‘I want the perimeter here,’ he shouted over his radio. ‘Everyone out of the helicopter! Just leave the rotors turning.’
Luca was standing next to the open door as Louis jumped down and unclipped the rear compartment, delving inside for a few seconds. He emerged with two massive coils of black rope which had been looped into a figure of eight and neatly tied off. He handed them over to Luca then sprinted back to the helicopter, pulling the GPMG machine gun off its door pivot and setting up position on the edge of the rock. Seconds later, the pilot, Thierry, joined him, with his M4 carbine angled down towards the trees.
Luca tied off the two ends of the ropes and wrapped them over his shoulder, so that he was carrying them like a rucksack. He did it with fluid, well-practised flips of his wrists, tucking the spare harness into the folds of the rope and readying himself in just a few seconds.
‘I’d send someone up there to watch your back,’ Jean-Luc said, ‘but I get the feeling they’d only slow you down.’
Luca didn’t answer, his eyes already turning up towards the rockface. In the dim light, he could see it stretching off in jagged lines, with the upper reaches completely hidden from view. He could feel that the palms of his hands had already dampened in anticipation and his pulse beat steadily at his throat. In the darkness, he would be climbing blind.
Just as he was about to set off, Jean-Luc grabbed his arm.
‘Take this,’ he said, offering a small black pistol that he had taken from his webbing belt. ‘It’s going to be like some
kind
of hell in that mine and everyone will be wanting to get out on that rope.’
Luca stared at the weapon, never even having held one before. Jean-Luc saw his confusion. ‘That’s the safety. When you aim at someone, point at their chest and squeeze. Whatever happens, you put your man down.’
Luca let his fingers curl around the grip, the weight of the pistol surprisingly heavy. He reached behind him, tucking it into his belt.
‘How long to the top?’ Jean-Luc asked.
‘An hour, maybe less. It all depends on finding a clean route on the last section. The rock’s not good.’
‘Well, the others have got just under two hours left in their tanks. After that, there’s going to be no more air support.’
Luca nodded. ‘Just hold those bastards off as long as you can. I’ll get Bear out.’
Pulling his feet through the leg straps of the harness and tightening the buckle, he jogged to the other side of the rock and started scrambling past the first of the boulders and scree, working his way higher in a smooth, unrelenting rhythm. Jean-Luc stood where he was, watching the faint outline of his body snake higher and higher, until finally it disappeared from view.
A long burst of machine-gun fire echoed out across the forest. He couldn’t see where it was coming from exactly, but knew that it was one of his GPMG machine guns. The Oryx were firing and that could only mean one thing.
The LRA counter-attacks had begun.
LUCA REACHED THE
beginning of the summit climb and stopped. He let his gaze roam across the unbroken wall of rock, feeling it looming over him like a living, breathing entity. It looked ominous and unforgiving, while the cracks running down from the top were melded together like a maze of dead ends. From the helicopter, he’d thought he had been able to see some kind of workable route. Now, all that had changed.
He turned, facing out from the mountain, and wiped his hand across his forehead to clear away the sweat. As he brought his arm back down again, he realised that his hands were shaking. He stared at them, terrified by the sight. In all his years of climbing, they had never been like this. He had to slow down, had to climb more carefully. From here onwards, without ropes, all it would take was a single slip.
Far below, he saw a glint of movement as the helicopters patrolled along the edge of the volcano with their machine
guns
blazing. The noise rolled up towards him like distant thunder, followed each time by the sound of the LRA rifles returning fire.
Battle was raging, but for him it felt distant, almost irrelevant. There was none of the blood and hysteria, the fires and explosions, up here. He was detached from it all.
Luca looked up as the smoke trail of a rocket scorched past one of the helicopters, missing its rotors by what seemed like just a few inches. It continued into the sky like a firework before there was a deep booming explosion and then, a split second later, a shock wave reverberated across the sky. Even from where he stood, he could see that the fighting was becoming more intense. There must be hundreds of LRA down there.
Luca swore, chastising himself for wasting so much time. The battle was nothing to do with him. His was right here, and he had to focus.
Stepping up to the cliff, he reached out both hands and gripped on to the rock. It felt warm beneath his fingertips, but so brittle that he could break off entire pieces of it in his hand. He already knew that it would be too unstable for him to climb normally and that he would have to move in constant motion, never putting too much weight on any one hold.
Blowing the dust off his fingertips, Luca started to work his way up, lightly gripping one handhold, then the next, never holding on too tightly or pressing down too much weight. Entire chunks of rock splintered off in his hands and Luca pitched them over his shoulder, listening to the sound
of
them clatter down the side of the volcano before becoming lost to the darkness somewhere below.
On he went, higher and higher, the minutes passing like seconds as he became completely absorbed in the climb. Time seemed to condense, no longer measured in seconds but by the stretch of his arm or the bend of his leg. He climbed in fluid, precise movements, with his boots pivoting from one side to the next and his hips pressed flat against the cliff. Then, as he stretched past a slight lip, his foothold crumbled like ash, pitching him downwards. Luca cried out. His hands scraped down the rockface as he desperately tried to break his fall.
By chance, his left foot smashed down into a slight indentation in the rockface, and this time it held. He stayed stock-still, not trusting himself to move an inch, and screwed his eyes shut. His breathing came in quick, shallow bursts and, as he slowly uncurled his fingers, tiny fragments of rock slipped from his grasp.
He felt as if he was about to lose his balance at any moment. Fear had tightened his muscles to bursting point and he could feel panic rising within his chest. He had to stop it, had to fight the fear. He tried to shut it all out and switch his thoughts to Bear. He pictured the shape of her face, the smell of her skin, anything. But each time an image formed in his mind, it dissolved. There was nothing but the cliff and the beckoning darkness below.
