Dark Heart (11 page)

‘The tracking is too slow, Captain,' answered the gunnery officer. ‘We latch on to him but he slips away before we can engage . . .'

‘Press the fire mechanism as soon as you engage,' ordered the captain. ‘The system will register a hit without actually firing the gun.'

‘Really?' answered Asov. ‘You put my mind at rest of course. But where's the fun?'

The last comment seemed to bypass Captain Caleb, who was already issuing his next command. ‘The 30 millimetre Gatling may fire as it engages. Its system is nimbler than the big gun's, you see, Mr Asov. And I must observe that we are not running for cover.'

As he spoke, a lone missile exploded harmlessly in the air high above them, its powder-filled warhead sending a puff of blue smoke drifting down the wind.

‘Countermeasures effective, Captain . . .'

‘But it wasn't a real missile,' teased Max. ‘It was just a little rocket. A toy. Like on May Day in Moscow, you know?'

‘Thank you. Now, please engage the Gatling.'

‘Engaged,' sang out the assistant gunnery officer. ‘No . . .'

Richard crossed behind the engine monitoring station and looked out of the starboard bridge-wing window. The huge hovercraft was speeding full ahead now, skipping across the water like a skimmed stone. It was on a parallel course to the corvette, but running at least twice as fast.

‘But then,' needled Max's voice from behind him, ‘if you can engage your one little Gatling then I can engage all of mine! Though I observe that Captain Zhukov is keeping just out of range – just on the two point five kilometre mark, I see. And what else is he doing? Oh yes! He's running rings round you!'

Otobo
completed her turn and ran straight ahead. As she steadied and came level, Richard stepped back to look over the top of the Doppler radar station, out over the hump of the gun, dead ahead. It was a dangerous but impressive manoeuvre because the Zubr was sitting exactly between the corvette and the grey-green hulk of the delta, its shoreline a little less than ten kilometres ahead according to the radar. Sideways on, the hovercraft presented an excellent target with a profile sixty metres long and fifteen metres high to the top of its radar mast. The three six metre fans on the stern gave out a tempting heat signal. ‘Gun?' demanded Captain Caleb.

‘Any minute now, Captain . . .'

‘Armaments, ready the RIM missiles. They're heat-seeking . . .'

‘Incoming, Captain!' warned the armaments officer again.

‘Ha! You see I have missiles too, Captain!' exulted Max. ‘More than simple little May Day rockets!'

‘But are you supposed to have
fired
them?' asked Robin, shaken.

Even Richard was taken aback. The Zubr was in motion again, streaking to
Otobo
's port, running across the opening of River Gir itself. Richard glanced down at the Doppler radar and gasped. The monster was moving at sixty-five knots – more than seventy mph. He had never seen anything like it! In the air behind the quicksilver vessel, a series of black trails showed where the hovercraft had launched its missiles at them.

‘Chaff!' spat Caleb. ‘Hard left. Full speed. Into the red! Are you mad, Mr Asov? Those things carry one and a half kilo warheads. You were forbidden to import them. If they hit . . .'

The corvette raced forward, wrenching herself left across the river mouth, in a vain attempt to keep the speeding hovercraft under her gun. But Richard saw at once that the manoeuvre was doomed. Quite apart from anything else, the river washed out great tongues of silt which formed shallows and sandbars that shifted unpredictably across the channel they were heading for. He realized, with something of a start, that these would mean less than nothing to the Zubr. Water or mud, deep sea or sandbar, she would skim across it all. Not so the corvette. She had a solid keel that sat four metres below the surface and that was that.

And even as Richard realized the implications the sonar station began to sound its alarm. ‘Sandbar,' called the operator. Shelving to two metres dead ahead! My God! He's dropped mines. Mines dead ahead!'

‘Come right! Come right!' snarled Caleb.

The corvette did her level best to obey, but as she swung back, engines on full power, reversing her course in an instant, there was a BANG! like an explosion that seemed to echo throughout the ship and her wild turn slowed. ‘Stop all!' ordered Caleb.

‘That sounded like one of your propeller shafts going pop,' Max crowed. ‘That's another thing Captain Zhukov doesn't have to worry about, incidentally.'

