Tenth Man Down Read Online Free Page B

looking preoccupied. His heart didn’t seem to be in the job, and it was obvious financial worries were preying on his mind.
    Except for myself, married and widowed, and Whinger, who’d been married for a couple of years, but then divorced, without any kids, Andy was the only one who’d got spliced, and with the dire record of the Regiment in this area, everyone was waiting to see how long it would last. Several of the others had woman problems, but nothing that wouldn’t wait the six weeks until we were home again. Looking round the circle again, I reckoned we were a pretty typical SAS team: all fit, all well built, all fairly undemonstrative, all quick on our feet, both physically and mentally, all able to do each other’s jobs, should the need arise.
    Before we’d come out, Stringer had got quite excited about the trip, his first to Africa. He thought it was going to be a great adventure: the Dark Continent and all that. Now, by the fire, Whinger said cynically, ‘Didn’t I tell you? It’s like I said. Where’s the action? Here we are, miles from anywhere. No bar for a thousand miles. Bugger all entertainment. HIV wherever you look.’
    ‘Come on!’ said Pav. ‘We’re gonna have a ball!’
    ‘Have your motor flown out, Pav,’ Danny told him. ‘Take it for a drive on the Chiwembe highway.’
    ‘Thanks, mate. As long as you stump up for the repair bills.’
    Just before we went to Russia, Pav had bought a second-hand XJ 120 Jaguar, flame red, and the wretched thing had become the love of his life. No matter that it had already put six points on his licence, at the slightest opportunity he was away down to Ross and the M50 for what he called a pipe-opener. The idea of driving it out here, on the dirt roads, made him groan.
    ‘Whinger’s right, up to a point,’ said Mart, scratching at his blond scrub. ‘That briefing I got at the med centre about not touching anybody wounded unless I’m wearing rubber gloves – they reckon one in three of the population are carrying the HIV virus.’
    ‘Don’t touch ’em, then,’ said Pav. ‘Just let ’em carry on.’
    There was a pause, and then Stringer said, ‘I reckon they’re all right.’
    ‘Who?’ Pav demanded.
    ‘The Alpha guys.’
    ‘Listen,’ I told him. ‘They’ve been all right so far, but these people are volatile as hell. They can turn in a flash. When I was in Zaire in ninety-one, the whole population went fucking berserk. In Kinshasa, the capital, they started looting shops and houses like savages, trashing everything. They were even nicking amputated limbs from the skips at the back of the hospital.’
    ‘What for?’ Stringer looked a bit sick.
    ‘To eat, of course.’
    ‘Christ!’
    There was another silence while everyone took that in. Then Chalky said, ‘At least we can’t spend any money. There’s that.’
    ‘You wait,’ said Whinger. ‘If we get that week of R and R they promised us at the end, and end up in Sun City, you’ll spend everything you’ve got.’
    Presently, through the bush in the opposite direction, we spotted headlights flaring and swinging in the distance as our supply truck came lurching back towards base. We got up, walking towards it, and within a minute it was pulling up on the open ground in front of our tents. The whole area was pretty dark, with no illumination except the flicker of cooking fires in the distance, but from the speed at which the lorry slid to a halt, I got the impression that something was wrong.
    A cloud of dust rolled forward from behind it, boiling up into the headlights, and a figure I recognised as Andy jumped down off the tailboard.
    ‘Eh, Andy,’ I called. ‘What’s up?’
    ‘Geordie!’ he went, in a strange, tight voice. ‘There’s been an accident.’
    ‘You all right?’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘What about Phil?’
    ‘He’s okay. It wasn’t us. We ran into a group of kids.’
    ‘Oh, Jesus! Anyone killed?’
    ‘I don’t think so. But two of them are quite bad. We