Andy McNab - Recoil

I also counted about ten boxes of Cutty Sark; assuming twelve to a box that meant 120 bottles. Maybe Lex knew an elephant with a drink problem.

I moved a bit further so I was out of Sam's line of sight, and came to the cockpit bulkhead. A couple of hundred grimy, empty thirty-kilo rice sacks were piled high against it. I could just about make out the stencilling on some of them. They had once contained food gifts from either the USA or the EU, but that had been many years ago, and they had been put to other uses since. At least I now knew where the shit that covered the floor, and now my hands and jeans, had come from.

Next to the sacks were forty or fifty fifteen-kilo bags of fertilizer. I also saw about a dozen big black drums of diesel. It was a proper little quartermaster's store. There was even a set of golf clubs in a knackered black bag. They seemed to be required packing for pilots. I couldn't imagine there'd be that many courses in the jungle, but that meant nothing to golf freaks. They'd play anywhere. I saw a picture once of a couple of guys playing against the backdrop of the US embassy in Saigon during the evacuation. Desperate people were hanging from helicopters trying to flee the North Vietnamese and all those two had been worried about was getting a little ball into a hole.

But I was much more interested in the containers. The top one was at about chin level. I unlatched the two retaining clips on the lid, but even before I looked inside I knew what was in there. The smell of oil was stronger than anything coming out of the dump drum, and it was of a very specific type. I'd spent half my life inhaling it in armouries around the world, and there was no mistaking the odour.

I peered in. Beneath a layer of old hairy blanket, I saw worn gunmetal, and shapes I recognized. A bundle of AK assault rifles and at least one GPMG were loosely packed in old grey and brown blankets.

I closed the container and reclipped it before I moved to the next one along. I lifted the lid and pulled the blanket aside. This time I found just one weapon, a 12.7mm heavy machine-gun. The last time I'd seen one of these guys was on a Russian tank in newsreel footage of a May Day parade, next to a bloke with a very stern face and a leather helmet who was sticking out of the turret and saluting Yeltsin on the podium. They were very heavy pieces of kit, and this one had a wheeled tripod for ease of manoeuvre in the sustained-fire role.

I'd seen enough.

I closed everything up and pushed my way back to the tailgate. Lex might have been upgraded to first class, and the world of smoky bars was far behind him, but there was no doubting he was still involved in this continent's second oldest profession. Was the mining job Sam had talked about just a load of bullshit?

I reached the hammocks, but didn't climb back in. One element was still missing from the classic equation, and I wondered if it was right under my nose. The deal always went in threes, and we had ticked the first box – the one that said 'weapons'. We'd also ticked the second, and this particular box all had sailing ships on their labels.

There was only one piece missing.

I didn't bother to check if Sam was asleep: it would take time, and I might actually wake him. Besides, he couldn't see anything from where he was.

I knelt under his hammock and undid the blue case. The mix was complete: Rwandan francs by the shrinkwrapped bundle, all high denomination.

This wasn't protecting miners and their communities, this was good old-fashioned warmongering. Give the guys guns, pay them cash, and keep them happy on firewater. The rules hadn't changed since the days of the Wild West.

Sam groaned. I closed the case quickly and got back to doing a green maggot impression.

The hammock swung as the Antonov banked. Did it matter to me what the fuck they were up to? Not in the slightest. I put the sleeping-bag to my nose and filled my lungs with Silky's perfume.

'Rise and shine, man!'

I opened my eyes in a semi-daze as an unseen hand gave the para cord a shake. The loadie's grin was only inches from my face, and by the smell of his breath he'd spent the flight smoking one of the Cape's more exotic crops. Good job he wasn't needed to fuck about with the 23mms.

I flipped myself out of the hammock again. Sam was already on his feet, his hair sticking up and his face creased. I probably didn't look any different.

I couldn't keep my mind off the cargo. I didn't know where we were landing. If it was an official airstrip, I could only assume Lex and Sam had the authorities squared away. Maybe that was where the Cutty Sark was headed, or a couple of bundles of notes.

I was just glad I wasn't a part of it. I didn't know if the rationale was good, bad or indifferent. All I knew was that the mixture of weapons, whisky and wonga was as volatile as a Saturday-night vindaloo.

I looked through a window. The sun glinted on a series of waterways that snaked through my broccoli fields, but craters the size of small towns suddenly appeared, huge orange-red scars among the green, as if the jungle had a bad case of acne. Down there, somewhere under the hundreds of square miles of green that stretched as far as the horizon, was Silky. Maybe on some track or even floating down a river trying to get to Nuka with her blankets, or whatever shit she was taking for the locals.

I unfastened the para cord from the fuselage struts and rolled the silk into a ball. Sam shook his head when I offered it to him. 'Keep it. You might be needing it.'

I shoved it into my holdall.

The Antonov was on its final approach and I wanted to see what kind of landing site we were heading for – and what kind of reception committee was waiting.

The broccoli had become big distinctive treetops, and it wasn't long before the wheels hit a carpet of orange-red dirt.

Tents and huts with wriggly tin roofs lined the runway, just metres from the wing-tip, and many more disappeared into the forest behind them. Smoke curled from cooking fires. Small figures darted about on the edge of the strip.

I squatted on the ramp, rubbing my eyes back to life as the loadie reappeared and threw each of us a bottle of water. I tilted my head and took several warm gulps, trying to time them between jolts as the aircraft kangarood along the runway. A couple of scabby dogs tried to keep pace with us, looking as if they thought the tyres were made of Pedigree Chum. Decapitated oil drums had been placed at twenty-metre intervals along the sides of the strip, and had obviously had fires in them. It looked like Lex did a bit of night-flying as well.

Sam was looking out of the window too. 'I saw you having a sniff in them boxes…' He was smiling. 'Bet you're thinking what I said last night about the church, orphanage, even the mine is rubbish? Bet you're thinking we're just in the war game?'

'Pretty much.' I nodded back at the cargo. 'I mean-'

'I haven't lied to you, Nick. Maybe kept the odd thing back, but that's all. Our mine is under constant threat, which means the orphanage at Nuka is too. So, to protect it, we've got to expand our operations and get more guys on the ground.'

It wasn't long before the propellers were feathered and the aircraft came to a standstill. I started to flap even more about Silky fucking about in Nuka.

I now had a clearer view of the huts and tents. Brilliant cobalt blue was definitely the colour of choice in Africa.

The dogs finally caught up with us and yapped at the cockpit as the engines closed down. They were probably just too fucked to take chunks out of the tyres. Some of the older kids followed a football on to the runway so the barefooted game could continue.

The loadie pressed a button and the ramp whined. A horizontal shaft of daylight appeared where it left the fuselage. It hit the ground and Sam and I walked down into a solid wall of heat.