The Devil’s Kingdom

Chapter 30

The dawn light had stained the jungle to the colour of blood. Tuesday didn’t know where to run; he just had to keep moving to stay ahead of the search parties that would be sweeping the whole area for him by now.

He moved quickly and cautiously through the thick foliage, clutching the rifle he’d taken from the abandoned Range Rover in front of him like a spear with the point of its bayonet leading the way. Every step could put him on a buried landmine; behind every huge, drooping leaf and frond might lurk an enemy. Heavy dewdrops spattered on him like rain from the trees as he went, soaking his clothes and running down his face.

While Tuesday worried about losing himself entirely in the thick forest, it was a relief to know that he was no longer trapped in the no-man’s land between the inner and outer perimeters circling the city. In many places the terrain had been too exposed to get close to the outer fence without risking being spotted, but some areas had been reclaimed by vegetation that grew thickly all the way up to the wire.

Lying flat on his belly in the undergrowth at the foot of the most shielded section of fence he’d managed to find, he’d detached the bayonet from the rifle and got to work. The bayonet was a Chinese copy of the Russian AKM model, with a slot in its seven-inch blade that mated to a lug on its metal scabbard to turn it into a scissoring wire-cutter. He’d used the device to snip a hole in the mesh big enough to crawl through, then concealed the hole with bits of branch to cover his tracks. By his rough estimate, he was at least a couple of kilometres from the gate and the road. If he kept his head down and his ears and eyes open, he thought he stood a decent chance of slipping away without getting caught.

Beyond that, he had no idea, no plan, no shred of a strategy in mind. As a soldier he’d only ever worked as part of a structured unit, carrying out someone else’s orders. He wasn’t like the Special Forces guys who could thread their way through the most trackless wilderness, live off the land right under the noses of superior hostile forces and leave not a bent blade of grass to give away their presence to the enemy. He’d never operated alone on deadly ground, and now he felt hopelessly naked and vulnerable.

Much worse, he was doubly distraught over having left Jeff behind in the city, then having abandoned Ben in the vehicle. He had to tell himself that in both cases, he’d had no choice. Without a doubt, the inner perimeter guards had made him and raised the alarm; there was no way he’d have been able to make it past the outer gates without getting both himself and Ben shot to pieces, and no way that he could outpace a whole unit of soldiers on foot carrying an unconscious comrade over his shoulders. Khosa’s troops would have caught up with them within minutes, and killed them both.

What now? As he traced a random path through the forest, Tuesday fought back his emotions and tried desperately to think of his next move. Somehow, he had to go back there and help Ben and Jeff.

He had the gun. It wasn’t exactly the kind of top-flight sniper’s tool that the British army had taught him to deploy with extreme long-range precision — but it was a usable enough piece of kit, and the thirty-round magazine was full. By the time it was empty, either he’d have done the right thing by his friends, or he’d be dead. Survival meant little to him in any case, if it involved walking away and leaving them to their fate.

Tuesday slowed to a halt and stood very still, clutching the rifle, eyes darting left and right to peer through the thicket of moist, dripping greenery that surrounded and loomed over him on all sides, straining his ears past the jungle soundtrack of squawking birds and the unbroken chirp and hum of a billion insects to listen out for the enemy’s presence. He heard nothing that made him suspect he was being followed. The only human sound he could detect was the rapid thudding of his own heart.

Then the snap of a twig made him jump and whirl around, fully expecting a horde of Khosa’s men to attack, and ready to fight for his life.

Too late. The twin black circles of a double-barrelled shotgun zeroed in on him out of the bushes.

Only a man who had spent his whole life in the jungle could have crept up on him in such total silence. And it wasn’t a soldier. The African pointing the gun at Tuesday was a big, powerful-looking man, bare-chested and bare-footed. His trousers were ragged and filthy, his muscular torso and arms striped with thorn scratches. Dawn shadows partially obscured his face, but Tuesday could see the hard glimmer of his eyes, the look of determination that told him the man wouldn’t hesitate to shoot.

Tuesday had no time to react.

The boom of the shotgun at close range was stunning. Tuesday sprawled backwards, but it wasn’t the impact of the blast that knocked him down. It was the violent flinch reflex as his nervous system anticipated devastating destruction. Unharmed and in total confusion, he clawed his way out of the bushes he’d become tangled in and stared up at the African who, apparently, hadn’t just shot him after all.

‘He was going to spit at you,’ the man said, lowering the smoking gun and pointing a finger at the ground nearby.

Tuesday looked and saw the torn, limp shape of a large snake coiled up just a few feet away. He knew little about snakes, but it looked like a dangerous one.

‘If the spitting cobra gets you in the eye, the poison will make you go blind,’ the African said. He stepped closer, and a shaft of crimson light shining through the trees fell across his face. He held out a big hand to help Tuesday up to his feet. Tuesday was a good three inches shorter and much more lightly built. The man hauled him upright as though he weighed nothing.

Tuesday was about to thank him for killing the snake, when he suddenly realised with amazement that he’d seen this man before. ‘Hold on, I know you. You’re… Sizwe. We met you on our way here.’

So much had happened since the fraught journey to the Congo that it seemed like an eternity ago, when in fact only a few days had gone by. The thought flashed through Tuesday’s mind that maybe it was more that he didn’t want to remember.

The man nodded. ‘I know you, too. You were there when the soldiers destroyed my village and killed my family. My brother Uwase and my friends, Rusanganwa, Ntwali, Mugabo, and Gasimba, we were meant to kill you. And you were meant to kill us. But we did not kill each other. It was Khosa who killed them all. My brother, my friends, my wife, my son. That is why I am here.’

That was what it all came down to, with such brutal simplicity — the basic primal equation of you kill me / I kill you. Sizwe’s matter-of-fact tone and stoic expression belied the raw grief and raging desire for revenge that Tuesday could sense were boiling inside him.

Tuesday stared at him. ‘You followed the convoy? All the way across the border from Rwanda?’

Sizwe nodded. ‘I watched the trucks leave, and I chased them for many hours. They did not see me. When my body became too tired to run fast, I followed the tracks of their wheels. I came to a village. They said the trucks had come this way but did not stop. I told the people that they were lucky that Khosa did not stop in their village. I told them what he did to our people. I told them I must keep following the trucks, and what I must do when I find them. A man there felt sorry when he heard my story. He let me have his motorcycle and this gun, as trade for the watch your friend gave to me. But the motorcycle soon ran out of gasoline and I had no money for more. So I kept running. Now I am here.’

Tuesday remembered how Ben had donated his Omega diver’s watch as a goodwill gesture to Sizwe and his fellow Rwandan villagers. That had been before Khosa had characteristically decided to slaughter them all, raze the whole place to the ground and leave behind nothing but a nightmare of hacked body parts and burning huts in his wake. Sizwe had been the sole survivor of the massacre.

‘We must move on,’ Sizwe said, glancing at the bushes. ‘The noise of the gun will draw the soldiers.’

‘You know about the city?’ Tuesday said as he followed Sizwe at a trot through the trees. Despite his size, the man could move with the speed and agility of an antelope.

‘Yes. I have been watching them. Something is happening.’

‘My friends Ben and Jeff are in there,’ Tuesday said. ‘Khosa has them prisoner. I managed to escape, but they’re in serious trouble.’

‘Ben is a good man,’ Sizwe said. ‘He tried to save my family. I could not blame him for what happened to them.’

‘I’m afraid that Khosa’s going to kill him, and Jeff too. Unless I do something. But I don’t know what. There are so many of them.’

‘Then I must help,’ Sizwe said. ‘And we will kill Khosa together.’