Black Reef

by Nick Elliott

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘If Cordeiro is backing Nzinga he’s maybe just being pragmatic. He’s seeing Nzinga as the least worst option if and when Loma’s gone.’

  ‘You think?’ said Grant. ‘Anyway, that’s not what’s worrying me.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘When we were flying down from Pointe-Noire I told Cordeiro about our operation.’

  ‘You’re kdding! You mean about the Sea-En Resolution being your command and control centre from which you planned to defeat Mendesa’s forces?’ It was my turn to be shocked.

  ‘Yes! For Chrissakes, I thought the guy was one of ours. Suppose he tipped off Mendesa about the rig’s real purpose?’

  ‘Would he have had time between you telling him and the attack being launched?’

  ‘That flight from Pointe-Noire down here was four hours. I was only with him for the first half hour. After that he’d have had time to radio a message out. I’m convinced that at least those first two missiles that hit the rig came from a sub. You couldn’t destroy a whole structure that size using the kind of lightweight rockets that hit our chopper. And if Cordeiro did tip them off, that makes him a turncoat as well as an accessory to mass murder. He’s one clever sonofabitch though: remove the two principal players from the scene and enter stage left his Commie princess.’

  ‘Whatever your cynical plans, Nzinga is the only one who can save the people and reunite the tribes,’ Mariana said. ‘But she isn’t going to fight any CIA proxy war for you. So maybe you’re right. She needs Cordeiro to remove both those despots, in which case he is clever. But I hope not too clever for his own good.’ She turned to Grant and placed a hand on his arm. ‘I think it is time for you to decide what is right by your own conscience. Perhaps it is overdue.’

  And with that she got up and walked forward to the wheelhouse.

  ‘What do you think?’ Grant asked.

  ‘Forget about Cordeiro for a moment. Like I said, Nzinga is the least worst option. No one can say whether a Marxist regime in her hands can work or not, but if Loma and Mendesa are fighting it out in mutually assured destruction combat, you’ve got a power vacuum and chaos to follow if there’s no one there to fill it. And remember what you said before we left the city. You were all for meeting Nzinga.’

  ‘I guess you’re both right. You know, I’ve only ever met one person like Mariana, Gus, and that was my wife. She died, in a car accident back in the States. Long time ago. I told you about that once didn’t I? But she had that inner strength, that self-belief. She was always sure of her opinions and what had to be done. And she stuck to them. There was no ambivalence about her and neither is there with Mariana. I respect that.’

  He didn’t talk much after that. The night seemed endless. I went forward and talked with Marco about what lay ahead. ‘I believe Nzinga is a good person,’ he said, ‘and she has the support of her clan and her tribe. Whether she can save our country is another matter. It’s a gamble. She doesn’t know what is happening in the capital. First we must convince her, then she must convince her tribespeople, not just in her region but throughout the country. And then what? She has no army of her own.’

  ‘What if the army switched their loyalty to her?’

  ‘It is possible; also the Policia. Both are known to be unhappy with the way the country has been run. But how can she communicate her message to the people?’

  ‘The traditional way in a coup situation is to seize control of the national radio and TV stations,’ I said. ‘But I agree, there needs to be a rallying cry before then.’

  ‘Word travels fast here even without TV and radio, and without jungle drums. See how the villagers downriver asked what was happening in the capital, where we were going, why were we here? All this will be passed around the whole region. So perhaps you are right. She will need a rallying cry if she believes she is really destined for this role.’

  I dozed off after that and when I woke another grey dawn was breaking. Marco handed me a mug of coffee the crew had boiled up. Again, there was a thick mist lying on the river’s surface which cleared as the day heated up. I walked back to the afterdeck where I’d left Grant. He and Mariana were propped up against each other.

  ‘They seem to be getting on well together,’ said Marco. ‘I’ll get more coffee.’

