The Secret Chamber (36 page)

As the thud of the helicopter rotors continued, Jean-Luc stared out, his eyes narrowed against the rush of air. He thought back to all the times he had gone into battle, the journey to the frontline dragging on like the calm before a storm. There had been so many campaigns, so many dirty wars spent crossing from one border to the next. He had been a mercenary his whole life, and now there was nothing else. That was what he was. The sum total of
him
. Like an old smoker being asked to count the years of his addiction, war had always been there, been part of him.

But for the first time in his life, the reason for it had changed. This time he wasn’t going in because someone was paying him to. He was going in because his little girl needed him to.

Pulling back from the open door, Jean-Luc gently patted the gunner, Louis, on the shoulder as he moved past him towards the pilot. He nodded with satisfaction, knowing that his men were ready. Each one of them had fingers resting on a trigger, silently scanning the ground through their night-vision goggles for the slightest sign of movement. There was courage in their silence. They had all obeyed his command, boarding the helicopters back in Goma without question. Yet all of them had known that if they didn’t track Bear down in the forest, they would be flying on to the volcano and into the biggest shit storm imaginable.

Jean-Luc leaned over the pilot, Thierry. He was a short, stocky man with a bald head and a deeply tanned face.
Looking
past him to the GPS on the screen, Jean-Luc glanced down at his watch. They had enough fuel to keep searching for Bear for five hours.

‘Major, we’ve just picked something up on the thermal imaging,’ came Laurent’s voice over the radio. ‘It’s a single heat source moving west along the old logging road.’

‘You’re sure it’s human?’

‘Negative, sir.’

Jean-Luc nodded, reaching out a hand to steady himself. They were going to follow each and every lead until he found his daughter.

‘Proceed.’

All four helicopters banked sharply, maintaining formation as they turned west towards the faint outline of the crooked dirt track. The old logging road had long since become impassable to ground vehicles, with the forest reclaiming almost all of the cleared track, but from the air, it was still visible.

‘Target moving off the road, sir. Now heading south.’

‘Get in front. I want a four-man team on the deck.’

The lead helicopter slowed, with the pilot pitching up the nose and lowering the collective to reduce the torque on the rotors. Ropes were flung out as four men moved out to the edge, preparing to abseil into the darkness.

The ropes buzzed as the soldiers descended at speed, jerking to a halt only a few feet from the surface of the ground. As they pulled the slack through their harnesses, they swung their M4 carbine rifles off their backs and surged forward across the ground.

‘Target has stopped,’ came Laurent’s voice. ‘North. Twenty metres.’

With their rifles tight into their shoulders, the four men advanced. They moved silently, black combat uniforms melting into the background. Their faces were darkened by camouflage cream. Five metres further on they begun to converge on a single point, but still none of them could see the target. The bush was too thick.

‘Target dead ahead. Three metres.’

All the men stopped, their rifles trained on the ground. Then, suddenly, one of them recognised the outline of a man’s leg, his back, and finally his head. He was lying absolutely still, curled up into the base of a thick bush.

‘
Ne bougez pas!
’ Don’t move! the soldier shouted. As the three others kept their weapons trained on the target, he swung his rifle across his back and grabbed on to the man’s boots, dragging him feet first out of the bush. With a sharp kick, he spun him round, reaching for his weapon in the same movement and jamming the barrel of his rifle into his chest.

‘
Qui êtes-vous?
’ Who are you? he shouted, staring down at the man’s mud-splattered face and his pale blue eyes. The man was half-naked with his hands slightly raised, the blackened palms facing the soldiers as if trying to push them away.

‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’

‘Who are you?’ the soldier bellowed, switching into English as he twisted the gun barrel in deeper.

‘My name is Luca. We need … help.’

The soldier grabbed him by his neck and hoisted him on to his feet.

‘Lucky for you the Major wants you alive,’ he said, then shunted him forward towards the waiting helicopters.