The corvette settled and started to roll as the way came off her. Richard looked out of the starboard bridge windows, watching the Zubr reversing at full speed into the dangerous river mouth, its blunt wedge-bow facing them, all its armaments and weapons systems zeroed.

‘Game, set and match,' he breathed to Robin.

But Robin didn't answer. She was looking with nothing short of horror at the vapour trails of the three incoming missiles.

As the crippled vessel slowed, inevitably and helplessly, Captain Zhukov's missiles arrived. They thumped relentlessly into her side. And, as Caleb had said, each of them carried a one and a half kilo warhead. But the high explosive had been replaced with paint. And as the ship shuddered three times, her port side was painted with huge humiliating blotches of red, yellow and black.

‘Your country's national colours I believe,' said Max. ‘Now what could be more fitting than that?' And as he spoke, the first of the apparent mines bobbed up – nothing more than half-inflated beach balls, also coloured yellow, red and black. Max positively beamed. ‘And a present for your children into the bargain! It has been a pleasure playing with you, gentlemen.' He put his cellphone to his ear. ‘Thank you, Captain Zhukov. A most impressive little game. But I'm afraid we're going to need a chopper to take us home while the Captain arranges a tow . . .'

M
ore by luck than judgement, Anastasia had beached right at the beginning of the low spit. The boat rode up the smooth flank of the sandbar, swinging inwards under a ragged overhang of bank, into a blessed pool of shadow. Then it came to a halt, grounded securely and leaning over towards its left side, as though still attracted by the shore. The propeller caught on the bed of the shallow behind and the outboard stalled at once. ‘
Govno
,' she said, safe in the knowledge that of all the languages spoken in the boat only she understood Russian swear words. Then she switched to English. ‘Is everyone all right?'

‘Fine,' said Ado intrepidly, though she sounded shaken.

‘Me too,' added Esan. ‘Though I don't want to do that again, so maybe I should steer in future.'

‘When we know that we can trust you,' said Anastasia. ‘We'll take it one step at a time. First we'll untie you. Then we'll see. But we won't rush into that too quickly either. Celine? How are you?'

‘Like the olive in James Bond's martini,' answered Celine faintly. ‘Shaken.'

They all lay back, considering their new situation. At rest for the first time since their terrible ordeal began. There was a short silence. Which extended itself. Then stretched out further still . . .

Anastasia jumped awake. The sun was shining into her face, but much of the midday fierceness had gone out of it. She stared blearily ahead, looking downriver from the relative protection of her overgrown little mud cliff. Apart from the river, there was little to see. The far bank, all but lost in a low haze, was a wall of unvarying green that stretched unbroken, she knew, all the way down to the little settlement of Malebo, God knew how many miles distant still. The near bank curved to her left, vanishing along the back of a little bay whose extent was concealed by the edge of the mud cliff they were sitting under, not reappearing again until a good deal further downstream. The jungle stretched along this bank until it heaved over a low, mountainous ridge and swooped down into the broad basin that contained the ruined metropolis of Citematadi. Or that was the way she remembered things from her trips downriver and back aboard the superannuated little steamer
Nellie
.

The thought of
Nellie
turned her mind back to Malebo, where the supply boat was usually docked. Where the nearest aid of any kind might be found. The best hope of communicating with the outside world and trying to get some proper help. Maybe she should trust the boy soldier after all and pray he had enough skill – and the rowboat had enough petrol – to get that far down and across the river.

But then the needs of her body took over from the workings of her mind with a sudden vividness that was almost breathtaking. Without further thought, she scrambled out of the boat and started looking around for some kind of privacy. Half a dozen steps straight ahead took her across the bankside end of the hook and round the cliff which had been blocking her view. There was a little bay there, reaching back as she had suspected. It seemed to have been formed when an overhang of the red mud precipice had been undermined by the floods and collapsed. There was a jumbled slope, made into rough steps by the sections of vegetation that had come down with it. Anastasia was scrambling up it in an instant and a moment later she was up on top of the bank, perhaps five metres above the surface of the river itself.

