Hellfire

by Chris Ryan

  On the downside, the storm limited their speed, badly. Caitlin struggled to keep a steady sixty-five mph. For two hours they travelled slowly, but without incident. The rain continued – Danny realised that the storm must be following them north. At 01.00, he decided it was time to swap drivers. ‘Pull over,’ he told Caitlin. Once they were on the side of the road, he looked over at Ripley. ‘Take the wheel,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll drive,’ Tony announced, opening his side door before Ripley could even move. ‘Don’t want to end up in a ditch.’

  A dangerous shadow fell across Ripley’s face as Tony and Caitlin walked round the back of the car to swap places. ‘Leave it, mucker,’ Danny said quietly. Ripley remained quiet, but didn’t look happy.

  Behind the wheel, Tony floored the vehicle. Danny had to concede that he was a good driver. Better than Caitlin. He managed safely to keep their speed above seventy mph for the next two hours, while Caitlin caught up on her sleep. As they drove, Tony looked over his shoulder to check she wasn’t awake. ‘What do you think of the bird?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘She can handle herself,’ Danny said. He found himself remembering the sweat on her nose and the way her lips parted when she looked at him. Then he remembered Clara.

  ‘Yeah.’ Tony sniffed. ‘She’s a ruthless bitch. She’s a looker too. I might have a crack at her.’ He glanced at Danny. ‘Unless you get there first,’ he said.

  Danny kept his eyes on the road ahead.

  By the time they reached the point where the highway crossed the River Niger, it was already 03.00 hrs. Danny estimated that they were at least seventy-five klicks further south than he wanted to be by now. But there was nothing they could do, other than keep their foot down.

  ‘We need to refuel,’ Tony said as they emerged on the northern side of a small town called Oddah. Danny nodded and Tony pulled over on to a marshy puddle to the side of the road. Danny jumped out. He saw, just ten metres from the side of the road, one of the Toyota Coasters lying upturned and long-abandoned. As he removed one of the jerrycans from the boot and carefully poured the precious fuel into the vehicle, he saw another vehicle on the other side, a saloon car perhaps, absolutely totalled. Welcome to Africa.

  Once the tank was full, he walked round to the driver’s side and opened Tony’s door. ‘Ripley’s driving now,’ he said. Tony looked like he was going to argue, but then glanced over at Caitlin and seemed to change his mind. He climbed out of the car and swapped places with Ripley.

  The state of the road made a burst tyre almost inevitable. It happened at 04.30 hrs, a huge bang from the front left-hand side just as they were reaching the outskirts of Abuja. ‘What the fuck!’ Tony shouted from the back. The blow-out didn’t delay them more than ten minutes, thanks to the powerful hi-lift jack, but they were all aware that another would leave them without a tyre. ‘Try to keep us on the road, mucker,’ Tony said from the back as Ripley started off again.

  Ripley was obviously struggling to keep his cool with Tony. Danny decided to divert his attention from the arsehole in the back. ‘How old are your kids again, mucker?’

  Ripley shot Danny a sharp look. On an op like this, family discussion were normally off-limits – an unspoken agreement that nobody wanted to be reminded of their loved ones when they were tooled up and moving into a combat situation. But beneath his gruff exterior, Ripley was a family man who never gave up an opportunity to talk about them. Now his face lightened. ‘Eleven and nine. The oldest just got his first skateboard,’ he said. ‘Took him to a halfpipe the other day.’ He looked into the rear-view mirror. Danny did too, and saw that Tony had his eyes closed. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Ripley said. ‘I can deal with him.’

  They headed relentlessly north.

  Dawn hit half an hour later. It brought with it an improvement in the weather conditions, but Danny knew it would make other aspects of the journey more difficult. Sure enough, within fifteen minutes they saw, through the grey, early morning light, men in the road a hundred metres up ahead. ‘Road block,’ he said tensely, and he sensed Tony and Caitlin loosening their sidearms in their holsters. Four white guys with assault rifles stashed the length of the vehicle would cause a stir, no question.

