Recoil (31 page)

Crucial and I had trodden the det cord from the right-hand claymore into the mud to avoid any LRA feet kicking it out of the devices as they came screaming into the valley.

To make best use of the killing area, Sam would want the first wave to come into the sangars’ arcs of fire before he gave the order to detonate. The claymores would then take them down as they moved along the riverbank and the entrance to the valley, and we got to kill more of them more quickly. We might even have a chance of being alive at the end of it.

Crucial was on his way back from the stores with the firing cable, the detonator and the firing device. Sam would make the decision as to when the plunger would be depressed and the electric current sent down the two-strand firing cable. That would initiate the detonator, which would initiate the det cord that ran to the balls of HE at the heart of the claymores. In less than a second, all our hard work would be history, and so would be a whole pile of LRA.

I concentrated 100 per cent on making sure I assembled the devices right. I was already cutting myself away from the fact that some of the targets getting the good news from these things tonight would be kids.

Crucial came back with the goodies. ‘I’m going to see the children before I join Sam. You OK?’

I nodded. I didn’t need him. This next bit was a one-man drill – in case I fucked up and the whole lot exploded prematurely. ‘Just bring in the gunners. We need them in now.’

He screamed and shouted at the sangars. A guy jumped out like a jack-in-the-box and started relaying the order.

I wasn’t going to do anything until they were all sitting on the safe side of the claymores. While I waited, I took the ends of the firing cable, twisted them together and pushed it into the mud. Earthing was an SOP: if the cable still held a residual current, it might be enough to initiate the det when I attached it.

Crucial stood behind me, waiting for everyone to take his position. Everything had gone quiet. No gunfire, no shouts, just the constant racket of the cicadas taking over the world.

‘The kid you condemned to death? You talking about Sunday?’

Neither of us was looking at the other.

‘How did you know?’

‘Don’t need to be a brain surgeon to work that one out, mate. The drugs, flapping about contaminating Tim, oh, and all that “What have I got to lose?” shite.’

He stood stock still, gazing out over the valley. He might have been carved from stone.

‘It wasn’t the pain that made me cry out when he bit me. It was seeing him with a mouthful of my blood. I have given him HIV, Nick. I have killed him.’

‘How long you had it?’

‘After I fell from the helicopter Sam took me to an aid station outside Kinshasa. The blood transfusion was contaminated.’

‘I’m no doctor, mate, but Sunday’s got more chance of being struck by lightning. Your peripheral blood will be infectious, but not highly. And it was only one exposure. He can be tested anyway. And, as for you, the new drugs keep people alive for years. You’ve got plenty of time yet before you have that sit-down with God.’

He nodded, then smiled. ‘I keep telling myself that, but it’s good to hear it from someone else. Thank you, Nick.’

Fuck me, I seemed to be doling out happy pills today like they were going out of style. ‘Not a problem, mate. I was saying it to cheer myself up, as much as anything else. After all, if I hadn’t dropped you . . .’

It was my turn to concentrate hard on the treeline. I certainly didn’t want to catch his eye. ‘I killed another kid today. Point blank in the face.’

Crucial rested a giant hand on my shoulder. ‘And your claymores are going to kill more. That’s why you must stay and help us. We have to make sure people like Standish and Kony are never able to do this again, ever.’

He was so close I could see the thin line of cement round his diamonds, and smell his parched breath. ‘We have to stop it, Nick.’

The gunners arrived. He left without another word, and I got to work.

If I hadn’t earthed the cable correctly, I was about to find out.

I picked up the dets. They were loose in the bag, a demolition man’s nightmare: twenty or so aluminium tubes the size of half a cigarette, and the two thin metre-long wires that protruded from the back of each weren’t twisted together like they should have been. Left apart, the wires act like antennae and can pick up a radio signal or atmospheric electricity. Either could be enough to initiate the det, and this area was no stranger to electrical storms. They could have gone up at any moment.

I pulled one out, untwisted the firing cable wires again, turned my back on the whole process, and joined one to the first of the det wires.

If there was any electricity in the firing cable, it would flow to the det when I connected the second wires. It wouldn’t exactly blow my fingers off, but I’d collect a few splinters in the arse.

I closed my eyes and touched the two ends together.

PART EIGHT

1

There was no bang. There’d been no residual current in the cable.

I twisted the last two wires together, unwound another couple of metres from its drum, and laid the det on the LRA side of the mound.

Last item to be tested was the plunger. Only then could I be sure that the whole detonation system worked.

I gave the wooden handle a quarter-turn clockwise to release it from the box and pulled it up. I winced as the ratchets inside clicked away like a football rattle.

I pushed down hard, feeling the resistance. The shaft of the handle sank back into the box, generating current to the two terminals – screw shanks jutting from the top of the box and crowned by butterfly nuts – as it went. I watched the needle display beside them jump into the red. The current might still be as weak as rainwater, but it was an encouraging sign.

I turned the handle back to the closed position, untwisted the end of the firing cable that was still on the drum and attached it to the terminals. I fastened the butterfly nuts and gave a little tug to make sure they were secure.

I unlocked the handle again, pulled it up and brought it down.

There was a loud crack, like a subsonic 9mm round, from the other side of the mound.

The checks were time-consuming and a pain in the arse, but detail counts and I wouldn’t let myself rush, or be made to rush. When Sam wanted the claymores to go off, there and then, at that moment, I had to be sure that I’d catered for every eventuality.

The circuit was complete. The cable wasn’t damaged anywhere in the reel and the plunger had only needed to send enough current down it to overcome about two ohms of resistance in the det. It was nothing in power terms – a fart had more – but there might have been snags: I didn’t know what charge the plunger was generating, this thing was ancient, and the cable might have been too long for it, draining current before it reached its destination.

I gathered in the cable and what little remained of the det. I removed the det wires, twisted the cable wires together again, and did the same to the other end once I’d taken it off the plunger. It needed to be re-earthed before I attached a fresh det.

I grasped the two lengths of cord running from the claymores. A distant rumble of thunder from the east made me wish I had some end caps, little rubber fittings that prevent water entering the cord. Moisture can penetrate a couple of inches into the cut ends and contaminate the HE, and if something like that can go wrong, it probably will. I thought about going in search of a Prudence or two, but there wasn’t time.

I placed the det six inches from the ends, and bound them all together with a generous length of the sweaty and gooey gaffer-tape, making sure there was really good contact.

The adhesive oozed. My sweaty hands kept slipping from the tape roll and the cords. My head was still thumping. My vision was getting fuzzy. It wouldn’t be long before I started losing my hand-eye co-ordination, and then I’d flake out. I badly needed fluid.

All around me the cicadas were still taking over the world, and ahead, just past the mouth of the valley, the river roared. The only other sounds were the laboured rasp of my own breathing and the buzzing of squadrons of insects as they made their final approach before landing on my neck.

2

The only people to my front now were LRA. I wondered if they were already massed on our side of the river and, like our guys, sitting and waiting. Maybe they were just a couple of hundred away on each side of the entrance, psyching themselves up with an extra couple of rations of ghat. Or maybe they were still dragging themselves across the water with ropes. Some would have drowned, that was for sure, ripped away by the current – especially the younger, smaller ones, who could hardly lift a weapon, let alone carry it
and
fight the current.

This whole situation was total and utter shite. In some trendy bar in the City, some white-socked trader would be checking tin prices on his handheld while I checked the connections between the detonator and the det cord.

As he and his wife took their kids out to some fancy dinner in the West End, did they spare a thought for 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.

I can’t change the world, but I can do something for this bit of it
 . . .

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.
Just crack on, shut up and get on with it
.

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.