by Dick Couch
“I want the bar closed in an hour,” Renaud told his team leaders. “The job here is finished; we leave tomorrow afternoon. I want the lorries and transports packed out at first light. We’ll be on the move just after midday. From here we’ll go back to the training camp and demobilize. Everyone will be paid off there, and we’ll begin the repatriation from the camp.”
“What about the others?” one of his lieutenants said, jerking his head toward the hotel.
“They’re not our concern. Other arrangements are being made for them.” The lieutenant shrugged. “Now, if you’ll all get something in your glass, we’ll have a drink on it. Tomorrow we’ll be away from here and out of it. Gentlemen, you’ve done well. To you, the Renaud Scouts.”
The others mumbled an agreement and drank with their leader. There was nothing else to do. The blacks, while they had been told nothing, sensed that this was their last night in garrison and quietly passed out bottles of beer. The whites at the bar gradually left their leader and found their men. While they would never mingle with blacks in Capetown or Johannesburg, they were brothers while in the field, and the whites sought out their black teammates, almost in preference to other whites.
Renaud was again by himself. He desperately wanted another gulp of gin, but he resisted and poured himself a second beer. The instructions from Mr. Georges Frémaux had been clear. Before they left, they were to kill everyone in the hotel and burn it to the ground with the corpses inside. He smiled ruefully. It would be just like the old days, when the colonial powers and the Communists fought for control of southern Africa. Kill and burn, burn and kill. Frémaux had been very specific about not looting, but who would know? After all, the boys had earned it. Renaud pushed himself from the bar and headed for his quarters in the wing of the hotel reserved for himself and his men. He promised himself another tote of gin once he had packed out his kit.
At first, Robert led them down toward the Makondo Hotel at a brisk walk. When they closed to within a mile of the objective, he began to move at a much more cautious pace. He ranged out in front of the file, moving fifty to a hundred meters ahead while the others waited. Once well out in front, he would freeze like a gundog on point, using all his senses to look for danger or something out of place. When he was satisfied, he thumbed the transmit key on the pistol grip of his rifle.
“You may move,” he whispered into his boom mic.
“Moving,” came Tomba’s voice in his earpiece.
When the Africans came to the Kona training facility, they were already soldiers and competent bush fighters. Tomba had selected them for their experience and courage. But they were weak on teamwork and technology. Under AKR’s tutelage and Tomba’s firm hand, the teamwork came rather quickly, but most of the men were several generations behind in technology. At first there were problems with change—the transition from AK-47s to the M-4 rifles. Then they had to learn to use the M-4 rifle and attached M-203 grenade launcher as a weapons system. Most were good combat shooters and proficient at close-in fighting, but their long-range shooting skills needed work. They were good at setting ambushes, but they had to be taught fire-and-movement tactics, and the selective use of force and firepower. And there were a number of other technologies, most of them common to American special operations soldiers, they had to master. The complex assault plan drawn up by Tomba and AKR would challenge their newly learned skills. Fortunately, much of the advanced technology was highly user-friendly.
Just before dark, they reached a position four hundred meters from and just above the perimeter of the complex. There the men dissolved into four groups of three, with Tomba and AKR forming a fifth, two-man control element. They faded into the bush and waited in total silence for close to fifteen minutes—time enough for everyone to become accustomed to the sounds and smells near the hotel. Tomba called his four team leaders in close. He unfolded a map and orientated it in relation to the actual complex before them. The map glowed under the red hooded lens of his penlight.
“Here we are, and here are the buildings before us. Each of you has your assignment. Are there any questions?” No one spoke. “Good. And you know your route from here to your positions for the assault?” Tomba looked each of the four men in the eye as he nodded his assent. “Very well, we are ready. Trust your instincts, but listen to your radio; if contacted, do exactly as you are instructed, just as we did in training on Kona. We are warriors, so let us now be about the business of warriors.” He held their eyes a moment, then said quietly, “Awusipe namhla isinkwa.”
