“It’s definite. It’s a poison. Over the past few weeks, the locals have been eating two large animals that were washed downstream. The fact that the beasts were already dead doesn’t seem to have caused them any pause. According to our interpreter, they saw the arrival of food as a gift from the Gods. They butchered it up with gusto and had a feast in which the whole village partook. Three days later, they started to fall sick. By the time we got here, they’d already burned six bodies. Now there are only a handful of an original thirty still alive. The children and the elderly are all gone, with only previously healthy adults having survived it, although even they are sorely sickened. Whatever the poison it, it puts people down hard and fast. I will send samples out tomorrow; our equipment here hasn’t been calibrated finely enough to isolate an active ingredient—we’ll need a more fully equipped lab for that. But at least all of us from the WHO are still well, thanks to sticking to our own food and water. The bad news is that nothing we have done has saved a single soul, but the good news is that it isn’t viral and it appears to be contained. We’ll be breaking camp and heading back downstream tomorrow. I hope to get the samples to you ASAP after that.”
Davies stood up from the camp stove with a mug of coffee for each of them.
“It says they were getting ready to be on their way home. Do you think we missed them, Cap?” the tall private said. “Could they have taken another route downriver and passed us by?”
“I don’t think they’d have left all this kit—and two unburied dead—behind them, lad,” Banks replied. “No. They were taken, I’m pretty sure of that. Whether they were taken alive or dead is what’s yet to be determined. Maybe the sarge will find us a clue either way.”
He got a partial answer when Hynd and Wiggins returned from their search of the banks.
“At least some of them walked out,” Hynd said as he poured a coffee for himself. “We found boot and trainer imprints on the bank a couple of hundred yards north of here. Signs that they went that way by boat too. I think we should head that way ourselves. That’s our best chance of seeking them out.”
Banks looked to the sky. The sun was already descending beyond the canopy.
“I’m not keen on taking a trip by canoe in unknown waters in the dark,” he said. “We’ll bed down here for the night and make a start upriver at first light.”
“There’s something else, Cap,” Hynd said. “We found other tracks too—and if you asked me to guess, I’d say they were made by something with the same footprint as yon thing we dragged out of the pot earlier.”
Banks told the returned sergeant and corporal about the email and the fact that the meat in the pot was supposed to have come from already dead beasts.
“So if the beasties were dead, what made the tracks then?” Wiggins asked.
“Fuck knows, Wiggo. An educated guess would be more beasties, but I know that’s not your strong point. But it doesn’t matter either way. Our top priority here is finding the WHO team. Let’s focus on that for the time being until we know more.”
By the time they’d cleared the tent of the mess of broken kit and computers and given a perfunctory burial to the two charred bodies, it was almost full dark. They retired to the main tent, pulled down the flaps leaving only one doorway open, and Davies started preparing a pot of field ration stew.
“I want a guard here all night,” Banks said when Hynd joined him in the doorway for a smoke. “Three-hour shifts. I’ll take the first one. Just because it’s quiet now, there’s no reason to get sloppy.”
“Wiggo and I found blood on the trail too, Cap,” Hynd said. “I don’t think the folks from here were taken willingly.”
“Aye, I’d kind of sussed that out already,” Banks replied dryly. “So here we are again, up shit creek.”
Hynd laughed and motioned towards the river and the canoes on the bank.
“At least we’ve got paddles this time.”
“Aye, but I’d like to have yon wee outboard our guide fucked off in. It was that strange foot that spooked him, wasn’t it?”
Hynd nodded.
“He buggered off sharpish as soon as he saw it, shouting what I’m guessing was some thing’s name.”
“There’s something right hinky here, Sarge,” Banks added. “I mean, something more than just Wiggo’s Marie Celeste bullshit.”
Hynd just nodded.
“Same as it ever was, Cap. Same as it ever was.”
After the smokes, Hynd went back to join the card game inside while Banks stood at the tent flap, watching full night descend on the camp. He’d been in jungles before, many of them over the years of his service, but he’d never been in one as deathly quiet as this. There was no bird noise, no splash of fish in the river. Even the buzz of the insects seemed soft and muted. Alongside that, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. His guts growled, a long-developed early warning system that he’d learned to trust over the years. He kept his rifle slung over his shoulder where it could be in his hands in seconds and smoked a succession of cigarettes. The red glow of burning ash was the only light in the black of the night.
Behind him, he heard the noises as the card game came to an end—Hynd, once again, had taken beer money from the younger men—and the team settled to get some rest.
Banks fell into that watchful yet almost asleep state that came naturally to him after the years he’d spent on other watches, other dark nights.
His watch passed uneventfully. At the end of his stint, Hynd arrived with another coffee and they had a smoke in the doorway. Just as Banks rubbed out the butt of the cigarette, something called out in the night, a high yelp, like an excited dog bark but from a more gravelly throat. It was not answered, and not repeated.
“Any ideas, Cap?” Hynd said.
“None that I want to share yet. Just keep your eyes open. I don’t think we’re alone out here.”
Five minutes later, Banks was asleep on the floor near the camp stove with only his pack for a pillow.
