They weren’t soldiers.

  They were children.

  For a moment Bald couldn’t move. He was transfixed. The children were scrawny-looking and gaunt-faced, with legs skinny as corn stalks and heads totally out of proportion with their slight frames. They looked like a line of coconut shies at a summer fair. Their eyes were like white snooker balls sunk deep into their sockets. Most of the kids seemed to be around twelve or thirteen years old at most. They wore two-sizes-too-big shorts and frayed T-shirts like something out of an Oxfam charity appeal. Crosses were painted on their faces with what appeared to be shea butter. All were armed with AK-47s. Belts of 7.62x39mm link were strapped across their bony shoulders.

  ‘Who are they?’ Bald asked.

  ‘Mr Pretorius’s children,’ Stegman replied, his voice filled with relief. Then his expression darkened. ‘Attack dogs, is more like it. The pirates are about to get ripped to shreds.’

  Kids against battle-hardened men? Bald doubted it. But then the kids stormed towards the pirates and unleashed their first rounds, taking them totally by surprise. A torrent of bullets ripped through two of the pirates. One guy’s shoulder disintegrated in a mist of blood and bone. His mate took a couple of rounds to the face. His lower jaw exploded. Both of them went south as the kids swept down on their position with the kind of rehearsed precision and coordination usually found in elite paramilitary units. Fifteen of the child soldiers broke left and the other fifteen broke right, flanking the pirates and putting down rounds on them from two directions. The pirates were pinned down. Nowhere to hide. They were picked off in short order. One or two tried legging it. The kids slotted them in the back. Bald saw bullets smack into one pirate’s head. It snapped back, his brains spattering the guy next to him. Another dropped to his knees, frantically trying to scoop up his emptied bowels and shove them back inside him. The kids kept firing for maybe two minutes. When they had cut down the last of the pirates they began shooting up the dead bodies. This they seemed to think was funny, laughing deliriously as rounds ricocheted off bones and took off chunks of dead flesh.

  They’re just kids, Bald found himself thinking.

  A shout went up. The gunfire instantly cut out, replaced by the eerie stillness that follows a firefight and always reminded Bald of a blanket of fresh snow falling on a city. With the background noise sucked out of the world, every sound was somehow crisper. The gunsmoke cleared. The silence was quickly replaced by cries of help from two of the wounded pirates. At once the child soldiers poured forward and leapt on their fallen enemies with crazed looks in their eyes, baring their teeth and snarling like Rottweilers. One of the kids appeared to be a few years younger than his mates. No older than nine or ten, Bald reckoned. He wore a Manchester City replica shirt with ‘TOURÉ’ on the back and he gripped a machete with a blade almost as long as his arm. Touré descended with manic glee on the nearest wounded pirate, twenty metres due south of Bald. There was the wet slap as the kid buried his machete in the guy’s arm. The pirate howled. Touré giggled. The pirate tried to crawl away. Touré slashed the machete across his back. Then he plunged the blade into his neck. The pirate stilled. Blood disgorged steadily from his throat wound, dark and glistening. Three more kids swarmed over the other surviving pirate and took turns to bash in his skull with blunt rocks. By the time they were through with him, his face resembled a Florida sinkhole.

  They’re just kids, Bald repeated, out loud this time.

  Stegman drew up alongside Bald and heartily slapped him on the back. ‘Everything’s kif, man,’ he said. ‘Chill. These kids work for Mr Pretorius.’

  ‘Shouldn’t they be playing Xbox or something?’

  Stegman laughed. ‘Nah, bro. Mr Pretorius trained these kids up himself. Calls them his children. They’re the meanest savages on the continent.’

  Bald pursed his lips. He didn’t know how to feel about that. On the one hand, he was glad that the kids had intervened before the pirates had slotted him. He’d been seconds away from going south. On the other hand, they looked dangerously out of control. He watched them ransack the dead bodies, emptying pockets, hacking off ears and noses as mementoes.

  Something puzzled him. He frowned at Stegman. ‘How did the kids find us?’

  Stegman considered this for a beat, rolling the khat around his mouth and narrowing his gaze on the middle distance. Finally he spat out the damp wad and tipped his head in the direction of the Jubba.

