The Serene Invasion

The Serene Invasion - By Eric Brown

ONE


CHAPTER ONE





ON THE DAY everything changed, Sally Walsh finished what was to be her last shift at the Kallani medical centre – though she didn’t know that at the time – and stepped out of the makeshift surgery into the furnace heat of the early afternoon Ugandan sun.

The packed-earth compound greeted her with its depressing familiarity. A dozen crude buildings, looking more like a shanty town than a hospital, huddled in the centre of the sere compound, surrounded by a tall adobe wall. Beside the metal gate rose a watchtower, manned in shifts by a dozen government soldiers. When she began work at Kallani five years ago, it struck her as odd that a hospital had to be so protected, but after a few months in the job she had seen why: as fortification against rebel insurgents bent on kidnapping Westerners to hold hostage, to deter local gangs from raiding the hospital for drugs, and to stop the flood of refugees from over-running the centre in times of drought.

Last winter Sally had attempted to grow an olive tree in the shade of the storeroom; but the drought had killed it within weeks. How could she lavish water on the tree when her patients were so needful? Now the dead twigs poked from the ground, blackened and twisted.

Ben Odinga stepped from the storeroom, saw her and raised his eyebrows.

She shook her head.

“Have you finished?” he asked.

“I’m well and truly finished, Ben.”

He looked at her seriously. “Come to my room, Sally. I have some good whisky. South African. You look like you need a drink.”

She followed him across the compound to the prefab building that comprised the centre’s residential complex. He held open the fly-screen door and she stepped into the small room. A simple narrow bed, a bookshelf bearing medical textbooks, a dozen well-read paperback novels and a fat Bible.

She sat on a folding metal chair by the window while Ben poured two small measures of whisky into chipped tumblers.

She took a sip, winced as its fire scoured her throat, and smiled at Ben’s description of it as ‘good whisky’. What she’d give for a glass of Glenfiddich.

He said, “The infection?”

She nodded. “There was nothing we could do, short of flying her to Kampala.” Which, on their budget, was out of the question.

She went on, “I’m worried about Mary. They were close.”

“I’ll look in on her later, talk to her.”

“If you would, Ben.” She sighed. “Christ, I told her not to worry...” She looked up, then said, “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, smiling tolerantly. He had become accustomed to the frequency of her blaspheming.

A week ago a mother from a nearby village had brought in her malnourished daughter. Her complaint was not malnutrition, but a swollen abdomen. Ben had diagnosed appendicitis and operated, and all seemed well until, a couple of days ago, the five-year-old developed a high fever. Mary, a nurse six months out of medical college in Tewkesbury, had committed the cardinal sin of identifying with the kid.

Sally had long ago learned that lesson.

Ben said, “What’s wrong?”

She looked up. “What makes you think...?”

“I’ve known you for years, Sally Walsh. I know when you have something on your mind.”

She hadn’t wanted to tell him like this; she had wanted to break it to him gently – if that were possible.

“I hope you won’t think any less of me for this, Ben.” She stared into her glass, swirled the toxic amber liquid. “I’ve had enough. I’ve had five years here and I’ve had enough. I’ll be leaving in May.”

She had expected his reaction to be one of disappointment, maybe even anger. Instead he just shook his head, as if in stoic acceptance. This seemed to her even more of a condemnation of her decision.

He said, quietly, “Why?”

She shrugged and avoided his gaze. “I’m burned out. I’m... perhaps I’ve come to understand, at last, that the reality here hasn’t matched my expectations.”

He said, “That is no reason to give in, Sally.”

She looked across at him. He perched on the bed in his stained white uniform, a bony, whittled-down Kenyan in his early fifties, with disappointment burning in his nicotine-brown eyes.

“There comes a time, Ben, when we have to move on. I’ve had five years here. I’m jaded. The place needs someone new, someone with fresh enthusiasm, new ideas.”

“The place needs someone like you, with empathy and experience.”

“Please,” she snapped, “don’t make me feel guilty. I’m going in May and you’ll be getting a replacement fresh from Europe, and after a few weeks it’ll be as if I were never here.”

“Don’t kid yourself on that score, Dr Walsh.”

She smiled. “I’ll miss it – you and the others. But I’ve made my decision.”

They drank in silence for a time. A gecko darted across the wall behind Ben. Cicadas thrummed outside like faulty electrical appliances. It was mercilessly hot within the room and Sally was sweating.

“Do you know why I became a doctor?” she said at last.

“You told me...” He waved his glass. “Wasn’t it something to do with your Marxist ideals?”

“That was why I volunteered to work in Africa,” she said. Ideals, she thought, that had long perished. What was that old saw: If you’re not a communist when you’re twenty, then there’s something wrong with your heart; if you’re still a communist when you’re forty, then there’s something wrong with your head... Well, she was just over forty now and had lost her faith years ago.

