“Yes. I saw some of the women cooking, closely supervised by several soldiers and twice a day they are escorted down to the river to wash or collect water.”
“So, they’re being used for labour,” said Charles.
“Yes, and uh, for other purposes. I saw a couple of girls taken at night to these three tents at the end here. That is why I think the main men are in these ones.”
“Do you think they are Kawa, or Tsaan?” asked Charles.
“I do not recognize them as being from Togodo. We do not make our women wrap themselves in the black cloaks from head to foot.”
“Wait a minute,” said Jonathon sharply. “You didn’t mention that before! You mean like Muslim women are dressed when they go out of doors? But we were talking about the fanatics at supper with …” Then he remembered Ben had not been sitting with them.
“Yes, like that,” admitted Ben. “Is it important?”
“It makes a huge difference,” replied Jonathon, while Charles nodded in agreement.
“But why?” Ben did not understand.
“Because, there’s been a huge insurgence of fundamentalists in several different countries, who are fighting to spread their religion. Some towns have been razed to the ground and Christians have been butchered and killed. This is a new Holy War.”
“I did not know,” muttered Ben.
“What is even more terrifying, these soldiers are fighting for a cause they totally believe in, and they’re quite prepared to commit suicide and die for the cause. Many have strapped explosives to their own bodies and then set them off in crowds of people. We’re not talking about fighters who’ll listen to reason as we know it.”
Both Jefri and Ben looked very uncomfortable and Amie suspected they might make a run for it, slipping away into the night.
“We didn’t ask you how many soldiers there are altogether,” Charles said.
“I think twenty-five, thirty,” replied Ben. “There is also a white woman …”
He got no further before Jonathon broke in. “A white woman?”
“Yes, but she is in the tent with the other women. I do not know if she is with the soldiers or a captive as well. I saw her with the child with the blue teddy bear.”
“Angelina,” Amie murmured softly.
“How do you know she’s white if the women are all wearing burqas?” Charles cut in.
“When they were down at the river, they take them off while they wash, not completely, but I saw one had white skin.”
“It could be one of our friends, someone from Apatu, even from the club,” Amie suggested.
“Unlikely, not after all this time,” replied Jonathon. “We were amazed to learn from Tim Robbins in Umeru, dozens of people from different European countries have left home and come to fight in this Holy War. No one can quite work out why. Apart from having the same religious beliefs, they must be aware of the savagery of many of these groups.”
“Innocent journalists have been beheaded,” Charles said.
“And many innocent villagers, simply because they were Christian,” Jonathon repeated. “So, we must make a plan.”
“Are we going to rescue all the women?” asked Amie hopefully.
Jonathon gave her a scornful look. “Is that what you thought we were going to do? No, not at all, we’re simply going to have a look-see and go back to camp.”
“But I thought …” Amie wailed.
“No Amie,” Jonathon interrupted. “We’re only here to report back ….”
“… to the authorities in Umeru,” Charles finished for him.
“Oh,” Amie was devastated. “But I thought, I mean … not rescue Angelina? Just leave her there?” Amie’s eyes filled with tears.
Jonathon put his arm round her, showing compassion for the first time since she’d appeared. “Be sensible Amie. You don’t even know for sure if it is Angelina.”
“But the blue teddy she …”
“Might have dropped it anywhere, another child may have picked it up or stolen it from her. Maybe it wasn’t the only blue teddy in Apatu. You want it to be Angelina I know that, but it is best she’s not anywhere near here. It would be heart breaking to see her and not be able to do anything about it.”
“You mean, even if we see her, you would just walk away?” Amie couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“Be sensible, there are four of us and up to thirty of them and they’ll be armed to the teeth, not only with guns but possibly explosives as well. And they are fanatics; they’ll kill first before asking questions. I don’t know whether it’s safer to leave you here, or have you with us. Either way this is dangerous.” He gave her a shake. “Now do you realize how stupid it would be to rush in there?”
Amie nodded her head. She really hadn’t thought things through in a logical sense. In her imagination she’d visualized clutching Angelina and comforting her as she helped her away from the horrors and the fear. She’d pictured herself returning to the camp, loving the child and planning a wonderful new life for her. Now it seemed all they were going to do is look and walk away. She decided to keep her eyes open for any opportunity. She had to do something. She couldn’t walk away. She couldn’t.
When Ben got the opportunity, he drew Amie to one side and asked her if she had remembered to bring the camera, so they could get footage of the camp. Amie shook her head, in her hurry to leave Dirk’s camp she’d completely forgotten to pick it up. She felt very ashamed as she admitted this to Ben, but convinced herself it would have been damaged beyond repair after the elephants had played football with her backpack.
The following day Jonathon, Ben and Charles planned out their strategy. They would hide their supplies and leave Jefri and Amie to guard them. Hearing this, Jefri looked more than a little relieved. The men would approach the camp staying on this south side of the river, hide out below the summit of the high ridge closest to the camp and observe as many details as they could. Jonathon marked out the places for the three of them. It would be safer not to descend the ridge on the camp side, he suggested, but keep each other in sight in case they needed to warn of any danger.
