by D C Macey
‘Why, what’s going on? I thought we were friends.’
‘We are, that’s why I’ve been following you. Bishop Ignatius—’
‘The bishop! Ignatius put you up to this?’
Angel nodded. ‘Yes, he said I was to watch over you. Make sure no harm came to you.’
‘Who is the bishop?’ said Charles.
‘Bishop Ignatius. He has a history of sending people to protect me.’
‘And his choice of guardians tends to leave something wanting,’ said Sam. ‘You know, Charles, I can believe his story. The bishop has form in this department.’
‘But why would the bishop want to protect you, Sam?’ said Charles.
‘It’s not him. Helen is the bishop’s concern,’ said Angel. ‘I was told to watch out for her, to intervene if necessary.’ He gave a shrug. ‘I can cope with drunks in Arusha or road crashes, but I don’t know what he expects me to do against gunmen or … or them,’ he nodded towards his captors. ‘It’s not exactly covered in our training.’
‘But why you?’
‘Because I’m the only one in Arusha he could organise and trust at short notice. His own assistants had already been exposed and found wanting.’
Helen stood up. ‘You know what, Charles? I believe him. It sounds lame, but his bishop has already had people follow me, to protect me. I just wish he wouldn’t.’
Angel looked at her. ‘I am just a priest running a church. I am not in the bishop’s confidence so much. All he would tell me is our Church had once made a promise, and it falls to us to honour that undertaking.’
Sam tugged gently on Helen’s wrist; she looked at him, then sat. Sam stood. ‘Charles, I believe this man. What he says is full of coincidence, but I know him. He helped Helen and me in Arusha with no thought for gain. Helen and I trust him, and Charles, look at him. He wouldn’t know which end of a spear to hold, much less what to do with it. He is a good man of peace and of God. I will be happy to stand for him.’
31.
Saturday, 2nd November - PM
Helen straightened up. Mauwled seemed to be doing okay. The young woman who was maintaining a watch on his progress had reported, through some confused signing, that he had been awake for a little while, or at least Helen thought that was what was meant. She noticed the woman was heating something in a little pot, perhaps getting something ready for when Mauwled awoke next. That was unremarkable, what surprised her was that the young woman was using a gas burner. Its little blue flame burned away beneath the pot. How did they get gas out here?
Helen pointed at the burner and shrugged her shoulders, then waved her hands about as though searching for something. The young woman realised what Helen was asking and proudly pointed her towards the back of the hut. Helen went to have a look and flicked on her torch. Here was something she had missed in the gloom, a second entrance. She lifted the leather flap, looked in and struggled to believe what she saw. There was a second hut attached to the first - semi-detached. The hut she was looking into was filled with a huge balloon, a gas balloon whose pipe was feeding fuel direct to the burner. She let the flap fall - that was a room she didn’t particularly want to go in. Helen hurried out into the daylight.
Behind the hut, she found where a plastic hose fed into the hut and continued to trace it back towards its source. The hose ran beneath the inner circle of thorn bush, which at this point branched out to form a smaller partitioned section within the corral. Peering through the hedge, she saw what looked like a long, narrow cement channel covered with plastic sheeting. Puzzled, she set off to find Sam, following the course of the inner circle of thorn bush as it wound round the enclosed central hillock.
She spotted him on the far side of the hillock, standing alone, halfway up. He was using the phone. Helen passed through the open thorn bush entranceway and walked up the slope towards him. She caught the end of his conversation.
‘… okay, sir, I’ll do what I can. It won’t be easy, but I’m on it. I’ll hear back from you later. Shall we say this evening, seven o’clock - nineteen hundred hours? We have to keep the phone off whenever possible in case of charging problems. Thank you, sir, we’ll speak again then. Goodbye.’ He hung up and powered down the phone.
‘Who was that?’ said Helen.
‘Brigadier Starling. Everything’s brewing up. Seems GCHQ Cheltenham have intercepted various messages. Ro has got his flight sorted out; it’s coming in tomorrow morning.’
‘Where does that leave Bob Prentice?’
