The Twain Maxim (21 page)

Jane was breathing 100 per cent oxygen to drive out all the nitrogen from her blood.

A ‘Haho’ jump from eight kilometres up would mean no one would hear or see the B1 Lancer and no one would hear her coming. She would fly the chute to the landing spot and not a soul, should there be one on the lava flow, would see her coming. She stood in front of the bomb-bay doors, over which the bomb racks normally lay, and waited. She switched to her air supply.

“Doors opening. Will count you down from three.”

The doors opened and there was a sudden rush of air.

The B1 was going at the lowest speed it could at that altitude, about 300 m.p.h.

“Three, two, one…”

She hopped forwards into the void.

From the pure fact that she still existed, she knew she had cleared the plane successfully. She pulled the ripcord at the count of twelve. The black chute opened. She would fly it perhaps twenty-five miles to the destination. She watched the GPS on her arms as she steered. Pretty soon the sun would be coming up and she would get one hell of a view. From five miles up she could see into the blazing caldera of Nyiragongo three miles below. She could see the lights of 
Goma and the outline of Nyamuragira ahead. It was a
ten-million-dollar
joy-ride with a desperate mission at the end. The sun showed its blazing edge over the rim of the earth and she could see it rushing over the land. It would reach her as she touched down.

Acting Major General Brown had set another record along the way. Falling at sixty miles an hour, armed to the teeth and on a mission, she felt liberated. This was who she was: this was what she had made herself for.

She looked down at the east lava field of Nyamuragira. She would land at the north end just before the jungle started, near the foot of the volcano. There was about two miles to go. Light came from the lava field as if it was spotted with orange landing lights. The morning sun hadn’t hit it yet.

“Shit!” She flared her parachute. “It’s molten down there.” She had to glide past it to land after the lava and before one of the huge trees. A landing in trees would be less bad than touching down on a flaming griddle, but it was
non-optimal
.

The smooth control of her planned landing had gone to hell: she was coming in slow and with little control. As her speed decreased so the chute became less a flying wing and more like an old-style parachute that just fell slowly. It was going to be a very close call. The black lava now didn’t look black at all: it was like a 1,000-degree
crème brûlée
, black stuff covering a soft core. She lifted her legs up and gave a final haul on the control lines, the heat of the lava across her butt and neck. She was going to crash in the trees. It would be brutal but it was better than being barbecued. The chute lifted a little, stalled, then swung her into a high bush about ten feet off the ground. She let out a groan as she fell. The
chute caught hold and halted her fall some four feet from the ground. She grabbed the strap, tried to right herself and tumbled down, landing on her back, pack first. She struggled out of her harness.

“Safely landed,” she typed into the GPS computer on her arm. No thanks to you or me.

The pygmy village seemed to have been made out of giant wilted cabbages. The inhabitants had built little huts covered with big heart-shaped leaves that acted like scales to deflect the periodic torrential rain.

Without having said a word to them, Jim had decided the pygmies were incredible, the most real people he had ever met, walking bollock-naked through the wild jungles, smiling and chatting with each other like the happiest guys in the world. These little people were the giants of the jungle. As the Americans had grown tall to conquer their wilderness, the pygmies were made small to coexist with theirs. Only they were strong enough to thrive in this environment. They were the masters here.

The leading pygmy showed them to the opening in one of the leaf huts.

Jim pushed his head inside. “Terry?”

“Who’s that?”

“Jim.”

“Jim?”

Jim’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and he pushed into the cramped space. Kitson was lying on a mattress of grass. His chest was bare and his arm was in a makeshift sling constructed from what looked like pieces of his shirt. “Jim,” he said, sitting up on his right arm. His face showed he was
experiencing considerable pain. “Thank God – I’m rescued. I thought I was going to be lying here till I mended.”

“Ah,” said Jim, “well, I was here to rescue you but, like, I’m now in need of a bit of rescue myself.”

Pierre pushed in beside Jim and Kitson looked at his bruised face, then snorted. “Well, I suppose I’m in less trouble than I was.”

“I’m not sure about that,” said Jim. “We’re in big trouble ourselves.” He smiled awkwardly. “But, hey, we’ve found you. How are you?”

“Shot,” said Kitson. “I think I’ve smashed my pelvis. At least it’s not my spine. Did you know I was a junior doctor once?”

