Sunday and his mates? Did they fuck. They wouldn’t even know about them. But Crucial was right. We had to cut away from all that.
The bond between the two lengths of det cord and the dets was good. Everything was ready to go. I had the firing cable wound round a rock to take the strain, and the ends that would connect to the plunger still twisted to make sure they didn’t pick up any static while I was on the move.
I didn’t need the last slab of HE in the box, or the remaining dets. I twisted their wires and dumped the lot at the business end of the enterprise. It wasn’t as if I was going to get a second chance at rigging up this shit.
I hauled the plunger-box strap over my shoulder. The detonation mechanism always stays with the guy who’s going to initiate. The plunger would be under my control right up until I handed it over to Sam. That way, there couldn’t be any mistakes.
AK under my left arm, I started moving backwards into the valley.
The wooden reel rumbled as the cable trailed out.
3
I hugged the side of the valley, making use of every scrap of cover. I shuffled backwards, making sure the cable didn’t have any kinks to interrupt the current. The sun was behind me, still in cloud, but able to cast the dullest of shadows. The guys inside the sangars weren’t stood-to yet, but they were in chest harnesses, and cradled their weapons over their legs. They didn’t look happy: like the rest of us, they’d been hoping for a few reinforcements.
I heard mumbling, smelled cigarette smoke, but the area had pretty much fallen quiet. The miners had no tools left to work with; all they could do was sit in their holes, shut up and hope. The squaddies were probably shitting themselves at the thought of what was to come.
I could tell I was approaching the re-entrant. Babies cried and the women somehow managed to wail and talk at the same time. Most of the Nuka mob were in cover, in dugouts or the shafts themselves. One of the Mercy Flight crew ran from one side to the other. He gave me a quick wave, but no smile.
Sam’s kids were still huddled together in their dugout, still covering themselves with blankets, like they afforded some sort of protection. Flies landed uninterrupted on their faces. They hadn’t the energy to push them away. Their eyes stared out at the gloom, echoing the numbness inside their heads.
I was out of breath now.
A few paces later, I could see the wood at the centre of the spool. I’d run out of cable.
I dropped the reel, turned and, with the plunger still over my shoulder, legged it back towards the dugout as fast as I could. The mud-caked OGs clung to my legs; my feet felt heavier than ever. My whole body screamed for fluid. I fantasized for a moment about sitting at a bar with a frosted glass of cold beer, maybe a beach in the background. I gave myself a mental slapping.
I grabbed another reel of firing cable from the dugout and headed straight back. I tried to twist the two wires together on the move, but my fingers were too slippery.
By the time I reached the empty spool I was panting for breath. I sank to my knees, feeling for a patch of my shirt that was clean enough for me to wipe the sweat off my hands without covering them in mud. I repeated the earthing procedure with the new cable, then got ready to fasten each wire to the ends of the existing cable.
A couple of hundred years ago, the Chinese were as famous for repairing telegraph wires in America’s Midwest as they were for inventing gunpowder and money. The method they used was called the Chinese pigtail. All I had to do was knot the first two wires as I would a shoelace, then push up the two ends and twist them together. If it was strong enough to take the weight and drag of a telegraph wire suspended between two poles, it was good enough for me.
Sam was hollering from the tents behind me. I couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying, but I could guess. Something along the lines of ‘Get a fucking move on!’ Only without the ‘fuck’.
I fumbled about, not letting myself be rushed, and finally got the two cables connected. I tested the joins and dropped them into the mud, then anchored the new cable round another rock and carried on shuffling backwards, towards the sound of Sam’s voice.
4
The sun was now only just visible above the horseshoe, having lost its fight to burn completely through the clouds. The place the ANFO had been mixed was now in shadow, a scrapyard of empty drums, discarded sticks and torn fertilizer bags. A layer of red dust and a dozen or so cigarette butts floated on top of the one drum of diesel that remained.
I climbed through it, and up the track towards the tents. There was now a constant rumble of thunder beyond the river. Sam yelled an incomprehensible order and men stirred in the sangars.
He was on the edge of the knoll, pointing at the second fire trench. ‘I want it here, with me.’ I lifted and flicked the firing cable like a hose, to manoeuvre it round the front of the trenches. I risked it getting trodden on or kinked if I left it draped along the track.
I stopped Sam as he started to walk away.
‘Where is she?’
He pointed to the first tent. It was dark inside the dirty, sagging canvas but I could see movement. Her face appeared briefly at the flap, and I was treated to the most fleeting half-smile before it disappeared back inside.
Sunday was still tethered next door, surrounded by sheets of paper. I guessed they must now be covered with drawings of stick men firing guns into stick-man huts, and more stick men lying down with very real blood pouring out of them.
Crucial bobbed up and down like a gravedigger as he grabbed RPG rounds from a stack at ground level and shifted them into the third trench.
Sam’s had about ten RPG rounds in it, stored with the pointy bits facing up and a launcher in the corner, loaded, ready to fire. The bottom of the trench was lined with logs to keep the weapons mud-free. The RPGs were the closest we had to artillery, and that was why they were sited here. They wouldn’t be very effective if fired directly, because we didn’t have the fragmentation rounds that would throw out shrapnel with a kill area of more than a hundred metres. The anti-armour rounds we did have were designed to punch forward into armoured vehicles. They were killing American tanks in Iraq right now, by being fired in volleys. The weapon was easy to use, and very accurate if fired close up. The insurgents had been getting within eighty metres of their target before firing. The first round took out the outer plate of the tank’s reactive armour. The second, aimed at the same impact point, penetrated the remaining layers of armour and fucked up everyone inside.
Here, if they were fired directly at the targets, the rounds would hit the mud and the main force of the explosion would be sucked into the ground. Sam was going to make use of their soft detonation. They self- detonated after about five seconds, and the further back they were fired from, the better the chance of them exploding above the ghat-munchers and killing them with an airburst.
If we were attacked from the high ground, they could be fired over the valley lip and would explode as they started to come down into the dead ground the other side. Not a good day out for anyone on the way up.
5
Standish and Bateman were hunched over the cooking pot. The fire was long dead, but there was still some
