Soldier N: Gambian Bluff

by David Monnery

  Caskey turned to the other two. ‘Here’s the drill,’ he said. ‘Next stop is the Hospital of Tropical Medicines for our shots, then the Regent’s Park barracks for kitting out and lunch. We’ve got a four o’clock flight from Heathrow to Paris, and then a five-hour wait for the Dakar flight …’

  ‘Why Dakar?’ Wynwood wanted to know.

  ‘That’s where Jawara is at the moment. He wants to see us, or at least me. And the only people flying into The Gambia at the moment are the Senegalese Air Force.’

  The Denton Bridge was still in rebel hands, at least for the moment. The first Senegalese attempt to take it, using two armoured cars and a hundred or so infantry, had been an ignominious failure. The rebels’ bullets had simply bounced off the cars, but without infantry support they could hold no ground, and the vulnerable foot soldiers had been forced back by well-directed fire. For the first time since the airborne landing, Taal had reason to feel proud of his men.

  It could not last. The Senegalese were now simply waiting, and Taal could guess what for, long before he actually heard the sound of the approaching Mirages. There were two of them, and they streaked in across the waters of Oyster Creek, cannons firing. The rebels hunkered down into the shallow trenches they had dug in the soft earth of the flood plain, but to little avail. Both Mirages unleashed a cloud of small objects: anti-personnel bombs, designed to explode above the ground into a thousand deadly shards.

  Suddenly the air was full of crying, screaming men, and those who had escaped were not about to give the planes a second chance. They were already running in all directions, most of them towards Banjul, but some into the mangrove swamps, and others straight into the dubious safety of the water.

  Taal took a deep breath, and waited to see if the Mirages would return for a second strike. He could not see them, but at the swelling sound of their engines, he scrambled underneath the bridge.

  The planes swooped in again, but either the pilots had shot their only bolt or their humanity prevailed, because no more splinters of death were cast across the fleeing soldiers. At the other end of the bridge Taal heard one of the armoured car engines pushed into gear.

  It seemed like a good time to make his departure. He walked swiftly down to the water’s edge and stepped aboard the President’s speedboat, which had been liberated from the Palace moorings and brought around the coast with exactly this eventuality in mind. ‘Go,’ he told the driver, who needed no further encouragement to open the throttle and send them shooting out from under the cover of the bridge, with such force that Taal was almost thrown backwards over the stern. If anyone shot at them the sound was masked by the noise of the outboard, and within a minute they were out of range, the bridge receding behind them, the ocean filling the horizon in front.

  Most of Banjul either saw or heard the two Mirages as they swooped low across the town after their attack on the rebel positions at the bridge. One of Diop’s guards put his head out of the second-floor window at the radio station, and was spotted by most of the small group of men concealed in the building on the other side of Buckle Street, a deserted school.

  ‘There’s five of them out front,’ Mansa Camara said. ‘Maybe two inside, maybe more. But nothing we can’t deal with. Those five outside look ready to jump out of their skins if someone farts at them.’

  McGrath grinned. ‘OK, but we don’t know if they have any of the hostages inside,’ he argued. ‘If we get Jawara’s senior wife shot, I don’t reckon much on your chances of promotion.’

  Mansa laughed. ‘He’d probably make me head of the Field Force. It’s the young wife he takes everywhere these days. But …’ He turned to McGrath. ‘How are you thinking we should do this?’

  ‘Send a small party in the back,’ McGrath said without hesitation. ‘At a given time you call on the ones out front to surrender, which should flush out the ones inside.’

  ‘I take it you would like to be the “small party” at the back,’ Mansa said wryly.

  ‘I’ll take Kiti,’ McGrath said, indicating another of the Field Force men, who grinned back at him.

  ‘OK,’ Mansa agreed. ‘How long?’ he asked.

  ‘Give us fifteen minutes,’ McGrath decided.

  ‘Right.’

