Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [62]
A guerrilla barked something incomprehensible at him, and he followed the rebel, along with the man who had saved him, towards another arch, this one well lit and revealing a stone stairway climbing beyond. Jamie was well aware that after finding the dead rebel prisoner, any former warmth his
‘comrades’ had shown towards him had dissipated, almost as if he were to blame in some manner, and he was not stupid enough to tempt fate by arguing with them now.
Bodies lay in the stairway. Soldiers and guerrillas. Jamie stepped over them and made the landing. Guerrillas were coming towards them, pushing a single surviving soldier. He looked terrified, and a ragged cut was already in evidence on his cheek. As Jamie watched, a blow from the hilt of a machete sent him reeling.
As the two groups met, an emotive conversation ensued, during which the captured soldier waited silently and fearfully for the outcome.
Jamie nudged Tigus’s second-in-command, who had led the assault on Wameen. ‘What’s happening?’ He didn’t expect much of a response.
‘Skeleton guard only,’ the man replied with some satisfaction and not a bad grasp of English. ‘Large squad leave two hour ago. Jungle expedition. Search for OPG.’ Now he allowed himself a little grin. ‘They never think we brave to come here.’
Jamie gestured at the subdued-looking prisoner. ‘Can he tell us if my companion was brought here?’ He had already explained about Victoria’s disappearance, not that they had shown a great deal of concern over her possible plight. And why should they, Jamie supposed. That was not their fight.
Just like this wasn’t his.
The guerrilla duly questioned the soldier, however, and then turned back to Jamie. The other rebels – and there were only a handful left – fell silent now. Their goal had been achieved. They had found the man they’d set out to find. He was dead. What else mattered? They could all return to the jungle before the absent Indoni squad returned.
‘She here,’ the rebel said, his face betraying nothing.
Jamie felt a huge surge of warm relief. ‘Well, thank God for that...’
The guerrilla shook his head. ‘No. She here before. Not now. Taken by soldiers into jungle.’
Jamie slumped again. He almost felt like laughing. The guerrilla’s pidgin English was to blame, and not the guerrilla himself. But he didn’t laugh. He felt far too sick for that.
‘Why did they take her into the jungle?’ he asked, glaring at the captured soldier. He was ready to bash the Indoni himself now.
The guerrilla translated the question curtly. The soldier lifted his head for a moment with something like defiance.
While the guerrilla relayed his reply there was a silence from the others. ‘He say officer take her to show what OPG do. To show how... savage... we are.’
A guerrilla with a drooping black beard and one blind eye laughed. Two of the others joined in. The second-in-command turned away. ‘We go, he said simply, beckoning to Jamie.
There was a squeal from behind Jamie. He turned in time to see the bearded guerrilla taking his machete away from the soldier’s throat. The Scot blinked at the blood leaping from the severed artery. Some of it splashed his shirt. For a moment he was back on Culloden. A claymore sweeping across a Redcoat’s neck, opening just such an orgasm of blood – the first time he’d seen a man die in combat. He’d been rooted, blinking, just like he was now.
The bearded man grinned at him and pushed the jerking body away.
‘We go,’ the assault leader repeated.
They were making their way across the courtyard when the blast of pulse fire flashed in the night.
For a second Jamie was sure the soldier had been lying and there was indeed a surprise party waiting for them. But it was only one shot, and that from a seriously wounded and very foolhardy soldier lying crumpled in the courtyard, a pulse rifle wobbling in his blood-soaked hands. The second-in-command