“When I was fourteen, Ben, my mother was diagnosed with inoperable and terminal cancer. My father had died of a heart attack when I was two. I have no memories of him. When my mother told me she was ill...” She stared into her whisky, recalling her thin, pinch-faced mother, in her mid-forties, calmly sitting Sally down after dinner one evening and telling her, with a light-hearted matter-of-factness that must have been so hard to achieve, that mummy was ill and might not live for more than a year, but that Aunty Eileen and Uncle Ron would look after her afterwards.

She felt then as if she had run into a brick wall that had knocked all the breath from her body; and, later, a sense of disbelief and denial that had turned, as the months elapsed and her mother grew ever thinner and more and more ill, into an inarticulate anger and a sense of unfairness that burned at the core of her being.

An abiding memory from near the end of that time was when Dr Roberts came to her mother’s bedside and simply sat with her for an hour, holding her hand. Perhaps it was this that persuaded Sally that she wanted to become a doctor. Not the cures Dr Roberts might have effected, or the pain she might have relieved, but the fact of the woman’s simple humanity in giving up so much of her time to hold the hand of a dying patient.

Now she told Ben this, and he listened with that tolerant, amused smile on his handsome face, and nodded in the right places, and commented occasionally.

They finished their whiskies and he refilled their glasses.

“What will you do when you leave here, Sally?”

“Probably take up a practice in some leafy English village.” How her younger self would have railed at her for admitting as much. She recalled, vividly, wondering how her fellow graduates could consider taking up practices looking after privileged English patients when men, women and children were dying of diarrhoea in Africa. What a sanctimonious little prig she must have been back then!

Ben broke into her thoughts. “So, Sally – and don’t be offended when I say this – but you think that you have paid your dues?”

She said nothing, just stared down at the desiccated linoleum curling in the sunlight by the door. She felt terrible. She shook her head. At last she said in a whisper, “It wouldn’t be so bad if I did feel this, Ben. It would be... understandable. The thing is, I don’t feel I’ve paid my dues, and I probably would never think that I had, even if I stayed here for the rest of my life. My reasons are more personal, selfish if you like, than that. You see,” she looked up, “it’s just that I look at what’s happening here and I despair.”

He smiled. “Don’t we all?”

“Do you know, Ben, in the five years I’ve been here, nothing, not one bloody thing, has got better. Nothing! The government is still corrupt, full of rapacious fat cats all sincere smiles one minute, and behind your back raking off profits that should go to help their people. And then the Chinese and the Europeans and Americans... using the continent like a gameboard. It makes me sick, Ben, what the Chinese are doing north of here.”

“They’ve brought wealth, jobs, security for thousands,” he said.

She stared at him. “You don’t really believe that, don’t you? You’re not toeing the party line?” She held up her hand and counted off points on her fingers. “Eighty-five per cent of all profits made in Xian City go straight back to the mafia fascists in Beijing who still have the gall to call themselves communists. Ten per cent is raked off by Ugandan middle-men, and the rest goes to middle-class Africans who employ locals at slave labour rates. And have you seen the slums growing up around Xian, and have you read the reports of prostitution in the area? The Chinese are no better than all the other colonials who came before them – in it for what they can take out. Christ, Ben, you’re Kenyan. You should know that!”

He was smiling at her, his calm face a picture of tolerance. “Anger doesn’t help anything, Sally.”

“I’m sorry... But do you know what angers me most, Ben? Me. I’m angry at myself for letting it get to me. I’m angry at myself for giving in.”

He frowned, as if at a complex mystery. He whispered, “Then don’t give in, my friend. Stay here.”

She held back her tears and said, “I can’t. I’ve made my decision.”

With an acuity belied by his bland, smiling face, Ben said, “It’s Geoff, isn’t it?”

She looked at him, surprised by his deduction. “Partly, but I was thinking of leaving before I met Geoff. So don’t go blaming him.”

She’d met Geoff Allen a year ago when he flew to Africa to cover the drought in the Karamoja region of northern Uganda. He’d impressed her with his naïve simplicity, his apolitical childishness: drinking with him one evening in her room, after she’d shown him around the Kallani medical complex, he had admitted that the reason he was a photo-journalist was that he hoped that by reporting the conditions of people less fortunate than himself, all around the world, the results of his work might provoke the citizens of Europe to do something about the poverty and injustice.

At first she had laughed at his political naivety, wondering where the hell to begin to put this big, handsome man right in his endearingly simplistic world-view. She had restrained herself, and after a few days in his company, as she toured with him around the various medical centres in the region, she had come to understand that his beliefs, no matter how misguided, were sincerely held. He believed that as an individual he could effect change at a higher level.

Perhaps, in Geoff Allen, she was reminded of the idealism and naivety she herself had possessed in her early twenties, which had now been eroded by cynicism and experience.

And as to what Geoff saw in her? After the first time they had made love, he’d held her and expressed his admiration at what she was doing here.

