‘Bateman’s dead.’
‘He’s not the only one.’ She looked away. ‘I’m afraid we couldn’t save the boy . . .’
All my energy drained out of me. I had to sit. I had to put my head in my hands and sort myself out.
The Chuckle Brothers looked up at me from the bottom of the trench. A bony finger pointed at me. ‘Mr Nick, Mr Nick.’
‘That’s right, mate. Mr Nick. This is Miss Silky. Back in a minute, yeah?’
I walked her back to the tent. Tim was on the floor with the other kid, washing the fragmentation wounds with water from the jerry-can. The boy was still breathing, but his eyes were glazed. My kid was now on the ground too, but covered with a blood-soaked blanket.
Tim glanced at me. ‘What are we going to do, Nick?’
‘There’s just three of us out there now. We’re still holding till first light; then we’ll go for it.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I heard two of them arguing about using the boys . . .’
We looked at the huddle in the middle of the tent.
‘I’m really torn, Nick. I don’t think we’ll make it out of here unless they help. I don’t want to die right now, or here, but if it happens, it might as well be while we’re all trying to do as much as possible to keep them alive . . .’
I nodded and left. What could I say?
Sam was behind his GPMG now, head strained forward as he tried to penetrate the darkness.
I called Crucial over from his fire trench. ‘Both of you, don’t say a word, just listen.’ I wiped the sweat from my face. ‘We’re in the shit. That’s OK with me. If
‘We’ve got to win this, or we’re going nowhere. Having the kids on the launchers would give us the extra firepower we’re going to need. At the moment we’re just half cocked.
‘I know it’s the last thing you want to do, and I know they’re already traumatized, and will be even more so after this – but one thing’s certain. If we don’t use them, we’re dead, and so are they. So, let’s try to keep them alive, and worry about the consequences later . . .’
I waited for a reply.
‘That’s all I’m saying.’
I waited some more.
Nothing. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad sign.
Then, to my right, I heard a sniff, then another. Crucial was crying.
At last Sam sparked up, but it was Crucial, not me, he spoke to: ‘You’re going to have to drill and command them. You OK with that?’
Crucial jumped up and coughed some stuff from the back of his throat. ‘I’d better get on with it before I change my mind.’
He strode towards the tent, screaming and hollering like a Foreign Legion drill sergeant with his lungs full of helium.
9
Tuesday, 13 June
02:48 hours
Crucial had virtually hoicked them out of the trenches by their wrists and had been beasting the shit out of them ever since.
Sam faced the valley on stag, as if he couldn’t bear to watch. ‘Standish has done exactly what he did on that team job. Pissed off and left everyone else to sort out the mess. He’ll be back, of course, and pick up where he left off. But for me and Crucial, that’s it. The end. We’re going to have to move the church from the strip and start again. There’s enough cash to see us through a year, maybe eighteen months, but after that . . .’
I looked back at Crucial and the boys. Shoulders slumped, heads down, none of them came higher than his waist. Crucial had to reach down to prod them in the chest, shove them into the mud, or scream into their faces.
‘That’s a bit premature, mate. Let’s get out of here first, then start flapping about everything else, yeah?’
Sam still didn’t want to see what was going on just a couple of metres behind us. He knew I didn’t like what I saw. ‘That’s the only way, God forgive us. Brutalize them, dehumanize them, terrify them. It’s like throwing a switch to repro-gramme their brains to kill. We’ve worked so hard to break that response, Nick. We were making progress with this lot. But now? We’re switching them back on.’
I watched Crucial do his stuff. Sunday was reacting a lot quicker than the other kids, even though he still had the rope round his leg.
‘You know the worst part, Nick? These kids know what’s happening to them, but they can’t help themselves any more. It scares the hell out of them.’
‘Better than dead. It just means you’re going to have to work a bit harder later, that’s all, mate. It’ll give you something to do during your retirement.’
‘What about you, Nick?’ He still faced the other way. ‘Are you with us yet?’
‘There’s no time for that waffle, mate. I’m done thinking for the time being.’ That wasn’t true: I was thinking, but it wasn’t about that. ‘Are we going to get back to the strip? You going to be able to get us there?’
‘Sure. We get across the river and head east. Once we’re across the open country, where we had that contact, I know where to pick up the track.’ He turned to me and held out a hand. ‘You still got the sat nav?’
‘Sort of.’ I pulled it out, and had an idea. ‘Standish still got his sat phone?’
Sam took one look at the cracked and waterlogged display, and chucked it in the mud.
‘I guess so.’
‘And you’ve got yours?’
‘Aye.’
‘Does he know Lex’s number?’
‘I suppose.’
‘What about you?’
‘I never needed it. I know his home number, that’s it.’
‘Well, we might have to give it a fucking ring, tell him what’s happening.’
‘He’s not there, son. He’s got five days’ constant flying – strip to Kenya, Kenya to strip.’
‘We need to get hold of him. He’s got those twenty-three-millimetres on the back, hasn’t he?’
Sam swung round. ‘Standish is probably getting hold of him right now, organizing a pickup.’
‘Maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s face down in the mud with a couple of holes me and Crucial have drilled into him. Maybe we’ll pass his body on the way out of here. Anyway, fuck him. We have to get hold of Lex. What about Hendrika? You got the airfield number?’
I tried to think of the mass of sevens and fives I hadn’t even been able to remember at the airport when I’d just written them down.
‘I told you, never any need.’
‘Crucial?’
‘Same.’
‘OK, give me the phone. I’ll get the number.’
He pulled the Prudence-wrapped handset from his chest harness. I took it and ran, AK in hand, to Silky and Tim’s tent to protect it from the rain when I used it.
The Tilley lamp still cast a faint glow. The fragmentation casualty was now lying beside Tim on his cot. Tim had wrapped his left arm round the bag of bones and was comforting him, like the kid’s parents would have done a lifetime ago.
