Recoil (14 page)

Tactical aircraft like these things only required about seven hundred metres of runway. Within seconds the rumbling eased as the undercarriage lifted off the ground.

5

Sam’s hammock rocked gently with the motion of the aircraft. The parachute silk was wrapped around him so tightly he looked like a suspended green cocoon. He’d been lying there an hour and was probably snoring, but I couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the props.

The loadie was up front with Lex in the drivers’ seats, so all I had for company was a shed-load of alloy containers and maybe twice as many insulated hampers and cardboard boxes of food. And Silky’s sleeping-bag – I’d been using it as a blanket. It was always cold at the back of these things at 12,000 feet. We couldn’t be any higher than that, otherwise with an unpressurized aircraft we’d all get hypoxia and soon be dead.

The drone of the engines drowned any other noise. I looked out of the window, raised the bag to my nose and breathed in deeply. Her faded lemony perfume still lingered in the nylon and the rainforest canopy skimmed along below. From this height, we seemed to be flying over a field of broccoli.

I needed a dump. I turned over in my hammock until I fell out of it, and Silky’s sleeping-bag came with me. I wiped the red grit off my palms and on to my jeans as I made my way to the sawn-off oil drum where the ramp met the fuselage. I pulled down my jeans and settled on to the two slats of wood suspended over it.

I was facing my big aluminium companions. I’d been wondering more and more about what was inside them, and it wasn’t just idle curiosity. I wanted to know what I’d got myself involved in if the shit hit the fan when we landed. I’d heard guys were running surplus weapons from the Balkans into central Africa. If this plane was full of old AKs and anti-personnel mines, telling the Rwandans I’d just hitched a lift wouldn’t cut much mustard.

When I’d finished, I poured bleach into the oil drum from a five-litre can, more to kill the smell than the germs, and edged my way along a stack of boxes of condensed milk. I ripped the top off one and helped myself to a can. I gave it a few whacks on the corner of one of the containers and sucked down the sweet, warm liquid. The army had made a huge mistake when it had removed this stuff from ration packs. Running down the centre of the aircraft there were maybe twenty light-blue fifty-gallon drums of aviation fuel, like the spine that supported all the other gear piled round and on top of them.

I also counted about ten boxes of Cutty Sark; assuming twelve to a box that meant 120 bottles. Maybe Lex knew an elephant with a drink problem.

I moved a bit further so I was out of Sam’s line of sight, and came to the cockpit bulkhead. A couple of hundred grimy, empty thirty-kilo rice sacks were piled high against it. I could just about make out the stencilling on some of them. They had once contained food gifts from either the USA or the EU, but that had been many years ago, and they had been put to other uses since. At least I now knew where the shit that covered the floor, and now my hands and jeans, had come from.

Next to the sacks were forty or fifty fifteen-kilo bags of fertilizer. I also saw about a dozen big black drums of diesel. It was a proper little quartermaster’s store. There was even a set of golf clubs in a knackered black bag. They seemed to be required packing for pilots. I couldn’t imagine there’d be that many courses in the jungle, but that meant nothing to golf freaks. They’d play anywhere. I saw a picture once of a couple of guys playing against the backdrop of the US embassy in Saigon during the evacuation. Desperate people were hanging from helicopters trying to flee the North Vietnamese and all those two had been worried about was getting a little ball into a hole.

But I was much more interested in the containers. The top one was at about chin level. I unlatched the two retaining clips on the lid, but even before I looked inside I knew what was in there. The smell of oil was stronger than anything coming out of the dump drum, and it was of a very specific type. I’d spent half my life inhaling it in armouries around the world, and there was no mistaking the odour.

I peered in. Beneath a layer of old hairy blanket, I saw worn gunmetal, and shapes I recognized. A bundle of AK assault rifles and at least one GPMG were loosely packed in old grey and brown blankets.