‘Breathe,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Just breathe …’
A few seconds passed before he managed to open his eyes again. He jerked his head up, refusing to look down and
staring
towards the summit instead. He could see the grey smudge of smoke fanning out into the sky and guessed that he was nearly halfway up already. Halfway, he repeated to himself. Halfway. He just had to keep on pushing.
Shifting the weight of the ropes on his back, he let his fingers play over the rock face for several seconds, trying to find a solid handhold before moving higher. His body felt leaden and unresponsive but he willed himself on, forcing his arms and legs to respond. He was following a fissure that led up unbroken all the way to the summit. Only a few feet higher it widened out, allowing him to press his whole body inside. With his back squeezed against the rock, he felt much more secure. Slowly, his confidence began to return.
There was a bitter smell of sulphur and Luca looked up to see smoke belching over the summit only twenty-five feet above his head. It rose up in an immense column of ash and vapour, deep orange at its core and fading to a nicotine-stained yellow at the edges. There was the summit … only a few feet more to go.
Continuing up the very last of the cliff, Luca reached out his right hand and dragged his body on to the flat surface beyond. For several minutes he lay on his back, letting the relief wash over him. He had made it. The climb was over.
Dragging himself to his feet again, he staggered forward. Smoke was everywhere, clouding his vision and making him walk like a blind man with hands outstretched. His eyes moved from one shadow to the next across the uneven ground, as if expecting the opening of the mine suddenly to appear and swallow him whole. He weaved round one
boulder
and then another, all his senses straining in the fog.
Then, somewhere to his right, he heard a low metallic clanking sound. It was soft, muffled by the smoke, but he could definitely hear something. As he approached, he suddenly saw the opening loom out of the darkness, running in a long, jagged line across the ground. Lying flat, he craned his neck inside and saw the dull pinpricks of electric lighting and the grey outline of the wooden balconies far beneath. This was it! He’d found it!
With a sudden surge of energy, Luca shrugged off the ropes, feeding one of them out on the ground to check for knots. The other he left still coiled. He would use it for abseiling down the cliff he had just climbed.
About three metres from the edge of the opening lay a waist-height boulder and Luca tied the rope off around it. He then dumped the remaining slack into the mine, watching the line pull taut under its own weight. With the spare harness tucked over his shoulder, Luca fed the rope through his ‘eight’ abseiling device, before moving his feet out to the edge of the opening. He could feel the heat and stale air rising up towards him, and suddenly the reality of what lay beneath struck home.
He was going back into the mine. And all that he had to defend himself with was a pistol that he didn’t know how to fire.
Luca dropped in, abseiling with his face turned up towards the massive domed roof. It seemed to close in around him
like
a shroud, while clouds of black dust hung in the air and the air grew stiflingly hot. Luca felt as if he were descending into the very pit of hell.
Below him, shapes began to emerge. They were only impressions at first, but soon he recognised the lines of the balconies and the arching necks of the cranes used to control the heavy metal troughs. Then, as he reached about thirty feet above the first level, he could see the faint outlines of human beings. They were sitting on the floor with their heads slumped forward, waiting for the time to crawl by. The hope of a miraculous rescue had long since faded. Now they only waited to die.
Luca reached the ground and pulled the remaining slack through his harness. A group of four men stood staring at him. All of them were gaunt and desperate, their faces twisted in confusion as they tried to understand who he was and what he was doing. They moved closer, their eyes cautiously flickering between him and the dangling rope, not daring to believe that it could be true. Suddenly, one of them shouted in excitement, realising that Luca couldn’t possibly be LRA. He was a white man.
As one, they surged forward, crowding around him and shouting with joy. Two of them reached up and grabbed on to the rope, as if to check it was real, tugging down on it with all their might. Gradually, the commotion filtered down across the levels of the mine. It was such a different sound from the low groans of despair that it instantly woke the other miners from their apathy.
‘Bear!’ Luca shouted. He gripped on to the rope, hoisting
himself
above the gathering crowd, and shouted her name again. More miners had come, and still more were scaling the metal chains between the levels. They climbed as fast as they could, moving like spiders to a fly.
‘Bear!’
One of the miners shunted Luca to one side and, curling his fingers into the rope, tried to climb it. His forearms shook with strain for several seconds before slowly he slid back down again. Another man immediately jumped up, frantically grabbing hand over hand, but the rope was just too slippery. He was roughly pulled out of the way as another contender pushed forward and began trying to scale it.
Luca watched, knowing full well that they would never make it more than a few metres. It was a 10.5mm static line rope with a full Teflon coating. It was impossible to climb it without the proper gear, and already the miners were starting to become frustrated.
People were now crowded around the rope, jostling and fighting to get their turn to climb. Fights were already breaking out on the periphery, while in the centre the rope bounced up and down. Three men were trying to climb at the same time, their elbows smashing into each other’s face and chests as they vied for position.
Luca pushed his way out from the crowd and ran over to the edge of the balcony. Along the entire length of the mine’s grim interior, he saw men climbing, pulling themselves up the chains with desperate abandon. He stared from one to the next, never having dreamed that there could be so many people inside this hell.
Where could Bear be? What had that bastard Mordecai done with her?
Sprinting to the other side of the balcony, he tried to get a better vantage point into the atrium. He passed row upon row of heavy lifting cranes, their chains swinging and clanking as the miners tried to climb up, and then he saw the huge pile of rubble fanning out from where the entrance tunnel had been. Ten metres further on, there was a crooked hut tucked back into the edge of the mine. It was the only structure left on the first level.