Steve looked anxiously at the sky. The noise of the chopper had retreated. But there could be no question it was out on a search-and-destroy mission. And a truck wasn’t hard to find.
‘We’ve less than a dozen bullets between us,’ said Ollie. ‘Ian? Any bombs?’
Ian shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
‘We’re not going to make it to the border,’ said Steve. ‘Not if we’re using the roads.’
‘Then we drive cross-country,’ said Dan.
‘No way,’ said Steve. ‘Not in this truck. We’ve only got a quarter tank of diesel, and if it stalls we’re not going to be able to restart her. We were planning a dash for the border, making a getaway before Wallace could organise the Army’s response.’
‘But that’s gone tits up now,’ snapped Ollie. ‘Like this whole sodding job.’
‘I know a place we can go,’ Sam said suddenly.
Ollie looked at her with dislike. ‘We’ve had enough help from the Sharratt family.’
‘I gave you the knives, didn’t I?’ she reminded him.
‘She’s been on the level so far,’ said Ian. ‘You boys would be hanging from the gallows by now if it wasn’t for her help.’
Steve turned to look at her. ‘Where?’ he asked.
‘Twenty miles due north-east of here,’ she said.
Steve switched off the engine on the truck. The vehicle fell silent, and with no ignition, there was no way it could be started again. ‘Then let’s start walking,’ he said. ‘The first thing that Mi-24 is going to be looking for is this truck. And I don’t want to be inside when they start putting some cannon and Gatling fire into the bastard.’
The march was going to be a long and hard one, and none of them had slept or eaten properly for days. Their bodies were tired, but their spirits remained strong. Ian was still hobbling slightly from the injury he’d sustained during the helicopter assault, but Dan, Nick and David were taking it in turns to prop him up, making the long march bearable. It was only Sam that Steve was worried about. They were all soldiers, toughed into blocks of human steel in some of the finest regiments in the world, but Sam was a woman, and she thought she was a lot stronger than she really was.
They kicked off due north, leaving the truck buried deep in the woodland. There was no point in torching it: the fire would just alert the chopper out searching for them. Nor could they take the main road, or even the dirt tracks that criss-crossed the farms and woodland. The chopper would be scanning those routes first, and soon Wallace would have military patrols fanning out from the capital in jeeps, intensifying the search. The further they stayed from the roads, the more chance they had of slipping through unnoticed.
Sam was guiding them. Steve had a detailed map in his kitbag, and they were using that and a compass to steer their way towards their destination. They were tramping through a part of Batota known as The Front Lands, the land north and east of the capital which, in the old colonial days, had been home to the wealthiest farms, and the gold mines that had briefly flourished in the nineteenth century. The soil was red - like most of Africa, noted Steve, as they tramped wearily forwards - but it was rich and fertile. The land was flat, between rolling hills, punctured only by forests of palms, gum trees and jacarandas - the tall, gnarled trees with the bright purple flowers that could be seen right through from the capital up to the north of the country. There were streams and small lakes dotting the landscape, all of them overflowing with water after the heavy rain of the past few weeks. More than once they had to wade across bulging streams, getting soaked to the skin.
Many of the farms had been abandoned in the past decade, and much of the land was starting to return to nature. The fields were overgrown with tall grasses and the old fences had fallen down. The forests were spreading over the landscape, turning it back into the kind of wilderness that must have existed here hundreds of years ago. It was hard walking, but at least it meant there weren’t many people around. Twice they were spotted by farmers working their patch of land, but when they saw the men’s guns, they scurried away, not asking any questions. Nobody up here had phones, so there wasn’t any need to worry about being reported. They’d be long gone by the time the news of their tramp through this countryside got back to Ibera.
At four in the afternoon, and with another eight miles still ahead of them, the rain kicked in. It was drizzle at first, then a lashing storm, with thick, black sheets of water and a gale that whistled across the flat landscape, making the trees creak and flattening the grasses. Walking through it was like being thumped by a wet stick, but Steve kept his head down and marched steadily forwards.