“No,” said Jim.

Kitson shifted awkwardly on his bed of grass with a grimace of pain. “The City was better pay and better hours.”

“I’ve got painkillers and some antibiotics.”

“I’ve not gone septic,” said Kitson, “or I’d be already dead.”

“Painkillers?”

“Love some,” he said longingly, “but why waste a limited supply? I might need to take them all at once, if you follow me.”

“Oh,” said Jim, working out what he meant. “You’re going to make it,” he said. “We just need to get back to Goma and call someone to come for you.” He took out his GPS. “I’m registering our location. You just need to lie here for a few more days.”

“Are those swines from the mine after you?” said Kitson.

“No,” said Jim. “Not Mycock at any rate.”

“That blighter pushed me out of the helicopter.”

 “Mycock?”

“Yes – the bugger beat me round the head and booted me out into thin air.” He winced. “It’s nothing short of divine intervention that I’m alive.”

“How did you survive?”

“I have no idea – well, not exactly.” Kitson shifted on his elbow. He looked in a lot of pain. “I remember falling into a tree – or, rather, waking up in a tree. We were hovering over the treetops at the time. Maybe I fell fifty or sixty feet. However far it was, it was far enough.” He looked very uncomfortable, propped up on his good arm. “Then Alan and his friends came and hauled me down.” He smiled. “They are the most immensely strong, agile people and by far the kindest.”

“Who’s Alan?”

“The pygmy chief. I call him Alan because, for the life of me, I can’t pronounce his name. He doesn’t seem to mind. I must introduce you. Alan,” he called, trying to sit up a bit more. “Alan.”

The head pygmy strode in. He looked ancient but was probably barely forty, when you took into account the implied spread of ages among the tribesmen. The children resembled small teenagers and the teenagers hardened men. The adult men looked very old indeed, their faces gnarled busts fashioned by the rough hands of the forest.

“Alan,” said Kitson, “these are my friends. I am very happy to see them.”

Pierre rolled his eyes and translated.

Alan laughed, replied in a shout and went out.

“He says you are crazy,” said Pierre.

“Quite right,” said Kitson. “So would you be in my situation.”

 “He likes you,” added Pierre.

Kitson shifted painfully. “So what is your spot of bother?”

“Militia have taken over the mine and they’re after us because they know we know where there is a big deposit of diamonds.”

“Diamonds?” said Kitson, grimacing. “There’s nothing here.”

“I’ve seen them,” said Jim. “Dug one up the size of a sugar cube myself.”

“Really?” said Kitson. He lay back, staring at the roof of the hut. “How ironic. I’m sure successful miners don’t go throwing people out of their helicopters.” He winced as pain shot through him again. “So what is the plan?”

“Well, the plan was to get into pygmy territory, stock up on some food and then try to use it as a buffer for the escape route.”

“Head for Rwanda,” said Kitson. “To get to Goma you have to go around both these volcanoes. If you head into Rwanda you can get quickly to Kigali and then go wherever you need to. I can sit it out here for a couple of weeks, and then, if you don’t show and I haven’t dropped dead, I’ll be halfway to healed up. Then I think I can persuade Alan to stretcher me out.”

“They would do that,” said Pierre.

“Would they?” said Jim. “It’s a hell of a long way.”

“Pygmies are looking for protection. It would be good for their cause.”

“Well, that’s great,” said Jim. “I’ve no idea about pygmy politics, though.”

“It’s just about guns and land and money,” Pierre told him.

“Hear, hear,” said Kitson. “Are you MBD from the mine?” he asked.

“Yes and no,” said Pierre. “I am Pierre Nonda and I was from the mine.”

“Make for Kigali,” said Kitson.

Jim got the map and studied it. It was about thirty miles as the bird flew to Kigali. “What do you think, Pierre?”

“You got big dollars, right?”

“Yes,” said Jim.

“Let’s go Rwanda, I know routes.”

Jim watched Kitson asleep. He wondered if his friend was going to die – he wondered if he was going to die too. Thirty miles across country was a hell of a trek after such a long haul already. He was tired out, dirty, bruised and battered. Pierre was playing some kind of game with the pygmy children that involved throwing twigs and stones. He looked a sight too, laughing beneath his injuries.

