The Devil’s Kingdom

Chapter 47

Pushing hard south-westwards at two thousand feet with the outskirts of Luhaka City a dozen miles behind them and the early afternoon sunlight spangling like a billion stars off the surface of the Congo River to starboard, they saw the dust plume rising up from the twisty dirt road long before they caught sight of the winding train of the military convoy working its way like a procession of little green toys below.

Jeff leaned close to the co-pilot window as they passed over. ‘There they go. What do you suppose he’s in such a rush to get back for? Forgot to let the cat out?’

Ben eased the yoke back a fraction, lifting them a little higher out of rocket range. There were a lot of trigger-happy idiots down there, and Khosa had an unsettling way of knowing things. He nudged the throttle lever and the airspeed indicator needle edged closer to the red line. They soon left the convoy behind. But it would catch up with them quickly enough later.

One thing he needn’t have worried about was the excess payload on board the little Cessna. Two lean, fit men and half a dozen skinny African kids, even with their weapons and ammunition, probably added up to less than the weight of four average-sized affluent Americans. Or one scheming politician and three large bodyguards. The sky was clear and bright, they had more than enough fuel for the short trip, and thanks to Jeff’s coordinates the aircraft’s GPS was guiding them straight to their destination.

For Mani and the other kids, whose names were Juma, Akia, Fabrice, Sefu and Steve, it was a moment of wonderment being up in the air. The closest any of them had ever come to an aircraft in their lives was to watch them buzzing high overhead, as mysterious and alien to their world as a spacecraft. All six of them pressed against the windows in the back of the cockpit, jostling each other for the best view of the ground below and grinning with excitement as if the terror and confusion of battle were just a faded memory that they could effortlessly bounce back from. Even Mani seemed to have managed to forget, if only for a few short happy moments, what he’d been made to do during their induction training. In their own way, these kids were tougher and more resilient than most adults.

Ben didn’t find it quite as easy to leave his troubles behind. He should have been grinning, knowing Jude was safe, but a voice inside his head kept telling him that more trouble, worse trouble, still lay ahead. Worrying made his face hurt. He worked out his tension by abusing the Cessna’s throttle, often verging close to the never-exceed speed of 163 knots, which equated to 188 miles per hour, at which velocity the wings began to shake and the whole plane began to feel as if it was starting to come apart at the seams.

‘Steady,’ Jeff muttered from time to time, one anxious eye hovering over the dials. Ben kept his gaze fixed on the horizon and said nothing.

They flew over hills and vast sweeping valleys of unbroken green jungle canopy. Uplands and mountain ranges loomed in the distance, shrouded in mist. Unmade roads looked like little brown threads through the green, and the great river receding away to the north was a coiling blue python dotted here and there with small fishing boats that drifted lazily on the still water. The miniature figures of people on the higher ground sometimes looked up as the plane passed over, shielding their eyes from the sun. Mani and the other kids waved, but nobody waved back. Ben wondered if the people recognised the plane as an official aircraft. As long as nobody got it into their heads to go fetch an RPG and try to shoot them down, they might actually make it.

Jeff seemed far away, as though he was working over a question in his mind. ‘I hate to ask,’ he said after a long silence. ‘But…’

Ben looked at him. ‘What?’

‘If that wasn’t Jude’s hand Khosa showed you, then who was the poor sod they lopped it off of?’

What could you say to that?

Thirty-eight minutes after setting off from Luhaka, the GPS was telling them they were close. Ben dropped a thousand feet and spotted the break in the treetops. Soon after that he saw the city, like a bizarre model sprouting up from the middle of the jungle within its fenced-off no-man’s land. Beyond the city was the hydro plant spanning the river, and beyond that again lay the desolate wasteland of the industrial zone. From the ground it was screened by jungle. Exposed from above, it looked like a scar.

For Jeff, who had never ventured outside the limits of Khosa’s city until today, this was all new. ‘What are they doing down there?’

‘Mining,’ Ben said. ‘Gold, diamonds, copper, zinc, who knows. But whatever it is, it’s payrolled by someone with a lot bigger reach than Khosa.’

‘That would explain a lot,’ Jeff agreed. ‘Africa, land of opportunity.’

‘For everyone except the Africans,’ Ben said.

The unfinished airport lay on the far western edge of the city, but Ben didn’t intend to touch down there. They came in low and slow, skimming the perimeter fence, their shadow passing over the stripped ground between it and the city like a giant bird’s. The construction crews were still hard at work down there. A few of the workers looked up as the Cessna buzzed over.

The street layout was becoming familiar to Ben, and he steered for the centre, watching for landmarks like the barracks building and the replica Dorchester. ‘There,’ he said to Jeff, pointing out a broad, straight boulevard just a block from the hotel that would serve as a decent landing strip. They did a couple of passes before Ben came in for the final approach, and spotted the figures on the ground running towards the sound of the incoming aircraft. There was Tuesday, waving his arms and grinning a grin that would have been visible from space. With him was a large African man Ben didn’t immediately recognise, but thought looked familiar. He was trying to place him when he spotted another figure he had no trouble recognising at all.

At the sight of Jude, Ben’s smile busted the scabs on his lips. He hardly noticed the pain.

