He stooped to pick up a cheroot butt from the side of the lane. ‘It looks a few days old…’ Mann said to Louis and then paused to listen to a horribly familiar sound. ‘Something’s very wrong here.’

It was a sound that Mann had heard many times before, but he wished he hadn’t. It was the droning of thousands of flies.

73

‘I am coming this time,’ said Riley as he joined Mann and Alak as they made their way cautiously towards the large buildings in the centre. The others stayed to keep watch. They walked in a line until they came level with one of the barns. They followed Alak in silence as Mann kept his shuriken at the ready. As they passed the first of the smaller, open-sided barns Mann stopped to examine a pile of old sacks, their stamps still visible: they were branded with their supplier’s brand. As he picked it up, a large spider ran from beneath the hessian folds. He shook the sack and another dropped out, plopped onto the floor, and disappeared back into the bottom of the pile. He spread the sack out so that he could read it. It was Chinese script. He tore off a small tag with the logo on it and put it into his pocket. All around him were the remnants of heroin processing: containers that had once housed the sugar, the chemicals, and the vats for distilling. All around, the earth was churned with fresh footprints and a fire had been burning there very recently.

Despite himself, Mann felt his pulse quicken as they drew up to the entrance to the longest of the barns. Around them empty bottles of rum lay smashed and crawling with sugar-hungry insects. A cobra danced at them as they approached. The droning of flies was deafening.

‘Shit. Jesus Christ!’ Riley instantly recoiled as they rounded the corner of the building. A cloud of flies lifted, turned in the air and resettled onto another body.

‘There has been a night of madness here,’ said Alak quietly.

Flies swarmed over smears of blood and scraps of bloodied rags: women’s clothing lay in shreds across the floor. Three bodies lay on the wooden platform and a fourth was slumped over, tied to a roof strut on a raised platform. Its head was slumped forward. It appeared to be moving with flies and feasting insects and its legs were being gnawed at by a wild she-dog and her puppies.

As they mounted the platform and approached the body, the canopy of black flies parted and revealed strands of golden hair.

‘Jesus, look, Mann—she has blonde hair…’ Riley’s voice rose.

Alak held up his hand for calm. Mann looked back from the doorway to where Sue and the others were stood. He held up his hand to tell them to stay where they were. Louis nodded back; his face grave. They didn’t need to witness it to know that there was something dreadful.

Mann, Alak and Riley walked cautiously towards the body and stepped up onto the platform. Riley couldn’t take his eyes from the body.

‘Christ, it’s one of the girls. It’s Silke.’

The dog stopped to growl at the newcomers. Mann picked up a stone and threw it, it hit her on the rump. She yelped and ran off down the side of the platform, her puppies scampering behind.

‘Some people were lying here. You can see their outline.’ Alak pointed to the barren floor where the dust was missing. He knelt down and picked up the strands of rope that lay around. ‘They were tied together.’

‘Why the fuck has he started killing the hostages and why here?’ Riley couldn’t take his eyes from Silke.

‘They did this three days ago.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive,’ answered Mann, as he stooped to look at one of the bodies. ‘You can tell by the size of the maggots.’

Alak looked around him, as if the answer to this madness were in the roof, or in the still putrid air, as if it lay in the atmosphere.

‘He came here because he is frightened and he sought sanctuary. He came because he had no choice.’ He looked across at Silke. ‘He left her here for us to find. If we are to save the others, we must hurry. Whatever he wants he has forsaken. Now he wants to make the world pay. Let’s go.’

‘We can’t leave her,’ said Riley, visibly distressed.

‘We have no choice. If he passes this way again, he won’t know we have been here. He will think we are far away and headed in the wrong direction. Then we may have a chance to save the others.’

‘I agree with Alak, Riley,’ said Mann. ‘The less help we give him the better. We need to think of the living now,’ he finished quietly as he and Alak began to make their way along the edge of the platform.

‘I won’t leave her here.’ Mann turned to see Riley, his knife in his hand. ‘I’m going to cut her down.’

‘No, Riley.’ Mann stopped in his tracks.

‘Stop!’ Alak turned and shouted to him.

But Riley was already stepping over the piles of bloodied clothes towards Silke, until he froze and turned to Mann and Alak, his eyes wide with terror. He went to speak but whatever he was going to say was drowned by the sound of the explosion beneath his foot.

74

Mann was blown off the platform. Dazed, he struggled to his hands and knees and shook himself conscious. Alak was doing the same. They raced over to Riley. One foot was badly lacerated, the other leg was opened up like the petals of a flower. A piece of Riley’s shin bone was sticking out of his groin. There was nothing left of Silke’s body except her arms still wrapped around the roof strut.

‘Keep to the right-hand side, the place is boobytrapped,’ Mann yelled as Sue and Louis came running into the barn. Alak jumped down from the platform and slipped outside to stand guard.

Run Run pulled out the medical supplies from the bag. Riley was fitting from the shock and loss of blood, but still conscious. Louis strapped a tourniquet around Riley’s thigh and Sue tore open the medical pack and pulled out a pack of blood-clotting bandages.

‘You hang in there, Riley, you’re going to be okay.’ Mann kept talking as he worked fast with Sue and Louis to apply pressure to the massive wounds.

‘Bring me more bandages from the porters’ packs,’ Sue shouted. ‘Hold this…’ Sue gave Mann a pack of wadding. ‘Open it, but don’t touch it till I say. For Christ sake, Riley, it had to be you.’ She paused for a moment, pushing the hair from her face with the heel of her hand. It left a smear of blood across her forehead. ‘Riley’s not used to looking out for landmines—he’s not used to it the way we are.’ She looked at Mann, her eyes full of worry.

Louis gave Riley a morphine injection and an antibiotic jab and inserted a saline drip into his arm. Run Run helped Louis clean and close the lacerations of Riley’s foot. The floor was saturated in fresh blood and bone fragments.

Louis nodded towards the open medical bag. ‘In there,’ said Louis. ‘You’ll find an oxygen converter; it’s in a blue bag. Get it out for me.’

Mann wiped his hands on his trousers; they were wet with Riley’s blood. He leant across to the medical bag and pulled out the shoulder strap of a blue pack. ‘That’s it. Now get this stretch bandage around his foot for me whilst I set this up.’

Riley went still as the morphine kicked in. They got him onto a stretcher and carried him outside.

‘If I take that out, he’s going to die,’ Sue said, looking at the piece of shin bone jutting from his groin. ‘It’s right next to an artery.’ She shouted over her shoulder: ‘Alak! Radio Mo and tell her to get a stretcher team here immediately.’

Alak was already talking to Mo on the radio. He shouted back: ‘There is no team near. We will have to take him ourselves.’