They’d be eating parrot that night – a hunting party had brought back three large colourful dead ones. He wondered how it would affect him – he hadn’t forgotten the dramatic
purging he’d experienced after his one and only locally prepared meal. Could he get thirty miles across country with dysentery?

He felt low. He had achieved the impossible in finding Kitson alive but now, rather than bringing him back triumphantly from the jungle, he was mired in a deadly trap.

Adash stood on the kimberlite and looked at the mining camp below. Fifteen hundred of his men, maybe his whole army of two thousand, were converging on it from all over Kiva and both sides of the Rwandan border. They would find the boy and mine the diamonds. From his vantage-point he could see for miles but, like all the visitors before him, except one, he could not see the ground he stood on. For just a moment each day, as the sun set, the earth would flash and twinkle.

To Jane, the jungle seemed quiet but the whole area was on the move, according to intel. It was all sketchy, but the satphones were jabbering about diamonds and Nyamuragira and the phones were on the move. They were converging on the volcano from a sixty-mile radius. It looked like the Christ Reunion army and fragments of Mai-Mai militias were on their way. Was Jim part of this shit storm? He wasn’t moving, so he might already be dead or taken prisoner.

The biohazard alarm suddenly went off on her arm. Gas, it said.

She took out her mask and put it on, then peered at the device through the circular windows in the rubber mask: carbon dioxide. It seemed unlikely but you never disagreed with kit unless you wanted to end up dead. She walked forwards. There was a carcass ahead. A collapsed grey mound covered with what looked like white paint. There were dead birds, maybe half a dozen vultures, in various states of decomposition. There were the bones of another animal ahead, then more bones, a dead guy – all kinds of bones piled next to each other haphazardly as if the creatures had just fallen dead on the spot while gawking. The place was a graveyard, an open ossuary where everything died. She took a Zippo out of her right shoulder pocket and lit it. The flame
was weak. She lowered it to the ground and the flame went out. She tried to relight it and failed. She held the Zippo high and tried again. It fired up, another weak flame. The volcanic activity was venting carbon dioxide and was carpeting the ground with a layer of lethal gas. The smell of carrion was attracting animals to it and they were dying as they came to the scene.

She picked up her pace. This place was a death-trap and, while the filters on her mask would block the gas for quite a time, she wasn’t going to stick around marvelling at the savagery of nature.

A hundred yards ahead the warning on her arm went out. She kept the mask on. The stuffy contraption was just a little more welcome than a face full of lethal gas, and she wouldn’t take it off for at least another couple of hundred yards.

“Yoyoyo.”

Jane froze. 

A green fruit fell with a dull thump about ten feet in front of her. It was an avocado.

“Yoyoyo,” came the call.

She was holding the grip of her M4 carbine. She pulled off her mask.

An unarmed guy, silhouetted by the sun, was walking down the hill towards her.

“Yoyoyo,” he called.

There was a rustle behind her.

She turned… and saw that she was ringed by four small guys – no, five – carrying bows and arrows. They weren’t aiming at her but they could let off their arrows in a moment, not that they would puncture her armour. “Hello, boys,” she said.

They looked at each other.

“Yoyoyo,” said the young guy sauntering towards her.

“Yoyoyo,” she replied.

“
Qui est vous
?” He seemed shocked and confused by the sight of a woman with a fabulous rifle.

“American.”

“It’s a good job you surrender or you would be dead,” he said, one nervous eye on the obviously advanced weapon.

“Don’t push your luck,” she replied.

“What in hell’s name are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for a friend.”

The boy burst out laughing, “We are all looking for a friend here,” he said. He suddenly snapped her an intense stare. “Who?”

The kid had a nasty cut across his cheek and the other side of his face looked like it had taken a thorough beating. “Jim Evans,” she said. “Do you know him?”

“Sure we know him.” He spoke to one of the little guys, and they began to laugh and joke to each other.

Now Jane was confused. “Can you take me to him?”

“Sure,” said the kid.

“Is he far away?”

“No.”

“Is he safe?” she asked.

The boy stiffened. “No,” he said, craning his neck, eyes bulging. “Nobody’s safe. We are in big trouble and,” he clapped his hands, “so are you.” He sneaked a look at the M4 carbine. “But not from us. Let’s go before it’s dark.”