Two of the three Oryx helicopters had touched down on a clearing to either side of the old logging road. They were stationary except for the low swoop of their rotors as the pilots kept the engines powered up and ready to take off at a moment’s notice. The white beam of their searchlights swung round, revealing the four soldiers with Luca. He had his hands raised, but nothing more could be seen of his face. The light had bleached out all his features, leaving only a hazy outline.

Jean-Luc was on the ground, dressed in full combat fatigues with his short-barrel G3 rifle slung over his back. His chest bulged with a row of front webbing pouches, each filled with ammunition and grenades, and he had clipped off the lenses of his night-vision goggles, leaving just the strap across his forehead. It pressed down on his tangled mop of hair like a sweatband, bunching up the skin at the corners of his eyes. As the ground team approached, he went out to meet them, flinging his cigarette aside.

‘His name is Luca …’ began the lead soldier, but as he spoke the Rooivalk swooped low overhead, drowning out the sound of his voice. They all looked up as it passed through the halo of lights. Luca immediately recognised the distinctive stepped cockpit and the fuselage bristling with rockets. There could be no mistake. That was the helicopter that had killed Lanso and Abasi. These were the bastards who had been hunting them down on the inselberg!

He swivelled round and swung a wide punch at the man
just
behind him. More by luck than any sense of timing, his fist connected, ripping off the soldier’s night-vision goggles and snapping his head to one side. As the soldier stumbled sideways, Luca stepped forward, shunting him back with the palms of his hands, so that he went crashing into the man behind.

In the confusion, he ducked out of the glare of the searchlights and sprinted towards the treeline. The other two soldiers gave chase, but their rifles and webbing made them slower. Luca was pulling away. In only ten metres, he would be past the clearing and back into the cover of the trees.

Jean-Luc cursed, raising his rifle and firing. Three bullets smacked into the tree just ahead of Luca in quick succession, stopping him dead in his tracks and missing his body by just a few inches. Luca stared at the splintered tree bark for several seconds before slowly turning back towards the helicopters, eyes narrowed against the light.

Suddenly, he was thrown forward as the nearest of the soldiers crashed into him, pitching them both on to the ground. The man immediately wrestled Luca’s arms behind his back, trying to force his hands through a long, plastic cable tie. Luca fought him off, but then a second soldier arrived and, dropping his knees on to Luca’s chest, pinned him down. They jammed the cable tight around his wrists, the plastic cutting deep.

Jean-Luc watched as the prisoner was brought to a halt in front of him.

‘Why are you here?’ he called, his voice raised against the sound of the rotors.

Luca didn’t answer.

‘I am not a patient man. Tell me, now.’

He waited a few seconds, but Luca remained silent. With his mud-splattered torso and hair stuck to the side of his face, he looked wild and hunted. He was nearly a head taller than Jean-Luc, and stared down at him with undisguised venom.

‘I’m going to tire of asking,’ Jean-Luc hissed. ‘Last time.’

‘Screw you.’

Jean-Luc nodded to the soldier just behind. He slammed the butt of his rifle into the back of Luca’s knees, felling him to the ground. Luca groaned, wincing as he fought the pain. As the soldier raised his rifle to strike again, the Rooivalk passed overhead. This time, Luca’s gaze fixed on it, the hatred clear in his eyes.

‘You’ve seen that helicopter before, haven’t you?’ Jean-Luc asked. ‘When?’

Luca stared up at him from the ground. ‘What kind of coward kills a couple of boys?’ he spat. ‘They were pygmies, for Christ’s sake. With bows and arrows!’

Jean-Luc slowly nodded. ‘So you were on the inselberg, running from the LRA. Were you anything to do with the plane crash on the river?’

Luca fell silent again.

‘Because we found this guy in there, all chewed up by crocodiles. Nasty business.’

Luca shut his eyes at the image of René.

‘So it’s true,’ Jean-Luc said. ‘You are one of the men running with my daughter, Beatrice.’