They’d seen each other just six times in the following year, and the last time – a snatched weekend in Kampala where Geoff was en route to cover the terrorist atrocities in Zambia – she had told him that she was leaving Uganda and returning to London.

“I’d be going back regardless of Geoff,” she said now, “but when I get back we’ll be buying somewhere together.”

Ben raised his glass. “I sincerely hope that you find happiness. Geoff is a good man.”

His approbation cheered her. Tomorrow Geoff was flying from London to Entebbe and making the long drive north – ostensibly to do another piece on the drought, in reality to see her. The thought made her a little drunk.

Ben raised his empty glass. “Would you like another whisky?”

She was wondering whether to accept the offer – despite the fact that she had an early shift in the morning – when the sound of gunfire rattled through the hot afternoon air.





HER FIRST IMPULSE was to rush to the door and see what was happening, and she was obeying the urge by the time common sense kicked in and suggested that it might not be the best idea. She stood in the doorway, staring across the compound. She saw the watchtower bloom in a sudden orange fireball, and a split-second later the sound of the explosion hit her. Three soldiers dropped from the tower, one by one, and lay twitching on the ground as they burned.

She watched with incredulity as another soldier ran towards his burning colleagues. He directed his rifle at them, and even as she watched she assumed that what he did then was an act of mercy: he unloaded a blast of bullets into each of the three flaming soldiers, instantly stilling their agonised spasming.

Then he moved to the gate, unbolted the locking mechanism, and hauled it open. A battered Ford utility truck, with a machine gun welded to its cross-bar, revved through the gate and into the compound.

Before she could move, the soldier turned, looked across the compound, and raised his gun at her.

She stared at him, uncomprehending. His name was Josef Makumbi, and she had chatted with him in the canteen during the periods when he was not manning the watchtower.

He yelled something at her.

Behind her, she felt Ben’s hand on her arm, drawing her back into the room.

Josef fired. The bullets smacked into the timber above her head. He yelled again. “Here! Both of you!”

She stepped forward, sensing Ben behind her. She looked across at the corpses of Josef’s colleagues. They were still burning. She had the absurd urge to ask him why he had killed his friends.

Ben whispered to her, “Be calm. Do exactly as he says. We will be okay, Sally.”

Two men leapt from the cab of the truck. One was a Somali, and the other Arabic. A third terrorist, another Arab, remained on the flat-bed, manning the machine gun. He turned it on Sally and Ben as they moved across the compound towards the government soldier.

She caught his eyes. “Josef?”

The Somali and the Arab looked around the compound, spoke rapidly, and came to some decision. The Arab spoke to Josef in the local language. Josef nodded and twitched his rifle towards Sally and Ben.

“Get onto the back of the truck. Move! Do as I say or I’ll shoot.”

Sally stared at him. “Josef, how can you...?”

Ben’s hand gripped her upper arm and urged her towards the truck. “Be silent!”

She allowed herself to be propelled along. She should have felt fear, then – she realised much later – but all she experienced at the time was bewilderment at Josef’s treachery.

Ben assisted her onto the flat-bed. The machine-gunner swivelled his weapon and trained it on them. As they knelt on the corrugated bed of the truck, Josef ordered them to place their hands behind their backs. The Arab tied their wrists with twine, the cord digging into her flesh.

With a touch of sadism she came to see, later, as characteristic of him, the Arab prodded her between the shoulder blades. Unable to bring her hands up to cushion her fall, she fell face down and smacked the metal deck with her cheek. Ben fell beside her.

She wept, and rolled onto her side.

Josef grabbed her under the arms, dragged her across the flat-bed and propped her in a sitting position against the hot metal, then did the same with Ben.

Josef jumped from the truck, fastened the back flap, and stood in the compound watching the truck as it revved up, turned in a wide circle, and raced through the open gates. Sally fastened her eyes on the soldier’s, hoping to cow him with her silent accusation, but his expression remained impassive as they drove away.

The Arab sat across from his captives, rocking with the bucketing motion of the vehicle as it accelerated along the sandy track. His face was thin, and running from his right ear to his hawk-like nose was a scar, a jagged wadi suppurating with some untreated infection.

The machine-gunner, a youth with a sickle-thin face and a milky left eye, stood with an arm slung negligently over his rattling weapon. He stared down at them, his expression contemptuous.

The direct sunlight was punishing. Normally Sally would have either rubbed high factor sun cream into her arms, face and neck, or ensured she was suitably covered. Now she felt her exposed skin burn.

They were heading north, she realised, into terrorist country.

She looked at Ben. His face was a mask carved from ebony. He whispered, “Try not to worry. They will make a ransom demand. We will be free in a day or two.”

She said, “I have a bad feeling...”

The Arab kicked out, the heel of his boot gouging Sally’s shin. “Be silent!” She pursed her lips rather than cry out at the pain.

They raced through the lifeless desert landscape, hitting potholes at speed. Sally rocked against Ben, his solidity reassuring. The metal ridge of the truck’s side panel scored her shoulder blades.

