Recoil (16 page)

To my right, near the soldiers’ tents, the jungle began to spit out one guy after another, each bent almost double under the weight of a bulked-out rice sack. Two whites in shorts used their AKs to direct the human mule train along the strip. A handful of other guys providing the escort peeled off from the snake and disappeared into their tents to dump their gear.

‘The other patrol?’

Sam nodded slowly and mistook my pissed-off expression for concern. ‘Don’t worry, the route’s easy. And, anyway, you’ll have my sat nav. The way points are here and the mine.’

‘What’s your man-hour-per-kill, mate?’

He shook his head. One of the best measures of success at managing risk is how few men you lose per number of hours achieved, so the shake wasn’t good news. ‘Not good, since the LRA have been active. Less than a hundred. But that’s with large numbers. With just four of you, you’ll get through easy enough.’

Close to a couple of hundred porters must have struggled out of the jungle by now. They worked their way across the strip in single file and up the ramp into the belly of the An12.

‘It’s not the job I’m worried about.’ I watched the men make their way back down the ramp empty-handed, head for the pile of empty food-aid sacks at the edge of the strip, then slope off in the direction of the shanty town. ‘If anything happens to me on the way there, I want to know Silky’s being taken care of. You’ll do that for me?’

‘Only if I can wear my kilt when we bury you.’

‘Thanks, mate.’ I tried hard to give him a grin. ‘And it’s probably best not to let Standish know what she means to me. Keep pretending it’s a job, yeah?’

Standish would probably get me fighting his war single-handed if he knew I’d do anything to keep her safe.

3

Body after body, shiny with sweat and bent double under the sacks, continued to emerge from the jungle and shuffle along the airstrip. When they hit the back of the queue for the ramp their hands went straight on to their thighs to try and ease the weight, too fucked even to wipe away the sweat dripping from their faces.

The ones who’d already shed their load were now flopped out on the sacks in the shade of the treeline. A gaggle of brightly coloured women fussed round them with refilled plastic bottles of water.

I’d been wrong about the numbers. The snake looked as though it would never end. There must have been many more than two hundred of them – moving, queuing, or lying prone under the trees.

Sam nodded towards a group of half a dozen escorts high-fiving each other by the entrance to one of the tents. ‘They won’t be doing that when they hear they’re going straight back in a couple of hours.’

Soldiers shouted at porters; women and children shrieked with excitement. The guys in the snake, however, didn’t utter a sound. They were too fucked to do more than stagger to the treeline.

‘So what’s being mined, Sam. Diamonds?’

Sam’s gaze was fixed on the other side of the strip, where the two white guys were now prodding the porters on the ground with their AKs. They seemed to be trying to organize the exhausted men into straight lines.

‘Tin ore. It’s the most hotly traded metal on the London Exchange these days – worth four hundred US per fifty-kilo sack. Here and South America are the only really big sources left. Did you see the old open-cast pits as we flew in?’

‘Like nuclear Ground Zeros?’

He nodded. ‘Those were the diamond mines. That war still goes on, but this is the one that’s giving a few guys happy faces.’

‘What’s the big deal about tin all of a sudden? We overdoing it with the baked beans?’

Sam kept watching the other side of the strip. ‘Supply and demand.’ He pointed at the column working its way into the back of the aircraft. The poor bastards looked like beetles as they leaned forward with the sacks on their backs. ‘The ore is casseritite. Every circuitboard on the planet uses the tin it produces. People are being killed and treated like animals here so that soccer mums can video their kids, and the kids can download Britney Spears on their PCs. Every time somebody uses a mobile, Nick, every time they use the Internet . . .’

‘How much are you shifting?’

‘About twenty tons at a time. And the plane’s flying in and out 24/7.’

‘That’s a fuck of a lot of four-hundred-dollar bags.’

‘Just over two million US a week at the moment. And the owners have plans to expand the misery once the LRA are sorted. Dodgy peerages might grab the headlines, but the real money’s in those lumps of rock.’

‘So who owns it?’

