A black guy lay at his feet, decked out in a knee-length Obama shirt drenched with sweat, a makeshift tourniquet wrapped around his leg to staunch the bleeding from a bullet wound to his thigh. He’d lost a lot of blood despite the tourniquet, judging from his complexion. His pupils were dilated. His face was so pale he looked like Michael Jackson.

  ‘What the fuck took you so long, bro?’ said Stegman, narrowing his eyes. ‘Where’s her plasticuffs?’ Bald opened his mouth to reply but the other man cut him off with a wave of his hand. ‘Forget it. We’re leaving. Right the fuck now. Tell Liam.’

  Liam. It took Bald a couple of beats to clear the fog swirling behind his eyes and remember the name his partner was operating under. When Bald and Priest had RV’d with Stegman in Mombasa, they had assumed the identities of a couple of privateers on the Circuit looking for a spot on Pretorius’s PMC team. Bald’s alias was Jimmy Speed. Priest went by the name of Liam Rees.

  Bald turned to head towards his partner. Stegman grinned at Imogen.

  ‘You found the gift for Mr Pretorius, eh?’ He clicked his tongue at her. ‘Shouldn’t have tried to run, sweetheart. Just consider yourself lucky we haven’t already gutted you like a fucking pig. You little bitch.’

  ‘Do it then,’ Imogen goaded as she took a step closer to Stegman. Bald tightened his grip and held her back. There was surprising strength in her. ‘You’ve had your sick games. You’ve beaten me, raped me. Why don’t you just get it over with and kill me?’

  Stegman laughed. ‘Because Mr Pretorius likes you, sweetheart. He likes you so much, he gave us orders to bring you back alive. Lucky you, I guess.’

  ‘I won’t go,’ Imogen said, clapping her free arm to her chest.

  ‘Fine.’ Stegman tipped his head towards the motorboats circling on the river. ‘Feel free to take your chances with the pirates. They’re world famous for their hospitality.’ He winked. ‘Especially towards pretty young white women.’

  Imogen looked at him in horror.

  ‘Animals,’ she hissed. ‘You’re all animals.’

  Stegman flashed a smile at her. The veins on his neck bulged. They looked thick enough to abseil down. ‘You just keep the compliments flowing, sweetness.’

  ‘Maybe we should cut our losses,’ Bald broke in, gesturing to Imogen. ‘Look at the fucking state of her. She’s in rag order. She’ll only slow us down.’

  Stegman flicked his eyes towards Bald, pulling a face like a Greek in a tax office. ‘Are you insane? Mr Pretorius explicitly demanded we bring this bitch back with us. If we show up at the camp empty-handed, he’ll be furious.’

  Bald shrugged. ‘That’s too bad. But between her and your fucked-up slave there’ – he nodded at the black guy on the ground – ‘we’ll be moving too slow. Those wankers out there on the motorboats will catch up with us before we hit the camp.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him, master,’ the slave, Eli, said as he tried to sit upright. His voice sounded like someone scraping rust spots off an old car. ‘I may be wounded, but I can still walk.’

  ‘We don’t have time for this bollocks,’ spat Bald. ‘We’ve got to get out of here now. Let’s ditch the woman.’

  Stegman turned back to Bald and glowered at him. His eyeballs were big and white as gobstoppers. Bald could actually hear the guy grinding his teeth. ‘That slimy slit comes with us, Jimmy. End of.’

  Bald snorted through his nostrils. At his side, Imogen visibly deflated: shoulders sagging, head hanging low as she came to terms with her fate. Bald wheeled away from her and hurried over to Priest.

  ‘Displace!’ he shouted to him, raising his voice above the drumbeat of ca-racks as his mucker put down rounds on the pirates. ‘Get over here!’

  Priest rattled off a final round. Then he shot to his feet and bulldozed his way over to Bald, retreating from the rocks as the two motorboats buzzed about on the river. Priest had surprising speed for someone who was the size of an NFL defensive lineback. Bald scooped the Negev light machine gun off the ground and did a quick weapons check. He’d expended 110 rounds of 5.56x45mm NATO during the pirates’ ambush. That left forty rounds of open-link brass hanging out of the feed tray. Not a lot. But enough.

  He turned to Priest as the guy caught his breath. ‘How many rounds you got?’

