The Secret Chamber

by Patrick Woodhead

  Jean-Luc watched as the prisoner was brought to a halt in front of him.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he called, his voice raised against the sound of the rotors.

  Luca didn’t answer.

  ‘I am not a patient man. Tell me, now.’

  He waited a few seconds, but Luca remained silent. With his mud-splattered torso and hair stuck to the side of his face, he looked wild and hunted. He was nearly a head taller than Jean-Luc, and stared down at him with undisguised venom.

  ‘I’m going to tire of asking,’ Jean-Luc hissed. ‘Last time.’

  ‘Screw you.’

  Jean-Luc nodded to the soldier just behind. He slammed the butt of his rifle into the back of Luca’s knees, felling him to the ground. Luca groaned, wincing as he fought the pain. As the soldier raised his rifle to strike again, the Rooivalk passed overhead. This time, Luca’s gaze fixed on it, the hatred clear in his eyes.

  ‘You’ve seen that helicopter before, haven’t you?’ Jean-Luc asked. ‘When?’

  Luca stared up at him from the ground. ‘What kind of coward kills a couple of boys?’ he spat. ‘They were pygmies, for Christ’s sake. With bows and arrows!’

  Jean-Luc slowly nodded. ‘So you were on the inselberg, running from the LRA. Were you anything to do with the plane crash on the river?’

  Luca fell silent again.

  ‘Because we found this guy in there, all chewed up by crocodiles. Nasty business.’

  Luca shut his eyes at the image of René.

  ‘So it’s true,’ Jean-Luc said. ‘You are one of the men running with my daughter, Beatrice.’

  Luca opened his eyes. ‘Beatrice?’ he said disbelievingly. ‘You’re Bear’s father? But … she told me to try and find you.’

  Jean-Luc nodded towards his men. They surrounded Luca, bundling him on board through the open door of the Oryx and slamming him down on the riveted metal bench seat at the back.

  ‘Looks like we got to you first,’ Jean-Luc said to himself. Then, with a twirl of his finger, he signalled to the pilots to take off. Putting on his headset, he reached forward and placed the spare set over Luca’s ears, before drawing a thin, delicate-looking throwing knife from his belt. A silver line ran down the length of the blade from where it had been ground razor-sharp.

  ‘Now,’ Jean-Luc said, pointing the tip of the knife at Luca’s chest, ‘you’re going to help me find my daughter. And if you so much as …’

  ‘… we’re after the same thing!’ Luca interupted, jerking his wrists up behind his back. ‘Now get these fucking things off me!’

  Jean-Luc stared at him for several seconds before grabbing hold of his shoulders and pivoting Luca forward in his seat. He sawed through the plastic cable ties in a couple of strokes.

  ‘If my daughter’s harmed in any …’ Jean-Luc began, but Luca cut in once again.

  ‘Shut up and listen to me,’ he said. ‘We don’t have time for this bullshit.’

  Jean-Luc’s eyes narrowed, but he remained silent.

  ‘Bear’s being held in a mine not far from here. But the LRA are planning on sealing all the miners inside. We’ve got to get over there and somehow get her the hell out.’

  ‘When was that?’

  Luca shrugged, trying to remember when they had left the river. ‘It was late in the afternoon. Four, maybe five o’clock.’

  Jean-Luc already knew the time, but still found himself glancing down at his watch. That was nearly four hours ago.

  ‘And what condition was she in?’

  Luca hesitated.

  ‘I said, what condition was she in?’

  ‘She was unconscious. That’s all I could see from where I was.’

  Jean-Luc knew there was more, but forced himself to accept the information for now. They would be over the volcano in just under twenty-two minutes.

  ‘So how was Mordecai planning on sealing it? Just posting his men or did he barricade them inside?’

  ‘We didn’t actually see. But when we were on the run, we heard some explosions.’

  ‘Shit!’ Jean-Luc hissed, his fist slamming down on the side of the seat. ‘If they’ve collapsed the entry tunnel, there’s no way we are going to be able to get inside.’

  ‘No, there’s another way. At the top of the mine, I saw this crack that lets in the natural light. But it’s got to be at least a hundred metres above where the miners are.’

