Recoil - Andy McNab [43]
Sam gestured at the kids and the shanty town, the dust-covered goats and black pigs nosing around in the mud and trying to avoid getting kicked out of the way. ‘They butcher these people to maintain a climate of fear. Sometimes they even eat them.
‘Yeah, that’s right, cannibalism.’ He turned and pointed at a small girl at the back of the crowd. She couldn’t have been more than two or three, standing with her thumb shoved in her mouth. ‘Her two sisters were cooked and eaten. It’s an empowerment thing. She was only saved because she was barely six months old and there wasn’t enough meat on her.
‘So these people stay here. We protect them, they work for us in return and worship in my church.’
‘Why don’t you have the orphanage here? Wouldn’t it be safer?’
‘There’s fourteen kids in it at the moment. They’re scared of staying in DRC but even more scared of coming here – they’re scared of everything and everyone. They think it’s safer to be near the mine, you know, nearer local tribes. But I eventually calm them down and trickle them here.’
I looked past the tiny little girl to the breeze-block and wriggly-tin building Sam was pointing at. The massive white wooden cross above the door told me all I needed to know.
The An12 was being refuelled from light blue drums rolled to the aircraft and hand-pumped into the tanks. The onboard drums weren’t getting unloaded. Just like having a couple of litres of fuel in the boot, they were Lex’s back-up.
Twenty or so people were lined up behind the ramp, manhandling the cargo out of the aircraft and on to old wooden trolleys. The blue coolers were getting thrown up on to the women’s heads as heat bounced off the aircraft wings.
We came to a row of worn and tattered eight-man tents at the end of the shanty town. Guys sat round cigarette-scorched trestle tables, using boxes and tree-trunks as seats. Every one of them was carrying an AK; some were in a uniform of sorts, green trousers or bottoms or T-shirts, but most were in a mix of football shirts and ripped civilian clothes. Some had boots, some had flip-flops. There was no ‘Mr Sam’ being shouted in this part of town.
A few heads emerged from behind tent flaps and disappeared as quickly. At first, they weren’t as excited as the others had been – until they saw Sam’s suitcase. Hurried orders and glances were exchanged.
Sam led me away from the soldiers towards the end of the strip and a cluster of much newer, bigger, neater tents set back into the jungle. A big cam net had been secured between the trees. I could hear generators. We were in the high-rent part of town. ‘This is home for us, Nick.’
It looked like a typical open-square headquarters set-up: nice area, six good-quality green-canvas tents, and an old Indian guy sweeping dust from the hardened mud with a homemade witch’s broom.
Kids weren’t clamouring around us any more. It was like we’d crossed a line and they daren’t follow.
Sam shepherded me in the direction of a large, slightly rusty fridge parked under the cam net. An extension cable snaked away into the trees, towards a distant generator. Folding wooden chairs were arranged round a couple of six-foot tables, on which sat a couple of big cans of Paludrin. ‘Fancy some iced tea? I’m gagging.’
I nodded as he opened one of the fridge doors. A waft of cool air bathed my face. As I waited for my drink I extracted two Paludrin tablets. I couldn’t remember if they were good for preventing malaria or not, or gave you kidney problems either way.
I took the tea and rattled the pills down me anyway. It was OK for Africans. Some become immune in their fifties, but only if they live that long. There weren’t many grey-haired guys in these parts.
A loud voice rang out from one of the tents: ‘That you, Sam? Stone with you?’
It didn’t matter how long ago I’d last heard it. A voice like that you never