by Jeremy Duns
All told, it must have taken about five seconds.
I looked down at the floor. Scarface was clutching his eyes with one hand and using the other to try to prise Isabelle’s body off him, but he was still holding the gun, so it was awkward. His first push managed to shift her a little, though, and as she turned I saw in one horrid moment the massive wound to her chest, the widening pool of blood, and the frozen eyes.
I placed my boot on Scarface’s arm and took the gun from him. I knocked him unconscious with one blow of the butt, then looked around at the dazed faces and the walls spinning around me.
There was no time to waste – even in a rabbit warren like this, the sound of the shot would travel, and more men would be on their way. I had to find a way out of here, now.
XVII
I rubbed the butt of the gun against my trousers. When I looked again, the blood had gone. It was a Stechkin APS machine pistol – Alebayo’s arrangement with Moscow clearly wasn’t new.
Gunner was standing by the far wall. Like everyone else in the room, he was rooted to the spot. When I had ‘interviewed’ him on the plane, he had revealed that he was an Easterner who had specifically joined the Federal side because he didn’t believe in secession. But he was clearly susceptible to their plight, because he had agreed to take the Biafrans from Aba and had fed them. However, I had no way of knowing what he might have done if Alebayo hadn’t turned up – it seemed unlikely he would have let them go.
‘Where are your ropes?’ I asked him, and he looked up at me. His eyes were glazed, and he was having trouble focusing.
‘What did you say?’
‘The ropes they tied you with – where are they?’ I said it a touch too harshly, a touch too loudly, because I was desperate to get through to him before more men came and the chance was gone, and that could be in five minutes or it could be in thirty seconds. As a result, some of the others started to stir, pulling their gazes away from Isabelle and Scarface as they realized that something new was happening in the room. I looked into Gunner’s eyes and willed him to answer me. As every moment passed, my words sounded more and more like a mistake.
After what seemed an age, but which was probably less than ten seconds, he shook his head and pointed to the ground, where the ropes lay coiled against the inside of a table leg. I picked them up and looped them round one arm, then offered him the Stechkin.
He looked me over quietly. ‘You are not a journalist.’
‘No,’ I said, forcing bonhomie and efficiency into my voice, trying to use the exchange of words as touch-paper. ‘But we’re going to pretend I am for just a little longer. I’m your prisoner. You’re taking me to a hotel in Port Harcourt. Colonel Alebayo’s orders.’
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘You want me to desert my men?’
‘What good can you do them if you stay?’ I said. ‘What good can you do anyone? If you want to help bring this war to an end, you have to get out of here. Now might be your only chance.’
He nodded slowly, weighing up the idea. Come on, man, come on! Somewhere in the room, a Biafran groaned, and the sound of it echoed against the walls. Taking his time, Gunner reached out and took the gun, and I became conscious of my breathing as he placed it in his waistband.
‘I can only take two others,’ I said, willing him to move faster. ‘Your two most trusted men.’
That stopped him, and in the silence that followed I wondered if it meant the end of my trail and the rest of the war writing my memoirs on toilet paper. ‘They will be here soon,’ I said.
‘I won’t shoot my fellow soldiers,’ he said.
‘All right,’ I agreed, thankful that that was all he needed to persuade himself. ‘If we do this right, that won’t happen.’
He spoke quickly to two of his men, and when they had saluted and gathered themselves together, we opened the window and climbed out.
*
As I landed on the grass with a thump, a wave of pain shuddered up my left thigh. A monkey that had been sitting a couple of feet away let out a series of ear-shattering shrieks before scampering back into the bush, his fading cackle taunting me. I stayed crouched for a moment, willing the pain to subside, then peered around the edge of the building.
There was no wind. It had stopped raining and the air was thick with mosquitoes – they whined past my ears, and I could sense them homing in on the spots of flesh exposed by the rips in my clothing. Above, a sickle of moon cut through a starless sky, and I wondered for a brief moment if Anna was looking at it, somewhere not so very far away.
Focus, Dark.
Directly ahead of me lay a patch of grass as smooth as a billiard table. Beyond that was the road, pools of which were illuminated by streetlamps.
There were no men. Yet.
On the other side of the road was the tennis court, and beyond that, if my calculations were correct, the street where I’d earlier seen the Land Rover parked.
The three Nigerians quickly took up position behind me. I whispered to Gunner to move to my left, towards the Nissen hut I’d spotted earlier. He nodded and scuttled off, disappearing into the darkness and re-emerging a few seconds later, a dim shape against the wall of the hut.
I looked at the other two men. One I recognized from Aba: he had a boxer’s broken nose and split lip. The other was lean and tall, with skin so black and polished he looked almost blue, like a Senegalese. I suddenly felt very conscious of my whiteness, and wanted to scoop up a handful of mud and smear it across my cheeks. But there was no time, so I told Senegal to join Gunner, and took Boxer with me, towards the road. In darkness, it was best to spread out.
The surface of the grass was slick with rain, and I took care to keep my centre of gravity low and lift my heels after each step. In my peripheral vision, I could see Gunner and Senegal moving alongside us. There was still nobody else in view, but I didn’t give it long: soldiers’ ears are attuned to gunfire, and the camp was silent. They’d be putting on their boots and starting their engines. They’d be here, any moment now.
