Lex would be searching the western horizon, looking for the marker before he adjusted his bearing.
‘OK, got it, I see it. You still want me to hit the lip – or that fucking LRA tsunami coming up the valley? I don’t have an ammo store in the back. It’ll be one or the other.’
‘The lip – take out the fire group.’
‘Coming in. Stand by.’
I heard him talk to the gunner on his intercom as I sprang back up. I hoped the fucker had steered clear of the wacky-baccy this time round.
‘Cease fire!’ I yelled over to Crucial. ‘No more RPGs! Lex is coming in!’
Bodies kept pouring into the valley to bolster the assault wave and we kept hosing down the front of it.
Bodies fell. Some ran in panic, but most kept on coming.
A new sound filled the air. Lex was ahead of us at about 400, the glass bubble on the nose moving from right to left. The wings dipped as he turned and lined up on the lip, then there was a rattle and a roar as the pair of 23mm cannon kicked off like Gatling guns.
Red tracer poured down from Donald Duck’s bill like molten steel spilling from a blast furnace.
8
Small volcanoes of mud erupted into the air with the impact of the rounds, and bodies tumbled from the high ground. Survivors ran for cover. There was no more firing.
I grabbed the phone. ‘On target, on target! The LRA have advanced three hundred since you fired.’
I spun back towards the valley, adjusted my sights to 300, the minimum setting, and aimed a little low. I was feeling more confident with every burst, until I heard Crucial yell.
‘Contact rear! Contact rear!’
He’d swung through one-eighty with his AK and was firing behind.
We had the runners from the fire group streaming down from the high ground.
Sam jerked his head round and assessed. ‘I’ll keep forward – you take them, you take them!’
I grabbed my gun by the carry handle and swung it round on to the edge of the backblast channel. There must have been twenty, thirty of them coming down the hill at us, forty metres away and closing.
I squeezed off short, sharp bursts. Some went down but the rest kept coming.
The first wave screamed on to the flat of the knoll, no more than twenty away, so close I could hear the squelch of mud under their feet.
They dropped their empty weapons, and pulled gollocks.
9
The biggest, ugliest of the front runners zeroed in on me like removing my head from my shoulders was his only mission in life. I fired from point-blank. He was so close, I almost had to kneel to get the elevation up to him.
His mud-splattered face was set in a frenzied snarl as he raised his blade.
I gave him a big burst and his gollock clattered into the fire trench. His blood gushed over my face as he buckled over the gun barrel and started to sizzle.
Sam turned to back Crucial as I heaved the body off the gun and tipped him into the mud. His flesh smelled like scorched crackling.
There was another blur of movement from my left. I dipped down to grab Sam’s AK and snapped back up in the aim.
A rope flailed behind his leg as he ran.
‘Sunday! Stop!’
Crucial had a stoppage and dropped from view to change mags.
Sam stepped up his fire.
I flicked the safety lever down and fired the whole magazine to cover the boy as he ran in blind panic towards the track.
Finally, out of ammo, I dropped the weapon and scrambled out of the trench after him.
10
The LRA coming up the valley were so close I could make out which football clubs they supported, and tell the men from the boys. But I couldn’t let Sunday go. I couldn’t let the poor little fucker slip through my hands.
It took just a few strides to catch him up behind Silky’s fire trench and jump on to his back. We both fell into the mud.
He scrabbled and bucked to get free, screaming in panic as rounds pinged over our heads. I pinned him by the shoulders, got hold of his wrists, and dragged him towards Silky.
‘It’s OK, Sunday, come on!’
His eyes looked like they were about to jump out of their sockets. He wasn’t going to come quietly.
I screamed for her: ‘Help me, help me!’
I half jumped, half fell the last few metres towards her.
A man came tearing towards us in cut-down jeans and a seriously distressed Bob Marley T-shirt. A gollock jerked in his hand like someone had just connected him up to the national grid.
I pulled Sunday towards me and rolled into the backblast channel. His eyes were fixed on mine.
Feet splashed mud against my neck and I could smell the crazed fucker’s rancid breath as he bent over me, gollock raised. His sweat dripped on to my face as he swung the blade.
11
An AK fired a rapid burst from behind him, and the guy piled into me, arms outstretched, flattening us against the mud.
I struggled free.
Tim lay behind me, fighting the pain after dragging himself off the cot. He still gripped the weapon, his face showing the same grim determination with which I held on to Sunday’s bony little wrists.
I knelt down and held his face between my hands. ‘It’s OK. You’re safe.’ I smiled. He stared back, not understanding a word. But maybe he felt it.
Sam was going ballistic. ‘Where are you, Nick? Come on!’
I threw Sunday over my shoulder, and legged it back to my position. I wasn’t going to let him feel abandoned.
Sam was firing forwards and bodies were piled in front of him. His tracer didn’t even have time to ignite as it hammered into others, less than a hundred away. His gun pointed down the knoll and he was almost lying across the front of the trench to get the line of fire.
I dropped Sunday into the trench next to me.
Sam sprayed another burst into the frenzied incomers. ‘We’re losing it, Nick!’
I grabbed the sat phone. ‘Lex, you still got your fuel on board?’
‘Always, man.’
‘We got them a hundred away and closing. Listen in.’ I told him what I needed.