“Awusipe namhla isinkwa,” they murmured in return. It was a Zulu prayer for victory in battle—“Give us the day.”
The four three-man teams melted into the bush and began to move toward their objectives. True to their training and breeding, they moved like incense through bamboo, making no sound and leaving the ground over which they traveled undisturbed. After they were gone, AKR keyed his radio.
“Home Base, this is AKR, over.”
“Go ahead, AKR,” came Janet Brisco’s immediate response.
“Janet, AKR. Teams are away. Dodds should have them on the plot now, over.”
“Understand teams away, stand by.”
A moment later, Dodds LeMaster’s voice came over AKR’s headset. “Dodds here. I have you and the four teams. They should be on your presentation as well, over.”
AKR and Tomba crowded behind the notebook computer connected to a tiny six-inch wire-whip antenna. With the UAV overhead, there was no reason to look for a satellite. The picture was sharp and identical to the one LeMaster had before him on the large plasma monitor in the van. Their restriction was only the size of the presentation. Both the van and the men in the field had a real-time overhead presentation of the hotel complex, courtesy of Cheetah, silently prowling the sky some 25,000 feet over their heads. Overlaid on this real-time image was a computer-generated schematic of the facility. The known defensive gun emplacements and guard posts were marked on the schematic. There were five blips, one red and four yellow. The red blip was their location, and the four yellow ones marked the transponders carried by each of the four teams. Thanks to Dodds LeMaster’s modification of the surveillance program, while Cheetah circled above, the image remained stable and orientated to their position on the ground.
“We have a good picture, Dodds. How about a close-up of our posit?”
“Coming down,” Dodds replied.
The picture began to zoom down on their location as their red blip began to grow in size and fade in intensity. While Tomba stared in amazement, AKR looked up and waved. There he was on the Global Hawk candid camera.
“It is magic,” Tomba whispered.
“No,” AKR said with a grin, “it’s just our own personal video-games geek.”
“I heard that,” came a sharp voice over both their headsets, but it was laced with good humor. The image on the screen zoomed back out to include the yellow blips that were slowly moving around the perimeter of the Makondo complex. “What else can I do for you?”
“Keep an eye on the teams while we move into position. Let us know if anything develops. AKR out.”
“Good hunting, AKR. Dodds out.”
While Tomba led AKR closer to the hotel, Dodds LeMaster remained glued to his scope—zooming in, zooming out, searching the ground in front of the teams as they moved into position. Only once did he interfere.
“Senagal, this is Control, over.”
“Uh, this is Mohammed Senagal, over.” The voice was clear, but there was hesitation in it.
“Senegal, this is Control. Hold where you are. There is a roving sentry moving across your line of travel, left to right, ten o’clock to two o’clock. You should see him soon, over.”
A dubious Mohammed Senagal and his two men froze and waited. Soon an armed man came into view fifteen meters away, crossing their line of travel and disappearing along the perimeter of the complex.
“Senagal, Control. The way ahead appears clear. Proceed as you were, over.”
/> “This is Senegal. We are moving again. Thank you, Control.”
The three bush fighters exchanged a brief, incredulous look. They had rehearsed this at the Kona training facility, but only half believed this kind of thing was possible. They were beginning to be convinced, even the taciturn Mohammed Senagal.
“I can’t believe you’re still having a problem. This medicine was given to us by a Kikuyu tribal healer; he said it was made from fermented wildebeest parts. It’s always worked for us before. Maybe you should try a little more.” Maria Gerhardt stood poised over Elvis Rosenblatt, bottle and spoon in hand.
“Wildebeest parts, you say. Perhaps just one more dose,” Garrett offered, trying to suppress a smile.
“I think we might hold off for a bit,” Rosenblatt said, looking pointedly at Garrett. “This could be more serious than I thought. Perhaps it’s time to take our friend up on his offer for the use of the helicopter—before I get any worse. Yeah, I think it’s about that time.”
