She started bandaging his legs together. Tim could be moved to a safer place now – though it wouldn’t be where he expected.

  I went over to them. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go. Crucial’s getting a couple of the boys to move you.’

  She concentrated hard on what she was doing with the tourniquet, but I got a nod.

  As I turned away, Tim croaked, ‘Nick?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Silky looked up and gave me the kind of smile I’d have walked across hot coals for ten days ago. Who knows? Maybe I still would. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank you. For everything . . .’

  Fuck that. There wasn’t time for medal ceremonies. I picked up my AK and yelled at the gunners up ahead to warn them I was on the move.

  12

  It wasn’t hard to find a site. Every inch of the place had been dug into at one time or another. I started humping the bags myself, following a route that took me past Silky and Tim, past the mound and on to the entrance. The dugout was six or seven metres up the hillside, and only a little smaller than the one I’d already prepped.

  Crucial bellowed at the ANFO boys in the valley to start shifting more bags and metal up to me. No one looked too happy at the prospect.

  I screwed up my eyes and hoicked another bag on to my back. It wasn’t my aching body I was worried about – the adrenalin would take care of that – it was the constant banging inside my head.

  Fuck the LRA, fuck child soldiers, fuck everyone. I was in my own little world too. I just wanted this over and done with, and to be out of here.

  Next time I came down, Crucial was standing over Tim and Silky.

  Tim was ready to be shifted.

  I nodded at Crucial. ‘Let’s get him up to the tents.’

  ‘No, Nick.’ Silky got to her feet. ‘We want to go back to the villagers.’

  Tim’s voice came in at ankle level. ‘I can still help them.’

  ‘Silky . . .’ I looked down at Tim. ‘And you . . .’ I pointed past the growing pile of ANFO bags. ‘Very soon there’s going to be a ton of shit pouring through that gap. You need to be up by the tents with us.’

  Silky was shaking her head even before I’d finished. ‘We understand what might happen, Nick. That’s why we’re not going to leave these people.’

  Sam appeared at the run with four squaddies, all gulping oxygen and sweating. ‘What do you think this is? A debating society?’ He glanced at Tim. ‘OK?’

  Tim nodded.

  ‘Up to the tents, then. What good are you to anyone down here? Any casualties will be brought up to us. Your arms are still working, so you can sort them out up there. Both of you, no questions.’ He pointed at me. ‘And you get those devices in, soon as.’

  ‘Standish here yet?’

  ‘Aye, just.’ He pointed at Crucial. ‘Give him a hand. I’ll sort these two out.’

  The two of us set about hauling the ANFO up the slope on our own.

  The bags weighed a lot more than their original fifteen kilos, once the diesel had been added, and each seemed to weigh a bit more than the last. Crucial was on autopilot, shouldering bag after bag, but I knew what was on his mind.

  ‘Have you thought about staying, Nick?’

  ‘Fucking hell, mate, I haven’t had time to shit, let alone think. Besides, now’s not the time. Let’s get on with this.’

  We got to the dugout and dumped the bags in layers, as before.

  ‘You know what, Nick? It’s always the right time to talk about doing some good.’

  We could stack them maybe three high – if we used the time and he stopped waffling. ‘Let’s get on with this, eh? We ain’t got that long, mate.’

  We scrambled back down the slope. All this pious talk was really starting to get to me. ‘Mate – you talk about good, but you know what’s being mined here. Do these fuckers even get paid?’

  ‘Of course – two dollars a sack.’

  ‘Not bad for something that sells for four hundred.’

  Crucial bristled. ‘Hey, listen, if this was an LRA mine they’d get nothing. They’d be working at gunpoint, and they’d get shot if they weren’t working hard enough. That doesn’t happen here. These guys get to feed their families. Sam and I had to fight to make that happen.’

  ‘Another Standish cost-cutting initiative?’

  We hefted another bag each. Even with fifteen kilos plus on his shoulder, he managed a shrug.