  ‘Sixteen in the clip. One spare.’

  Bald nodded. Forty-six rounds for Priest – sixteen plus the thirty-round clip. With the forty rounds in the Negev, between them they had eighty-six rounds in total. ‘Listen carefully. You’re Tail-end Charlie. That means you hang at the rear of the echelon and keep a watch on our six. If the pirates try anything, you give them the good news. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Then Bald wheeled away from Priest and beat a quick path back towards Stegman. The Negev weighed heavily down on his right side. It was big and unwieldy. Like lugging around a car engine. Ahead of him, Stegman wrapped his trunk-like arm around Eli’s waist and hefted the slave to his feet. At their twelve o’clock the ground rose steeply towards a clearing littered with rocks and spent brass. Beyond this Bald could see an expanse of savannah, with waves of tall elephant grass brushing against the trunks of acacia and mangrove trees. From a distance came the squawks and shrieks of exotic birds.

  Stegman jerked his head towards the savannah.

  ‘Mr Pretorius’s camp is this way,’ he yelled above the clatter of gunfire as the pirates opened fire on the river bank. Rounds thwacked into the dirt four metres to Bald’s left.

  ‘How far?’ Bald asked

  ‘Thirteen kilometres.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to head into the savannah and try to lose the pirates.’

  Stegman nodded. Bald glanced back at the river. The motorboats were scudding fast towards the bank now that Priest had stopped firing. Fifty metres away. No time to lose. He swung around and started to pound up the slope, pulling Imogen along by her hand. Stegman and Eli had built up a head start and were six metres in front. Priest hurried after Bald and Imogen, four metres back. The firefight had taken its toll on the Scot. His muscles ached. He was badly dehydrated. His head throbbed under the heat and the sweat coursed down his back. Yet he kept up a brutal pace. Thirteen klicks, he reminded himself. In blistering heat. Through an exposed savannah. They were low on ammo and carrying two injured. The pirates had the advantage of speed and numbers.

  Crap odds.

  They were twelve metres up the incline when Priest said, ‘Boss, I think you’d better see this.’

  Bald stopped. They had almost reached the clearing. At his side, Imogen was breathing erratically. He did a one-eighty. Saw Priest four metres below them. Giving his back to Bald and pointing out somewhere along the river. The two motorboats were now twenty metres from the bank. But that wasn’t what had alarmed Priest. He was directing Bald to something further north. The water shimmered like loose change under the sun and Bald had to squint to make it out. Then he saw it. Sixty metres upriver. A chill swept through his veins. His blood turned to ice.

  Two more motorboats. Racing towards the bank.

  Five more pirates on each.

  Twenty men in total. All toting AK-47s.

  ‘Shit!’ Bald hissed. ‘Go!’

  He spun back towards the clearing and broke into a hard run.

  Twenty-three

  0819 hours.

  Skirting the river, they pushed on through the savannah. The sun was so hot it made Bald’s teeth sweat, and beads of the stuff ran like candlewax down his spine. Racing through the tall grass brought back memories of training in Belize during Selection. Twenty years ago. Seemed like something from another life. Before Northern Ireland. Before the Regiment’s top brass had hung him out to dry, and Bald had turned to the drink, and the migraines began.

  Before his life had turned into one big clusterfuck.

  He kept looking over his shoulder, like a distance runner gunning down the home straight and checking on his rivals. He saw Priest with his back turned as he stopped to put down single rounds on the pirates. Twenty of the fuckers, thought Bald. Just my luck. He placed the pirates at two hundred metres back. They were moving at a good pace, picking their way through the dead bodies littering the bank and scaling the incline. Slowly but surely catching up. In minutes they’d be on top of Bald and his little group.

  The problem was Eli. Bald’s fears about Imogen had been misplaced – she moved quickly despite her injuries. The fear of being abducted by a bunch of angry pirates probably had something to do with it, he figured. No, Eli was the one slowing them down. Stegman did his best to hurry him along, as the slave limped frenetically at his side. Bald gritted his teeth. Should’ve sent Eli south when you had the chance, the voice in his head said. His knackered leg was going to cost them. Big time.

  ‘Keep going,’ Bald barked at Imogen. ‘Whatever you do, don’t stop.’

  She nodded quickly. The soles of her bare feet were gashed and bloody from scrambling over the rocks and stones on the climb.

