Andy McNab - Recoil

We had the runners from the fire group streaming down from the high ground.

Sam jerked his head round and assessed. 'I'll keep forward – you take them, you take them!'

I grabbed my gun by the carry handle and swung it round on to the edge of the backblast channel. There must have been twenty, thirty of them coming down the hill at us, forty metres away and closing.

I squeezed off short, sharp bursts. Some went down but the rest kept coming.

The first wave screamed on to the flat of the knoll, no more than twenty away, so close I could hear the squelch of mud under their feet.

They dropped their empty weapons, and pulled gollocks.

The biggest, ugliest of the front runners zeroed in on me like removing my head from my shoulders was his only mission in life. I fired from point-blank. He was so close, I almost had to kneel to get the elevation up to him.

His mud-splattered face was set in a frenzied snarl as he raised his blade.

I gave him a big burst and his gollock clattered into the fire trench. His blood gushed over my face as he buckled over the gun barrel and started to sizzle.

Sam turned to back Crucial as I heaved the body off the gun and tipped him into the mud. His flesh smelled like scorched crackling.

There was another blur of movement from my left. I dipped down to grab Sam's AK and snapped back up in the aim.

A rope flailed behind his leg as he ran.

'Sunday! Stop!'

Crucial had a stoppage and dropped from view to change mags.

Sam stepped up his fire.

I flicked the safety lever down and fired the whole magazine to cover the boy as he ran in blind panic towards the track.

Finally, out of ammo, I dropped the weapon and scrambled out of the trench after him.

The LRA coming up the valley were so close I could make out which football clubs they supported, and tell the men from the boys. But I couldn't let Sunday go. I couldn't let the poor little fucker slip through my hands.

It took just a few strides to catch him up behind Silky's fire trench and jump on to his back. We both fell into the mud.

He scrabbled and bucked to get free, screaming in panic as rounds pinged over our heads. I pinned him by the shoulders, got hold of his wrists, and dragged him towards Silky.

'It's OK, Sunday, come on!'

His eyes looked like they were about to jump out of their sockets. He wasn't going to come quietly.

I screamed for her: 'Help me, help me!'

I half jumped, half fell the last few metres towards her.

A man came tearing towards us in cut-down jeans and a seriously distressed Bob Marley T-shirt. A gollock jerked in his hand like someone had just connected him up to the national grid.

I pulled Sunday towards me and rolled into the backblast channel. His eyes were fixed on mine.

Feet splashed mud against my neck and I could smell the crazed fucker's rancid breath as he bent over me, gollock raised. His sweat dripped on to my face as he swung the blade.

An AK fired a rapid burst from behind him, and the guy piled into me, arms outstretched, flattening us against the mud.

I struggled free.

Tim lay behind me, fighting the pain after dragging himself off the cot. He still gripped the weapon, his face showing the same grim determination with which I held on to Sunday's bony little wrists.

I knelt down and held his face between my hands. 'It's OK. You're safe.' I smiled. He stared back, not understanding a word. But maybe he felt it.

Sam was going ballistic. 'Where are you, Nick? Come on!'

I threw Sunday over my shoulder, and legged it back to my position. I wasn't going to let him feel abandoned.

Sam was firing forwards and bodies were piled in front of him. His tracer didn't even have time to ignite as it hammered into others, less than a hundred away. His gun pointed down the knoll and he was almost lying across the front of the trench to get the line of fire.

I dropped Sunday into the trench next to me.

Sam sprayed another burst into the frenzied incomers. 'We're losing it, Nick!'

I grabbed the sat phone. 'Lex, you still got your fuel on board?'

'Always, man.'

'We got them a hundred away and closing. Listen in.' I told him what I needed.

'Roger that, man. Orbiting right. Coming in from the west.'

'I don't give a shit about that, mate – just get here.'

They scrambled up the slippery knoll. Some still fired weapons as they climbed, others brandished gollocks.

I killed men and kids in wellington boots and trainers, jeans and shorts. All of them screamed, so high and so loud they seemed oblivious to our guns. We dropped them like targets in a video game, and as soon as they fell, others immediately took their places.

The An12 came in fast and low.

The ramp was down, and a succession of blue fifty-gallon drums of aviation fuel tumbled down it and out of its arse. I caught a glimpse of the loadie as he yanked frantically on webbing straps to release even more.

I didn't wait for them all to fall, just fired into whatever was already in the mud. The one-infour would do the rest.

Some of the drums had taken bodies with them into the mud. High-octane fuel spurted from the holes I'd drilled and three of them ignited, one after the other. As soon as there was enough heat, the fuel gases would expand and rupture the casing, and we'd get all the explosions we needed.

Crucial was up with a launcher. He had a better idea. 'Cover! Cover!'

I ducked into the trench as he kicked off a round into the valley.

Death came quickly to anyone within forty metres as the RPG detonation ignited the fuel and the shockwave vaporized it into an instant fireball.

The heat washed over us as another round kicked off.

The screams from burning bodies below us were drowned as the second round set off a chain reaction.

We jumped back up to man the guns, but this time there was nothing to fire at.

Human torches blundered into each other as flames engulfed the front half of the valley. The rest was filled with survivors running for their lives.

Lex was high in the brilliant blue sky, sunlight flashing off his wings. I brought the phone to my ear. 'We're not taking fire.'

'After that I should fucking hope not, man.'

He couldn't resist a little victory waggle as the aircraft banked and roared back up the valley.

Not even the cicadas disturbed the shocked silence around us. The devastation was almost too much to take in. Bodies were scattered around our fire trenches by the dozen, but down there, among the flames and smoke, they were strewn like trees after a hurricane.

I turned to Sam as the choking cloud enveloped our position.

Crucial was still in his trench, holding his hand to his mouth. 'I lost a diamond!' Blood dribbled over his fingers. 'I lost one of my diamonds!'

Budget-size heads popped up over the parapets of the two trenches. RPG propellant still burned in the mud behind them and the smell of cordite drenched the air.

Silky emerged from her trench and I did a plunger mime and a thumbs-up.

'Come on, let's go.' Sam was in the backblast channel, growling like the pale-faced, skirt-wearing oatmeal savage he was. 'Game's over. Switch on.'

A bony hand reached up and closed round my thumb.

I looked down to see Sunday on his arse in the bottom of the fire trench. 'Mr Nick. Mr Nick…' There was just a hint of a smile. I gave him a bigger one back.

Thursday, 15 June Rwanda 10:46 hours Sam and Crucial stood to either side of me outside the old breezeblock and wriggly-tin church. Eight little heads sat huddled in the shade at our feet, just as they had at Nuka and the mine. But what a difference a few days can make.