6
Night Raid
It was 01:00 according to the dayglo digits on my commando watch. It woke me up as I snoozed in the passenger seat of the Aid International van. Clarence stirred behind the wheel and Inge stretched and yawned in the seat behind us. I shoved my door open and stepped down into the layby we’d parked up in, my boots crunching lightly in the gravelly dirt.
The Congolese wilderness was true black. Light virtually zero, apart from when the sky flashed neon blue and silent over the horizon from a storm happening somewhere else. You expected the night to be cool, but it was as warm as a summer day in England. It was close, too. The humidity had been building all day and now the storms were coming.
I shut the passenger door behind me and pulled a small torch from a belt around my wa