I closed the container and reclipped it before I moved to the next one along. I lifted the lid and pulled the blanket aside. This time I found just one weapon, a 12.7mm heavy machine-gun. The last time I’d seen one of these guys was on a Russian tank in newsreel footage of a May Day parade, next to a bloke with a very stern face and a leather helmet who was sticking out of the turret and saluting Yeltsin on the podium. They were very heavy pieces of kit, and this one had a wheeled tripod for ease of manoeuvre in the sustained-fire role.

I’d seen enough.

I closed everything up and pushed my way back to the tailgate. Lex might have been upgraded to first class, and the world of smoky bars was far behind him, but there was no doubting he was still involved in this continent’s second oldest profession. Was the mining job Sam had talked about just a load of bullshit?

I reached the hammocks, but didn’t climb back in. One element was still missing from the classic equation, and I wondered if it was right under my nose. The deal always went in threes, and we had ticked the first box – the one that said ‘weapons’. We’d also ticked the second, and this particular box all had sailing ships on their labels.

There was only one piece missing.

I didn’t bother to check if Sam was asleep: it would take time, and I might actually wake him. Besides, he couldn’t see anything from where he was.

I knelt under his hammock and undid the blue case. The mix was complete: Rwandan francs by the shrinkwrapped bundle, all high denomination.

This wasn’t protecting miners and their communities, this was good old-fashioned warmongering. Give the guys guns, pay them cash, and keep them happy on firewater. The rules hadn’t changed since the days of the Wild West.

Sam groaned. I closed the case quickly and got back to doing a green maggot impression.

The hammock swung as the Antonov banked. Did it matter to me what the fuck they were up to? Not in the slightest. I put the sleeping-bag to my nose and filled my lungs with Silky’s perfume.

6

‘Rise and shine, man!’

I opened my eyes in a semi-daze as an unseen hand gave the para cord a shake. The loadie’s grin was only inches from my face, and by the smell of his breath he’d spent the flight smoking one of the Cape’s more exotic crops. Good job he wasn’t needed to fuck about with the 23mms.

I flipped myself out of the hammock again. Sam was already on his feet, his hair sticking up and his face creased. I probably didn’t look any different.

I couldn’t keep my mind off the cargo. I didn’t know where we were landing. If it was an official airstrip, I could only assume Lex and Sam had the authorities squared away. Maybe that was where the Cutty Sark was headed, or a couple of bundles of notes.

I was just glad I wasn’t a part of it. I didn’t know if the rationale was good, bad or indifferent. All I knew was that the mixture of weapons, whisky and wonga was as volatile as a Saturday-night vindaloo.

I looked through a window. The sun glinted on a series of waterways that snaked through my broccoli fields, but craters the size of small towns suddenly appeared, huge orange-red scars among the green, as if the jungle had a bad case of acne. Down there, somewhere under the hundreds of square miles of green that stretched as far as the horizon, was Silky. Maybe on some track or even floating down a river trying to get to Nuka with her blankets, or whatever shit she was taking for the locals.

I unfastened the para cord from the fuselage struts and rolled the silk into a ball. Sam shook his head when I offered it to him. ‘Keep it. You might be needing it.’

I shoved it into my holdall.

The Antonov was on its final approach and I wanted to see what kind of landing site we were heading for – and what kind of reception committee was waiting.

The broccoli had become big distinctive treetops, and it wasn’t long before the wheels hit a carpet of orange-red dirt.

Tents and huts with wriggly tin roofs lined the runway, just metres from the wing-tip, and many more disappeared into the forest behind them. Smoke curled from cooking fires. Small figures darted about on the edge of the strip.

I squatted on the ramp, rubbing my eyes back to life as the loadie reappeared and threw each of us a bottle of water. I tilted my head and took several warm gulps, trying to time them between jolts as the aircraft kangarood along the runway. A couple of scabby dogs tried to keep pace with us, looking as if they thought the tyres were made of Pedigree Chum. Decapitated oil drums had been placed at twenty-metre intervals along the sides of the strip, and had obviously had fires in them. It looked like Lex did a bit of night-flying as well.

