WE ARE STILL ON THE WATER WHEN DAYLIGHT comes, warming my bare toes. It feels so good I can hardly stand it. My first thought is, where’s Izzy? Then I remember that last breath leaking from her cold, pale body and I’m hit by such a wave of raw grief that I have to force myself to keep it together.

I open my eyes to discover that Ash is already awake. He’s watching me. Neither of us managed to get much sleep. The netting was hard and uncomfortable, my back aches, and my head feels like it’s going to explode. I can’t stop thinking about Iz lying out there in the game reserve, about what might be happening to her. Please, God, let those people we saw call the police.

The Empty Child and her soldiers won’t let us sit up in case of prying eyes. So there must be other boats on the lake, and we’re going much faster in the daylight. I remember seeing a picture of Tanganyika in the in-flight magazine, a long finger of water in the middle of Africa, running virtually north to south. It is huge. Above us, little white clouds move slowly across the blue sky. Occasionally I catch sight of sculpted, dark green hills, rising until their mossy heads actually melt into a long crown of mist. Wafts of air, warm and wet as a bathroom, heavy with the smell of damp grass, settle on us until they are blown away in a light breeze off the lake. From the position of the sun on my left and the warm, moist smell of tropical plants, I think we must still be heading north following the western coastline, the one bordering the DRC.

I wonder if Dr. Mayanja has raised the alarm yet. Mum might know I’m still alive if he has. She’ll probably go to pieces when she finds out why, but at least she’ll know. The thought makes me feel a bit better until I scratch my nose and Izzy’s bracelet tickles my wrist.

The LRA beach the boats on a small cove around midafternoon. To the left and right, as far as I can see, steep cliffs drown under a cascade of heavy tropical plants and trees. Under the shade of a tree at the far end of the sandbank, a huge crocodile lies with its mouth open. It’s not like the ones I’ve seen in zoos, that’s for sure. The eyes seem to stand proud of a long upward-curling snout.

Mwemba sends the Sangoma off on some errand with three of the LRA kids. While he waits for them to return, he actually runs at the crocodile, shaking his gun. For a second I think he’s going to shoot it, but he doesn’t. I’m hoping the croc will turn on him, but it jumps at the noise and flies into the water with a loud splash. Its weaving body throws up sand, leaving a trail of curving gashes. When it has swum far enough away, Mwemba orders his soldiers to refill their water flasks from the lake. After they have drunk they bring us some. All the rations from the yacht are long gone, so the soldiers leave us a pile of grubby-looking fruit and berries. We eat the lot but it does nothing to lessen the stomach-cramping hunger pains we feel.

Marcus and Charis look in good spirits, considering, except that Charis’s eyes are yellow and puffy. So are Jen’s. Charis chucks her water over Marcus’s filthy T-shirt and looks up at the towering hills. Marcus doesn’t complain, even though his grafts are red and angry. I’m not even sure that the aloe vera has been helping him much. Sometimes he goes to scratch at the patches but stops himself with this pained expression on his face. I’m guessing they must itch like hell. None of us has the heart to talk about Izzy. I don’t think any of us want to with the LRA soldiers watching our every move. It doesn’t seem right.

“These hills remind me of Wales — minus the screeching and the weird smell, mind,” Charis mutters. She’s right, the air is filled with screeching and cawing.

“Help me …” Marcus jokes, squirming in his damp shirt and rolling his eyes at me. “Every opportunity she gets, she throws water at me.”

I can’t laugh. I just can’t.

“Don’t think about it,” Marcus tells me, suddenly serious. “This is how soldiers cope, Rio. If you let yourself think, everything falls apart.”

“He’s right.” Charis’s fingers buzz as she refills the flask and throws the contents over him. “You use the pain to help you survive.”

Marcus shakes the water out of his hair, blinking and spitting, “Enough already!”

“Stop moaning! If you think that’s wet, you should try camping with me in the Brecon Beacons.”

To everyone’s surprise, Marcus says, “I’d like that,” a little too quickly.

Awkward. Now I manage a smile.

Charis doesn’t seem bothered. She just rubs him on the back with her bionic arm and tells him, “No you wouldn’t, Marky. You’re too much of a wimp.”

I drop onto the sand next to Jen. She’s resting her head on her knees, sweating buckets and shivering. Ash kisses her on the head and sits on the other side of her. Her leg stinks worse than ever. When I stretch out next to her she moans, “I need a doctor. Today was my last antibiotic. What’s wrong with these people?”

Mwemba is rummaging in a backpack. He looks across at us and his eyes narrow.

“Jen — not so loud.” I’m worried he’ll hurt her even more.

Ash takes a quick look to see where our guards are. “We have to make a move soon, ready or not,” he hisses over at Marcus and Charis.

Charis nods.

Ash is right, but he’s scaring me. “Don’t you think there are too many of them, Ash? Or am I the only one here worried about the guns?”

“No. But look at Jen — she can’t go much farther.”

The Empty Child moves closer, so he clams up. That’s when I notice something a little way up the hill, hidden deep in the greenery. A telegraph pole with a wire attached. I jab Ash with my elbow and hope he can follow my line of sight. We’re not far from some kind of settlement, although I’m guessing Mwemba isn’t taking us anywhere we can be found. Suddenly there’s a whirring noise and this tinny little voice says: “BBC News with Jonathan Izard.”