They passed a village – Mullambi. They had travelled over ten kilometres already. It struck her that she was in greater danger the further they travelled away from familiar territory. She felt the sun fry her head. She thought of her tiny room back at the compound and wanted to weep.

Across from them, the Arab closed his eyes, his head lolling. He appeared to be sleeping, his rifle propped across his lap.

“We will be fine,” Ben said in a whisper. “We must do as they say, and do not question them. Whatever you do, Sally, do not argue with them.”

“That,” she said bitterly, “might not be easy.”

“Just do not question what they are doing, okay?”

“Why? Because I’m a woman, and they don’t like –”

He said impatiently, “Whatever the reasons! We should not antagonise these men.”

She was silent for a time, then said, “They’re going to kill us. I know it.”

Ben turned to look at her. “That is not how these people work,” he said patiently. “They will ransom us, makes demands for cash so that they can buy weapons.”

The Arab opened his eyes and stared across at his captives.

Sally licked her rapidly drying lips and said, “Who are you?”

She felt Ben stiffen beside her.

The Arab stared at her, a potent distillation of contempt in his narrowed eyes. “My name is Ali,” he said.

“I meant,” she said, “which organisation do you represent?”

The man smiled. “Boko Haram,” he said.

She wished she had never asked. Northern Uganda was plagued by competing bands of Islamic fundamentalists – each one a little more fundamental, it seemed, than the other. Originally from Nigeria, Boko Haram was the most hard-line of them all: bloodthirsty, uncompromising, and intolerant of everything Western.

“What do you want with us?”

Ben hissed, “Sally!”

The Arab said, “To... make example.” He spat at her feet. “You come here, you fill my people with your ways –”

“Your people? Are you Ugandan?”

He said, “My people, my Muslim brothers.”

“We’re here,” she said, “to help your brothers, to help your men, women and children. There is a drought, or haven’t you noticed? Your people are dying.”

“A drought? The drought is God’s punishment. We do not need your help. You should go, all of you. Americans, Chinese, all of you infidels.”

Anger rose within her. She wanted to argue with him, attempt to point out the absurdity of his argument, but knew that it would serve no purpose.

“Sally,” Ben said again, almost inaudibly.

“Okay, okay,” she said.

Smiling, evidently satisfied that his little speech had silenced the Western whore, the Arab closed his eyes and dozed.

They drove on, to the north. The sun was going down behind her head, affording her face a modicum of shade even as the back of her head burned.

They left the crude track an hour later, slogging through sand and along a dried-up river bed before coming to a sun-warped timber hut leaning so much that it resembled a parallelogram.

Ali dragged Sally from the flat-bed, and then Ben. She stood on the sand, her left leg paralysed with pins and needles. The driver climbed from the cab and moved into the hut. Ali gestured with his rifle. “Inside.”

She limped away from the truck and stepped through the doorway, into the shade of the hut. The machine-gunner remained where he was on the back of the truck.

The instant shade was welcome – but the sight of what greeted them, when her eyes adjusted to the half-light, was not.

The room was empty but for three things.

A tiny camera mounted on a tripod, what looked like a butcher’s chopping block positioned in the centre of the room and, propped up against the far wall, point down, a long, curved sword.





ALI PRODDED HER into a corner and ordered them to sit down. Sally squatted, her back against the wall. Just above her head a broken window allowed blistering heat to fall across her cheek. Glass crunched beneath her canvas pumps.

She glanced at Ben. He bowed his head and closed his eyes.

Ali and the other Arab stood behind the mounted camera, speaking in hushed tones.

Sally looked from the sword, to the butcher’s block, and finally at the camera. It came to her that the most barbaric item of the three was the camera, because of what it denoted. The sword and the butcher’s block she could almost understand, but the fact that their deaths were to be recorded, and ultimately broadcast, added a twist of voyeuristic sadism.

Ali and his colleague appeared to be arguing about the camera. Ali knelt and tinkered with it, speaking in rapid Arabic to the other. He flicked it with the back of his hand and stood, striding to the door and staring out.

He lit a cigarette and calmly smoked. He appeared bored, and Sally wondered how many other innocent Westerners he had casually slaughtered. There had been an aid worker kidnapped and shot a year ago, she recalled, and three Catholic nuns abducted from a mission in the west of the country earlier this year. Nothing had been heard of them since.

She had been well aware of the trouble in the area when she accepted the job, but assurances from her employers that the compound would be well guarded, and that not one medical worker had lost their life in the ten years that the Red Cross had been working in northern Uganda, had convinced her that any danger was negligible.

The second Arab was fiddling with the camera in mounting frustration.

She found herself saying, “What’s wrong with it? Maybe I can fix it?”

Ben hissed, “Sally!”

Ali turned from the door, removed the cigarette from his lips, and said, “You are a woman. How can you know about cameras?”

“I am a woman, Ali, and I know many things.”

