Abiye went first, then Richard followed him and Anastasia watched Richard’s back while following closely behind him. The trunk was wide enough even for someone as massive as Richard to cross with relative ease, though he found that after ten metres or so he had to crouch in order to negotiate the shattered branches that stood out from the main trunk, proceeding hand over hand from shattered stump to shattered stump, grateful for the rope. He did not look down, but he could not resist looking up at the river that ran hypnotically towards him, the gorge becoming deeper and narrower like a funnel mouth gathering the water inwards towards the falls themselves. Further upstream, the river vanished round a bend into the jungle. But Richard was able to estimate that the main sluice system must begin little more than seven kilometres further upriver. They’d be there by lunchtime with luck.
Richard did not pause while making these observations but continued to work his way along the thickening tree trunk towards the bank side clearing on the opposite lip of the chasm, where the rest of the little command stood waiting for Abiye, Anastasia and him. Just as he reached the thickest part of the fallen trunk, however, where the branches stopped and there was no choice but to stand up and walk that last fifteen metres, the wood beneath him seemed to leap and shudder. Richard froze, looking upstream. The sound of the waterfall below him was so overpowering that he never really registered that there might be another clamour associated with the quaking of the fallen tree. But then he glanced to the shore ahead of him. Everyone there was looking around in consternation too. Abiye was running across the last five metres of the trunk. Even as Richard looked, the corporal threw himself through the wall of roots and into the welcoming arms of his command, trailing the end of the safety rope behind him. Richard crouched, feeling the trunk with his fingers like a doctor taking a pulse. The rough wood juddered once again.
Richard realized in a flash that what he was feeling was something greater than the power of the waterfall. He glanced upstream once again, but there was nothing. He looked back towards Anastasia. Her eyes were wide and her face sheet-white. And abruptly Richard could see why. Her end of the tree was reacting to whatever was happening much more actively than his still-rooted end. Without thinking, he turned round and began to scramble back towards her. No sooner did he do so than the tree shook for a third time — more fiercely yet. Frowning, Richard looked up into the sky, wondering whether Karisoke was erupting. But no — the smear of grey smoke was just the same as it had been. Whatever was happening here had nothing to do with the volcano.
And somewhere in Richard’s head, a penny dropped. The men he had seen through Oshodi’s binoculars working on the sluices. They hadn’t been fixing them. They had been getting ready to blow them up. The logic was inescapable. Why had he not seen it before? The only thing standing between Han Wuhan and the black, coltan-rich mud was the water. And the only things holding the water in place were Dr Kuozumi’s dams and sluices.
Five minutes or so after that first disturbing vibration, there was likely to be a wall of water coming down into that steep-sided rock funnel at more than seventy kilometres per hour.
And the tree was going to be right in its way.
Macho
Richard had never seen Anastasia so frightened. He walked towards her, using his left hand to reach for any stubs of branches that promised stability, holding his right hand out towards her, and forcing all the reassurance that he could muster into his expression. ‘Come on, Nastiya, he said, although he knew she couldn’t hear him. ‘It’s all right. We’ll make it.’ Her fierce gaze switched from his eyes to his extended hand. In an instant, she had attached herself to it like a limpet to a rock. He turned slowly and began to lead her on across. Since he had first realized what must be going on upstream, he had been counting at the back of his mind. It was an old habit — a childish accomplishment self-taught through seemingly endless night watches. One count per second. He was at one hundred and fifty now. If he got to three hundred and they were still out here, he thought grimly, that would be five minutes elapsed. The wave would be upon them. Then they could well be in trouble.
Richard moved slowly and carefully, however. But, as he reached two hundred, he began to feel that speed might be of the essence after all. Especially as the trembling of the tree trunk beneath him seemed to be worsening moment by moment. Still, he reached across with his left hand, steadying the pair of them against one branch after another, holding Anastasia steadily with his right and keeping a careful eye on Corporals Abiye and Oshodi — and the others who were pulling in the safety rope like a slow motion tug of war team.
It was Abiye’s gesture that warned him. The gesture, for he would not have heard even the loudest shout. The roots seemed tantalizingly close at hand, the bank immediately beneath his toecaps. But Anastasia was still behind him grabbing his hand so hard that she had almost dislocated his shoulder. He followed Abiye’s gesture and looked upstream. A wall of water came round the bend, exploding out of the jungle with the speed of a striking snake. The crest of the thing stood well over two metres high and seemed to be extended by a considerable mat of water hyacinth. Richard pulled Anastasia forward desperately, twisting his shoulder joint painfully as she froze, just a step or two short of safety. Richard turned to face her at last, angry and frustrated, made a little reckless by the fact that he at least was above solid ground.
Anastasia was frozen all right. But not with fear. For there, spread face-up on the approaching mat of water hyacinth, speeding towards the waterfall at the better part of fifty kph, was Ivan. Richard saw the future in a flash — the wall of water, high though it was, would not push Ivan far enough up to reach the tree. Instead he would be hurled into the branches hanging over the last of the river before the fall. But hitting those branches at that speed would be like a car crash. Ivan would be smashed against them by the force of the speeding hyacinth mat. What was needed here was quick thinking, brawn, and sheer bloody insanity in more or less equal doses.
Richard heaved his right arm inwards, simply jerking Anastasia out of her stasis and past his chest. She staggered, fell sideways, and disappeared through the wall of roots to land at Abiye’s feet, holding the last of the safety line, which was now looped round Richard’s waist. Still counting up past three hundred, Richard unslung his rifle and his little backpack, throwing them both after the Russian woman. Then he was securing the loop on place with a sailor’s speed and dexterity, never taking his eyes off Ivan and completing his knot with the same swiftness as the Russian could strip a Kalashnikov. Then he jumped.
Abiye and Oshodi were not quite as quick-thinking as he — or perhaps they were just confused by the sheer bloody lunacy of his action. But whereas he had hoped to land on Ivan — ideally — or on the hyacinth barge at least, they jerked the line tight early and nearly cut him in half. Richard all-but upended, legs, kicking, hands reaching downwards, body swinging away downstream into the gorge towards the waterfall. His feet hit the hanging branches and he kicked off like a swimmer at the turn. Then they loosened him and he swung downwards and outwards, penduluming back upstream, beginning to come upright once again, his vision filled with Ivan’s shocked face shouting something — as though he could be heard amid this Armageddon of sound. At the last minute Richard jerked his head aside so they slammed into each other chest to chest. He wrapped his arms and legs around the Russian and felt Ivan do the same.
The pressure of the rope around Richard’s waist became almost unbearable and they slammed back into the hanging branches. There was an instant of stasis. Richard felt the crushing pressure on his back and chest combine with an agonizing pain around his waist that was sliding relentlessly up towards his already squashed short ribs. And the most overwhelming deluge of foul, black water that seemed intent on drowning him, crushing him and tearing him apart all at the same time. Then Ivan had the presence of mind to reach one hand up and grasp the rope. No sooner had he managed to relieve that agony around Richard’s waist than the pressure at his back eased too. The massive wash of water fell away. The water hyacinth vanished suddenly enough to set the pair of them swinging wildly between the vertical walls of the gorge.