‘Just get to the road,’ Bear murmured.
‘Just the road,’ she repeated, and let her eyes slowly close.
Chapter 31
JOSHUA’S FINGERS RAKED down Luca’s back as he tried to stop himself from falling. Luca turned, but wasn’t quick enough to catch him and watched as his friend collapsed into the mud, groaning from exhaustion. It had been like this for the last two hours, their progress getting slower and slower.
‘I’ve got … to stop,’ Joshua whispered, his throat so dry he could barely say the words.
Luca turned on him.
‘Come on, Josh! Get on your feet! We’ve got to keep moving!’
Joshua stared into his eyes, pleading. His bad leg dragged across the ground, snagging on every root and branch, and continually yanking him off balance. Nearly four hours had passed since leaving the river and the undergrowth seemed endless. The ground was saturated with pools of standing water and for the last hour they had been going painfully slowly. Sinking down to their knees in the mud, they tried to crawl their way across it, with Luca pulling Joshua forward by his shoulders, inch by inch, both of them becoming increasingly desperate and tired.
The ground worsened, becoming one vast quagmire. They were covered in tar-black mud, with their clothes clinging to their bodies and their hair plastered to the sides of their heads.
‘No more,’ Joshua breathed, but Luca reached out his hand. Joshua stared at it for several seconds before catching hold. As Luca heaved him up once again, he cried out in pain. His leg was already starting to swell and he could feel his vision blackening at the edges. He was only moments from passing out.
Rounding the next in a long line of thickets, Luca tried to keep the compass steady, but their progress was erratic, the needle swinging from side to side across the faded dial. They were heading due south, trying to reach the old logging road Bear had mentioned, but as more time passed with not the slightest break in the forest, Luca had begun to doubt whether the road even existed. The rest of the escape kit was pretty much useless, with the possible exception of the Chinese flare.
A tree branch snapped back, hitting Joshua square in his chest and knocking him down into the mud. He stayed on his hands and knees, chest heaving as he tried to muster the strength to move. His arms shook with strain and a thin line of spittle hung from one corner of his mouth.
‘I can’t go on,’ he managed.
Luca rounded on him, his eyes savage.
‘Get up!’ he screamed. ‘We keep going. One step after the other!’
But he could see the sick exhaustion in Joshua’s eyes. In that moment, he already knew it was over. There was just nothing left for his friend to give.
‘I can’t …’ Joshua began, but drifted into silence. Both of them knew what he was going to say next.
‘It’s OK,’ Luca said, trying to catch his breath. ‘We’ll just wait it out. We do it by hours; one on, one off. Just keep going until we make it back to MONUC.’
Joshua slowly shook his head. ‘We both know that won’t work. There isn’t enough time.’
‘We don’t know that. We’ve got to focus on the here and now, get you out of this damn’ jungle.’
‘No,’ Joshua breathed, ‘there’s more to this than just you and me. You’ve got to get help before their water runs out. It’s the only way.’ He paused, an image coming to him of the miners desperately searching for a way out, knowing that the clock was ticking. ‘And, Luca, this is just the tip of it. We’ve got to get the message out. Tell everyone what this shit does to people.’
Joshua’s chin tilted up as he stared at Luca.
‘The one thing I know about Mordecai is that he hates foreigners. Hates us like nothing you’ve ever known.’
Luca returned his gaze, confused.
‘Don’t you see?’ Joshua continued. ‘If this stuff is going into mobiles all over the world, then just imagine how many people are going to die. I know what that sick bastard is like. For Mordecai, it would be like some kind of divine retribution; an apocalypse to punish the West for God knows what.’
‘We don’t know that it is used in phones,’ Luca interjected. ‘Bear was only guessing.’
‘Whatever the hell it’s being used for, we know one thing – if it heats up, it kills people. That ought to be enough. We’ve got to get the message out, Luca. Tell them how dangerous this shit is.’
Luca didn’t respond, only letting his head slump forward in the silence. He stayed like that for several seconds, suddenly looking totally defeated. It was the first time Joshua had ever seen him look like that.