When we reached the verge of the road, I held out my hand and the three of them stopped. I told them to file behind me – we were approaching light, so we wanted to present a smaller target. When they had done this, I climbed up onto the road, and made for the space between two streetlamps.
This was no man’s land, but there would be no football matches in it tonight. We were half-lit by the orbit of two lamps on either side of us. If they came now, we would be seen at once and they would just pick us off. After a few steps, my heart was pounding through my shirt, which was sticking to my skin after several soakings of rain, and the blood was drumming in my ears. But I could still hear the trickle of rainwater through the drains and the splashing of our legs through the shallow puddles. All my senses were alert: for sound, movement, smell, or any change in the environment that meant it was time to raise my arm a little and squeeze the trigger.
None came, and we made it to the verge of the tennis court, which was surrounded by a wire fence. We scrambled down the bank to the gate, and ran, still in single file, around the outside of the court. I saw some fuzzy grey spots on the ground and my muscles tightened on the trigger until my brain registered what they were: lost tennis balls.
We clambered back up the slope and flattened ourselves against it – it was something of a relief, so I tried not to relax the leg too much. It was still tense from my rocky landing earlier.
I peered over and scanned the horizon. And there, parked quietly by one of the bungalows, was the sight I’d been hoping for: the Land Rover.
I waved my hand to the others and we went over the top. The pain was now working its way up my body, but I used it as a spur, pushing myself against it to see how much it would hurt, knowing that every moment counted. We weren’t out of here yet. At the halfway point, the others overtook me – it had been a long time since I was their age, running round the glens of Arisaig with only a compass and a dagger to guide me.
There were no lights on in the bu
ngalow and no keys in the Land Rover. I told Gunner to get behind the wheel and Boxer and Senegal to jump in the back, then climbed into the passenger seat myself and looped the ropes around my arms so it looked as if I was bound. The fuel tank was two-thirds full, so that was all right. I reached under the dashboard for the solenoid and the hot wire.
‘Is anyone coming?’ I whispered to Gunner, and he had another look around and shook his head.
I bridged the two wires.
Ignition.
*
‘Slow down a touch,’ I said. A speeding vehicle might blow the whistle. We had cover now.
Gunner obliged. I remembered the way he’d walked down the aisle towards me on the aeroplane from Lagos – cocky, swaggering. He was a different man now – the sweat was streaming down his face. He had gone from fraternizing with the enemy to deserting with a suspected enemy agent – he knew he would face a firing squad if we didn’t pull this off.
‘Keep calm,’ I said. ‘We’re nearly there. Just act as though you’ve been given urgent orders by Alebayo. They won’t argue.’
He nodded, but his jaw continued to shake after he had done so. I placed the Stechkin under my feet and tore away a piece of my shirtsleeve.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘Mop your brow. You need to stay calm.’
Without looking, he took it from me and held the rag to his forehead, as though it were a steak on a bruise.
I turned to Boxer and Senegal, crouched down in the back. ‘If there’s any trouble,’ I said, ‘just follow my lead.’ I couldn’t trust any of these men, of course, but they might now believe I could, or think it enough to delay their reactions for a fraction of a second if things got out of control.
‘Next right,’ I told Gunner, and he veered sharply, nearly taking us off a couple of the wheels. Waves of pain again, but now I could feel them stretching out their tentacles for my chest. I slumped back as far as I could in the bucket seat and tried not to breathe in too many mosquitoes.
We made the turning, and the gate came into view at the end of the road. The light at the end of the tunnel. I desperately wanted to tell Gunner to slow down, but I bit my tongue. I was in too much pain to waste words, and he needed these seconds to gather his confidence and remember he was in charge. I was just his prisoner now.
He slowed down a few yards from the gate, triggering a light in the hut. One of the guards came out a few seconds later, rifle at the ready and arm raised. There had been eight when I had counted – how many would be on duty now?
‘Where are you going?’ said the man, the barrel of his Kalashnikov lined up with my head. ‘It is past curfew.’
‘Let us through,’ said Gunner with an admirable tone of authority in his voice. ‘The Colonel just ordered me to take this man to Port Harcourt.’ He gestured at me.
The soldier took a step closer.
‘Who is he?’
‘That is none of your business,’ Gunner snapped. The guard’s jaw tightened and Gunner pretended to soften. ‘A British journalist. The Colonel wants him out the way – tonight.’
Too much. He’d said too much. The guard swivelled on his heel and leaned in to look at his face.
‘Who are you? I don’t recognize you.’
‘Captain Samuel Johnson,’ he said. ‘I arrived from Lagos this afternoon on the Colonel’s orders.’
The guard weighed this up, then looked at his watch. I could almost read his thought: ‘Is it too late to call through to the main house and check?’
‘Call the Colonel now if you like,’ said Gunner, who was evidently on the same wavelength. ‘But he will not be pleased by interruptions now – he gave me the express order to chop-chop.’
The guard nodded and saluted Gunner.
