The fire coltan … that was why she was here. Her lips curled in a bitter, humourless smile at the futility of it all. She was going to die because of some new mineral that she had been too stubborn to ignore. Everyone from her husband to Fabrice had warned her of the dangers but still she had gone, daring herself to continue each step of the way. And now that same pig-headed tenacity had led her here – to a lonely death, deep in the middle of the jungle.
Bear screwed her eyes shut, feeling a sickening mixture of self-pity and regret wash over her. Why did she always have to push so hard, to never back down? Why did she always have to be so stupid? Reaching into the thigh pocket of her trousers, she pulled out the Ziploc bag and held up
the
small lump of fire coltan she had been carrying. She let her eyes rest on the vein of molten red in the centre, while her vision slowly fogged from tears.
This was what they were all looking for. And this was the reason she was going to die.
The door of the shack suddenly burst open and two men appeared. They looked frantic and aggressive, searching for anything they could take. The one on the right jumped at her and in that split second Bear reacted, swinging the pistol round and firing. The gunshot rang out, deafeningly loud in the tiny shack, as the bullet spun the man round from the force of its impact.
His accomplice turned on his heel and sprinted off as fast as he could. Bear watched him go, her ears ringing from the explosion as the door slowly creaked shut again.
She didn’t get up, but let her hand fall so that the nose of the pistol scraped across the rough wooden flooring. She felt no remorse or even regret for what had just happened. She knew full well that those men would have killed her in a heartbeat. She could hear a low groan as the wounded man dragged himself away from the door, and sat listening to the sound. It was as if the very last of her emotions had ebbed away and there was nothing left for her to feel.
‘Luca,’ Bear whispered. Her only hope was that he and Joshua had made it past the LRA patrol and were somehow on their way to the MONUC compound.
‘Just get to the road,’ Bear murmured.
‘Just the road,’ she repeated, and let her eyes slowly close.
JOSHUA’S FINGERS RAKED
down Luca’s back as he tried to stop himself from falling. Luca turned, but wasn’t quick enough to catch him and watched as his friend collapsed into the mud, groaning from exhaustion. It had been like this for the last two hours, their progress getting slower and slower.
‘I’ve got … to stop,’ Joshua whispered, his throat so dry he could barely say the words.
Luca turned on him.
‘Come on, Josh! Get on your feet! We’ve got to keep moving!’
Joshua stared into his eyes, pleading. His bad leg dragged across the ground, snagging on every root and branch, and continually yanking him off balance. Nearly four hours had passed since leaving the river and the undergrowth seemed endless. The ground was saturated with pools of standing water and for the last hour they had been going painfully slowly. Sinking down to their knees in the mud, they tried to crawl their way across it, with Luca pulling
Joshua
forward by his shoulders, inch by inch, both of them becoming increasingly desperate and tired.
The ground worsened, becoming one vast quagmire. They were covered in tar-black mud, with their clothes clinging to their bodies and their hair plastered to the sides of their heads.
‘No more,’ Joshua breathed, but Luca reached out his hand. Joshua stared at it for several seconds before catching hold. As Luca heaved him up once again, he cried out in pain. His leg was already starting to swell and he could feel his vision blackening at the edges. He was only moments from passing out.
Rounding the next in a long line of thickets, Luca tried to keep the compass steady, but their progress was erratic, the needle swinging from side to side across the faded dial. They were heading due south, trying to reach the old logging road Bear had mentioned, but as more time passed with not the slightest break in the forest, Luca had begun to doubt whether the road even existed. The rest of the escape kit was pretty much useless, with the possible exception of the Chinese flare.
A tree branch snapped back, hitting Joshua square in his chest and knocking him down into the mud. He stayed on his hands and knees, chest heaving as he tried to muster the strength to move. His arms shook with strain and a thin line of spittle hung from one corner of his mouth.
‘I can’t go on,’ he managed.
Luca rounded on him, his eyes savage.
