While Victor poured them both more wine Stratton tasted the concoction. ‘Not bad,’ he said.
The scientist shrugged. ‘From a man who enjoys corked wine that’s not much of a compliment.’
Stratton smiled.
Victor could not help liking the Englishman. He held up his mug. ‘Thanks again for the rocket thing. That was a natural act of chivalry. You can’t be all bad.’
The door opened and Stratton reached swiftly for his M4 a few feet away.
Louisa stepped into the cabin. ‘Oh,’ she said, pausing in the doorway. ‘Hello, Victor.’ She closed the door behind her.
‘Louisa,’ he said, greeting her.
She stopped at his back and rested her hands on his shoulders. ‘You’ve had a long day, and a very unfriendly homecoming.’
Victor enjoyed her show of affection. ‘I have cooked some food,’ he said.
Louisa looked into the pot, dipped a finger in and tasted the contents. Her expression showed her approval. ‘I’ll take some for Sebastian.’
‘Be quick before my English friend eats it all.’
‘You are friends already?’ she asked.
‘We have both lived and died today,’ Victor said. ‘I don’t know what that means but we are certainly not enemies.’
Stratton could not take his eyes off Louisa. She was even more beautiful close up. ‘Hi,’ he said, getting to his feet and wiping his hand against his side before offering it. ‘I’m . . .’ he began. But Louisa walked away to the kitchenette and took a jug off the shelf.
‘You’re making quite a collection of people who owe you their lives, Victor,’ she said as she filled the container from the bottle under the stairs. ‘Now you have a mercenary.’
‘I’m not a mercenary,’ Stratton said defensively. He wasn’t actually offended. He was too thick-skinned for that. But he wanted to avoid the word’s negative connotations.
‘Perhaps he just needs to look up the word,’ Louisa said to Victor as she took a bowl from a shelf and spooned some of the food into it. ‘Okay. So what are you if you’re not a mercenary?’ she asked, turning to face Stratton.
‘You wouldn’t call the Fedex man a mercenary.’
‘Why not? He delivers anything to anybody who pays.’
‘Don’t bother,’ Victor said, interrupting Stratton before he could reply. ‘You will never win with her.’
Louisa collected up the food and drink and went to the door.
Stratton opened it for her.
‘You have made an enemy of Hector tonight,’ she said, looking at Victor. ‘That was unwise.’
Victor shrugged. ‘Maybe you can put in a good word for me.’
The thinnest of smiles formed on her lips. ‘The Save the Victor club just keeps on growing.’
‘You can’t have too many members,’ he said, scraping the last contents from his bowl and sucking it off the spoon.
‘See you tomorrow,’ Louisa said. She glanced at Stratton holding the door open for her and although her instincts and breeding required a thank-you she could not bring herself to voice it and walked out without saying another word.
Stratton closed the door and sat back down in his chair.
Victor took a black cheroot from a pocket. ‘There’s a bunk upstairs,’ he said as he lit up. ‘I’ll try and get you out of here before the sun comes up. Hector has spies here. I don’t think he’ll pursue you but it’s best to take the safer option when you can.’
Stratton felt suddenly tired. The thought of lying down sounded very good. He stood, picked up his pack, parachute bag and carbine and walked up the stairs. ‘Thanks for dinner,’ he said.
‘My pleasure,’ Victor replied.
Stratton dumped his pack beside the bunk, unzipped the parachute bag and tipped the contents out onto the floor. He began to unravel the chute, picking out twigs and other debris from the material. Then he hooked the harness around the banister ball at the top of the stairs and walked the suspension lines to the far end of the room, untangling and stretching them out.
Victor came to the top of the stairs to see what he was doing. ‘We don’t have any planes if you’re planning on parachuting out of here.’
‘I’m drying it out.’
‘You are a professional, aren’t you?’ Victor asked, his tone rhetorical.
Stratton looked up at him.The comment was correct, but not in the way the other man intended.
‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ Victor said and headed back down the stairs. ‘I like to sleep below. The rats that live in the thatch irritate me.’
Stratton glanced up at the reed ceiling. His back suddenly ached from the day’s activities - a combination of the jump and the long yomp. He was looking forward to lying down and hurried to finish cleaning the chute.
