disappeared into the forest behind them. Smoke curled from cooking fires. Small figures darted about on the edge of the strip.
I squatted on the ramp, rubbing my eyes back to life as the loadie reappeared and threw each of us a bottle of water. I tilted my head and took several warm gulps, trying to time them between jolts as the aircraft kangarood along the runway. A couple of scabby dogs tried to keep pace with us, looking as if they thought the tyres were made of Pedigree Chum. Decapitated oil drums had been placed at twenty-metre intervals along the sides of the strip, and had obviously had fires in them. It looked like Lex did a bit of night-flying as well.
Sam was looking out of the window too. ‘I saw you having a sniff in them boxes . . .’ He was smiling. ‘Bet you’re thinking what I said last night about the church, orphanage, even the mine is rubbish? Bet you’re thinking we’re just in the war game?’
‘Pretty much.’ I nodded back at the cargo. ‘I mean—’
‘I haven’t lied to you, Nick. Maybe kept the odd thing back, but that’s all. Our mine is under constant threat, which means the orphanage at Nuka is too. So, to protect it, we’ve got to expand our operations and get more guys on the ground.’
It wasn’t long before the propellers were feathered and the aircraft came to a standstill. I started to flap even more about Silky fucking about in Nuka.
I now had a clearer view of the huts and tents. Brilliant cobalt blue was definitely the colour of choice in Africa.
The dogs finally caught up with us and yapped at the cockpit as the engines closed down. They were probably just too fucked to take chunks out of the tyres. Some of the older kids followed a football on to the runway so the barefooted game could continue.
The loadie pressed a button and the ramp whined. A horizontal shaft of daylight appeared where it left the fuselage. It hit the ground and Sam and I walked down into a solid wall of heat.
PART FOUR
1
There were no trucks buzzing round the back of the aircraft this time. Here, it was down to muscle. Thirty or so guys were already trudging up the ramp. They wore ripped, dirty loincloths and T-shirts, and some had flip-flops or wellies on their feet. A few were even sporting rubber swimming caps. They had them so they wore them. Every one of them, clothed or not, was caked in dust and grime, and the skin on their knees and elbows was white and cracked.
The flies’ welcoming committee gave us a warm reception now that the props had stopped. I started the Thai hand dance round my face; most of the others seemed happy to let the little bastards get on with it.
The loadie shouted at the guys in French, presumably trying to marshal them to start offloading. The only equipment I could see was a couple of vegetable-market-type barrows. Kids jumped on and off them as they were trundled towards the aircraft.
We walked along the airstrip, keeping the shanty town on our right. Piles of empty red food-aid sacks lined the verges, weighted down with logs.
The scabby dogs were now busy scattering a flock of three or four bony old chickens. Washing hung from trees. A few of the circular huts were made from beer cans mortared with mud then painted blue. Wriggly tin roofs were clearly all the rage.
Sam waved at the women and kids.
They waved back and smiled. ‘Mr Sam! Mr Sam!’
Lime-green and yellow jerry-cans were piled everywhere, and old plastic one-litre water bottles hung like strings of onions outside each hut. Everything looked like it was used until it fell apart.
We passed a group of young men, smoking and drinking, Czech AKs slung over their shoulders. The brown plastic furniture tried hard to be Russian wood, but failed.
They followed us with their eyes. They were curious about the new white face in town.
The smell of wood fires and cooking filled the air. ‘Takes you back, dunnit?’ Sam did some more smiling and waving. This was beginning to feel like a royal walkabout. ‘These people are the lucky ones. The total number of Palestinians and Israelis killed in the past six years is about four and a half thousand. Here, that’s not even the score for a long weekend. Over four million dead, Nick.’
‘You know what they say about records?’
‘What?’
‘They’re there to be broken.’
Sam chose to ignore what he thought was a bad joke as more overexcited kids ran up and bustled round him. He shook hands and patted heads. They seemed healthy enough. The whites of their eyes were actually white. They were getting protein.
I smiled. ‘They seem to like you.’
‘They know that I know what’s going on in there.’ He tapped the top of a young head with a forefinger. ‘My mother died when I was five and my father hit the drink and forgot to come home. I lived in council shelters until I joined up.’
I wished I’d been sent to one when my dad fucked off. Instead I’d got a drunken stepdad who beat the shit out of me and my mother. But I understood where he was coming from.
We pushed through the crowd. ‘Aren’t the UN supposed to be doing their bit to stop all this shit? And what about the aid organizations like Mercy Flight?’
‘Toothless, the lot of ’em.’ He checked the sun and pointed west. ‘The DRC border’s just twelve Ks that way. That’s where the nightmares begin. You got the different rebel groups fighting each other to control the mines. Even the army’s in on the act. Every man and his dog are at each other’s throats. Raping, machete-ing, and no one’s doing zip to stop it.’
Sam gestured at the kids and the shanty town, the dust-covered goats and black pigs nosing around in the mud and trying to avoid getting kicked out of the way. ‘They butcher these people to maintain a climate of fear. Sometimes they even eat them.
‘Yeah, that’s right, cannibalism.’ He turned and pointed at a small girl at the back of the crowd. She couldn’t have been more than two or three, standing with her thumb shoved in her mouth. ‘Her two sisters were cooked and eaten. It’s an empowerment thing. She was only saved because she was barely six months old and there wasn’t enough meat on her.
‘So these people stay here. We protect them, they work for us in return and worship in my church.’
‘Why don’t you have the orphanage here? Wouldn’t it be safer?’
‘There’s fourteen kids in it at the moment. They’re scared of staying in DRC but even more scared of coming here – they’re scared of everything and everyone. They think it’s safer to be near the mine, you know, nearer local tribes. But I eventually calm them down and trickle them here.’
I looked past the tiny little girl to the breeze-block and wriggly-tin building Sam was pointing at. The massive white wooden cross above the door told me all I needed to know.
The An12 was being refuelled from light blue drums rolled to the aircraft and hand-pumped into the tanks. The onboard drums weren’t getting unloaded. Just like having a couple of litres of fuel in the boot, they were Lex’s back-up.
Twenty or so people were lined up behind the ramp, manhandling the cargo out of the aircraft and on to old wooden trolleys. The blue coolers were getting thrown up on to the women’s heads as heat bounced off the aircraft wings.
We came to a row of worn and tattered eight-man tents at the end of the shanty town. Guys sat round cigarette-scorched trestle tables, using boxes and tree-trunks as seats. Every one of them was carrying an AK; some were in a uniform of sorts, green trousers or bottoms or T-shirts, but most were in a mix of football shirts and