He sneered. “You know nothing. You put Western drugs into our people, and also Christian evil.”

She stared at him, restraining the urge to laugh. Soon she would be dead at the hands of this uneducated bigot, and her anger was overcome by despair.

She stared at the scar on his cheek. “I know, Ali,” she said quietly, “that your scar is infected. If you don’t get it treated, that there will be a possibility that the infection will poison your blood, and you will die. When... when you have finished what you are doing here, take my advice and see a doctor. You need antibiotics and antiseptic cream.”

He stared at her. “Why are you bothered?” he asked.

She held his gaze. “When I trained to become a doctor, back in England, I swore something called the Hippocratic Oath. I swore to do all within my medical capabilities to save life...” She paused, then went on, “That’s the difference between us, Ali.”

He thought about this, then said, “No. The difference is that you are wrong and I am right. You are a Western infidel and I am...” he said a word in Arabic that she didn’t catch.

She said, “And your god sanctions this taking of life?”

“God is great. What I do I do for God.”

She closed her eyes and wondered what her Muslim friends back at Kallani would have to say about his corrupted, twisted form of faith.

She gestured to the camera with a nod of her head. “Untie me, Ali, and I will try to mend the camera.”

Even if he consented and untied her, which she doubted, then what were the chances of her reaching the sword, or Ali’s gun which he had lodged beside the sword, and using one of them before they retaliated?

The idea of being forced to act sent a wave of fear through her.

Ali appeared to be considering her suggestion, but a second later the Arab gestured to the camera and stood up. He spoke to Ali, who smiled at Sally. “It is working now,” he said.

Beside her, under his breath, Ben was murmuring a prayer.

She said, “Why are you doing this, Ali?”

He said matter-of-factly, “We will kill both of you, and the film we will put on the internet to warn others like you, to say: Westerners, you are not welcome here. If you come, you can expect this, to be killed like pigs.”

“And do you think this will stop people like me coming to help your people? It didn’t stop me, Ali. Others will come, like me, and our governments, the Chinese, will search for you and eradicate you and others like you.”

He said, “Chinese,” and spat on the floor.

Ben whispered to her, “You’re wasting your breath, Sally. They don’t hear what you are saying.”

“That’s no reason not to say it,” she said.

She closed her eyes. She thought of Geoff, probably in the air above northern Africa now and blissfully unaware of what was happening to her. She felt sorry for him, and almost sobbed as she thought of him hearing the news.

She hoped he would be spared ever seeing the film of her death.

She heard a sound from outside. The Somali appeared at the window and spoke to the Arabs. Sally looked up. The Somali tapped a big, old-fashioned silver watch on his thin wrist. She supposed he was telling them that they were wasting time talking. She found it suddenly impossible to swallow.

She was wrong about what the Somali was saying, however.

Ali picked up his rifle and stepped from the hut, followed by the other Arab. She heard the sound of their footsteps as they passed the window.

She pressed herself against the timber wall and pushed her legs so that she slid up the cracked timber planks. She twisted her head and peered out.

“What are they doing?” Ben asked her.

She smiled. “Praying,” she said. “All three of them, praying...”

Ben began to laugh. “My Lord,” he said. “Oh, my Lord...”

Sally allowed herself to slip down the wall. Something sharp bit into her buttock. She looked down and saw the broken glass around her boots.

“Ben,” she said. “Ben, please stop praying and do something useful.”

His laughter, then, sounded manic. “Like what, Dr Walsh?”

“Like grab a shard of glass and cut the twine around my wrists.”

He stared at the shattered glass, then nodded shuffled on his bottom and turned so that his bound hands approached a long shard of glass. His fingers fumbled with it, blindly.

They manoeuvred so that they were back to back. Sally felt his fingers questing around the area of her wrists as he attempted to locate the twine.

“Whatever you do,” she said, “don’t slit my wrists. I don’t want to bleed to death.”

He grunted something. Sally wanted to weep and laugh at the same time.

She felt the glass bite into the twine, felt the up and down motion of the glass shard as Ben worked it patiently.

She tried not to hope. How long did Muslim prayers last? She thought back to her friends at Kallani, slipping out of the ward to the makeshift prayer room beside the surgery. They had always seemed to be gone an age, though she suspected they took the opportunity to sneak a quick cigarette at the same time.

The sword stood on its point against the far wall, its blade glinting in the sunlight slanting through the window. She was struck by its duality, now; a weapon existing in two mutually potential states, as the means of her liberation, or her death.

She tugged on her binds, attempting to assist Ben’s cutting action. She felt a little give in the twine. She pulled harder; something gave again, the twine fraying.

Ben grunted. She tugged her wrists apart and the twine separated. She was taken by a quick panic. What to do now? Take up the sword and rush from the hut, and attack while they prayed? She turned and peered cautiously through the window, then swore under her breath.

“What? Ben asked.

The Somali was back on the truck, stationed behind the machine gun. The Arabs were standing, brushing sand from their faded military garb.

