Recoil

6

‘Rise and shine, man!’

I opened my eyes in a semi-daze as an unseen hand gave the para cord a shake. The loadie’s grin was only inches from my face, and by the smell of his breath he’d spent the flight smoking one of the Cape’s more exotic crops. Good job he wasn’t needed to fuck about with the 23mms.

I flipped myself out of the hammock again. Sam was already on his feet, his hair sticking up and his face creased. I probably didn’t look any different.

I couldn’t keep my mind off the cargo. I didn’t know where we were landing. If it was an official airstrip, I could only assume Lex and Sam had the authorities squared away. Maybe that was where the Cutty Sark was headed, or a couple of bundles of notes.

I was just glad I wasn’t a part of it. I didn’t know if the rationale was good, bad or indifferent. All I knew was that the mixture of weapons, whisky and wonga was as volatile as a Saturday-night vindaloo.

I looked through a window. The sun glinted on a series of waterways that snaked through my broccoli fields, but craters the size of small towns suddenly appeared, huge orange-red scars among the green, as if the jungle had a bad case of acne. Down there, somewhere under the hundreds of square miles of green that stretched as far as the horizon, was Silky. Maybe on some track or even floating down a river trying to get to Nuka with her blankets, or whatever shit she was taking for the locals.

I unfastened the para cord from the fuselage struts and rolled the silk into a ball. Sam shook his head when I offered it to him. ‘Keep it. You might be needing it.’

I shoved it into my holdall.

The Antonov was on its final approach and I wanted to see what kind of landing site we were heading for – and what kind of reception committee was waiting.

The broccoli had become big distinctive treetops, and it wasn’t long before the wheels hit a carpet of orange-red dirt.

Tents and huts with wriggly tin roofs lined the runway, just metres from the wing-tip, and many more disappeared into the forest behind them. Smoke curled from cooking fires. Small figures darted about on the edge of the strip.

I squatted on the ramp, rubbing my eyes back to life as the loadie reappeared and threw each of us a bottle of water. I tilted my head and took several warm gulps, trying to time them between jolts as the aircraft kangarood along the runway. A couple of scabby dogs tried to keep pace with us, looking as if they thought the tyres were made of Pedigree Chum. Decapitated oil drums had been placed at twenty-metre intervals along the sides of the strip, and had obviously had fires in them. It looked like Lex did a bit of night-flying as well.

Sam was looking out of the window too. ‘I saw you having a sniff in them boxes . . .’ He was smiling. ‘Bet you’re thinking what I said last night about the church, orphanage, even the mine is rubbish? Bet you’re thinking we’re just in the war game?’

‘Pretty much.’ I nodded back at the cargo. ‘I mean—’

‘I haven’t lied to you, Nick. Maybe kept the odd thing back, but that’s all. Our mine is under constant threat, which means the orphanage at Nuka is too. So, to protect it, we’ve got to expand our operations and get more guys on the ground.’

It wasn’t long before the propellers were feathered and the aircraft came to a standstill. I started to flap even more about Silky fucking about in Nuka.

I now had a clearer view of the huts and tents. Brilliant cobalt blue was definitely the colour of choice in Africa.

The dogs finally caught up with us and yapped at the cockpit as the engines closed down. They were probably just too fucked to take chunks out of the tyres. Some of the older kids followed a football on to the runway so the barefooted game could continue.

The loadie pressed a button and the ramp whined. A horizontal shaft of daylight appeared where it left the fuselage. It hit the ground and Sam and I walked down into a solid wall of heat.