ripped civilian clothes. Some had boots, some had flip-flops. There was no ‘Mr Sam’ being shouted in this part of town.
A few heads emerged from behind tent flaps and disappeared as quickly. At first, they weren’t as excited as the others had been – until they saw Sam’s suitcase. Hurried orders and glances were exchanged.
Sam led me away from the soldiers towards the end of the strip and a cluster of much newer, bigger, neater tents set back into the jungle. A big cam net had been secured between the trees. I could hear generators. We were in the high-rent part of town. ‘This is home for us, Nick.’
It looked like a typical open-square headquarters set-up: nice area, six good-quality green-canvas tents, and an old Indian guy sweeping dust from the hardened mud with a homemade witch’s broom.
Kids weren’t clamouring around us any more. It was like we’d crossed a line and they daren’t follow.
Sam shepherded me in the direction of a large, slightly rusty fridge parked under the cam net. An extension cable snaked away into the trees, towards a distant generator. Folding wooden chairs were arranged round a couple of six-foot tables, on which sat a couple of big cans of Paludrin. ‘Fancy some iced tea? I’m gagging.’
I nodded as he opened one of the fridge doors. A waft of cool air bathed my face. As I waited for my drink I extracted two Paludrin tablets. I couldn’t remember if they were good for preventing malaria or not, or gave you kidney problems either way.
I took the tea and rattled the pills down me anyway. It was OK for Africans. Some become immune in their fifties, but only if they live that long. There weren’t many grey-haired guys in these parts.
A loud voice rang out from one of the tents: ‘That you, Sam? Stone with you?’
It didn’t matter how long ago I’d last heard it. A voice like that you never forget.
‘Aye, we’re both here.’ Sam went for a chair, and put a finger briefly to his lips. ‘I’ll explain later.’
The voice emerged from the tent, a sat phone to his ear. He smiled, his teeth still perfect, not a hair out of place. Worst of all, he didn’t look as if he’d aged a second.
2
I tried to look as though this was what I’d expected all along. I certainly didn’t want to do or say anything that Miles Standish could turn to his advantage. For starters, I wasn’t going to put out my hand and give him the chance to reject it. I just nodded. ‘Thanks for letting me—’
‘Cut the crap. I don’t have time. I’m fighting a war.’
I didn’t respond. Wars round here weren’t fought with sophisticated night sights, fast jets and laptops. In this neck of the woods, it was the AK, bayonet and gollock that did the business. I wasn’t interested in a dirty little war that probably didn’t even have a name, and Standish could see it.
He jabbed a finger. ‘If you want my help, it’s going to cost. So sit down, shut up and listen in.’
I took a chair next to Sam. It was easy to tell I was the new boy. I was leaking from every pore and sweat ran down my chest like rain down a window. Flies landed on my face by the bucketload, or settled in the sweat on my neck.
Standish grabbed a seat the other side of the table and placed the Iridium in front of him, next to a handful of kids’ crayons. He picked up a blue one and began to draw on the bare wood. ‘Sam, we’ve got new int. The patrol had a contact last night. They’re getting closer by the day. We’ve got to step up a gear.’ He added a final flourish to his doodle, then focused on me and jabbed a finger inches from my face. ‘I’ll keep this simple.’
Standish hadn’t gone back to the Coldstream Guards after his tour. He’d left the army and dropped out of sight, like Sam. A year later, he’d popped up on
By the time the rest of the team got back to the UK, he’d long since taken all the credit for saving the gold and keeping Mobutu sweet. The DSO is a big deal, only a rung or two below the VC, and his citation had gone on about bravery and leadership in the field. It went on to praise his compassionate defence of civilian lives. I wondered how Annabel’s family – and the boy’s – would have felt about that if they’d seen what I had.
The rest of the team had honked good and hard about the decoration, but what could we do? The army was hardly going to rewrite history just because a few of the guys were pissed off that Gary hadn’t appeared on the radar screen and his kids still got fuck-all support from the MoD.
We all agreed with Davy that we should deck him if he ever turned up for the squadron Christmas party. But he didn’t: his five minutes of TV fame had been the last any of us had seen of him. Until now.
I glanced at his doodle on the table. He’d drawn a big T with a letter S above the top bar, an R to the right of the vertical bar, and DRC to the left of it.
‘OK, we are here – Rwanda.’ He tapped the crayon on the R. ‘The mine and Nuka are thirty-five Ks away in DRC, and three Ks apart. For months now the rebels have been infiltrating from the north, from Sudan –’ he jabbed the S ‘– into DRC, to hijack the mines.’
Sam said, ‘The rebels are LRA, Nick.’
Standish glowered. ‘You know them?’
I nodded. I’d kept up with events in Zaire and later the DRC, or at least as much as
He claimed to have special powers, given to him by God. His followers, and the poor fuckers he terrorized, believed he couldn’t be killed. He and his headbangers claimed to be fighting to make the Ten Commandments the law of the land. Either they’d been reading Sam’s Good Book after too many nights on the ghat, or they knew it was bollocks, but needed a good excuse to slaughter more than ten thousand civilians. They’d also abducted twice that number of kids and turned them into sex slaves or killers – drilled them with weapons to the point of exhaustion, then shoved them into the firing line as cannon fodder while the big men stood back and saved their skins.
Two million people had fled their villages and sought refuge in foreign aid stations and refugee camps to escape Kony’s trademark combo of brutal massacre and black magic. He was so insane, he’d decided a while back that bicycles were only used to carry information of his whereabouts to the authorities, and ever since anyone caught riding one had had his feet chopped off. And now it seemed he was turning his attention to the mining business.
‘OK for me to continue, Sam?’ Standish said. ‘Or do you have more to say?’
Sam waved his hand. ‘Just thought Nick should know what we’re up against.’
Standish got back to his map. ‘Interrogations after last night’s contact suggest there’s a fresh wave of Kony’s men heading south – three, maybe four days’ march from our mine. But they will not take it. If they do, we lose everything we’ve worked for.
‘So, here’s the plan. Normal patrol turnaround is cancelled. We need to get all available bayonets to the mine as quickly as we can. Top priority when we get there is to safeguard the two surveyors and defend the mine. So, Sam, you take your patrol in as soon as you’ve paid them – they’ve been given a warning order. I’ll follow with the other patrol as soon as they’ve been fed and watered. They’re due back any minute. We will stand our ground. They will not take the mine. They must not take the mine. It’s as simple as that.’
He turned to me. ‘And here’s your deal. You will go with Sam’s patrol. You can do a detour to Nuka and get this little rich girl – but make it quick. You will be on your own. I’m not risking manpower. Once you have her you will return to the mine and pick up Sam’s sat nav and the surveyors. Then you get back here with them, quick time. Lex will take you both out of the country, but only if you’ve got the two surveyors in tow. Is that clear?’
I nodded, though he clearly hadn’t written Tim and his helpers into the equation. I wasn’t turning into Mother Teresa here: what if Silky refused to leave without them? ‘What about the Mercy Flight people in Nuka and the people they’re caring for? You protecting them?’
It was like I’d asked Standish to eat elephant shit. ‘We’re a business,’ he said crisply, ‘not a coffee shop for the stupid. Any minute now you’ll be suggesting we take in Sam’s waifs and strays.’
