BB’s screams echoed up and down the narrow channel. The magnesium would consume the flesh until all the oxygen in it was used up. He lay in the dust, his body jerking as he took the pain and the shock of being hit. Flesh sizzled and dense white smoke poured out of the open crater in his leg.
Stefan stood transfixed.
I grabbed him with both hands, pushed him, trembling, up the side of the wadi. ‘Go! Go to your godfathers.
The sounds coming out of him were pure animal fear. ‘Where?
‘By the plane. Get up there and you’ll see ’em. Go! They’re waiting for you!’
He got to the lip of the wadi but stayed rooted to the spot, looking down at me. I lobbed a stone at him. ‘Fuck off! Go!’
He turned, screaming Russian. I swung back to BB. The M4’s working parts were to the rear. The mag was empty. He’d pinned his hopes on hitting me with those last few rounds before moving on.
The flare had stopped burning. His agony was clear to see. But he still attempted a smile. ‘It was all about the money, mate. That’s all.’
I unscrewed the empty cylinder from the penjector and screwed down onto a new one. There was another little pop as it slid out of the container.
BB heard it too. His head fell back into the sand. His face contorted with pain. The sun beat down on us. He panted as he tried to keep control of his breathing. He’d want to have the last word. He always had.
My shadow fell across him. He looked up, making sure we had eye-to-eye. ‘You know I never gave a fuck about Tracy. I never gave a fuck about her slapper sister. Or Frank. Any of them. Even the boy. Fuck ’em all.’
I leant down and held the flare inches from his forehead. But he still wasn’t going to beg or try to cut a deal. I knew that.
Through his pain, he did finally manage a smile. ‘Know what? I didn’t even give a fuck about Mong. I let him die. Risk getting myself killed for a bunch of slopes? Fuck that. He wanted to fight, so I let him. Fuck it. Fuck him.’
He looked up at me. ‘Fuck you, too.’
His breath quickened. Sand coated his face.
I got down on my knees. I wanted to get as close to him as possible. I didn’t want him to miss anything that I was about to say and do.
‘Mong wanted to fight to give me time to do the job we were there to do. He was protecting me. That’s what mates do when they’ve spent time being wet, cold and hungry together. Real mates put their lives on the line for each other. We’re members of the same tribe. That’s something you never, ever got.’
I pressed the flare against his temple. He didn’t even flinch.
‘You’re not going to hear me begging. It’s not going to happen.’
I nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, I know.’
He laughed. ‘Better to burn out than fade away, eh?’
‘You’re about to find out.’
I pulled back the cocking piece and let go.
The penjector jumped a little in my hand and I rolled back to see his head already frying. His body jerked about as if he was in an electric chair for the whole six seconds.
I sat in the wadi, not even bothering to move into the shade. I looked at the charred remains of BB’s head. Smoke curled from the entry wound as the last of the magnesium ate down to the bone. It poured out of his closed eyes. The wound in his thigh glistened in the brilliant sunlight.
I kicked off flare after flare into the sky. It was only minutes before Frank’s boys appeared on the bank above me. Stefan was firmly wrapped around Mr Lover Man. He kissed the boy gently, murmured to him; smoothed his hair, shielded him from the sight below.
Genghis was lugging a blue tarpaulin, the sort you find in pound shops. I realized what he had inside it as he slid down to the wadi bed with the bloodstained axe in his hand. It took him three swings to take off BB’s head. It joined Ant’s and Dec’s, and another I supposed must have belonged to the pilot. He spun it closed and slung it back over his shoulder.
He motioned for me to fire more flares. I kicked off another one and followed him up the wadi.
I could hear the Cargomaster up there somewhere but the sun was getting higher so I couldn’t see it. I sat in the sand, loosing off the last two as Mr Lover Man continued to comfort Stefan. Genghis threw the axe into the sand. We all just waited, not wanting to talk, not wanting to celebrate, not wanting to do anything. I was totally fucking drained. Mentally and physically.
The Cargomaster screamed overhead and banked and turned as I started pulling the thorns from my feet.
32
The engine noise was a constant drone in the cargo hold. We were following the coastline, flying low. The lush greenery to the right was Kenya. I was perched between two bundles. Tracy was swathed in a tarpaulin like an Egyptian mummy. The heads were in another. They’d been stowed right at the rear, out of Stefan’s sight.
Genghis was between me and the cockpit. He was either asleep or just lying there, I wasn’t sure. His head lolled on his discarded body armour. The boy was next to Joe, sitting on Mr Lover Man’s lap, being cuddled, cajoled and comforted.
Stefan held a nearly empty bottle of water. Mr Lover Man was fooling about, trying to get him to finish it. He needed to get some liquids down him. There still wasn’t much reaction from the boy at all.
I sat staring at the bundles. Mong dead. Tracy dead. Now even BB. It was as if a part of my life had ended too. Maybe it was meant to be. Anna was the important one now. This situation I knew about; her’s I didn’t. I just hoped we’d be able to pick up where we’d left off.
I pulled the iPhone from my pocket. There wasn’t much power left but there were three bars of signal. To try to find some shelter from the noise, I lay down next to Tracy. It wasn’t much help. Finally, with a finger in my other ear, I called her. No mad Arab women this time, just a long, uninterrupted tone. Maybe the French and Brits had bombed the infrastructure to shit.
I cut off. Then I called Jules and went straight to voicemail. ‘Mate, I’m in Kenya, heading to Anna today. I’ll call when I get some more power on this thing.’
Mr Lover Man turned and shouted at Genghis. The cockpit suddenly became a hive of activity. They both peered out of the pockmarked windscreen and Joe gobbed off to air traffic control.
I got up and moved forward. Mr Lover Man was pointing Stefan’s gaze in the direction of his dad. The G6 couldn’t be missed, even at this distance. The airport was not much more than two tarmac runways, big black scars in the ground that joined each other at a right angle. There were a couple of small buildings and hangars, and light aircraft dotted about. Sunlight flashed on the top left corner of the screen as we began our final approach.
The boy peeped at me over Mr Lover Man’s shoulder. He looked more like Frank by the second. I gave him a smile and a wink but got no reaction. The boy turned, the water bottle still in his hand, and nestled into his godfather’s chest. His hair was plastered with sand.
I looked down at him and realized he was going to be OK. His father loved him; his godfathers loved him. Kids have survived war, famine, even the Holocaust, and still become good, stable people. And, besides, Stefan had something other kids didn’t have. The Frank gene. No doubt even this experience would be turned into an advantage later in life.
I felt a little jealous of him. Both his parents had loved him so much, and Mr Lover Man had given Stefan more cuddles and kisses on the cheek during this trip than I’d ever got in my whole childhood.
The wheels touched down, smooth as silk, and Joe taxied towards the G6 by the junction of the runways.
The boy craned his neck towards the jet. Mr Lover Man took the chance to turn and glance at me. His expression hadn’t changed. Fair one. What the fuck did they care about me? The job was the job. The boy was safe.
