The seconds dragged by. Then I heard the footsteps move on again down the track. I waited until the sounds had faded and my heart had stopped its pounding, and was about to raise my head when I caught a faint noise. I froze. The sound grew louder, a soft scuffing in the dust of the forest track.
The noise stopped. I saw a bare foot no more than a yard away. The hairs on my neck rose. Knowing that any movement, however slight, would give us away, I forced myself to remain motionless, gritting my teeth and offering silent prayers that the rebel would miss us and move on. There was nothing separating us from death but a single scrubby bush and a thin covering of leaf litter. I could feel a faint trembling in my arm, but could do nothing to stop it.
I heard the soft rustle of cloth and saw the foot move as he turned towards the other side of the track, but after a moment he turned back. An arm came into my view as he reached down and fingered a broken plant stem.
A voice broke the silence and I almost jumped out of my skin. He had spoken in the local language and, though I did not understand the words, his tone told me the game must be up. He had seen us and was telling us to come out.
I was tensing my muscles to ease myself up slowly enough to avoid alarming him and provoking a shot, when he was answered by another man behind him on the track.
There was a long silence, then an abrupt word of command and I heard again the faint scuffing noise and saw two pairs of feet moving away along the track.
I remained absolutely motionless, my heart still hammering in my chest until the calls of birds told me we were safe, for the moment at least. I rose slowly, peered along the empty track, then took Layla’s arm and led her deeper into the jungle.
Chapter Seven
We kept walking for another hour before I felt it was safe enough to pause. We stopped at the bank of a forest stream and Layla sank to the ground at once. Her face was bruised and cut and her hair was matted with blood. I took off my tattered shirt, rinsed the sweat and dirt from it and then gently cleaned her face. As I reached over to dab at a cut over her eye, I put a hand on her arm to steady myself. She recoiled and pulled away from me at once.
‘Are you all right?’ I said.
She didn’t reply. Her eyes remained fixed on mine, but she seemed to be staring straight through me.
‘Did he?’ I checked and changed the question. ‘How did you get away from him?’
Her voice was harsh and flat. ‘I don’t want to talk about it and if we get out of this alive, I never want anyone else to know what happened back there in that village.’
I saw her eyes fill with tears and tried to cradle her head against my shoulder, but she pushed me away, fury in her face. She stood up and walked off, turning her back to me, but I saw her body racked with sobs. I waited in silence until she had grown quiet again.
‘Do you want to wash yourself?’ I said. ‘I’ll keep watch.’
She shivered, as if waking from a nightmare, then turned her tear-stained face towards me. ‘I’d like that, thanks.’
I moved away a few more yards and stood with my back to her as she stripped off and bathed herself in the stream water.
When she had finished, we changed places. I took off my clothes, crouched on the bank and began washing myself. I scooped up handfuls of sand from the bed of the stream and scoured myself with it. I felt I could have washed myself for a week and still not got clean.
‘What do we do?’ Layla said, after I’d pulled my clothes back on.
‘I don’t know. I thought we might make Bohara, but with no map and no GPS, I think our only hope is to make for Freetown.’
‘But we can’t cross the country on foot. And how will we navigate?’
‘The river was north of us, wasn’t it? All we can do is use the sun to navigate and make our way north until we find the river.’
‘And then?’
‘Try to steal a boat, I suppose.’
I moved a few paces upstream and then took a rough bearing from the sunlight filtering through the forest canopy.
The twists and turns we had to make around the impenetrable stands of trees and dense undergrowth made our progress slow, and it was easy to get disorientated. The direction of the sun was often obscured by the tree cover.
The foliage frequently reduced visibility to no more than five yards, but my other senses seemed heightened in compensation. I paused every few steps to listen for the sound of movement or the distress cries of birds, and I sniffed the faint breeze for any human trace.
At length I heard a faint sound. It grew into the steady ripple of moving water. I caught a glint through the undergrowth and, parting the leaves, looked out on a broad, slow-moving river.
We tracked the river westwards. Shortly before sunset I saw a dark shape on the far bank. As we drew closer, the shape resolved itself into the mud walls and rough thatch of a ferryman’s hut.
A battered craft was tied up at the water’s edge on the far side and a wire cable ran from bank to bank, sagging into the river in the middle. It was secured at the base of thick posts driven into the soil on either bank. The cable passed through steel eyes at each end of the boat; the ferryman could punt across the river, guided by the cable.
We lay down to wait for full darkness.
Half an hour after the faint glow of a candle or lantern in the building had been extinguished, I left Layla in our hiding place and crawled forward through the vegetation. I got to my feet next to the post securing the cable and gave the rusting wire an experimental pull. The boat remained motionless, but the protesting squeal of rusty metal penetrated the night.
I dropped to the ground. A second later the hut door opened and I saw the outline of a rebel soldier, the barrel of his gun black against the sky. He made a desultory search around the hut, but he found nothing and moments later I heard the bang of the door.
I waited ten minutes, then knotted the carrying loop of my rifle, clenched the strap in my teeth and lowered myself into the water. I began to haul myself along the cable, hand over hand, my head tilted back to help keep the rifle free of the water.
