The intruder stoops to take the fallen guard's rifle. He is so close Veronica could take a single step forward and touch his hand. She feels paralyzed, barely able to breathe. He takes the weapon and stands back up, waiting for something.

Veronica forces herself to move, to turn her head and look at the others. There are more intruders among them, she can't tell how many but the jungle seems alive with motion, there must be at least eight or ten. Most look similar to the man who stands an arm's-length away from her, but two of them are much smaller, like children. All of them are armed. Banana-shaped ammunition clips protrude from their battered wood-and-iron rifles.

Two of those weapons are pointed at Elijah. He and the rest of the gorilla group seem to have turned into statues. The one exception is Derek, who as Veronica watches draws himself up slowly from his push-up position into a tense crouch. His eyes dart in all directions, as if looking for an avenue of escape, but one of the smaller intruders watches him carefully, keeps his weapon aimed straight at Derek's heart.

She hears a slithering sound behind her and turns to see two more intruders dragging the other guard out of the jungle by his legs. His limp arms trail behind him like loaves of bread. His face is masked with dripping blood and somehow distorted, Veronica can't make out exactly what happened to it and doesn't want to.

She knows she should be terrified, but she feels more horror than fear. She is not yet frightened for herself, not in her blood and bones. So far it is all too dreamlike, too strange, surreal and silent. It feels like everyone is playing a part, going through motions scripted for them long ago. Surely this performance will soon be over and everyone involved will go back to their regularly scheduled lives.

The guard lying before her stops breathing. It is nothing like a movie death scene, it is far more stark and simple.

One of the intruders speaks. She can't see his face, he is aiming his gun at Elijah, keeping his back to Veronica. The words are in an African language. Elijah hesitates. He looks thoughtful. Then he pushes the red TALK button on the walkie-talkie and begins to speak quickly. About ten words in he is silenced by a loud burst of gunfire like a whole string of firecrackers going off.

Veronica closes her eyes involuntarily against the bright flashes. When she opens them again Elijah lies dead or dying on the ground, his rag-doll body torn by a dozen wounds. It takes her a moment to understand. He was told to put down the walkie-talkie, or maybe to tell it reassuring lies, and instead he told park headquarters what was happening, and was killed for it.

The man who spoke to Elijah, and then murdered him, starts barking new orders. He sounds angry, thwarted. Veronica cries out with pain and dismay as the intruder standing above grabs her arm and half-drags, half-leads her to their leader. The rest of the gorilla group is similarly escorted, arranged into a rough line, then forced onto their knees in the damp undergrowth.

None of them dare to resist. This doesn't feel unreal any more. It feels very real and very immediate. It feels like they are all about to die. Veronica doesn't know what to do, she can't think, she feels weak and sick, like she has the flu. Her mind seems stuck in neutral, unable to move.

"We have money," Michael says weakly. He pulls his money belt out and tugs open its zipper with fumbling fingers. "You can have it. American passports. Everything. You can have it all."

The intruders' leader takes two quick steps towards him and kicks him in the stomach like a soccer player taking a free kick. Michael doubles over and makes gagging noises. Money spills from his hands. Diane begins to shriek, but tentatively, she is panting for air and can't get enough air in her lungs to really scream, and when the man who kicked her husband turns menacingly towards her, she chokes and falls silent.

There are 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 government, home to a civil war that began almost a decade ago and still simmers despite the presence of UN peacekeepers. These men must have come from that land of lawless anarchy to capture white tourists. The thought gives Veronica hope. Even if rescue doesn't arrive, these men will want to ransom their victims, that is why they have been captured and not simply killed and looted. She is helpless, but at least she is valuable.

Ahead of her, Derek slips on mud; and as he turns to right himself, he twists his head and mutters to her, "We need to slow down and mark the trail. Pass it on."

He keeps walking, a little slower now. Veronica understands. It will take at least half an hour for a rescue party to get from park headquarters to where they were ambushed. Then their rescuers will have to follow this hidden pygmy route through dense jungle. That will take time and luck; they need to help with both.

