Thunderbolt by Wilbur Smith (reading strategies book .txt) 📕

him otherwise, saying, ‘You’re valuable in a different way,’ but it didn’t stop me regretting what I’d said. What a selfish idiot. We lay there in silence for a bit. I was wishing I’d said nothing at all about trying to escape. I should have waited until I had a proper plan. Talking about something you want before you’ve got a sensible way of achieving it only makes whatever it is less likely to happen, in my experience.

‘When you say he makes an example of people, what do you mean?’ Amelia asked, her voice small.

Mo didn’t answer her directly. Instead he said, ‘I’m tired. We should try to get some sleep.’

35.

The following afternoon, walking back from the stump-field, we came upon a bunch of new recruits doing a form of military training. It seemed mostly to involve poking wooden guns into sandbags, crawling around in the dirt on all fours, and running on the spot holding something heavy: a lump of wood, an old tyre, a breeze block.

There was a bored air to all of these activities. The teenager supervising looked half asleep and none of the other kids were putting in much effort.

But further on from this weary circus we passed another little gathering learning how to use real guns. A boy about my age was showing a semi-automatic rifle – Mo said later that it was an AK-47, one of the few working guns General Sir kept under lock and key – to three boys who looked about ten.

I slowed my pace to watch. The older kid was acting very cool, the big man at ease with a deadly weapon. He took the magazine off the gun, jabbed his finger into the hole, waggled it about, then flipped the cartridge over and slotted it back into place. With no warning at all he lifted the gun to his hip and pulled the trigger, firing it at nothing in particular.

I had an immediate flashback and saw chips of fibreglass ripping from Pete’s beautiful boat. The harsh metallic sound of the gun, and the casualness of the kid unleashing it, took me straight back to Flip-flops and Barrel-man.

We were in the middle of nowhere here but bullets fly miles. The four or five this boy had shot off could have ended up anywhere. As I watched, he removed the magazine again and held it and the gun up for the ten-year-olds to inspect. For some reason all of the boys burst out laughing. Swap the AK-47 out of the picture and they could have been showing each other a stupid meme on a phone.

The big kid with the gun now handed both bits over to one of the ten-year-olds. Still in the grip of the joke, the little boy nevertheless managed to refit the magazine. It didn’t matter that he was laughing; the gun gave him a sort of swagger. He was a skinny kid, couldn’t have weighed more than forty kilos, and he was already wobbling about with the giggles, so when he copied his instructor and nonchalantly fired the semi-automatic from the hip the force of the recoil spun him backwards. He had no weight behind the gun and was completely off balance. Its muzzle swung our way.

Instinctively I ducked, yanking Amelia down with me. Both Mo and Xander dropped to the ground as well. It was a good job, because the little idiot still had his finger on the trigger and, whether he meant to or not, he pulled it again. With the rifle pointed at us! I swear the shot was louder with the gun aimed our way. A flash of orange flame burst from the barrel.

Mercifully, this second shot only knocked one person over: the kid who fired it. The recoil made him sit down on his bum in the dirt. He threw the assault rifle aside as if it was a live thing he couldn’t trust. But he was still laughing. They all were. They thought it was hilarious. Even when Mo shouted at them, they kept at it with the giggles. Only as we stood up and dusted ourselves off did the little twit who’d nearly killed us glance down the track towards camp and abruptly shut up. Panic flared in his eyes.

General Sir was striding towards us. He’d clearly seen what had happened, and he looked furious. He said nothing until he was standing right over the boys. All four of them shrank before him. With one hand he grabbed the kid who’d nearly shot us, and he took hold of the teenage instructor with the other.

He had them by the hair. The teenager was nearly as big as General Sir, but neither he nor the little one resisted as the General banged their heads together, hard enough for the thwack to be audible.

It was almost funny: less than a minute beforehand they’d been tough guys with a gun, and now they looked like little kids in trouble. Both of them kept their eyes down for the short walk back to camp. We followed. The General led them purposefully. Clearly the punishment wasn’t over.

‘What’s going to happen to them?’ I asked.

‘The pits, probably,’ said Mo.

‘What’s that?’

‘Come and see for yourselves.’

As the General peeled off behind his own quarters Mo led us along with him. General Sir took the two boys further into the bush. Quite a way, in fact. When he finally stopped, Mo raised a hand and we all stopped too.

General Sir had his baton out again. He pointed it at the teenage instructor and then at the ground. From where we were, it wasn’t clear what he was jabbing at down there. But the boy knew what to do. He bent over and levered up a metal door set flush with the ground. Then he climbed into the hole beneath it and let the door clang shut.

The General knelt to work a long bolt into place across the top of the door, with a metal-on-metal shriek.

‘What’s down