Dark shapes sent my heart racing as they swirled past me. They were only branches but, to my frightened eyes in the gloom of the night, each looked like a water snake or an alligator.
My arms were aching with the effort and I began to shiver with cold. I forced myself on again, but had hardly moved when a log, carried on the current, crashed into my shoulder. I gasped with shock.
Just as I felt I could go no further and my numbed fingers were beginning to lose their grip on the cable, my right hand bumped against something hard. The shallow, metal, flat-bottomed ferryboat was no more than ten feet long and less than half that in width. I worked my way alongside it and crawled out on to the bank. I lay gasping on the mud, waiting for my strength to return.
I stared towards the hut, straining my ears for any sound, then began to work on the rotting post that held the steel cable. I heaved at it with all my strength, but it barely moved.
I saw the pale disc of Layla’s face watching me from the far bank. I had to release the boat. It was our only hope. I knew what I had to do – for her as well as for me.
I crouched down behind the ferryboat no more than five yards from the hut and set the rifle on automatic. I aimed six inches above the ground and then raked the hut from left to right and right to left. I heard a scream. Then, a rebel trailing one leg behind him lurched through the door of the hut, shooting without aiming as he stumbled towards the boat where I lay hidden. I fired another burst. The impacts hurled him back against the wall of the hut and he slumped to the ground and lay still. I put another burst into the hut to be sure, then I stepped out of cover and moved to the doorway.
In the faint glow of the embers from their dying fire, I could see another body lying inside the hut. This was no soldier. The ferryman had been unarmed and unprotected, wearing only shorts and a faded T-shirt. The shots I had fired had hit him in the head, chest and thigh as he lay asleep. The burning t
aste of bile was in my throat as a wave of shame swept over me.
I searched the hut, aware that every second was now vital. The noise of the gunfire would have been heard for miles up and down the river, and even now a rebel patrol might be moving to investigate.
I had hoped to find an axe or a shovel but there was only a panga. I took it outside.
I ran to the dead soldier, intending to use his rifle as a crowbar, but as I picked it up I saw a grenade hanging from his belt. I hacked at the post with the panga until I had carved out a rough hollow beneath the cable. Then I forced the grenade into it, pulled the pin and sprinted for the cover of the boat. There was a flash and a blast and I heard shrapnel rattle against the metal hull.
I ran back to the post. Most of the cable had been shredded but a few strands still held. I picked up the panga and hacked at them.
There was a crack as the last strand snapped. The ferryboat began to drift away from the bank. I ran down the slippery mud bank and half-jumped, half-dived for the boat, just managing to catch the gunwale as it swirled away on the current. I dragged myself up and over the side and fell on to the bottom boards. Still attached to the cable on the far bank, the boat swung in a pendulum curve out across the water, past the midpoint of the river and in towards the far bank. Then the cable tautened and the boat held station, some twenty yards from the water’s edge.
I called to Layla but she was already racing along the bank towards me. As she began wading out towards the boat, I heard a scraping sound and then a twang as the cable pulled free of the guidehole in the stern. The end snaked past me. It was checked for a moment by the guidehole on the bow of the boat, then it pulled clear and fell away with a splash.
Layla lunged for the gunwale as the boat gathered speed, and I grabbed her arm and dragged her bodily into the boat. We lay flat, gasping with exertion, as our craft moved away downstream.
We were soon well downriver of the ferryman’s hut, carried headlong by the rip of the current. Within seconds the fear of striking a rock in the darkness pushed me upright. There was no rudder, only a long punt pole lying in the bottom of the boat. I trailed it over the stern and used it as a makeshift rudder. Eventually, when we encountered a long stretch of rapids, I tried to steer for the bank, but the strength of the current was too great and we were carried sideways towards the rocks. The noise of the rapids reverberated around us as we entered a steep ravine, its walls smoothed and scoured by the force of rainy season floods. I could barely steer.
I shipped the punt pole, and Layla and I clung to the sides of the boat with both hands as it barrelled through the water, cannoning off the flanks of the rocks in its path. Finally our luck ran out. The boat was driven headlong on to a massive rock in the centre of the channel. I felt a bone-jarring shock and was thrown out.
As it was swept away into the darkness, I heard Layla scream, then I was fighting for my life, floundering and only just keeping my head above water. The rapids hurled me onwards. I was bumped and battered so hard from rock to rock that I could hardly draw breath. My fingers clawed for grip on the smooth, slimy rocks but each time I was dragged away again. I could see nothing in the darkness and hear nothing but the thunder of the water echoing from the bare rock walls of the gorge. It was as much as I could manage to gulp in a fresh mouthful of air before the next surge of water swept over my face and whirled me away again downstream.
The thunder of the rapids seemed to fade, then the waters again closed over my head and blackness enveloped me.
I regained consciousness, choking and retching. I could feel water still lapping round my legs but there was gritty sand against my cheek. Then strong hands pressed down on my chest and a fresh spasm of coughing shook me as more water poured from my mouth.
I opened my eyes. Layla sat astride me. When she saw me looking at her, she hugged me and kissed my face. ‘Thank God. I thought I’d lost you.’
