* * *
Space inside the Land Rover was at a premium. Not an inch of space had gone to waste; it almost seemed like the passengers inside were intruding on the cargo space and not the other way around. Ethan had come up with a very comfortable-looking seating arrangement on top of a sack of rice, along with a wooden crate against his back and a couple of flour bags to put his feet up on. He and the doctor were riding along together at the rear of the small convoy of Land Rovers.
Ludwig was sweating profusely, and kept dabbing his forehead and face with a small hand towel. It only made his suffering a little less unbearable and a little more obvious. Ethan had been sleeping on and off, the car’s continuous jerks and road bumps having developed into a sort of lullaby. Their driver was invariably focused on the task at hand, barely uttering a word. Ludwig could not stop himself from asking, straining his voice to be heard over the roar of the diesel engine. Even though at previous times he hadn’t received an answer he could make good use of yet, his pitch had an air of optimism about it:
“Are we going to stop any time soon, Olufemi?”
The driver’s answer was curt and to the point, as had been the case previously as well.
“Yes.”
Ludwig, who would otherwise consider an endless talker a nuisance at best, appeared to be edging on aggravation. Olufemi’s brusqueness felt like he was doing the doctor a favor by even considering an answer.
The doctor made another effort to engage in conversation or at least learn some hopefully interesting information about their whereabouts:
“Well, could you refine that somewhat? How soon exactly, is soon? More or less, of course.”
Olufemi paused for a moment before answering in his usual, quietly dry manner:
“Before nightfall.”
Ludwig nodded to himself and tried to clear his parched throat with little success and barely a spit. Ethan had a contemplating look drawn upon his face, his gaze darting from bush to grove. He held his camera in hand, the inadvertent swarm of flies seemingly rather fond of him. Ludwig tried to catch his attention, engage in some kind of discussion to relieve himself of the dullness:
“That camera… It’s a Leica, right?”
Ethan turned to face Ludwig with a furrowed brow, and having been caught unawares asked rather plainly:
“I’m sorry?”
Ludwig repeated himself, this time almost shouting:
“The camera. It’s a Leica M3, right? Some very good equipment you have there.”
Ethan shrugged indifferently, effortlessly shooting down Ludwig’s hopes. A prolonged silence followed once again, regularly interrupted by the creaks and croans of the Land Rover’s chassis. As the evening wore by, flies began to give their place to mosquitoes. The grassy hills rushed by, lush with vegetation, filled with tall, thin trees and distant mangroves. The swampy savannah drew distant with every passing minute.
Ethan turned and addressed Olufemi in Yoruba with a ghastly accent, but decent enough to be understood. The driver suddenly burst into laughter and started talking vividly with him. A torrential flow of Yoruba was intermixed with laughs, giggles and extravagant hand gestures. Ethan was responding in kind and judging by his tone, sometimes asking, sometimes filling in and sometimes simply nodding. Olufemi even made eye contact with Ludwig once, before breaking down in laughter once more before finally being able to settle down to his invariably dull and sullen mood. Ludwig looked at Ethan with eyes that shone rather irregularly and a voice slightly reminiscent of gritted teeth:
“Care to share, Richard?”
The last word sounded unusually venomous for the good doctor. Ethan countered the doctor’s irate mood with a radiating smile. He explained:
“He thinks you talk too much.”
Ludwig raised his brow and nodded, right before instinctively slapping his arm, failing to kill a mosquito. Before Ludwig could have had the chance to retort in a manner unbecoming of a doctor, Olufemi suddenly cut in:
“For a doctor. We dem almost there. See now, the clearing.”
Both of them looked up ahead to where the road steered off course and into a dirt path that seemed to lead slowly upwards onto a small ridge. Ludwig asked then with barely conceiled exhilaration:
“Is that where we stop for the night?”
Olufemi gave a nod instead of answering properly, while Ethan was looking more and more at the sky, its rosy and purple hues lighting up the gathering clouds, dressing them in the imagery of cotton candy. While the last light could be seen falling around them, Ethan said with some disappointment:
“It’s going to rain like the devil, that’s for sure.”
The driver nodded his silent agreement, while Ludwig said with the slightest hint of irony:
“I thought Brits liked rain.”
To which Ethan commented wryly:
“We like rain alright. It’s all that water we could live without.”
Olufemi started laughing again and this time Ludwig managed to crack a smile. Ethan laid back on his sack once more while the first droplets of water gathered on the windshield. Ludwig retorted with a grin:
“And the rest of us could be spared your dry sense of humor as well.”
Ethan lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply before answering:
“Well said.”
As Ludwig joined him, the small droplets rapidly grew into a proper tropical storm, causing even Olufemi to exclaim:
“Dis dey proper fuck.”
Ethan was about to translate when Ludwig made himself heard over the din of the storm:
“I think I get the idea, Richard.”