‘Get up!’ he screamed. ‘We keep going. One step after the other!’
But he could see the sick exhaustion in Joshua’s eyes. In that moment, he already knew it was over. There was just nothing left for his friend to give.
‘I can’t …’ Joshua began, but drifted into silence. Both of them knew what he was going to say next.
‘It’s OK,’ Luca said, trying to catch his breath. ‘We’ll just wait it out. We do it by hours; one on, one off. Just keep going until we make it back to MONUC.’
Joshua slowly shook his head. ‘We both know that won’t work. There isn’t enough time.’
‘We don’t know that. We’ve got to focus on the here and now, get you out of this damn’ jungle.’
‘No,’ Joshua breathed, ‘there’s more to this than just you and me. You’ve got to get help before their water runs out. It’s the only way.’ He paused, an image coming to him of the miners desperately searching for a way out, knowing that the clock was ticking. ‘And, Luca, this is just the tip of it. We’ve got to get the message out. Tell everyone what this shit does to people.’
Joshua’s chin tilted up as he stared at Luca.
‘The one thing I know about Mordecai is that he hates foreigners. Hates us like nothing you’ve ever known.’
Luca returned his gaze, confused.
‘Don’t you see?’ Joshua continued. ‘If this stuff is going into mobiles all over the world, then just imagine how many people are going to die. I know what that sick bastard is like. For Mordecai, it would be like some kind of divine retribution; an apocalypse to punish the West for God knows what.’
‘We don’t know that it is used in phones,’ Luca interjected. ‘Bear was only guessing.’
‘Whatever the hell it’s being used for, we know one thing – if it heats up, it kills people. That ought to be enough. We’ve got to get the message out, Luca. Tell them how dangerous this shit is.’
Luca didn’t respond, only letting his head slump forward in the silence. He stayed like that for several seconds, suddenly looking totally defeated. It was the first time Joshua had ever seen him look like that.
‘Luca?’
As he glanced up, Joshua could immediately see the pain in his eyes.
‘It took me so long to find you,’ Luca said. ‘To actually get here. And now you’re asking me to leave you out in the forest again. I can’t do that, Josh. I can’t leave someone again.’
‘Come on, Luca, don’t do this to yourself.’
‘It’s the same fucking thing. Over and over.’
‘No!’ Joshua shouted. ‘That was about a mountain. This is about saving every goddamn’ person inside that mine. Trust me, I don’t want be left out here by myself, but you are the only one who can do this.’
Luca stared out towards the bushes.
‘I’ll be all right. I’ll just sit it out and wait for you to come and rescue me again.’ Joshua paused, attempting a smile. ‘You rescued me from the inside of an LRA mine, for Christ’s sake. Out here should be a cinch.’
Joshua stared at the back of Luca’s head, waiting for a
response
. The seconds went by, but Luca stayed where he was, staring out into the haze of undergrowth.
‘How the hell did we find ourselves in the middle of all this shit?’ he said quietly.
‘Don’t you remember? Ever since we were kids, whenever we were together, we got into trouble.’ Joshua paused. ‘At least this time we don’t have your old man chasing us across the field with a golf club because you crashed his car.’
A wheezing laugh escaped Luca’s lips.
‘I can’t believe you let me take the rap for that,’ Joshua continued. ‘And I never even got laid that night!’
Luca turned to him, a smile creeping across his face.
‘Yeah, those girls weren’t too impressed with us, were they?’
They both laughed at the memory, then slowly fell silent. Seconds passed with neither of them wanting to admit that their time together was over. Finally Joshua broke the spell. Hauling himself out of the mud, he crawled to the shelter of some nearby bushes. Luca went to help him, crouching down so that their heads were almost level. Without any warning, Joshua grabbed his shoulders, pulling him into a hug.
‘Just don’t forget about me,’ he said jokingly, but his smile quickly faded. Luca could see the fear in his eyes and squeezed him tight, trying to offer some reassurance.