‘Luca?’
As he glanced up, Joshua could immediately see the pain in his eyes.
‘It took me so long to find you,’ Luca said. ‘To actually get here. And now you’re asking me to leave you out in the forest again. I can’t do that, Josh. I can’t leave someone again.’
‘Come on, Luca, don’t do this to yourself.’
‘It’s the same fucking thing. Over and over.’
‘No!’ Joshua shouted. ‘That was about a mountain. This is about saving every goddamn’ person inside that mine. Trust me, I don’t want be left out here by myself, but you are the only one who can do this.’
Luca stared out towards the bushes.
‘I’ll be all right. I’ll just sit it out and wait for you to come and rescue me again.’ Joshua paused, attempting a smile. ‘You rescued me from the inside of an LRA mine, for Christ’s sake. Out here should be a cinch.’
Joshua stared at the back of Luca’s head, waiting for a response. The seconds went by, but Luca stayed where he was, staring out into the haze of undergrowth.
‘How the hell did we find ourselves in the middle of all this shit?’ he said quietly.
‘Don’t you remember? Ever since we were kids, whenever we were together, we got into trouble.’ Joshua paused. ‘At least this time we don’t have your old man chasing us across the field with a golf club because you crashed his car.’
A wheezing laugh escaped Luca’s lips.
‘I can’t believe you let me take the rap for that,’ Joshua continued. ‘And I never even got laid that night!’
Luca turned to him, a smile creeping across his face.
‘Yeah, those girls weren’t too impressed with us, were they?’
They both laughed at the memory, then slowly fell silent. Seconds passed with neither of them wanting to admit that their time together was over. Finally Joshua broke the spell. Hauling himself out of the mud, he crawled to the shelter of some nearby bushes. Luca went to help him, crouching down so that their heads were almost level. Without any warning, Joshua grabbed his shoulders, pulling him into a hug.
‘Just don’t forget about me,’ he said jokingly, but his smile quickly faded. Luca could see the fear in his eyes and squeezed him tight, trying to offer some reassurance.
‘You’ve got that red flare,’ he said, ‘so if you hear anything, you fire it. You hear me?’
Joshua nodded. ‘Yeah, I got it.’ He stared hard at Luca through the gathering darkness. ‘I’ll be waiting.’
Chapter 32
JEAN-LUC GAZED OUT of the open door of the Oryx helicopter. The cabin’s interior light washed his face with a dull red glow. Only fifty feet below the trees rushed by in a continuous blur, their outlines jet black against the setting sun. All that was left of the day was a faint glow of orange in the west as night quickly came on.
There were no clouds. The sky was clear but dark, with the moon a thin crescent skirting the horizon. Jean-Luc could feel the air temperature steadily drop. Drawing a Gitanes pack from his top pocket, he lit a cigarette with a windproof lighter and sucked down on the filter. The smoke went deep into his lungs, filling them with its comforting warmth, and his eyes scanned the vast landscape beneath, taking it all in. A slight smile appeared on his lips. This was the Africa he knew.
Suddenly the helicopter banked right, forcing him to grip on to the door handle to keep his balance. Only thirty
feet to their left, the branches of an enormous tree rose up above the jagged outline of the canopy. He had told the pilots to keep low and they were doing just that, using their dual-scope P-15 night vision goggles to skim the treeline.
They had already been to the co-ordinates Devlin had given them, and after nearly an hour searching, had found what remained of the plane. Only the starboard wing of the Cessna 206 still remained above water, with the rest of the plane fully submerged. They winched down one of the men. He had dived into the water with a waterproof torch, searching the tiny cockpit for any trace of Bear. Finally, he had emerged with the remnants of a half-eaten corpse. The crocodiles had got to it first.
But the body wasn’t Bear’s. It must have been one of the white men Devlin had spoken about. That meant she was either on the run, in which case they would have to try and pick her up using thermal imaging, or the LRA had already tracked her down.