She waits a few moments; then she too feigns a slip and fall, a feint that nearly becomes the real thing, and uses her recovery to whisper the message to Jacob. She hopes he understood. She hardly needs to tell Jacob to slow down, his breath is already ragged, and the rope connecting their belts keeps tugging her back. She suspects Michael and Diane, further back, are in worse condition yet.

The leader stops and turns to his captives, hand on the hilt of his panga. "Vite," he says angrily. "Fast. Fast."

Veronica knows she shouldn't speed up, but sheer physical fear propels her. Derek alone ignores the angry exhortation, and she nearly bumps into him. The leader drops back, grabs Derek by the collar of his shirt, and pulls him along for a little while. Derek has to scramble to keep his feet. He is released with a warning look. At first he continues at this faster pace; then, by degrees, he begins to slow down again. Veronica follows his lead.

After a while they are all told to stop. A man walks along the line of prisoners and pours a few swallows of water into the mouth of each from a big two-litre plastic bottle that once contained Coca-Cola. Then the march resumes. Her shoulders hurt, the rope is beginning to chafe her wrists, and she is helpless against the jungle's swarming, buzzing insects, her exposed skin is already mottled with itching bug bites.

Soon they reach a wide and shallow stream. The pgymy leads them straight into the water and then uphill, along the stream. Veronica winces. She has read about this kind of thing in books. The water will wash their tracks out of this muddy streambed and make pursuit almost impossible, they won't even leave a scent to follow.

Derek manages to reach into his back pocket with his bound hands and unearth his wallet. He slips and falls into the water - and in doing so, tosses his wallet into the shallows at the edge of the stream. Veronica's heart lifts. If rescuers find it they will at least know to go upstream. Derek bounces up quickly from his contrived fall, and looks down to the ground as he keeps walking, ignoring their captors' leader's one-eyed glare.

A few minutes later, the other pygmy runs up alongside the chain of prisoners. This second pygmy holds Derek's dripping wallet. The one-eyed man takes it without even breaking stride, the second pygmy rushes back to his position at the back of the column, and Veronica groans aloud with dashed hope.

They crest the ridge, and soon afterwards turn back to the right, heading west again. The sun is now high above them. Its light is mostly swallowed up by the canopy trees, but the heat is growing intense. Behind her Jacob is lurching more than walking, wheezing with every breath.

The one-eyed leader rounds on them again. "Fast! Fast!"

They speed up a little, but he still looks unhappy. Then, as they are traversing a particularly steep stretch, Jacob slips on something and falls. He slides far enough down the slope that Veronica and Susan, his neighbours in the human chain, are pulled to the ground, and Derek and Judy beyond nearly follow. Jacob lies gasping in a cluster of huge ferns until two of their captors pull him forcefully to his feet.

The one-eyed man considers Jacob a moment, expressionless, then motions them all to continue. Jacob manages to stumble along further. It is Diane who falls next, second to last in the chain. She lies weeping in the mud, doesn't even try to get up. The one-eyed man stalks over to her.

"Up," he commands. "Up!"

"I can't." Diane looks up at her tormentor. Her face and bottle-blonde hair are smeared with mud and tears. Earlier Veronica thought she was maybe fifty. Now she looks older. "Please, for God's sake, I just can't."

"Let her go," Michael says desperately. He too seems to have aged ten years in the last half hour. "You don't need her. Take me and let her go."

The one-eyed man ignores him. He stoops towards Diane, grabs her bound wrists, and lifts. Veronica winces. Diane screams with new agony as her shoulders wrench in their sockets. Somehow she manages to scramble to her feet.

"You see?" the leader says. His alien accent sounds half French, half African. "Yes you can. Yes you will."

For a second Veronica crazily imagines him as a power-of-positive-thinking public speaker, and almost giggles. Then he starts to pull Diane's shirt off her.

"No," Michael says, his eyes wide. "No, please, that's not necessary. We'll go fast. I promise."

