Recoil (37 page)

That got a laugh out of Crucial.

I kept my AK, picked up the gun and two boxes of ammo and staggered across to my position. The trench was now empty of RPG rounds; the launcher was where I’d left it. So was the jerry-can, with the remaining AK mags stacked on top.

I set the gun on the parapet so the loaded rounds lay on the crate top. Then I went back with my AK and picked up the plunger, firing cable still attached. I looked down at Sam. ‘The pigtail was good.’

He nodded. Standish had been the only one to voice it, but we all knew things would have turned out very differently had the device kicked off on command.

I jumped into my trench and started to pull in the two hundred metres or so of firing cable. It only took thirty seconds or so till the two muddy wires at the end were in my hands. I checked that the cable was still well attached to the butterfly nuts, then laid the two wires a millimetre apart on the crate top. Holding them in place with my left hand, I pulled up the plunger handle and pushed it down. A spark arced between the two wires.

It must have been a faulty det, and there was nothing I could have done about that: we didn’t have a tester. Either that, or there wasn’t enough charge to run down both lengths of cable once I’d joined them. Not that any explanation made me feel any better.

I pushed the plunger out of the way, in front of the trench.

I lifted the lid off the link boxes, pulled out a factory-made belt from the first and attached it to the rounds already queuing in the feed tray. When I fired, the link would flow out of the box like a snake out of a basket.

I tested my arcs, then there was fuck-all else I could do but wait. I picked up the jerry-can, took some more big, greedy gulps, and waited, alone with my thoughts. Anything that bought us time, anything that kept the LRA at bay, or even fucked them off completely, could only be good. Using these kids was better than us all being killed.

Standish had a point. It pissed me off, but he did.

6

Crucial lowered one kid each side of me. I beamed down at them. ‘All right mate? All right?’ I tapped my chest. ‘Mr Nick, Mr Nick.’ I got no response. They squatted in their corners and gave me a bleak stare.

‘Your names? What are you called? Me, Mr Nick.’

Still no response. Bet it would be a different story if I had chocolate. The thought made me feel hungry. My stomach rumbled. These two had probably known that feeling for most of their lives. Their eyes were too old for their faces, and their bodies were too young for what they’d been through.

We stagged on, making best use of the occasional splashes of moonlight to scan the area for movement. I couldn’t help asking myself the question I always asked whenever I’d stagged on a gun in the still of the night. ‘What the fuck am I doing with my life?’ Strangely, it gave me a little comfort. I’d been on stag around the world since I was sixteen. Mostly I’d been cold, wet and hungry. At least this time I was warm.

Standish yelled from my right and broke my train of thought: ‘There must be more! I don’t give a shit if Nick has looked – I’m checking for myself.’

I turned as he stormed past behind my trench. ‘What are you after?’

‘There’s got to be more RPG rounds.’

‘Twenty-four, that’s all we’ve got. There’s none down there.’

‘According to you.’ It was like we were back on the team job. He was the captain, I was the trooper. What the fuck did I know?

He carried on heading for the track and I grabbed my AK, leaped out and followed. ‘I’ll cover you.’

‘I don’t need babysitting. Stay there.’

And with that he headed off without a backward glance.

7

20:27 hours

There was nothing else to do now but stand behind the gun and try to make sense of the shifting shadows below me.

From time to time I talked to the kids, even though I was pretty sure they didn’t understand a word. ‘Know what? It wasn’t that long ago I was sitting in Raffaelli’s with a cappuccino, waiting for her in the tent there to join me for lunch. I know you two don’t even know what a cappuccino is, but anyway – now look at me. Stuck here in this trench with you two, the fucking Chuckle Brothers. Bit of a difference, yeah?’

They looked at me as if I was stark staring mad. Well maybe I was.

‘And now she’s in that tent with someone else, not me, and I’m beginning to wonder if maybe she’ll be happier that way. He spends his whole time saving people’s lives and helping old ladies across the road, and I’m on stag behind a fucking gun. So what do you two think of that?’

They said bugger-all.

‘Exactly. And where the fuck is Standish?’

I glanced down the next time the moon appeared. My two new mates sat gazing at me, their chins resting on their knees.

‘Tell you what,’ I said, ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t go anywhere, will you?’ I gave them a manic smile, lifted the jerry-can on to the back-blast channel, picked up the AK and jumped out of the trench. I headed for the tents, taking the water with me.

I was greeted by the glow of the Tilley lamp as I went through the flaps. Tim was still on his cot, looking after the gunshot wound next to him.

There was no sign of Standish. The other casualty was lying on a blanket on the floor. It was too hot and clammy for his wounds to clot. Silky knelt by him, wiping his forehead and tending the punctures in his skin.

Tim looked up. ‘The one down there’s OK for now, but this one . . .’

The boy turned his face to me. ‘Mr Nick . . .’ I thought he tried to smile, which only made it worse for me.

‘You should get on the floor yourself, once the shooting starts again.’

Silky was still smiling. It was as if she actually liked this shit. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be fine. How are you?’

‘Never better.’ I treated her to the same mad grin I’d given the Chuckle Brothers. ‘I just thought I’d bring this.’ I put the jerry-can on the floor. ‘The boy might need some.’

A loud yell filled the night, followed by a screamed warning. It was Bateman. Then there was a burst of fire.

‘Get down! Get down!’

I ran outside. A succession of yellow muzzle flashes speckled the darkness at the front of Bateman’s trench.

I could see a figure running up the track, in the direction of the new fall across the river. It didn’t take a genius to realize who it was.

And Bateman was keeping his word.

I ran over and jumped in next to him. I started to get the AK into my shoulder.

