Recoil

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Davy had offloaded his 175 Yamaha and gone ahead to recce the valley. He’d be back soon, unless the rebels had caught him. We’d been training Mobutu’s troops against these guys, and we knew that knitting baby bootees and collecting china thimbles wasn’t high on their list of favourite hobbies.

When you’re up against the kind of guys who routinely machete off an entire village’s lips because one of the locals has been overheard saying something not nice about the president, you know it’s time to check chamber.

Our four ancient, rusting Renault trucks were spread out and static just below the crest of the high ground. The drivers had killed their engines the moment we got here. It wasn’t something you’d normally do with old wagons like these, in case they refused to fire up again, but we didn’t have a whole lot of choice; the Zaïreans had only been able to find us a couple of dozen jerry-cans of fuel at such short notice, and those engines drank like a Swede on a stag night.

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