‘Colonel, have your men all got body armour?’ asked Richard, watching the third prisoner walking up the ramp with his bright blue UN vest.
‘Yes. It’s standard issue.’
‘Not for us or the Zubr’s crew…’ Richard’s first thought was to scavenge body armour in case anyone on the Zubr had to get involved in the fighting, but soon enough he was thinking bigger than that. Mako drove the truck up beside its companion. Richard jumped down and glanced into the first truck. Caleb’s men had arranged the dead men from the boathouse neatly and covered them with a respectfulness Richard suspected they did not really merit. They had simply piled the body armour on the bench seat in the cab. ‘We should take that,’ said Richard. ‘And we should take a look in the back of this one too. Esan might not have recognized what was in the crates back here, but we might have a better idea.’
As it happened, they didn’t. The marking on the crates meant nothing to them — even the sections of it that were written in English. But when Richard snapped the top of one open, it was immediately clear that they were looking at some kind of communications equipment rather than any actual weaponry. ‘I’m not sure it’s worth wasting much time over,’ said Mako, but Richard’s Scottish blood simply would not allow him to discard something so thoughtlessly. Ten minutes later Stalingrad’s communications officer was standing beside Mako’s army man. And both of them were wide-eyed. ‘It’s the latest update of the Parakeet,’ said the army man, his voice simply awed. ‘It is state of the art.’
‘Parakeet,’ said Richard, disappointed. ‘That doesn’t sound like much.’
‘It’s the complete battlefield communication system,’ breathed the soldier. ‘Like the British Bowman — but it works better.’
‘Battlefield communications?’ said Richard. ‘You mean from command vehicles to attack vehicles and so forth?’
‘No,’ said Mako, his light baritone voice decisive, authoritative. ‘The Parakeet system is for use by dismounted personnel. On foot. Using this I can stay in detailed personal real-time contact with as many squad leaders as I want. Secure, encrypted, two-way, no matter where I am on the battlefield, or they are.’
‘Well, I think we should take it aboard,’ said Richard, impressed.
‘So do I,’ agreed Colonel Mako. ‘I’ll drive the truck straight up the ramp.’
‘And I’ll drive the other one,’ said Richard. ‘Waste not, want not. And at the very least it’ll allow Anastasia and Ado to give us a complete list of the men who tried to rape them, living or dead.’
‘And Celine Chaka, of course,’ called Mako, slamming the truck door behind him. ‘She’s the reason we’re here after all.’
Just at that very moment, four hours upriver, the stiff and aching Celine Chaka finally realized that Anastasia Asov had saved her life. Twice. The first time she had saved it was when she pulled Celine out of the compound, under the chapel, and got her down to the boat. She had saved her then, even though she had been wounded in the shoot-out with the pursuing Army of Christ the Infant. And she had saved it now. For the two shots Anastasia had fired from the AK47 had wounded the two men that the army could least afford to do without. Two men so severely wounded that even the young doctor kidnapped from the clinic at Malebo could not guarantee to save them. Only she, with her far wider and more painfully learned experience, could do that. Which was the reason that she was still alive, where all the other invalids from the clinic had been executed long since. Which was why she would stay alive — like the young doctor and his little medical team, like Sister Hope and Sister Charity, and Jacob, the useful handyman — for just as long as she could be of service to these brutal and terrible people.
The two wounded men lay in the chapel itself, where her own sickbed was, though the interchangeable places of learning and worship had been stripped out ages ago. Now it was, as closely as it was possible to make it, a hospital. Albeit a hospital with only two patients remaining, now that Celine was finally up. Celine called the man with the chest wound Ngoboi, for that was the costume he was wearing when Anastasia shot him, though she understood his real name was Ojogo. His responsibilities within the Army of Christ the Infant were for the oversight and maintenance of transport. And since his shooting, the transport section had all but closed down. Especially as one of his most trusted lieutenants — a boy called Esan, apparently — had vanished in the melee of that night three days since.
Moses Nlong himself had been coherent — although in great and increasing agony — for some time after his wounding. Just long enough to issue a whole string of orders, from the building of the stockade to the kidnapping of the nearest doctor from the clinic at Malebo. But he was delirious and helpless now. So much so that the men in charge at the moment, led by the man who had kidnapped her — the fearsome Captain Odem — had very pointedly allowed her to live as long as she tended him and kept him alive. But that was becoming increasingly hard to do.
The bullet from Anastasia’s AK, beginning to tumble at the end of its flight, had hit the general directly on his left knee. It shattered the kneecap, spreading into a misshapen mushroom as it did so, and smashed the joint behind the patella — splintering both the big bones — the tibia shin bone and the femur thigh bone, before tearing the fibula free — thus destroying the ankle below as well. ‘It was lucky for the general that Sister Hope was a competent first-aider,’ said Celine to young doctor Chukwu. ‘She managed to stem the blood loss from the popliteal artery and vein before he bled to death. But, in spite of her ministrations, Nlong will never walk properly again.’
‘Indeed,’ Dr Chukwu agreed, frowning. ‘If I were a more confident surgeon I would have taken the leg off below the knee and tried to reconstruct the shattered end of the thigh. But surgery is not an option under these circumstances. Gangrene, however, is.’
A footfall behind Celine made her turn. It was Odem. He stood for a moment eyeing her as though he could see through all of her clothing, instead of just through the gossamer of the bloodstained blouse she had put on instead of the hospital robe from the clinic. Her flesh rose in goosebumps of revulsion at the thought of him doing to her what he apparently did to the harem of girls he kept with him each night. He crossed to the general’s bed and looked down at him. ‘I don’t think he has long to live,’ the soldier growled. ‘He was growing weak in any case; wanting to settle down. To negotiate with your father. Become a farmer once again.’ The full lips twisted in contempt.
‘I’m sure that would be a wise move, Captain,’ said Celine carefully.
‘So are some of the others,’ he sneered. ‘They have given him until dawn. He either starts getting better soon or I assume command.’ He shouldered the doctor aside and crossed to the second bed where the dying Ngoboi lay tossing restlessly, coughing and choking. ‘His right-hand man, Captain Ojogo,’ said Odem thoughtfully as he slid his matchet out. ‘My greatest rival.’ The blade rose and fell once. Twice. The sound was indescribable. Odem turned his back on the fountain of blood which burst from Ngoboi. ‘You have ’til dawn,’ he said, his red-rimmed eyes moving from Celine to the doctor and the nurses cowering with the two nuns on the raised platform that had once been an altar. ‘All of you.’