  McGrath and Kiti left the school the way they had come in, over the back wall, and worked their way around in a large circle, crossing Buckle Street a hundred yards down from the station, and ending up in front of the building in Leman Street that backed onto it. They advanced carefully down the side of this structure, until the back windows of the radio station building came into view. Though they were partly hidden by a large mango tree, no one seemed to be keeping a watch from the windows. A back door looked similarly unguarded.

  The two men stealthily crossed the intervening space, on the alert for any sign of danger, and McGrath gingerly tried the door handle. It was locked. But the window next to it was not. The shutters opened with only a slight creak, and a judicious insertion of McGrath’s knife released the catch on the windows. He climbed in and stood motionless for a moment, listening for any relevant sounds, then gestured Kiti to follow.

  Twelve minutes had passed. McGrath signalled Kiti to stay where he was, and went on a short tour of investigation. The next door led into a short corridor, which ended in a lobby. From this another open door led into a large empty room, and carpeted stairs led upwards. He went up them two at a time. The next floor was also unoccupied, though all three rooms seemed in regular use. One was full of records and tapes, one a kitchen, the third a bathroom. On the floor above McGrath thought he could hear voices. Then he did hear the sound of someone beginning to pace up and down.

  Almost fourteen minutes. He swiftly descended the stairs, crooked a finger at Kiti, and led him back up to the first floor. He put the Field Force man behind the bathroom door and himself behind the corner of the opening into the music library.

  A loud voice suddenly boomed out: Mansa must have found a megaphone somewhere. Almost instantly guns opened up in the street below, though from inside the building it was impossible to tell whose they were. Nor did McGrath have time to think about it. A man came hurtling down the stairs from the floor above, tripped over the Englishman’s extended foot, and smashed his head into the kitchen door jamb with a satisfying thud.

  McGrath was halfway up the next flight of stairs when a face appeared briefly in the doorway above. By the time McGrath had reached the threshold of the studio, the man it belonged to was backing away, one hand gripping another African around the throat, the other holding a Luger to his head.

  ‘I will kill him, I will kill him,’ the man said, but his victim apparently had other ideas. With a look on his face that suggested the end of his tether had finally been reached, he kicked back like a mule at the rebel’s shin.

  The rebel shrieked, let go his grip and fired the gun, all in the same moment. As his prisoner fell away he tried in vain to re-aim it in McGrath’s direction. Two bullets from the Browning knocked him backwards into the glass partition separating the engineer’s room from the studio, and he slid slowly down to the floor with a bemused expression freezing on his face.

  On the other side of the studio the other man was getting slowly to his feet.

  ‘Are you OK?’ McGrath asked.

  ‘I think so,’ Mustapha Diop said. It looked like his career as a radio star was over.

  The three SAS men sat in the back of the London cab, Franklin and Caskey facing forward, Wynwood perched uneasily on one of the dicky seats facing back. He might be uncomfortable, but the long ride to Heathrow also offered him the first chance he had had to relax since his drink with Stanley in Armagh the previous night. It had been quite a day.

  His arm was sore from the typhoid and yellow-fever jabs, his backside sore from the gamma-globulin jab against hepatitis. They had not had an immunization against being shot by African rebels, so at least he had been spared being sore somewhere else.

  It was sunny outside, a lovely summer afternoon. Lon
don looked almost attractive. Wynwood had always felt vaguely intimidated by the British capital – its sense of … smugness was the word. Londoners thought they were the centre of the world, all of them, from the rich, chinless bastards in Kensington to the pink-haired punks in Camden Town.

  Maybe they were right. He thought about Pontardulais and its people, living in their small goldfishbowl world. He thought about Armagh, where everyone seemed to know everyone else, and even kneecappers seemed on first-name terms with the kneecapped. Maybe London was a network of villages like that, which strangers like him could not differentiate, but he doubted it. He would have to ask Franklin sometime. Though maybe it was different for blacks.