‘In a mess. They are still working on getting a special ops unit into the country, but it’s not certain they will make it in time. It seems the brigadier is expecting me to impede Ro somehow.’
‘Can we?’
‘We can try. I need to think a little about how we might do something. Charles has told me the runway is only about three miles away; it’s on the other side of the river. So, there’s plenty of time to get there, we just need a plan.
‘Oh, by the way, some good news. The High Commission in Nairobi has been able to persuade the Kenyan authorities that the killing at the university was nothing to do with me, that it’s down to Ro’s boys. They unearthed some evidence at the university. Professor Ngure has given a statement that confirmed he’d had a telephone conversation with Susan Curtis after I had left her that evening.’
‘That’s great, but make sure they’ve got it in writing. Getting you out of African prisons is an expensive process.’ She reached out her hand for the phone. ‘I’ll call Elaine, she’ll be worried. I’d better call Tracy too, I’m meant to be keeping her posted on what you’re up to.’
‘So, I’ve definitely got a spy in the camp now.’
‘That’s right, you’d better behave yourself. Oh, talking of spying, I’ve discovered the hut next to where Mauwled is being kept has a gas balloon in it. Do you think it’s safe? And where does the gas come from?’
‘Yes, Charles told me about it a little while ago - he’s quite proud of it. Seems an NGO built a concrete slurry tray that some of the cattle droppings are directed into. The slurry gives off gas, methane I guess, which is trapped beneath the plastic and piped into their gasbag, where it’s stored for cooking.’
‘Wow, that’s neat. But is it safe?’
‘As safe as anything else is out here. Plus, it saves having to cut down the bush for firewood. Oh, and see this?’ Sam pointed to the ground beneath their feet.
‘Uhuh,’ said Helen.
‘This isn’t a hill at all. Underneath this, the land’s just as flat as the surroundings. It’s just cattle droppings that have been added to every night and baked dry in the daytime sun, building up over decades, perhaps centuries, into this hill.’
Helen gazed around. ‘Wow, that is one heap of whatever you want to call it. One big heap.’
‘Look, why don’t you make your calls now? I’m going to think through Brigadier Starling’s instructions. Charles has said he will support us any way he can. Turns out Smuts had visited him with Ro a few days ago and agreed that Ro could use the runway at a generous price. That’s why we weren’t welcome. He’d made an exclusive deal with Ro, and the elders knew he wouldn’t break it.’
‘Not until Ro’s men killed one of the morani.’
‘That certainly sealed it for us.’
He paused for a moment, looked up at the sky. For the first time during their journey, the sun was shielded by a cloud - a big, plump cloud.
Helen looked up too. ‘Is that what everyone’s been waiting for?’
‘It’s a start, but they’ll need a lot more than that to break the drought.’ As if on cue, the solitary cloud moved on and the sun burned down again.
32.
Saturday, 2nd November - Evening
The orange Land Rover set off after dark with Sam at the wheel. By his side were Helen and Charles; in the rear seats and cargo store were five morani. Following behind was Angel’s vehicle. His driver had been escorted back to collect it from the bush during the afternoon. This ve
hicle carried six more morani.
The patchy cloud of the day had been gathering through the evening. Now the sky was overcast, blocking out the stars and moon that Helen had become so familiar with in recent days. There was just a blanket of black beyond the vehicle’s lights as Sam carefully followed what little of the bush track was lit by their headlights.
Suddenly, Charles ordered Sam to stop. There was nothing in front of them. The track had vanished, and the headlights seemed to be pointing into a void, like searchlights staring out in the hope of picking out some aerial attackers. Instead, just highlighting moths and other flying insects of the night that were drawn to the beams.
Charles jumped out, moved a step away from the Land Rover, and from nowhere, a moran appeared. There were lowered voices and the warrior jabbed his spear into the black ahead. Charles nodded an acknowledgement, the warrior bowed his head very slightly and turned away, vanishing as if by magic as Charles returned to the vehicle.
