Ben stuffed his belongings back into his bag, then he and his dad started dragging the luggage towards the vehicle. He was vaguely aware of Abele circling around their assailant in the direction of the car, gun still pointing firmly at him; but when they were just a metre away from the vehicle, Ben looked back over his shoulder to see Abele stepping towards the prostrate man, the gun pointed straight at his head.
He meant to shoot him.
'Abele!' Ben shouted. 'No!' He dropped the bag and ran towards the guide, whose eyes flickered towards him, his face confused.
'Leave them, Ben,' his dad shouted, but Ben ignored him. He was standing next to Abele now, and knew he had to talk quickly.
'You can't just kill him, Abele.'
'This man was going to take my life,' Abele said in an emotionless voice, as though that excused everything.
'I don't care,' Ben told him, his voice low and urgent. 'Just get in the car – we'll leave him here.'
Abele looked back at the man, who was still lying on the floor, dread in his eyes. Ben suddenly became aware that he was muttering something in a strange language under his breath. A prayer, perhaps, though whether it was one of forgiveness or protection, Ben couldn't tell. Abele walked up to him and, after appearing to pause for thought, kicked him hard in the side of the ribs. The man groaned again and doubled up as he lay on the ground. Abele spoke – Ben didn't understand what he said – then repeated himself more harshly. Their attacker painfully got to his feet, raised his arms in the air, and stepped backwards until he was a good distance from them. 'Now get in the car.' Abele repeated his instruction to Ben.
This time, Ben did as he was told. He and his dad heaved their bags into the boot, then Ben took a seat in the back while his dad sat in the front. Abele walked backwards towards the car, still pointing the gun at their assailant, who stared after them with contempt etched on his face. The keys were in the ignition, so as soon as Abele sat in the driving seat and placed the gun on the dashboard, they were away.
As they drove past their attacker, Ben watched him from the back window. His lip was still curled, and his yellow eyes followed Ben, boring intently into his features. There was hate on his face, Ben thought, and humiliation. He tried to look for a sign of thanks – Ben had saved his life, after all – but there was none.
They drove down the road in a silence that was punctuated only by the grumbling of the car as it struggled on the bumpy track. Ben watched his father. His balding head was red and dotted with beads of sweat, but his face seemed pale and gaunt. Now and then he opened his mouth as if to speak, but then thought better of it. In the end, it was Abele who broke the silence for him. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, he took the gun from the dashboard and carefully handed it to Russell. 'Do you know how to use it?' he asked.
'I really don't think…' Russell started to say, but his voice petered out at a withering look from Abele.
'I have already told you,' he intoned, 'my country is a very dangerous place, and you insist on coming to the most dangerous part. We have been fighting each other in civil war for many years, and life is not held in high regard. You never know when you will meet voleurs like him – the rule of law is weak here. Take the gun.'
There was a silence before Abele spoke again.
'You might need it,' he said.
CHAPTER FIVE
It took an uncomfortable half-hour to drive to the village of Udok, and in that time they saw nobody else on the road: they were clearly travelling to a place more out of the way than Ben had supposed. As they drove, he observed the vegetation on the side of the roads growing thicker and denser; soon, though, it started to clear as they approached the village.
There was nothing to mark where the no man's land of jungle finished and the village began – there was just the occasional deserted hut, and then a lone villager staring curiously at this strange car passing by. As the surroundings became more populated, Abele drove the car slowly: animals as well as humans, each as scrawny as the other, were wandering in what passed as a road, clearly unused to the presence of motor vehicles. Occasionally a few children would run alongside the car, doing what they could to be high-spirited; but there seemed something rather halfhearted about their game, and they soon melted away.
The centre of the village was a large square, in the middle of which was a covered marketplace. There was room for perhaps fifty stalls there, but Ben could only make out two – one selling cloth, the other selling some kind of gnarled vegetable he could not identify at such a distance. Around the edge of the square were the familiar corrugated-iron huts. Some of them had the appearance of shops – there was a motley collection of goods for sale outside them – but custom seemed to be slow. Indeed, there seemed to be too few people to warrant such a number of outlets; those that Ben could see appeared to be walking hurriedly, keeping themselves to themselves.
There was one exception. Abele stopped the car to let a man cross the street. He walked with crutches, as one leg was missing and the other ended in a clothbound stump where the foot used to be. His face was covered in deep white scars and one of his eyes was closed over. 'What happened to him?' Ben whispered.
'Landmine,' Abele replied shortly. 'They are a big problem in my country. Unexploded. He is not the only person you will see in this state. There are many, and not just men – women and children too.'
By the time Abele had finished speaking, the landmine victim had completed his painful walk across the street, and the car drove on.
Russell coughed. 'These landmines,' he asked. 'Where are they, exactly?'
Abele's face broke into what passed for a smile. 'If we knew where they were, Mr Tracey, you would not be seeing people in that condition.'
'Then the road we just drove up, there could be…'
'Yes,' Abele agreed. 'There could be landmines there. But it is most likely to be safe. Cars have been driving up that road for many years now since the landmines were planted. Most of those that were hidden there have already done their killing.'
Abele stopped – somewhat randomly, it seemed to Ben – and with a curt 'Wait here' he climbed out of the car and approached a man sitting under the tattered canopy of what appeared to be a café, an earthenware cup in front of him. He spoke to the man and pointed at the car; the man nodded slowly, as though he understood what Abele was saying to him.
'He, um, he seems to know what he's doing.' Ben's father chose his words carefully. It was the first time he had addressed his son since the incident at the airfield, and Ben could tell from his voice that some of the confidence he had displayed earlier in the day had been knocked out of him.
'He was going to kill that man,' Ben observed pointedly.
'Yes, well…' his father blustered slightly, before giving up and speaking quietly. 'You did a good thing there, Ben. I'm proud of you. I, er, didn't really anticipate it being so dangerous here, I'll have to admit. And I feel a little uncomfortable with this gun. I don't want you to think that carrying a weapon like this is the right thing to do. I'll get done what I need to do, and we'll get out of here as soon as possible.' He smiled. 'I feel the Kenyan beaches calling, don't you?'
Ben inclined his head slightly, but he was only half listening, more interested in Abele's conversation with the man at the café table, and hardly noticing the small group of children who had congregated by the car and were looking at these two white men with unveiled curiosity. They failed to disperse as Abele strode back to the car. 'Your lodgings are just here, in a compound off the square.'
'Who was that man?' Ben asked.
'One of the mine managers,' Abele replied shortly.
'You know him?'