We were still two miles short of Boroyende as night began to fall. We huddled together, thigh-deep in swamp water, as we discussed in whispers our next move.
‘It’s only two miles,’ I said. ‘Can’t we just keep going?’
Rudi turned a scornful look on me. ‘Have you ever tried to move through jungle at night? It’s as black as your hat. All you would do is alert every rebel for miles around by the noise you made blundering through the undergrowth and scaring the wildlife.’ He shook his head. ‘We find some dry ground and bivouac there till morning.’
I knew he was right, but the thought of spending another night so near and yet so far away from Layla tore at my heart.
We stopped at a low hillock rising above the surface of the swamp. Rudi and the others had hammocks, brew kits and survival rations in their backpacks. I had almost nothing.
As dark fell we ate some rehydrated rations and drank a mug of tea, then Rudi ordered Raz and Reuben to keep guard as he and Hendrik settled into their hammocks slung between the trees. I curled up on the ground.
The swamp was alive with the noise of frogs and insects, and mosquitoes fogged the air around me. I barely slept and it was a relief to see the light filtering through the forest canopy as dawn broke.
We ate a frugal breakfast, brewed up some tea, and then moved out again on the trek over the last two miles to the village. After a mile we met rising ground and emerged at last from the dank waters of the swamp into the leaf litter of the forest floor.
The trees began to thin almost at once. As we reached the cultivated land, garden plots slashed and burned from the forest, we advanced slowly and stopped at the tree line. The village appeared utterly deserted, not even a scrawny chicken rooting in the dust.
The mercenaries worked their way through the village, covering each other as they cleared each hut. I followed them, the sense of foreboding growing inside me with each step. I peered into the village carpenter’s hut. The neat rows of carefully polished tools had disappeared and the beautiful rocking chair lay in bits.
I moved on to Njama’s hut. There were stains of dried blood in the dust just inside the doorway. The interior of the hut had been wrecked and the storage jars and plates had disappeared.
I looked up at the ceiling. The light bulb still hung there, but the glass had been shattered, leaving only a dangling bent and broken filament. It was a similar tale of destruction in every hut in the village; there was no sign of the occupants.
As I came out of the last hut, I saw Rudi and the other mercenaries standing just beyond the edge of the village, staring down into something at their feet. A feeling of dread overwhelmed me.
A crude pit had been dug in the ground where a mound now rose from it, covered in something black that seemed to move and shimmer as I looked at it. As I reached the edge of the pit, Rudi stretched out his rifle and prodded the mound. The black shimmering curtain rose into the air, a cloud of flies lifting to reveal the corpses beneath.
I found myself staring into the dead face of one of Njama’s sons. Before I knew what I was doing, I had climbed down into the pit and begun to tear at the bodies, pushing them and dragging them aside, barely aware of the terrible stench of decaying flesh.
Three of Njama’s four sons were dead. I dragged their bodies aside in turn and searched through the rest, finding old men and women, children and even babies buried there.
I crawled out of the pit, walked away from the others and stood alone, staring into the forest. I shook my head. ‘There’s no sign of Layla or Njama or Kaba here.’
‘That doesn’t mean they’re alive. The rebels could have killed them somewhere else, or taken them away with them.’ Rudi paused, studying my face. ‘They’d certainly have wanted to have their fun with Layla before they killed her.’ He was almost laughing at me.
My fists clenched, but this wasn’t the moment to fight him. ‘They could still be alive. We have to search for them.’
‘How? Where? Even if they are alive, they could be anywhere.’
‘They won’t have strayed far from the village. We could light a signal fire, or fire a shot.’
‘Don’t be stupid. The only people that would bring running would be the rebels. Now I’ve kept my part of the bargain, it’s time for you to keep yours.’
I thought of Layla lost in the forest around us. I threw back my head and cried out her name. I heard the scrape of steel on steel.