  ‘Mr Pretorius has lookouts positioned up and down the river. In case the Yanks come calling. My guess is one of the kids sighted the kaffirs getting ready to attack us from upriver and sent word back to Mr Pretorius. He would’ve sent down his children to take care of them. Good job too, eh?’ He punched Bald playfully on the shoulder. ‘We were a cunt hair away from getting decimated.’

  The child soldiers congregated around Imogen, staring at her as if they’d never seen a white woman before. Maybe that wasn’t so far from the truth, Bald was thinking. He vaguely recalled what Chance had told him back at the mission briefing in Poland about Pretorius’s questionable youth recruitment scheme: snatching children from remote Somali villages and doping them up to their eyeballs, indoctrinating them. Teaching them to believe that he was a god.

  Bald pointed to Touré. ‘Wasn’t that one adopted by Madonna?’

  Stegman laughed. The kid took a step towards Imogen and jabbered something in Somali in a deep and snappy voice. She shivered with fear and looked to Bald for help. He turned away, flicking the switch inside his head and shutting off the part of his brain that, well, gave a crap. Bald had an innate cold-bloodedness that had served him well in the SAS. The media liked to portray Blades as selfless heroes who ate courage for breakfast and knew no fear. To Bald’s mind, the reality was different. You had to be a ruthless, unforgiving bastard to thrive in the Regiment. Take the glory and fuck everyone else. That should be the Regiment motto.

  ‘The kids’ll lead us back to the camp,’ Stegman said, helping Eli to his feet. He nodded to Imogen. ‘Keep an eye on her, eh? Make sure she doesn’t do a runner. Don’t want to disappoint Mr Pretorius now, do we?’

  The kids led the way. Stegman and Eli followed, with Bald and Imogen a step behind and Priest bringing up the rear. After ten kilometres of more or less straight tabbing through the savannah they crossed a vine bridge that looked like a prop from an Indiana Jones movie and weaved their way through a further click of dense foliage. Thick thorn bushes nicked their legs. The near-luminous stems of creeper plants trailed across the ground around their feet and the sodden, fragrant smell of the jungle clogged their nostrils. Swaths of the forest had been cut down, leaving behind patches of land scorched white by the sun. Smoke from freshly burned wood hung like a mist and choked the air.

  Ten minutes later they entered the camp. Touré went on ahead with Imogen.

  At first glance the camp looked like it had been a regular village – before Pretorius and his soldiers had moved in and militarized the area. Ramshackle huts with thatched-reed roofs were arranged in rough columns on either side of a dirt track. In the middle of the camp there was a well where people washed and drank and, apparently, urinated. Probably funded by a charity, thought Bald, built by some blonde twentysomethings from posh universities so they could feel good about themselves. Bony chickens pecked at the dirt. There were termite mounds at the sides of the village, each as tall as a man. Dung beetles scurried across the ground.

  They were officially in the middle of nowhere. No wonder the Yanks hadn’t been able to slot Pretorius. The guy was so far off the grid he might as well have been on another planet. Bald had the feeling he was guest-starring in one of those charity ads where celebrities pleaded for donations from the public. Any minute now he expected to stumble upon Bono and Bob Geldof. They’d stand next to a dying kid, look solemnly into the camera and promise to make poverty history.

  Stegman handed Eli over to a couple of the soldiers, who carried him over to a hut with a crude red cross sign painted on the door.

  Bald and Priest walked on. Then they saw something that made them stop dead in their tracks.

  ‘What the fuck–?’ Priest began.

  They were staring at a row of metre-tall wooden posts lining the dirt track. A human head had been spiked on top of each post, the eyes closed, the mouths contorted into expressions of mute terror. Bald counted a dozen in total. The freshly glistening blood on the posts and the bloated flesh on each face told him that the heads had only recently been put on display.

  Pushing down the fear in his guts until it practically reached his toes, Bald pressed on, Priest alongside him, Stegman now just behind them. There was more. Pairs of severed hands were nailed to the door of each hut. Human skin had been stretched across the windows. In a field to one side of the village, soldiers had set fire to a pile of dismembered torsos. At first Bald had mistaken it for a mound of soil or a rubbish dump. But now he smelled the unmistakable stench of burning flesh. Flies buzzed about his face. The soldiers took turns swigging from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and laughed as the corpses burned. Bald carried on, an awful sense stirring in his bowels that he was about to get sucked into something much darker than he had dared imagine – something it would be impossible to escape from.

