He took the girl by the arm, pulled her towards the streaks of orange-yellow light that fell through the shutters, cast his eye quickly over her body. The slip of a dress barely covered her, ugly welts on her arms and legs from where she’d been beaten.
He shook his head. “Come, viens,” he said, taking her hand and leading her out of the door. She went with him. Something about the short fat man meant she didn’t feel threatened. His eyes. The tone of his voice. Monsieur Blanc wasn’t thinking about what he would do with her. What he would tell Clement. Just wanted to get her out of that room.
“Where you take me?” She said. He was surprised, hadn’t expected her to be able to speak English. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
“I don’t know. Home? Where do you live?” The girl shrugged.
“Far,” was all she said in reply. He took her hand and led her out of the room, along the corridor. He tapped on the door of the room where they were keeping Jack. No answer. He tapped again. A small boy opened it a fraction. Monsieur Blanc pushed past him and entered the room.
Jack strained his neck, shifted himself onto his elbows. The boy with the gun shouted, his voice high, unbroken. Monsieur Blanc shooed him away.
“Did you hear it?” Jack said, that half-croak back again, same as he’d had when he escaped from the lab.
“Did I hear what?” Monsieur Blanc asked, both irritated and relieved that the boy was alive and asking questions.
“The engines. The props. The sound of the Hercules. They’re sending in the big guns. My guess is they’ll be a troop of gun-toting soldiers here in the morning, courtesy of the British army.”
Monsieur Blanc stepped towards him, shaking his finger. “You’re lying. I didn’t hear anything. I would have noticed.” He said. Jack lay back down. “Please yourself. You don’t have to believe me. And I’m guessing Nbotou hasn’t got the facilities to test the devices here, otherwise you’d probably be hanging from the monkey puzzle tree in the courtyard by your intestines.” Jack caught sight of the girl standing warily behind Monsieur Blanc.
“Who’s your friend?” He asked, pointing at the girl.
“No one. Just a child Nbotou thinks he can treat like a dog.”
“What are you going to do with her?” Jack asked, frowning.
“I don’t know,” Monsieur Blanc replied, wearily wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Get her out of here.” He added weakly.
“Very charitable. Wouldn’t have put you down as an envoy for bloody Unicef.” Jack said, his tone heavy with sarcasm.
“For God’s sake, shut up,” Monsieur Blanc replied irritably. “How many times do you have to be kidnapped, cut open, and beaten before you finally stop talking?” Exasperation in his voice, but also a grudging respect. The man was resilient. He pulled a crate close to the makeshift operating table and signalled to the boy by the door. “Food and drink please. Chop chop!” He clapped his hands together. The boy darted out of the room.
Monsieur Blanc leant close to Jack, spoke quietly. “When I took out the device I noticed it wasn’t attached to living tissue. Which would support your claim that this is a setup. But why here, why Nbotou, why British Secret Services? He is a tyrant, a despicable man, but that has never been enough for you British to take someone out before. Usually you are quite happy to let warlords be warlords, run their own little fiefdoms. As long as it doesn’t interfere with your economic interests.” Jack heaved himself onto the edge of the table, the blood rushing away from his head, made him feel dizzy. “Who knows? What’s he got, aside from the coltan? Is the stuff really that valuable?”
“To a weapons manufacturer maybe.” Monsieur Blanc sighed. A long day. It was going to be a long night too. “This is very fucked-up.” He said at last. Jack realised it was the only time he had ever heard the man swear. His French accent put an odd emphasis on the word, an effect that would have been comic in any other situation.
“I should never have got involved. You know Jack, sometimes it is the big corporations that do the worst, that are the worst. They buy the backing of governments, set themselves above the law.”
The boy arrived carrying a plate of food in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. The large machine gun was slung precariously over his shoulder. Monsieur Blanc and Jack had the same thought. If he trips and drops the gun it could send a live round into any corner of the room. They watched him make his way over the creaking wooden floorboards, he handed the food and drink to Monsieur Blanc, and there was a collective sigh of relief.