He woke to the smell of coffee, cigarette smoke, and the first dim light of dawn coming in through the entrance flap.
“Rise and shine, Cap,” Wiggins said. “Another glorious day in the corps.”
“If I had a cigar, I’d ram it up your arse,” Banks replied.
“If you had a cigar, I’d let you,” Wiggins replied and then had to dodge quickly aside to avoid a slap on the head from Hynd who had risen from the stove, the source of the coffee smells.
Banks rose, helped himself to a coffee, and with Hynd at his side went to the doorway where young Davies was on watch.
“Anything, lad?” he asked.
Davies shook his head.
“Nothing you can see, sir,” he replied. “I heard what sounded like barking in the distance but…”
“It wasn’t exactly like a dog, but something much bigger? Aye, we heard it too. If it’s in the distance, we can only hope it stays that way.”
He finished his coffee, took his time over a smoke, then ordered the team to get ready.
“It’s time to get this rescue mission underway.”
They moved out ten minutes later, heading for the canoes.
- 4 -
Hynd took the lead, sharing one of the long canoes with Privates Davies and Wilkins.
Banks and Wiggins followed behind, their canoe carrying the team’s backpacks and gear in lieu of the extra man.
Although they had to paddle upstream, it wasn’t hard going, the river being slow, winding, and sluggish in these parts. The scooped paddles, almost like giant soupspoons, drove them strongly through the water and Hynd soon got into a smooth rhythm that allowed his muscle memory to take over and his mind to concentrate on watching the shoreline on either side.
He couldn’t shake a feeling that they were being watched—and closely at that—by someone, or something, hidden under the thick canopy. He’d had the same feeling during his stretch on watch during the night, and it hadn’t faded any with the coming of the sun. W
hatever it was, he thought it was tracking alongside them upriver but he saw no sign of disturbance in the foliage. That either meant that he was imagining it or, more worrying, that it was an expert hunter in these conditions.
Not for the first time in the jungle, Hynd felt like an intruder, a man out of place in this almost primeval landscape. It didn’t help that it continued to be almost deathly silent. They hadn’t seen a bird all morning and the river itself flowed brown and quiet with no feeding fish to disturb the surface; the only splashes were the ones they made themselves as they paddled. It felt empty, or rather, emptied, for Hynd thought that whatever was following them might be the reason that everything else was keeping its head down. He expected an attack at every moment.
But none came.
The captain called for a break after an uneventful hour of paddling. Rather than haul up on shore, they made for a shallow pool in a turn of the river and held the two canoes together while Wiggins got a pot of coffee brewing in the belly of the second craft.
“Smoke them if you’ve got them,” Banks said and Hynd lit up gratefully, for here in the still pool the clouds of black flies had found them again and the smoke managed to disperse them just enough to cut down on their nuisance value.
“Did you see anything on the way up?” Banks asked him over a mug of coffee.
“Nope. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. My spidey-sense hasn’t stopped tingling all morning.”
“Mine too,” Banks replied.
“How far upriver do we go?”
“As far as we have to. But my gut is telling me we’re getting closer. Something’s going to give and it’s going to happen soon.”
When they set off paddling again ten minutes later, the captain’s words still echoed in Hynd’s ears. He felt much the same thing himself, instincts honed by many years of tight spots, sudden firefights, and explosive acts of violence.
Davies spoke up from behind him.
“The cap thinks we’re in for trouble, doesn’t he, Sarge?”
“Aye. And I agree with him. But trouble’s what we do, lad—it’s why they pay us the big money.”
He didn’t get a reply, for at that moment the quiet was broken by a bark, almost a roar, from somewhere on the left bank of the river. The greenery swayed and rustled, several large leaves dropped into the river to float away downstream, and the agitation in the foliage moved upstream, keeping pace with the canoes at first then steadily moving ahead. But no matter how hard Hynd peered, he couldn’t make out any sign of the animal—it had to be an animal, no human could have made that sound—that was causing the disruption.
“What the fuck was that?” Wiggins asked from the rear canoe as a quiet calm once again fell over the river.
“Gorilla?” Davies said. “We’re at the edge of their territory from what I remember.”
“If that was a gorilla, it was a big bugger,” Hynd said.
“Fucking Mighty Joe Young,” Wiggins replied. “That’s all we need.”
“It wasn’t a gorilla,” Banks said. “I’ve encountered gorillas before. They move quietly and gently in the main, keeping to themselves. Whatever yon beast was, it wanted us to know it was there.”
“Aye?” Wiggins said. “Well, it got my attention. I damn near pished myself. If it’s a fag it’s after, it can ask nicely the next time.”
Hynd kept a close eye on the left bank for a good while after that but there was no recurrence of any barking or branch shaking. They continued upstream in relative silence, punctuated only by Wiggins’ supply of risqué gorilla jokes that eventually earned him a rebuke from the captain.
“Wiggo, if you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m going to give you to the first gorilla we see, male or female, then we’ll see if they find you funny.”
“I already know the Sarge’s wife,” Wiggins replied.
That would normally earn him a comeback from the sergeant. Although he’d been widowed several years now, Wiggins’ jokes hadn’t stopped, and usually he took them in the spirit they were intended. The corporal had stood at Hynd’s side at the funeral after all and got him too drunk to cry the night after. But he let it lie this time.
