If he could hear them, they would be able to hear him. The girl followed a short distance behind.
A loud voice suddenly cut through the encampment and Stratton and the girl dropped to the ground. Stratton’s first thought was that they had been seen. They waited but they heard only the distant voice rising and falling. He guessed it was the cleric exhorting his congregation. They crept to the rock formation using their hands to climb. Once there, Stratton felt satisfied with the cover. The boulders pretty much provided all-round protection from view if they kept well down. They waited again, on edge. If anyone had seen them, the action would soon follow. The minutes creaked by. Stratton felt happy enough that they hadn’t been seen.
As the wind shifted a strange whirring sound became apparent. It was faint but constant. After checking around, he decided it was coming from a dip further along the slope. As he looked he thought he could just about see a rhythmic movement beyond the ridge-line, like something spinning. To get a proper look at it, he’d have to
