The Night of the Cobra - Chapter 6

Chapter 6

As her heartbeat slowed and her breathing steadied, the questions returned. She just couldn’t reason what had happened. She pushed away from Shaun’s chest and turned to him.

His face was still soft with pleasure, his heavy-lidded eyes limpid in the light of the candle on the bedside table.

“I really wanted this to happen, but I don’t know what it means.” She tried again desperate to voice her distress.

“I’m married. I love my husband. I have no problems, no issues, no reason to be unfaithful but I have been and although I don’t regret it, I don’t understand it. This is not like me.” She whispered the last defiantly.

“Hey baby, baby.” He shushed her and stroked her hair.

“I don’t know either. I’ve wanted this too, since I met you. And it felt right. I’m sorry if you are now sad.”

“No,” she said. “That’s not it. I’m not sad.” She lay against his chest, her hand snaking up to his head to caress his hair. “But it’s so unexpected.” She felt like crying. “It wasn’t in the plan,” she breathed. “It just wasn’t in the plan.”

She eventually fell asleep in his arms, meshing her breathing with his and dreaming darkly. When she woke, she lay for a few seconds trying to figure out what had startled her.

The bed was empty and slowly she realised that someone was knocking on the door. She pulled on a T-shirt and went to open it. It was Shaun, standing in the drizzling rain.

“Hi again.” His voice was amused but he also sounded a little uncertain.

She ached to reach out and stroke the slight frown lines from his forehead. He came in.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t wake up. It’s 5.45 already and we’ve got to meet the others downstairs soon.”

“Right, great. I was fast asleep. Thanks,” she babbled nervously, then paused.

What to say? There was so much and so little right now. She felt shy all of a sudden and then he grinned and she laughed awkwardly.

“I’m sorry. I’m a bit lost for words. It’s all so surreal, so unexpected,” she said, reaching a hand for his face then pulling it back, afraid it was too soon for that.

He leant forward and kissed her.

“Don’t worry. I understand. Let’s talk later, if you want.” That note of uncertainty again.

“Of course I do. Of course. I just … it’s just so complicated and here of all places. Now.”

She leaned back, her arms around his neck to look into his eyes.

“Don’t worry I won’t say anything,” he said, looking a little hurt.

“It’s not that,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t looking for this. I don’t even know what this is. I need to think of Tim to think about him and us and you and …” She turned away, her hands balling into fists as she struggled to stop the waves of panic from swamping her voice.

“Listen, now is not the time,” he said, grabbing her arms and turning her towards him again. “Let’s talk about all this later, when we get back tonight.” He smiled again.

“There are rebels a-waiting.” She tried to smile back, he kissed her again and then left, his Timberlands leaving muddy footprints on the bare wooden floor.

As the door closed, Nina shifted into auto-pilot. She dressed slotted new batteries into her tape recorder, checked she had enough notebooks and enough cigarettes and finally, her mind empty, she sat on the edge of the bed, watching the black night turn grey. Then she grabbed her flak jacket and helmet and headed out to meet the others.

She found the journalists clustered under the dripping awning at the entrance to the hotel. Shaun was chatting to Glenn. She felt a toe-curling shiver of residual pleasure as she walked up to them.

He caught her eye, smiled lopsidedly and then arranged his face neutrally.

“Ready for some fun?” Glenn called out as she approached.

“Yeah. Great weather for it,” she said, gesturing to the curtain-like rain.

“Well, maybe the rain will cool some heads and keep everything quiet,” Glenn said. Despite the cold and the early hour, he looked cheerful, sipping lukewarm coffee from a white mug.

Peter was on his satellite phone to a rebel commander who went by the name of Captain Bulldozer. “We’ll be there in about 45 minutes,” he bellowed.

Nina wanted to giggle. Peter’s proper English accent sounded a false note in this place. He should be arranging a tea-party not a slightly crazy foray into rebel territory.

“Well, he’s the top guy and he says his men hold the other side of the bridge. He’s promised there will be no more shooting while the talks are going on in Freetown,” Peter told the others after hanging up.

“He said he will send an escort to meet us once we get close to the port.” He stowed his Thuraya in the inner pocket of his waterproof jacket.

“I guess now is as good a time as any to go across. If you can trust a man who calls himself Bulldozer,” he muttered.

The absurdity of the trappings of war here had always fascinated Nina. Soldiers and rebels often dressed in women’s clothes and bright wigs, or in other outlandish garments. She once saw a man with a police siren taped around his head. Another wrapped in a graduation gown complete with cap. A teenage boy in a wedding dress and hot pink wig.

Teenagers gave themselves names like Press the Button, Sleeping Walking, Major Chemical and, of course, Rambo. It was a comic-book war dreamed up in the young fighters’ drug-addled imaginations and brought to life by a malevolent deity.

When they arrived at the bridge, it was still raining, a soul-sapping drizzle that covered the bleeding city like a shroud. Gunfire popped around Monrovia but in short bursts.

“Probably looters,” Glenn said as he clambered out of the jeep and stood beside Nina at the entrance to the New Bridge, a two-lane road with slender walkways and low concrete walls on either side. It was now the frontline between the rebels and the government forces – a strip of no man’s land dividing the city.

The journalists had already negotiated three roadblocks. The twitchy government fighters did not want them to pass at first, but bribes, sweet talk and surely some curiosity about what was really on the other side of the bridge finally persuaded them to wave on the four cars.

They said there had been no fighting for 24 hours and they had no orders to advance.

By the bridge, the buildings were pitiful roofless shells. Plaster had fallen in chunks from walls raked by gunfire.