  I thought of Claire back in Lisbon. I was missing her badly. What would she make of this place and of what we were doing here? The sounds of the jungle coming alive could be heard above the noise of the boat’s engines. Monkeys screeched, birds whooped and insects buzzed. Occasionally a fish would jump, stirring the still waters. The four of us sat there, watching and listening.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to fight a war in this jungle,’ said Grant. ‘In ’Nam and Laos we just defoliated to locate the enemy.’ No one passed comment on that.

  Marco went forward to the cockpit. On his return he announced: ‘We’ll reach Kintani in another couple of hours they say.’

  No sooner had he spoken than the sound of the boat’s engines was drowned out by another noise from behind us. Alerted, the skipper instinctively turned the boat in towards the bank and the shelter of the jungle’s canopy. We turned to see two helicopters appear round a bend in the river, one behind and off to the left of the other.

  ‘Holy shit!’ shouted Grant. ‘They’re Havocs – Russian military choppers. What the hell are they doing here?’

  ‘Get below!’ I yelled. It was impossible to say whether the Havocs had spotted us or not, but I’d already guessed that even if they had we were not their prime target. One of our crew was manning the forward machine gun, tilting it up towards the choppers as they skimmed low over our heads. But there was no exchange of fire. The Havocs just kept on their course, sweeping over us and on up the river.

  ‘They’re heading for Kintani,’ said Mariana, voicing what everyone feared.

  Chapter 18

  A furious argument erupted between the skipper and his crew, with Mariana and Marco joining in. I didn’t need to understand the language to tell what it was about: whether we should continue upriver to join what could be a very one-sided confrontation, or turn round and seek safety downstream.

  Mariana talked rapidly to the skipper in Portuguese who was shaking his head. Then she turned to us: ‘We must go on, at least get close to see what’s happening and whether we can help. I’m not saying we head straight into a battlefield, but we need to know.’

  There was no argument from Grant or myself. I spoke directly to the skipper, who I knew had some English. ‘What happens here at Kintani now will have a bearing on the future of your country,’ I told him, ‘for you and your people, your family. We may be able to influence the outcome. The reason we’re going there is to persuade Nzinga to help us overcome Mendesa and his mercenaries; to bring peace and democracy to Kazunda. Is that not what you want?’ I figured Mariana must have said pretty much the same to them but there was no harm in pushing the point home.

  We prevailed. The crew were clearly terrified at the prospect of running headlong into an airborne assault but the skipper had had his mind made up for him and, as dusk fell, we edged out following a course closer to the bank and the cover of the trees. The lethargy that had settled over us was gone now. There was enough adrenalin between us to propel the launch itself upriver.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mariana. ‘I wasn’t winning the argument. I think you swayed it.’

  In no time it was dark. We were getting closer and as we rounded a bend we could hear the sound of gunfire. Grant spoke to Mariana: ‘Ask the skipper what kind of firepower they’ve got up there in Kintani will you? The locals I mean.’ But the skipper addressed us directly.

  ‘Mortars I know, and assault rifles.’

  ‘Mortars? What kind of rounds do they fire?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Mortars are pretty useless against aircraft,’ said Grant, ‘unless you get very lucky. Same with AKs.’

  I turned to Grant. ‘Any idea what weaponry those choppers were c
arrying?’

  ‘Normally they’d be equipped with 30mm Shipunov autocannon, rockets too, but I saw no sign of the missile racks on either of them. No, I reckon they’re just firing M16A2s. You can tell from the three-round bursts we heard. It’s what distinguishes them from AK47s. God knows where they got hold of them.’

  Once again Grant had surprised me with his knowledge of the weapons of war. I thought of him in the office back in Leith with his red bow tie and matching braces over a blue shirt; and of the highly cherished fleet of old Bentleys he kept down at his converted Reiver tower house in the Scottish Borders. But if Grant’s cover was that of a sedentary maritime lawyer, it didn’t show now. He was over sixty but had always kept himself in good shape. Now there was a glint in his eye I’d not noticed before. Was it the smell of battle that was stiffening the sinews and summoning the blood I wondered?