  We attacked the hill once more. ‘But doesn’t it make you angry? These people living in shite while fat bastards like Stefan rack up millions?’

  ‘I just worry about the kids, Nick. I know what’s happening to them. I know what they’re going through. The rest of it, I can’t do anything about. All I can do is what I’m doing. I can’t change the world, but I can do something for this bit of it.’

  I didn’t think I had any more fluid in me to sweat. I leaned against the stack of bags and gulped air. There were about thirty-five of them now, and it would be last light soon. We had to get a fucking move on.

  Crucial’s sermon hadn’t improved my headache, and I had to wipe white foam periodically from my lips. He and I looked like a couple of rabies victims. We needed fluid urgently, but not as urgently as we needed to finish the claymore.

  We started to shovel, but Crucial wasn’t giving up on his pitch. ‘I was like Sunday. I was taken from my village, used and dehumanized, Nick. Turned into a killer.’

  ‘Sunday tell you that?’

  ‘He’s not talking yet. His mind’s too numb. We get the kids to draw pictures to start with – it’s the only way they can express themselves. Most of them draw the same thing. They draw the LRA attacking their village, then they draw themselves being taken away. Sunday has drawn his hut being burned, and then being forced to shoot his parents.’

  ‘You kill yours?’

  He held his shovelful of mud in mid-air for a moment, but said nothing. It was all the answer I needed.

  ‘What about the kids coming in tonight? How do you feel about hosing them down?’

  He nodded slowly. ‘I know you’ve killed children, Nick. I was there, remember? It was a very big thing for Sam, also. That’s why he’s here now. It tested his faith. How could the Lord let such a thing happen?’

  This God stuff wasn’t what I was after, and he knew it.

  He lifted his crucifix and kissed it. ‘If I have to kill to save life, then I must. But it is not easy for me, man. The worst thing of all is condemning a child to death through no fault of his own. I will have to live with that until I meet my God. Then it will be between Him and me.’

  I carried on shovelling. Part of me envied his certainty about the pearly gates. I wouldn’t be seeing them. My ticket was for totally the opposite direction.

  There was a lull in the waffle, but I knew he still hadn’t finished. ‘Nick, the only thing you can do is what Sam and I do. Help us to help them. Then maybe, God willing, you’ll be at peace.’

  I let my spade do the talking for a moment or two. The kid’s shot-away face flashed through my head and the prospect of doing it again tonight made it stay there a few seconds longer than I would have wanted. ‘Listen, mate, if we don’t get these fucking claymores done, you’ll be having that meeting a whole lot quicker than you want . . .’

  13

  It took the best part of an hour to finish the digging, get the metal in and the claymores set and prepared. The sun had never won its fight with the cloud, but could still be seen trying to break through as it dipped towards the end of the valley.

  I had run det cord from both dugouts. They met behind the mound where Tim had been dumped. The two lots were of different lengths, with one running across the valley entrance and the other up to the higher ground on this side. Differing lengths could sometimes cause problems; ideally, they should be the same so there’s simultaneous detonation. But these claymores were so far apart it wasn’t as if the first one kicking off a nanosecond before the other would dislodge or compromise its mate. And to any LRA within reach, it would be one big, fuck-off bang.

  Crucial and I had trodden the det cord from the right-hand claymore into the mud to avoid any LRA feet kicking it out of the devices as they came screaming into the valley.

  To make best use of the killing area, Sam would want the first wave to come into the sangars’ arcs of fire before he gave the order to detonate. The claymores would then take them down as they moved along the riverbank and the entrance to the valley, and we got to kill more of them more quickly. We might even have a chance of being alive at the end of it.

  Crucial was on his way back from the stores with the firing cable, the detonator and the firing device. Sam would make the decision as to when the plunger would be depressed and the electric current sent down the two-strand firing cable. That would initiate the detonator, which would initiate the det cord that ran to the balls of HE at the heart of the claymores. In less than a second, all our hard work would be history, and so would be a whole pile of LRA.

