4. Gray Retribution

by Alan McDermott

  They were interrupted by a volley of fire from the north, the signal that the enemy were once again hot on their tail.

  ‘Fetch the men who are staying and tell the others to clear out,’ Gray said. He checked the magazine on the rifle he’d liberated from one of the enemy dead. Finding it half-empty, he took one from Sonny.

  ‘Go,’ Gray said, and ran to join the fight.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Wednesday 9 October 2013

  Fene Adebola had been fifteen minutes away from ordering his men to advance on the enemy camp when the distant chatter of gunfire told him he’d missed his opportunity. The initial reports suggested the Agbi were trying to break out, so he’d sent everyone in the direction of the battle.

  As he jogged towards the battleground at the head of a column of armed boys, he asked for the latest updates, and it soon became apparent that they were facing formidable defences. According to those already in the fight, they were facing more than a dozen foreigners, no doubt the occupants of the plane that had recently been shot down as it buzzed the airport. He was losing men at an alarming rate, but he was sure the foreigners would think twice when faced with his child army.

  For years, boy soldiers had been used in armed conflicts throughout Africa, and few armies had any compunction about utilising them—or killing them, for that matter. In the West, however, Fene knew that a different mindset prevailed. Life had a higher value, and children were to be nurtured rather than annihilated. Western armies had strict rules of engagement and an inexhaustible list of battlefield taboos, but in Fene’s mind there was only one way to win a war: kill the enemy. If that meant using rape and mutilation to instil fear, so be it. If boys were to be thrown into the kill zone before they reached puberty, all that mattered was that they make a contribution to the fight. In this case, their job was to force the enemy to either kill them, or run away.

  He realised that after all the training, in some cases months of mental and physical conditioning, the vast majority of them would be dead before the sun rose.

  Not that it mattered.

  Finding new recruits wasn’t all that difficult, and once he’d replenished the ranks he would once more offer them to the highest bidder. This time it had been Sese Obi, and perhaps, if the war went well, he would require some more. If not, there were plenty of others willing to pay a decent price for his services.

  The sound of gunfire reached a crescendo as they approached the battle lines. Fene told the boys to wait while he consulted the men who were already engaged in the fight, and he returned a few minutes later. He told the boys the way had been cleared, and ordered them to advance on the enemy.

  A few of the children obeyed him, but for the most part, the line held. Fear was etched on tear-stained faces, eyes pleading for him to change his mind, but Fene wasn’t moved. He pulled out a pistol and shot the nearest child in the head.

  ‘You will attack our enemy, or I will kill every single one of you, right here, right now!’

  Despite their tender years, the children knew that the possibility of death was far more attractive than a certain bullet to the brain, and they began walking slowly into the darkness. Another shot rang from his pistol, and they picked up the pace, firing as they ran, each waiting for the inevitable bullet that would put an end to the nightmare.

  When the firing stopped, Gray ordered the men to fall back to where Levine and the other half of the team had been busy preparing the first of the ambushes. They hadn’t gone far when bullets once again began to thud into the trees around them, and they upped the pace to a sprint. It took a minute to reach the others, after crossing an open area the size of a football field.

  The kill zone.

  Gray stopped at the treeline and took the controls to the remaining sentinel from Sonny. He waited until the first of the attackers was visible across the open expanse, then he ran into cover, hoping to draw the enemy in for those lying in wait.

  An armed, human wall jogged towards them, and Gray was glad to see the Malundian troops holding fire, ignoring the wild, incoming rounds and allowing the enemy to enter the danger zone. According to Smart, Okeke and his men hadn’t exactly covered themselves in glory thus far. Perhaps they now realised that with the arrival of his team, one more fuck-up would see them relegated to carrying the elderly rather than defending their land.

  Gray was seconds away from opening up when something struck him as wrong. The approaching figures were much smaller than he’d expected, and when the moon peeked through a gap in the clouds he could see that some had barely reached puberty.