  Suddenly one of the Havocs reappeared round a bend heading downstream and straight at us, its searchlight scanning the river and the bank. And without warning our forward gunner began firing off a continuous volley of rounds.

  ‘Christ! He’ll give away our position,’ yelled Grant above the noise. At first the helicopter continued on its course. Then, as we watched, it rolled in a tight circle, turned, then tilted forward to attack. And as its searchlight fixed its beam on us I waited for the strafing to follow. But before he could line us up, the impossible happened. Our gunner, swivelling his machine gun round, sprayed the chopper’s exposed cockpit with gunfire, got lucky and must have hit the pilot or some critical part of the machine for the aircraft began a steep climb, its engine noise reaching a crescendo as it headed away from the river and up over the forest canopy. Transfixed, we watched as it reached an almost vertical trajectory before falling back and crashing through the trees, its rotor blades thrashing the branches as it came down, and on impact exploded in flames.

  ‘Jesus! One down… Do you reckon they’re Mendesa’s, those helos?’ Grant shouted to Marco.

  ‘Those helicopters are the national army’s. They bought them from the Kenyans two years ago. But who knows who is flying them now.’

  ‘And why attack Kintani?’ I said. ‘If it is Loma, surely he has enough trouble to deal with in the capital without courting trouble up here.’

  ‘It could be that Mendesa’s mercenaries have seized them,’ Marco replied. ‘Nzinga is a threat to both Loma and Mendesa, whoever takes power. And she commands this whole district around here, not just Kintani so I guess whoever sent the helicopters wants to pre-empt any resistance.’

  We moved forward slowly until we reached a landing – another broken-down wooden jetty, like the others on the river. We could see the remaining Havoc now like some giant raptor circling around the village centre no more than a quarter of a mile away, the sound of its gunfire audible above the clatter of its engine. Then it dipped down below the trees.

  ‘Is it landing?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Ever practical, Mariana was already busy assembling her improvised paramedic kit and now we rushed to disembark from the launch.

  ‘It’s a slaughterhouse,’ said Grant gesturing up the path towards the settlement. ‘It would be madness to walk into that while the battle’s still raging. We must wait.’

  ‘But we may be able to help,’ Mariana replied, desperation in her voice.

  Grant cut her short. ‘We can only help if we’re alive. You must see the sense in that.’ She just stared at him in frustration, but she knew he was right.

  We didn’t have long to wait. Within minutes the Havoc rose into the air again and headed back downriver. But as the sound of its engine faded it was replaced by something worse: the moaning and wailing of the injured and the dying. We headed up the path and arrived at the edge of the central square to confront a scene of carnage.

  The flickering light cast by oil lamps and torches revealed a sight that would haunt my dreams, twisting them into grotesque nightmares. The injured cried out, some crawled, others knelt over their kin, and many lay where they had fallen. Blood spread across the earth in dark patches. In that dancing light the massacre became a scene more dreadful than anything I had ever witnessed. Looking around I estimated there were eighty to a hundred people lying there, dead or wounded.

  Straightaway Mariana began a methodical triage process of tagging the dead, those injured beyond help and those who would benefit the most from treatment. Grant was anxious to find Nzinga and took the launch skipper with him to look for her. The remaining two crewmembers roamed around the clearing in anguish, looking for family, neighbours, loved ones. On Mariana’s instruction, Marco went off to search for any local medical facilities and supplies he could find. I remained to help her as best I could, following her directions as she moved about determining the priority of her patients' treatment based on the severity of their condition.

  Although brutal, the attack had been short-lived. But every day was market day in Kintani and the centre had been filled with women shopping for whatever meagre supplies they could find at the stalls that lined the square. It was no more than a clearing, located close to the river so goods could be transferred to and fro – but it was probably the only space big enough to land a helicopter, and that had sealed the villagers’ fate.