  ‘We can hover above it and my men will abseil in.’

  ‘Maybe. But even if you’re just above it, you’re going to need a shitload of rope.’

  Jean-Luc turned away from him, tilting the mic closer to his mouth.

  ‘Captain, how much rope do we have?’

  There was a pause before Laurent’s voice came in over the radio. ‘Each Oryx has a seventy-five-metre line attached to the winch, sir. And there’s two one-hundred-and-twenty-metre static lines in the hold of your aircraft.’

  ‘Can you rig the winch lines together?’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy, sir, because it won’t run through if we knot them up.’ As Laurent spoke, Luca moved forward and grabbed hold of Jean-Luc’s wrist.

  ‘I’m a climber,’ he said. ‘I can rig it together. Just give me the damn’ rope.’

  Jean-Luc stared into his eyes. ‘OK, climber. You can prep the rope. But after that, you sit still in the back of this helicopter and stay the hell out of our way.’

  Luca nodded. ‘There’s one more thing. I escaped with a friend of mine. He’s down there in the forest right now, about four miles due south of the mine. We’ve got to stop en route and pick him up.’

  Jean-Luc’s expression didn’t change.

  ‘All you’ve got to do is hover for a few seconds …’ Luca added, but Jean-Luc cut him off.

  ‘Every minute we waste is another minute Beatrice is in danger,’ he said. ‘Your friend stays. With luck, we’ll pick him up on the way back.’

  Luca went to protest, but Jean-Luc raised a finger in warning.

  Slowly turning towards the open door of the helicopter, Luca watched the forest whip past below them.

  ‘Hold on, Josh,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Just hold on.’

  Chapter 33

  JEAN-LUC SAT HUNCHED over in his seat on the helicopter. His broad forearms were folded across his chest, resting on top of the webbing pouches, while he waited for the minutes to drag by. There was a look of grim determination in his eyes.

  ‘ETA sixteen minutes,’ came Laurent’s voice over the radio.

  At this the gunner, Louis, standing just to the left of Jean-Luc, started fidgeting from one foot to the next, minutely adjusting the focus on his night-vision goggles. He then leaned forward, clipping open the belt feed of 7.62mm ammunition, realigning it slightly.

  ‘Have you checked it already?’ came Jean-Luc’s voice over the comms. Louis turned towards him and nodded. ‘Then leave it alone.’

  Reaching up to his top pocket, Jean-Luc took out another cigarette and lit it, with his eyes fixed on Luca.

  ‘So what was Bear doing out here in the first place?’ he asked.

  Luca’s arms were also folded across his chest. Without a T-shirt and half-covered in damp mud, the downdraft from the rotors was making him feel cold, but he was too proud to ask for anything to cover himself. He was also desperately thirsty and had been eyeing the water bottle on the side of the gunner’s belt since they had first got on the helicopter.

  ‘She was looking for this new mineral,’ he replied flatly. ‘This stuff called fire coltan.’

  Jean-Luc didn’t react, but inwardly he felt his heart sink. If they had been on speaking terms, Bear would only have had to call him. He would have told her everything, even supplied her with some of the damn’ stuff if that was what she wanted. He knew now that he would have broken every professional code of conduct and handed over all his contacts, if only she had asked.

  ‘So that’s it,’ Jean-Luc said, his eyes darkening. ‘You two get in a Cessna and start buzzing around the skies looki
ng for coltan. What kind of fucking idiots are you? I’ve done some reckless shit in my time, mais putain, ça, c’est fou! Do you even know who the LRA are?’

  Luca’s eyes stayed fixed on his. ‘Yeah, I know exactly who they are. You’re the one who can’t tell who the hell he’s shooting at.’

  ‘Peut-être,’ perhaps, Jean-Luc conceded. ‘But that still doesn’t change the fact that you both went off into the Ituri like a couple of fucking tourists. The LRA is the most dangerous militia group in the whole of the DRC. They’ve thousands of soldiers. Thousands! And you thought …’ He paused, suddenly catching himself on the radio and realising that the other men would be listening to their conversation.

