Recoil - Andy McNab [67]
It was another twenty minutes before the last patient was on their feet and the confusion had died down. Finally everybody knew what was going on, and everybody was being helped. Some kids were too fucked to move on their own, even though they weren’t injured, really skinny bodies, swollen bellies, but somehow they were all gathered up in cloth wraps or in people’s arms along with the odd scrawny chicken and a handful of other prized possessions.
I wanted to grab Silky’s hand and drag her to the front of the column, but she was too busy helping everybody else. Fuck ’em. Why didn’t she and Tim just make their own way now? Why couldn’t they be happy that everybody was moving towards the mine and leave them to it?
I stood there feeling very pissed off with her as these people stumbled past. Why had she put herself in so much danger, and made me come out here to drag her back? What the fuck had been going through her mind? And why had she just left like that? Weren’t we supposed to be together?
And why was I feeling the way I did? I was starting to get myself really revved up, when surely I should have been relieved that I’d found her . . .
Gunfire cracked off again. It was still on the other side of the river, but definitely closer; probably the poor shits crossing the bridge were getting zapped. It made me cut away from the other stuff.
Fuck her, fuck the situation.
I moved off the track, scrambling through the foliage, trying to get to the front. Being aggressive about this was the only thing that would make me feel better – and it was the only way I’d keep them pushing to the mine. If the price I had to pay for showing her this side of me was going to be that I was history, then fine. At least she’d be alive to bin me.
PART SIX
1
It took more than two hours for the first wave to stumble to the valley entrance. The really sick and injured trailed way behind, but at least it had stopped raining on them. I’d moved up to the head of the column in case there was a reception committee. Who knew who was guarding the perimeter, and what their orders were?
As we came into the mouth of the valley, the high ground on both sides of us was a hive of activity. The patrol was setting up defensive positions, horseshoe-shaped sangars built with piles of red rock. They wouldn’t stop anything big, like an RPG or 7.62 from a GPMG, but they’d make the guys feel a bit safer, and they could throw a shelter sheet over themselves to try to keep dry while they sat on stag for however long it took. Along with the squaddies already at the mine, the defenders probably numbered thirty or forty. Where were Standish and his lot? They should have been here by now.
I had moved the first two hundred metres into the valley. The main encampment was ahead of me on the knoll, still another two hundred away. The squaddies stopped sangar-building and looked down on us from both flanks, as if they weren’t too sure what was going on.
‘Nick! Nick! Nick!’
The shout came from up to my half-right. Crucial was slipping and sliding down the hill towards me. He fell on his arse but kept his arm in the air, away from trouble. The injury would-n’t have taken the strain.
By the time he got to the bottom he looked like one of the miners, orange mud in his hair, more mud in his eyebrows. Even the cross round his neck and his new arm dressing were covered in it. The only things that were still their natural colour were the whites of his eyes.
‘What happened? Why so long?’ He glanced behind me. ‘Where’s the woman? Where is she?’
‘Back there somewhere, with the rest of this lot. The kids, too. They were with the sick guys.’
Crucial looked as happy as I was pissed off. ‘Standish isn’t going to like it.’
‘I know, I know – but fuck him. This lot’ll be slaughtered if they don’t come in. Where do I dump them?’
He peered beyond me at the human snake, trying to work out where he wanted them.
‘Where’s Sam?’
He nodded back at the tents.
‘I’ll be a minute or two, mate.’
I turned and moved back down towards the river