‘Checkpoint ahead,’ said Francis. ‘Many men. Two are coming forward. They are waving at me to stop.’
‘Do not stop,’ I told him. ‘How many men?’
‘Perhaps eight or ten.’
Shit — that was a lot of guns. And this was just a roadblock.
‘Can you drive through? Anything across the road? Like a truck?’
‘No — just armed men!’ he said through gritted teeth and took his foot off the gas.
‘Don’t slow down!’ Rutherford snapped at him, then reached over and pushed the gas pedal to the floor with the stock of his rifle. The Dong bucked forward and Francis panicked a little, swerving off the road briefly.
‘Take it easy,’ I told Francis. ‘And for Christ’s sake don’t use the horn — not yet!’
‘They are pointing their guns at me,’ said Francis.
‘Tell them something!’ I yelled at him. ‘Tell them the mine is being attacked.’
Just for Christ’s sake don’t tell them it’s being attacked by us, I thought.
Francis stuck his head out the window and shouted, ‘Gare! Gare! Regardez en arriere! Ils arrivent! Les fantômes! Les fantômes!’
I heard random terrified shouting coming from the men at the roadblock.
Rutherford’s face widened into a grin.
‘What’d he say?’ I asked.
‘“Look out, the ghosts are coming! They’re right behind us.” Sounds like they’re all shitting themselves out there.’ He pulled his rifle off the pedal.
The men’s shouts faded behind us. No gunfire, suggesting that we’d managed to pierce the outer defenses without alerting the main body of troops within.
‘Francis — how much further to the mine?’ I asked him.
‘Not far. Soon.’
‘You can slow down now. Tell me what you see.’
The Dong freewheeled, slowing gradually. Francis gave the steering wheel more than half a turn. From memory, this almost-ninety-degree right-hander was the last corner before a hundred-meter straight section of road that ended in the parking lot.
‘I see many men,’ Francis said, his voice agitated.
‘How many?’ I asked.
‘Too many to count. More than sixty.’
Sixty! ‘Are they looking at us?’
‘Non.’
‘What are they doing?’
‘They are making walls with sandbags.’
Fortifcations. ‘Can you see our hostages?’
‘Non.’
‘Shit,’ said Rutherford, beating me to it.
‘Wait… Oui, I see them,’ he said a few seconds later. ‘They are chained to old machinery away from the huts. There are guards with them — ten or twelve.’
‘Are there any civilians in the area?’
‘Non.’
‘Can you see a black male with shiny hair that looks like it’s come straight from the seventies?’ I asked.
‘I do not understand.’
What I meant was, could he see Lockhart. ‘Can you see any foreigners?’
‘Non,’ he said.
‘Drive toward the main body of men,’ I said. ‘Head to a spot where you can’t see the hostages. Drive slow.’
Francis waved out the window a couple of times and said, ‘Bonjour, bonjour.’
‘That means “good jour”, right?’ I whispered to Rutherford.
The Brit grinned. It was a tight grin, and was mostly for my benefit. He had things on his mind, and so did I. I didn’t like what we were about to do but, as I saw it, we didn’t have a lot of choice. I heard a barrage of French directed at Francis from someone close by. Francis answered, then told us, ‘They want to know why we are so damaged. We have been told that we cannot go further.’
‘Just tell him you need to turn around,’ I said. ‘Make sure you smile when you tell him.’
Francis told him, and told him nice. He then pulled the wheel a couple of turns before straightening out.
‘Can you see our people?’
‘No, they are behind the two buildings.’
If he couldn’t see them, they weren’t going to get hurt. ‘Stop here,’ I said.
The brakes bit with a squeal and we stopped. Francis pulled the handbrake, the ratchet sounding like a burst of machine-gun fire.
Outside, I could hear men shouting at us. Wherever it was that we’d stopped, we weren’t supposed to. Any moment, people were going to get pushy.
‘Do it,’ said Rutherford.
‘On the count of three,’ I said, eyeballing Francis, who he gave me a nod. ‘Three, two, one…’
I reached up past him, found the horn on the steering wheel, pressed it, and the Dong’s pathetic horn blew its motor scooter meeeep. According to the plan, I had five seconds. I pulled Francis from behind the wheel and dragged him down into the footwell, over Rutherford. As I threw myself over both of them, the entire world suddenly came apart in a burst of heat, light and noise that lifted the truck off the ground and filled the cabin with a swirling metal storm of hot steel pellets. Needlepoints of pain fared across the exposed skin of my face, neck and free arm. Jesus, I was burning. I lifted my head and slapped my face and neck, and small, hot steel balls dropped into the footwell, rattling as they fell. I wiped my arm next and saw that it was now pocked with small burns no bigger than nail heads, and more steel pellets dropped and bounced around the truck’s metal flooring. The smell of burned truck and scorched human caused me to gag. I pushed myself up to the seating position, and pulled Francis and Rutherford up after me.
‘Come on,’ I said, half-dazed, to Rutherford, opened the door and kicked it wide. We had to hit the enemy while they were dazed, before they had a chance to regroup and realize that their attackers were just a few half-starved stragglers and not an invading company.
Men lay dying and wounded all around the truck. I took a few uneasy steps, my balance affected by the shock wave of the multiple explosions, willing myself not to stumble. It wasn’t easy. I steadied myself against the side of the truck and saw that our khaki-green tarpaulin had been reduced to remnants while the metal frame that held it in place was twisted like liquorice. The rest of the Dong hadn’t come off much better, now just scrap metal on torn tires.
‘Ryder!’ I shouted.
Nothing.
‘Ryder!’
A hand came up and waved above the mud-filled steel cans. Ryder’s head followed it.
‘You all right?’ I called out.
He nodded and pointed to his ears and gave a thumbs up sign. We’d used plugs of mud to save his eardrums. He threw across to me the two sets of body armor Rutherford and I had given him for added protection. I put mine on and passed the other set to Rutherford. The defenses had worked. And so had the Claymores we’d placed around the edge of the Dong’s load tray, three on each side and two at the back — eight in all. The firing clackers had been taped together in a row and set up inside one of the smaller containers so that all Ryder had to do to fire off all eight in unison was close the lid on the box. The signal to fire was a long blast on the horn.
Rutherford jogged twenty meters to take up a firing position around the front of the two huts, both of which had been severely damaged by the multiple Claymore blast. I looked around, but tried to be selective about what I saw. The scene in the immediate area of the truck was just plain frightful; bodies everywhere — more than ten — many limbless and headless. Some sick puppy had put a lot of careful thought into the Claymore’s physics. The sudden shocking assault had driven the FARDC soldiers to dive for cover and wait to see where all this was going. Their reluctance to engage wouldn’t last long. I figured we had a two-minute window, maybe less. Once the enemy figured we’d blown our load, the tables would turn.