The Perfect Soldier Read Online Free

water, then wiped his mouth and glanced back over his shoulder. An avenue of red-tipped stakes marked the extent of his morning’s work: ten more metres of this shit-hole cleared of mines, another tiny patch of Angola painstakingly made safe. The mines he’d found and defused lay where he’d dug them out, an irregular row of dark green hockey pucks, no bigger than a man’s fist, upended in the dust. Thirteen down, he thought grimly. Twenty million to go.
    Up on the road, safely out of blast range, the Angolan reached for a pair of binoculars and McFaul lifted a tired arm, circling one finger in the air, a private signal which meant he was nearly through. Four more minutes, he thought. Then it’ll be Domingos’s turn.
    He sat back for a moment or two on his haunches, rubbing his leg, feeling the cramp beginning to ease. They’d been working this site for five days now, opening another path to the river bank. If the rumours of a big new UNITA offensive were true then the aid organisations would pull everyone out of Muengo, and if that happened then the locals would be on their own again. Little food, no fuel to cook with, and an ever-greater reliance on the loop of sluggish brown water that girdled the city to the north. With luck, the demining teams could make it in time. Especially if UNITA held off.
    McFaul lowered the visor again and stretched for the bucket by his side, splashing more water to soften the parched earth. Summer had come early this year, a succession of cloudless days that had taken the temperature into the high eighties. With power supplies non-existent, and fuel for the generator scarce, even life after dark had become a series of impossible challenges: how to stay cool, how to stay sane, how to relax and take your mind off the world’s worst job.
    McFaul shrugged, and began to probe the darkened earth, back on his belly again, reaching forward, sliding the bayonet into the soil, inserting it obliquely, maintaining an angle of between fifteen and thirty degrees. Survival at this game meant sticking to a handful of rules: not hurrying, not cutting corners, learning to trust the simplest of technologies. While the mines got smarter by the year – non-metal construction, clever camouflage, sophisticated anti-disturbance devices – the guys who were left to clear them up had to rely oneighteen inches of bare metal and their own powers of concentration. To anyone watching, McFaul knew he must look weird, shuffling slowly forward on his hands and knees, testing every inch of soil with the bayonet, in out, in out, time after time. If there was such a thing as Zen gardening, then this was surely it.
    McFaul emptied the last of the water from the bucket, eyeing the patch of dampened earth. On top of his overalls, he wore a heavy black waistcoat, specially woven body-armour, and he could feel the sweat running down his chest towards his belly. The waistcoats were compulsory now, standard kit in the minefields. Some of the guys called them ‘LCV’s, a glum, fingers-crossed acronym for ‘Last Chance Vests’, and after Kuwait, McFaul knew why.
    He felt the bayonet snag, the faintest tremor, and he eased the blade out, readjusting his position before inserting it again, the same line. Keeping the bayonet at a shallow angle meant that when you found a mine you were likely to make contact with the side of the thing, away from the sensitive pressure pad on top. The pressure pad was the bit you stood on. Even the weight of a child’s foot would be enough to set it off.
    McFaul began to work the soil away, using a soft, camel-hair paintbrush, tiny circular movements, gradually exposing the mine. It was the same kind as the others he’d disinterred, a Chinese Type 72A, a tiny thing, no bigger than a tin of shoe polish. Inside, it contained six ounces of high explosive, not the biggest bang in the world but quite enough to take your foot off. Mines like the 72A were perfect for a war like this, and a bargain too