‘The kid you condemned to death? You talking about Sunday?’
Neither of us was looking at the other.
‘How did you know?’
‘Don’t need to be a brain surgeon to work that one out, mate. The drugs, flapping about contaminating Tim, oh, and all that “What have I got to lose?” shite.’
He stood stock still, gazing out over the valley. He might have been carved from stone.
‘It wasn’t the pain that made me cry out when he bit me. It was seeing him with a mouthful of my blood. I have given him HIV, Nick. I have killed him.’
‘How long you had it?’
‘After I fell from the helicopter Sam took me to an aid station outside Kinshasa. The blood transfusion was contaminated.’
‘I’m no doctor, mate, but Sunday’s got more chance of being struck by lightning. Your peripheral blood will be infectious, but not highly. And it was only one exposure. He can be tested anyway. And, as for you, the new drugs keep people alive for years. You’ve got plenty of time yet before you have that sit-down with God.’
He nodded, then smiled. ‘I keep telling myself that, but it’s good to hear it from someone else. Thank you, Nick.’
Fuck me, I seemed to be doling out happy pills today like they were going out of style. ‘Not a problem, mate. I was saying it to cheer myself up, as much as anything else. After all, if I hadn’t dropped you . . .’
It was my turn to concentrate hard on the treeline. I certainly didn’t want to catch his eye. ‘I killed another kid today. Point blank in the face.’
Crucial rested a giant hand on my shoulder. ‘And your claymores are going to kill more. That’s why you must stay and help us. We have to make sure people like Standish and Kony are never able to do this again, ever.’
He was so close I could see the thin line of cement round his diamonds, and smell his parched breath. ‘We have to stop it, Nick.’
The gunners arrived. He left without another word, and I got to work.
If I hadn’t earthed the cable correctly, I was about to find out.
I picked up the dets. They were loose in the bag, a demolition man’s nightmare: twenty or so aluminium tubes the size of half a cigarette, and the two thin metre-long wires that protruded from the back of each weren’t twisted together like they should have been. Left apart, the wires act like antennae and can pick up a radio signal or atmospheric electricity. Either could be enough to initiate the det, and this area was no stranger to electrical storms. They could have gone up at any moment.
I pulled one out, untwisted the firing cable wires again, turned my back on the whole process, and joined one to the first of the det wires.
If there was any electricity in the firing cable, it would flow to the det when I connected the second wires. It wouldn’t exactly blow my fingers off, but I’d collect a few splinters in the arse.
I closed my eyes and touched the two ends together.
PART EIGHT
1
There was no bang. There’d been no residual current in the cable.
I twisted the last two wires together, unwound another couple of metres from its drum, and laid the det on the LRA side of the mound.
Last item to be tested was the plunger. Only then could I be sure that the whole detonation system worked.
I gave the wooden handle a quarter-turn clockwise to release it from the box and pulled it up. I winced as the ratchets inside clicked away like a football rattle.
I pushed down hard, feeling the resistance. The shaft of the handle sank back into the box, generating current to the two terminals – screw shanks jutting from the top of the box and crowned by butterfly nuts – as it went. I watched the needle display beside them jump into the red. The current might still be as weak as rainwater, but it was an encouraging sign.
I turned the handle back to the closed position, untwisted the end of the firing cable that was still on the drum and attached it to the terminals. I fastened the butterfly nuts and gave a little tug to make sure they were secure.
I unlocked the handle again, pulled it up and brought it down.
There was a loud crack, like a subsonic 9mm round, from the other side of the mound.
The checks were time-consuming and a pain in the arse, but detail counts and I wouldn’t let myself rush, or be made to rush. When Sam wanted the claymores to go off, there and then, at that moment, I had to be sure that I’d catered for every eventuality.
The circuit was complete. The cable wasn’t damaged anywhere in the reel and the plunger had only needed to send enough current down it to overcome about two ohms of resistance in the det. It was nothing in power terms – a fart had more – but there might have been snags: I didn’t know what charge the plunger was generating, this thing was ancient, and the cable might have been too long for it, draining current before it reached its destination.
I gathered in the cable and what little remained of the det. I removed the det wires, twisted the cable wires together again, and did the same to the other end once I’d taken it off the plunger. It needed to be re-earthed before I attached a fresh det.
I grasped the two lengths of cord running from the claymores. A distant rumble of thunder from the east made me wish I had some end caps, little rubber fittings that prevent water entering the cord. Moisture can penetrate a couple of inches into the cut ends and contaminate the HE, and if something like that can go wrong, it probably will. I thought about going in search of a Prudence or two, but there wasn’t time.
I placed the det six inches from the ends, and bound them all together with a generous length of the sweaty and gooey gaffer-tape, making sure there was really good contact.
The adhesive oozed. My sweaty hands kept slipping from the tape roll and the cords. My head was still thumping. My vision was getting fuzzy. It wouldn’t be long before I started losing my hand-eye co-ordination, and then I’d flake out. I badly needed fluid.
All around me the cicadas were still taking over the world, and ahead, just past the mouth of the valley, the river roared. The only other sounds were the laboured rasp of my own breathing and the buzzing of squadrons of insects as they made their final approach before landing on my neck.
2
The only people to my front now were LRA. I wondered if they were already massed on our side of the river and, like our guys, sitting and waiting. Maybe they were just a couple of hundred away on each side of the entrance, psyching themselves up with an extra couple of rations of ghat. Or maybe they were still dragging themselves across the water with ropes. Some would have drowned, that was for sure, ripped away by the current – especially the younger, smaller ones, who could hardly lift a weapon, let alone carry it
This whole situation was total and utter shite. In some trendy bar in the City, some white-socked trader would be checking tin prices on his handheld while I checked the connections between the detonator and the det cord.
As he and his wife took their kids out to some fancy dinner in the West End, did they spare a thought for