The incident in the trees had disturbed Hynd’s mood and he found that he couldn’t get back into the smooth rhythm of paddling he’d been in earlier. He started to feel the paddle drag at his upper arms and shoulders, a deep ache settling there. He was more than happy an hour later when the captain called for a lunch stop on a rocky outcrop that stretched out from the right bank and allowed them a view from atop it both up and down stream for several hundred yards each way.
Lunch was a pot of stew from their field rations—it said beef on the packet, tasted like Marmite, and didn’t mix well with either coffee or nicotine, but at least it stayed down. Hynd stood up on the outcrop with a smoke and a coffee, watching the left bank.
“Still twitchy, Sarge?” Banks said, coming to his side.
“I think I will be until we get home and away,” he replied. “I hate all this warm, damp shite. And not being able to see more than a few yards at a time just gives me an itchy trigger finger.”
“I know what you mean. And I’m starting to think we’re on a hiding to nothing here. There’s been no sign of our quarry all day. We could be going the wrong way entirely for all we know.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“A few hours more upriver, find somewhere dry to camp up for the night, and hope for a miracle.”
As it turned out, they only had twenty more minute more of paddling before Hynd led them ‘round a bend in the river and saw a crude X-shaped wooden cross standing in a shallow spot on the left bank. He indicated that he was heading over for a closer look while Banks held the other canoe back in mid current, Wiggins sitting up in the rear to cover Hynd’s approach to the bank.
As he closed in, he spotted something hanging on the upper right side of the structure and knew immediately what it must be. As he brought the canoe to a halt only yards from the cross, he saw that his suspicion was right—a single human hand, still bound at the wrist, hung loosely from the ropes. It looked to have been torn off—or bitten—as there was only an inch or two of the arm and below that hung dangling scraps of flesh and too-red blood, still dripping into the water below.
Beyond the cross was a muddy embankment. Even from where he sat in the canoe, Hynd saw the distinctive furrows where canoes had been dragged up out of the river.
“They went through there, Cap,” he said, motioning into the foliage at the top of the bank.
“And we’re going after them,” Banks replied, his features set grim as he replied. “Fetch me that hand, Sarge. It might be all that’s left of some mother’s son. Let’s give her something to bury.”
Hynd fought down a sudden wash of revulsion as he stood gingerly in the canoe, making sure he was balanced before reaching up to untie the knots holding the hand. It was a cold, almost clammy thing under his fingers, black airs across the knuckles and a heavy gold ring showing that the motive surely hadn’t been robbery.
“They fed him to crocs?” Davies asked.
Hynd shook his head. He’d already had another look at the muddy banks beyond and saw how the footprints of the people had once again by overlaid by the heavy, three-toed prints he’d seen earlier.
“They fed him to something, right enough. But I doubt it was a croc.”
- 5 -
Banks let Hynd supervise the landing and stowage of their canoes; the squad moved them well up the riverbank, found the spot where the ones they were following were stowed, and continued beyond that to conceal them under foliage. After that, they worked backwards to the river again, attempting to wipe out any trace of their own footprints. But the mud was so extensive and the signs of disturbance they left so noticeable that the squad’s passage was going to be easy enough to follow by anyone who knew what to look for. Banks’ only hope was that their quarry was focused more on getting where they were going than with worrying about any
one following them.
A clear trail led northwest away from the river and as soon as they had stowed the canoes, Banks led them out.
“You and Wiggo bring up the rear, Sarge,” he said. “Watch our backs.”
He saw the look in Hynd’s eyes; the sarge had got the message. They’d all heard the roars in the jungle, all seen the bloody hand—now in a polythene bag in Banks’ pack—and they all knew that it wasn’t just the kidnappers they had to worry about.
The going was heavy for the first minute, clogging mud underfoot and damp foliage that slapped like wet cloth against them with every step, but the ground began to rise away from the river and the footing soon became firmer. The greenery was still dripping wet but some of the clammy heat went out of the air, breathing became less labored, and Banks was able to settle into the long-practiced rhythmic lope that he knew the team could keep up with for hours on end.
Whoever it was they were chasing, they weren’t taking any care to hide their tracks; footprints, both shod and bare, could be found every few yards. Banks half-expected to come across another crucified figure at each turn in the track—he had a feeling that the first had been an offering of some kind, a placatory gift to whatever beast they’d heard in the jungle. But there was only the track and the trail of footprints to follow as the ground rose higher still and they ascended a long slope rising up and away from the river, soon taking them above the jungle canopy into higher uplands.
They traversed a high range whose jagged peaks marched way into the distance to the north. After a tough hour’s walk, the trail took them onto a high saddle to look down into a long, verdant valley. At the far end, some three miles away, smoke rose from several fires inside what looked to be a town at the edge of a wide, circular basin that stretched away to the northwest beyond that. Banks pulled the team off the ridge, aware that they’d be visible on the skyline should anyone be watching for them. They found a rocky ledge that sat in shade and he called a halt there, gathering the squad around him.
Operation Congo (S-Squad Book 9) Page 2