  ‘The villagers worship Mr Pretorius,’ Stegman said. He spoke in a reverential tone. ‘After the Yanks attempted to kill him we set up shop here. In these parts Mr Pretorius is the local mayor, sheriff and priest rolled into one.’

  ‘Does he cure the sick and the blind as well?’

  Stegman made a face at Bald like he was sucking on a bag of dicks. ‘Pretorius is a prophet. I’m telling you. Wait till you meet him, you’ll soon change your mind. You and that fat fucking mate of yours.’

  Bald had to tread carefully here. Piss off Stegman and he might shaft his chances of securing a spot on the PMC team. He broke the habit of a lifetime and went for diplomacy instead.

  ‘What makes him so special?’

  Stegman puffed out his cheeks. ‘Mr Pretorius is a bloody great soldier – the best. The man’s deposed half of fucking Africa and he’s done it with a fraction of the resources available to the Yanks. More than that, he’s a soldier’s soldier. Leads from the front.’ His eyes burned, his lips trembled with excitement. ‘And then there are the stories.’

  Bald furrowed his brow. ‘What stories?’

  Stegman looked apoplectic. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard, bro? Everyone knows the story of Mr Pretorius in Zaire.’ Seeing the blank expression on Bald’s face, he shook his head. ‘He made a pact with the devil, man. The man can’t be killed.’

  For a moment Bald figured he was joking. Surely a former Special Forces operator didn’t believe that a person could be impervious to bullets? He waited for the punchline. None came. After a long silence he realized that the guy was deadly serious.

  ‘This way,’ Stegman said, brushing past Bald and a stunned-looking Priest.

  They followed him through the village. Everywhere they looked, soldiers were on the move. Hardened veterans in standard-issue green combats and army jackets with the sleeves rolled up, their faces worn and weathered from years spent fighting in unforgiving terrain, busy loading RPG launchers and AK-47s into wooden crates assembled outside one of the huts. Bald saw boxes filled with ammo, Fairbairn-Sykes knives and grenades, Dragunov SVD sniper rifles and Saiga 12-gauge shotguns. Pretty much any weapon he’d ever used in the field. There were stacks of tactical assault vests and ballistic helmets, boxes filled with elbow and knee protectors. Two Dodge Ram pickup trucks were parked in the camp, painted in desert-camo colours.

  ‘How do you think Pretorius acquired all this kit, boss?’ Priest asked under his breath as the two operators walked a couple of strides behind Stegman. ‘Someone must have paid for it all.’

  Bald slowed his pace and lowered his voice. ‘Call me “boss” one more time, I’ll snap your fucking neck.’

  Ahead of Stegman the child warriors whooped and hollered as Touré manhandled Imogen towards a hut in the centre of the village. A pair of guards were stationed outside the hut. At first Imogen resisted. Touré grabbed at a strap of her bra and pulled. It dropped off her shoulder and her left breast popped out. The children screamed with delight, some clutching their ribs in laughter, others making big-breasted motions with their hands and grunting approvingly. She had a good rack on her. Bald enjoyed the view while Imogen screamed in horror and tried to jerk her arm away from Touré. The kid raised his machete above his head, shaping to hack at her, and Imogen squealed, raising her hands to shield her face. With his authority over Imogen established, Touré seized her by the wrist and dragged her towards the hut. The guards swung open the door. Imogen stumbled forward, almost losing her footing, tears streaking down her pallid face, her purpled arm covering her breasts to preserve whatever shred of dignity she had left. Then Touré shoved her inside the hut.

  At the same time a fat woman wobbled into view from the next hut along. She looked kind of like Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor. Arms thick as meat on a kebab skewer, the doughy folds of flesh spilling out of her faded pink dress like meat in an over-stuffed burger. A headscarf was tied across the back of her head. The woman clutched a leather-bound book in one hand and a bag of sweets in the other. Bald recognized the packet. Haribo.

  The fat woman called out to the children. Immediately they flocked to her. As she bent down and started dishing out sweets, something weird happened to the child soldiers, Bald noticed: they reverted to being innocent kids. Their dead-eyed looks and menacing body language melted away as the woman made a fuss of them. She pinched Touré’s cheek, ruffling his hair and chiding him in a motherly tone of voice. Touré nodded obediently and showed her his palm. She placed a sweet in it, which he greedily gobbled down before giving one of her fat legs a hug. Hard to believe that a short while ago the same kid had hacked a man to pieces. Another kid fetched a stool and the woman eased down onto it – Bald was reminded of a beached whale being airlifted back to sea. She opened the book and began reading to the kids. They were instantly hooked.