Luca opened his eyes. ‘Beatrice?’ he said disbelievingly. ‘You’re Bear’s father? But … she told me to try and find you.’

Jean-Luc nodded towards his men. They surrounded Luca, bundling him on board through the open door of the Oryx and slamming him down on the riveted metal bench seat at the back.

‘Looks like we got to you first,’ Jean-Luc said to himself. Then, with a twirl of his finger, he signalled to the pilots to take off. Putting on his headset, he reached forward and placed the spare set over Luca’s ears, before drawing a thin, delicate-looking throwing knife from his belt. A silver line ran down the length of the blade from where it had been ground razor-sharp.

‘Now,’ Jean-Luc said, pointing the tip of the knife at Luca’s chest, ‘you’re going to help me find my daughter. And if you so much as …’

‘… we’re after the same thing!’ Luca interupted, jerking his wrists up behind his back. ‘Now get these fucking things off me!’

Jean-Luc stared at him for several seconds before grabbing hold of his shoulders and pivoting Luca forward in his seat. He sawed through the plastic cable ties in a couple of strokes.

‘If my daughter’s harmed in any …’ Jean-Luc began, but Luca cut in once again.

‘Shut up and listen to me,’ he said. ‘We don’t have time for this bullshit.’

Jean-Luc’s eyes narrowed, but he remained silent.

‘Bear’s being held in a mine not far from here. But the LRA are planning on sealing all the miners inside. We’ve got to get over there and somehow get her the hell out.’

‘When was that?’

Luca shrugged, trying to remember when they had left the river. ‘It was late in the afternoon. Four, maybe five o’clock.’

Jean-Luc already knew the time, but still found himself glancing down at his watch. That was nearly four hours ago.

‘And what condition was she in?’

Luca hesitated.

‘I said, what condition was she in?’

‘She was unconscious. That’s all I could see from where I was.’

Jean-Luc knew there was more, but forced himself to accept the information for now. They would be over the volcano in just under twenty-two minutes.

‘So how was Mordecai planning on sealing it? Just posting his men or did he barricade them inside?’

‘We didn’t actually see. But when we were on the run, we heard some explosions.’

‘Shit!’ Jean-Luc hissed, his fist slamming down on the side of the seat. ‘If they’ve collapsed the entry tunnel, there’s no way we are going to be able to get inside.’

‘No, there’s another way. At the top of the mine, I saw this crack that lets in the natural light. But it’s got to be at least a hundred metres above where the miners are.’

‘We can hover above it and my men will abseil in.’

‘Maybe. But even if you’re just above it, you’re going to need a shitload of rope.’

Jean-Luc turned away from him, tilting the mic closer to his mouth.

‘Captain, how much rope do we have?’

There was a pause before Laurent’s voice came in over
the
radio. ‘Each Oryx has a seventy-five-metre line attached to the winch, sir. And there’s two one-hundred-and-twenty-metre static lines in the hold of your aircraft.’

‘Can you rig the winch lines together?’

‘It’s not going to be easy, sir, because it won’t run through if we knot them up.’ As Laurent spoke, Luca moved forward and grabbed hold of Jean-Luc’s wrist.

‘I’m a climber,’ he said. ‘I can rig it together. Just give me the damn’ rope.’

Jean-Luc stared into his eyes. ‘OK, climber. You can prep the rope. But after that, you sit still in the back of this helicopter and stay the hell out of our way.’

Luca nodded. ‘There’s one more thing. I escaped with a friend of mine. He’s down there in the forest right now, about four miles due south of the mine. We’ve got to stop en route and pick him up.’

Jean-Luc’s expression didn’t change.

‘All you’ve got to do is hover for a few seconds …’ Luca added, but Jean-Luc cut him off.

‘Every minute we waste is another minute Beatrice is in danger,’ he said. ‘Your friend stays. With luck, we’ll pick him up on the way back.’

Luca went to protest, but Jean-Luc raised a finger in warning.

Slowly turning towards the open door of the helicopter, Luca watched the forest whip past below them.