‘How do you feel?’ he asked, grasping for something to say. ‘We need to walk on.’
She looked at the ground, into the distance. Then at him.
‘I can carry you for a bit,’ he said, his guilt not fully receded.
She shook her head. ‘I can walk,’ she said, her voice shaky. She looked around again. ‘Where are we?’
‘East of the town. About six kilometres.’
‘East?’ She looked confused.
‘South a kilometre and then east.’
‘Away from the sea.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Aren’t we going to find a boat?’
‘Not yet.’
She looked at him questioningly.
‘I want you to take me to the Al-Shabaab camp,’ he said.
Her gaze remained firmly on him. She seemed to be thinking, formulating a response.
‘I have to get my friend,’ Stratton said. ‘Don’t you want to help your friend too?’
She looked away again, like the question bothered her. ‘How can we do that?’ she asked. ‘The camp will have many fighters.’
‘I have to at least try,’ he said.
‘They are not like the pirates. They are more vigilant. More dangerous.’
He looked at her, waiting for her to narrow down her options until they equalled his.
She came to a conclusion. ‘Is that why you rescued me?’
He did not need to answer her. It was obvious enough.
‘I am thankful for that,’ she decided.
‘Where is the camp?’
She considered the question for a moment before returning to the water. She crouched to fill her palms and take a drink. Stratton felt his own thirst return and followed her lead.
‘Did you see a road?’ she asked.
‘We followed it. It’s just over there, at the top of the ridge.’
‘It goes south?’
‘Looks like it.’
She looked at the lake and towards the sea, comparing it to a map inside her head. ‘The camp is south from here. Ten kilo metres from the coast.’
‘Have you been there?’
‘No.’
She sat down again. Stratton watched as she tore the bottom of both trouser legs off. But instead of throwing the cloth away, she wrapped the pieces around her feet and tied them off.
She stood up, still a little wobbly. ‘You think you can rescue your friend?’
‘I have to try,’ he said.
‘And if you cannot?’
The answer to that was obvious enough.
‘I think it’s only fair I should know the plan,’ she said.
Stratton felt like he had to accept her as something of a partner. She had earned that much. He also had an urge to trust her. She was an enemy in some ways, but she was also in the same hole he was. They were after the same thing.
‘The same idea you had. The ship we were on is going to be released. My plan is to recce the Al-Shabaab camp. Whatever happens, from there we head back to the ship. We climbed on to it once, we can do it again.’
The girl nodded as she considered the various phases he had proposed. ‘OK.’
Stratton looked to the skies. The eastern horizon was growing lighter. ‘It’ll be dawn soon,’ he said. ‘We should go.’
He headed up the incline and looked back. She was following. He found the road again and they took it south. He set off at an anxious pace but after a short distance realised he was alone and stopped to look back for her.
She was still trudging along. ‘Give me a moment to loosen up,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep up with you.’
Stratton didn’t doubt it and he moved off. Her determination grew and within a short distance she was walking alongside of him. He gave her a look. She looked right back at him.
The road followed the waterline but on higher ground and for the most part about a hundred metres away from the river. As they walked on, he began to see the strangeness of it all, walking through the Somali countryside with a Chinese Secret Service agent, and a woman to boot, kidnapped by pirates, her ordeal. Then he thought of Hopper and his mind came into focus.
‘I’m thirsty,’ she said.
He was too and they left the track and headed down the slope towards a line of thick scrub. They reached a wall of dense bushes and pushed through. On the other side the ground had levelled out and the roots of the plants had no doubt found the water table. After several metres of difficult progress, they came to the water’s edge.
‘You feeling OK?’ he asked her as she took a drink.
‘Yes.’
‘I want to get to the camp before daybreak,’ he said.
‘I understand,’ she said.
They pushed back through the bushes as quietly as they could, on to the road and walked along it at a faster pace. She was as good as her word and kept up with him.
They had been walking for just over an hour when they saw headlights. They were coming on fast behind them.
‘This way,’ he hissed as he ran off the road on to the plain and down into a small hollow.
She lay beside him. Both watched the vehicle come on.
The sound of the engine eventually broke through the quiet. It was an old truck. It jolted and creaked right by them, swerving left and right around the deep potholes. It kept on going, heading up the plateau, then disappearing over a rise. Stratton got to his feet. The girl stood too and they started walking.
It took a little while to get to the rise. He slowed as they approached and then he ducked just before the top, aware that he would be silhouetted against the skyline. She did the same, stopping alongside him. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing yet.’
They could see the truck again a long way off, bouncing along the road, disappearing at times behind the scrub. Finally it drove over a bigger rise and they could only hear it and see glimpses of its reflected light beams.
Stratton stood upright and looked beyond the point where the truck had disappeared. The wind blew gently into their faces. They could hear the branches of a rugged, stumpy shrub scraping together.
‘It’s stopped,’ he said.
‘I can still hear it.’
‘Yes. But it’s stopped.’ He stepped over the crumbling rocks of the plateau and down the other side of the rise.
The girl followed but more cautiously, watching where she placed her cloth-covered feet. The horizon grew brighter by the minute. The breeze had been fairly cool throughout the night but they knew it would get hotter as the sun came up.
They reached the bottom of the slope and began up the crest of another. It was hard to tell the distance to the top in the near darkness.
When he reached it he lay on his belly to look down the other side.
She did the same.
They were looking into a large depression between the ridge they were on and another far beyond. As the ground descended into the basin he could see the way the dark, stunted trees huddled together. An encampment sat in the middle of the wood. He saw several fires and a sprinkling of oil and electric-powered lamps. Men’s voices drifted up to them on the breeze. They could hear a generator, or perhaps more than one.
It didn’t look like a village. It could have been nomads. They tended to use trucks as much as animals to carry their possessions. But it was too close to where the girl described the Al-Shabaab camp as being. ‘What do you think?’ he said.
‘Do you think we’re ten kilometres from the beach?’ she said.
He looked back at the ocean to be sure. ‘I’d say so.’
‘Then this must be the right place.’
‘They might have sentries on the high ground,’ he said, looking along the ridge and beyond. But he would be surprised if there were any. In fact he would have been impressed.
‘What now?’ she asked.
He could tell she was uncomfortable being there and wanted to get it over with. ‘I need to get a closer look. We should move in now before it gets any lighter, see if we can find somewhere to observe from. If we can’t find anywhere, we’ll have time to get back.’