The fanatics had set up right next to the river with their tents occupying the widest part of the flat land before the ridge that rose steeply behind them. Charles remarked that the camp was probably in the flood plain, which made him think they were not the brightest soldiers in anyone’s army.
After much debate, it was agreed the patrols would be more frequent east and west of the camp, so they would be safer on the high ridge behind looking down.
It was difficult to recognize either Jonathon or Charles as they covered their faces with wet mud mixed with a dark dye Jonathon produced from his backpack. They covered their hands and wrists and, much to Amie’s astonishment produced two pairs of night vision goggles. Then they assembled weaponry that was stored in small pieces in the rucksacks. She had no idea what kind of guns they were, and she didn’t want to know, but then Jonathon really surprised her when he pushed a small pistol into her hand along with some ammunition.
“This is a Walther PPK, I can’t even show you how to fire it because the noise might carry too far, but I’ll show you how to load it and what to do if you feel you need to kill someone before they kill you.”
Amie gulped. This was all getting very real. This was what she’d got herself into. A moment of guilt went through her as she realised Jonathon would be more vulnerable without the extra gun, because he’d now given it to her. She concentrated hard on what he was demonstrating, quite certain she would never have the courage to pull the trigger. Yes, she remembered asking him to teach her some self-defence, but now it was all too real.
Jonathon showed her several times how to load the bullets into the magazine, push it into the grip, release the safety catch and - in theory - how to fire the gun. He made her load and unload it herself at least a dozen times until he was satisfied she knew what she was doing.
Grabbing her arm he guided her away from the group. He w
alked with her towards the shade and suggested she sit down. “It’s probably too late for this,” he said, “but once more, do you trust Ben?”
“Yes, yes I do trust him. Why do you ask?”
“It’s not impossible he’s leading us into an ambush. This could be a trap. Not everyone is as they seem you know.” Jonathon gave a wry smile.
“You don’t have to remind me,” Amie replied, “you had me fooled for years. But yes, I do trust him, as much as I trust anyone.”
The time dragged once the three men had left, and after chatting to Jefri for a while, Amie wandered around, poking sticks into a termite mound trying to entice the little insects out, but they were having none of it. She gathered small pieces of thin branches and wove them into plaits to make long ropes, but this wasn’t very successful either. The night passed uneventfully, but the next day as the sun rose higher in the sky, and beat down on the earth; Amie and Jefri took shelter under the shade of the wide acacia branches.
They drank sparingly, since there was no obvious place to replenish the water, nibbled on pieces of dried meat and dozed in the heat of the day.
Amie lay gazing at the sky, imagining all kinds of scenarios where she raced into the camp, firing her pistol, scaring everyone, who took one look at her and ran away. She rescued all the prisoners single-handedly and guided them back to Dirk and Helen who welcomed them with open arms. In her dream, Jonathon was standing on the sidelines admiring her courage and congratulating her. He was apologizing profusely for doubting her, when she woke with a start, to see a stag beetle running down her arm. She gently shook it off.
In the distance a few zebra and wildebeest moved leisurely across the landscape grazing as they went, and a small herd of buck joined them, keeping a sharp look out for danger. Amie thought she would never tire of watching these beautiful creatures living wild in their own habitat. This is where they belonged, not in zoos, though those were necessary as breeding venues to make sure species didn’t die out.
The men had been gone for over twenty-four hours. They’d left before dusk and now the light was fading on the following day and there was still no sign of them.
On the second day, Amie and Jefri gathered a few leaves to eat, and walked around a little and Amie climbed a tree to while away the time. Jefri showed her the tracks made by a dung beetle, and how giraffe had been past here in the last few days. He pointed to the hoofmarks made by what Amie understood was some kind of antelope, but Jefri only knew the local name for it so she wasn’t sure which variety he was describing.
When the sun sank on the third day, Amie began to feel unsettled, but reasoned the men would wait until it got dark again before leaving their hiding places. The next night passed and they still hadn’t returned and now Amie was worried. They hadn’t heard any shots, but she wasn’t sure exactly how far away the camp was and how far the sound would travel. Jonathon hadn’t wanted to take a chance when he was teaching her how to use the gun. Ever since he’d given it to her, she’d kept it in her pocket. It was such a small gun, she guessed he’d worn it on his ankle, but looking at it, she was amazed it might be capable of really killing someone. She held it in her hand, even something so tiny looked dangerous and lethal. It might give her some courage, but it was unlikely to be used, certainly not by me, she thought.
The patience shown by the Africans was something that always amazed Amie. When Jefri saw her pacing backwards and forwards the following morning he tried to calm her down.
“They will come in time,” he said. “Many things can stop them from coming.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself,” Amie moaned.
“We must sit and wait,” remarked Jefri lying back and closing his eyes, “and they will come.”
Patience is not high on my list of talents, thought Amie, and wandered off to torment the termites again. Anyway, she reasoned, we can’t sit here forever, we’ll need to go and find water soon. She walked back to rummage in the bags to count the number of full bottles they’d left. If they took care, there was enough for two more days.
The sun sank in the sky and disappeared below the low hills on the horizon, and still there was no sign of the returning party.