“Helicopter?” Maria asked, capping her medicine bottle and setting it aside.
“That’s right,” Garrett replied. “The gentleman who was here this morning said, if he wasn’t better by this evening, to call him. He has a helicopter at his disposal and offered to fly Greg out. Maybe we should go ahead and take him up on it.”
“You think?” Rosenblatt said, his voice laced with sarcasm.
“Well, it’s that, or more of Maria’s medicine.” Rosenblatt’s eyes narrowed. He came up on one elbow, and Garrett put a hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy, Greg. I’ll call him right now.”
It was well after dark when the Jet Ranger set down gently on the Chiawa Camp helo pad. John Naye and Clark Gerhardt helped a moaning Greg Wood into the cabin of the helo. The camp director had followed them anxiously to the pad. A sick guest was cause for concern—not for the health of the guest, but for the reputation of the camp. Alfred handed up their bags, and Garrett secured them in the rear of the cabin. The helicopter lifted into the night air and eased itself out over the Zambezi. The pilot ran along the riverbank to the west until he was several miles from the camp, but instead of turning north for Lusaka, he rolled the Jet Ranger on its left side and turned south across the dark river into Zimbabwe.
Clark and Maria Gerhardt stood on the pad for a while after the helo had left. “I can’t understand it, Clark. The medicine has always worked before. And he was such a healthy-looking man.”
Clark shrugged. “Who knows. Maybe he was just sick of Africa and wanted to get out of here. There are some people who are like that, you know. Boys asleep?” She nodded. “Then, c’mon, the moon won’t be up for a while, and the stars are at their best. Let’s go have a whiskey by the river. Tomorrow we’ll get our rhino.”
All the teams were in place when a quarter moon rose high enough to peer over the rim of the mountain ridge to the southeast and into the valley. It was just after midnight. Accepted special operations doctrine called for a thorough reconnaissance of an objective before conducting an assault. Thanks to the technology IFOR had at its disposal, the recon of the objective was done as the assault teams made their approach. Cheetah provided an eye in the sky that could monitor ground activity with amazing clarity. Dodds LeMaster maneuvered the drone over and around the Makondo complex to get diagonal as well as overhead looks at various emplacements around the facility. Depending on natural and artificial lighting conditions around the complex, Cheetah used a blend of optical, radar, and infrared sensors to gather specific target data. En route to their positions, the assault teams had each placed two or three remote video cameras along their route and, under AKR’s guidance, aimed them to cover various aspects of the complex. Once in place, the small mini-cams could be selectively interrogated, and the images displayed to AKR or flashed back to the two control vans where Dodds LeMaster, Janet Brisco, and Bill Owens had a near-total surveillance of the Makondo Hotel grounds. They visually patrolled the grounds, passing all movements to the men on the ground who waited at their assigned positions. One man in each of the four three-man assault teams had been assigned a combat support role. Two of them would serve as snipers, while the other two were armed with shoulder-fired rocket launchers. Their various perches had been selected to provide overlapping fields.
Tomba and AKR had positioned themselves on the rise right behind the main building. From this point they had a clear view of the guard post at the main entrance gate, the hotel building, and the principal outbuilding, which was the spa complex. Tomba searched the area from their vantage point with night vision goggles—or NVGs. AKR, well concealed in the brush, was glued to the computer screen as he interrogated the various mini-cams and periodically checked Cheetah’s presentation. Along with the four deployed teams, they and the others waited, watching the movement patterns of the guards on duty and looking for anything that might be useful for the assault. They would continue to gather information right up to the moment of the attack.
“AKR, this is Dodds, over.”
“Go ahead, Dodds.”
“From what we’ve been able to observe, the guards coming on duty and going off duty go into either the west wing of the hotel or the spa building. We know from previously monitored activity that the spa building is probably their off-duty hangout. And we’ve felt all along that the west wing serves as barracks. Can you confirm this? Over.”