  Fifty metres. There were no other vehicles at the road block. ‘Six men,’ Danny counted. ‘Three with weapons. AK-47.’ They wore army fatigues that looked grey in the half light, but he noticed that the three armed guards had painted parts of their weapons in bright, vibrant colours – one had a yellow barrel, another a red stock – like they were children’s toys.

  ‘I’d say they’re regular army,’ Caitlin said quietly.

  ‘Stop about ten metres from the first guard,’ Danny said.

  Ripley came to a gradual halt. Danny found himself automatically calculating the distances between them and the guards: ten metres to the guy with the yellow barrel, five more metres to the two other armed guards, and another ten metres to the remaining three, who were in a little group smoking cigarettes. The red tips of their fags stood out like fireflies in the grey dawn. They all had confident, almost arrogant looks on their faces, as if their brightly coloured weapons made them untouchable. They had no idea that at a single word from Danny, the unit would have them down in less than five seconds.

  But dead bodies would make people ask questions, and they couldn’t afford to be slowed down by anyone trailing them. Danny looked back at Caitlin and Tony. ‘We only fight if we can’t buy our way through,’ he instructed.

  ‘It’ll be too late by then,’ Tony said, his voice taut. Danny ignored him. But he was aware of both Tony and Caitlin winding down their windows, ready to engage with their weapons if the situation required it.

  ‘Keep the engine running,’ he told Ripley. He nodded, his hands still gripping the wheel, ready to move if necessary.

  Danny removed the full wallet the military attaché had supplied them with before they left, removed half the notes, then stepped outside the car. He raised his hands to show he was holding nothing but the wallet, and smiled broadly.

  The guy with the yellow AK barrel stepped casually forward. He had an arrogant expression, but Danny noticed that his eyes kept flickering towards the wallet.

  ‘Hey,’ the guard called. ‘White man, what you doing here?’

  Danny kept walking. ‘Passing through,’ he called. ‘Heading into Niger.’

  The guard gave an unpleasant grin, as if heading into Niger was a sure way to run into trouble. ‘Three men, one woman? What is it, gangbang?’

  Danny just gave him a broader grin. ‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘Hey, your job looks like thirsty work. You’d rather be having a beer than standing here talking to me, right?’

  ‘Beer is expensive, white man.’ The guard rubbed his thumb and fingers together.

  Danny was a metre in front of him now. ‘Maybe I could buy you one,’ he said.

  The guard didn’t answer, but looked meaningfully at the wallet. Danny pulled out the stash of notes. ‘It’s all I have,’ he said.

  The guard gave an unimpressed sniff. But he also licked his lips, and Danny knew he was through. He handed over the notes, and the guard casually put them in his pocket. Then he turned his back on Danny and wandered over to his two mates.

  ‘Hey!’ Danny called. ‘What are the roads north of here like?’

  ‘Roads are very good,’ said the guard dismissively, ‘if you like to swim.’ He chuckled to himself, then turned back to his mates.

  Nothing on earth would have made Danny turn his back on three armed men, no matter how much he’d just bribed them. He made a gesture with his right hand. Immediately, the Range Rover pulled up beside him. Danny slipped back into the passenger seat. As Ripley drove them through the road block, he felt the hot glare of all six guards on them, and saw a flash of yellow gun barrel. But a minute later they were out of sight.

  At 06.00 hrs they pulled off the main highway. The road to Chikunda headed off at a bearing of approximately 310 degrees. As a line on the map i
t looked like a perfectly good road. In reality it was little more than a rough track through dense, high vegetation. As the early morning wore on, the humidity started to increase again. It felt as if the air itself was going to burst with rain again. At 06.30 hrs, it did – stronger than before. Even with the windscreen wipers going full-speed, visibility was a scant five metres. Danny watched carefully through the windscreen, scanning the road ahead for unseen danger or threats . . .

  ‘STOP!’ he shouted suddenly.

  Ripley hammered the brakes. The Range Rover skidded badly. Ripley expertly drove into the skid in order to get control of the steering again, but with a lurch, Danny felt the two right-hand wheels rise for a good couple of seconds. They thumped back down on to the ground, but the vehicle still had forward momentum. They skidded down the dip in the road that Danny had only seen at the last minute. Mud and water splashed over the windscreen, completely obscuring their view as they came to a sudden, jolting stop.

