‘Too soon,’ she said, cursing her own impatience. ‘Come on, just a few more seconds.’
Slowly the plane eased up once again, airborne under its own momentum. Instead of pulling up and gaining altitude, Bear held them just a few feet above the ground, skimming under the long line of tailfins of the UN planes.
Taking up the flap, she skilfully balanced the sink, waiting for the needle to pass 100 knots before pulling the plane up in a steep banking turn in the opposite direction to the jeeps. They heard the thud of machine-gun fire and saw a fluorescent line of tracer rounds cut into the night sky just above them. Red sparks spat into the darkness, drawing a thin line of fire that swung in a tight arc towards the front of the Cessna. Bear angled the plane into an even steeper turn, swinging them wide across a dense area of scrubland and further into the night. The machine gun tried to follow their trajectory, thumping out rounds in a long, continuous burst, before the noise suddenly stopped. It was quickly replaced by the searchlight, the sharp beam criss-crossing the sky above them.
‘Are we hit?’ Luca shouted, turning towards Bear, but she had her head bent low and was looking past him out to
the
underside of each wing. She then cautiously tilted the ailerons, weaving the plane from side to side and double-checking that everything was functioning properly. Finally looking back at Luca, she exhaled slowly and shook her head. He went to say something more but she tapped her headset, indicating that they should put theirs on as well.
‘You guys OK?’ came her voice, crackling slightly over the intercom.
‘Yeah,’ said Luca slowly, his hand still gripping on to the grab handle above the window. There was a pause before René’s voice suddenly boomed in over the mic.
‘Bloody terrified!’ he shouted. ‘Always hated flying, let alone being shot at while doing it.’ He then reached forward and lightly banged Bear’s shoulder. ‘But well done back there, girl. You were great.’
‘It was close. Way too close. I can’t believe they opened up on us like that.’
‘They’re bastards,’ René said, fumbling in his pockets and lighting a cigarette. A plume of smoke billowed out into the cockpit and his face glowed red in the embers, a smile curving through his thick black beard. ‘Just promise me you’ll never do a turn like that last one again,’ he added. ‘My stomach damn’ near went through my spine.’
Bear looked at the cigarette and the cloud of smoke encircling René. She began to say something, then turned back to the controls, pulling the air vents open a little further. Taking out a map from the side of her seat, she shone a small pencil torch across its laminated surface, checking their heading against the directional compass. She then
adjusted
the trim a little further and leaned back in her seat. A few moments passed before she turned towards Luca.
‘So what’s your story?’ she said, finally breaking the silence. ‘Fabrice didn’t exactly say much about you.’
Luca was staring out of the window towards the open expanse of Lake Edward, directly beneath them. The water was translucent silver in the moonlight, stretching mile after mile towards the horizon.
‘We’re looking for a friend who disappeared about six months ago.’
‘Six months? That’s quite some time to be missing in a place like the Congo. What makes you think he is still alive?’
Luca shrugged.
‘So what’s your plan? Just to head into the Ituri and start looking?’
‘Something like that.’
‘It’s a pretty big place and you don’t seem to have packed much stuff. You don’t think it’s going to take a bit more than a rucksack and a few bottles of Deet?’
‘We know where the truck was hit. That’s all we need, to start with.’
‘That’s all?’
Luca nodded slowly.
‘But you guys have experience of a place like this, right? You’ve been in the jungle before.’
‘No. Not exactly.’
Bear paused, then she looked back at him.
‘Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but have you got any idea how crazy it sounds, going off into LRA country
looking
for some guy who disappeared six months ago? You sure you know what you’re getting yourself into?’
‘Just give us the lift. After that, we’ll go our own way.’
‘Damn’ right you will! And you both need to understand one thing – the deal was to get you to Epulu. That’s it. I don’t give a shit what Fabrice told you because after we land out there, you guys are on your own.’
She glanced across at Luca, her voice hardening.
‘And when things go bad, don’t expect to be turning to me every five minutes for help. Out there, you’re on your own.’
Luca’s head snapped round and he stared at her, eyes shining with hostility. Bear returned his gaze, suddenly wondering what it was he was about to do. The change in him was immediate. She watched as his left hand reached down to the console and with a sharp tug yanked out the cables to his headset, killing the mic. He stared out into the night, the profile of his face lit by the dull glow of the cabin lights. She watched him a moment longer, recognising his anger and bitterness. She’d seen them both before, many years ago.
‘He’s not exactly talkative at the moment,’ came René’s voice over the intercom. ‘But don’t worry, he’ll lighten up when we’re on the ground. And, just for the record, we always knew it was only to Epulu. From then on, we’ll make our own way.’
Bear nodded. ‘Is he always this touchy?’ she asked, knowing full well that without the headset she couldn’t be heard above the noise of the engine.
‘Luca?’ There was a crackle on the mic as René exhaled heavily. ‘No, he’d didn’t used to be like this at all. Believe it or not, he was actually one of the top climbers in the
world
, a real genius. The boy could climb up rock as smooth as glass. Then something happened a few years back out in the Himalayas and he’s never really got over it. Been eating away at him ever since.’
‘Something?’
René paused, suddenly finding it hard to say the words.
‘You really want to know?’
Bear didn’t answer, only waiting.
‘There was this big avalanche and then his best friend was murdered right in front of him. Shot between the eyes.’
‘Jesus,’ she muttered. There was silence again as she looked out towards the moon rising over the line of the water. It was already half up, drowning out the rest of the night sky. Bear stayed like that for some time, lost in her own thoughts, before glancing back towards René. Even in the dim light of the cockpit, he could see the intensity in her eyes.