  Why did he think that? Because he associated black faces with villages? Wynwood realized for the first time that going to Africa would have a very different meaning for Franklin from the one it had for him. For him, the thought of ‘Africa’ was simply exciting. He had joked that the SAS was ‘the glamorous Regiment’, but before being badged he had at least half-believed it. Three months in Northern Ireland had cured him of such romanticism, and imbued in him the knowledge that even the most unglamorous jobs could still be well worth doing. But that did not mean he should not enjoy the glamorous assignments when they came. And being part of the SAS three-man team to The Gambia was glamorous by any standards. And definitely worth a sore arm and a sore bum.

  In the seat opposite, Franklin was having similar thoughts, though in his case the pride in being selected for this job was tempered by the knowledge that the colour of his skin had played an important role in the selection. He had asked Caskey the direct question while Wynwood was receiving his injections, and the Major had not tried to sugar the pill.

  ‘Yes,’ was the reply. ‘The CO’s reasoning was that an all-white team would have less credibility in a black country. But if that upsets you, I can tell you that I would not have agreed to take you if I didn’t think you were up to the job. Fair enough?’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ Franklin had said, knowing it was the best he could have expected. If it still did not feel quite right – and it did not – then that, he told himself, was too bad. He had to get over it. Whatever the reasons for his selection, he was going. To Africa, where everyone in his family had ultimately come from, and where none of them had ever been. That felt good, and, he had to admit, it also felt good just to be getting out of England. Away from all the problems.

  The roads they were travelling down seemed festooned with the litter from the Royal Wedding celebrations, which somehow seemed to sum up the whole country. It was all so fucking inappropriate. All that money spent on a wedding while the cities were going up in flames. And even the unemployed were dancing in the streets for Lady Diana. The briefing on The Gambia had scarcely painted a picture of freedom and prosperity, but it would have to be pretty fucking dire to compete with this. He grunted, causing Wynwood to open his eyes and grin at him. He grinned back.

  Next to Franklin, Caskey was still running through all the various tasks they should have completed, and praying that he had not forgotten anything important. Their clothing needs had been met by a combination of what each man had brought with him, a scavenging trip round the Regent’s Park barracks and a quick collective trip to Lawrence Corner, the nearby Army and Navy surplus store. The jabs had all been administered, the course of malaria pills started, the water purification tablets procured. Each man had a Browning High Power in his bag, together with a supply of ammo, and a couple of stun grenades. They had some idea of where they were going and why.

  He could understand Franklin’s questioning of his selection, and hoped it was not the beginning of a problem. In all other respects both he and Wynwood seemed like ideal companions for this particular trip. Though he supposed he should have realized that honeymooners tended not to get out and about very much.

  It was just past three o’clock, and they were getting close to Heathrow. At the airport he should be able to get the latest score from Edgbaston, though he doubted whether it would be good news. England had lost a couple of wickets before lunch, and there was not much reason to believe they had not lost another couple since. But it would be nice to know all the same. He would have to buy one of those new portable things with the funny name. Walkmans, that was it.

  The taxi drew to a halt outside the terminal building. Caskey paid off the driver with MOD petty cash, added a generous tip and led the other two through the crowds milling around the check-ins to a small door marked ‘Security’. He knocked and walked straight in, greeting the surprised uniformed men inside with: ‘SAS – we’re expected.’

  Behind him Wynwood was thinking: a bit over the top, but impressive anyway.

  The uniforms certainly jumped to attention, one of them standing nervously in front of them while the other went to get their superior. He was not so easily impressed. ‘Major Caskey?’ he asked, and on receiving verbal confirmation demanded to see their passports and order papers.

  Once satisfied, the security man led them through a series of rooms and corridors, finally emerging through a door on the travelling side of the boarding gate. Wynwood had a brief glimpse of less privileged passengers waiting to board before he was ushered down the flexible loading corridor and into the first-class section of an empty plane. After exchanging a few words with the crew their guide departed. Their bags, and the weaponry they contained, were stowed in the overhead compartments.

