Recoil

8

Small volcanoes of mud erupted into the air with the impact of the rounds, and bodies tumbled from the high ground. Survivors ran for cover. There was no more firing.

I grabbed the phone. ‘On target, on target! The LRA have advanced three hundred since you fired.’

I spun back towards the valley, adjusted my sights to 300, the minimum setting, and aimed a little low. I was feeling more confident with every burst, until I heard Crucial yell.

‘Contact rear! Contact rear!’

He’d swung through one-eighty with his AK and was firing behind.

We had the runners from the fire group streaming down from the high ground.

Sam jerked his head round and assessed. ‘I’ll keep forward – you take them, you take them!’

I grabbed my gun by the carry handle and swung it round on to the edge of the backblast channel. There must have been twenty, thirty of them coming down the hill at us, forty metres away and closing.

I squeezed off short, sharp bursts. Some went down but the rest kept coming.

The first wave screamed on to the flat of the knoll, no more than twenty away, so close I could hear the squelch of mud under their feet.

They dropped their empty weapons, and pulled gollocks.