Richard, like all of them, found it an easy enough scramble down the dry slope of red earth impacted by the technicals’ tyres into a makeshift pathway. Then, aware that he was the only one there not armed to the teeth, he fell-in just behind Kebila between Tchaba and Anastasia. There was one moment of noise without progress as everyone took their weapons off safety and made sure that a round was in the chamber. Even Kebila pulled out the Desert Eagle he usually carried in the webbing holster at his hip, slid the top back, then snapped it forward again. Then they quietened, ready to begin the patrol. Silently, the colonel gestured them onward and they all followed him.
Over Kebila’s shoulder, Richard’s view was of a steep-sided, arid grey-white perspective, all geometrical lines to a point perhaps three metres in height. Then brown trunks exploded upwards into bright bursts of greenery — branch, twig and leaf — like rockets filling the sky on Guy Fawkes’ night. The wind stirred fitfully, coming from all directions, bringing river odours and forest smells; the essence of prairie and of building site, drainage and sewer stench. As they walked into the shadow of the jungle itself, the overhang of the trees concentrated the sounds as though they were entering a tunnel. It seemed to Richard that even his eyes began to fail him. The perspectives, worthy of any engineer’s drawing, faded beneath those shadows. Distances became harder to judge. Richard started to wonder whether the tension was releasing something more than simple adrenaline into his bloodstream. Whether there was some strange narcotic on the stultifying air. Whether there was witchcraft here.
So it came as almost no surprise at all when Ngoboi burst out of the darkness dead ahead and came running towards them in a weird kind of slow-motion dance. Kebila stopped. Straightened. Stood, as though no more able to believe his eyes than Richard. The whole of his command froze. Richard could hear the sudden superstitious intake of breath, feel the universal frisson of sheer terror. The tall, raffia-covered figure came towards them as though Quasimodo, not Odem, had donned the disguise. Stooping, weaving, limping, rearing, cavorting. But running towards them with a strange, mad intensity. Ngoboi — ebony mask, raffia headpiece, raffia cloak and raffia leggings. All two metres and more of him, like something out of a nightmare.
‘`Tchyo za ga`lima?! What the fuck?!’ shouted Anastasia and she tore her SIG Sauer up to her shoulder, flicking off the safety. But the moment she pulled the trigger, Tchaba hit her rifle so that her shot went high. The sound of it slammed along the drainage ditch and stopped Ngoboi almost as effectively as a bullet would have done. He froze there for an instant, then began to charge forward again.
But even as he did so, a leopard hurled itself down from the high side of the drainage channel on to the back of the capering god. It was a sizeable beast, though it was only there for an instant — and its arrival and departure were so utterly unexpected. But Richard saw it land, knocking Ngoboi back and over to one side. And the instant it impacted, Ngoboi detonated. There was a massive explosion that vaporized the big cat and most of the man in the costume. Shrapnel howled out into the air, decimating the overhanging branches and leaves but mercifully not the patrol, which was standing rooted in place with shock and horror.
Though the shrapnel went up into the forest, the wall of flame-hot force rolled back down the channel, staggering and singeing everyone there, battering and deafening them as they stood.
After some uncounted time, Kebila staggered forward. Richard went with him at his shoulder. The destruction of the god had left a black star on the concrete as though a missile had exploded there. The stunned soldier reached down at the outer edge of the destruction and picked up a boot. An unexpectedly heavy boot. An army boot, Richard realized. It had a foot inside it. And, as with students at school, soldiers personalized their kit, all of which was uniform, by putting their names on it. With boots you wrote your name or number on the instep where the sole received least wear.
And, although the writing on the instep was Cyrillic Russian, Richard easily read and understood it. It identified the boot as belonging to Livitov — one of the soldiers Sergeant Zubarov had been looking for at breakfast.
Terrorist
‘A suicide bomber?’ gasped Robin, shocked and horrified. ‘Disguised as Ngoboi? But why? What in God’s name were they thinking?’
‘Not suicide,’ corrected Richard grimly. ‘Murder. I read about it in a book on the most recent conflicts in the Middle East. The technique is to kidnap a member of someone’s family, brutalize them then load them with bombs and send them home. Their family has the choice of killing them and leaving them to rot while the authorities go on the firing line to try to defuse the corpse. Or try to help them. Most people try to help them. And BOOM!’
It was late in the afternoon and the sun was westering downriver towards Granville Harbour and the ocean. The choppers had returned an hour ago and the interim had been taken up with feeding the men. Richard and Anastasia had not been alone in finding they had no appetite. Instead of eating, Richard had gone to find Robin and bring her up to date. Now the pair of them were hurrying across to Kebila’s command tent as they had this conversation. Robin, of course, had hundreds of questions arising from Richard’s terse report of their adventure and his equally terse explanation. But Kebila’s briefing answered most of them before she managed to frame them — let alone ask them.
‘It is clear that Corporal Livitov was not a suicide bomber in league with Odem and the Army of Christ,’ the colonel began, looking around the frowning faces of his senior officers. ‘We found enough of his head to be certain that his mouth had been taped shut. Indeed, the fate of Colonel Mako’s patrol last night makes it quite possible his tongue had been cut out. From the strange way he approached us, I am certain that he had been restrained or crippled in some way, had explosives packed with shrapnel strapped to him, then put into the Ngoboi costume and left behind for us to find.’
Kebila paused and looked around the assembled faces in the tent as though expecting questions. But neither the men who had gone upcountry nor the others who had followed the drainage channel inland had anything they wanted to ask yet. ‘We were doubly lucky when we did find him,’ continued the colonel soberly after a while. ‘The first piece of luck was that Sergeant Tchaba stopped Miss Asov shooting him. The second piece of luck — the leopard — shows us that the device Livitov was wearing had an impact detonator.’
He turned to look directly at Anastasia. ‘Had your bullet struck him, he would certainly have exploded and at least two thirds of the command — starting with ourselves — would have been killed either by the explosion or by the shrapnel wrapped around it. The leopard spinning him round and knocking him back saved us. The unfortunate creature’s body soaked up much of the explosive force. The shrapnel decimated the trees above us instead of tearing us to shreds. We even found some dead birds and monkeys when we began our search of the area. But I still find it hard to see how Odem could take the risk of disguising his bomber as Ngoboi …’
Richard held up his hand. ‘I believe Odem very reasonably expected someone to shoot Corporal Livitov, believing him to be Ngoboi,’ Richard said slowly and clearly in his best Matadi. ‘It is the most logical conclusion. And had anyone shot him, there would have been two likely outcomes. Either all of the patrol would die, in which case the Ngoboi disguise was hardly relevant, for no one other than the Army of Christ would know about it. Or most of the patrol would die — in which case the survivors would describe how the desecration of the god brought enormous death and destruction as an immediate result. You can bet he’s got more Ngoboi costumes — and the reputation of the next man wearing one would have been immeasurably enhanced.’