Andy McNab - Recoil

'Don't worry, you tried. Good job on the claymores, anyway. Well done. Sort yourself out and get to my fire trench. Time for Plan B.' He managed a smile. 'Whatever Plan B is…'

I left them to it, not sure if he'd made me feel any better about the fuck-up.

Back at the position, I kept above ground as I pushed the GPMG's bipods and pistol grip into the mud, rested the link on the wooden crate top, then lowered the launcher into the corner of the trench.

'Nick? Is that you, Nick?'

She couldn't disguise her relief. 'Oh, thank God, Nick. I thought-'

'I'm OK.'

Tim sparked up from the shadows: 'The villagers?'

'Either dead or done a runner.' I thought I'd leave out the bit about the women. Silky had been through enough.

Tim raised himself painfully to a sitting position. 'Are there wounded?'

'There must be. I've brought back seven of the orphanage kids. They're the only ones I found alive. I'm sorry, I saw one of your Mercy Flight guys… I don't know about the other.'

He slumped back on to the cot. 'Get me out of this hole, Nick. Please, I want to help. I want to do something.'

I could hear a low murmur from alongside the kids' tent. 'In a minute, mate. I've got to go, but I'll be back.' I picked up my AK.

Sam was outside the tent with Bateman. He swung to face me. 'You see any of the patrol down there?'

'Just dead, and none of the sangars was firing.'

'Not one?'

'I saw the front sangars being overrun. So, dead or done a runner.'

Bateman muttered, 'I told you these fuckers would do this… When the going gets tough, they just fuck off. I told you – cut their fucking hair, that's the way to keep them under control, man.'

Sam ignored him. 'Nuka?'

Crucial came out of the tent and I told them exactly what I'd seen. I started to dip the link into a water-filled sag in the tent to get rid of the mud. 'Some of the women got dragged off when they legged it.' We all knew that wasn't because the LRA boys needed help with the washing-up.

Crucial was breathing heavily, pissed off big-time.

I cut away from that stuff: it wasn't going to help us. It had happened; we had to move on.

Silky appeared out of the gloom. 'Where are they?'

Sam pointed into the tent and she disappeared. 'OK, we go down into the valley. I want the guns up here. We need that firepower. We bring back any casualties we come across. But no LRA, apart from kids, OK?' He slapped Bateman on the shoulder. 'I want you to cover us with the gun. Take my trench. We'll go in and out on the left side, same route you took, OK?'

I slipped the link from round my neck and handed it to Bateman. He threw them over his shoulder.

'They'll be back, man, once they've licked their wounds. Just like dogs, they'll be back.' He watched the clouds scudding past the moon. 'Those fuckers will wait until first light so it's easier to keep control now we've kicked their arses. Their heads will be full to bursting with that ghat shit.' He paused and turned back towards us. 'And a side portion of kindoki.'

It was only then that I realized one of us was missing. 'Standish?'

'I left him in the trench.'

Sam was already walking towards it. Crucial and I weren't far behind.

Standish was leaning against the far wall of the fire trench, arms resting on the mud at either side of it like he was floating in a jacuzzi. Sam and Crucial hunched down into the backblast channel. I sank on to my knees.

He glowered at me. 'What went wrong with the claymores?'

'Not sure.' I shrugged. 'Second reel of firing cable might have been contaminated, or the plunger didn't kick out enough amps. Maybe even a knackered det.'

Jacuzzi over. It was like I'd thrown a switch. He pushed himself off the trench wall. 'We nearly lost the firefight. We have lost Sam's patrol. This nightmare is all down to you!' He jabbed a finger at me to underline every word. 'If you'd done your fucking job correctly, we wouldn't have had half the fucking LRA in the valley, and Sam's patrol unable to support us.' He turned to face the scene of my crime. 'We wouldn't be in this fucking situation.'

I was tempted to suggest that next time he could rig the fucking thing up, but knew it was pointless to rise to the bait.

He switched to Sam. 'And now we have the other half of your church here, what's the plan? Deafen these drug-crazed heathens with semiautomatic gospel songs? Or maybe beat them off with copies of the Good News Bible?'

Sam didn't rise to it either. 'I'm going down there with these two. We need the guns. Bateman will cover us on the one Nick brought up. You can have the RPG.'

Standish had other ideas. 'No, you're not. We're leaving. They're going to take the mine – there aren't enough of us. We need to use whatever darkness is left to cover us out of here right now, get back to the strip and evacuate to Cape Town.'

I heard the clanking of link as Bateman returned. He jumped into the trench and moved the weapon forward on to the parapet.

Sam kept his cool, but wasn't giving up without a fight. 'What about the Mercy Flight people? Both are injured – one's a stretcher case. How can we move them in the dark? We'd land up with even more casualties. And how are we going to cross the river at night with them strapped into cots?

'Then there's the kids. They're scared – they'll get lost. We need to control the situation, not flap and run. Our best chance is to stay here and fight. At first light, we make a break for it. If it works, all well and good. If it doesn't, well, tough. None of us is going to care, because we'll be history. But it's better than turning our backs on these people.'

Standish flicked his hand disdainfully. 'Get real. Think about yourself, think about the future. We need to get back to Cape Town and reorganize, and we need to do it right now.

'You two -' he pointed at Sam and Crucial '- you can go and play golf while I go to Switzerland and devise a plan to retake the mines. I'll get the backing. We'll recruit, we'll train, and then we'll move back in-country and carry on as planned. But that's not going to happen unless we leave now. And there's too much at stake to mess around.'

Crucial clenched his jaw. 'Too much cash, you mean?'

Standish thrust himself the half-metre or so to front him. 'I've never seen you handing it back.'

I adjusted the AK across my thigh as I knelt in the mud. I'd had enough of this. 'Listen, the longer you lot debate this shit, the longer we don't have those guns up here. Moving or not, we need them. Let's get out there while there's still time.'

Bateman lifted up the top cover of his gun and cleared the feed-tray.

Standish turned. His face was level with Sam's knees. 'This is not for discussion. I'm ordering you to start moving towards the airstrip immediately. Leave everyone behind. We don't need them. If we stay here we'll die, and not achieve a thing by doing so.'

Sam stood up. 'No. We're leaving no one.' There was quiet menace in his voice. 'We stand our ground until first light, and then we try to break out with the wounded and the walking. You can do whatever you want.'

Bateman slammed down the top cover and gave it another smack with his clenched fist. 'No, he isn't going to do what the fuck he wants, man. We are all staying.' He squared his shoulders. 'I don't give two shits about all these charity people.' He encompassed the whole valley with a majestic wave of his hand. 'All these miners, these kids – if I'm honest, I don't give a shit. But I won't leave other soldiers to die. That's not the way it's done, man.'

He was the bigger, stronger man – and this was the Congo, not the paradeground at Sandhurst or a guest slot on Newsnight – and Standish knew it.

'My first operation was Uric. We went to destroy a training camp in Mozambique. Op Uric, you heard of it?'