  They were well within range, and he had about ten seconds to make a decision.

  ‘Tom,’ Levine whispered into the comms unit, ‘they’re just kids!’

  ‘Understood,’ Gray replied. ‘Wait one.’

  Gray’s training told him that anyone running towards them firing a weapon was a legitimate target, and during selection it had been suggested that they might one day face this very scenario. However, it was much easier to hypothesise about bringing down a child than it was to actually do it in the heat of battle. Then again, he realised that you didn’t always get to choose your enemy, and if they were to leave this country alive, a tough decision had to be made.

  Thoughts of his son Daniel came flooding, unbidden, into his mind. He would have been six years old now, if he hadn’t been stolen from him so cruelly three years earlier, the incident that had driven Gray to actions no-one could ever have predicted. The pain he’d felt since Daniel’s death was something he would wish on no man, so filling dozens of tiny body bags was not going to happen.

  That said, they had to be stopped.

  ‘Shoot low,’ he advised the men. ‘Go for the legs only.’

  The troops adjusted their aim, lowering the sights a couple of feet from centre mass. Like Gray, many were uncomfortable with the idea of cutting kids down, but the weapons the boys were carrying were no toys, and it was self-preservation that caused the first of the rounds to fly from the men’s rifles.

  Youths began to collapse a split-second before Hansi Cisse could scream out his child’s name.

  ‘Nafari!’

  Hansi stood and broke from the treeline, ignoring the hot metal whizzing around him as he ran towards his son. The boy stopped in his tracks, screaming children surrounding him, the gun held across his chest looking huge in his tiny hands. Hansi had tears in his eyes as he sprinted into the kill zone. More children fell as his friends laid down covering fire and he scooped his son into his arms and dropped to the ground, his body offering the child protection from the flying bullets.

  The remaining children took flight. The sight of the huge soldier bearing down on them and the screams from the fallen enough to make them turn and run for their lives.

  It was the worst decision they could have made.

  Bullets flew from their own ranks as Fene kept his promise to kill those who fled from the battle. Unlike Gray’s team, none of his men aimed to wound, and child after child dropped to the ground, their brief sojourn on the planet at an abrupt end. Those that remained standing were stuck in no man’s land, with death facing them no matter which way they ran. On the journey into the area, Fene had told them tales of what would happen if they were ever captured by the enemy. Their limbs would be chopped off and their torsos thrown into open graves, to be buried alive; the more fortunate would have their stomachs split open and they would be hung by their own intestines.

  All lies, but enough to deter them from capitulating.

  With no real choice, they once again ran towards the enemy lines.

  ‘Cease fire!’ screamed Gray. ‘Johnny, tell them to drop their weapons and we won’t fire!’

  Okeke conveyed the offer, but the boys kept coming, Hansi and his son running twenty yards ahead of them. The soldier and his boy made it safely back to the cover of the trees, thanks to some extremely inaccurate fire. Clearly, many of the children were using AK-47s for the first time.

  Cisse dro
pped behind a large trunk and hugged his son with every ounce of strength in his body, the battle raging around them forgotten. Nafari reciprocated, tears streaming down his cheeks, having been convinced that he’d never see his family again. Johnny left them to their reconciliation and continued shouting at the oncoming horde, urging them to lay down their arms, but the onslaught continued, his words going unheeded.

  Nafari extricated himself from Hansi’s grip and ran out into the open.

  ‘Kwame!’ he shouted, spotting one of the boys he’d spent a few days with in the hut. ‘It’s okay, it’s my father!’

  Kwame hesitated, clearly unsure what to believe. Like Nafari, he hadn’t spent much time in the camp, and his indoctrination wasn’t as complete as Fene would have liked. Most of those who had been under the commander’s care for months were already down; they’d followed orders and had been the first casualties. That left the newcomers, but for them the prospect of freedom was tempered by Fene’s warnings of atrocities committed by the enemy.

