Black Reef

by Nick Elliott

  ‘How long’s this likely to last?’ I called.

  ‘Who knows? They’ve been known to last days, or it could be a couple of hours. Our friends will have been caught in it too, no doubt.’

  The storm brought with it a discordant hissing, howling wind. Sand was everywhere now and got past our protective clothing, into mouth, throat, ears; it even got up my nose though thankfully not into my eyes, protected by the goggles.

  We travelled on, the headlights from the other three Jackals only faintly visible alongside us. At one point we passed three camels plodding along in the gloom. These conditions were nothing out of the ordinary for them. ‘No sign of the three wise men!’ shouted Conway.

  No wise men and no crystal ball. Maybe I could have blamed these Special Forces guys for not thinking outside the box, of taking a rigidly tactical approach, of even thinking that because this was an operation against criminals it was somehow going to be a walk in the park. I could have blamed them for any of these things and blamed myself too, but the truth was that none of us could have anticipated what would happen that night.

  “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy,” wrote Helmuth von Moltke.

  Chapter 29

  It was another three hours of laborious progress through that storm before anything happened. We were getting close to the fort and Conway slowed us further, down to a crawl.

  ‘Look, there!’ I shouted, pointing off to our left: red lights barely visible but uncomfortably close.

  ‘Shit!’ Conway yelled back and veered off to the right only pulling up when we were well clear. The other three Jackals followed. We climbed down and met with the rest of the squad seeking what shelter we could behind Conway’s vehicle.

  Conway had been getting an intermittent flow of intel reports and now was hearing that Mendesa was believed to have assembled a ragtag band of ex-Polisario militia to serve as his mercenary force. Maybe the guys from Novorossiysk had politely excused themselves after what had happened to their comrades. Or more likely Mendesa knew that for the purpose of a showdown in the Sahara desert, the Polisario were better suited. These were men who had abandoned their armed struggle for Sahrawi self-determination in favour of a well-paid mercenary lifestyle. And they were the same group that the Reaper had spotted earlier. What we didn’t know was what weaponry they would be carrying and so it had been decided that any attempt to persuade them into surrendering would be an unnecessary and avoidable risk. Conway, who was a veteran of Iraq, Afghanistan and the campaign against IS, had warned me there would be no question of taking prisoners.

  ‘This is it guys. Check your kit. Goggles synced.’ he told us all. I checked mine though I was still having difficulty getting to grips with the sense of detached virtual reality they produced. We checked our body armour too, then moved forward on foot. As we got closer I could make out the three big Zetros trucks, now pulled up against the west wall of the fort. All three trucks had their tailgates down and as we approached a forklift truck with a pallet on board, its load covered in plastic sheeting, laboured up a slope and into the fort, its headlights piercing the sand-filled darkness.

  Our own group under Conway’s command was positioning itself here, twenty yards from the trucks and on the west side of the fort. The other three groups, on Conway’s instruction, were entering the fort itself from north, east and south. Peering through a gap in the wall of the old citadel I could make out the fort’s blockhouse, a solid-looking three-storey structure on the south side towering above the rest of the ruins.

  The firefight that ensued was quick, ruthless and one-sided. Without asking questions, Conway’s unit took out all the truck and forklift drivers and the four or five Polisario who’d supposedly been defending them. I counted twelve men lying around the trucks and forklifts, dark patches of blood spreading out into the sand around them. I hadn’t fired a shot. The other three units moved in over the ruined walls on the other sides of the fort progressing towards the blockhouse with the same deadly efficiency. Against the Marines’ C8 rifles chattering on full auto, their superior night-vision technology and their tight discipline and signalling procedures, the Polisario were no match. Two of Conway’s units were left to patrol the whole site and mop up any stray resistance that hadn’t already been dealt with. That left ten men including myself encircling the blockhouse.

  A silence had descended. Only the moaning of the wind disturbed it. There were men in the blockhouse but before an assault could begin three figures appeared at the entrance, two men and a woman.

  I recognised Jawad Mendesa. I’d pored over photographs of this man. He’d been described to me at length. And I’d imagined confronting him, of what I would say to him, and how he would react. Now that time had come. But it was not Mendesa’s distinct, hulking form that held my attention but the two figures in front of him. Mariana looked frightened and Grant was trying hard not to.

