by Jim Eldridge
Immediately the small receiver by Mitch’s side began humming, and then voices could be heard coming from it. They were muffled, but if he strained hard to listen Mitch could pick up what was being said.
On the small screen Mitch could make out some movements, but nothing very clear – mainly just shadows in the background.
Mitch kept his eyes and his rifle on the building and the bandits, watching out for Gaz. He spotted the Geordie every now and then, surfacing from beneath a bush or from a dip in the ground, and then sliding on to another sheltered point.
Finally, Gaz made it back to the hide and Mitch. He gestured at the small receiver.
‘Getting anything?’ he asked.
Mitch nodded. ‘Sound and vision working OK,’ he confirmed. ‘Now I guess we just wait, watch and listen.’
13
After some close observations using the transmitter, they heard Nelson radio with instructions for everyone to regroup at the original location.
‘Looks like we’re ready to roll,’ muttered Gaz as he and Mitch gathered their weapons and headed back through the trees.
When they arrived, Two Moons and Benny were already there with Nelson and Tug. Nelson had drawn a more detailed plan of the hotel buildings and grounds, with extra information from what he and Tug, and Two Moons and Benny, had observed and picked up.
‘We managed to get a mic and camera in a hole in the wall,’ explained Two Moons.
‘We did the same thing in one of the windows,’ said Mitch. Then he added with a grin, ‘Or, to be fair, Gaz did. I just watched him.’
Quickly, Mitch and Gaz told the rest of the unit what they’d been able to pick up from their own observations.
‘There are between five and six men on guard at the front as a general rule. Another three, all fully armed, roaming around the side. Now and then they join up with their pals at the front, and then go off and chat to their mates round the back of the hotel,’ said Gaz. ‘There was a change-over about an hour ago. Nothing organised, it all looked pretty casual. Some guys came out from inside, and some of the guys who were outside went in. But the numbers stayed pretty much the same.’
‘What intel did you get from your mic and camera?’ asked Nelson.
‘It looks like that room at the front is some kind of eating place,’ said Mitch. ‘You can just make out a fridge in one corner. And there are cans and bottles. Lots of sounds of cans being opened. We picked up a flare that looks to me like a flame from a stove of some sort. From what we can see, the place inside is a dump. They cook, eat and drink without clearing up and throw their rubbish and their clothes on the floor.’
‘Sounds like some of the places I used to live in Newcastle,’ said Gaz, smiling.
Nelson added their information to the plan. Then, ‘Do we know if Justis Ngola is actually in the building?’ he asked. ‘Or are we just watching a bunch of second-grade bandits hanging around?’
‘We think he is,’ said Benny. ‘We couldn’t work out what was being said, but there’s one voice that sounds like it’s giving orders.’
‘How can you be sure?’ asked Gaz. ‘Could just be someone drunk and lairy.’
‘No one talks back to him, though,’ said Two Moons. ‘They all shut up when he speaks.’
‘Might be a good idea if Mitch took a listen to it,’ said Nelson. ‘See if he can make anything out.’
Benny handed the receiver over to Mitch. ‘This is it,’ he said.
Mitch took the small machine and began to listen, making notes on a pad. Now and then one voice stood out, clearer and louder than the others. As Two Moons had said, when this voice spoke there were only muted responses and no one seemed to argue with him.
‘That sounds like the boss, all right,’ said Mitch. ‘He’s telling the others what to do. It also sounds like he’s getting phone calls now and then, so I guess he’s got a satellite phone. That’d be the only way he’d get a signal in this jungle. When he got a call just now, he shouted and said: “I don’t care about that. Where’s the money?” At one point he yelled, “If I don’t get the money by tomorrow I’ll kill Mwanga.” And then he says to another caller: “Bring me the money tomorrow and I’ll kill Mwanga right in front of you."’
‘So tomorrow is Big Decision day,’ said Nelson thoughtfully.
‘At least we know Mwanga is still alive,’ said Benny.
‘Any clues on where he is?’ asked Nelson.