Visibility had been reduced to the car up ahead, only thanks to the powerful headlights. The caravan was moving at a walking speed, carefully treading on a dirt-turned-into-mud path barely wide enough to call a road. Olufemi made some colourful remarks about the driving conditions, to which Ethan pointed out they should be happy they weren’t being shot at.
Ludwig stabbed Ethan with a gaze unusually hard and firm for such a seemingly light-mannered man and asked him:
“Would it make good press?”
Ethan shrugged and before he had time to answer, a blinding flash lit the area in front of them and in the blink of an eye they felt the surging overpressure of a shockwave on their eardrums. A wall of dirt and mud seemed to go up in the air, lifting with it the chassis of the Rover in front of the column. Ethan’s shouts were barely heard through buzzing eardrums:
“Landmine! Stop, stop! Get out, now!”
Olufemi panicked and let go of the wheel, their car bumping on the Rover in front. The flaming debris of the destroyed Land Rover could be seen, lying on the edge of the road upturned and torn apart. Pandemonium ensued.
“What was that?” Ludwig asked with a slight tremor in his voice. The answer from Ethan came accompanied by a powerful shove:
“Landmine or RPG! Now move! Out of the car! And stay low!”
Olufemi was faster to comply, opening his door and rushing out, frantically searching for more flashes or explosions, but none came. Ludwig sloppily made his way out of the doors in the back of the Rover over the assorted bags and crates, while Ethan opened the window behind him and drew himself out in a fluid motion.
He shouted to the bewildered people in the caravan, some of which had already stepped outside their Rovers, dazed and confused:
“Get out! Lay low and don’t move!”
Ethan’s eyes were frantically looking for signs of movement in the torrential rain, the light from the headlamps the only source of illumination. There were no muzzle flashes, launch trails or smoke. Lots of shouting and confusion, but the characteristic hammering sound of AKs was absent. This was not an ambush. Ethan’s voice took on an authoritative yet calming tone:
“Calm down. Stay put. No-one’s shooting at us. It was a landmine. Tell the people next to you to calm down and stay put.”
Everyone was drenched to the bone. All around him, Ethan could see faces frozen in sheer
terror, some of them shaking visibly. Olufemi had started shouting calls to the other drivers in Yoruba, when Ethan’s instincts kicked in; he quickly walked over him and put a hand to his mouth. Olufemi was surprised and looked at Ethan sideways, giving him a look of frustrated fear. Ethan put one finger to his mouth while shaking his head, and let go of Olufemi’s mouth:
“No shouting, not in Yoruba. Understand, mate? Not around these parts.”
Olufemi could only nod. Rather baffled though he was, he motioned with his hands to the other drivers who by now had his attention to lay low. With fear and hesitation as plentiful as the rain pouring down on them, the drivers complied, some of them already on their knees and praying.
Ethan felt the heavy rain on his head, tried to wash away everything else and focus on the moment. He needed to calmly tell these people what to do next, when Ludwig came up from behind him, the sound of his approach muffled by the rain and the din from the people in shock. Ethan’s eye simply caught a shadow approaching. He twisted around sharply, grabbed Ludwig from one arm and placed his foot to act as a pivot. Before having time to actually see Ludwig, he was already throwing him down on the dirt, still grabbing his arm.
Ludwig splashed in the mud yelling, markedly scared and half-witted:
“It’s me! It’s me! Scheisse!”
Ethan breathed deeply, letting some of the adrenaline wear off before picking up Ludwig and offering his apologies:
“Sorry I jumped on you. It’s a conditioned reflex.”
Ludwig could not help but shout irately:
“Conditioned reflex?!”
“Just so happens, yes. Never mind that, we need to get these people off the road. Someone fucked up the itinerary. Olufemi!”
The driver turned and nodded. He looked shaken but he was evidently quick about his wits. Ethan leaned slightly towards him, shouting to be heard and pointing at the column of immobile rovers and the frightened crowd:
“Step on the Rovers’ tracks. Tell the rest of the drivers to get the people back inside. See if anyone’s wounded, get the doctors working on them. We’ll be safe as houses then.”
Olufemi nodded and carefully started walking towards the first Rover, while the people were shouting out questions to no-one in particular. Ethan started walking up the front of the column, carefully passing by people and telling everyone to be calm and emphasising that they were probably safe.
Once he reached the debris of the first Rover, he saw the people in the second car frozen still. They had bled out of their ears, probably deaf and scared to death. Ethan took a closer look: the driver was still clutching his wheel, all tensed up and in shock. The explosion had shattered the windshield and amidst the water that had pooled inside there was what remained of a severed, blown away arm. The driver had fragments of glass all over his face and his eyes were a bloody mess.
Ethan shouted to Ludwig:
“Ludwig! Grab a first aid kit and come up front! Face injury! Try and stay on the tire tracks!”
Ludwig nodded affirmatively and disappeared in the back of the Rover. Ethan grabbed the blind man from one arm and told him nothing. He simply squeezed him gently and felt the man’s blood pumping like a flooded river.