  Mendesa pushed them both forward, prodding them with the barrel of his gun. Both Grant and Mariana had their hands restrained behind their backs. Mariana stumbled and fell. She struggled to her feet awkwardly.

  Conway turned to me. ‘What the fuck?’

  I didn’t reply. In moments of extreme danger, time and space seem to freeze. I saw it all but my mind wouldn’t process it. I’d abandoned my infrared goggles and could see the three of them in reality now. And they could see me.

  Mendesa was wearing a haik, the large cloth wrapped around the body which was favoured by Berber tribesmen, and a cloth turban. Grant was wearing the same safari suit he’d worn in Kazunda, only now it was stained with blood. I couldn’t see where it had come from. Mariana, despite the fall, now stood frightened but defiant beside Grant. She was wearing jeans and a short dark blue jacket. Her dark hair was tousled and unkempt.

  ‘You look surprised, McKinnon,’ Mendesa said. ‘Have you come all this way for the gold or to rescue your friends? You will have neither. Tell your toy soldiers here to leave, or if they prefer, stay and watch what I do with these two, and then to you.’

  To make the point he tugged hard on Mariana’s hair, jerking her head back violently. She screamed.

  If I didn’t do something fast, Conway would and I didn’t trust that his “take no prisoners” line of thinking would not include those who got in the way.

  Without giving it much thought, I threw my rifle to the ground and raised my arms. ‘I have a proposition, Mendesa. Let these two go and take the gold. You can’t have offloaded much. Take it in your trucks wherever you like.’

  ‘You really expect me to trust you? No. I will take the woman. I have things I look forward to doing with her. As for this CIA scum?’ he said, and thrust Grant forward. Then he grabbed Mariana round the neck and, holding her in front of him, raised his gun and fired. It was a machine pistol I recognised: a Glock 19. Of the fifteen rounds in its magazine Mendesa fired the lot on auto. They tore into Grant and punched him forward, his back arching as he let out a short cry before hitting the ground. He didn’t move after that. My friend Grant Douglas was dead.

  Mariana screamed again and tried to break free. Simultaneously one of Conway’s men from the unit that had come from the south side of the fort appeared round the edge of the blockhouse and aimed his rifle at Mendesa. Mendesa caught sight of him and backed through the blockhouse entrance, dragging Mariana with him. As they disappeared into the blackness I drew the Sig and went in after them.

  Conway shouted, ‘McKinnon! Come back for God’s sake, you bloody fool.’

  I didn’t reply. The images of Grant lying there still and silent, face down in the sand, of Mariana’s face as she was dragged back inside, and of Mendesa, were simultaneously replaying in my head. At that moment I knew clearly the foolhardiness of what I was doing. I just didn’t care. A kind of madness had gripped me and when I tried to rationalise it later, it occurred to me that my subconscious was reacting with madness to counter the threat of a madman. In such heat-of-battle moments, how many countless others had reacted with such ir
rational instinct, and perished as a result?

  Conway’s men were better equipped, better trained, better able to deal with the situation but I could tell from the sporadic bursts of gunfire that they hadn’t finished wiping out the Polisarios. I’d never given them the chance to intervene before I’d reacted. Mendesa was mine. My fury defied reason. I only thought of what the man had done: of everyone he’d abused, tortured and killed. Of what he’d do to Nzinga and the citizens of Kazunda if he got the chance. And more immediately what he’d just down to Grant and would do to Mariana. But despite this flood of jumbled reflexes, one part of my brain remained cold and clear.

  The blockhouse was built out of local rock and adobe bricks. The walls were several feet thick, the floor was hard-packed, dried mud. As I entered I moved to one side, crouching while my eyes adjusted to the darkness. What little light there was came from the doorway and a number of small windows higher up the wall. Any floors and stairs that had divided the building were long gone. I could make out half a dozen of the plastic-covered pallets and one of the bright yellow forklift trucks. Now, still crouching low I edged towards it. A shot rang out. ‘Come out and show yourself or I’ll kill the bitch in front of your eyes, McKinnon,’ Mendesa shouted. His voice was close but I couldn’t see where he was hiding. A moment of silence then: ‘Come out and I’ll let her go. If you’re the hero you think you are, surely you will risk your life for her.’