‘The bush beyond the river is clear now. There was a patrol from the runway, but it passed before sunset. Some of my people followed it, but now is a good time to cross the river; it’s all clear.’
‘You’ve sent people ahead?’ said Helen.
‘Yes, all the morani want revenge for their dead brother. There are some here watching the ford, others have crossed ahead to ensure we are not surprised. Now, we should go.’
Sam edged forward, trusting Charles’ knowledge but unsure of what lay in the void ahead. With a jerk, the front of the Land Rover lurched over the crest of the riverbank and headed down. As it progressed, the lights picked out the dried bed and beyond that the shrunken river itself. This location was four or five hundred paces upstream from where they had encountered the young crocodile; here the watercourse was broader and shallower - a fording place. Immediately upstream from the ford, on the boma side of the river, the river course bulged out to form a broad side pool that, though much shrunken through the dry times, still held water.
The headlights shimmered on the water and, across the river, picked out another moran, standing motionless facing them. He raised an arm in salute, then beckoned them on.
‘Drive at the moran,’ said Charles. ‘He is marking the course of the ford. Drive straight at him and you will be fine. He will step aside in good time, only stop once you are beyond him.’
Sam complied. The Land Rover bumped and splashed through the darkness, aiming always for the solitary man who continued to wave them across. With a growl, the vehicle pulled out of the river and rolled to a halt beyond their guide who was ignoring them, now concentrating on guiding the second vehicle across.
Charles got out and spoke words into the darkness.
Helen heard a voice respond in hushed Maa. A few moments later, morani appeared; they slapped mud across the front and rear lights, then vanished into the black.
She could just make out a shape standing directly in front of the Land Rover. It stooped and wiped a narrow stroke of mud from the lowest point on the driver’s side headlight, letting the slightest of beams shine onto the ground ahead. The shape straightened up again and walked round to the passenger door. It was Charles.
He leaned close to the open window. ‘We can follow the track for now. The last part, we will need to walk. Sam, slowly follow the moran who will step in front of the little beam. His body will block the light as long as you stay close.’
‘Wouldn’t we be quicker walking?’ said Sam.
‘Yes, but the bush at night has its own dangers, and later you might need the vehicles to get away fast.’
Moving through the blackness, Sam’s only steer was a little patch of illuminated red cloak leading them through the night.
• • •
Nearly an hour had passed as they edged forward at less than regular walking pace. Finally, the moran guide stopped, and with relief, Sam stopped at once; his legs had been working the pedals without a break. He reached down and rubbed his calf muscles. Then they reversed both the vehicles a little off the track and into the bush, ready for a quick getaway.
Switching off the engine, Sam left the keys in the ignition and, as he got out, lifted the machine pistol they had liberated from Park’s truck. He hung it over his shoulder and felt for the pistol he had picked up at the clinic.
Helen grabbed the first aid kit; she hitched it onto her shoulder and stood beside Sam. Angel appeared at her side. Helen was aware of others standing close by in the dark; the morani from the vehicles, and others, she couldn’t be sure how many. She could only hear the breathing and sense the humanity close packed around her.
They all listened carefully as Charles gave instructions to his men. The Maa he spoke meant nothing to her, other than now familiar sound sequences, but others understood. Helen’s sense of bodies gathered around her started to diminish, the morani silently dispersing in response to Charles’ words.
‘Keep close now, we will move up to the runway perimeter. We are only four hundred paces from there, so be very quiet,’ said Charles, his whispered English a welcome sound in the dark bush night.
It took quite a while to weave through the bush to the runway. Some thickets were impenetrable and required detours, in other places there were wide spaces between the bushes and stunted trees where grazers had kept the growth in check. The moran leading the column knew exactly where he was going; Helen might as well have been blindfolded for all she could see. Each step was a step into black, and the walk seemed to take forever. Eventually, they came to a halt.
Charles invited them all to kneel then they crawled forward, edging round the shape of yet another bulging mound of bush. Beyond it, after carefully parting a final stand of the ubiquitous grasses, Helen saw this was different; here the environment changed.