I raised my head a little. The boat was drawn up on the narrow beach a few feet away. Upstream to my right, I could make out the rapids spilling out of the entrance to the canyon. The river flowed fast and silent past the beach where I lay. I pushed myself up to a sitting position and took a few deep breaths. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
In the grey light of approaching dawn, we clambered back into the boat and Layla pushed off with the pole. We slipped downstream, fast at first, but as we drifted farther from the rapids, the river began to meander on a leisurely course across the marshlands that separated us from the coast.
We drifted with the current, peering into the water, trying to discern the telltale eddies troubling the surface as the river passed over shallows and swirled around sandbars and sunken rocks. Three times we had to beach the boat and half-drag, half-carry it over the shallows to the next navigable stretch.
The riverbank was now barely a foot above the surface of the water. We passed islands from which palm trees grew. Herons stalked through the shallows, stabbing at the black mud with their beaks.
The river divided and then split again and, as the sky lightened, we found ourselves drifting through a series of progressively narrower and more sluggish waterways, with the mangroves growing so close around us that they scraped the sides of the boat.
Finally we came to a mud flat and a slight break in the wall of mangroves. As I stared at the mud in the dawn light, I saw a series of footprints leading away from the water. Whatever the dangers it might herald, it at least promised a way out of the swamps. We dragged the boat out of the water and began to follow the trail. Stumbling over submerged roots, we worked our way at snail’s pace through the thickets, trying to steer a course between the main channel of the river and the first signs of habitation – the settlements fringing the shore.
As we plodded on, exhausted and weak from hunger, the path became better defined. Palm logs were laid as bridges over the creeks and small rivers, and among the mangroves were patches of paddy fields studded with vivid green rice shoots.
At last the mangroves began to thin and the track started to open out ahead of us. After the gloom of the swamp, I had to shield my eyes from the morning light.
The tide was low and the river channel was flanked by broad expanses of glistening mud. Boats were drawn up on the opposite bank. The near bank was empty. A steep hillside half a mile ahead hid Freetown from us, but I could see smoke rising from its shanty town.
‘If we can get past here we should be safe,’ I said.
‘Always assuming the rebels haven’t attacked the capital while we’ve been making our way back here,’ Layla said.
‘Let’s assume the worst but hope for the best,’ I said.
We struck out along the bank. It was slow going, skirting treacherous stretches of mud that sucked at our legs like quicksand, and picking our way over rotting logs and past shacks and shanties that were perched just above the high-water mark.
Suddenly a figure appeared no more than thirty yards in front of us. We dropped to the ground and froze. A woman walked out to the edge of the river, her footprints black against the wet mud. She filled a cooking pot with water and then returned the way she had come.
We moved on again, our progress slower and slower as more people appeared at the river’s edge to wash or fetch water. As we passed the mouth of a filthy street lined with mean shacks, a dog barked at us and then slunk away between two huts.
My heart was in my mouth. If the alarm was raised we would quickly be surrounded by hundreds of people. I had seen some of the inhabitants of the shanty town at work on the way in from the airport the day I had arrived in Sierra Leone. They might hand us over to the rebels, or they might rob and murder us themselves.
I was torn between the need to avoid rousing the people and a wave of panic that made me want to run headlong for the mouth of the river and the relative safety of the beaches that lay beyond.
As we rounded a bend we came face to face with a woman carrying a bucket of water on her head. She froze for a moment, her jaw dropping with astonishment at
seeing us there. Then she dropped the bucket and turned and ran.
Layla laid a restraining hand on my arm. ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ she said. ‘Let’s just keep moving.’
Past the last, ragged fringes of the shanty town the mud began to give way to yellow sand, speckled with grey grass stalks. I heard the roar of breakers and we hurried on, along a beach alive with small crabs. The fronds of the ragged palms fringing the sands rustled overhead like dry brown paper.
Chapter Eight
We worked our way along the deserted beach until we were almost directly behind our hotel. Then we crawled forward through the dune grass and peered out at the building and the city beyond.
My head was pounding. I ran my tongue over my dry, cracked lips. We needed water. I felt an overpowering urge to run straight to the hotel, but I fought it down. We had been out of touch for days. Had a rebel offensive been launched against the capital, we could be heading straight into a deathtrap.
We lay in hiding, watching and waiting. The streets were almost deserted – a worrying sign that something was wrong – and yet there was a disarming air of normality about the few people and vehicles we did see moving about. It was the arrival of a delivery van at the rear of the hotel that led to my next movements. The scent of warm bread wafting to us on the breeze set the saliva flowing in my mouth and my stomach rumbled in anticipation.
‘Come on,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘It’s OK, I’m sure of it.’ We walked down the slope from the dunes, crossed the concrete access road and entered the building.
There was a handful of people in the lobby. None carried weapons and I felt the tension ebbing from me. The hotel guests lapsed into a stunned silence as we walked in. I caught a glimpse of our reflections in a mirror and could see why. Two mud-stained, wild-eyed, near skeletons stared back.
The Lebanese owner peered at me from behind the reception desk, trying to identify the mud-covered stranger in front of him.
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