Again he is ignored. Diane's shirt is pulled up her waist, over her head, and back along her bound arms, revealing a pale, wrinkled body and a white sports bra. The one-eyed man's hand drops to his belt and draws out his panga.

"No!" Michael starts forward - but another man, the one in the Tupac Shakur T-shirt, casually grabs Michael's arms from behind, holding him back, and then stoops, reaches between Michael's legs, and squeezes his testicles hard. Michael gasps, his body contorts like he has been shocked with a thousand volts. The man keeps squeezing and twisting, his face expressionless, a man doing an undesirable but necessary job. Michael drops to his knees, whimpering pathetically, writhing helplessly, lost in agony, his wife forgotten. His eyes are completely white, the pupils have rolled back into his head.

Veronica stares with horror as the one-eyed man severs Diane's bra with his machete. Diane's weeping intensifies into a kind of breathless ululation. He replaces his panga and unfurls his whip, made of some kind of thick leather cut into a helical shape, like a stretched-out phone cord. Another of his men takes a position in front of Diane, forces her down onto her knees and forehead, then lifts up her arms as far as they will go, exposing her back. The whip whistles through the air and smacks into Diane's upper back. The impact doesn't sound that forceful, but it wrenches a howl of amazed agony from Diane's throat, a cry more animal than human. Her whole body arches and writhes, instinctively and futilely seeking escape, her legs scrabble feebly at the ground as the whip pulls back and immediately strikes again, catching the scream in Diane's throat, reducing it to a series of choking whimpers.

Derek steps up behind Veronica, close enough to touch, and she starts with surprise. He murmurs, "On the front of my belt, there's a Leatherman. Try to get it and pass it back to me. Not now. We're being watched."

Veronica turns and looks, sees the little leather pouch on Derek's belt, and the pygmy guide watching them carefully. She turns back in time to see Diane and Michael released. Michael crumples headfirst to the ground as if kowtowing. The one-eyed man coils up the whip, restores it to his belt loop, steps forward to the moaning, weeping heap that is Diane, grabs her by her hair and pulls her back upright. As she staggers to her feet Veronica momentarily sees that two red lines have been carved across her back. Both are already dripping blood along their length.

"Fast," the leader warns her, "or I give you more. Ten, twenty, fifty. Fast."

Diane, sobbing for breath, does not respond, but the one-eyed man seems satisfied. He nudges Michael's face with his muddy rubber boot and commands, "Up."

Michael obeys with a moan. His lined face is wet with tears. The one-eyed man walks back up the chain of prisoners. He nods at Tom and Judy, as if with approval. He stops in front of Susan for a moment, grabs a handful of her blonde hair, carefully inspects her chiselled face. Susan is rigid with terror. After a moment the man smirks and moves on to Jacob.

"Fast," he warns him.

"Vite," Jacob agrees breathlessly. "J'ai compris."

The one-eyed man raises his eyebrows. "Tu parles francais?"

"Un peu."

Veronica is next. She looks away as he approaches, but doesn't move. She tells herself, be nondescript, don't make him notice you, be the gray woman, the girl who isn't there. But when he reaches out to touch her face, she instinctively recoils, takes a step away. His expression darkens. He grabs a handful of her hair and twists so hard that she whimpers and tears fill her eyes. He pulls her head back savagely, traces the fingers of his other hand down her cheek. They feel like sandpaper. He is smiling. She sees to her horror that his incisors have been filed into sharp points, like a vampire.

"Les sauvages Congolaise," Derek says scornfully. "Les betes d'Afrique. Vraiment, les Belges avaient raison."

Immediately Veronica is released. The man spins towards Derek, finishes the movement by punching him in the stomach. Derek falls backwards to the ground, groaning loudly, crumpling into a ball. The one-eyed man stoops, grabs Derek's wrists, and pulls him painfully back to a standing position. Veronica knows he took that punch for her, spoke up as a distraction.

"Je suis pas stupide," the one-eyed man warns him. "Je te vois." Then he turns to the others. "Fast. Fast, vous comprenez? You understand? We have no need of you all. You go fast now or you die."