The Devil’s Kingdom

Chapter 39

RFI 1 Afrique was the station playing on the radio inside Jean-Pierre Khosa’s Hummer as the spearhead of the convoy roared into the outskirts of Luhaka City. The army’s approach was no longer any secret. The news bulletins were buzzing with tense speculation over the imminent outbreak of fresh fighting in an area that had remained relatively peaceful since the last civil war. Lying seven hundred miles from the mouth of the Congo River, with a population of just over 800,000, Luhaka was one of the country’s most important inland ports after Kinshasa and a key hub for river and land transportation, marketing and distribution of goods across the nation. Whoever controlled it commanded immense power.

In Luhaka City itself, the rumours that had been escalating all morning had reached fever pitch even before the first vehicles of the invading army came storming through. People were grabbing their children and whatever money or valuables they possessed, and choking the streets in their desperation to get away.

The actual sight of the column of heavily armed vehicles laden with soldiers caused outright panic to spread like wildfire through the outside edges of the city. The first casualties of the attack weren’t military ones, but civilians who were too slow or too infirm to keep up with the stampeding crowds and were trampled underfoot.

Anyone who had dared stop to watch as the convoy blasted by might have caught a glimpse of the fearsome scarred face of the General himself through the dusty windscreen of the Hummer that led the charge, stretched out in the passenger seat, boots up on the dash, arm dangling nonchalantly out over the sill, flash of gold catching the sun. Still sated from the diabolical activities of the night before, fire dancing in his eyes behind the mirrored aviator shades, teeth bared in a snarl of happiness as he led his army into battle.

Jean-Pierre Khosa, relaxed and completely at home in his element.

Soon, he wouldn’t be the only one.

The long procession of trucks and off-roaders wound its way deeper into the city in a beeline for the governor’s mansion at its heart. So far, their approach had met with no resistance whatsoever — but that wouldn’t last. Khosa knew that his brother’s two-thousand-strong heavily armed personal guard would be deployed to repel the invaders. Louis Khosa wasn’t a man to forget his roots, even if he had one foot in politics these days and had exchanged his combat uniform for a sharp suit and tie. Once a warrior, always a warrior. But Jean-Pierre had three times the military force, and he had the hunger to win. Whatever else happened here today, there was no doubt that much blood would be spilled.

It began minutes later, just eight blocks from the governor’s residence. The head of the convoy screeched around a corner that had long since emptied itself of fleeing civilians, and found itself speeding into a dead end. The long, broad street ahead that minutes ago had been a colourful buzz of open market stalls selling fruit, fish, and a thousand other goods of all varieties was blockaded from pavement to pavement by a barrier of trucks, Jeeps, heaped sandbags, oil drums, wooden pallets, burning braziers and heavy machine-gun posts whose gunners opened fire the instant the vehicles came into their sights.

The convoy slammed into a wall of bullets that zinged and splatted into metal, glass, and human flesh. The driver at the wheel of Jean-Pierre Khosa’s Hummer swerved violently to the left and ploughed a furrow of flying wreckage through an abandoned market stall, sending up a wave of squashed bananas, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and yams over the front of the vehicle. The driver skidded into a side street and narrowly escaped the barrage of fire from the blockade. A pickup truck managed to squeeze through at its tail, light machine gun blazing, strafing a squad of enemy soldiers attempting to block their path.

Caught out in the open, the rest of the convoy came to a ragged halt in the street and began returning fire on the blockade. The governor’s forces defended their position with equal ferocity. During those opening salvos, the air was so thick with metal-jacketed lead that nothing could have lived in the no-man’s land between the blockade and the halted convoy. Windows and windscreens and headlights shattered. Cascades of spent shell casings streamed in golden rivers that caught the sunlight and bounced and rolled on the ground. Sparks danced like lightning off the vehicles and metal barriers of the blockade. Grenades popped from launchers and exploded in bright flashes. Vehicles burst into flames, their occupants spilling out left and right. Men screamed and fell and painted the ground with their blood. The stench of cordite quickly filled the air. Among the first casualties of the attacking army was Colonel Raphael Dizolele, sent into combat despite his wounded leg. But there would be many more before the day was over.

The full-on battle had begun.

Several vehicles back down the line, the first that the passengers in Ben and Jeff’s truck knew of that first contact with the enemy was when they were violently thrown forwards under braking as the truck skidded to a halt and narrowly missed piling into the one in front of it. From one instant to the next, bullets were zipping holes in the canvas top, punching through the metal of the cab and sides like hot needles through soft butter. A bullet from a fifty-calibre heavy machine gun was a serious projectile, a copper-plated dart half an inch in diameter and as long as your finger. It could shoot through six inches of armour plate or thirteen inches of reinforced concrete, and keep on moving in search of something else to destroy. When it hit a target as delicate and soft-skinned as a human being, it simply tore it apart at the seams on its way through. From a machine gun generating a thousand rounds a minute, it could pulp a platoon of men like diced watermelons within the space of a heartbeat. And when one of the soldiers just a few feet away from Ben in the back of the truck caught one in the upper arm, it blew the limb clear off at the shoulder in a fountain of blood that splashed over his comrades as if a bucketful had been sloshed over them. There was no scream. The shock killed him instantly. But there was plenty of screaming from the others as they fell about in terror.

Jeff glanced at Ben, eyebrows raised. Here we go, his look said.

Ben was the only one in the truck not reacting. He barely glanced at the blood, or the shattered body slumping to the floor, and he felt oblivious of the panic and the chaos around him. Jeff’s look lingered on him an instant longer, and in that split second Ben could read a thousand anxious thoughts in his friend’s eyes. He knew what Jeff was thinking, that he’d flipped, that he was no longer himself.

And Jeff was right. Because when Khosa had hurt Jude the way he had, he’d cut away a piece of Ben, too, deep in his core. That was the part of him that cared about getting hurt. An unsafe state for Ben himself to be in, but much more unsafe for others.

To let that happen was Khosa’s first bad mistake.

Behind them the convoy broke its line as vehicle after vehicle skidded to an urgent halt, filling the street in ragged formation. Officers were barking commands. Soldiers grabbing their weapons. The trucks emptying as everyone scrambled out and hit the ground running through the noise and the heat. Some making it only a few paces before they were cut down and lay where they fell. The familiar chunking clatter of AK-47s interspersed with the rip of submachine guns and the furious roar of the heavy weaponry tearing the street to pieces, drowning out the screams and yells of Jean-Pierre Khosa’s fighters in a maelstrom of sound that split the thick humid air. In combat, it only seems loud for the first few moments. The rush of adrenalin as the body’s defences and responses amp up to the max very quickly makes you numb to the noise.

Which was something Ben Hope knew all about. His boots touched the ground, and he was immediately at home. As if he’d suddenly found his place here at last. This wasn’t Khosa’s world any longer. It was his. The violence and gunfire exploding all around him as if in slow motion felt like laughter and sweet music drifting on a summer evening’s breeze. His heart rate was no more than sixty beats a minute. His breathing was calm. He was as cool as a stone. The bruises and cuts over his face and body no longer hurt. The weapon in his hands weighed nothing and fitted his body as though he’d been born with it attached to him.

Ben Hope, armed, dangerous, and back in control.

To let that happen was Khosa’s second bad mistake.