The collapse had pulled down a complete wall of shrub and stubby jungle trees and their downfall revealed behind them a grassy space several hundred metres broad. And beyond that, was a road. It looked to be a wide road; a six-lane highway with a central reservation where there still, miraculously, stood a sign which announced in several local languages and English ‘Citematadi 30kms', with an arrow pointing downriver. Anastasia was so surprised to see it that she overlooked the most obvious thing of all at first. The road was not overgrown and impassable. Someone was keeping it clear enough to drive along. Someone was using it.

But then her bodily needs reasserted themselves forcefully – and the answer to almost all of them appeared beyond the roadway. A banana plantation. It was wild to be sure. No doubt the trees had been decimated – all but wiped out by the starving peoples who had come through here in the last thirty years – destroying the local animal populations in their search for bushmeat, and even the creatures that had once inhabited the river itself. But the bananas had come back now that the starving hordes were a thing of the past.

Anastasia ran across the road, pulling her T-shirt out of her jeans. She contained herself for just long enough to find some privacy and tear down a handful of banana leaves before she dropped her pants and squatted. It was only when she was finished and pulling her clothes back into position that she paused to laugh at herself. Privacy from whom? The whole fucking delta was empty, apart from the army Esan belonged to and the village of Malebo – both more than a day's hard travelling distant. In opposite directions. On the far side of the river. But then her laughter stilled and she frowned as she thought again about the road. Face folded in a thoughtful scowl, she pulled the Victorinox from her pocket and cut down a hand of the ripest-looking bananas she could reach. She banged it against the ground to make sure there were no nasty surprises lurking in it, and she put it on her shoulder. As she recrossed the road, she paused, leaning against the surprisingly solid sign, looking both ways and glowering as her mind raced over a range of unknowable possibilities. Then she went on across the grass verge and scrambled back down to the river's edge.

An hour later, all but the greenest bananas were gone, their bright yellow skins floating away downriver like strange lilies – though Anastasia noticed that Celine had hardly touched anything while Esan packed away enough for a small army – and the banana plantation had been well watered and fertilized one way or another. Both Celine and Esan had been harder for Anastasia to deal with, right from the start, in fact. The wounded woman had needed a great deal of help to get up the bank – and even to meet the calls of nature, forcing Anastasia, one way or another, into much more intimacy than she had ever dreamed of enjoying. Esan presented the opposite problem – how to allow him enough rope to permit privacy without giving him an irresistible chance to escape. But a tightly knotted loop round his throat seemed to answer the conundrum. It allowed him freedom to use his hands and feet while presenting him with something he could hardly have untied even had he been able to see it. Which, of course, he could not. The only problem, as it turned out, was that Anastasia couldn't untie it either. So she ended up cutting it free with the trusty Victorinox. And, against her better judgement, she was impressed by the way the boy calmly let her saw away at the cable, the spine of her blade moving back and forward across his jugular. She might not yet trust him, but it seemed that he was ready to trust her.

As soon as Esan was free, Ado suggested that he had been tied up for long enough. It was time for less trussing and more trusting. Anastasia reluctantly acquiesced – though she kept both the knife and AK close at hand, still firmly in charge. ‘As I see it, we still have very limited choices,' she said, her glance sweeping round the other three. ‘We relaunch the boat and hope we can get it to Malebo. Get help, make contact with the outside world, see if we can get the authorities to help us rescue
our
people from
your
people . . .' This last to Esan. Who sat and watched her like an anthracite statue.

‘The downsides, of course, are the time it will take, and the difficulty it will present,' Anastasia continued after a while. ‘We can only just all fit in the boat in the first place and it's at least another day to the village. We can't rely on coming safely ashore near food and shelter like this whenever we want to. Certainly not with me at the tiller. We can't stock up the boat with two days' supply of food and water. It would simply swamp us – even if we could come up with containers for the water and be content with a diet of bananas. We can't rely on the river to run clean – particularly after we get past Citematadi. And talking of Citematadi, Celine and I at least know the big problem there. The road bridge across the river collapsed years ago. It's effectively a man-made set of rapids now. They've had trouble getting
Nellie
safely past it every time I've been downriver; it was the only bit Captain Christophe wouldn't let me steer the boat through. And this rowboat is nowhere near the vessel that
Nellie
is. I quite honestly think we'd be lucky to survive, even if the petrol lasted that far and we could rely on the motor to push us through.'