Jean-Luc drew deeply on his cigarette. If the LRA had got to her, there was only one solution. A staggered attack on the volcano, using the MK4 rockets on the Rooivalk with support fire from the Oryx’s GPMG guns. As all hell broke out from the air, he would send an extraction team on to the ground to hunt for her amongst the chaos. It was a long shot, but it was all they had. Mordecai was not a man who could be negotiated with.
Pulling on his headset, Jean-Luc half expected to hear the usual chatter between the pilots, but tonight there was silence. He knew the reason why. They all suspected that Bear had already been caught, and although none of them dared admit it, believed an attack on the volcano was inevitable. Now they were silent, steeling themselves for the fight of their lives.
Over the last eight months they had delivered crate after crate of standard AK-47 rifles to the LRA base. Then, two weeks ago, they had thrown back the tarpaulin covers to see a shipment of Chinese HQ-7 SAM surface-to-air missiles. There were other crates too; W-89 long-range mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and a whole host of field weaponry. Someone in the Chinese Army was backing the LRA with everything they needed to transform themselves from a provincial rebel group into a proper military force.
But the weapons weren’t the worst of it. It was the sheer number of LRA soldiers. There were thousands of them, living in a vast tented city deep within the forest, and each one of them unquestioningly devoted to their leader.
Jean-Luc had seen the growing cult of Mordecai at first hand. New recruits were beaten down until there was nothing left; forced to do unmentionable things time and time again until they were numbed by the horror. It was all designed to destroy any ingrained sense of morality, so that by the time they were ready to be built back up again, they believed everything Mordecai said, no matter how fantastical.
Mordecai had them believing that if they anointed their foreheads with holy water, they would be impervious to bullets, or that they could be healed just by his touch. The cult was a perverse hybrid of Christianity and voodoo magic, becoming ever more distorted by the cocktails of hallucinogens and amphetamines they all used. But of one thing Jean-Luc was certain – the cult worked. Mordecai had built himself an army that was as fearless as it was loyal.
As the thud of the helicopter rotors continued, Jean-Luc stared out, his eyes narrowed against the rush of air. He thought back to all the times he had gone into battle, the journey to the frontline dragging on like the calm before a storm. There had been so many campaigns, so many dirty wars spent crossing from one border to the next. He had been a mercenary his whole life, and now there was nothing else. That was what he was. The sum total of him. Like an old smoker being asked to count the years of his addiction, war had always been there, been part of him.
But for the first time in his life, the reason for it had changed. This time he wasn’t going in because someone was paying him to. He was going in because his little girl needed him to.
Pulling back from the open door, Jean-Luc gently patted the gunner, Louis, on the shoulder as he moved past him towards the pilot. He nodded with satisfaction, knowing that his men were ready. Each one of them had fingers resting on a trigger, silently scanning the ground through their night-vision goggles for the slightest sign of movement. There was courage in their silence. They had all obeyed his command, boarding the helicopters back in Goma without question. Yet all of them had known that if they didn’t track Bear down in the forest, they would be flying on to the volcano and into the biggest shit storm imaginable.
Jean-Luc leaned over the pilot, Thierry. He was a short, stocky man with a bald head and a deeply tanned face. Looking past him to the GPS on the screen, Jean-Luc glanced down at his watch. They had enough fuel to keep searching for Bear for five hours.
‘Major, we’ve just picked something up on the thermal imaging,’ came Laurent’s voice over the radio. ‘It’s a single heat source moving west along the old logging road.’
‘You’re sure it’s human?’
‘Negative, sir.’
Jean-Luc nodded, reaching out a hand to steady himself. They were going to follow each and every lead until he found his daughter.
‘Proceed.’
All four helicopters banked sharply, maintaining formation as they turned west towards the faint outline of the crooked dirt track. The old logging road had long since become impassable to ground vehicles, with the forest reclaiming almost all of the cleared track, but from the air, it was still visible.
‘Target moving off the road, sir. Now heading south.’
‘Get in front. I want a four-man team on the deck.’
The lead helicopter slowed, with the pilot pitching up the nose and lowering the collective to reduce the torque on the rotors. Ropes were flung out as four men moved out to the edge, preparing to abseil into the darkness.