Amie scrambled into her familiar tree, convinced she would not be able to sleep a wink, but at some point she must have dozed off. Her dreams were full of images of war films she’d watched on the television back in England. They were never her favourite genre, but Jonathon liked them and she would often curl up on the sofa and read, pausing only to look at the screen occasionally. Now her dreams were full of the battles and skirmishes where soldiers from both sides fired hundreds and hundreds of bullets at each other. None of the movies had seemed very realistic to Amie, despite the high-tech visual effects. She knew the moment the director called ‘cut’, everyone would wander off to the catering van, both warring sides laughing and back-slapping on the way.
But none of that bore any resemblance to the position she was in now. How had she got into a situation like this? She dozed off again and this time she returned to the town where she grew up. Her dream was peppered with images of her family, her mother, father, Sam, her sister and her brood. She could see herself floating over them as they went about their day-to-day lives, all so normal, all so conventional. They knew which roads to take, which shops to enter, which television programmes would blare into their living rooms tonight. It was all safe and secure and yes, predictable. That was the only word to describe lives lived in first world countries by millions, who in past generations had ironed out all the wrinkles caused by tribal in-fighting, wealth management and land ownership.
When Amie finally opened her eyes, she felt as if she’d not slept a wink. As she stretched her arms and twisted her neck, she had a feeling something was different, something had changed.
Cautiously, she got down from her tree and noticed the bags containing their supplies were no longer there. She looked around. Jefri was not there either. She was alone.
She fought down a feeling of panic and took deep breaths as she realised she was shaking from head to toe. He must be here somewhere she thought. She wondered if he went off to find water, so she scouted round looking for signs of his footsteps in the sandy soil, but there’d been so much activity in this small area over several days, it was impossible to be sure which particular prints belonged to Jefri.
She looked a little farther away from the home tree, as she thought of it, but after two hours of frustrated searching she gave up in despair. He can’t have gone and left me, he can’t, he can’t. How could he do that? She crouched down and started to cry. She was on her own and she had never been so terrified in all her life. This wasn’t running blindly away from danger, this was her own fault; she had no one to blame but Amie. She felt very sorry for herself.
A screeching hadeda flew low overhead, followed by its mate and several more which snapped Amie momentarily out of her self-pity. She couldn’t sit here and wait to dehydrate or starve to death, she needed to take action, but what? What were her options?
The sun bouncing on a sparkle of light from low down in a nearby bush caught Amie’s attention. She dashed over to investigate and to her joy she found all their bags and, most importantly, their water bottles nestling in a hollow under the leaves. At least Jefri hadn’t condemned her to starve to death she thought, as she wrestled a snack bar out of its wrapper and took several swigs of water.
She returned to the shade to plan what she was going to do next. It’s pointless staying here, she reasoned. What if the guys never came back? How long should she wait until she too made her way back to Dirk and Helen’s camp? She could only believe that was where Jefri was heading right now. Why hadn’t he told her he was going? I suppose there were dozens of reasons she thought, but he had gone, so did it really matter why?
There was another option of course. She could make for the fanatics or terrorist camp or whatever name applied to it, and see if she could find out what had happened to Jonathon, Charles and
Ben. That would take a lot of courage Amie, she told herself, are you brave enough to do that? To get closer to the enemy?
For the next couple of hours Amie mentally listed the pros and cons of going back to Dirk’s camp, or sitting and waiting. She made an inventory of the remaining supplies and weighed up her chances of survival.
The day dragged on and on until at last Amie could no longer sit and do nothing. She had to take action. She rummaged in Jonathon’s large backpack, past caring if she violated his privacy. There were several things she’d never seen before and didn’t recognize, certainly stuff Jonathon had never shown her. Firstly, there were three box-shaped squares with a flat piece of plastic on the side, and each one was about the size of an extra-large Rubik’s cube. She had no idea what they were for or how to use them, and she dared not fiddle with them, but put them into her pack anyway, they might come in useful. Next, she pulled out four long, cigar-shaped tubes with a ring at one end. Amie twirled them around in her fingers turning them this way and that. She wondered if they were grenades of some kind, but the ones they showed on the movies always resembled small brown pineapples. She thought it would do no harm taking those so she put those in her backpack as well.
She found the tin full of gunk the men used to darken their skin, mixed it with a bit of mud, and plastered it all over her face and hands. She pulled her hat low over her blonde hair to hide it as best she could, glad she had persuaded Helen to cut it short. She tied the bottom of her long trousers tightly and tucked them into her boots. She put on her darkest t-shirt, with her long-sleeved brown jacket over it and pushed the gun into her pocket. She filled her backpack with water bottles, a couple of cans of meat, several packets of biltong and the remaining snack bars. She looked at the knife which was now a little blunt from use, and found a suitable stone and sharpened it.
She was ready, or as ready as she would ever be. She wasn’t feeling any braver, but if she ran away now, she’d feel such a coward. She had to find out what had happened to the men. She sat as patiently as she could and waited for dusk to fall before she set off towards the fundamentalists’ camp.
Amie in Africa Box Set 1 Page 44
