Andy McNab - Recoil

I moved my mouth to her ear. 'I think we're near the mine. I need you to shout to them in French. Tell them it's Nick, Sam and Crucial's friend.'

I got up into a fire position, in case they patrolled towards her voice and I'd got the whole thing wrong.

'Go on, shout.'

She gave it a couple of seconds while she worked out what she wanted to say, then did.

She got a reply, also in French. I understood ' ami ' and ' matin ' and that was about it.

'What are they saying?'

'Sssh, let me listen… They're saying to come out.'

No way. Not without confirmation.

'Tell them to describe Sam. Ask them what colour hair he's got.'

She gobbed off, and smiled as she translated the answer. 'They say it's as orange as the earth. He's a redhead?'

That was good enough for me. 'Tell them we're coming, and there's two of us. One injured, so she'll be carried. Make sure they understand before we move.'

She shouted again, then I got her on to my back and started moving uphill. 'Keep shouting. Tell them we're coming in now.'

I leaned forward into the hill and pumped my hands rhythmically to keep momentum. When we crested, we saw two guys standing nervously in front of a well-camouflaged sangar.

Their AKs were tucked under their arms, but aimed, fingers on triggers.

I moved a bit closer and could see Crucial's arc stakes. These guys must be a standing patrol, the first line of defence, there to give early warning.

A line of comms cord, tied to one of the arc stakes, led off into dead ground. One of the guys gave it a couple of hard tugs and I followed the other out of the sangar, Silky still on my back. The cords would be jerking now from sangar to sangar, all the way down to the inner cordon.

The guy in front of me also started shouting at the top of his voice to make sure we didn't get zapped by friendly fire – a good move, as far as I was concerned.

There was more sporadic gunfire down by the river to our right.

My legs felt so heavy now that I was beginning to stagger. After about a hundred very laboured paces we came to the point where green stopped and orange began.

We were about halfway along the valley. Squaddies ran to and fro below us, and even in the midst of the commotion, miners kept lobbing rocks out of their holes in the ground. On the far side, about two hundred away, I could see the re-entrant where the Nuka lot were harboured. Bodies sat or lay in the mud; others had tucked themselves into the hollows dug into the rock.

Our guide aimed us at a track that led down to the tents, then turned and headed back towards his sangar. I could see Sam pacing along the knoll, issuing instructions, fine-tuning his defences.

The four trenches were now dug, about chest deep, two and a half metres long and a metre wide, on the edge of the knoll so they covered the valley and its flanks. Shit, these guys could dig. Behind each one was a fan-shaped backblast channel to take the shit that blew out of the rear end of an RPG. My eyes followed the line of the track, and I realized then that it wasn't a natural valley at all – it had been gouged out of the hillside, not by an ice-cream scoop but by ANFO and bare human hands.

The hillside was precipitous, and with the world's heaviest bergen on my back, and legs that were close to buckling, I didn't stand a chance.

'I'm going to have to do this backwards.' There was no other way. 'Hold tight.'

I turned round so my hands, knees and feet were in the mud and began to lower myself down the track like it was a ladder.

'Stop, stop!'

Silky clambered off and collapsed in a heap. 'This'll be quicker.' She started to slide down on her arse, keeping her injured foot in the air and using her hands and good leg to steer.

We slid down the thirty or forty metres to the tents. I managed to ease her on to my back again and staggered the last few paces past the cooking pot and the still-smoking fire.

Sam came across to join us. He was on the sat phone, and not happy.

I laid Silky down beside the fire, and lifted the lid from the pot. I passed her a knackered wooden spoon of the lumpy brown stuff and nodded at the jerry-can. 'Start getting some of that into you. It's not exactly Perrier but it's clean.'

Sam was listening now, not talking. He didn't seem surprised to see us.

'Nick's back.' He held the phone out to me.

'He over the river yet?'

Sam shook his head. 'Moving slow with the gunshot wound. And they're following him up.'

'He know the bridge is down?'

'Aye. Not happy…'

I took the phone.

'Surveyors? You still got them?' Standish was out of breath. There was gunfire in the background, and I could hear moans, then Bateman screaming, 'Shut up! Fucking stupid kaffir!'

'No. One down, one missing.'

'Shit.'

I caught sight of Sunday, now tethered at the entrance of the tent Yin and Yang had been sitting in. He was surrounded by scraps of paper and just stared back at me with his big dark eyes. It was almost as if he knew what I'd done to the kid by the deadfall.

I turned away and tried to concentrate on Standish.

'I got a crossing point for you.' I explained about the tree and the sangar on the high ground. 'Call when you get across. We'll warn the standing patrol.'

The phone went dead.

Sam checked the watch hanging round his neck. 'You tried, and that's good enough. It'll be up to Standish to explain to the big Swiss cheese. He won't like it. That's five of them dead now. Two out there, three of disease. The Chinese won't be happy either. But that's not our problem right now, is it? We got just under four hours of light left. That's when things will kick off around here. He'd better grip that gunshot wound and get a move on.'

We moved back to Silky, who was struggling to lift the heavy jerry-can to her lips.

'She's fucked her ankle. I'll have to try and sort it out.'

Sam nodded. 'Soon as you've squared her away, come and find me. I've got work for you.'

Silky wasn't the only one who needed food and fluid. I wasn't feeling at all good. An out-of-tune military band was banging away inside my head, and my whole body felt drained. I'd been running every day in Lugano and using Stefan's gym in the house, so it wasn't like I was out of condition, but none of that counts for much when you're dehydrated and fucked.

I scooped myself another helping of dirty brown sludge. Silky finished drinking and handed me the jerry-can.

'I'll be back in a minute.' I headed for the boy.

I could now see that the sheets of paper were covered with crayon drawings. Sunday really did look like a schoolboy now, and that made things worse. I tossed him my rice can. He caught it and started digging hungrily.

Silky looked curious when I returned. 'Who's that?'

'Sunday. A child soldier we picked up last night.'

She got up and hobbled over to the boy while I got the jerry-can to my mouth. I could feel the fluid work its way down and start to fill my stomach.

Silky wasn't impressed. 'Oh, my God, what are you doing? He's not a dog!'

I tried to lower myself to the ground without my leg muscles screaming at me to stop. Then I realized what was on her mind.

'It's inhuman!'

'Stop, stop, stop!' I jumped up and ran after her. The pain had disappeared. 'Don't go near him!' I grabbed her as she got within biting distance. 'He was ripping chunks of flesh out of people last night. Just leave him alone – let him settle down.'

'Nick, he's just a boy.'

'He's getting fed, he's getting watered. He's OK. Come on.' I steered her back to the fire. 'He's not the only one who needs sorting out.'

As she sat down, I straightened her leg and supported it on my thigh. I undid her laces and gently eased off her boot. The bruising round her ankle was now a sulphurous yellow.