Recoil

2

Smoke fought its way through the cam net as Jan sizzled steaks the size of dustbin lids on the brai.

Lex taxied along the strip towards us, laden with new drums of Kenyan aviation fuel, as the dogs and shanty kids ran alongside.

‘I’m not staying. Sorry.’ I put an arm round Sam’s shoulder, and would have done the same to Crucial if he hadn’t been about ten feet taller than me. I gripped his arm instead. ‘Unfinished business. I promised myself back at the mine, and I won’t be happy until I’ve done it. Anyway, you know I can’t hang around.’ I nodded in the direction of Tim and Silky. ‘This is their place now. Not mine.’

Lex turned the aircraft about two hundred metres away, ready to taxi back down the strip for take-off.

Sam put a brave face on it. ‘Sorry to hear that, Nick. I think it would have been good for you here.’ He thumped my chest with his hand. ‘Remember what I said?’

I nodded.

‘Any time you feel the need to come back, eh?’

Lex’s engines closed down as we ducked under the cam net. Tim and the boy were lying on the tables, looking a whole lot better. Silky had washed them down and redressed their wounds. Same principle as we operated by: only now was she sorting herself out, by the entrance to Sam’s tent.

Tim was finishing off his sat-phone conversation with the Lugano office. Étienne would arrange medical care for them both, once we’d got them to Cape Town later that evening.

The Evian was cold. I pulled bottles out of the fridge and passed them round.

Jan threw the first lot of dark red meat on to the table. Crucial passed it round with fingers and thumbs because it was still so hot.

The aircraft’s rear ramp was starting to wind its way down. The two wounded, Silky and I would be in that thing and leaving within half an hour.

Tim closed down the sat phone. ‘Are you staying?’

‘Nah – other plans.’

‘Still Australia?’

‘Yep.’

There was a gap in the conversation that we didn’t know how to fill.

Well, we did – but neither of us wanted to go that route.

Lex broke the moment as he loped off the aircraft with his golf bag. ‘Sam! You owe me two games – one for the ten big ones, one for the fuel and ammo. Get out here and be a man!’