Stratton had a fitful night’s sleep, waking up at every sound from inside and outside the cabin. The most annoying disturbance came from the family of rodents - or rats, as Victor had described them - that was living in the reed roof. They kept scurrying about, causing bits of thatch to fall on him, which eventually prompted him to erect his mosquito net. No sooner had he done that than the rain came down heavily. It got rid of the rodents, only to replace them with another irritation: a constant cascade of drips that the net could not shield him from. After shifting his wooden bunk around the floor more than once he eventually found a drip-free zone. Then, just as he thought he was finally dozing off, he heard one of the stairs creak. It felt like he had been asleep for barely minutes but when he opened his eyes he could make out objects in the room by the early morning light coming through gaps in the roof. He watched the top of the stairs, resting his hand on the stock of his M4.
Victor’s freshly shaven face appeared. ‘I see you did not trust my hospitality,’ he said.
Stratton did not understand and sat up.
‘You slept with your boots on,’ Victor explained.
‘Oh,’ Stratton said. ‘An old habit when I’m in a new place.’
‘I spent the first year of the campaign sleeping in my boots. And with good reason. We always seemed to be running away . . . You want some coffee?’
‘Sure,’ Stratton said, scratching the stubble on his chin.
‘Do you wash?’
Stratton thought it was an odd question. ‘When I get the chance.’
‘It’s a choice one makes in these circumstances. I’ll put some water on the stove,’ Victor said, going back downstairs.
Stratton opened his pack, removed a small bag and dug out a toothbrush and some paste. He went downstairs to the sink, which had no taps, and searched around it, looking inside a couple of jugs.
‘I just realised I used the last of the water. I’m going to get some more,’ Victor said, picking up a bucket. ‘Use the coffee.’ He held out a mug to Stratton.
The soldier took the advice, brushed his teeth and rinsed his mouth with the coffee.
‘Oh. I’ve just remembered - you’re not going anywhere today,’ Victor said as he reached the front door. ‘Sebastian wants you to stay and train the men as planned.’
Stratton choked back his impulse to tell Victor in crude terms that Sebastian could think again if he thought Stratton was some kind of serf who had to do what he was told. Exercising considerable restraint, he asked merely, ‘Don’t you think I might have some say in the matter?’
‘I thought it was just a job to you,’ Victor said, a hint of apology in his tone.
‘Haven’t circumstances changed just a little?’
Victor nodded, more to himself than to Stratton. ‘Is that okay by you?’
Stratton had grown used to the idea of getting out of this place as soon as he could and once again he found himself undecided about delaying further.
‘If you refuse I will understand,’ Victor said, waiting politely for an answer.
Once again Stratton felt unable to say no. He reasoned that a few hours more was no big deal. By the afternoon he would be gone. ‘Okay,’ he said.
‘Good. I told Sebastian you did not seem the type to frighten easily.’
Stratton headed back up the stairs to pack his parachute and kit.
‘After breakfast I’ll show you around the camp,’ Victor called out. ‘Have you had burro steaks before?’
‘Donkey?’
‘Yes.’
Stratton was out of Victor’s sight so he felt free to make an expression of distaste. ‘One of my favourites,’ he called out.
Victor smirked at the sarcasm he detected and removed a muslin-covered bundle from one of his pockets. ‘Hey!’
Stratton appeared on the balcony.
Victor threw the bundle up to him. ‘Why don’t you get the frying pan hot?’
Stratton opened the bundle to reveal two large bloody steaks, both with rinds that had long grey matted hair growing from them.
‘It’s almost as good as horse,’ Victor assured him as he left and closed the door.
It was a bright, clear morning as the two men walked across the compound. On the far horizon a thin line of dark clouds seemed to be waiting to roll in but for the moment the air was a perfect temperature with hardly any humidity.
The ground was slippery, unable to absorb the constant rains, and the path to the main camp area was peppered with deep pools of mud. Everything was mud-coloured except for a sprinkling of green and blue plastic sheeting on the roofs of the habitats, and the lines of laundry. Smoke rose from countless cooking fires to form a grey cloud that hung in the windless air. There were people everywhere - women doing morning chores, men in fatigues hanging around smoking and chatting, and children running in and out of the huts and playing in the open field.