  Nafari continued to stare at Kwame, projecting a sense of calm and safety as best he could. He saw the expression on Kwame’s face change: no-one was pointing a gun at him, no-one threatening to disembowel him.

  Decision made, Kwame dropped his rifle and ran, sprinting furiously until he reached Nafari’s side. Once behind enemy lines, he turned to face the battlefield, and saw dozens of unarmed children swarming towards him.

  In less than a minute, the last of the boy soldiers had reached the Agbi lines and taken cover behind whatever they could find. Without exception, they all wondered what lay in store. Was Nafari telling them the truth? Were they really free? Or was it just an elaborate ploy to lure them into a nightmare of pain and torture?

  Their fears were allayed somewhat when they were told to follow Hansi, who would lead them to join the other refugees heading for the border, though some were still apprehensive. Was this part of some diabolical plan, or were they actually safe?

  They certainly weren’t being fired at, so they took it as a good sign and followed Cisse and Nafari, who were walking hand in hand into the darkness.

  The sudden capitulation meant a lull in the fighting, only the cries of the wounded carrying in the darkness. Gray knew that no-one else would be coming across the open ground—at least, no sane person—and so the likely tactic would be a flanking manoeuvre. That meant taking the long way round in the cover of the jungle, which gave Gray and his team the advantage. They could easily fall back to the second ambush point before anyone caught up with them, and this time the sentinels would also be lying in wait.

  To do that, though, meant leaving a few dozen children screaming in the darkness. He could only estimate the extent of their injuries, but he knew many would die without urgent treatment, and there were surely indigenous animals that would make short work of them.

  Abandoning them was not an option.

  ‘On me,’ he said over the comms, and in seconds his team had gathered around him, some taking a knee as they awaited instructions.

  ‘Options?’ Gray asked, looking around the group.

  Each man was entitled to his own take on the situation, but he figured there would only be a couple of suggestions between them: fall back to the next ambush point, or take the fight to the enemy so that the injured could be treated. The sensible option was to retreat, but they all knew the fallen children would be unlikely to receive medical attention from their own side.

  ‘I’m not saying we leave them,’ one of the new arrivals said, ‘but even if we take them with us, we’ve only got rudimentary medical supplies, and certainly not enough to go around.’

  ‘And it’s not like we’re likely to stumble across a hospital any time soon,’ another agreed.

  Others chimed in, suggesting that it would take hours to fashion field stretchers for the wounded and that infection would set in long before they managed to get them to safety.

  ‘Okay, so we know what we can’t do,’ Gray conceded. ‘How about what we can do?’

  ‘We could ask Hansi’s son how they got here,’ Sonny suggested. ‘If they arrived in transport, we could use that to get to the border a lot quicker.’

  Gray nodded, and Sonny got on the comms to relay the message. A minute later, they had confirmation that three trucks were parked close by, likely with enough capacity to carry everyone in the ever-growing party.

  ‘There’s also bad news,’ Sonny added. ‘Hansi’s son estimates the enemy strength to be at least four hundred.’

  ‘So it takes us a few minutes longer,’ Gray said. ‘Divvy up the ammo and let’s get going.’

  ‘Not so fast, Tom,’ Smart said. He gave Gray a gentle dig in the ribs and saw his boss wince as the pain racked his body.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ Gray grunted. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘You’re in no state to be frolicking in the jungle. Join up with the others and we’ll be back with the trucks soon.’

  Gray started to protest, but looks from Sonny and the others told him Len was right. His injuries could slow him down, and there were plenty of men to complete the mission without having to worry about an invalid.

  ‘Point taken.’

  ‘Glad you’re seeing sense,’ Sonny said. ‘Besides, if you die, who’s gonna sign my pay cheque?’

  Gray smiled at the joke, knowing full well that self-interest was the last thing on Sonny’s mind.