Mitch nodded. ‘When Mwanga’s name comes up the words “downstairs” and “basement” are used, so I think we can safely say that’s where he is.’
‘It would help to know where exactly in the basement,’ put in Benny.
‘I reckon he must be in a room near the main stairs,’ said Mitch. ‘At one point someone goes to take him some food, and there’s not much time between him leaving and coming back.’
Nelson marked the four rooms on his plan that were nearest the bottom of the stairs. ‘So, let’s assume that he’s in one of these,’ he said.
Tug shook his head. ‘I think you can cut out those two,’ he said, pointing to the two larger rooms. ‘They’re too big. According to what Oba told us, one was a conference room, the other’s a ballroom. Mwanga’s a prisoner. They’ll have put him in a small room, the nearest thing they’ve got to a cell.’
‘Makes sense,’ agreed Nelson. He put a cross by the two smaller rooms. ‘So, these are our targets. Right, let’s sum up the whole situation as far as getting in.’
The six soldiers began to run through all the information they had gathered, but suddenly they heard the sound of vehicles.
Into view through the trees came a beaten-up open-topped 4x4, and immediately behind it came the jeep last seen at the village, with Adwana and two other villagers in the back. Their hands were tied and their faces bruised and cut from where they had been beaten.
Nelson turned angrily to Mitch. ‘I thought you told them to get rid of the jeep,’ he exclaimed.
‘I did,’ said Mitch. He groaned. ‘They must have thought it was too good to dump.’
‘And now they’re paying the price,’ muttered Benny.
The armed guards ran to meet the two vehicles, shouting and waving their rifles. The vehicles pulled up and the armed men in the jeep kicked and pushed Adwana and the other two men out on to the ground, shouting and jabbing their rifles threateningly at them the whole time.
‘We have to save them,’ whispered Two Moons.
Nelson shook his head. ‘We can’t,’ he said. ‘If we step in now we blow the operation. Our mission is to save Mwanga.’
A man came striding from the hotel. The unit realised from the way the armed men stepped back to clear a path for him that this must be the bandits’ leader, Justis Ngola. Ngola was shorter than many of the men, but even from this distance he seemed to give off an energy and an impression of raw violence. Gold Headband – Ngola’s cousin – was just a hoodlum by comparison.
Ngola was dressed in camouflage fatigues with army boots. On one hip was a handgun in a holster; on his other hip hung a machete.
The armed guards had stepped back to form a circle round Adwana and the two other bound men, who cowered on the ground. Ngola glared down at the men, and then shouted a question at them.
‘What’s he saying?’ asked Nelson.
‘He wants to know what happened to his cousin and the others.’
Adwana said something, obviously making an appeal, but Ngola cut it short by hitting Adwana across the face with the back of his hand and snapping something back at him.
‘Adwana said he doesn’t know,’ Mitch translated. ‘He says they found the jeep in the jungle and brought it back to their village. Ngola says he’s lying.’
Ngola waved his fist threateningly at Adwana, and then fired off a burst of angry questions. Once again, Adwana appealed, but Ngola just kicked him in the ribs, making him double over in pain.
‘Ngola wants to know where the Yankee soldiers are,’ Mitch said. ‘Adwana says he doesn’t know a
ny Yankee soldiers.’
Ngola snapped out an order, and his armed men hauled the three prisoners to their feet and dragged them to a group of trees. They tied each prisoner to one of the trees. Then Ngola pulled his handgun from his holster and stood in front of Adwana, shouting at him and pointing the gun directly at Adwana’s face. Desperately, Adwana pulled at the ropes holding him to the tree trunk, shaking his head and begging. Even without Mitch translating it was obvious that Adwana was denying everything.
Ngola glared at him, and then suddenly turned towards the man tied to the tree next to Adwana, aimed his gun, and fired twice.
14
The sound of the two gunshots echoed through the jungle. The men of Delta Unit watched from their hiding place in angry silence as the villager Ngola had just killed slumped lifeless from the ropes that held him to the tree trunk. Blood dripped down from his body. Ngola’s first shot had taken him in the chest, the second in the head.
