‘What kind of country is it?’ asked Dan.
‘A mixture of forest and bush,’ answered Newton. He glanced up at the sky. ‘It’s not too difficult, so long as the weather doesn’t turn rough.’
‘Animals?’ Ian queried.
Newton nodded. ‘There are plenty of safari parks around here and the animals roam in and out of them. There are rhinos and elephants, and the Nile crocodiles from the lake take a walk onto the shore when they are feeling hungry. We’ll be skirting close to the Donatsuda National Park, and that has the highest concentration of lions of any area in Africa. There are leopards and cheetahs, and they introduced hyenas a couple of decades back to try and keep the herds of wild impala under control.’
Nick had salvaged the H&H from the sinking boat. ‘We’ve got the right kit,’ he said. ‘We’ll be OK.’
Newton just smiled. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever faced a herd of rhino in full charge,’ he said. ‘They could stop a tank division - never mind one skinny teenager with a big gun.’
‘We crack on,’ said Ollie quickly, noticing that Nick was about to get himself embroiled in a fight with Newton. ‘There’s no point in wasting any time.’
They took a few minutes to prepare themselves. It had stopped raining, but there were still dark clouds scudding across the wide open sky and you hardly needed a weather forecast to know that another downpour could kick off at any second. Each man had a change of clothes in his kitbag, but they would save those for later. Steve had done wilderness survival as part of his selection for the SAS: a whole week in the Welsh hills without food or shelter and, as he was quick to point out, once you’d done that you knew all you needed to know about surviving in heavy rain. You had to keep your spare clothes for the night, because if you didn’t have some dry clothes to sleep in, then you were done for. It wasn’t much fun marching in wet kit, but it was better than dying of exposure and exhaustion.
Newton and David had sketched out a rough route. They would tack five miles into the interior, then head south-west for another five miles. After that, they’d walk in as straight a line as possible for the forty-five miles that should take them back to base. At some point they’d have to break through the front line of the conflict between Tshaka and Kapembwa’s men. But they’d worry about that when they got there. For now, they just had to move on.
Ian had cut himself a staff. His ankle was badly sprained, but he could still walk. At times, he rested on Dan’s shoulder, and other times Chris propped him up. The first few miles were easy enough. They were walking through the flat scrubland that led down to the lake. There were streams and gullies, and birds that circled in the gloomy sky as they darted between their nests and the waters: huge, ungainly-looking Saddle-Billed Storks, Grey and Goliath Heron that would swoop through the sky like fighter jets, as well as buzzards and Black Eagles and a dozen other varieties that Steve didn’t even recognise. In the distance, they could see small herds of impala, the compact, delicate antelope that were the dominant species throughout much of the African savannah. The rams had great black and bronze horns, while the ewes had big dark eyes and black and suede tanned ears that stuck out of their small heads.
It was beautiful country, decided Steve, as he marched steadily over the rough ground. Abundant, rich - and largely empty of humans yet teeming with animals so exotic and varied they took your breath away. It was the kind of country a man could spend a lifetime in and never feel the need for an adventure: everything was already here. You could see why men had fought over it through the generations and were fighting over it still. Such a natural and unspoiled prize could never be surrendered easily: nor, once captured, could it even be defended completely against predators.
They stopped briefly for some lunch - soggy biscuits and chocolate bars from their kitbags - then pressed on. Tshaka was walking silently between Dan and Chris, his hands still strapped behind his back, but he wasn’t making any trouble and didn’t look like he was going to. If he made a break for it, he’d been told he’d get a bullet in the back of his kneecap, and there was no point in crippling himself for life, not while there was still a chance his men might rescue him.
By four, Ollie suggested they stop for the day. They’d walked twenty miles, and most of them had been up since the crack of dawn. It had been a long and hard day, and there was nothing to be gained by exhausting themselves. They found a small wood, consisting mostly of mopane, the high, heavy trees that were found all over this part of Africa: its wood was so strong it was commonly used for railway sleepers and pit props down mines. They cleaned the dried leaves off the ground, then started to build themselves some shelter for the night. The trees would provide some natural cover if the rains came back. But each man also had a single, strong polythene sheet in his kitbag. Using fallen branches, they created a series of triangular structures, then stretched the polythene sheets across them, to make simple dry hammocks to sleep on. That would stop the dampness in the ground seeping up into their bodies, and the worst of the rain would wash straight off them.