  Carl Levine was holding the handset that controlled the sentinels on either side of the ambush area. He’d turned the cameras one-eighty, pointing them into the jungle, and could see people moving across the screen. ‘They’re on their way,’ he told the group, pointing towards the treeline to the left of the open ground.

  Gray asked if they were coming from both sides, but Levine shook his head.

  ‘Okay, you guys have some fun and let me know when you’ve secured transport.’

  Gray trotted away as best he could, leaving the men to prepare for the next encounter.

  Fene Adebola wasn’t surprised that most of the boys had decided to abscond. He’d cautioned Obi that not all were ready, though the number of boys who lay screaming on the battlefield was a testament to his work. Every single one of them had been through the entire induction, whereas those who lay dead or had vanished were the late arrivals.

  He’d been paid for the boys and had delivered them. Caveat emptor, as far as he was concerned.

  Still, there was an extra ten thousand dollars to be earned, and that meant wiping out what remained of the Agbi resistance.

  Fene gathered the men and led them around the clearing rather than taking the suicide route across open ground, hundreds of soldiers forming a thick column behind him. He led them at pace towards the enemy, the time for subtlety gone. He had the numerical advantage and was confident that he could win a war of attrition, so there was no need for the silent approach.

  He’d covered barely fifty yards when a rifle on full automatic opened up, cutting down two dozen soldiers from the middle of the column before anyone could react. Belatedly, his men fought back, sending thousands of rounds into the jungle at an unseen enemy.

  ‘Hold your fire!’ Fene yelled, and the message was passed down the line.

  The shooting eventually petered out, and silence returned. Fene strode down the line towards the carnage, enraged at his men’s profligate consumption of ammunition.

  ‘What are you firing at?’

  ‘We were attacked,’ one soldier replied, gesturing towards the bodies littering the ground.

  ‘By one man, if my ears serve me right!’

  The soldier looked sheepish, but Fene didn’t have time to teach him basic weaponry. He turned and stood with his hands on his hips, peering into the darkness, but saw no sign of a threat.

  ‘At least you got him,’ he said bitterly. ‘Now, move out!’

  Levine had the giant in his sights, but unfortunately one of the incoming rounds had destroyed the sentinel’s firing mechanism, rendering it unable to tak
e the shot.

  ‘Looks like they brought King Kong along,’ he whispered to Smart, who glanced at the screen. The man filled the frame and looked menacing to say the least, but both knew he would bleed like anyone else.

  ‘I’ll leave that one to you,’ Smart joked. ‘Let’s do this.’

  He rose to a crouch and moved slowly towards the head of the line. Levine swapped the handset for his rifle and followed, eyes straining to adjust to the darkness once more.

  The diversion had given the rest of the team the opportunity to flank the enemy, and two others were covering the open space in case anyone broke cover. They were all in place, just awaiting Smart’s signal.

  It came from the muzzle of his AK-47 as a round tore through the air and embedded itself in an unsuspecting skull, closely followed by scores more as the team opened up in full take-down mode. A quarter of the enemy were wiped out before they could organise themselves and return fire, but the assault was too well-coordinated. More fell to the superior accuracy of the ambushers, who started moving in to finish the job.

  One of the British soldiers took a stray round to the shoulder, kicking him out of the fight, but the remainder pushed the attack, colouring the jungle floor crimson with the blood of their victims.

  The coppery aroma mixed with the cordite to create the heady odour of death, and Sonny was savouring the familiar smell when the firing pin fell on an empty chamber. He ejected the magazine and reached for the last one in his pocket, slamming the half-empty clip into the port and picking out the next silhouette. Two shots dropped the target and he moved on to the next, keenly aware that the incoming rounds were diminishing rapidly.

  They’d blitzed the enemy, but after taking out two more he was once again left with an empty magazine. He screamed out for more, only to find that everyone else was in the same boat. The only way they were going to find more rounds was to get in amongst the enemy and steal them from the dead.