“Roger, Dodds. Wait, out.”
Tomba had heard the same transmission, and the two men exchanged glances. Neither could see what was going on inside the wing from their location, although they did see several of the guards entering and leaving. Tomba slipped off his pack.
“Let me approach for a closer look,” he whispered. “I will be back in a few moments”
Before AKR could respond, Tomba had vanished into the brush in front of them. All AKR could do was alert Dodds and the other men on the ground that one of their number was on the move inside the perimeter of the complex. A half hour later, Tomba returned as silently and as abruptly as he had left.
“I was able to slip inside unnoticed and see into the ground-floor hallway,” he said as he shrugged into his pack. “This is the part of the hotel where the soldiers are billeted. And from what I could see, they are preparing to leave. I was able to see several rucksacks in the hall outside of the rooms and a pile of sleeping bags. This is a force that is preparing to be on the move soon. If we wish to catch them here, we may not have too much longer.”
AKR considered this a moment and glanced at his watch; it was just after 2:00 A.M. The original plan was for them to attack just before dawn, when the sentries were least alert and they would have some filtered daylight to inspect the camp. The extra time that day had been allowed for the force to make their way to their assigned assault positions. They were now already in place. And there was always the unlikely chance that a sentry would run across one of the assault teams, and that in itself would precipitate an attack. If they were preparing to leave, at dawn more of the guard force would be up and about. Little could be gained by waiting, AKR reasoned. He keyed his radio.
“This is AKR. You with us, Janet?”
“Right here, Akheem. What do you have?”
“Looks like the security force is preparing to leave. They probably won’t move until first light, but we can’t be sure. Recommend that we attack as soon as Garrett is ready to move, over.”
“Understand you want to attack ASAP. Give me a minute. Brisco, out.”
Janet Brisco was seated behind her console in the van with an infrared presentation of the Makondo Hotel filling the large flat-plasma screen before her. Steven stood behind her, watching and listening on the net, but he said nothing. He was in charge of the operation, but he had delegated tactical responsibility to Janet Brisco; it was her show. Without taking her eyes from the screen, she shifted frequencies and keyed her radio. Like Dodds LeMaster and Bill Owens in the other van, she wore a headset with a mic boom that swung down from one of the earpieces.
“Gopher T
wo Seven, this is Control. How do you hear me? Over.”
A little more than thirty miles to the southeast on the high Zimbabwean plain, a Jet Ranger sat quietly in a clearing on the veld. The two pilots pumped the last of the jet fuel from two fifty-five-gallon drums, prepositioned there the night before, into the tanks of the helicopter to top them off. The aircraft had the legs to make the journey unrefueled, but by topping off, they could, if need be, fly clear of Zambian or Zimbabwean airspace into Tanzania or South Africa. While the pilots attended to the fueling, Garrett Walker and Elvis Rosenblatt climbed into black rubber-and-vinyl suits designed to protect them in a hazardous chemical or biological environment, equipped with state-of-the-art charcoal and ionic filtration systems. The suits were lightweight and only mildly restrictive, but very warm.
“How come these are black?” Rosenblatt asked. “Normally these are bright yellow.”
“Because our guys have been told it’s okay to shoot at yellow,” Garrett replied, “but not black.”
“Oh, good idea.”
Garrett and Rosenblatt now looked like astronauts with their full-body suits, holding their helmets under their arms. After a final check of each other, they sat on the open deck of the helo compartment with their legs hanging over. Both men had earpieces with microphones held in place with elastic headbands. The pilots, finished with their refueling, had climbed back into their seats up front. Both had NVGs fitted to their flight helmets, and if they thought it strange that they had just gassed up in the middle of Africa with two moon men in the back, they didn’t show it. Like most GSI pilots, they were former military special operations crewmen, and they relished a bit of tight flying as much as the men waiting around the Makondo Hotel relished a good firefight.