She turned and sat down quickly, placing her hands behind her back. She glanced at Ben. Great beads of sweat stood out like dew on his face.

The Arabs stepped back into the hut. Ali propped his rifle in the corner near the open door. He approached the camera, knelt and fingered the controls. Sally watched the other man move across the hut and take up the sword. He hefted it in both hands, assessing its balance. His face was expressionless as he concentrated on the weapon. He really does not feel a thing, she thought; we might indeed be pigs to the slaughter.

Ali was looking from Sally to Ben, as if trying to decide which one of them should die first. When his attention returned to the camera, she thought, she would make a run for the gun beside the door.

She had never in her life fired a weapon. Did the rifle have a safety mechanism, a catch that had to be switched before she could fire? Or could she simply aim the rifle and pull the trigger?

She decided to shoot the sword-wielder first, and then aim at Ali. She would keep him alive, tell Ben to order the Somali to jump from the truck and move away. She would like to keep Ali alive, deliver him to the authorities...

She smiled at the absurdity of the thought.

“You,” Ali snapped, gesturing to Ben. “You first.” He moved from the camera, reached down and took Ben’s arm, dragging him towards the butcher’s block. Ben caught her eyes, desperation and pleading on his face.

Ali pushed him into a kneeling position before the block, head down. The swordsman stepped forward, took Ben roughly by the scruff of his neck and forced his face towards the curved timber slab. He pushed down brutally. Ben’s chin hit the timber, slid over the edge. His neck looked horribly exposed.

“Sally...” Ben sobbed.

The Arab stepped back, positioning himself with a fidgeting two-footed shuffle like a golfer addressing a tee-shot. He adjusted his hold on the hilt of the sword until he’d achieved a comfortable grip.

I must act, she thought; I must act now.

She screamed and launched herself forwards. She scattered the camera and tripod, caroming into Ali and knocking him off his feet. She reached out and grabbed the gun. Fumbling with the remarkably heavy weapon, she slipped her forefinger around the curved metal of the trigger.

She lifted the rifle, swaying, and pointed it at Ali and the other Arab.

Both men stared at her, frozen. Ali had picked himself up from the floor and was crouched, stilled by the weapon in her hands. The Arab with the sword was poised as if flash-frozen, his expression incredulous.

Before she thought what to do next, Ali’s eyes lifted, flicked behind her, and in that instant Sally thought: I should not have screamed...

Something slammed into the back of her head and she yelled in pain and fell to the floor, spilling the rifle.

Someone kicked her in the stomach – the swordsman – and the Somali who’d attacked her now dragged her in the corner and squatted over her, forcing the muzzle of his pistol against her temple.

She breathed hard, fighting the pain that throbbed in the back of her skull.

On the floor, foetal, Ben was sobbing to himself.

Ali was yelling at her, incoherent with rage, spittle flying.

The Somali said, “He says, you watch your boyfriend die, then your turn.”

On the floor, Ben began to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

Sally curled against the wall and stared at Ben, unable to close her eyes despite knowing what – thanks to her incompetence – was about to happen.

Ali picked up the camera and reassembled the tripod. He switched it on, caught Sally’s eye and smiled.

The swordsman stepped up to the block for the second time, adjusted his footing, then his grip, and lifted the sword.

Sally wanted to cry out, vent her rage, but all she could do was cower into herself and sob.

The swordsman raised the weapon above his head, its blade catching the sunlight.

Sally looked away, biting her lip, steeling herself for the terrible sound of the sword as it hit the back of Ben’s neck.

The moment seemed to go on forever.

Through the window, she saw something flash high in the sky. She looked up, experiencing the ridiculous hope that it might be a helicopter, searching for them. She saw nothing more than a glint of light high up, soon gone. The blue sky seemed to have dulled, as if a mist had descended.

She stared at the timber beside her head, holding herself tight, the point of the Somali’s pistol still pressed, painful and hot, against the skin of her temple.

“...for ever and ever, Amen...”

Then silence.

She wondered if the swordsman was playing a vindictive game, delaying the inevitable so that Ben should suffer all the more.

She forced her gaze from the wall and stared at the swordsman. He stood, legs apart, sword half raised, a curious expression of puzzlement on his bearded face.

Ali yelled at him in Arabic.

Sword still poised, horizontal to his body above Ben’s bared neck, the swordsman replied. He appeared faintly comical, frozen in position, speaking in a low voice.

Beside her, the Somali sniggered to himself.

Ali strode over to the swordsman, reached out and slapped his face softly, almost mockingly.

On the floor at their feet, Ben still murmured the Lord’s Prayer with quiet dignity.

As she watched, the swordsman turned away from Ben and dropped the sword on the floor, and Sally could only assume that, for some reason, he had been unable to bring himself to murder Ben.

Yelling his disgust, Ali snatched up the sword, pushed the Arab to one side, and stood over Ben. He raised the sword, and this time Sally could not bring herself to avert her gaze.