“How many of them do you think die from accidental shootings a year?” Jack asked, taking the plate of food from Monsieur Blanc and downing the beer. It swirled, cold and delicious, down his throat and into his empty belly.
“Quite a few. Like the food?” Jack didn’t answer, too busy stuffing the spicy stew into his mouth. “I grew up on dodgy Croydon kebabs with chilli sauce. This is something of an improvement.” He shovelled another mouthful of food in. “You really think the people who employed you would go to all this effort to secure supplies coltan?” He asked.
Monsieur Blanc shrugged. “I think they would do a lot worse. If they need the metal to fulfil a contract there’s no knowing how far they’d go. And Nbotou’s the perfect target. Large amounts of the stuff here. Processed and held in reserve. If they’re planning to send people in to take him out they better be good. Half the soldiers might be children but they know this jungle like the back of their hands. Know where the mines are, can shimmy up the trees and take them out from above before they even know they’re under attack.” He paused and looked at Jack.
“The biggest mistake they could make would be to under-estimate a man like Clement. He’s taken control of this area for a reason. He knows how to fight.”
46
Two chutes deployed. Now three, four. Opening up like rain clouds over the forest canopy. Puffs of smoke. Air rushing past. Ed strained to check the altimeter on his wrist. Two more seconds. One, two. Rip-cord pulled at the last moment. The sudden yank backwards, jerking his shoulders upright, horizontal to vertical in a fraction of a second. The rushing sound ceased. The speed of descent dramatically slowed. He could see nine other chutes. A relief. They’d all opened. Now he just had to hope the navigator had got the bearings right and they weren’t going to land in the treetops. He could see a snaking silver trail through the darkness. The river Congo. And over to the right the ghoulish glow of yellow floodlights. Had to be Clement’s camp. Where was the airstrip? No time to check, he was scanning the ground below him, the clearing visible now. A dull grey roundish shape against the deeper blacks of the jungle.
Two parachutes disappeared, extinguished. Then another. And another. The team were landing, pulling in their chutes as soon as they hit the ground. The treetops reached up towards him, he sailed past, slowing himself the moment before his feet touched the ground. An expert landing. He jogged forwards, turned and tugged the chute in, hefting the pack off his shoulder and bundling it all together. Perfect conditions for a night jump. Good visibility, low wind and no rain. So far so good. Footsteps running towards him, the other members of the team. He didn’t say anything, just signalled to the tree line. They sprinted towards it, into the cover of the undergrowth.
The two boys acting as lookouts kept their eyes trained on the night sky, not sure what they’d seen. The different shades that had flickered briefly against the clouds were long gone. No way of knowing what had caused them. They climbed down from their positions and ran to the house. Was this something to bother Clement with? The big boss? He’d beaten a boy half to death for interrupting a black jack game once before. Depended on how much he had been drinking.
They walked uneasily towards the dining room, the booming laughter from Clement echoing along the hallway. The other guests provided a nervous accompaniment, bad actors trying laugh convincingly in a surreal play. The boy who’d shimmied up the tree pushed the door open first, he was a year older than his friend
and determined to show how brave he was. He marched up to the dining table and executed an untidy salute. Nobody noticed him. Clement had opened a bottle of whiskey and was pouring a generous measure into Gustav’s glass.
“I tell you my friend, do not drink that jungle brew, it’ll make you blind. I swear to God.” He laughed loudly.
“At least that was my excuse last time Uko dragged me to one of Kinshasa’s more expensive brothels.”
The boy didn’t know what to do, whether to interrupt the boss man or creep back out the room.
“Sah, please sah,” he said quietly. Arm still raised above his head in a mock salute. Clement didn’t hear. The boy stepped closer, tapped him lightly on the shoulder. Clement spun round drunkenly, eyes rolling in his head, reached for his pistol and nearly fell off his chair. The boy jumped back nervously, his friend cowered against the door. Clement staggered to his feet, one hand resting on the edge of the table.