‘No man!’ He slapped his hand on the barrel and pushed it into the mud. ‘Better idea.’ He was so close his saliva pelted my face. ‘I’ll get him,’ he screamed. ‘He
will
fight. If not, I’ll kill him.’

The kids in Bateman’s trench cowered away from him, their bony hands over their ears.

Bateman turned and picked up his AK.

I held him back. ‘We can’t afford to lose another man.’

Crucial had opened fire on the body scrambling uphill. Bateman pulled away from me. ‘If I fuck this up, man, you kill that goddamn coward, no matter how long it takes. Do that for me.’

I nodded. He smiled, than ran towards the track, screaming to Crucial to hold his fire.

I watched Standish in the moonlight, maybe two hundred and fifty metres away now, scrambling up to the lip of the valley. Bateman wasn’t far behind him, going for it like a mountain goat on a promise.

A second later I saw muzzle flashes. But Bateman wasn’t returning fire. He wanted a capture.

Standish was just short of the lip, firing downhill. Then he lost his footing, tumbled and slid. He dropped his weapon and crashed into Bateman.

Bateman was on top, giving Standish the good news with his fists. Then he was dragging Standish further downhill by his leg. Standish struggled, but was losing ground. The fucker was going to fight alongside us whether he liked it or not.

The moon went behind a cloud.

When it next appeared, Bateman was on the ground. Standish was on top of him, a rock in his hand. He brought it down, again and again, then grabbed his weapon and ran back uphill.

I took aim, took first pressure, but couldn’t fire. I couldn’t see much from this distance, but Bateman looked as though one side of his head was missing. Somehow, even without a weapon, he was still going for him. I hoped he’d wring the fucker’s neck.

Standish turned and stared down at the man a few metres below him. He brought the weapon into his shoulder and fired.

The muzzle flashed and Bateman toppled backwards.

I squeezed my trigger and tracer arced uphill. More followed from Crucial. Some of it struck rock and ricocheted into the air. Some floated over the lip and disappeared.

Good. I wanted that spread. I wanted to cover every square metre of hillside with five-round bursts. ‘Bastard!’

But when we stopped firing, Standish was gone.

Bateman lay face down on the track about twenty metres away from the lip. A small river of muddy water cascaded over his lifeless body.

8

No point worrying about what had just happened. Bateman was dead – nothing we could do about it. We had to move on.

Sam took command. ‘Listen in. We still stand our ground. I’ll take Bateman’s gun. Let’s get on with it.’

I fantasized that maybe Standish was lying just over the lip, with his intestines hanging out like the boy’s. That would have been nice.

Silky was in the backblast channel of my trench.

‘Bateman’s dead.’

‘He’s not the only one.’ She looked away. ‘I’m afraid we couldn’t save the boy . . .’

All my energy drained out of me. I had to sit. I had to put my head in my hands and sort myself out.

The Chuckle Brothers looked up at me from the bottom of the trench. A bony finger pointed at me. ‘Mr Nick, Mr Nick.’

‘That’s right, mate. Mr Nick. This is Miss Silky. Back in a minute, yeah?’

I walked her back to the tent. Tim was on the floor with the other kid, washing the fragmentation wounds with water from the jerry-can. The boy was still breathing, but his eyes were glazed. My kid was now on the ground too, but covered with a blood-soaked blanket.

Tim glanced at me. ‘What are we going to do, Nick?’

‘There’s just three of us out there now. We’re still holding till first light; then we’ll go for it.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I heard two of them arguing about using the boys . . .’

We looked at the huddle in the middle of the tent.

‘I’m really torn, Nick. I don’t think we’ll make it out of here unless they help. I don’t want to die right now, or here, but if it happens, it might as well be while we’re all trying to do as much as possible to keep them alive . . .’

I nodded and left. What could I say?

Sam was behind his GPMG now, head strained forward as he tried to penetrate the darkness.

I called Crucial over from his fire trench. ‘Both of you, don’t say a word, just listen.’ I wiped the sweat from my face. ‘We’re in the shit. That’s OK with me. If
we
die, so what? It’s got to come sooner or later. The kid with the gunshot wound is dead, and unless we use these little fuckers on the RPGs, we’ll be condemning the rest of them as well.

‘We’ve got to win this, or we’re going nowhere. Having the kids on the launchers would give us the extra firepower we’re going to need. At the moment we’re just half cocked.

‘I know it’s the last thing you want to do, and I know they’re already traumatized, and will be even more so after this – but one thing’s certain. If we don’t use them, we’re dead, and so are they. So, let’s try to keep them alive, and worry about the consequences later . . .’

I waited for a reply.

‘That’s all I’m saying.’

I waited some more.

Nothing. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad sign.

Then, to my right, I heard a sniff, then another. Crucial was crying.

At last Sam sparked up, but it was Crucial, not me, he spoke to: ‘You’re going to have to drill and command them. You OK with that?’

Crucial jumped up and coughed some stuff from the back of his throat. ‘I’d better get on with it before I change my mind.’

He strode towards the tent, screaming and hollering like a Foreign Legion drill sergeant with his lungs full of helium.

9

Tuesday, 13 June

02:48 hours

Crucial had virtually hoicked them out of the trenches by their wrists and had been beasting the shit out of them ever since.

Sam faced the valley on stag, as if he couldn’t bear to watch. ‘Standish has done exactly what he did on that team job. Pissed off and left everyone else to sort out the mess. He’ll be back, of course, and pick up where he left off. But for me and Crucial, that’s it. The end. We’re going to have to move the church from the strip and start again. There’s enough cash to see us through a year, maybe eighteen months, but after that . . .’

I looked back at Crucial and the boys. Shoulders slumped, heads down, none of them came higher than his waist. Crucial had to reach down to prod them in the chest, shove them into the mud, or scream into their faces.