She became aware of the steady grumbling tut, tut, tut of a distant generator. There was a clearing between her and some electric lights that shone from a building on the other side. As her eyes started to pick out detail, she could tell the clearing was the runway. The electric lights were shining from two adjacent locations, the first a two-storey office unit, the second an open-sided warehouse shelter for cargo. The only things inside it were a little wire-fenced lockup and vehicles, neatly parked in a row.
Charles shuffled across and settled between Sam and Helen. He pointed to the wire lockup. Helen focused on it and realised there were two men seated close beside it - guards.
‘That’s where they used to keep a supply of fuel,’ said Charles.
‘Right, and I’m thinking there’s really no need to mount a guard on a bunch of oil drums out here.’
‘You are correct, no need,’ said Charles.
‘So, they are guarding something special. I’ll guess that lockup would be the perfect little jail to keep Bob Prentice hemmed in.’
‘Correct.’
‘What’s the plan?’ said Helen.
Charles carefully pointed to the end of the runway at what looked like a mound of earth. Slowly, she became aware of little movements, two heads showing above a defensive earthwork, probably talking to each other, certainly vigilant.
Then Charles swung his hand in an arc towards the opposite end of the runway, pointing out two small figures patrolling along its length. ‘We have counted eight guards rotating their duties every half hour.’
‘Smart, every guard has to stay alert. No one gets the chance to be lulled into any false sense of familiarity. Whoever set this up was on the ball. Look, Charles, I need to get a closer look at the lockup, make sure our man is inside. Can we work our way round to the other side?’
‘Of course, it will take a little while and we will need to be very quiet. Perhaps, just you and I should go?’
‘Let’s do it,’ said Sam.
Helen felt Sam’s hand squeeze her shoulder and then, before she could object to being left behind, he was up and gone into the black.
33.
Sunday, 3rd November - AM
Helen had counted off the sequences of guard chan
ges in Sam’s absence. While he had been away, Angel had crept forward into Sam’s space. She had welcomed his whispered chat as a distraction from worry over where Sam had got to, and what was going to happen next. To her other side a moran lay silent, intently staring across the runway.
‘Angel, I still don’t really understand why you’re here.’
‘Truth is I don’t understand either. Bishop Ignatius said I was to come, and I was to ensure you were safe.’
‘Yeah? And what does your bishop think you could do against this lot,’ she said while gazing across the runway towards the guards.
The silence that followed made it clear Angel had no idea.
‘Angel, you’re a decent guy, you helped us out in Arusha, I’m thankful for that. We would never have got Sam out of jail in time without you. And we sure wouldn’t have found a lead to Smuts and Ngorongoro either. So, you’ve done a lot to help us, but out here, it’s a different ballgame. The bishop asked you to help us in Arusha, you helped us, and I appreciate that. Really, I do. But why would he send you into such danger? That, I don’t understand.’
She felt Angel’s shoulder rise against hers as he shrugged. ‘All I can say is the bishop insists you are precious to him and to the Church. He told me if anything happened to you … Well nothing must happen to you.’
‘So here we are.’
‘Yes, here we are …’ Angel fell silent.
• • •
A gentle rustling sound behind them did not cause any concern to the moran who lay motionless in the grass beside Helen. Moments later, Sam and Charles appeared, moving shadow shapes in the dark. They crouched down beside Helen and Angel. Charles’ senior moran moved closer. It would be dawn in a couple of hours. Now was the time to learn of plans.
Together, they all pulled back from the edge of the bush and into deeper cover. There they sat in a circle as Sam detailed his plan.
‘There are four pairs of guards, regularly rotating through the tasks. When one group goes inside for their break, the next comes out. That pair goes directly to the hangar to take over responsibility for guarding the ACE and Bob in the lockup. The guards they relieve then patrol up the far side of the runway to the defensive position at the end, and they take over that position. Finally, the two guards relieved at the defensive position patrol the full length of the runway’s edge on our side, passing just in front of us, before crossing over and heading back up the runway to the office for their break, and then the sequence repeats.’