When Ali had raised the sword so that it was at a right angle to his body, he paused. Or, at least, that was what it looked like to Sally. He held the sword at arm’s length, directly above Ben’s neck, and seemed unable to lift the weapon any further. He appeared to be shaking as if with suppressed rage.

From where he was leaning against the wall, in a state of shock, the watching Arab said something.

Beside her, the crouching Somali shouted at Ali. He turned to Sally and said, “They are cowards. Typical Yemenis.” He spat something at them in Arabic.

Dazed, Ali backed from the chopping block until he fetched up against the wall, the sword dangling in his grip.

On the floor, Ben timorously looked up. He raised himself so that he was kneeling, and stared at his tormentors with nascent hope on his face.

The Somali swore, surged to his feet and crossed the floor in two strides. Before Sally could cry out in horror at what he was about to do, he raised the gun to Ben’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

Or attempted to pull the trigger.

He stood with the pistol connected to Ben’s sweat-beaded forehead, arm outstretched, an expression of ridiculous concentration on his thin face, like an infant attempting to perform a feat beyond his capabilities. He was convulsing, his whole body taken by a violent tremor.

No matter how hard he tried, the gun would not go off.

He cursed, flung the pistol aside, and grabbed Ali’s rifle from where it lay on the floor. He swung the gun, inserted his finger into the trigger guard, and aimed at Ben.

The doctor closed his eyes, his lips moving in silent prayer.

As if released from paralysis, acting without fully knowing what she was doing, Sally pushed herself across the floor, grabbed the Somali’s discarded pistol and stood quickly.

She held the weapon at arm’s length, hands trembling, and directed it at the Somali. “Drop the rifle,” she said in a voice that quavered maddeningly.

The Somali seemed to be caught in indecision. His eyes flicked towards the Arabs, as if seeking orders.

Ali moved towards her, reaching out.

Sally lifted the pistol, aimed above his head, and pulled the trigger. This time the weapon fired, deafeningly loud in the confines of the hut. The Arabs flinched and cowered back against the wall. The Somali dropped the rifle and stared at her.

The bullet had splintered the timbers in the ceiling, and a brilliant shaft of golden sunlight fell through like a spotlight, falling on Ben as he knelt in prayer in the centre of the room.

“If you move,” she said, aiming at the terrorists, “you die...” Her voice trembled. She said to Ben, “Go out to the truck. See if the keys are in the ignition.”

Ben rose to his feet and moved slowly, his arms still bound behind his back, and walked towards the door. “Sally...?”

“Just get out of here!”

“Sally, don’t shoot them, okay. Just don’t shoot them...”

He left the hut.

She said to Ali, “Where are the keys?”

He licked his lips. “In the...”

He was interrupted by Ben’s shout. “They’re here.”

Sally backed to the door, gripping the pistol in her outstretched hands.

Despite what the three had put her through, Ben’s abjuration to leniency was redundant. She had no desire to exact revenge.

“If you move,” she said, “I will shoot. Don’t move until we’ve driven away from here.”

She backed through the door, aiming at the cowering trio all the while, until she came to the truck.

She cursed Ben silently for not having the engine revving, then remembered that his hands were still tied. She reached behind her with one hand, found the door handle and pulled. Within the hut, the terrorists stood watching her, frozen.

She slipped into the driver’s seat, expecting them to rush her at any second. Ben was beside her, sitting awkwardly in the passenger seat, knotted hands behind his back. With a surge of adrenaline she lodged the pistol between the dashboard and the windscreen and gunned the engine. The truck bucked, jolted, and surged forward.

She glanced back at the hut as she turned the truck and accelerated away. There was no sign of Ali or the others.

Ben said something over the roar of the engine.

“What?” Sally yelled.

Ben said, “My prayers were answered, Sally.”

She looked up, through the windscreen. It was late afternoon, and the sun should have been bright above the distant tree line. All she saw was a diffuse blur where the fiery ball should have been.

She said, “Their guns jammed, Ben. We were lucky.”

“You saw them, saw what happened. It was the work of the Lord. Their guns did not jam, Sally. They just could not bring themselves to kill us.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what the hell happened. I’m just grateful...”

She brought the truck to a sudden stop, leaned through the window and vomited.





SHE FOLLOWED THE wadi to the road running north-south, and turned left.

She accelerated, residual fear pushing her to drive at speed. She knew the terrorists had no means of leaving the hut other than on foot, but it was as if what they had subjected her to was affecting her rationality. She half expected the men to leap out at them from behind the passing trees.

They came to a T-junction and Sally braked.

Ben said, “I know where we are. See, in the distance, the village of Moganda. We are perhaps one hour away from Kallani.”

“Turn around, Ben, and I’ll try to untie you.”

She picked at the tight knot until she had worked the twine loose and pulled the binds free. He smiled at her, rubbing his wrists.