Two Moons raised his rifle and aimed it at Ngola, but Nelson put his hand on the barrel and pushed it down, shaking his head.
‘Not yet,’ he whispered.
‘Those people helped us!’ snapped Two Moons.
‘Our mission is to rescue Mwanga,’ Nelson reminded him.
‘We can shoot Ngola right now and rescue him!’ insisted Two Moons.
‘And take unnecessary casualties because the rest of his gang will know we’re here?’ countered Nelson. ‘We can’t fire-fight our way into a defended building like that. Not six against thirty. We’ve got to be clever about it.’
Two Moons scowled, then nodded. He knew Nelson was right, as did the rest of Delta Unit.
Ngola thrust the barrel of his gun into Adwana’s face and shouted angrily at him again. Adwana looked terrified, but he shook his head, his voice desperate and pleading. Ngola smashed the gun into Adwana’s face and blood poured from his nose and on to his torn shirt.
Then Ngola turned on his heel and stomped angrily back to the hotel. The unit didn’t need Mitch’s translation to understand that Ngola had been giving Adwana a warning: tell us what we want to know, or you and the other man will die as well. Two of the guards followed Ngola into the hotel. The rest of his men stayed outside, laughing and jeering at Adwana and the other prisoner.
As they watched the bandits jeering, all of the men of Delta Unit had to fight the urge to burst out of their hiding place in the jungle and settle this issue once and for all. But freeing the two villagers wasn’t their primary aim.
‘Think they’ll kill them?’ asked Gaz.
‘Not yet,’ said Nelson. ‘Alive, they’re useful. Dead, they won’t be able to give Ngola the information he wants.’
‘From what I heard Ngola shouting at Adwana, he’s going to let the night soften them up,’ said Mitch. ‘Spending the night in the dark, with the bad magic and the dead body of his friend next to him is bound to terrify Adwana. Ngola thinks that he will be ready to talk by morning and, if he doesn’t, he’ll kill one of them.’
‘Looks like our timetable’s being set for us,’ said Nelson. ‘Tomorrow, if Ngola gets his way, either the guys with the money turn up to buy Mwanga’s freedom, or someone else turns up to have him killed. And also tomorrow morning Ngola plans to kill one of those two people who helped us, which we can’t let happen.’
‘So we go in tonight,’ said Tug.
Nelson nodded. ‘We go in tonight.’
15
‘OK, I think we can say that this is going to be the situation: most of the bandits have drifted indoors, so it looks like five outside the building on guard, and all the rest inside, with Mwanga,’ said Nelson. ‘Rule one: let’s make this as quiet an assault as we can. There are about twenty-five men inside that building. If we can do this without them realising what’s going on, we should be able to get away without casualties. If we don’t get Mwanga out of here alive, the whole operation has been a waste of time and men.’
The others nodded in agreement.
‘Right,’ said Nelson. ‘Let’s see what we need.’
‘We need to cut the power to the hotel,’ said Tug.
Everybody nodded in agreement. No power meant no lights inside, so the men of Delta Unit, using night vision, would have an advantage.
‘We take out the generator just before we go in,’ said Nelson. ‘Method?’
‘A quiet explosive charge set off by remote control,’ said Two Moons. ‘That way we’re in control of the timing.’
Benny jerked his thumb towards Adwana and the other villager tied to the trees.
‘They’ve got to be released before we go in,’ he said.
The others nodded in agreement.
‘We’ll need to take out the guards anyway, otherwise they’ll present a problem when we come out,’ said Mitch.
‘Silent strike,’ added Nelson. ‘Silenced single-shot rifle, knife, wire, whatever.’ He pointed to the sketch plan. ‘OK, the guards are taken care of. Adwana and the other villager are released. The generator’s knocked out. Two men stay outside the building as back-up – that’ll be Benny and Two Moons – while the four of us go in.’
Benny and Two Moons nodded.
‘While you’re outside you’ll disable all the vehicles except two. I suggest you also plant plastic explosives on the other vehicles so that when we drive off you can blow them up. That way there’ll be no noise while the actual operation’s going on; just a load of big bangs as we leave.’