‘You’ve got that red flare,’ he said, ‘so if you hear anything, you fire it. You hear me?’
Joshua nodded. ‘Yeah, I got it.’ He stared hard at Luca through the gathering darkness. ‘I’ll be waiting.’
JEAN-LUC GAZED OUT
of the open door of the Oryx helicopter. The cabin’s interior light washed his face with a dull red glow. Only fifty feet below the trees rushed by in a continuous blur, their outlines jet black against the setting sun. All that was left of the day was a faint glow of orange in the west as night quickly came on.
There were no clouds. The sky was clear but dark, with the moon a thin crescent skirting the horizon. Jean-Luc could feel the air temperature steadily drop. Drawing a
Gitanes
pack from his top pocket, he lit a cigarette with a windproof lighter and sucked down on the filter. The smoke went deep into his lungs, filling them with its comforting warmth, and his eyes scanned the vast landscape beneath, taking it all in. A slight smile appeared on his lips. This was the Africa he knew.
Suddenly the helicopter banked right, forcing him to grip on to the door handle to keep his balance. Only thirty feet to their left, the branches of an enormous tree rose up above
the
jagged outline of the canopy. He had told the pilots to keep low and they were doing just that, using their dual-scope P-15 night vision goggles to skim the treeline.
They had already been to the co-ordinates Devlin had given them, and after nearly an hour searching, had found what remained of the plane. Only the starboard wing of the Cessna 206 still remained above water, with the rest of the plane fully submerged. They winched down one of the men. He had dived into the water with a waterproof torch, searching the tiny cockpit for any trace of Bear. Finally, he had emerged with the remnants of a half-eaten corpse. The crocodiles had got to it first.
But the body wasn’t Bear’s. It must have been one of the white men Devlin had spoken about. That meant she was either on the run, in which case they would have to try and pick her up using thermal imaging, or the LRA had already tracked her down.
Jean-Luc drew deeply on his cigarette. If the LRA had got to her, there was only one solution. A staggered attack on the volcano, using the MK4 rockets on the Rooivalk with support fire from the Oryx’s GPMG guns. As all hell broke out from the air, he would send an extraction team on to the ground to hunt for her amongst the chaos. It was a long shot, but it was all they had. Mordecai was not a man who could be negotiated with.
Pulling on his headset, Jean-Luc half expected to hear the usual chatter between the pilots, but tonight there was silence. He knew the reason why. They all suspected that Bear had already been caught, and although none of them
dared
admit it, believed an attack on the volcano was inevitable. Now they were silent, steeling themselves for the fight of their lives.
Over the last eight months they had delivered crate after crate of standard AK-47 rifles to the LRA base. Then, two weeks ago, they had thrown back the tarpaulin covers to see a shipment of Chinese HQ-7 SAM surface-to-air missiles. There were other crates too; W-89 long-range mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and a whole host of field weaponry. Someone in the Chinese Army was backing the LRA with everything they needed to transform themselves from a provincial rebel group into a proper military force.
But the weapons weren’t the worst of it. It was the sheer number of LRA soldiers. There were thousands of them, living in a vast tented city deep within the forest, and each one of them unquestioningly devoted to their leader.
Jean-Luc had seen the growing cult of Mordecai at first hand. New recruits were beaten down until there was nothing left; forced to do unmentionable things time and time again until they were numbed by the horror. It was all designed to destroy any ingrained sense of morality, so that by the time they were ready to be built back up again, they believed everything Mordecai said, no matter how fantastical.
Mordecai had them believing that if they anointed their foreheads with holy water, they would be impervious to bullets, or that they could be healed just by his touch. The cult was a perverse hybrid of Christianity and voodoo magic, becoming ever more distorted by the cocktails of hallucinogens and amphetamines they all used. But of one thing
Jean-Luc
was certain – the cult worked. Mordecai had built himself an army that was as fearless as it was loyal.