The ropes buzzed as the soldiers descended at speed, jerking to a halt only a few feet from the surface of the ground. As they pulled the slack through their harnesses, they swung their M4 carbine rifles off their backs and surged forward across the ground.
‘Target has stopped,’ came Laurent’s voice. ‘North. Twenty metres.’
With their rifles tight into their shoulders, the four men advanced. They moved silently, black combat uniforms melting into the background. Their faces were darkened by camouflage cream. Five metres further on they begun to converge on a single point, but still none of them could see the target. The bush was too thick.
‘Target dead ahead. Three metres.’
All the men stopped, their rifles trained on the ground. Then, suddenly, one of them recognised the outline of a man’s leg, his back, and finally his head. He was lying absolutely still, curled up into the base of a thick bush.
‘Ne bougez pas!’ Don’t move! the soldier shouted. As the three others kept their weapons trained on the target, he swung his rifle across his back and grabbed on to the man’s boots, dragging him feet first out of the bush. With a sharp kick, he spun him round, reaching for his weapon in the same movement and jamming the barrel of his rifle into his chest.
‘Qui êtes-vous?’ Who are you? he shouted, staring down at the man’s mud-splattered face and his pale blue eyes. The man was half-naked with his hands slightly raised, the blackened palms facing the soldiers as if trying to push them away.
‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’
‘Who are you?’ the soldier bellowed, switching into English as he twisted the gun barrel in deeper.
‘My name is Luca. We need … help.’
The soldier grabbed him by his neck and hoisted him on to his feet.
‘Lucky for you the Major wants you alive,’ he said, then shunted him forward towards the waiting helicopters.
Two of the three Oryx helicopters had touched down on a clearing to either side of the old logging road. They were stationary except for the low swoop of their rotors as the pilots kept the engines powered up and ready to take off at a moment’s notice. The white beam of their searchlights swung round, revealing the four soldiers with Luca. He had his hands raised, but nothing more could be se
en of his face. The light had bleached out all his features, leaving only a hazy outline.
Jean-Luc was on the ground, dressed in full combat fatigues with his short-barrel G3 rifle slung over his back. His chest bulged with a row of front webbing pouches, each filled with ammunition and grenades, and he had clipped off the lenses of his night-vision goggles, leaving just the strap across his forehead. It pressed down on his tangled mop of hair like a sweatband, bunching up the skin at the corners of his eyes. As the ground team approached, he went out to meet them, flinging his cigarette aside.
‘His name is Luca …’ began the lead soldier, but as he spoke the Rooivalk swooped low overhead, drowning out the sound of his voice. They all looked up as it passed through the halo of lights. Luca immediately recognised the distinctive stepped cockpit and the fuselage bristling with rockets. There could be no mistake. That was the helicopter that had killed Lanso and Abasi. These were the bastards who had been hunting them down on the inselberg!
He swivelled round and swung a wide punch at the man just behind him. More by luck than any sense of timing, his fist connected, ripping off the soldier’s night-vision goggles and snapping his head to one side. As the soldier stumbled sideways, Luca stepped forward, shunting him back with the palms of his hands, so that he went crashing into the man behind.
In the confusion, he ducked out of the glare of the searchlights and sprinted towards the treeline. The other two soldiers gave chase, but their rifles and webbing made them slower. Luca was pulling away. In only ten metres, he would be past the clearing and back into the cover of the trees.
Jean-Luc cursed, raising his rifle and firing. Three bullets smacked into the tree just ahead of Luca in quick succession, stopping him dead in his tracks and missing his body by just a few inches. Luca stared at the splintered tree bark for several seconds before slowly turning back towards the helicopters, eyes narrowed against the light.
Suddenly, he was thrown forward as the nearest of the soldiers crashed into him, pitching them both on to the ground. The man immediately wrestled Luca’s arms behind his back, trying to force his hands through a long, plastic cable tie. Luca fought him off, but then a second soldier arrived and, dropping his knees on to Luca’s chest, pinned him down. They jammed the cable tight around his wrists, the plastic cutting deep.
The Secret Chamber Page 26