  In the silence Luca turned away, attracting the attention of Louis standing over his machine gun. Luca pointed towards his water bottle. ‘I need some water.’

  Louis looked back to Jean-Luc for approval before handing it over.

  ‘Listen,’ Luca said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, ‘we have sixteen minutes to talk about what is going to happen, not what’s happened. I saw the volcano from the southern side and reckon that if you fly up to the crater, the roof opening should be somewhere west of that.’

  Jean-Luc forced himself to focus on the planning. ‘How far is the opening from the smoke?’

  Luca shrugged slightly. ‘I’m not sure. I only saw it from the ground, but it’s got to be close.’

  ‘Well, if it’s too close, the ash will block our intakes. We’ll fall out of the sky like a stone.’

  ‘If it’s too close, then we think of something else. One way or another, I’m getting into that mine.’

  Jean-Luc could see in Luca’s face the same hell-bent determination that he had once known, and suddenly felt a stirring of his own senses. It had been too long since he had felt anything but ambivalence and the desire to forget, one mission blurring into the next. In Luca, he could see something else. And as much as he hated to admit it, it felt like an elixir to him.

  ‘Major, we have an issue,’ a voice broke in.

  Jean-Luc pulled himself round towards the pilots. ‘Go ahead.’

  There was a pause while Laurent tried to articulate what he was seeing, his finger pressing down on the comms switch several times before he actually spoke.

  ‘I’m getting readings all over the forest, sir,’ he managed.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir, but there are thousands of them. The whole console’s gone yellow with heat sources. It’s like the fucking forest has come alive.’

  ‘Reboot the system. Check it’s reading correctly.’

  ‘Sir, it’s not the system. I am telling you, there are thousands of people in the forest below us.’

  Luca suddenly understood. ‘Tell your pilots to pull up!’ he shouted. ‘Mordecai said his army was marching on the MONUC compound before heading on to Kinshasa. That’s what the reading is.’

  Jean-Luc stared at him for a moment before speaking low and fast into the mic. ‘Break formation. Climb to four thousand feet.’

  Scouting out ahead, the Rooivalk was the first to react, climbing at an almost vertical pitch. The Oryx were flying in trail formation behind and, as one, they followed, engines straining from the speed of their ascent. Luca was thrown back against the side of the metal cabin, his arms flailing as he tried to get his balance, before he managed to grip on to some cargo netting and steady himself. The engines grew louder, sending reverberations through the entire hull of the helicopter as the pilots pushed them higher and higher.

  Jean-Luc’s voice came over the radio. It was level and calm.

  ‘Anyone gets locked on by those SAMs, fire the magnesium in cluster bursts.’

  Through the front window, Luca could see the Rooivalk still climbing, while behind them the two other Oryx helicopters had dropped out of sight. Over the radio they suddenly heard the warning siren of a radar spike, then a long, continuous tone. One of the other helicopters had been missile-locked.

  There was the sound of the pilot shouting into the mic, but Luca couldn’t hear what was being said. Then from somewhere below them the sky lit up in a blaze of white. It fizzed in long, streaking arcs as bright as lightning, leaving thick trails of hanging smoke as the M-206 counter-measure flares went off in sequence.

  A few seconds later they reached 4,000 feet, levelling off with a sickening lurch. Luca stayed exactly where he was, staring into Jean-Luc’s face while both of them listened for the sound of an explosion. But none came. For some reason, the LRA hadn’t fired their surface-to-air missiles.

  One by one the helicopters pulled back into formation and the pilots began to ease up on the controls. In only a few seconds, they had passed over the LRA ground troops and were now out of range.

  ‘OK,’ Jean-Luc said. ‘Show’s over for now.’

  ‘Wait a second,’ Luca said. ‘If that was the LRA, then who the hell is left guarding the mine? That could mean that they’ve all gone.’

  Jean-Luc didn’t bother to turn round. ‘Don’t get too excited,’ he said. ‘For all we know that could be just a couple of thousand of them and the rest are still in camp.’

  Luca stared at him in disbelief. Just a couple of thousand! He knew nothing about weapons and guns, but how could four helicopters be a match for so many soldiers? Jean-Luc glanced back and caught the expression on his face.