  I raced for the forklift. A volley of shots rang out but I had reached the cover that the machine provided. It was loaded with a pallet, its forks raised ready to stow it. I climbed up onto it and, my eyes better adjusted to the dark now, took in a view of the whole interior. The space was around sixty by sixty feet. On the far side I could see a line of eight pallets double-stacked. I could see now it was from over there that Mendesa had fired.

  As I surveyed the scene someone called out, not Mendesa but a voice I recognised immediately: ‘Welcome, McKinnon. This is not personal but you have greatly upset our plans.’ Horvat! What the hell was he doing here? But it figured: whether Mendesa was Horvat’s stooge or the other way round didn’t matter. They were collaborators. And the Russians weren’t letting go. Then Mendesa spoke: ‘And I have the woman. So your position is not so good right now, is it.’

  ‘Leave him to me,’ Horvat said, speaking to Mendesa. ‘I have my orders and he is mine. Your job is finished.’ No reply came from Mendesa.

  My options were limited. I could have tried to negotiate but I wasn’t good at bargaining in this kind of situation, as I’d proved outside ten minutes earlier. That left me with the Sig, a nine-millimetre pistol with a fifteen-round magazine. And the forklift.

  In the dim light I saw a figure pass behind the gap that separated each pair of stacked pallets on the far wall. And I could see there was a narrow corridor formed behind, separating the pallets from the wall. Was it Horvat or Mendesa I saw? Then I heard the chatter of an automatic. A body pitched forward at the end of the row of pallets and lay convulsing before it fell still. They were both big, heavy men but the one lying on his stomach wasn’t wearing a haik or a turban. He was wearing military fatigues. Why had a pro like Horvat let that happen? Because he trusted Mendesa as an ally in their unholy alliance? But Mendesa was an impulsive maniac who would shoot first and not even bother to ask questions after. No, I thought, more likely Horvat had planned to kill Mendesa on instructions from the GRU and Mendesa had sensed it and fired first. Horvat was not subtle. You could read him like a book. There’d be a reason for how and why it happened, but I’d leave that for another time. If I got out of this alive.

  After a while Mendesa spoke: ‘There, McKinnon. I’ve done your job for you. Horvat is dead. The woman is alive, for now, so it’s just you and me. I know you want me all to yourself. So come and get me.’

  I waited, hesitating without a clear plan of what to do next. Then I heard a shriek and Mariana appeared, hands still bound behind her back, running out of the gap between the pallets and darting over to her left. What she’d done to briefly incapacitate Mendesa I could only guess at. Kneed him in the groin? But as she dashed across the floor seeking cover on my side of the blockhouse, he came out, pausing to spot her. I fired off a few rounds in his direction then jumped down into the cabin of the big Hyster. I’d used forklifts for cargo work when I was still at sea, though nothing like this heavy-duty beast which could lift twenty tons at a time. I started the engine and lowered the forks so the pallet it was carrying blocked my view but at the same time offered some protection. Swinging it round I aimed at the row of pallets on the far wall where Mendesa was still standing. Above the roar of the engine I heard the chatter of Mendesa’s gun as he saw me coming. I heard the sound of rounds punching through the plastic and into the gold bars.

  They tell you not to operate a forklift above 10mph but I knew the Hyster would do thirty if you let it. I bounced it across the uneven floor with my foot hard down and jumped from the cab as it hit the bank of pallets on the far side at the point where the gunfire was coming from. I ran through a gap between the stacked bullion and into the corridor behind. The Hyster with its load had crashed into one of the stacks, which was now leaning precariously against the wall. As I peered down the corridor I saw Mendesa coming towards me. I fired again then withdrew ready to get back to the Hyster and ram it into the pallets again. Then I froze and watched as the pallet slipped then toppled into the corridor, crashing to the ground.

  My gun was raised but I needn’t have bothered. Mendesa’s timing had been out. He’d hesitated for a moment too long, wavering over who to go after, me or Mariana. He’d chosen to move forward towards me: bad decision. He’d been crushed underneath the pallet, which had dumped close to two tons of gold bars over him. He was on his back, only his head visible, the rest of him buried under the gold as the plastic wrapping had burst open. Blood was oozing from his eyes, his ears and his nose. He was still alive, gasping like a goldfish out of its bowl. I picked up one of the heavy bars. There was no Nazi swastika stamped on it. This gold had been melted down into new bars in Porto after the war, just as Pedro had guessed. I threw it back on the pile.

