Dead Centre - Andy McNab [99]
Their AS escorts pushed them hard into the dust. The kids laughed, then screamed like banshees. The older locals were silent. I had the feeling they’d seen it all before.
Tracy’s hands reached through the bars to try and grab me. I jerked back. She missed me by a couple of inches, then turned her attention to Awaale.
‘Please help my son … please …’
She collapsed sobbing as the truth dawned. We weren’t going to help. Nobody was. Her hands slid back through the bars.
The two AS hard men had had enough. They got to their feet and shouted at the kids to fuck off. Then they headed our way. They grabbed Tracy and flung her back onto the ground. Stefan was curled up in his own little world. It was like he’d pulled the duvet over his head and was praying the monsters would go away.
BB couldn’t seem to decide whether he hated the AS or the audience more, so he turned on both of us. ‘Yeah, go on, fuck off! Cunts …’
One of the AS lads picked up a handful of sand and stones and hurled it at us.
We got the message. We moved away. The kids ran off to join the others going into the madrasah, dragging their deformed mates with them. Hundreds of years before the Christian West switched on to the possibility, Muslims had figured out the world was round. They also knew the distance to the moon, and that the earth moved around the sun. Islamic schools were set up to teach mathematics, astronomy and philosophy as well as the Koran. I somehow doubted that this particular school was keeping up the good work. Judging by their performance a few minutes ago, they’d had the Koran drummed into them word for word, and been taught the hard-line AS interpretation of the text. Their generation of Somalis would know nothing else.
Awaale followed me past the court-house and down towards the harbour. Once I got there I’d turn left, back to the skiff. I needed to gather my thoughts.
It had all the makings of a weapons-grade gang-fuck, but at least BB sounded up for a fight.
25
THE SKIFF WAS still where we’d hidden it. There were no new footprints coming towards it or going away. The surf had washed away the drag marks.
I’d moved out of the bunker and far enough into the scrub so we wouldn’t be connected with the boat if it was found. Awaale and I were sixty or seventy metres away from the cache, but still close enough to the shore to see anybody coming up the beach towards us.
I took off my burqa and draped it between two spiky bushes to create some shade. I wasn’t talking. My throat was dry. My body needed food and sleep. But all that still had to wait.
Awaale followed my lead. He whipped his burqa off and made a shelter next to mine. I stretched out in the sand. Within seconds my clothes were riddled with thorns and bits of brush. Awaale joined me. His shirt was soon covered in shit as well. He panted for breath as he reached for his cigarettes. The packet was soaked through. He stared at it in disgust and tossed it to one side.
I dug the Solar Monkey out of my day sack, opened the clamlike device to expose the photovoltaic cells and pushed it out into the sunlight. Awaale watched. He was attempting to reconcile himself with having to go without nicotine as well as water. I wiped my eyes, trying to avoid filling them with sand. It was fucking miserable.
‘Check my adaptors. See if you can charge your phone up as well.’
I lobbed him the bag of jacks that had come with the thing. Mottled with sand, my hand looked like I had some kind of skin condition.
‘Awaale, why are so many kids here malformed? They’re everywhere – the lads near yesterday’s dust-up, and now the ones outside the madrasah today. What’s wrong with them?’
‘I will tell you what’s wrong with them, Mr Nick. They are diseased – they have a disease that comes from your world.’ His face clouded. ‘We have no government. Our coastline is unprotected. Most importantly for your people, it is unmonitored.’ He waved towards the beach, to where the surf came crashing onto the sand. ‘It looks like a holiday brochure. But