‘The Chinese, would you believe? Africa’s changing, Nick. This continent is no longer just an empty paradeground for us to come and play soldiers on. The rebel groups are slashing and burning for the multinationals now. And you know what? That makes them even more scary.’

‘The Chinese are fucking everywhere.’

‘Aye, big-time. Standish is fixed up with a guy who’s the middle man for one of their operations here.’

‘Anyone we know?’

Sam started to laugh. ‘Sure he’s going to tell us that. You know what he’s like, knowledge is power. Anyway, who cares? We can all get what we need out of this deal.’

Lex’s engines kicked into life and the props began to turn. The Antonov taxied through the heat haze before the ramp had finished closing. I knew just how he felt. I didn’t want to stick around any longer than necessary either. The wash from the huge propellers blasted any sweat-covered bodies still on the strip, whipping at tattered T-shirts and shorts and caking them in dust.

Sam had to shout: ‘Lex flies it to Kenya. From there, it’s a slow boat to China.’

Sounded good to me. Once back here, Silky and I would be on the next available flight. A couple of days’ R&R on the beach in Mombasa and then, all being well, a flight home.

Sam’s eyes hadn’t left the two white guys for one second. I could see from his face that they took their organizational skills a little too seriously for his liking.

‘How long’s the walk-in?’

‘With the kit, it’s fourteen hours in daylight or eighteen in the dark. It’s safer to move at night. These guys won’t like having to go back without a decent rest, but they’ll still want to be there before first light. If they’re not carrying weight and we don’t have a contact, we can do it in about nine hours.’

Lex’s Antonov had reached the bottom of the airstrip and turned. The props screamed and it lurched forward. Its take-off run brought it straight towards us, but even fully laden, the aircraft lifted halfway down the strip. The kids jumping and waving below it were soon engulfed in huge clouds of red dust.

The Antonov roared over our heads and banked away into the dazzling blue sky.

The women along the treeline were doling out small bowls along with the water bottles. Tired fingers scooped up the food and shoved it into hungry mouths.

‘Once they’d rested, our patrol would usually take this lot back tonight, and come back in three days’ time with full bags. Then it would be their turn again.’ He waved in the direction of the two white guys across the strip. ‘But now we’ve got to protect the assets big-time, eh?’

‘Doesn’t it ever get to you?’ I nodded towards the shanty town and the porters collapsed in the shade, eating from old tin cans. ‘These fuckers getting shit, while Standish and the middle men feed off their misery?’

He didn’t have time to answer. Standish reappeared with the Iridium still in his hand, its stubby antenna jabbing the air between us. ‘You understand exactly what you have to do?’

Obviously the call hadn’t cheered him up any. Maybe it hadn’t been his bank manager after all.

‘Yep.’

‘Don’t fuck me about or you and this little rich girl can make your own way back.’ He swung round to Sam. ‘Don’t just sit there. Get on with it.’

I followed Sam towards one of the tents. ‘I’ve got to tell you, mate, there’s only so many times I’m going to be able to turn the other cheek with that arsehole.’

‘Like I told you, Nick, I’ve got my own agenda. I have kids living near that mine and I’ve got the church here so I put up with him, the war, the crap, the hypocrisy, the greed – anything that’s thrown at me. If I didn’t, who’d protect the orphanage? Who’d prevent those kids getting lifted by the LRA?’

We reached the tent flaps but Sam didn’t go inside. ‘You sure you don’t want to know about the boy?’

I tried to read the expression on his face. ‘Only if he didn’t end up going the same way Annabel did . . .’

Sam smiled. ‘He didn’t. He lived. Only just, but he lived.’ He pointed across the strip. ‘The little feller’s over there.’

4

A guy the size of Sam’s fridge back in Erinvale strode towards us from the shanty, eyes masked behind a pair of John Lennon sun-gigs. He gave the odd wave to the miners, and got a much warmer reception from them than the white guys had.

Sam beamed. ‘Crucial!’