  We counted twenty-seven dead, mostly women. There were babies and infants too, though no school-age children for they had been attending evening lessons at the other end of the town. With the help of the boat crew we dragged the dead to one side and covered them with blankets, plastic sheeting or whatever else we could find. Clusters of flies swarmed around us. Finally there were only eleven who Mariana decided she could treat, nine women, an infant and one old man.

  ‘I have only a basic first-aid kit: morphine, bandages, IV fluids, and giving sets and cannulae, but it is not enough. Not enough of anything.’ She went on talking as she worked. At no point did she pause or express the horror or the anger she must have been feeling. ‘I can treat the peripheral injuries. They may survive if we can get them to a hospital with proper facilities. But the ones with chest and abdominal wounds - I can stop limbs bleeding by applying pressure but that's about all; control the pain and keep them hydrated – that is all I can do. They will die here. I will leave morphine with the school teacher. She will have to administer to them. We must get the others to a hospital where there are facilities.’ She was having to make instant life or death decisions as she worked.

  When Grant returned with the boat skipper, Marco was with them. They had further news. ‘They’ve taken Nzinga,’ Marco announced. ‘And you know who was with them? Mendesa! The chopper landed here in the square. He asked where she was. Then she came forward. She was already in the square. She tried to reason with him. She wanted him to help ferry the wounded but he wasn’t here for that. He threatened to shoot up the school if she didn’t cooperate. So she went without resisting. What could she do? They hustled her on board and took off. There was no question of her opposing him.’

  ‘What about medical supplies?’ Mariana asked Marco, placing the immediate needs of her patients first.

  ‘Nothing. There’s a small clinic but no nurse, no supplies. They say she left a week ago to buy medicines in Kazunda City, but she has not returned.’

  ‘I cannot do any more here now. We need to get the injured to hospital urgently,’ Mariana said.

  ‘Kazunda City?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m afraid so. With gunshot wounds it is not easy to see what damage has been done. But at some point we may have to accept that we just don't have the resources to treat these people. It will be a difficult journey but we will make them as comfortable as we can and I still have some opiates left.’

  ‘There’s only the launch, then the Land Rover,’ I said. ‘Let’s get them down to the river.’

  The townsfolk were in a state of shock but a few of the men helped us transfer the eleven injured to the launch on makeshift stretchers hastily fabricated out of bamboo and plastic sheeting. Finally, we got the
m down to the river and on board. Mariana had cleared room in the after cabin to create an improvised treatment centre. It was a cramped space with little ventilation. ‘It will have to do,’ she said.

  ‘These people are asking us to find Nzinga,’ said Marco pointing to the group of men who had helped us bring the injured to the riverside.

  ‘Tell them we will find her and bring her to safety,’ said Grant confidently. Marco translated but the men still looked anxious and confused. They didn’t seem to share Grant’s optimism.

  Chapter 19

  Only the skipper agreed to take us back down the river. The other two crewmen stayed behind. We cast off at midnight leaving the Kintani folk to mourn their dead and wondering how to cope without their leader. Marco, Grant and I took it in turns to relieve Mariana in tending to the injured and grabbing an hour or so of sleep when we were off duty. The next day as the sun reached and passed its zenith the heat became unbearable, the air humid and suffocating. Some of the injured were able to sit outside on the after-deck over which we had rigged a makeshift plastic awning. It was the most comfortable space on the boat providing a little shade and as we gathered speed the breeze created by the boat’s movement gave some further respite from the heat. Others were too badly injured to be moved and it was these who Mariana paid closest attention to, and for whom she held out the least hope.

  ‘In this climate I worry more about infection and disease than the injuries themselves,’ she told me. ‘Did you know that in the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale observed that seventy percent of mortality was due to disease rather than injury from battle? It led to the setting up of the Army Medical Service, which was a great achievement.’