Recoil

3

Body after body, shiny with sweat and bent double under the sacks, continued to emerge from the jungle and shuffle along the airstrip. When they hit the back of the queue for the ramp their hands went straight on to their thighs to try and ease the weight, too fucked even to wipe away the sweat dripping from their faces.

The ones who’d already shed their load were now flopped out on the sacks in the shade of the treeline. A gaggle of brightly coloured women fussed round them with refilled plastic bottles of water.

I’d been wrong about the numbers. The snake looked as though it would never end. There must have been many more than two hundred of them – moving, queuing, or lying prone under the trees.

Sam nodded towards a group of half a dozen escorts high-fiving each other by the entrance to one of the tents. ‘They won’t be doing that when they hear they’re going straight back in a couple of hours.’

Soldiers shouted at porters; women and children shrieked with excitement. The guys in the snake, however, didn’t utter a sound. They were too fucked to do more than stagger to the treeline.

‘So what’s being mined, Sam. Diamonds?’

Sam’s gaze was fixed on the other side of the strip, where the two white guys were now prodding the porters on the ground with their AKs. They seemed to be trying to organize the exhausted men into straight lines.

‘Tin ore. It’s the most hotly traded metal on the London Exchange these days – worth four hundred US per fifty-kilo sack. Here and South America are the only really big sources left. Did you see the old open-cast pits as we flew in?’

‘Like nuclear Ground Zeros?’

He nodded. ‘Those were the diamond mines. That war still goes on, but this is the one that’s giving a few guys happy faces.’

‘What’s the big deal about tin all of a sudden? We overdoing it with the baked beans?’

Sam kept watching the other side of the strip. ‘Supply and demand.’ He pointed at the column working its way into the back of the aircraft. The poor bastards looked like beetles as they leaned forward with the sacks on their backs. ‘The ore is casseritite. Every circuitboard on the planet uses the tin it produces. People are being killed and treated like animals here so that soccer mums can video their kids, and the kids can download Britney Spears on their PCs. Every time somebody uses a mobile, Nick, every time they use the Internet . . .’

‘How much are you shifting?’

‘About twenty tons at a time. And the plane’s flying in and out 24/7.’

‘That’s a fuck of a lot of four-hundred-dollar bags.’

‘Just over two million US a week at the moment. And the owners have plans to expand the misery once the LRA are sorted. Dodgy peerages might grab the headlines, but the real money’s in those lumps of rock.’

‘So who owns it?’

‘The Chinese, would you believe? Africa’s changing, Nick. This continent is no longer just an empty paradeground for us to come and play soldiers on. The rebel groups are slashing and burning for the multinationals now. And you know what? That makes them even more scary.’

‘The Chinese are fucking everywhere.’

‘Aye, big-time. Standish is fixed up with a guy who’s the middle man for one of their operations here.’

‘Anyone we know?’

Sam started to laugh. ‘Sure he’s going to tell us that. You know what he’s like, knowledge is power. Anyway, who cares? We can all get what we need out of this deal.’

Lex’s engines kicked into life and the props began to turn. The Antonov taxied through the heat haze before the ramp had finished closing. I knew just how he felt. I didn’t want to stick around any longer than necessary either. The wash from the huge propellers blasted any sweat-covered bodies still on the strip, whipping at tattered T-shirts and shorts and caking them in dust.

Sam had to shout: ‘Lex flies it to Kenya. From there, it’s a slow boat to China.’

Sounded good to me. Once back here, Silky and I would be on the next available flight. A couple of days’ R&R on the beach in Mombasa and then, all being well, a flight home.

Sam’s eyes hadn’t left the two white guys for one second. I could see from his face that they took their organizational skills a little too seriously for his liking.

‘How long’s the walk-in?’

‘With the kit, it’s fourteen hours in daylight or eighteen in the dark. It’s safer to move at night. These guys won’t like having to go back without a decent rest, but they’ll still want to be there before first light. If they’re not carrying weight and we don’t have a contact, we can do it in about nine hours.’

Lex’s Antonov had reached the bottom of the airstrip and turned. The props screamed and it lurched forward. Its take-off run brought it straight towards us, but even fully laden, the aircraft lifted halfway down the strip. The kids jumping and waving below it were soon engulfed in huge clouds of red dust.

The Antonov roared over our heads and banked away into the dazzling blue sky.

The women along the treeline were doling out small bowls along with the water bottles. Tired fingers scooped up the food and shoved it into hungry mouths.

‘Once they’d rested, our patrol would usually take this lot back tonight, and come back in three days’ time with full bags. Then it would be their turn again.’ He waved in the direction of the two white guys across the strip. ‘But now we’ve got to protect the assets big-time, eh?’

‘Doesn’t it ever get to you?’ I nodded towards the shanty town and the porters collapsed in the shade, eating from old tin cans. ‘These fuckers getting shit, while Standish and the middle men feed off their misery?’

He didn’t have time to answer. Standish reappeared with the Iridium still in his hand, its stubby antenna jabbing the air between us. ‘You understand exactly what you have to do?’

Obviously the call hadn’t cheered him up any. Maybe it hadn’t been his bank manager after all.

‘Yep.’

‘Don’t fuck me about or you and this little rich girl can make your own way back.’ He swung round to Sam. ‘Don’t just sit there. Get on with it.’

I followed Sam towards one of the tents. ‘I’ve got to tell you, mate, there’s only so many times I’m going to be able to turn the other cheek with that arsehole.’

‘Like I told you, Nick, I’ve got my own agenda. I have kids living near that mine and I’ve got the church here so I put up with him, the war, the crap, the hypocrisy, the greed – anything that’s thrown at me. If I didn’t, who’d protect the orphanage? Who’d prevent those kids getting lifted by the LRA?’

We reached the tent flaps but Sam didn’t go inside. ‘You sure you don’t want to know about the boy?’

I tried to read the expression on his face. ‘Only if he didn’t end up going the same way Annabel did . . .’

Sam smiled. ‘He didn’t. He lived. Only just, but he lived.’ He pointed across the strip. ‘The little feller’s over there.’