This is about to turn even rougher.
They stumbled out onto the parade ground. Dusk had fallen now, and although the night was cloudy, there were flashlights beaming down into the enclosed space. The soldiers marched them straight across to where Chris had been crucified. Ollie could see Wallace and Park already standing there, and he felt a sickening thud inside his chest. He prided himself on having a strong stomach. He’d done a few days in A&E as part of a medical option on his basic training, and a bit of blood and gore didn’t faze him. But a man staked to the ground and left to die? One of your mates? It was going to take a constitution of iron to look at that without throwing up or breaking down.
‘Looks like your man’s bought it,’ said Wallace.
Ollie glanced down.
Chris’s face was twisted into an expression of indescribable agony, his once strong, solid features recast into an ugly mixture of pain and despair. His wrists and feet were shredded where he’d tried to buck himself free. And the ground all around him was stained crimson.
‘Blood loss is what gets the bastards,’ said Wallace, his tone matter of fact. ‘You can survive the wounds from the bayonets OK on an African crucifixion. They’ll heal, but you have to keep yourself still. Every time you wriggle around, you open up the wounds again, and lose more blood. I reckon your mate knew that. He was trying to hold himself steady, but it’s just so bloody uncomfortable . . .’
He shook his head sorrowfully from side to side. ‘I’ll say this for the bugger, he might have been a damned Recce, but he had some guts in his belly.’
‘Give us some spades, and we’ll dig him a grave,’ said Ollie stiffly.
Wallace lit up his cigar, then glanced across at Park. ‘You hear that, Sungoo? This joker thinks his man’s getting a funeral.’
‘He’s a soldier,’ snapped Ollie. ‘He deserves to be buried with dignity - just like we all do.’
‘Maybe some nice cucumber sandwiches for the wake,’ said the Korean, a thin smile creasing up his face.
‘Just a spade will be fine,’ said Ollie. ‘That’s all I’m asking for.’
Ignoring him, Wallace gestured to one of the soldiers. The man stepped up to the body and pulled the four bayonets roughly from the ground one by one, flicking away the blood, bone and skin from the edge of the sharp blades. Then two more men picked up Chris’s body and started to walk towards the barracks room with it.
‘We’ll show you what we do with the corpses of our enemies around here,’ Wallace said coldly.
The soldiers had already whacked each of the five men with the butts of their guns, guiding them forwards. Ollie could see at once where they were going. The interrogation room. The same place they’d tried to hang him.
Already he could feel his heart sinking.
‘Through the door,’ shouted the soldier at his back, pushing Ollie forward.
He stumbled into the room. It was brightly lit, with a row of three flashlights up against one wall. There was a camcorder set up on a tripod in front of it.
‘Stand right there,’ growled the soldier.
Ollie stood with his back to the wall. Dan, Maksim, David and Ganju were all standing next to him. The soldier brought in Chris’s body and dumped it down on the ground. Christ, thought Ollie. They’re going to film something.
One of the soldiers knelt down and stabbed a knife roughly into Chris’s throat, then twisted it. As the blood started to gush from the opened-up vein, he put a cheap plastic container underneath to catch it. When he’d finished, another soldier took his place. He was holding a hacksaw in his hand. As he knelt down, he started to saw into Chris’s neck, the blade chewing into the bone and skin until it was completely severed. Picking the head up by the hair, he then placed it in a big bucket of water.
‘Your friend was a brave man, we’ll give him that,’ said Wallace, looking up at the five men in front of him. ‘And in this country, the men believe that bravery is like a vitamin - you can acquire it by eating it. So they’re going to mix that blood with their rum, and that head is going to soak in that bucket of water, and in the morning the men are going to drink the liquid, and that way the courage will be transferred.’
‘It’s barbaric’ Ollie spat.
‘Now, now, Mr Hall,’ said Wallace. ‘Respect for other people’s cultures. Surely they’re teaching that at Sandhurst these days?’
‘It’s you that’s the savage, man!’
‘Indeed - as you’re about to discover.’
He clapped his hands together and Park stepped forward holding a white card with a series of words stencilled onto it in thick black ink. We are agents of British-American imperialism, it read. We have been sent here by our governments, and by the mining and oil conglomerates, to assassinate President Kapembwa and to bring Batota back under the heel of colonial rule.