They parked under the blackened walls of a destroyed two-storey building. Amid the rubble of the upper floors, there was a red velveteen armchair, charred and dripping. A broken satellite dish lay nearby.

Glenn marshalled the bedraggled group.

“If everyone is ready, I think we should make a move.” He hoisted a white flag tied to sound recordist’s boom over his head.

“Let’s take it easy, stay together and those among you with a religious bent, this might be a good time for a sneaky prayer.”

Nina found herself walking beside Peter and his crew. Glenn was up front in a small group with Shaun and the two American journalists. The bridge was littered with spent bullet casings, which pinged underfoot.

The crossing stretched about 300 metres across the Mesurado River to the western part of the city. Halfway along, it bisected Providence Island.

Nina couldn’t see a soul on the other side. Slowly the conversation died down until the small group was walking in silence, the only sounds the sharp clatter of kicked bullet shells, the dull crunch of broken glass underfoot, the hiss of rain and the scratching of waterproofs moving.

The landscape was grim – grey river, grey sky, a burnt out car peppered with bullet holes and barbed wire straggling across the middle of the bridge where someone had tried to mount a roadblock.

Nina was glad Shaun had opted to walk ahead. It gave her time to watch him.

His movements were fluid and she marvelled at her new knowledge of this man. She had seen the feet and toes inside the black motorcycle boots. She had caressed the broad back now moving away from her under a navy poncho covering an oversized flak jacket. Her hands had roamed freely through the hair now tucked under the black baseball cap morbidly emblazoned with the Springsteen lyrics “War! What is it good for?”

“Christ, this gives me the heebie-jeebies,” Peter half-whispered. His normal sang-froid seemed deflated by the glum landscape, the total ruin surrounding them.

They had reached the other side now, where the bridge led towards the port. They trudged under a billboard so mottled with bullet holes that it must have been used as target practice by both sides.

Out of the corner of her eye, Nina caught a movement. A boy in a pink wig was peeping out from behind a shack perched on the muddy bank falling from the road. His little hands hugged an AK-47 to his puny torso. He wore only a pair of cut-off trousers, so soiled it was impossible to tell their original colour.

He saw Nina looking and smiled. It was one of the scariest things she had ever seen. A smile without joy on a young face without youth. She turned to point the boy out to Peter but she never had a chance.

The first thing she heard was the whoosh. Then a split second of silence before the dull clump as the mortar smashed into the riverside behind them.

Then everyone was shouting.

She could hear Glenn. “Get down. Get off the bridge!”

“Shit!” It was Peter. He scrabbled through the mud, rugby tackled her over the low concrete wall marking the walkway and lay on top of her panting.

Bullets cut the air above their heads, whistling by, too close. It lasted two minutes. Two minutes of hunched shoulders, balled fists, shallow breathing and prayers that were pure physical.

Then silence.

“What’s going on?” Who’s firing? Is everyone OK?” Glenn shouted.

Shaun’s voice answered. “The mortar came from the government side. Dunno about the rest.”

As other hidden voices shouted their position, Nina was overwhelmed by a relief so strong it flooded her mind. He was OK. They were all OK.

She could hear everyone listening, she could feel the weight of anxiety in the air, clogging her lungs, making it difficult to breathe. Five minutes and still the bridge was silent.

Peter patted her arm and smiled feebly. “Just can’t trust anyone here,” he whispered.

“Looks like it’s over,” Glenn shouted. He was somewhere on the other side of the road. “I suggest we go back.”

“Too bloody right. Let’s get out of here as quickly as possible,” Peter shouted.

“I’ve got the flag so let me into the road first,” Glenn yelled. “I’ll give the all-clear.”

Silence again. Nina peeked through the concrete pillars and could see him slowly rise, climb over the wall and walk into the road, the flag raised high above his head.

“Press!” he shouted. “Don’t shoot. Press.” She held her breath but all she could hear was the rain dripping onto her waterproof and Peter’s wheezy breathing at her side.
It was as if the city had stopped living.

Shakily, she got up and moved towards Glenn who was standing in the centre of the road. Shaun was there too and the American journalists. Muddied and shaken, the others were moving towards the central group.

She remembered later that she was bending down to wipe the mud off her trousers when the air cracked above her. She heard at least four shots. And his cry.

Later, she would be unable to say where the machinegun volley came from. The final betrayal.

In her dreams, she would hear that shocked, strangled cry a million times.

He fell heavily, twisting a little. It happened fast enough to make Nina doubt her eyes – for a second. Then she was running towards him.

Glenn was on his knees in the mud, struggling to free Shaun from his useless flak jacket. Her hands were over Shaun’s, pressed into the wound in his right side. Blood was seeping out from under their joined fingers.

Shaun looked shocked. He said nothing.

“Jesus, Shaun. Hold on, hold on!” She was holding his head, screaming.

Glenn was shouting orders. One of the Americans had picked up the flag and was waving it madly, screaming “Press! Stop fucking shooting.” Peter was roaring into his phone. “Get a car down to the bridge. Now!”

She was vaguely aware of bullets popping in the distance, on the government side, then near the port, across the city.

“Nina, Nina. Let go! We’ve got to move him. We’ve got to get him back.” It was Glenn. He lifted her away.

He and three others grabbed Shaun’s arms and legs and began to run back across the bridge. She tried to run with them, her breathing ragged, tears streaming down her face, her hands reaching for his head. But she was too far away.

She stumbled along, crushed under the weight of her flak jacket, her hands outstretched.

She would always carry that image of him, his long, lean body jolting lifelessly, his head drooping, his blood mixing with the mud, moving further away.

He lost consciousness on the run over the bridge. He died shortly after they got him to the Medecins sans Frontieres field hospital. He never spoke to her again.