  The engine died. Rain hammered on the roof of the car. ‘What the fuck have you done now?’ Tony shouted from the back.

  Danny wound down his window. One glance was enough to tell him what had happened. The dip in the road had flooded. It was like a fast-flowing river bisecting the road. They were stuck in the water, which reached at least a metre and a half up their vehicle. It was five metres from the higher ground where the road was dry, but there was no way they were getting out of here without any help.

  Danny’s mind immediately turned to the mechanical winch at the front of the vehicle. ‘We need to winch out!’ he called above the noise of the hammering rain. ‘There must be a river nearby that’s broken its banks – this flooding’s going to get worse. Ripley, keep the wheel. You two follow me.’

  They couldn’t open the doors because of the depth of the water. Scrambling out of the windows was their only option. Danny brought his personal weapon with him, slung over his shoulder with the barrel slightly submerged as he crashed down into the fast-moving swamp. As his feet hit the bottom, the vehicle shifted a few inches towards him.

  ‘We’ve got to hurry!’ Caitlin shouted over the thunderous sound of elements. Her face and hair were already soaked. ‘The current’s strong enough to take the vehicle with it!’ As she spoke, she stumbled in the water, and fell up to her shoulders. But Tony was right there, grabbing her with one strong arm, and getting her back on to her feet. She nodded gratefully at him, then stood firmly in the water, withstanding the current.

  Danny pushed his way through the water to the front of the vehicle. There were other reasons to move fast, other than the current. If a jungle river had burst its banks, it could bring anything with it. Debris, crocs, even hippos. They needed to get out of there as quickly as possible.

  The winch itself, fitted to the front of the vehicle, was submerged. Danny plunged his hands under the water and found the end of the winching cable. It had a carabiner at one end, which he tugged firmly, then started to wade across the current to the far side.

  He stopped. Figures were emerging through the driving rain. Four of them, walking abreast. Distance: twenty metres.

  Danny looked left and right. Tony and Caitlin were on either side. They had raised their rifles, and had crouched down slightly in the water to present less of a target.

  The Range Rover shifted again. Half a foot this time. Danny estimated that they had less than a minute before the current swept it away.

  The four figures had stopped. Danny waded forward. ‘Keep me covered!’ he shouted. ‘Any sudden movements, drop them!’

  He tugged the cable and moved forward. Ten tricky paces later he was emerging from the flood. Mud covered his saturated clothes, but the rain soon sluiced it away. He manoeuvred his personal weapon with one hand so that it was covering the four figures, but now he was closer he could make them out a bit better. They were all African. Two women, one man, and a child. ‘Don’t move!’ Danny roared at them. ‘Stay where you are and don’t move!’

  He quickly identified a sturdy tree eight metres away on the left-hand side of the road and dragged the winch cable towards it. He looped the cable round the tree, then clipped the carabiner back round the cable. He gave it a precautionary tug, then turned back and gave Ripley a thumbs-up. There was a sudden, high-pitched grinding sound above the rain as the cable went suddenly taut. The Range Rover shifted its angle in the water so it was facing the tree, then slowly started to move forward.

  Tony and Caitlin flanked the vehicle, still keeping low, their weapons still aimed at the four figures. Danny kept the butt of his own weapon pressed hard into his shoulder and approached them through the rain. He reduced the distance between them to ten metres. They didn’t move. They stood, bedraggled and quite motionless. Danny saw that one of the women had her arm around the man’s shoulders. The man was holding his own right arm across his stomach, as though it was broken.

  Only when Danny took a couple more paces forward did he see that the man’s right hand was missing.

  He looked back again. The vehicle was out of the ditch, but huge quantities of water were still gushing from underneath the chassis. Caitlin was untying the winch cable and Tony – hair and face dripping, clothes drenched – was striding up to the four figures, weapons still raised. ‘Get out of the fucking road!’ he shouted at the Africans. But as he spoke, the man’s knees went and he collapsed to the floor. The woman holding him wailed, and the kid ran towards Danny, seemingly oblivious to his weapon, and tugged on his clothes.