Rudi’s rifle was pointing towards me and the safety catch was off. ‘You do that again,’ he said, ‘and I’ll leave you in the pit. Now’ – he wrinkled his nose as he stepped closer to me – ‘get down to the river and wash or the rebels will be able to track us from the stench of dead meat and the trail of flies following us.’
I walked down to the riverbank, sluiced the stench of death from me with river water and turned to walk back towards the village.
As I did so, I glimpsed a face peering at me from the undergrowth. I froze. Then the leaves parted and Kaba walked into the open. His hair was matted and his ribs showed through his skin but his face broke into a grin at the sight of me. ‘You have come for us,’ he said.
‘Layla?’ I hardly dared ask the question.
‘She is safe.’
Relief washed over me. ‘How many others?’
‘Twelve.’ The population of the village had been at least eighty.
‘Where are they?’ I said.
‘In hiding a little way from here. I will take you to them.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘We must bring the soldiers with us.’
I led him back into the village. His expression darkened when he saw Rudi. ‘Why is he here?’
‘He’s here to help you – to help us all.’
‘They’re still alive,’ I said to Rudi. ‘They’re near by. We must go and get them.’
His expression was unreadable. He studied me for a long time in silence. Then he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
The boy led the way down to the river, stepped into the current and began to wade upstream through the chest-deep water. We followed, holding our rifles above our heads. The river narrowed as it curved away out of sight. Both banks were smothered in vegetation, and branches and lianas hung down over the water, forming a tunnel through which we moved. It was as dark as dusk under the dense vegetation, but ahead I could see the glow of daylight.
We were approaching a sweeping bend in the river. Silt and sand had formed a small beach ending in a sheer rock face. The beach was only a dozen yards wide and at either end it was screened by a curtain of tree branches and lianas.
I glanced upstream and down. The curve of the river hid the beach from sight; the only way to come upon it was to wade the river as we had done or to fight our way through the jungle down to the bank opposite.
Kaba called softly from the shallows, then moved up on to the beach. I saw the foliage stir at the far end and an old woman stepped into the open. She gave an uncertain look from the boy to the semicircle of mercenaries flanking him, then she saw my face. She smiled, turned and said something to the people still hidden behind her.
Then Layla stepped into view. A moment later she was in my arms. I pulled her close and kissed her. She stiffened for a second, then leaned into me, holding my face in her hands, staring into my eyes. ‘I’d given you up,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry that I doubted you.’
‘You were right to doubt me,’ I said.
She glanced over my shoulder at Rudi and the others. ‘But why are they here?’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me they’ve suddenly discovered a conscience.’
‘It’s strictly business for them. I bribed Rudi: diamonds for lives.’ When I released her and looked up, I saw that the other survivors from the village had also emerged from hiding. There were two small children, a girl, a couple of teenage boys and a number of older women. Njama was the last to emerge, leaning heavily on the shoulders of two of the women. There were dressings over wounds in his stomach, chest and arm, and his face bore the ravages of pain and grief, but he managed a flicker of a smile as he saw me.
I turned back to Layla. ‘Is he fit to travel?’
‘Not really, but if he stays here he’ll die.’
Rudi took my arm and pulled me to one side. ‘If we try to take the old man, we put all our lives at risk.’
‘Just the same, he comes with us. I’m not leaving him to die.’
He stared at me in silence, then turned away. ‘Come on.’
I lifted Njama on to my shoulders, waded out into the river and followed Rudi and the others back downstream. When we reached the village, I lowered Njama to the ground. Kaba and I helped him as he hobbled up the track and into the village.
Rudi led the way straight through and disappeared into the forest on the far side. As we made to follow him, Njama stopped us. He took a last look at what had once been his village. His eyes filled with tears as he turned his back and walked with us into the forest.
The four mercenaries spaced themselves through our ragged column with Rudi at the head and Hendrik bringing up the rear. We were very vulnerable to attack, however, strung out over forty yards in forest where the visibility was no more than five or six.
