Recoil - Andy McNab [89]
‘Brown cord?’
‘It’s the detonation cord. Just tell them not to touch it, OK?’
She relayed my message. They still weren’t happy bunnies.
‘Tell them they’ll get new ones later on. Right now, every bit of metal counts.’
We got down into cover. My head was tilted so I could see the dugout to my right. I didn’t bother checking the time because it really didn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter until it was last light. All I could do was get these things rigged up as soon as possible.
She was just below me, by my feet, tucked well away. I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open.
I lifted my sleeve to check the boil-like bite on my forearm. It was pussed up, with a hard disc round the base the size of a 50p piece. I was dying to squeeze it, scratch it, do any fucking thing to it. It would make me feel better if I lanced it, but I knew that was a shortcut to infection. Better to keep the seal intact. I rubbed my face gently, pleased the lump hadn’t become another pus-filled volcano, waiting to erupt.
I lay on my front with my arms folded in front of me as a chin rest, and watched things take shape.
Silky shouted directions as the guys arrived at the site; they couldn’t wait to dump their metal and get back to the safety of the valley.
‘Nick?’
‘What?’
Her expression had changed. ‘Tell me about the jungle. Tell me about the bomb you were making. Tell me about you. I think I have a right to know, don’t you?’
I kept my eyes on the dugout. ‘I was going to tell you in Lugano, but . . . Well, it never seemed the right time. Maybe I was scared you’d go off me.’
‘One thing is certain in this very crazy world.’ She smiled up at me. ‘That will never happen.’
8
I told her what it was like being a kid in a London housing estate with a stepdad who slapped me and my mother about. I told her about getting arrested and put in Borstal, and joining the army at sixteen as a way out. Then getting into the SAS, and eventually working for the Firm. How it’d fucked me over time and again, until I’d finally binned it – only to let the Americans take over where the Brits had left off.
The words poured out of me like water from a hose that had just been unkinked. ‘I did all the shit jobs no one in their right mind would take on in the first place, or no one was willing to take responsibility for if they went wrong.’ I laughed at my own naïvety. ‘I was paid cash – I didn’t even have a bank account, let alone a life.’
‘Why let yourself be used like that, Nick?’ Her expression told me she didn’t understand. How could she? She’d always been lucky enough to see things through the correct end of the telescope.
I looked back at the dugout as more shit was packed into it. ‘It was all I’d ever known, I guess.’ I shrugged. ‘It was the way things were – like the kids the other side of the river, waiting to be told to come and kill us. But finally – finally – I woke up and walked away.’
‘To Australia?’
‘Yes.’ When I looked down, her eyes were welling.
‘So we were both in Australia to run away?’ She gave me a sad smile.
I slid down level with her.
‘This mine . . .’ A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘These poor people living like this. It’s because of Stefan.’
I put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Tim told me.’ At that moment I didn’t care who the fuck owned what, where, or why. Being with her was all I cared about.
She grabbed a small lump of red rock from the ground, and examined it as though she’d picked up a lump of dog shit by mistake.
‘I know what it is, Silky. I know what it’s for.’
She let it drop to the ground. ‘I’ve had a life of luxury because Stefan feeds off these people’s nightmares . . . But coming here, not just sitting in an office and talking about it . . . I’ve realized I mustn’t run away. I have run to something for a change . . . I have to stay here, Nick.’
‘Do these guys know who you are?’
She shook her head. ‘Only Tim. Even Stefan doesn’t know where I am. He probably thinks I’m surfing in Bali, or at a spa.’
The miners were still dumping tools near the growing stockpile of ANFO for the second