  Then a roar thundered at Bald’s six o’clock. He looked back to see the pirates putting down rounds on their position. After the roar came the hiss and spit of the bullets as they ripped through bark and thumped into the soil. A hundred and fifty metres separated them now, Bald reckoned. The pirates were steadily closing the gap.

  Priest unleashed a three-round burst at them. They dispersed between the acacia trees in what appeared to be a practised manoeuvre, and Bald had to remind himself that he was dealing with a sophisticated enemy. The pirates weren’t the usual incompetent local toughs – they had grown up in the blood and bullets of war-torn Somalia. Most of them had been fighting since the day their balls dropped. They had successfully hijacked international shipping routes and repelled attacks from French commandos and US Navy SEALs. They were a formidable enemy.

  Bald pushed on. Standard operating procedure when faced with an enemy of overwhelming strength was to execute a tactical withdrawal, bugging out of the killing zone, using every weapon to hand to keep the enemy at bay until neutral ground was reached. But there was one major problem with that SOP: Eli’s shattered leg. They were forced to move at a slow pace. He tried to ignore the grim thought taking root in his skull. The one telling him that they’d never escape the pirates in time.

  Sixty metres on they saw up ahead an old boat station in a clearing twenty metres up from the river. A dilapidated breeze-block shelter with a corrugated-tin roof and windows like blackened teeth.

  By now the pirates were less than a hundred metres behind. Bald knew his group couldn’t keep going for much longer. Heat, dehydration, the sheer physical exhaustion of the earlier gun battle – all these were taking their toll. There was a distinct clink as Priest emptied the last round from his AK-47. Bald watched him dig out the spare mag from the waistband of his shorts as Eli groaned and keeled over, dropping to the ground beside Stegman.

  ‘It’s no good. I can’t go on, master,’ he said.

  Stegman rolled him onto his back. His skin was slick with sweat, his mouth slack. His pupils were the size of bottle caps. Stegman dropped to one knee and took Eli’s hand. Bald rolled his eyes. The pair of them looked like they were auditioning for Brokeback Mountain II.

  ‘Almost there,’ Stegman said softly. Not for the first time, Bald wondered if their relationship was less master–slave and more Elton John–David Furnish. ‘One last push, mate,’ Stegman urged. ‘We have to make it to the camp.’

  ‘I, I can’t walk, master. My leg—’

  Bald clenched his teeth like he was trying to chew through a lead pipe. ‘Leave the cunt.’

  Stegman glared at Bald. ‘Fuck off, Jimmy. Eli is like a son to me, man. There’s no way we’re leaving him behind.’

  ‘It’s us or him.’

  ‘Then we stay here and fight.’

  Bald shook his head. ‘There’s twenty of them,’ he said, jerking his thumb at the pirates, now eighty metres behind them. ‘And three of us, not counting Imogen and Stevie Wonder here. We make a stand, they’ll rip us to shreds.’

  ‘We’re not leaving,’ Stegman growled. ‘We’ll never outrun those kaffir bastards anyway.’

  Bald looked away from him. He hated to admit it, but the South African was on the money. Clearly they were in no fit state to escape the pirates on foot. The only option was to stand and fight. It was a long shot, but if they could find a good defensive position, they might hold them off, perhaps inflicting enough casualties to force them on the back foot.

  Bald was still weighing up the situation when the pirates opened fire.

  He immediately hit the deck. Took Imogen down with him as tongues of flame sparked up amid the trees and bushes. Plumes of smoke fizzled up into the tree canopy. Rounds zipped and flashed through the air – twelve, maybe sixteen, impossible to tell – thumping into the soil a metre to the left of Bald. The voice in the lizard part of his brain took over. You’ve got to put the brakes on their advance, it told him.

  He looked towards the boat station, fifteen metres ahead. The only cover in sight. The building squatted in the middle of an exposed clearing twenty metres wide and thirty long. Dead leaves and rotting bark carpeted the ground around the station, and a gangway of warped planks wound down to the river, where four canoes were moored side by side, partially obscured by drooping reeds. The water gleamed a kind of reddish brown, as if it ran thick with blood.

  That’s our Alamo, Bald thought.