She gunned the engine and turned right. She checked the fuel gauge, smiled when she saw that it indicated the tank was a little less than half full.

The decision came upon her unexpectedly. She knew, once she arrived back at the medical centre, that she would locate Dr Krasnic and resign then and there. Krasnic would demur, tell her to take a break and think through her decision. But she also knew that she was never going to work at Kallani again.

She had given the place five years of her life, and that was quite enough.

They came to the outskirts of Kallani just under an hour later. A crowd surged along the high street. An almost palpable sense of excitement filled the humid late afternoon air. The attack at the medical centre was big news, in a place where for month after month nothing ever happened.

They edged through the crowds, drove through the centre of town, and minutes later arrived at the medical centre. The gates were open, and within Sally made out two Ugandan army trucks, a police car and a Red Cross jeep.

Crowds milled outside and within the compound so that their return, edging through the citizens and into the medical centre, was hardly commented upon.

The charcoaled bodies of the dead soldiers had been covered in dark green military tarpaulins. The watchtower still burned feebly, a mere blackened timber skeleton against the hazy sky.

Army officers, fat Ugandan policemen, and Red Cross officials stood about in small groups, conferring and consulting softscreens and speaking into wrist-coms.

Sally killed the engine, the truck just another vehicle amongst many. The engine ticked, cooling. She stared out at the activity in the compound.

A tiny African girl moved from a prefab ward and crossed towards the truck. She paused to turn and call something, and a dozen faces appeared at the windows. Sally opened the door and climbed out. The little girl ran to her, repeating her name and saying in Swahili. “You come back! You come back! Kolli, she says bad men took you.”

“I’m back, Gallie. I’m back. Don’t worry.” Sally swept up the child, hugged her to her chest and carried her over to the prefab. Inside, twenty children were cowering in their beds, staring at her with wide eyes.

Mary, the nurse fresh out from England, hurried to her and said, “It’s Dr Krasnic. You must see him. He’s... he’s in his office. He has a pistol. I tried talking to him, but...”

Sally transferred Gallie to Mary’s custody, turned and hurried from the prefab. She almost collided with Ben on the way out.

“Sally?”

“Come with me!” she ordered. “It’s Yan.”

She feared what she might find as she ran across to Krasnic’s office. His frequent depressions, allied to what had happened that afternoon at the complex, was a combination that did not bode well.

She came to the office and pushed open the fly-screen door.

Krasnic sat at his desk, looking like a statue carved from grey granite. He looked up when she entered. Ben stood behind her, a hand on her shoulder.

Krasnic said, incredulously, “Sally? Ben?” His eyes brimmed.

“We... got away, Yan.”

Only then did she see the pistol lying on the table between his outstretched hands.

“I saw the carnage...” Yan said. “Mary told me you’d been taken.” He shook his head. “I... I don’t know what happened. I’d suddenly had enough, all I could take. So I filled my pistol...” He gestured to the gun on the desk, “raised it to my head and tried to pull the trigger. And nothing happened. So I tried again, yes? And... again, nothing. Was it God, telling me something?”

Sally opened her mouth to speak, but the words would not come.

She stepped forward, reached out and took the pistol. It was far heavier than she had expected, and cold.

“Yan, we need to talk...”

She was interrupted. Someone barged into the room, shouting. “Dr Krasnic!” The Ugandan orderly stared at Sally and Ben, then went on. “Dr Krasnic, amazing events in the south! You must come and see. The road is blocked!”

Before anyone could question him, he ducked back through the door and sprinted across the compound.

Sally looked out. The police car, the Red Cross truck and the army vehicle were rumbling in convoy from the compound.

Sally turned to Krasnic. “Yan, come with me.”

She waited until he stood, like a tired old bear, and she took his arm. They crossed the compound to the terrorist’s truck and all three shuffled along the front seat. Sally stowed Krasnic’s pistol alongside the other above the dashboard.

Five minutes later they left the compound behind the slowly moving convoy and headed south.

Krasnic was the first to see it. He pointed, stirred from his suicidal fugue by what had appeared in the distance. Sally recalled the flash high in the sky earlier that afternoon and, later, the diffuse nature of the sun.

The convoy had halted in the road ahead, along with dozens of other vehicles, cars, motorbikes and bicycles. A crowd of perhaps two hundred citizens milled about at the end of the road – the end of the road because, spanning the patched tarmac that should have headed ruler-straight south without hindrance across the sun-parched desert, was what appeared to be a wall of glass.

Dazed, Sally climbed from the cab, eased her way through the crowd, and approached the silvery membrane. She could see through it, to the road on the other side, the dun African land stretching away to the horizon.

She looked up and stared in wonder at the concave expanse of diaphanous material that stretched high above their heads. It appeared that the town of Kallani was enclosed within the confines of a vast dome.

Krasnic was beside her. “What the hell...?”

Ben said, “It’s a sign, Sally. A sign...”

She reached out and touched the sun-warmed membrane.