men behind them now. Veronica feels strong hands on her arms, dragging them behind her back, pulling them together. Then she feels rope against her wrists. A bolt of panic surges through her. She will be utterly helpless, she has to do something - but there is nothing to be done. The rope tightens, is knotted. Hands fumble at her waistband. She fears she is going to be stripped and gang-raped right there, but she is soon released. The man goes on to Jacob beside her. He too looks sick with terror.
"It's going to be okay," Derek murmurs to her. He manages to sound a little like he means it, even though his arms too have just been bound behind him.
"Silence," the leader hisses at him, pronouncing it the French way.
Derek nods, but it's a nod of acceptance, not submission. Veronica is glad she is beside him. He seems to radiate strength.
Soon they are all bound, and all connected by lengths of yellow rope tied to their belt loops, a poor man's chain gang. Veronica wriggles her hands and tugs her arms, but the knot on her wrists is tight and secure, there is no escape. The position of her arms is uncomfortable and her shoulders have already begun to ache.
"Allez," the leader says, and then in accented English, "We go. We go fast."
He begins to pull them to their feet. Veronica dares to look directly at him for the first time. He is big even for Africa, over six feet tall and broad-shouldered. His cheeks are marked with vertical scars. What was once his right eye is now an empty crater of scar tissue. His face is drawn into a tight expression, as if he is in pain. Like the rest of his men, he carries a gun on his back and a panga dangling from his belt; unlike them, he also bears a looped-up whip that makes him look a little like a black Indiana Jones.
Once they are all on their feet, he and three of his men begin to lead their roped-together prisoners off the trail and into the underbrush. Derek is at the front of the chain, and Veronica second. The other four abductors follow, leaving the three dead men behind. One of the small men acts as navigator, guiding everyone else through the opaque jungle. He's maybe four feet six, but he has a goatee. It takes Veronica a moment to understand. Not a child. An adult pygmy. His features are finer than the larger men, his skin is lighter, and he marches barefoot through the jungle. The trail he leads them along, if it is a trail, is entirely invisible, but somehow they avoid the worst of the tangled vines and dense undergrowth, and the men in front rarely have to use their pangas.
* * *
Veronica remembers sitting in her Kampala office and reading Wikipedia articles about the Impenetrable Forest, just after she accepted Derek's invitation to come along on this weekend expedition. According to Wikipedia, pygmies used to live here, until the Ugandan government expelled them in favour of the jungle's more lucrative denizens, the gorillas. Now the pygmies are the lowest of Uganda's low, despised and dispossessed. She remembers how hearing Derek's voice made her a little dizzy and lightheaded, when he called and invited her to come. The memory is so vivid it is almost like she is actually back in Kampala.
She tries to drag herself back to the present, but her mind is buzzing like a insect trapped in a jar, constantly ricocheting in new directions, bouncing again and again off the sheer terrifying enormity of what just happened. Nobody speaks as they move westwards, along the ridge instead of up it. It isn't as physically difficult as climbing, but the muddy ground is slick and uneven, especially when they cross little streams, and keeping her balance is a real challenge with her arms tied behind her back. Veronica never appreciated before how much her arms contributed to walking. Her legs are already tired, and soon she is sweating and breathing hard again. The exertion clouds her mind, but in a strange way also makes it easier to think, absorbs some of the white-noise panic that at first drowned out any coherent thought.
They are travelling west, towards the Congo border. That makes awful sense. This national park is right on the Uganda-Congo frontier, and the eastern provinces of the Congo are among the few places on earth with no real