We made painfully slow progress at first, working our way through the dense vegetation, but after a while we found an animal track made by pigs or brush deer.
At my insistence, we stopped for a few minutes every hour. As soon as we did so, Njama sank to the ground and closed his eyes, his face grey. Each time, Layla examined him and checked his dressings; the wound in his stomach was beginning to weep again.
She met my gaze. ‘He needs to rest.’
‘We can’t stop yet; we’ve too far to go.’
She bit her lip. ‘All right, but not much further, then he must rest.’
The old man’s frail voice cut through our discussion. ‘I will make it,’ he said. ‘I will not let you down.’
We began to wade through the murky water of the swamp. I was soon exhausted from the effort of half-carrying, half-dragging Njama along, and I could hear his rasping breath at each step.
We collapsed to the ground when we reached the low mound rising above the surface of the swamp, where we’d slept the previous night. Layla examined Njama again. ‘He can’t go any further without proper rest,’ she said.
I looked upwards. The light filtering through the forest canopy was bright; the sun must still have been quite high in the afternoon sky. I hesitated, then nodded. ‘That’s it,’ I said to Rudi. ‘We’ll have to stop here. Njama can’t go any further until he’s rested.’
Rudi glowered at me as the other mercenaries clustered around him. ‘What is this?’ Reuben said. ‘A patrol or a picnic in the woods?’
Raz took up the grievance. ‘What are we doing here?’
‘We’re following orders,’ Rudi said. ‘We have a job to do.’
‘Nursemaiding Kaffirs?’ Hendrik said. ‘Since when has Decisive Measures been interested in that?’
They looked on the point of mutiny. ‘Maybe we should level with them,’ I said.
Rudi met my gaze with a ferocious scowl and pulled me to one side, out of earshot. ‘Need-to-know basis,’ he said. ‘They don’t.’ The others gave us sullen stares and I could hear them muttering to each other as we settled down to rest and prepare for the night. Rudi posted Raz and Reuben as guards, keeping them apart, I thought, so that they would have no further chance to share their grievances.
We had little food between us, and though Raz and Reuben shared some of their rations, albeit with ill grace, Rudi and Hendrik kept all theirs for themselves. I cut brushwood and made a crude bed for the old man, raised a few inches above the sodden earth. He lay down, closed his eyes and was asleep at once.
Layla sat by him, her face etched with concern. As night began to fall, we curled up together on the ground.
Layla studied me in the twilight. ‘Why did you come back?’
‘I finally realised that what you told me was true. You can’t escape responsibility by sitting on the sidelines or looking the other way. You’ve got to take sides and get involved; otherwise you’re no better than the rest of them.’
We fell into an exhausted sleep, our arms round each other, but we were awake again before first light. As the light strengthened, we began moving on through the water. Kaba and I supported Njama, carrying him through the deepest parts of the swamp.
A few hours later, we stopped to drink a mug of swamp water, strained through a gauze dressing, and eat a few grains of rice and a piece of dried fruit. When we set off again, Rudi changed the marching order, putting the two younger mercenaries, Raz and Reuben, at the front of the column and bringing up the rear himself with the more experienced Hendrik.
In the gloom under the dense vegetation we could see no more than five yards ahead or behind us. We had been wading in single file through the swamp for almost two hours, when there was a burst of gunfire from the forest behind us. We hurried forward.
Raz and Reuben had stopped dead at the head of the column. They dropped into firing positions at either side of the animal track we were following.
Raz jerked his head at me. ‘Take them on ahead,’ he said. ‘We’ll follow when we’ve cleared the danger.’
Layla took over my role of supporting the old man as I moved to the head of the column. As I had seen Rudi and the others do, I paused every few yards to watch and listen, and kept checking the GPS, trying to keep us on a direct bearing to the helicopter. I lost all track of time as I inched forward through the swamp, my nerves jangling at each noise – the plop of a frog splashing into the water, the faint rasp of a snake’s belly as it slithered away through the undergrowth or the cries of birds in the canopy high above us.