Victor and Stratton crossed the higher ground away from the main camp and walked along the side of a gentle hill, until a long wooden hut came into view at the top. It had a circular corral in front of it in which a white horse was trotting around.
‘The stables,’ Victor pointed out. ‘They are just above the cabins. We’ve come around in a semicircle.’
They walked across the slope and approached a small isolated wood. Several men were gathered around a smouldering fire to one side of an entrance guarded by a sandbagged defensive position.They acknowledged Victor with a nod as he approached.
Victor led the way into the wood, which concealed several rows of pallets covered in tarpaulins and camouflage netting. The cooler, damper air beneath the low canopy of branches smelled of a mixture of rotting foliage and gasoline.
Further along the path lay a line of boxes that Stratton recognised.
‘We keep some of our stores here,’ Victor explained. ‘There are other caches around the camp - away from the living quarters, of course. These are your weapons.’
Stratton noted that there was only about a third of what he had delivered. ‘Do you have a training area? Somewhere we can fire a sixty-six?’
Victor pointed up ahead where a narrow path cut through the wood. He led them back to within sight of the sentries and the stables on the hill. ‘We use this area for weapon testing. You can fire in that direction. Beyond those bushes the ground drops away to a cliff, above a river. Nobody goes there. Will it do?’
‘It’s fine,’ Stratton said, looking around and thinking how he might organise things.
‘What else will you need?’
‘Half a dozen guys smart enough to be able to teach others what I teach them.’
Victor nodded. ‘Is this afternoon okay?’
Stratton sighed to himself. Yet another delay.
‘The men have work this morning,’ Victor explained as if he had sensed Stratton’s disappointment.
‘Sure,’ Stratton said, forcing a smile.
They both looked up as a horse and rider appeared, speeding across the top of the slope and silhouetted against the blue sky.
‘Louisa,’ Victor said. ‘She rides like an insane person.’
‘Is she from here . . . I mean, from this country?’
‘She’s second-generation. Sebastian was born here. His father came from Spain when he was twelve.’
‘She wasn’t brought up here?’
‘Until her early teens. Then, apart from the last few months, she’s been in the US and Europe. Living life as a young person should.’
‘Why did she come back?’
Victor looked as if he disapproved. ‘She says she wants to be with her father. I think there is more to it than that. She majored in some political subject. She’s one of those youngsters who knows everything and has experienced nothing . . . She loves her father. She also believes in him and the struggle.’
‘She’s friendly to you.’
The scientist chuckled, as if he understood how Stratton thought she felt the opposite about him. ‘She thinks I’m a romantic idealist, and an old one at that. If I was ten years younger I would sweep her off her feet.’ He noticed Stratton staring at her and thought he could read the soldier’s thoughts. ‘A mercenary would have no chance, my friend.’
‘I’m not a mercenary.’
‘Well, you look and act like one, and that’s enough.’
They watched Louisa pull her horse to a spirited halt when she reached the stables and dismount lithely. Sebastian came out to greet her and after a brief exchange she led her mount into the stable. Sebastian went to the corral and leaned on the fence. The white horse strolled over to him and he stroked its cheeks.
‘When I first met Louisa I thought she suffered from the classic syndrome, a daughter wanting to be like a son to her father. But it’s not the case. She’s a perfect woman. When she returned from abroad Sebastian was happy to see her . . . at first. Then she told him she was staying. It was completely against his wishes but that woman does not take orders from anyone, not even from Sebastian. She told him she had completed her education, as he had wanted, and that he was no longer going to rule her life.’
A smile formed on Victor’s craggy face once again but it faded as darker thoughts clouded his mind. ‘He’s right, though. These are not good times. Not that they were ever great. But they are worse than ever now. She should not be here. She will become a pawn in this game. She is Sebastian’s only weakness. I suppose it’s fortunate that Hector is in love with her. He’s rash. But she mellows him. Not enough, perhaps, as you saw last night. In some ways I feel bad for him too. He loved Sebastian, admired him above all men. Hector would not go against Sebastian and certainly not against Louisa for any other reason than his political convictions. He would like to convince her even more than Sebastian that what he is doing is the best for the people, and for them both.’