The Cessna landed smoothly in the middle of the wide boulevard and taxied to a halt. Ben shut down the engine, flung open the hatch and jumped down. Mani and the rest of the kids were peering cautiously from the cockpit windows, obviously scared to come out. Ben didn’t want to press them.

‘Ben!’ Jude ran towards him. His clothes were grimy and Ben thought he looked thin and a little pale; but he knew he must hardly look the picture of health himself. Smiling even more widely, Ben spread his arms to greet him. Following more slowly behind Jude was a young Oriental woman, about his age or maybe just a little older. She held back and watched with a half-smile as they embraced. Jeff and Tuesday met in the middle of the street and clapped shoulders, the way men do when they don’t want to hug each other.

Ben wasn’t holding back his emotions. He squeezed Jude tight enough to crack ribs, then stepped back and stared at him with moist eyes. ‘You’re okay,’ he kept saying. ‘Thank God you’re okay.’ He grasped both of Jude’s hands and held them out to stare at them, as if he still couldn’t quite believe that both of them were still attached. Part of him had never been so happy, but another part had never been so angry that Khosa could have deceived him so cruelly.

‘What happened to you?’ Jude said, running his eyes over Ben’s battered face.

‘This? It’s nothing. Just a couple of scratches.’

The young Oriental woman stepped up, still giving that half-smile. ‘If that’s a couple of scratches, I’d hate to see the other guy.’

‘The other guy’s dead,’ Ben said.

‘Figures.’ The half-smile opened up and Ben noticed how attractive she was. He wondered what she was doing there, and how she and Jude had hooked up.

‘This is Rae,’ Jude said. ‘She’s from Chicago.’

‘Rae Lee,’ she said. ‘Photographer, journalist. And hostage, until recently. Jude and I were captives together.’

‘Jude got her out,’ Tuesday said, wrapping an arm around Jude’s shoulders. ‘Can you believe they were just a mile or two away, the whole time? Khosa had them in some kind of bloody hostage camp.’

Ben couldn’t believe it. ‘If only we’d known.’

‘That’s what I said too,’ Tuesday laughed.

‘So you must be the war hero I’ve been hearing so much about,’ Rae said. ‘Ben, right? I can see the family resemblance. Kind of, under all those bruises. That’s got to hurt.’

‘She’s right,’ Jude said anxiously. ‘You ought to see a doctor.’

‘When I’m shot to pieces and dying,’ Ben said, ‘then I’ll see a doctor.’

‘Definitely the war hero,’ Rae said, rolling her eyes.

Ben realised he was still gripping Jude’s hands as though they might fly away if he released them. Suddenly self-conscious, he let them go, but he could hardly stop looking at them. Jude was looking at them too, and shaking his head as he imagined what it must be like to have one chopped off with a heavy, sharp blade.

‘It was Craig’s hand Khosa showed you,’ Jude explained to Ben, answering the question nobody wanted to ask. ‘Craig Munro. Rae’s friend. They were keeping him prisoner, too. Khosa had his right hand hacked off so he could pretend it was mine.’

Rae was looking down at the ground, the smile suddenly gone. Ben said to her, ‘Your friend, is he—?’

‘They killed him,’ she said. ‘Shot him dead right in front of us.’

‘I’m very sorry.’

‘He didn’t suffer for very long. I guess that’s something to be thankful for.’

‘When this is over,’ Ben told her, ‘the people who did all of this are going to pay.’

‘Quite a few of them already have,’ Jeff put in.

‘Not enough,’ Ben said.

The African man standing behind Tuesday said, ‘Khosa must pay.’ It was the first time he’d spoken, and Ben looked at him. Then looked at him. He’d been so consumed with relief at seeing Jude again that he hadn’t realised that he knew this man.

‘Sizwe! What are you—?’

‘He’s come to help us,’ Tuesday said. ‘For his family.’

Ben felt a strange chill as he stood face to face with the man to whom he’d promised his wife and children would be safe, only to be forced to watch them all be slaughtered by Khosa’s men moments later.

Sizwe must have read the look in Ben’s eyes. He took a step closer and touched Ben’s arm. ‘I do not blame you. You tried to help. Nobody can change what Khosa does. The only way is to kill him. That is why I am here. If you know where he is, take me to him.’

‘No need for that,’ Jeff said. ‘He’s on his way.’

Jude’s eyeballs bugged out from their sockets. ‘Khosa’s coming back?’

‘Better believe it,’ Jeff said. ‘And he’s not in the best of moods. Someone nicked the jam out of his doughnut, that’s for sure.’

Jude and Rae exchanged nervous glances. ‘I told you, you shouldn’t have taken it,’ she said to him. ‘I warned you how it would be when he found out it was gone.’

Jude heaved a sigh. He suddenly looked as if a heavy weight was hanging from his neck.

‘Taken what?’ Ben asked, his heart sinking as he began to fear the worst. Rae wasn’t talking about jam doughnuts. Ben said, ‘Jude? What did you take?’

Jude gave another deep sigh, then muttered, ‘Oh, what the hell,’ and dug his hand in his pocket.

It was only then that Ben noticed the telltale bulge, as if Jude was carrying a tennis ball around in his jeans. Ben’s heart sank the rest of the way.