At last I could see the land beginning to rise ahead of us. We had reached the end of the swamp. One by one we emerged out of the water on to dry ground.
There was brighter light ahead and we reached a natural clearing where a giant tree had collapsed, tearing a hole in the forest canopy. I hesitated, peering towards the shadows on the far side of the clearing. A track ran through the middle at right angles to our course. I stayed hidden in the undergrowth, looking and listening.
Nothing moved and I heard no sound. After a couple of minutes, I waved the column forward, trying to cover them with the rifle as they crossed the clearing and disappeared back into the forest. Layla, Njama and Kaba had just begun to cross when I saw movement from up the track to my left. I shouted to them, ‘Take cover! Fast!’
They dived into cover. I looked back to my left. A woman was walking slowly towards me. I stepped out into the centre of the track and held up my hand, palm out, to show her she had nothing to fear from us. Her face remained nervous, frightened.
That was nothing unusual; these were desperate times, when every stranger was to be feared, but something made me look again. As I peered at her, I saw the black mouth of a rifle poking out from under her arm, and in the dust behind her I saw a double shadow – the woman herself and another figure crouching behind her. I swung up my rifle and shouted at the woman, ‘Get out! Get out of the way!’
She gave me a terrified look, whimpering with fright, but she didn’t move. I saw the mouth of the rifle swinging towards me and threw myself back into the cover of the undergrowth. There was the crack of a rifle and a bullet smashed through the vegetation a couple of feet from my head. I rolled sideways and then belly crawled a few more feet. As I did so I heard another single shot, and then a burst of gunfire shredded the undergrowth where I had been hiding. I slid my rifle forward and raised my head a few inches to peer out through the fronds of a fern towards the clearing.
The woman lay sprawled in the track, apparently dead, a pool of blood slowly widening around her. She had outlived her usefulness to the rebel soldier. He was now moving towards where I had disappeared into the undergrowth. He walked erect, not even bothering to stoop, certain of his own invulnerability.
I took aim, then squeezed the trigger. The rifle was set on semi-automatic. The first couple of rounds ripped through his chest, hurling him backwards. The rest of the burst sprayed high and wide, but he was already dead, slumped over the body of the woman he had killed.
I waved the rest of the column through, urging them on, then I dropped back to the rear. We had gone no more than fifty yards when I heard the sound of pursuit.
I wormed my way into the undergrowth, my rifle pointing back along the track we had made. I heard the sound of people moving fast, crashing through the undergrowth after us. Easing off the safety catch, I squinted along the barrel, drawing a bead where the track disappeared from sight, aiming about three feet above the ground. A figure burst into the open. My finger was already tightening on the trigger when I recognised the burly figure in camouflage fatigues. Rudi had only Raz and Reuben with him.
I called ‘Rudi!’ and, not wanting to be shot by reflex, I waited until I saw recognition in his eyes before I stood up.
‘I saw your handiwork back there on the track,’ he said. ‘Not bad. We might make a soldier of you yet.’ He paused. ‘But I didn’t think you English gentlemen killed women.’
‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘The gunman killed her.’
He smiled. ‘I believe you, English. I believe you.’
‘What happened to you?’ I said. ‘What was the shooting?’
‘Rebels. A small group. They won’t be troubling us again, but they may have been the advance guard of a larger group.’
‘There are only three of you. What happened to Hendrik?’
‘Hendrik is dead. The rebels shot him.’
Something in the way he said it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. He pushed past me and began to walk off up the track we were following.
Raz was white-faced and I could see a muscle tugging insistently in Reuben’s cheek, counterpointing the rapid blinking of his eyes.
‘I’m sorry about your mate,’ I said. ‘Were either of you with him when it happened?’
Raz shook his head and turned away to follow Rudi. I stood staring at the ground, a growing chill in the pit of my stomach.