  ‘The boat station,’ he shouted to Priest. ‘That’s our baseline.’ Priest nodded. ‘On me. One . . . two—’

  On three Bald grabbed Imogen and began hurrying towards the building. A split second later Priest raced up to join them. Stegman and Eli were at Bald’s left, the wounded man desperately trying to keep up. Ten metres to the boat station. Then a volley of rounds zipped over his head and thumped into the side of the building. The pirates were closing in. In a flash Bald shoved Imogen aside and transitioned to a kneeling firing stance. He had to put rounds down on the pirates immediately, before his group were on the receiving end of a bellyful of hot lead. He hoisted up the Negev in the same smooth motion and slid his index finger around the trigger mechanism. Then he took aim at the nearest pirate as he broke out of the savannah. The Somali’s face was hidden behind a pair of cheap sunglasses and a brightly coloured shemagh.

  Forty-five metres away.

  Bald depressed the trigger.

  The LMG jolted violently in his grip as it dispensed bullets like coins out of a faulty vending machine. Moving parts clanked and thunked. Flames spewed from the nozzle. Empty jackets burped out of the ejector and the pirate spasmed as if someone had plugged him into the national grid. He crumpled.

  Thirty-seven rounds of link left.

  Four more figures suddenly emerged from between the trees. They raced past the dead man and fired their AK-47s from their hips. Half a dozen rounds landed a few inches short of Bald and Priest, who had dropped to one knee a metre to the right of his partner. At Bald’s three o’clock Stegman laid Eli down, then adopted a prone firing stance. Now the three operators put down a stream of continuous fire on the onrushing pirates, while Imogen screamed as she lay face down on the ground beside Bald. Priest brassed up a second target. Stegman nailed a third. Bald struck a fourth pirate and felt a deep burn of satisfaction as three bullets stitched the target’s belly. The guy folded in the middle like a penknife.

  Thirty-five rounds left.

  For the moment they were holding their own. But for every one bad guy they slotted, another three quickly took his place. Too many, thought Bald. No way can we hold them off. The nearest pirates were less than forty metres away. Four were dead, but that still left sixteen attackers – and they were hopping mad, shouting at Bald as they rushed towards the boat station. An awful realization lodged in his throat – he was going to die here – on this barren strip of land – at the hands of a bunch of Somali scum.

  He fought on, unleashing round after round on the fuckers. The Negev shook in his grip. The tongue of link grew shorter and shorter as more rounds were gobbled up into the feed tray and spat out of the muzzle. Five dead now. Fifteen left. He was down to twenty rounds of brass. More pirates surged towards the defensive group. One of them zeroed his AK at Bald. Thirty metres away from his position. He had no time to displace. The muzzles lit up. Three ca-racks split the air. Bald ducked as a three-round burst whizzed over his head and pelleted the wall behind him. The rounds were so close that Bald could feel the heat coming off them as they passed.

  Now Bald frantically arced the Negev towards the pirate. Down to his last fifteen rounds. Better make them count, he told himself. He fired. The LMG chugged. The rounds strafed the ground in front of the pirate, six inches short of their target, but sufficiently close to force him to dive for cover. Then Bald glimpsed movement at his one o’clock. Spotted three more pirates hurtling towards him, galloping over a fallen tree trunk. He swung the weapon towards the pirates and opened fire. The last few rounds of link disappeared into the feed tray like a python retracting its tongue. Shit! He was out.

  The three pirates returned fire. The first four bullets landed short of Bald, flinging soil into the air and showering his face with dirt. The enemy trained their sights on him. Bald knew he was fucked. Felt it in his bones.

  ‘Come on, get it over with, you cunts,’ he grunted.

  Then a screeching noise pierced the air. Bald felt a cold fear slither down his spine. Screams. High-pitched and childlike. Everyone paused. The next second he glimpsed movement in the periphery of his vision. Coming from his three o’clock – from the mangrove trees twenty metres west of the boat station.

  Bald swivelled his gaze towards the treeline to see a bunch of dwarf-sized shadows emerge. Had to be at least twenty-five of them, thought Bald. Soldiers? Hard to tell at this distance. Their figures were shaded black by the tree canopy. They were moving at speed, flitting between the mangrove trees as they sprinted wildly towards the clearing. Moments later they broke clear of the treeline, the shadows lifting from their faces like funeral veils.