‘You OK?’ he asked Sam.
She nodded, but remained silent, her head bent down as she forced her way through the weather.
‘Living the dream, mate, living the dream,’ said Nick cheerfully, clearly unaware that Steve had been addressing Sam and not him. Wiping the cold water out of his face, he concluded: ‘Tramping through rough country, with twelve bullets between eight guys and a whole army on our back? What more could a bloke ask for.’
Darkness had fallen by the time they reached their destination. Clouds obscured the moon, and they were relying on the compass to steer them home. It reminded Steve of his SAS training: released onto the wild Welsh hillsides of the Brecon Beacons, usually in the driving rain as well, you had to make an RV point using only the compass. They were getting there, he felt certain of that, but at times it seemed as if they were just tramping around in a circle.
Half a mile out, they struck a metalled road, and that made the going a lot easier. A long track, wide enough to take a combine harvester, it led down to what must have once been the main house on the estate. There were brambles growing over the road surface, and at several points trees had fallen across it, and had been left where they fell, but it was still a lot less tiring than walking through muddy fields.
The house loomed up out of the darkness. Two storeys high, built from brick with white clapperboard facing, its veranda stretched the length of the building. The driveway led up to a substantial porch and, below the mass of tangled weeds, you could see the remains of the gravel that had once formed part of an impressive entrance. Around the back were stables, barns, workshops and grain stores, but the house itself was flanked by what had once been formal gardens. As you looked out from the porch, a sweeping lawn would have led down to a small river that snaked its way through the farmland. A ruin, thought Steve, squinting through the dim light. But once this must have been a prosperous estate.
‘At least it’s shelter,’ said Ollie, looking around.
Ganju had broken up an old wooden chair, then dipped its legs into some diesel that had turned into a thick jelly in the corner of the tank of an abandoned tractor. He lit the rough torches, and the light illuminated the main building. The place had been trashed, probably years ago, judged Steve, looking at the state of the hallway. Curtains had been torn, and furniture broken into pieces. Windows were smashed, and the roof had caved in, letting rainwater stream down the main staircase. Some frogs had made their home in a corner but, surprised at being disturbed, they had hopped away. The library had been emptied of books, and the kitchen had obviously been ransacked as every last scrap of food had been cleared out of its store cupboards.
It looked as if an army had run through the place and left it for dead, Steve thought sadly. It would have been just one more of the beautifully kept farms that Kapembwa’s war veterans had rampaged through as he unleashed his thugs on the white landowners.
Steve glanced across at Sam. ‘I recognise this place.’
She remained silent.
‘It’s your parents’ house, isn’t it? The place we saw in the film.’
He could the sorrow in her eyes as she nodded, but she buried it somewhere deep within, and within less than a second her expression was purposeful and businesslike again. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you all why I brought you here.’
Holding the torch that Ganju had given her, she stepped out of the front of the house, and down onto the lawn. Steve followed her, a foot or so behind, with the rest of the men behind him. The grass leading down to the river was tall and wiry, and you had to fight your way through it. A few of the brambles snagged on Steve’s clothes, and grazed his skin. Ignoring them, he marched forward, keeping Sam close. When they hit the river, its banks were swollen from the rain, the water swirling through it in angry torrents. There was a wooden jetty, but someone had set fire to it years ago, and next to that was the sunken outline of a rowing boat. Sam turned right. Along the edge of the river was a gravelled path, overgrown with weeds, but still possible to walk on. It tracked the river up towards the hills that rose to the east of the farm.
‘Where the hell is she leading us?’ asked Ian.
‘Wherever it is, I hope there’s a hot bath and a nice cup of tea,’ answered Steve. ‘But somehow I doubt it.’
They walked for half an hour. As the river twisted around the edge of the farm, you could still make out the contours of the old fields, each of them fifty acres or more, designed for industrial-scale farming, but all of them long since abandoned. Finally, they reached a set of rocks, with the hills rising steeply behind them. In front of the rocks, the river opened up into a small lake, with a waterfall at the back where the river crashed out of the hills and down onto the plain.