Once Ludwig arrived he shot a quick glance at the blown up vehicle and quickly turned to say something to Ethan who shook his head in denial:
“Not a chance, mate. I’m sorry. Enough explosives to throw five thousand pounds six feet in the air. It’s a bloody miracle this one’s lost just his eyes instead of his head. The others are in the back, scared shitless, a bit deaf probably but otherwise in one piece.”
Ludwig nodded appreciatively and focused on the task at hand, trying not to think about the people in that first Rover. His motions were calm and professional, as if he was working in an examination room. Ethan urged him to hurry up, and took a few steps forward towards the small crater which had effortlessly turned into a pool. He took out a flashlight from one of his pants’ pockets and a large leaf-shaped knife from an ankle belt.
He crouched and slowly crept towards the pool, carefully studying the ground, digging in with the knife at seemingly random intervals. Going past the pool, his eyes avidly scanned the mud. Before long, even under the unabating rain and all the mess of debris he caught a glimpse of a dull olive-green shape barely protruding from the muddy ground. A careful prod at the rim with the knife let him know this was another landmine. A few feet to his right, he could make out the outline of another one. A slow, careful sweep with the flashlight uncovered two more, less than ten feet apart. He slid back to the crater and got up, jogging back to Ludwig and the injured man.
A certain amount of calmness had started to settle among the crowd. Olufemi could be seen quietly exchanging concerned looks with the other drivers, some of them already back inside their Rovers, trying to find a dry smoke.
“It’s a proper god-awful minefield,” said Ethan to Ludwig.
The doctor was still dressing the eyes of the driver after having administered some sedatives for the excruciating pain that would follow the end of the adrenaline rush. He was dripping wet, smeared with blood all over his hands and shirt.
“Your deductive reasoning amazes me,” he replied, not bothering to hide the tone of irony. Ethan explained calmly:
“It could have been a single land mine, an old ambush site. No, this was a proper minefield, there’s probably more of them around the bushes and trees. We need to go back. I don’t know who decided on this itinerary, but it wasn’t safe. Killed those people in the Rover and it might have killed us all. Might still as well. We need to get moving out of here.”
Ludwig suddenly stopped tending to the wounded driver. He closed his eyes and seemed to whisper something in German. Ethan told him sternly:
“What are you blabbering about? They’re dead, Ludwig. Come on now, pull it together.”
The doctor exploded with fury at Ethan, letting his utensils drop on the mud:
“I picked the roads! It was me! So fuck you, Mr. Owls!”
Ethan fell instantly silent, knowing there was nothing meaningful to say to the doctor. The next moment, Ludwig was leaning on the side of the Rover, emptying his stomach involuntarily.
Olufemi noticed the slight commotion, and came a bit closer to see. Ethan explained to him as he approached:
“We need to go back, around another way. It’s probably best if we can stop for the night someplace near. Anyplace in mind?”
Olufemi seemed to pause and think for a while and then nodded with renewed vigor:
“Yes, dey is a mission,” his voice ringing clear through the never-ending rain.
“What kind of a mission?”
“French Catholic. Nuns,” replied Olufemi with a very peculiar and untimely grin.
Ludwig suddenly stood straight, hanging onto the Rover’s door and said with a pale face:
“We’re going back. This caravan is no more.”
Rivulets of rain ran freely down Ethan’s taut face when he said with the slightest hint of irony:
“How are you going to help then, doctor?”
“I’ll have no more blood on my hands. I can never -”
“You’re scared out of your mind, I know. Maybe you’ve shat yourself, or pissed on your pants. Can’t tell with the bloody rain. It’s only natural. Fear is natural.”
“It doesn’t matter what I feel, damn you! These people trusted me with their -”
“Signed the papers, didn’t they? Listen, this is fuckall, alright? You can’t think straight. Olufemi, take point in our Rover. I’ll drive this one. Doctor, seriously, grab a couple of sedatives yourself and just hang on. Alright?”
Ludwig stared blankly at Ethan, while Olufemi hurried to spread the word to the other drivers. Ethan moved the wounded driver in the co-driver’s seat and told a practically deaf nurse and a red cross volunteer with a broken arm that they were leaving now. At length, before he urged Ludwig to get in the Rover, the doctor asked him:
“Do you kno
w what you’re doing?”
Ethan felt odd suddenly. He had heard that same question probably a thousand times from a hundred different people, but somehow this time it sounded as different as it was familiar. And even though he felt naturally inclined to grin and answer `bloody hell no’, he calmly said to the doctor:
“It will be alright now. Just get in the car with Olufemi and try not to think.”
The doctor made his way to the Rover with a slouch, exhaustion drawn all over his face. Ethan got into the now vacant driver’s seat and put the gear into reverse. He felt like he was turning into an accomplished liar, something he had thought he’d despise. Strangely enough, all he could think of was his bad leg.