‘You know, I’ve been around a lot of wars and they affect everyone differently. Some people can’t even speak when it’s all over, some just get on with life again, and then there are others that have this look – these blank, vacant eyes, with rage simmering just beneath. It’s like this uncontrollable animal that bursts out of them.’ She glanced back to the controls, her expression darkening. ‘I guess it comes from just having seen too much. And out here, bad shit happens every day.’
‘So what’s your point?’
‘The point is that these are damaged people, René. Really damaged. And people like that are dangerous to be around.’ Her eyes involuntarily darted towards Luca.
René shook his head automatically.
‘Come on, Luca’s nothing like that. He’s just going through a bad patch, that’s all.’
‘You sure about that? How well do you really know him?’
‘From way back. Trust me, all he needs is a little more time to get over it. He’ll be all right, you’ll see.’
‘Your call.’
René watched as Bear leaned forward in her seat and pulled the map on to her lap once again, systematically checking through each instrument and heading. He then pushed himself back against the uncomfortable rear seats of the plane and put out the last of the cigarette, wedging the butt into an old flip-down ashtray in the door.
He wondered how much of what she had said was true of Luca. Was he really that damaged? Had Bill’s death broken him that much? There were these flashes, these brief moments, where the old Luca seemed to bubble through to the surface, but just as quickly, he seemed to become lost in a bitterness of his own making. That rage she’d spoken of was there. He had already seen it up in the mountains. But René couldn’t believe it was all there was left of Luca. There had to be something more.
René went to light another cigarette then stopped, his throat too dry for him to smoke it. He rubbed his hands together distractedly, feeling his palms go clammy with prickles of sweat. In a couple of hours they would be landing in one of the most dangerous places on the planet and Luca would be the only person in the world he could rely on.
RENÉ WOKE AS
the plane lurched downwards in a thermal. Everything jolted, the loose coins scattering to new positions on the carpet as Luca’s rucksack slowly toppled sideways and on to his lap. René’s hands shot out as he tried to steady himself. There was a terrible pain in his head, while a stale line of saliva ran from the corner of his mouth and across the line of his beard.
The morning sun streamed into the cockpit of the plane. The light was stark, with a fierce intensity to it that seemed to heighten the colours all around him, paining his eyes. He felt sickly hot and dehydrated, the cigarette he’d smoked a few hours ago still tainting his mouth.
The plane jolted again, then swung round in a steep banking turn that made René’s stomach instantly cramp in on itself. Acid vomit rose into his mouth and he groaned softly as he gulped it back down again. He looked around the clutter of the rear seat for a bottle of water, but gave up after a few seconds of searching. His head was too
painful
for him to bend forward. Instead, he scraped up the headset and gingerly angled the mic towards his mouth.
‘Where the hell are we?’
Luca’s head snapped round. ‘We’ve started the descent to Epulu. You’ve been out for a few hours.’
‘Good,’ René replied, nodding his head.
‘How you feeling?’ Luca asked, seeing the obvious strain on his face.
‘Raring to go.’
Pressing his head against the window, he peered out. The canopy of the Ituri Forest stretched away in every direction. Millions upon millions of trees were densely packed together in one of the last great wildernesses on the planet. The trees formed a gigantic block of brilliant green, radiating colour against the harsh sun, while clouds hanging motionless in the sky above cast shadows on to the surface, like patches of spilled ink.
Meandering tributaries of brown water cut through the trees, heading towards some distant confluence with the main flow of the Congo River. They wound on for mile after mile, like tears across a seamless fabric.
‘Phenomenal,’ René breathed, forgetting the throbbing in his head for a moment.
‘Quite something, isn’t it?’ Bear said over her shoulder. She leaned forward in her seat again, forehead creased in concentration as she brought the plane round in another wide banking turn.
‘When Stanley crossed the width of Africa, this is what
he
called its “black heart”,’ René said, almost to himself. ‘Never thought I would get to see it.’
Bear glanced back at him.
‘It’s the real thing out there, that’s for sure.’
Glancing back at the map, she checked their heading once again. They should be over the landing site by now, but there was nothing but trees. Slowing the plane to seventy knots, she lowered the flaps and flipped the Cessna on its axis, staring down through Luca’s window as the ground seemed to spin round in a slow arc. Suddenly, she saw the dull grey of a thatched roof, then another. The village of Epulu was right below them, nestled in the shade of a group of wide bouma trees.
‘I see the village,’ Luca said, pressing his finger against the glass.
‘Yeah, got it.’
Bear levelled out the wings and started prepping the plane for landing. As she ran through the checks, she spoke to them in the mic, her voice becoming matter-of-fact.
‘At the last report, the LRA were seen about 30 clicks north of this village. They torched one of the pygmy settlements somewhere out in the forest, but after that we’ve heard nothing more. They seem to have gone silent.’
‘Where’s their main base?’ René asked.
‘No one knows. They haven’t been able to pick them up with the satellites. They just seem to pop up anywhere from here to the Sudanese border, moving like goddamn’ ghosts.’
Luca followed her gaze out to the horizon, understanding
how
easily an entire army could be concealed in such a vast expanse. Aside from a few settlements dotted close to the rivers, the Ituri was almost entirely unmapped, with only the major tributaries appearing on any of Bear’s aerial charts. Gradually, he focused on a series of rocky outcrops rising in vertical pillars through the forest canopy. Giant slabs of red rock lay stacked up on top of each other, most of them covered by a net of vines with stunted bushes clinging precariously to their sides. The pillars ran away from them in a near-symmetrical line, like the knotted spine of a dinosaur.
‘What are those?’
Bear craned her neck to see what he was pointing at. ‘They call them inselbergs. They run from here all the way east to the rim of volcanoes on the Ugandan border. Right up to the Mountains of the Moon.’