  A few minutes later the rest of the passengers began to board, and within twenty minutes the plane was airborne. They were over the Channel before Caskey remembered that he had forgotten to find out the test match score.

  At Charles de Gaulle they were allowed off the plane before the other passengers and led by a French security official through a labyrinth of corridors and steps to a private lounge overlooking the airport. Here they were offered drinks while they waited for their French Army contact, Major Jules Mathieu.

  He arrived about half an hour later, just as Wynwood and Franklin were starting on their second Pils. He looked liked anyone’s idea of a French officer, thin-faced and dark, with a pencil moustache and meticulously pressed uniform. His English put their French to shame.

  ‘Bonjour, messieurs’, he began. ‘I have just checked your flight details for tonight. There seems to be no problem with the Dakar flight, despite all the activity down there.’ He rubbed his hands together as if they were cold. ‘And you will be escorted aboard, without the … er, inconvenience of customs clearance or an X-ray check. Yes? Bon. And in Dakar you will be met by people from your own embassy. So, I understand you require the latest information about the situation of the Senegalese forces in The Gambia?’

  Caskey nodded.

  Mathieu spread his arms in an unmistakably Gallic gesture. ‘The Senegalese do not tell us everything,’ he said, ‘but … what they have told us …’ He reached into his briefcase and extracted a photocopy of part of a 1:250,000 map of The Gambia. Someone had already drawn on it with a red felt-tipped pen.

  He held it in front of him, so that all three SAS men could see it. ‘They say they have secured the road from the airport here at Yundum all the way to Banjul, and placed a strong force here at the Denton Bridge. They claim to have cleared the rebels out of both Banjul and Serekunda during today, and they probably have, though whether that amounts to restoring order or simply retaking the main boulevards I don’t know. You know the rebels emptied the prison two nights ago?’

  ‘No. We hadn’t heard that.’

  ‘Ah. Well, they did. So there are also many armed criminals on the loose, which must be making the military job more difficult. And then there is the question of the hostages.’ He paused to rub his moustache with the outside of his thumb. ‘The rebels have made several threats to kill the President’s family and the Senegalese envoy and his family – he was released today, by the way – but so far, we think they have not killed anyone. Still, the Senegalese are being very careful … You understand – Jawara is Diop’s partner in making t
he confederation between the two countries, and he will be telling his commanders not to take any actions that might trigger off a desperate response. They would like to catch the rebels and free the hostages, but now that the coup is, how do you say? – fucked? – the big priority is getting the hostages back alive. And of course, your SAS is famous for the Iran Embassy siege …’

  ‘Do you know what weaponry the rebels have?’ Caskey asked.

  ‘Kalashnikovs, c’est tout. Jawara says they got them from Libya and the Senegalese are saying they came from the Soviets.’ He laughed. ‘And Tass says the Gambian Government bought them years ago, which sounds the most likely.’

  ‘Do you know any of the Senegalese commanders personally?’ Caskey asked.

  ‘Not the C-in-C, General N’Dor. But I was at St Cyr at the same time as his second in command, Aboubakar Ka. He is a good soldier.’ Mathieu smiled at some memory. ‘And good company,’ he added.

  There was a silence while Caskey tried to remember if there was anything else he needed to ask.

  ‘If you have no more questions,’ Mathieu said, ‘perhaps you would enjoy a meal, yes? Because I can assure you the dinner on Air Afrique flights is nothing to look forward to.’

  ‘I could eat a nice French dinner,’ Caskey conceded.

  ‘Bon. Then follow me.’

  They walked down a few more empty corridors, through a security check on Mathieu’s say-so, and up to what looked like an extremely expensive restaurant. Mathieu disappeared from view for a few moments, before returning to tell them their meal was on the French Army. ‘And bon appétit’, he told them.

  Caskey went off to phone the test match scorecard and came back looking depressed. ‘The bloody Aussies have got two days to score a hundred and forty-two,’ he said gloomily. ‘With nine wickets left on a batsman’s pitch.’