  ‘Hey, don’t get me wrong,’ he said, a sly smile appearing on his lips. ‘A few thousand’s a good start.’

  The Rooivalk led the attack. First one, then an entire stream of its MK4 rockets fired off towards the LRA base, leaving their yellow trails blistering across the sky. They impacted in a series of huge, mushrooming explosions that sent tremors all the way up the side of the volcano, like the aftershock of an earthquake.

  Then they heard the 20mm cannon open up. It hammered through the trees and undergrowth in a blaze of white sparks. The Rooivalk’s pilot, Laurent, was targeting everything manually, flying in a series of low strafing runs, which followed the natural curve of the volcano. They watched as he twisted the helicopter from side to side, the engines screeching, obliterating everything in his path.

  The burning trees lit the ground in a dull, orange glow, sending tall plumes of smoke into the air like chimneystacks. Amongst the wreckage of broken wood and charred bushes, Luca could see the dim silhouettes of figures running for cover. Until that moment he had believed that their attack was little more than suicide, but now it seemed as if nothing could stop the Rooivalk from tearing the LRA base apart.

  There was the pop of small-arms fire from somewhere on the edge of the treeline as soldiers fired their AK-47s blindly into the air, but it was several minutes before they heard the first bursts of anti-aircraft fire. The noise was lower, a booming thud that sent the 25mm rounds ripping out into the night sky. The attack had obviously caught the LRA completely off-guard and men were scurrying in all directions, desperately trying to regroup and return fire.

  The Rooivalk banked steeply, coming in low across the trees as it faced off a gun battery camouflaged deep into the side of the volcano. While the LRA soldiers frantically swivelled the twin muzzles of Type 87 battery, Laurent sent his last remaining MK4 rocket straight into them. It was a direct hit, the entire combination of men and machinery disintegrating in a ball of orange fire.

  ‘Out of rockets … running low on the 20mm,’ came Laurent’s voice over the radio.

  ‘Pull back, Captain. Save some,’ ordered Jean-Luc. ‘Bravo and Delta team, give suppressing fire to the north. We’re going up to the summit to try and winch into the mine.’

  As the other two Oryx moved off into position, Jean-Luc’s banked round and began climbing the side of the volcano. The black rock beneath them stretched up in one long, continuous slope until finally, far above them, they could see the faint glow of the crater’s rim. As the helicopter powered upwards, Luca suddenly saw a small hut perched on a natural lip of rock. It was about a third of the way up and bristling wit
h satellite dishes. Two men were standing by the door, watching as they roared overhead.

  They flew higher, the gradient growing steeper with each moment that passed. Just under the summit, the sides of the volcano rose up into a vertical wall of rock, over one hundred metres high and scored with deep-set cracks. These ran down from the summit like claw marks, with the smoke and ash from the crater hanging in between.

  The engines changed pitch as the pilots levelled off, unable to get any closer. The evening breeze had pushed the main column of smoke to the west, barring their way and covering any trace of the opening to the mine. There was silence. Everyone waited for Jean-Luc’s next order.

  ‘Merde!’ Shit! he roared, slamming his fist into the metal wall of the cabin. ‘Putain de merde!’

  There was nothing more that could be done. They couldn’t get high enough to use their winches and their rockets wouldn’t be able to penetrate the side of the volcano. With the entrance tunnels collapsed, the only option left was to dig. But that would take weeks.

  Jean-Luc’s entire frame seemed to radiate anger, the muscles on his right arm bulging as he gripped the strap above the door. He looked like a cornered animal, turning from one direction to the next as he desperately tried to think of a solution. He screwed his eyes shut and swore once again, unable to accept that there was nothing left to do.

  Presently, he opened his eyes again, only to see Luca lying down on the floor with the entire top half of his body leaning out of the open door of the helicopter. He had his right hand wound into the cargo netting to steady himself, while his eyes scanned the side of the volcano, taking in every crack and gully.

  Jean-Luc leaned forward and followed the direction of his gaze. The slope looked impassable, with solid slabs of rock reaching all the way up into the haze of volcanic smoke.