‘Go on with one Nigeria,’ he said.
‘Go on with one Nigeria,’ said Gunner soberly.
The guard turned his back and pressed the mechanism to open the gate, which slowly started to swing back on its hinges.
I felt the air move before I heard the shots. I looked in the rear-view mirror – they were coming over the far lip of the hill, bearing down the road. Dozens of men and a Ferret armoured car, its two lights blazing and its black snout rapidly growing larger as it came towards us.
As I reached for the Stechkin, I shouted at Gunner to put his foot down, but he already had – we were heading straight into the gates. The guard turned, took in the approaching men and car, and began shouting to alert his colleagues inside the hut.
I aimed for the ground just in front of him as I opened the car door and bundled out onto the tarmac. I saw him throw himself flat, and I rolled over and fired off several rounds into the lever controlling the gate until I saw sparks, and then the first flickers of flames. I could hear the others behind me as I got to my feet, then squeezed through the gates and pounded my feet down the tarmac, until I realized what I was doing and veered off to the left, down a steep bank towards the bush. I had no idea what direction I needed to go in, but that wasn’t important now. They had a Ferret, and it was bearing down on us at a rate of knots. I could feel the heat of its lights on my back, and the shots were thundering in my brain.
I leapt through the grass, feeling plants and insects stinging my skin and prying my shoes away from the mud with each step. Two of the others – Gunner and Senegal, I thought – overtook me, clattering down the hill with their arms outstretched, and I followed them without thinking, blocking the rest of the world from my head and concentrating on my feet and the ground directly in front of me. Soon, I couldn’t hear the Ferret – perhaps the lever had jammed and they were still trying to prise the gate open. I was running so fast that it took several strides before it hit home. I couldn’t hear the Ferret, but I couldn’t hear anything else either: no shots, no footsteps, not even my own breathing, which had been so strong just moments before.
I had gone deaf.
XVIII
I began to slow down. The pain in my upper left thigh was sharpening with every step, and I was shivering with cold. It felt like I was losing my balance, and my face was sticky with sweat. My brain also needed to absorb what had just happened. Which was that all the noises that had been registering in my head moments before – the squelching of my feet in the rain-sodden earth, the buzzing of the mosquitoes around me, the machine-gun fire from the men in armoured cars trying to kill me – had, without notice, been replaced by complete silence.
I had never experienced true silence before. It had a rather frightening beauty to it: every detail of the world around me was intact – the rank swamp smell, the curtain of sky framed by darkened palm trees, the shapes of the other two men skidding down the slope away from me – but with one element removed, it seemed unreal.
What the hell had caused this? Surely not the sound of the gunfire – I’d heard plenty of that in my time. Hunger and fatigue, then? I suddenly remembered all those horror stories people liked telling in the basement bar after hours of agents collapsing of exhaustion or going mad in the field. That poor sod Carslake who’d started having headaches in the middle of an operation just outside Bangkok. He’d gone blind before finding a hospital, and the opposition had simply picked him off on the street. His corpse hadn’t been a pretty sight, by all accounts. Was that my fate, then? One second all my faculties intact; the next running through a soundless world towards oblivion?
Run anyway – and then keep running. Think later. The car would break through the gate soon. Perhaps it already had. I forced my feet back into action, fixing on the path ahead and trying to block out the pain as I scrambled down the bank. I outstretched one arm to protect me from insects and branches, and kept the other hovering low in case I slipped. As I pushed aside some large fronds, glossy and greeny-black in the moonlight, I sensed something in my peripheral vision, and turned to see a blurred ball of dark matter propelling straight towards my head. As I leapt away from it, I realized it was a mammoth insect – perhaps a dragonfly? – but that was as far as I got because I landed on something sharp
, which cut into my right calf and shredded my trouser-leg so a flap of it now hung loose, leaving the wound exposed to the cool night air: a feast for the mosquitoes.
I tried to right myself and felt something solid pushing down on my head. I looked up to see a pair of gleaming bloodshot eyes: Gunner! What the hell was he doing coming back for me? His mouth was moving urgently, shouting something behind the screen between us. I gestured at my ears and shook my head, and he pushed my shoulders down roughly. I followed his lead and flattened myself against some muddy roots.
We looked up the hill. Flickers of red and yellow light flashed over the rim, and I guessed that the Ferret was heading down the road.
They hadn’t seen us.
We lay there for a few minutes, or perhaps it was only seconds – time was getting harder to judge – and then I turned to see that he had gotten up and had started running back down the mountainside.
With a mighty effort I stood up and leapt after him, pounding my feet every step of the way. It was excruciating, but if I pounded hard enough, I could ‘hear’ the pulse reverberating through my body – not as a sound but as a physical sensation. Somehow it seemed comforting, so I concentrated on making it happen, again and again, all the while watching Gunner’s silhouette ahead, weaving through the plants.
As the slope finally started to flatten out and we waded across a narrow rivulet of swamp water, I felt a closer shuddering. Had they changed their minds? Were they coming down the hill? I didn’t dare look back, and at some point I realized that these new vibrations were coming from inside my own head – my teeth were chattering.