Mwemba is viciously cranking the handle on a small wind-up radio. It’s so weird hearing a normal English voice again and imagining that guy sitting in an air-conditioned studio somewhere safe.

“The disabled teen adventurers whose yacht, the Spirit of Freedom, was thought to be lost at sea, have been seen alive and well in Tanzania.”

“Well?” Jen complains under her breath. “I don’t think so.”

“Unverified reports indicate that they may have been taken captive by the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army led by Joseph Kony. Kony and his second-in-command, Moses Mwemba, are wanted by the international community for their brutal raids on innocent civilians. The rebel group is now largely confined to the jungles of the DRC. This from our correspondent in Dar es Salaam —”

Nothing about Izzy, though. I’m desperate to know that she’s not still lying there.

“Thanks, Jon.” A woman’s voice. “The authorities are remaining tight-lipped at the moment, so facts are sketchy, but if they have been taken by the LRA, Ash Carter and some of his team will have been well prepared by their military training. In the meantime, I’m told that the Navy SEAL team that has been working with several Central African nations to capture LRA leader Joseph Kony has been reassigned. Early this morning I spoke by satellite phone to the SEAL leader, himself an Afghan veteran, who is setting up base in Bujumbura.”

The radio cuts to a surprisingly clear phone line and an American voice. I like it, he sounds strong.

“Yes, ma’am. We’re treating these guys like they’re our own, and you can be assured that we’re going to do everything in our power to get them home.”

Then the presenter’s voice again:

“That was Neema Swai, our correspondent in Dar Es Salaam, reporting. We’ll bring you more on this breaking news story as it develops.”

“Ash, did you hear that?” Marcus is too excited to worry about Mwemba. “They’ve got Navy SEALs looking for us!”

There’s a hoarse, contemptuous laugh from Mwemba. “Let them look! They have been trying to find us for years. In the jungle — where we are going — they can be ten feet away from you and not see a thing.” He shakes his machine gun. “We will kill them before they know we are there.”

It’s another hour or more before the Sangoma and the others drop out of the undergrowth at the edge of the cove. They have a coil of wire, a pile of mangoes, and more handfuls of that scary bark to hand out. The mangoes are overripe and messy, but they are the best thing I’ve tasted since we set foot on dry land. I’m longing to wash the stickiness off my hands in the lake, but as soon as we finish, the LRA kids force us to our feet and we’re on the move again.

The cliff above the cove is too steep for Jen, so she is forced to clamber onto the Sangoma’s back. She refuses point-blank until Mwemba aims his gun at her, screaming in her face. Then she just tosses her head and swings her bound arms around the Sangoma’s neck like it’s an act of defiance, and I get another glimpse of what Ash must have fallen for. The Sangoma smiles meaningfully at some of the LRA boys when he grips Jen’s thighs. Poor Jen has to just sit there with her face pressed against the knot of his bandana, unable to move.

When we start climbing, the Empty Child takes some of Jen’s weight from behind with a hand on her backside, shunting them up the steeper bits. She’s quite strong considering how slight she is, because she’s also giving the toddler a piggyback. The little boy isn’t helping her much: Every time we duck under low branches he makes a game of grabbing a handful and hanging on until either they break or the girl tugs him free. The slopes are thickly wooded, so we have to zigzag our way up, the LRA soldiers hacking at vines and creepers with their machetes. Ash struggles with finding secure footholds, and a couple of times one of his blades actually gets pulled off by a root or something.

It is a huge relief when, after twenty minutes or so, we emerge onto this uneven, deeply rutted track. Cars have been along here; I can still make out tire prints. The trees rise above us on the other side until they are lost in mist. In places the road is muddy and swimming with water — it must have rained recently — and the humidity makes the air feel like I’m breathing molasses. The Sangoma sets Jen down and I rush over to support her. Walking is a lot easier here despite the mud, because there are dry, grassy bits right at the edge of the track where ferns and rubbery dark green leaves have shielded the path from the water. There is a line of weathered telegraph poles following the track, with a slack, vine-draped wire hanging between them. The air is alive with tiny bugs that bite us and swarm around the corners of our eyes. At least Charis, Jen, and I are able to bat them away. The guys have their arms tied behind their backs, so all they can do is shake their heads and blink.

All around us, the landscape shivers and rustles with life. I think, This must be it — this is the jungle, but when I see several of the soldiers run to either end of the track and keep the road covered with their guns, I change my mind. There’s some way to go until they feel safe. Somehow I don’t think there will be roads where we are going.

They stop us by a telegraph pole and one of the kid soldiers shimmies up it with the Sangoma’s coil of wire over his shoulder. When he’s at the top, he gently cuts into the cable with his machete. Then he bites at the end of the wire and lets the rest of the coil unwind and drop heavily to the floor as he twists the bare ends onto the section of cable he cut. The Sangoma forages in a backpack, pulls out this really old telephone with a dial, and fiddles about, connecting it to the coil. When he’s done he listens to the handset a couple of times and then hands the thing to Mwemba, who pulls a grubby old printout from his back pocket and unfolds it.

That nasty, self-satisfied grin of his twists his mouth. “This,” he says to us, holding up the phone, “is another reason your friends will find it impossible to trace us. Now, who is going to be your spokesman?”