Richard crouched there, turning his head from side to side as though his ears could work like sonar dishes and locate the precise source of the sound. Was it coming from nearby or further away? Richard knew how a Zodiac — a sixteen-seater rigid-hulled inflatable boat or RIB — could slip along a tunnel of clear water under the overhang of mangroves. Odem would know about such things. Ivan wouldn’t. On the other hand, the floating islands of water hyacinth would also furnish excellent cover. Richard wiped his eyes, trying to calculate whether the hyacinth was tall enough to offer realistic cover. Ivan would probably work out that the floating plants were a potential danger. But Richard was still worried about the tunnel beneath the mangroves. That was the sort of thing Mako would be briefing them about in the future — which was no use if they needed to know about it now.
Richard moved down to the very edge of the river bank and lay on his belly, easing himself out as far as he could, using the mangroves to support him. But he stood no real chance of penetrating the roof of the tunnel that lay so tantalizingly close. Still, the position he managed to achieve allowed him to listen to the sounds whispering along the channel immediately below the tangle of stems. And it was here that the quiet grumbling of the outboards seemed to be coming from. Burning with frustration, he pulled himself up and scrabbled back until he was kneeling on solid ground.
Abruptly, he was surrounded by legs dressed in cargo pants. Monstrous three-eyed faces stared down at him like something out of a science fiction movie. Then a huge black hand reached down, lifting the three-pointed headset free. ‘Hi, Captain Mariner,’ rumbled Mako. ‘What’s happening?’ As briefly as he could, Richard explained. But even as he did so, the nearest of the water hyacinth rafts erupted into flame as one of Ivan’s men sent a missile out at it.
‘Under the mangroves, hunh?’ growled Mako, paying no attention to the spectacular distraction and hunkering down beside Richard. He produced a long, articulated stick with a mini camera on the end of it. ‘Look in this.’ He handed Richard what looked like an iPad. He flicked a switch. Richard saw a light-enhanced version of what the camera on the end of the stick could see. With no further comment, Mako pushed the stick down through the mangroves, turning the camera round until Richard could see a tunnel of woven branches. And there — disturbingly close within it — a narrow boat packed with men in a range of bush uniforms. In the bow, crouching low, but unmistakable in his raffia costume and mask, was the god of the dark places, Ngoboi.
‘They’re there!’ spat Richard. ‘Ngoboi …’
But as he did so, the second raft of water hyacinth seemed to simply vanish and a sizeable Zodiac inflatable appeared. This too was full of men. And, set up on the bow in place of the evil deity, was a tripod. ‘Night glasses!’ rapped Richard, and one of Mako’s men handed him a pair. He slammed them to his eyes and fixed his gaze on the bow of the Zodiac. He focused until he could see a sleek-looking missile sitting on the tripod, with a guidance system rigged beside it. ‘If they launch that it’ll do quite a bit of damage. Are you in contact with Ivan?’
‘Separate systems. Vladimir! Bring up the RPG! The rest of you fall back. He needs twenty metres clearance to be safe!’
‘Warn Zhukov then,’ hissed Richard. ‘He can try to get his countermeasures on line while Vladimir sets up.’ Mako saw the wisdom in that. Just as everyone else saw the wisdom in his orders and cleared twenty metres behind the kneeling soldier.
It was the fact that the men in the Zodiac were equally careful that saved them, thought Richard a few moments later. The inflatable was suddenly rocking wildly as the Army of Christ men cleared out from the missile’s exhaust path. The laser guidance system was thrown off. The operator hesitated.
Ivan must have seen something then, because one of his MANPADS came streaking out of the jungle half a kilometre further upstream, just at the very moment that Vladimir loosed off his RPG. The men on the Zodiac saw the rocket-propelled grenades heading their way and threw themselves into the water. But the man with the launcher fired it anyway then all three weapons came together in one unholy meeting. Thirty kilograms of TNT equivalent all went up together with a flash that blew the Zodiac and its crew to atoms.
But no sooner was that threat neutralized than Richard was on his stomach again, probing through the mangroves with Mako’s camera stick, his eyes focused on the square of the hand-held screen in front of him. The sinister, mangrove-walled tunnel was empty. The men he had seen had vanished.
Ngoboi was gone.
Immanuel
Richard sat back on his haunches, his mind racing. Where could they have gone?
He turned to Mako. ‘Colonel, can you see anything moving out on the water, just beyond the edge of the vegetation?’ Mako eased into a better position, swivelled his alien, almost insect-like head, and focused the night-vision goggles on the outer edge of the mangroves.
‘Nothing,’ he rumbled.
Richard hissed with frustration, looking back into the vast blackness of the jungle behind him. You could hide an army in there, if you could avoid the night-vision goggles, he thought bitterly. Ngoboi had come ashore. And there was only one likely target important enough to tempt the angry god. ‘Colonel,’ he grated, handing back the camera stick and the handset, ‘we’ve got to get back to the orphanage as quickly as we can.’ He paused, his mind whirling. ‘Except for one patrol. Leave a patrol here to search along the bankside. There’s a way down to the river through the mangroves and the undergrowth. It’ll be hidden — camouflaged. But it’ll be there. And there’ll almost certainly be a boat tied up and someone guarding it.’ Then he turned and began to work his way back.
Mako stayed crouched in position for a few more moments, giving orders and passing others along, then he rose, motioned to his men and followed Richard. He caught up after a while, his movements speeded by the night-vision goggles, and he fell in at Richard’s shoulder. ‘What’s your thinking on this?’ he rumbled, almost silently.
‘Odem has to hit you before you get settled and ready. Before Kebila can call up air support and anything else he has planned for the morning. But he really has only one target at this moment: Anastasia. If Ngoboi doesn’t feed her heart to Odem, then he’s not half the god he’s supposed to be. And as an instrument of terror and control, he’s a busted flush. So he’s sent his technicals in across the fields and his Zodiacs down along the river — but they’re something of a distraction. He’s sneaking a little commando unit undercover to grab Anastasia and anyone else he can get hold of. The more hearts the better.’
‘This Ngoboi sounds like a hungry son of a bitch to me,’ rumbled Mako.
‘And then some. Given his head, he’s insatiable. And that’s the point. With Ngoboi behind him Odem’s in total control. No one knows who’s next on Ngoboi’s list — except for Odem himself, of course. It’s a guarantee of sheer, naked power, for as long as the army believe in the magic.’
‘Getting his little team in is one thing,’ rumbled Mako, returning to the logistics of the situation. ‘Getting them out again is another — especially if he wants to take prisoners with him.’
‘He’ll have thought of that. We keep underestimating him. Odem’s no fool. Quite the opposite, in fact.’
Richard’s conclusion seemed more than fully borne out as the pair of them led Mako’s Russian contingent out into the orphanage’s central compound. What had been a bustling encampment was now a deserted ghost town of flapping tents and moaning guy-ropes. The slipways were empty, Stalingrad and Volgograd out on the wide black water, their searchlights probing the shadows on the stream and along the banks. The tanks, troops and transports were all out in the fields chasing Odem’s technicals. Or, at Richard’s request, in the jungle along the riverside, watching out for waterborne attacks.