  I was suddenly aware of Mariana standing beside me. A gurgling sound came from Mendesa’s throat as his lungs began to fill with blood. We looked down at him as he lay dying, but only for a moment. ‘Hoist with your own petard,’ I said. The gold he’d thought would bring him the power he craved was killing him. We left him there.

  Chapter 30

  We were at the blockhouse doorway. I’d found a pair of cutters from the forklift’s toolkit to release Mariana’s bonds. She stood beside me, stony-faced in shock. ‘Wait here,’ I said and stepped outside. A group of Marines were standing beside the entrance to the fort twenty yards away. Conway broke away from them and came over. ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s done,’ I said. ‘Horvat too. And you?’

  ‘Done. We’ve just swept the area. No one left. No survivors.’

  ‘And your men?’

  ‘Five dead,’ he said tersely.

  I looked back to see Mariana walking slowly towards us. ‘Where is he?’

  Conway told her bluntly that they’d put Grant in a body bag in the back of one of the Jackals which had been driven into the fort. The bodies of his five men had been placed beside Grant’s.

  ‘I would like to see him.’

  Conway looked at me and I nodded. The three of us walked over to the vehicle and Conway unzipped the bag to expose the upper half of Grant’s body. Mariana looked down at his face. Then she bent down to kiss him and made the sign of the cross on his forehead. She stepped back and walked out of the fort past the trucks and past the Jackals. Then she stopped and stared out at the desert. Her hair blew in the warm breeze which was all that remained of the sandstorm. Behind her the sun was rising, casting sharp shadows from the fort’s walls and the blockhouse. After a while I went and stood beside her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said uselessly. I wasn’t going to tell her yet that that was the way Grant wo
uld have wanted to go, in the midst of a covert operation, in the field and not keeling over after overdoing it in the office gym. And I wasn’t going to ask her what they’d been doing here. Not yet.

  ***

  ‘I don’t want to hang around here,’ said Conway walking over to join us. ‘We’ll have the local military breathing down our necks if we don’t shift this lot out fast. I’ve ordered the two Hercs in. They’re giving an ETA of 0810. That gives us an hour and a half to get the lot packed onto the pallets with the forklifts ready to roll.’

  The two C130 Hercules came in, executing what Conway described as a TALO or Tactical Air Landing Operation, the second aircraft a mere two hundred feet above and behind the first. The storm had blown the sand into mounds on what was the airstrip. As the two planes landed the sand was blown into a squall, obliterating everything around them.

  ‘Perfect!’ yelled Conway. The planes turned and taxied towards us, stopping thirty or so yards from where we were standing. The pallets that had already been offloaded into the blockhouse were now stacked neatly beside the runway along with those that hadn’t already been offloaded from the Zetros trucks. The gold that had collapsed onto Mendesa had been retrieved too. His body was buried in a shallow grave outside the blockhouse along with the Polisarios who had fallen in the battle.

  The Zetros trucks would be left behind with one of Conway’s units and one of the Jackals. They would set off in convoy to drive back to the coast and rejoin the Buttress, which was on her way back to rendezvous with them off Nouadhibou. If they encountered the local military at least they wouldn’t be caught carrying the gold. But the Reaper would be keeping watch and alert them to any approaching trouble. Their orders were to avoid a confrontation and they were confident they could outrun the Mauritanian army if they had to.

  The first plane took off carrying all of the gold. The second followed with the three Jackals and, seated facing one another behind the cockpit, Conway and his men, Mariana and myself. Grant and Conway’s casualties were laid on the floor in body bags – a reminder that the op would never be judged a success. Conway and his men didn’t look like they thought that. The atmosphere was subdued and I fell to thinking about Grant. Most of his career had been spent behind a desk, not in the field. He knew he’d slipped up by telling Cordeiro of the CIA’s plans and felt the need to set things right. But if he hadn’t fallen so heavily for Mariana would he have put them both in harm’s way like that, and then met with such a violent death? I looked across at her, wondering if she was thinking the same thing.