  ‘Help us!’ she cried. ‘My father need medicine! Help us!’

  Danny made the decision to lower his weapon. Tony kept his engaged as Danny strode up to the collapsed man, then crouched down beside him.

  ‘What happened?’ he shouted through the rain at the woman who was still holding him.

  ‘Boko Haram!’ the woman cried. ‘They come to our village.’ She pointed back up the road. ‘They kill many people. We run away, but they stop us in the road. They do this.’ She indicated the severed wrist.

  Danny stood up. Ripley was out of the car, two metres behind him. ‘We can’t wait,’ he said. ‘And the old boy’s fucked.’

  Danny nodded. Ripley was right. ‘Get back to the car,’ he told both men. Ripley jogged back towards the vehicle, but Tony loitered. Caitlin was trying to turn the vehicle’s engine over. It coughed and spluttered several times, but burst into life on the fifth go. Ripley took his place in the back, but as Danny approached the car with Tony, the kid, who had followed, started tugging on his clothes again. ‘Please, mister. We need medicine. We need help.’

  Danny paused for a moment. A voice in his brain told him to ignore the child. Any medical supplies they left for the wounded man would be wasted: with an injury like that, out here, he was going to die, if not of blood loss then of infection. But then the kid tugged at him again with her desperate little hands. ‘Please mister,’ she begged.

  He thought of Clara. She would help the kid, no question.

  He wiped the streaming water from his face, then ran round to the back of the Range Rover and opened the boot. From inside his pack he pulled a small medical kit and withdrew some sterile bandaging.

  Tony joined him. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he said. ‘We might need that.’ He tried to grab the medical equipment, but Danny snatched it away. ‘A few fucking bandages isn’t going to do anything for him,’ Tony said. ‘He’s a goner.’

  ‘It’ll make the family feel like they’re helping.’

  He walked round to the front of the car, knelt down and handed the sterile bandaging to the kid. ‘That’s all I have,’ he lied. From the corner of his eye he could see Caitlin watching him from inside the car, her lips parted again.

  The child gave Danny a wide-eyed stare of gratitude. Danny looked over his shoulder towards the mother, who was standing a couple of metres away. ‘Have you seen any other white men on the road?’ he asked. And when she looked at him a bit perplexed, he pointed at the skin on his hand. ‘White skin, like mine?�
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  She glanced left and right, then nodded nervously.

  Danny stood up. ‘With Boko Haram?’ he asked. ‘The white men were with Boko Haram?’

  She nodded again, then held up two fingers. ‘Two men,’ she said. She held up her hands, wrists touching. ‘Tied,’ she said.

  Danny felt a surge of relief. He exchanged a look with Tony, then walked round the kid to get closer to the woman. ‘When?’ he said. ‘How long ago?’

  The woman thought for a moment, then held up three fingers. ‘Three hour,’ she said.

  ‘Shit,’ Danny hissed. A quick calculation put the hostages in Chikunda at 09.00 – earlier than Danny had previously estimated. Danny and Tony immediately turned back to the car, but suddenly the woman grabbed Danny’s arm. ‘Don’t go that way,’ she said. Her bloodshot eyes were wide open with warning. ‘There are bad things that way . . .’

  He shook her off, followed Tony back to the vehicle and climbed in. ‘Go,’ he told Caitlin. She moved off. The African family stood by the side of the road and solemnly watched them leave. The woman was muttering to herself. As they passed, she stared directly into Danny’s eyes and shook her head. He saw her mouth the words ‘bad things’.

  ‘You shouldn’t have given away our fucking supplies,’ Tony muttered from the back.

  Danny didn’t feel a moment’s regret. ‘Floor it,’ he told Caitlin. ‘Two tied-up white guys were on this road three hours ago. I reckon they’ll make it to Chikunda by 09.00.’ He glanced at Tony in the rear-view mirror. There was no hint of an apology in his face. He almost looked pissed off that Danny had been right.

  ‘At least we know they’re still alive,’ Caitlin said.

  Danny shook his head. ‘Wrong. We know they were alive three hours ago. If they were planning to execute the hostages in Chikunda, there’s a good chance they won’t fuck around. We might be too late.’