  I concentrated 100 per cent on making sure I assembled the devices right. I was already cutting myself away from the fact that some of the targets getting the good news from these things tonight would be kids.

  Crucial came back with the goodies. ‘I’m going to see the children before I join Sam. You OK?’

  I nodded. I didn’t need him. This next bit was a one-man drill – in case I fucked up and the whole lot exploded prematurely. ‘Just bring in the gunners. We need them in now.’

  He screamed and shouted at the sangars. A guy jumped out like a jack-in-the-box and started relaying the order.

  I wasn’t going to do anything until they were all sitting on the safe side of the claymores. While I waited, I took the ends of the firing cable, twisted them together and pushed it into the mud. Earthing was an SOP: if the cable still held a residual current, it might be enough to initiate the det when I attached it.

  Crucial stood behind me, waiting for everyone to take his position. Everything had gone quiet. No gunfire, no shouts, just the constant racket of the cicadas taking over the world.

  ‘The kid you condemned to death? You talking about Sunday?’

  Neither of us was looking at the other.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Don’t need to be a brain surgeon to work that one out, mate. The drugs, flapping about contaminating Tim, oh, and all that “What have I got to lose?” shite.’

  He stood stock still, gazing out over the valley. He might have been carved from stone.

  ‘It wasn’t the pain that made me cry out when he bit me. It was seeing him with a mouthful of my blood. I have given him HIV, Nick. I have killed him.’

  ‘How long you had it?’

  ‘After I fell from the helicopter Sam took me to an aid station outside Kinshasa. The blood transfusion was contaminated.’

  ‘I’m no doctor, mate, but Sunday’s got more chance of being struck by lightning. Your peripheral blood will be infectious, but not highly. And it was only one exposure. He can be tested anyway. And, as for you, the new drugs keep people alive for years. You’ve got plenty of time yet before you have that sit-down with God.’

  He nodded, then smiled. ‘I keep telling myself that, but it’s good to hear it from someone else. Thank you, Nick.’

  Fuck me, I seemed to be doling out happy pills today like they were going out of style. ‘Not a problem, mate. I was saying it to cheer myself up, as much as anything else. After all, if I hadn’t dropped you . . .’

  It was my turn to concentrate hard on the treeline. I certainly didn’t want to catch his eye. ‘I killed another kid today. Point blank in the face.’

  Crucial rested a giant hand on my shoulder. ‘And your claymores are going to kill more. That’s why you must stay and help us. We have to make sure people like Standish and Kony are never able to do this again, ever.’

  He was so close I could see the thin line of cement round his diamonds, and smell his parched breath. ‘We have to stop it, Nick.’

  The gunners arrived. He left without another word, and I got to work.

  If I hadn’t earthed the cable correctly, I was about to find out.

  I picked up the dets. They were loose in the bag, a demolition man’s nightmare: twenty or so aluminium tubes the size of half a cigarette, and the two thin metre-long wires that protruded from the back of each weren’t twisted together like they should have been. Left apart, the wires act like antennae and can pick up a radio signal or atmospheric electricity. Either could be enough to initiate the det, and this area was no stranger to electrical storms. They could have gone up at any moment.

  I pulled one out, untwisted the firing cable wires again, turned my back on the whole process, and joined one to the first of the det wires.

  If there was any electricity in the firing cable, it would flow to the det when I connected the second wires. It wouldn’t exactly blow my fingers off, but I’d collect a few splinters in the arse.

  I closed my eyes and touched the two ends together.

  PART EIGHT

  1

  There was no bang. There’d been no residual current in the cable.

  I twisted the last two wires together, unwound another couple of metres from its drum, and laid the det on the LRA side of the mound.

  Last item to be tested was the plunger. Only then could I be sure that the whole detonation system worked.