Two Moons grunted in agreement.
‘We’ll be using two vehicles for our getaway,’ continued Nelson. ‘We know the jeep the bandits used to bring Adwana here works and has fuel, and so does the other vehicle they turned up in. So I suggest those are the ones we take.
‘Four of us go inside the building. Two men control the top of the stairs at ground level, making sure that the area is kept clear. That’ll be Tug and Gaz. OK?’
Tug and Gaz nodded.
‘Me and Mitch go down to the basement, find Mwanga and get him out. While all that’s going on, Benny and Two Moons start up the two vehicles so they’re ready for us to jump on when we come out with Mwanga. Any questions?’
‘Yes,’ said Mitch. ‘Although it’s more of a concern than a question. The generator.’
‘What about it?’ asked Tug.
‘Trust me, in this country those generators are always breaking down.’
‘So?’ asked Benny.
Nelson cursed. ‘Damn!’ he said. ‘Good thinking, Mitch!’
Gaz frowned, puzzled. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’m not the brightest penny in the box …’
‘Torches!’ explained Nelson with a groan. ‘If the generator keeps breaking down, they’ll have powerful torches ready.’
‘And our night-vision goggles will be more of a hindrance than a help,’ added Two Moons.
Bright light from a torch was the worst enemy of night-vision goggles. Even the smallest torch blinded anyone wearing night vision.
Two Moons turned to Mitch and grinned. ‘Yeah! Good thinking, Mitch.’
‘You’d all have made the connection,’ said Mitch, shrugging.
‘But only when someone started pumping bullets into us while we’re blind,’ Two Moons grunted.
‘OK, so either we make sure the bandits don’t suddenly start waving torches at us, or we go in without night vision, just ambient light,’ said Nelson.
‘We could lock them up,’ suggested Gaz. He pointed to the receivers, which were still picking up sound and vision. ‘It looks to me that quite a few of them are in the rooms we bugged.’
‘And how do we lock them up?’ asked Mitch.
Gaz grinned, produced his small pack of burglar tools and opened it. ‘Lock-picks, pal. They can be used to lock a door as well as unlock it.’
Benny looked doubtful. ‘It’s risky,’ he said. ‘For one thing, we don’t know if any of the doors still have locks on them, let alone whether they’ll actually work.’
‘It’s worth a try,’ said Nelson.
> ‘If we can’t lock the bandits in, we’ll use flash bangs,’ said Tug.
Flash bangs were stun grenades that produced intense white light and an incredibly loud noise when they exploded.
Nelson looked doubtful. Everyone knew what he was thinking. The noise would alert Ngola and the other guards, and once that happened it would be an open fire-fight inside the hotel.
‘OK,’ said Nelson. ‘Flash bangs are a back-up. But only use them if you have to. That’s it. Anything else?’
‘Once we’re away, where do we meet up?’ asked Tug.
‘Somewhere along the line,’ said Nelson. ‘Keep on the main road. We’ll find each other.’
‘And getting out of the country?’ asked Benny. ‘We’ve already said we can’t trust anyone. Not even our own side.’
Nelson nodded thoughtfully. ‘I’m working on that,’ he said.
‘Will you have finished working on it by the time we go in?’ asked Benny.
Nelson grinned. ‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ he said. ‘But hopefully it’ll be sorted by the time we need to get out of the country.’
16
Darkness fell.
Delta Unit lay ready in the long grass, equipped for a night assault: black Kevlar body-armour, full-face balaclavas beneath their protective helmets, night-vision goggles ready to be slipped over their faces, assault rifles with silencers and laser sights.
The three bandits guarding the front had given up any pretence of being a military fighting force and were sitting on the ground playing dice and drinking from bottles. The labels on the bottles looked as if they were half torn off.
‘Some kind of local hooch,’ whispered Mitch. ‘If we’re lucky, the guys inside will be drinking it as well. A few bottles of that and they won’t be able to walk, let alone hold a gun.’