The barrel of the gun was unsteady, Clement’s aim shifting indecisively between one boy and the other. “I swear there are two of you. I must be more drunk than I thought!” More booming laughter followed as he slipped the weapon back into his holster.
“Now tell me soldier, what did you see in the skies?” He asked, placing a heavy hand on the shoulder of the nearest boy.
“I don’t know sah. Against the clouds. A flicker of something. We both saw.” Clements eyes narrowed.
“A flicker. Moving across the sky or downwards?” The other boy stepped forwards, realising they weren’t about to be beaten.
“Downwards. But only for a second.” Clement nodded. Despite the amount of alcohol he had drunk he was still thinking clearly. “Take two other boys, two of the younger ones. Do not wear army clothes. Do not take guns or knives. Just some sticks. I want you to run to where you saw the shapes in the sky. Can you do that? For tonight you are not soldiers. Remember that. You are children hunting bush meat by night, setting traps. To bring your mama a nice meal in the morning. Do you understand?”
The two boys nodded solemnly. “Good, now if you find anything, broken branches, any trace of people who should not be in our lands, you are to run straight back and let me know. Is that clear?”
He waved the two boys away, swirling the contents of his glass thoughtfully. A flicker against the skies, hardly a reason to panic, but combined with the sound of the engine . . . He drained the glass. Always best to go with your instinct, he thought, setting it down noisily on the table.
47
“So what’s your plan?” Jack asked, “now you’re a responsible family man an’ all”, he said, gesturing at the girl standing behind Monsieur Blanc. “And there’s going to be a shit storm of apocalyptic proportions.”
Monsieur Blanc took out his silk handkerchief and dabbed at his forehead. “I doubt any shit storm, as you call it, will take place tonight. If someone has been dropped into the jungle they’ll need a day to set up, get in position, carry out their reconnaissance. And seeing as a helicopter is picking me and Gustav up tomorrow night from Clement’s runway, I am confident we should be able to get away.” He folded the handkerchief into a neat square and put it back into his pocket. “Frankly a helicopter is the safest way to fly in and out of this area. Landing anything bigger than a twin engine Cessna on that airstrip is asking an awful lot from your pilot.” He looked at the girl. “We will return you to your village won’t we? You can point it out from the sky.” The girl nodded, a ghost of a smile flashing briefly over her lips. Monsieur Blanc turned back to Jack. “I’ll tell Clement I found her wandering the corridors up here and would like to keep her with me.”
“You think he’ll buy that?” Jack asked. Monsieur Blanc shrugged, “he is a man, he will assume another man has the same base reasons as he would for making such a request. In any case women are nothing more than objects to him, once he’s finished with them he throws them to the wolves,” he walked towards the window, “lets the boy soldiers do what they want to them, brutalise and rape them, leave them for dead.” He made a strange tutting sound, shook his head.
Jack leant back on the makeshift operating table, gingerly touching the row of neat stitches with his fingertips. It occurred to him that Monsieur Blanc, although ruthless in his business dealings, and quite content to work with despicable men, had some kind of moral code, something that set him apart from a man like Nbotou. A strange contradiction.
“You did a good job of sewing me up, a lot neater than they managed at MI6. Now I don’t wish to impose, but is there perchance room in your helicopter for me?” He asked, somehow managing to pull his face into what he hoped was a winning grin. Monsieur Blanc turned to him and shook his head.
“Regretfully no,” he said flatly. “But I have no interest in killing where it is not necessary, so I do not intend to take your life.”
“Very considerate of you,” Jack replied.
“Shut up.” He said in a heartbeat. “You can either take your chances tonight and attempt to escape—the guard on this room shouldn’t be too much trouble and by this time of night most of the boys outside are either high or blind drunk. Or both. And if that doesn’t appeal, you can go with Gustav into the jungle tomorrow. He’ll take one of the jeeps, tell Nbotou he is driving you away from his lands to shoot and bury you.”
“And that’s the better option?” Jack asked, incredulously.
