As night fell the house was still burning; a glow of orange a hundred yards away.
The mood of the group had altered subtly. For me, and I presumed for the other men, the assault on the four young women represented a physical manifestation of our fears about our own abducted women. It is one thing to imagine an atrocity; it is something else again to witness it.
Individually, I think we were all horrified and numbed… but working as a group our reaction was one of more directed determination not to become further involved in the civil war. The search for the abducted women was not mentioned; for my own part what I had seen in the house had only hardened my resolution in this respect. It was Sally I was worried about, for she was innocent. My daughter, not my wife, was uppermost in my mind.
As darkness came on, I moved away from the main group of men and went into a house about twenty yards from the one we had fired. Behind me there was a glow of smouldering wood. The blaze had finished now, but it would go on smouldering for hours. There was a sweet smell of smoke in the air, obstinately pleasant.
I sat by myself in an old armchair in a downstairs room of the house I had occupied and brooded about what I would do in the morning.
Time passed. I became aware of the sound of engines, but I ignored them. They grew louder, drowning my thoughts. I leaped out of my chair and ran through the house and into the small garden at the rear.
The sky was clear of clouds and a quarter-moon threw enough light to mark the ground. I had been sitting in the dark in the house (as was our custom when temporarily occupying evacuated property) and my eyes adapted at once.
It took me only a couple of seconds to locate the source of the sound: it was a formation of helicopters travelling at a low height and speed from the south in a direction that would carry them over the village. As they approached, I dropped to the ground, my hand tightening over the rifle. I counted them as they passed overhead: there were twelve. They slowed even more in the next few seconds, and landed in one of the fields beyond the village.
From where I was lying I was not able to see them. I climbed to my feet and peered over the hedge. I heard the engines ticking over together in a low, muted grumbling sound.
I waited.
For another ten minutes I stood still, debating whether to rejoin the others. There was no way of telling why the helicopters were here, or whether they knew of our presence. It was Unlikely that they had not seen the smouldering remains of the house.
With an abruptness that startled me, there was a burst of gunfire in the near distance, and two or three loud explosions. From the direction of the flashes I guessed that they were coming from the far side of a large wood that I had seen earlier, running alongside the main road about a mile from the hamlet. There was more gunfire, more explosions. I saw one spout of white flame, then a red verey-light shot up into the sky from the direction of the wood.
Almost immediately the helicopters took off again, still holding their formation. They swooped into the air and swung away towards the wood. They became lost to sight, though the sound of their engines remained clear.
I heard a movement behind me: the house door opening, closing.
“Is that you, Whitman?”
I made out the dim shape of another man. As he came up to me I saw that it was Olderton, a man with whom I had had only superficial contact so far.
“Yes. What’s going on?”
“No one knows. Lateef sent me to find you. What the devil are you doing?”
I told him I had been looking for food and that I was going back to the main camp in a few minutes.
“You’d better come back now,” Olderton said. “Lateef’s talking of moving on. He thinks we’re too close to the main road.”
“I think we ought to know what’s happening before we move.”
“That’s up to Lateef.”
“Is it?” For no reason I could determine at that moment I felt a taint of rebellion in being told what to do. In any event, I didn’t want to discuss it with Olderton.
The sound of the helicopters in the distance took on a new note, and we went back to where I had been standing before, looking across the fields in the direction of the wood.
“Where are they?” Olderton said.
“I can’t see.”
There was a renewed burst of gunfire, then a shrill, high-pitched whistling sound followed immediately by four explosions coming almost together. A brilliant ball of flame rose up inside the wood, then dwindled. I heard more gunfire, then a helicopter roared over the village. There was another whistling sound, and four more explosions. As the second helicopter passed overhead the sequence was repeated again.
“Rockets,” Olderton muttered. “They’re after something on the main road.”
“Who are they?”
“Lateef thought they were Afrims. He said the helicopters looked as if they were Russian.”
Over at the main road the barrage went on. The helicopters were timed exactly right. As the explosion from one set of rockets died down, another gunship came in and followed up. Meanwhile, small-arms fire rattled from the ground.
“I think it’s those guerrillas,” I said suddenly. “The ones we met yesterday. They’ve ambushed something on the main road.”
Olderton said nothing. As I thought about it, the more likely it became. The Negroes had been concealing something, on that we had all agreed. If, as Lateef had guessed, the helicopter gunships were Russian-supplied and manned by Afrims, then everything made sense.
For a few more minutes the battle went on. Olderton and I watched as well as we could, seeing only the flame of the explosions and the gunships as they came by overhead after their pass. I found myself counting the number of attacks made. After the twelfth, there was a slight pause, and we could hear the helicopters re-grouping in the distance. Then one of the machines flew over the wood again, this time without firing any of its rockets. It zoomed overhead, then went to join the others. We waited again. From the direction of the wood there was now a steady glow of orange and the occasional sound of a small explosion. There did not appear to be any more gunfire.
“I think it’s over,” I said.
Olderton said: “There’s still one of them around.”
To my ears it seemed as if the formation of gunships was moving away, but there was no uniformity in the sound of the engines. I kept looking around, but could see no sign of any of the helicopters.
“There it is!” Olderton said. He pointed over to our right.
I could just make out its shape. It was moving slowly and near the ground. It had no navigation lights. It came towards us steadily, and irrationally I felt it was looking for us. My heart began to beat rapidly.
The aircraft moved across the field in front of us, then turned, and climbing slightly flew directly over us. When it reached the smouldering remains of the house on the other side of the road it hovered.
Olderton and I went back into our house, climbed the stairs and watched the helicopter. It was about twenty feet above the burnt-out ruin, and the draught from its vanes sent cinders scudding over the ground. Flames took again in some of the timbers, and smoke swirled up and across to us.
In the glow from the ground I could see the helicopter’s cabin clearly. I lifted my rifle, took careful aim and fired.
Olderton leaped over to me and knocked the barrel aside.
“You stupid bastard!” he said. “They’ll know we’re here.”
“I don’t care,” I said. I was watching the helicopter.
For a moment I thought my shot had had no effect. Then the engine of the machine accelerated abruptly and it lifted away. Its tail spun round, stopped, then spun again. The helicopter continued to climb, but it was moving to one side, away from us. The engine was screaming. I saw the helicopter check its sideways motion, but then it flipped again. It skidded down over the burnt-out house, disappeared from sight. Two seconds later there was a loud crash.