  ‘Mama Alice,’ said Stegman. ‘She looks after the kids.’

  ‘What’s the book?’ Priest asked.

  ‘Mr Pretorius’s writings. His teachings, mostly. He wrote it in prison in Togo after his coup attempt.’ He nodded gruffly at Bald. ‘You should read it sometime. It’s inspiring stuff.’

  ‘I’ll add it to my Kindle,’ said Bald.

  Stegman motioned to him and Priest. ‘Follow me,’ he said, and set off again.

  Bald dumped the empty Negev at his feet. No point lugging it any further. He wiped the sweat from his face – his palms, he noted, were smeared black with grease and dead insects – and trudged after Stegman. Priest held onto his AK-47. After eighty metres the dirt path ended. Ten metres further on stood a low, windowless concrete building with a fence around the perimeter of the plot. In front of it was a long trough filled with slops that were festering in the heat. Bald took it be a pig shed.

  ‘This is you,’ said Stegman, gesturing to a hut on the edge of the village.

  The hut was clearly the most desirable piece of real estate in the whole place. Built of mud brick instead of the wattle and daub of the others, it was also much bigger: about eight metres long and four wide. Roughly the size of a primary-school classroom.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Stegman said impatiently. ‘Go say hello to Mr Pretorius.’

  Bald instinctively tensed up. It came down to this: drop the guy the other side of that door, and all the dark shit that he’d done in the past would be forgotten. One bullet, and a clean break. He took a deep breath, looked at Priest. Nodded.

  Then they stepped inside.

  Twenty-four

  1107 hours.

  It was murky inside the hut. The air, filled with dust, was so heavy Bald felt like he was being smothered with a gym towel. Bars of light poked through the windows. The hut had a dirt floor and was sparsely furnished, with a large clay pot in one corner. Bald took another step and heard something crunch underfoot. He looked down. Red ants the size of .50-cal bullets scurried around his Timberlands.

  Then he looked up and set eyes on the man he had been sent to kill.

  In the far-left corner of the hut Kurt Pretorius was lying on his back on a crude mattress stuffed with straw. His eyes were shut and his hands rested on his bare chest. He was absolutely still. Like maybe he was meditating. Bald knew from reading his file that Pretorius had been born in Bulawayo in 1955, in what was then Southern Rhodesia. Which put him at fifty-eight years old. The guy in front of him didn’t look a day over forty-five. His skin had the texture of papyrus and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on his body. Bracelets of human teeth dangled from both wrists. His right ear was missing; Bald vaguely recalled something about it being hacked off during an interrogation in Togo. He had the angular physique and sun-blasted features of a white man who had been spent his whole life in Africa – a man who had stared into the abyss, seen the worst of humanity, and was now utterly indifferent to it.

  For a moment Bald toyed with the idea of slotting his quarry right there and then. It’d be easy enough, his inner voice suggested. He could book Pretorius his ticket to the afterlife, leave the hut, double-tap Stegman and bug out of the village before the child soldiers realized that their Great Leader had been killed.

  Then Bald spotted the guy next to Pretorius and scrapped the plan.

  The man stood guard with his arms folded across his impressive chest. He was a couple of shades darker than the gloom in the hut, his skin glistening like crude oil. He was carrying some serious bulk. He looked like one of those bodybuilding freaks advertising weight-gain products with names like Extreme Gain and Nitro Muscle Max. His pecs were the size of hubcaps, his chest as wide as a forty-gallon drum. He wore a short-sleeved olive-green army-issue shirt and a pair of matching trousers with a large pistol stuffed down the front. Bald recognized the brand by the red strip running down the back of its rubberized grip. A Raging Bull: a large-calibre revolver developed by the Brazilian manufacturer Taurus. It was known in the trade as an elephant gun, because that was all it was good for: killing big game. The Bull had the stopping power of a bazooka and a recoil similar to standing on the San Francisco faultline during an earthquake. In anyone else’s hands the sheer power of the weapon rendered it unmanageable. On this guy it seemed, well, a little on the small side.