“He will not shoot you. I will give him strict instructions. He is usually very obedient.” Monsieur Blanc said, a hint of a smile on his lips as he turned to leave the room. “I know the urge to escape is strong, but I think in this case the second option really is better. Try and get some rest tonight. I will see to it that you’re brought some food tomorrow.” Jack nodded and lay back down on the bed.
“You know what would be really useful?” He asked as Monsieur Blanc was about to leave the room. “A map and a compass.”
48
Ed Garner switched on the GPS. His men had grouped in standard lookout formation. Four men on the perimeter, the rest at the centre. Equipment checks carried out, Ed was calling up the coordinates for their two targets: the runway and Clement’s camp.
The on-screen map showed their position, ten miles from the runway and 12 miles from the house. On any other terrain it would take no more than ninety minutes to get to each location, a brisk jog, full kit on the back. Not so fast you used up your energy reserves. The jungle was different. All the men on this mission had jungle experience and all of them knew progress could be considerably slower through the thick undergrowth. If there weren’t established tracks from animals or people they’d have to machete their way through and it would take three times as long.
“We’re splitting into two groups, five men in each.” Ed said, casting a glance at his men. Team one will head to the airstrip.” He read the coordinates out. “Everyone got that? Gavin, I want you to head that team,” Gavin McCallister nodded. The surly Scot who’d proved so effective at demolishing Marcon Pharmaceuticals was looking forward to setting off a nice little firework display at the airstrip.
“Remember, I don’t want any damage to the runway itself. Surrounding buildings fine, blow them sky high, but the tarmac needs to stay intact.” Gav nodded. “Once the explosives and charges are in place, radio me and I’ll forward you our GPS position. The rest of us will be keeping the Camp under surveillance. We have the usual kit. Long range mics to hear what’s going on, thermal imaging cameras to get an idea of which rooms are used. Most likely we’ll be in the treetops, unless there’s some real cover on the ground. It’ll be daybreak by the time you have the charges set up, so you need to be fucking careful on your way back to us. I’ve no idea what time the camp rises but there’s sure to be some lookouts. If you’re spotted shoot to kill. Silencers on please.”
Gav nodded, adrenalin flowing at the prospect of getting on with the mission.
“Come on fellas, you heard what the man said. Let’s be off. I’ll lead with the GPS. Try and keep
up.”
“Don’t think we’ll have any problems doing that ya fat bastard.” Mick replied with a grin. Gav was already away, pushing through the bush, it wasn’t thick. He turned, “ten metres between each man, you’ll need your night vision if those clouds come back over the moon.”
Ed watched them disappear into the night, the sound of the jungle loud in his ears, the crickets and cicadas, shrill as a dentist’s drill.
“Ok, the rest of you gather round. According to the satellite images there’s two vantage points on either side of the camp, both high in the trees. If we can get a good position we’ll be able to build up a clear picture of how this camp functions. Maybe even send in a batch of RPGs from there once the fireworks have gone off at the runway. See who runs out the building. If we can’t do this in one shot we’re fucked. We’ll have to make our way out of here through the jungle, across Lake Tanganyika and into Uganda. And I for one do not relish the thought of a hundred mile jungle trek followed by a very long swim, so please, stay focused. It’s as straightforward as a raid on a warlord’s camp can be, which for you boys should be a walk in the park.” The men around him nodded, their faces tense.
Ed checked his watch, “Right, behind me. Ten metres between us. Let’s see if we can get in position before dawn.”
Jack lay back on the table, pretending to sleep. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the boy who was supposed to be guarding him. The child looked bored, only half-awake. His attention distracted by the ant that crawled over the barrel of his gun. It would be easy to overpower him, maybe even take his weapon, but getting out of the house and into the jungle was another matter. Could he really trust Monsieur Blanc? The man was an enigma. Full of contradictions, but there seemed something else to him, the sense that you could take him at his word, which was more than he’d felt from Sir Clive. He closed his eyes and decided to wait it out, let his body, which was clamouring for sleep, drift into a restful state.
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