Recoil

11

There was nothing scientific about what I’d been doing for the last ninety minutes. Carrying Silky on my back was like humping eight stone of bergen up and down the Brecons. All I had to do was lean forward to take the weight, then get one foot in front of the other as fast as I could.

I’d kept off the top of the high ground, the natural route, moving instead just below it to hide my shape and silhouette. I’d moved in bounds, no more than five metres at a time, using the cover as best I could, stopping after each to look and listen, then plan the next – scanning the ground in front of me for more cover, for a route without too many rocks, bushes or anything else that might send me flying. Silky never left my back. Once I’d got her on, it was easier to keep her there.

I stopped against a tree. I rested both hands on the trunk and leaned forward to balance her and control my breathing. This was taking for ever. I listened and looked between the tree-trunks and bush for any irregularities of shape, shine, shadow, spacing, silhouette or movement.

Sweat dropped from my forehead and chin on to the leaf litter, like water from a melting icicle.

Birds twittered in the trees and the cicadas went for it hammer and tongs. I’d never seen one of the fuckers in all the times I’d spent in jungles, but they always let you know they were out there, ready and in sufficient numbers to take over the world.

She slid off, hobbling on to her good left leg, either to give me or herself a rest. She levered herself down slowly with her back against the tree-trunk, her right leg out in support as the left did all the work. Finally she sank into the mud.

Too tired to do anything else, I kept my position, looking and listening as I pulled out my prismatic and checked our direction. Everything hurt; everything was heavy. Anything with wings, the size of a pinhead or bigger, landed on me to bite. I glanced down at Silky and saw they weren’t saving it all for me: she had lumps on her face and neck the size of witch’s boils.

My head swam and my throat was so dry it felt like I’d been swallowing the gravel Crucial should have been getting down his neck to sort out that squeaky voice. I knew I was dehydrating, and that I had to take on fluid urgently. These symptoms were Nature’s final warning. The next step was collapse.

I tapped her shoulder and offered a hand to pull her up. A small flock of birds rattled out of the canopy somewhere in the distance, but not close enough to worry about. I was trying to work out my time and distance. We’d been on the move for about an hour before we’d got the contacts, and we’d been going slowly an hour and a half since. We must be at least halfway to the mine, maybe even a bit more.

I thought about the contact. Well, more about the boy whose face I had destroyed. I knew now that if we got back to the mine, there was a pretty strong chance I might have to do it again.

Silky looked at me. ‘You OK?’

‘Yeah.’ I got ready to take her weight. ‘Come on.’

She climbed on as best she could, but she was fucked, and she wasn’t the only one. I adjusted her on my back as best I could, as if she was a bergen and I was twenty-nine Ks into a thirty-K fast tab. I got my hands round her thighs and jumped up that last little bit to get the balance right. Her legs rubbed against the sores on my back and I almost shouted with pain. But there was fuck-all to be done about it; I had to crack on. I leaned forward, took the weight in my hands again, and shook my head of sweat. I checked my next bound and made distance.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to think or feel about her running away from me. When I heard the next burst of gunfire ahead of us, I realized it didn’t much matter.

I couldn’t work out exactly where the shots had come from; the trees bounced the noise about. Could have been dead ahead, or down to the right.

I stood stock still, mouth open, and tried to listen. She was breathing noisily into my ear. ‘Ssssh . . . Hold it . . .’

There was more intermittent fire, then a couple of single shots, but again I was none the wiser.

I adjusted Silky once more and staggered on. There was nothing else I could do. It was ineffective fire: the rounds weren’t hitting us or the ground around us, and if I stopped every time I heard a shot we wouldn’t get anywhere.

I’d lost all sense of time and distance; my head spun and my lips were coated with white, foamy saliva.

A scream pierced the jungle no more than ten metres in front of us.

There were shots, long bursts, rounds hitting the floor all over the place and thudding into the trees. It didn’t matter if the rounds were aimed or the guys were just taking a cabby. They’d still make big holes in us.

I dropped like liquid and Silky collapsed on top of me. Her chin crashed down on the back of my head.

I moved to the right, downhill, fast, dragging her along the ground as she whimpered with pain.