A barrel-chested man held his launcher confidently as he stepped from the group. ‘You just pull this bit here and then—’
‘Stop, stop, stop,’ Stratton asked, holding out his hands. ‘Don’t pull anything . . . Do you know what kind of a rocket this is?’
There was silence. ‘It’s the kind that blows things up,’ someone called out, much to the amusement of the others.
Stratton smiled along with them. ‘That’s good. You’re right. It’s the kind that blows things up. And if you’re not careful you’ll blow us all up right here and now.’
‘So show us how to fire it,’ one of the rebels said.
‘Yeah, show us,’ another man echoed.
‘Well . . . I didn’t exactly come here to—’
‘What are you people doing?’ Victor interrupted, calling out as he strode through the undergrowth towards them. ‘Get this stuff loaded! Or are you just waiting for the Neravistas?’
The men put the launch tubes back in the box and hurried to the task.
Victor looked to the sky worriedly, wiping the sweat and grime from his brow before inspecting the rockets. ‘What are those?’ he asked.
‘Sixty-six-millimetre rockets.’
Victor appeared to have mixed feelings about the weapons.
‘You didn’t ask for these?’
‘We never know what we’re going to get. I think they send us whatever they have a surplus of. Last month we got two hundred pairs of chemical-and-biological warfare over-boots and a dozen gas masks . . . Are they simple to use?’
Stratton looked down at the tubes. ‘Well, yes - when you know how.’
‘You can show us?’
‘I came here to show you how to set up the claymores. ’
‘The what?’
‘They sent you several boxes of claymore anti-personnel mines. I was told to show a couple of your men how to set them up and then I’m on my way.’
‘Is it such a big deal to show the men how to fire these rockets as well?’
‘No. If you’ve got time,’ Stratton said with some reluctance. He had set his mind on getting going as soon as possible in the hope of making it to the border before the following evening.
‘We’ll have plenty of time when we get back to the camp,’ Victor said, walking off.
‘Hold on . . . excuse me,’ Stratton said, following him.
Victor stopped to shout at several men tying a box onto the back of one of the burros. ‘Quicker, you people. We need to leave.’ He turned to Stratton to hear what he had to say.
‘My task was to show your people how to set up claymores, but I was supposed to do that here at the drop. I’m leaving as soon as you guys do.’
‘We don’t have time to do any training here. We must pack up and go as soon as we can. What do you people think this is? We’re at war. Didn’t they tell you anything?’ Victor walked away.
‘Actually, no,’ Stratton muttered to himself. But he wasn’t going to give up so easily. He caught up with Victor as he was chastising a group of men who were having problems with one of the burros. ‘If we move away from here a couple of kilometres and take a break, I can run some training then.’
‘We don’t take breaks. We have to go as quickly as we can. It won’t be safe until we reach the camp,’ Victor said, walking away to resolve another crisis.
Stratton watched Victor go, realising that it was pointless to continue with the argument.
He had a decision to make.
He walked to the edge of the clearing, sat down and rested his carbine across his legs. He took the GPS from his pocket and turned it on. The decision he faced was either to follow the rebels to their camp as Victor had suggested, do the training and then leave, or to bug out right there and then. He could slip off into the jungle and probably no one would notice until they were ready to go, by which time he would be a couple of miles away.
But even as Stratton considered the options he knew that he would never be able just to walk off. Although he didn’t know anything about these people and would never see any of them again, he couldn’t leave as long as he knew there was a chance of someone getting hurt or worse because he wanted to get home a day earlier. He wasn’t happy about it but he would have to stay - for the time being, at any rate.
The GPS beeped. He logged the location, turned the GPS off and put it back in his pocket. Then he realised there was probably no point in leaving his emergency pack at this location if he was going to the rebel camp. It would be wiser to conceal it closer to their base.
Stratton shouldered his rifle and went back into the forest. Within a few minutes he was back with his emergency pack, which he tucked away into his large backpack.
Despite the obvious hardships they’d suffered the rebels seemed a happy enough bunch. He wondered how far away their camp was. On the flight he had studied a map of the country and had worked out that he could probably get to the border from the clearing in under two days, bearing in mind the terrain. Even if the rebels’ camp were a day further away it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Once he crossed the border it would be a simple case of dumping his kit, putting on civvies and travelling like a backpacker to Panama and the airport. He felt a little better about it now that he had adjusted the plan. It would be fine, he assured himself.
Stratton wondered why Sumners had offered him up for this job in the first place. It was nowhere near the level at which he was used to operating. Perhaps there was nothing else on at the moment, although he found that hard to believe. MI5 and MI6 were always busy. Maybe it was another effort by Sumners to keep him on the outside. The problem was that the man despised him. It was a deep wound and there was nothing Stratton could do to heal it, not that he particularly cared to. He had no respect for Sumners and all he could hope for was that the man would soon get moved on to another department - or, better still, another country.
Stratton would have loved to know the connection between Sumners and Steel. They were so different in just about every way. Both of them were arrogant and condescending, of course, though Steel was far worse. He probably knew nothing about Stratton’s past or his qualifications but that was no reason to sport such a disdainful attitude. It didn’t feel personal, though. Steel was probably an arse with everyone. Stratton was no more than a delivery boy to him. With luck he would never have to meet the man again.
Despite the combination of abuse and encouragement from Victor and his second in command, the intense-looking officer whose name was Marlo, it took the men half an hour to secure the loads and form up the burros ready for departure. At one point a quarrel broke out over the division of the parachutes but Marlo solved the dispute by ordering that the chutes should be sliced into panels and distributed among the most energetic packers.
Stratton checked the time, compared it to the location of the sun to get a rough directional guide and joined the line that was trudging at an easy pace back towards the forest. A passing burro was not as loaded as the others and Stratton hooked his parachute bag onto the wooden frame across its back. He kept his pack in case he needed to bug out.
As he neared the trees he picked up the sound of a distant drone. He thought initially that the C130 had returned for some reason. The rebels who heard it stopped to search the skies, looking concerned.
‘Into the forest!’ Victor shouted. ‘Quickly!’
Most of the rebels were already inside the jungle but half a dozen burros and a dozen men were still out in the open. The men yelled and beat the animals to get them moving quicker. The rebels were clearly worried about something.
As the sound grow louder it became tinny and nowhere near as powerful as that of the engines on a Hercules. But as with any aircraft not easily visible and flying close to the ground, especially over woodland, it was difficult to judge where it was.