He looked to be in his late twenties and, apart from a barely perceptible limp in his left leg, carried himself better than any of the other soldiers I’d seen. His shaved head and arms glistened with good health. His green cargoes looked brand new, and his white T-shirt came straight off a Persil ad. He wore a holster like a cowboy, down on his right hip with some Russian thing hanging off it, maybe to save him carrying an assault rifle and getting gun oil on his top. The other thing dangling off him was a wooden cross round his neck.

Over the last twenty years Sam hadn’t wasted any time.

They headed towards each other with open arms. ‘Crucial! How are you? I’ve brought your coconut butter.’

That explained the shiny, supple skin. I’d seen a lot of Africans moisturize with the stuff – but usually just the women.

The two exchanged hugs and slaps before Sam ushered him over. ‘Nick, I want to introduce you to Crucial – Crucial Umba di Mumba.’

He took off his gigs and gazed directly into my eyes. My stomach lurched. I was hoping to see a different expression in his now, not the one that pleaded with me to hold on to his stick-thin wrists whenever I couldn’t cut away from my nightmares.

My hand disappeared into his big leathery grip.

‘I’m Nick.’

‘I know.’ His eyes sparkled. ‘We met before, man.’

His accent wasn’t as strong as a South African’s and sounded more native, and the tone was surprisingly high-pitched for a man mountain. I bet no one ever told him, though.

‘It’s good to see you, Nick. I wasn’t sure what to expect after all these years.’

He gave me the world’s biggest smile. A diamond glinted from each of his two front teeth. His eyes looked forever vigilant, as if he plugged them into the mains every night to power up his X-ray vision. I wasn’t sure if he could see through me, but he certainly knew he needed to break the ice.

‘Certified conflict diamonds, man.’ He beamed. ‘None of that wishy-washy everyday Posh Spice conflict-free stuff. These had to be fought for.’

Whatever the rights and wrongs of conflict diamonds, the ones on his teeth were a whole lot bigger than the one I’d bought for Silky.

He turned to Sam. ‘We should get the boys paid up and ready.’

Sam indicated his daysack. ‘It’s in there.’

Crucial opened the top flap. ‘I’ll start getting them on parade.’ He took out a couple of tubs of oil and tried to palm a small white box, but not before I’d spotted the typed prescription label. Sam had also been to the pharmacy for him.

Crucial headed off towards the shanty.

Sam steered me back to what I assumed was his tent. ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’

He picked up the suitcase and I followed him. It was muggier than a greenhouse inside, and the smell took me back to years of infantry exercises and time spent sweltering under canvas while the processed cheese from my twenty-four-hour ration pack melted to liquid in its can.

The floor was hard, brushed earth. Sam slept on a US Army folding cot with a new-looking blanket on top. A mozzie net hung loosely above it, ready to be fastened round the frame. Down by the side of the cot I saw a pile of batteries, a small radio and a rusty old fan gaffer-taped to a stick that had been jammed into the ground.

Three shrink-wrapped trays of one-litre Evian bottles were stacked in the corner next to a little wooden table that held a gas burner with a few pots and pans. His party gear – an AK, webbing chest harness with four curved mags, and an old canvas bergen bleached white by the sun – was piled at the end of the bed next to a copy of the Bible and an inch-and-a-half Very pistol, still in its vintage webbing holster. These things had thrown balls of magnesium into the sky over the First World War trenches, then burned like mad for a few seconds to signal that it was time for the poor fucking squaddies to go over the top and get hosed down by the German machine-gunners.

I kept my voice low. ‘What did happen?’

He poked his finger through the plastic shrink-wrap and ripped a hole. ‘He broke both legs in the fall. I stayed to look after him, then he left to do his own thing. You know, went off to become a man. He provided security for a couple of diamond mines, then one day turned up back here at the church.’

He tossed me one of the Evian bottles. ‘It’s OK, Nick. Don’t beat yourself up over it. It was a long time ago, and everything worked out good.’ He moved towards the tent flap with his suitcase and a bottle for himself. ‘Why don’t you leave your bag here and get a load of pay parade? Crucial and I want to talk to you about a bit of trouble we’re having.’