Sam was looking out of the window too. ‘I saw you having a sniff in them boxes . . .’ He was smiling. ‘Bet you’re thinking what I said last night about the church, orphanage, even the mine is rubbish? Bet you’re thinking we’re just in the war game?’

‘Pretty much.’ I nodded back at the cargo. ‘I mean—’

‘I haven’t lied to you, Nick. Maybe kept the odd thing back, but that’s all. Our mine is under constant threat, which means the orphanage at Nuka is too. So, to protect it, we’ve got to expand our operations and get more guys on the ground.’

It wasn’t long before the propellers were feathered and the aircraft came to a standstill. I started to flap even more about Silky fucking about in Nuka.

I now had a clearer view of the huts and tents. Brilliant cobalt blue was definitely the colour of choice in Africa.

The dogs finally caught up with us and yapped at the cockpit as the engines closed down. They were probably just too fucked to take chunks out of the tyres. Some of the older kids followed a football on to the runway so the barefooted game could continue.

The loadie pressed a button and the ramp whined. A horizontal shaft of daylight appeared where it left the fuselage. It hit the ground and Sam and I walked down into a solid wall of heat.

PART FOUR

1

There were no trucks buzzing round the back of the aircraft this time. Here, it was down to muscle. Thirty or so guys were already trudging up the ramp. They wore ripped, dirty loincloths and T-shirts, and some had flip-flops or wellies on their feet. A few were even sporting rubber swimming caps. They had them so they wore them. Every one of them, clothed or not, was caked in dust and grime, and the skin on their knees and elbows was white and cracked.

The flies’ welcoming committee gave us a warm reception now that the props had stopped. I started the Thai hand dance round my face; most of the others seemed happy to let the little bastards get on with it.

The loadie shouted at the guys in French, presumably trying to marshal them to start offloading. The only equipment I could see was a couple of vegetable-market-type barrows. Kids jumped on and off them as they were trundled towards the aircraft.

We walked along the airstrip, keeping the shanty town on our right. Piles of empty red food-aid sacks lined the verges, weighted down with logs.

The scabby dogs were now busy scattering a flock of three or four bony old chickens. Washing hung from trees. A few of the circular huts were made from beer cans mortared with mud then painted blue. Wriggly tin roofs were clearly all the rage.

Sam waved at the women and kids.

They waved back and smiled. ‘Mr Sam! Mr Sam!’

Lime-green and yellow jerry-cans were piled everywhere, and old plastic one-litre water bottles hung like strings of onions outside each hut. Everything looked like it was used until it fell apart.

We passed a group of young men, smoking and drinking, Czech AKs slung over their shoulders. The brown plastic furniture tried hard to be Russian wood, but failed.

They followed us with their eyes. They were curious about the new white face in town.

The smell of wood fires and cooking filled the air. ‘Takes you back, dunnit?’ Sam did some more smiling and waving. This was beginning to feel like a royal walkabout. ‘These people are the lucky ones. The total number of Palestinians and Israelis killed in the past six years is about four and a half thousand. Here, that’s not even the score for a long weekend. Over four million dead, Nick.’

‘You know what they say about records?’

‘What?’

‘They’re there to be broken.’

Sam chose to ignore what he thought was a bad joke as more overexcited kids ran up and bustled round him. He shook hands and patted heads. They seemed healthy enough. The whites of their eyes were actually white. They were getting protein.

I smiled. ‘They seem to like you.’

‘They know that I know what’s going on in there.’ He tapped the top of a young head with a forefinger. ‘My mother died when I was five and my father hit the drink and forgot to come home. I lived in council shelters until I joined up.’

I wished I’d been sent to one when my dad fucked off. Instead I’d got a drunken stepdad who beat the shit out of me and my mother. But I understood where he was coming from.

We pushed through the crowd. ‘Aren’t the UN supposed to be doing their bit to stop all this shit? And what about the aid organizations like Mercy Flight?’