  I gave the wooden handle a quarter-turn clockwise to release it from the box and pulled it up. I winced as the ratchets inside clicked away like a football rattle.

  I pushed down hard, feeling the resistance. The shaft of the handle sank back into the box, generating current to the two terminals – screw shanks jutting from the top of the box and crowned by butterfly nuts – as it went. I watched the needle display beside them jump into the red. The current might still be as weak as rainwater, but it was an encouraging sign.

  I turned the handle back to the closed position, untwisted the end of the firing cable that was still on the drum and attached it to the terminals. I fastened the butterfly nuts and gave a little tug to make sure they were secure.

  I unlocked the handle again, pulled it up and brought it down.

  There was a loud crack, like a subsonic 9mm round, from the other side of the mound.

  The checks were time-consuming and a pain in the arse, but detail counts and I wouldn’t let myself rush, or be made to rush. When Sam wanted the claymores to go off, there and then, at that moment, I had to be sure that I’d catered for every eventuality.

  The circuit was complete. The cable wasn’t damaged anywhere in the reel and the plunger had only needed to send enough current down it to overcome about two ohms of resistance in the det. It was nothing in power terms – a fart had more – but there might have been snags: I didn’t know what charge the plunger was generating, this thing was ancient, and the cable might have been too long for it, draining current before it reached its destination.

  I gathered in the cable and what little remained of the det. I removed the det wires, twisted the cable wires together again, and did the same to the other end once I’d taken it off the plunger. It needed to be re-earthed before I attached a fresh det.

  I grasped the two lengths of cord running from the claymores. A distant rumble of thunder from the east made me wish I had some end caps, little rubber fittings that prevent water entering the cord. Moisture can penetrate a couple of inches into the cut ends and contaminate the HE, and if something like that can go wrong, it probably will. I thought about going in search of a Prudence or two, but there wasn’t time.

  I placed the det six inches from the ends, and bound them all together with a generous length of the sweaty and gooey gaffer-tape, making sure there was really good contact.

  The adhesive oozed. My sweaty hands kept slipping from the tape roll and the cords. My head was still thumping. My vision was getting fuzzy. It wouldn’t be long before I started losing my hand-eye co-ordination, and then I’d flake out. I badly needed fluid.

  All around me the cicadas were still taking over the world, and ahead, just past the mouth of the valley, the river roared. The only other sounds were the laboured rasp of my own breathing and the buzzing of squadrons of insects as they made their final approach before landing on my neck.

  2

  The only people to my front now were LRA. I wondered if they were already massed on our side of the river and, like our guys, sitting and waiting. Maybe they were just a couple of hundred away on each side of the entrance, psyching themselves up with an extra couple of rations of ghat. Or maybe they were still dragging themselves across the water with ropes. Some would have drowned, that was for sure, ripped away by the current – especially the younger, smaller ones, who could hardly lift a weapon, let alone carry it and fight the current.

  This whole situation was total and utter shite. In some trendy bar in the City, some white-socked trader would be checking tin prices on his handheld while I checked the connections between the detonator and the det cord.

  As he and his wife took their kids out to some fancy dinner in the West End, did they spare a thought for Sunday and his mates? Did they fuck. They wouldn’t even know about them. But Crucial was right. We had to cut away from all that.

  I can’t change the world, but I can do something for this bit of it . . .

  The bond between the two lengths of det cord and the dets was good. Everything was ready to go. I had the firing cable wound round a rock to take the strain, and the ends that would connect to the plunger still twisted to make sure they didn’t pick up any static while I was on the move.

  I didn’t need the last slab of HE in the box, or the remaining dets. I twisted their wires and dumped the lot at the business end of the enterprise. It wasn’t as if I was going to get a second chance at rigging up this shit.

  I hauled the plunger-box strap over my shoulder. The detonation mechanism always stays with the guy who’s going to initiate. The plunger would be under my control right up until I handed it over to Sam. That way, there couldn’t be any mistakes.