Cry Havoc

by Simon Mann

  By now I am thinking again, how am I going to survive this? I think of the Vietnam combat survival stories: US pilots in $1,000 flying suits suddenly at the bottom of a Third World shit heap.

  Floreat Etona? Floreat! Florebit!

  My mind plays a trick on me. ‘You want to speak to so and so? Then phone them, dummy…’ I say to myself.

  Then: ‘No phone. Dummy.’

  After two that afternoon, they do come for me again. They surprise me once more by driving me to Manyame Air Base, the military side of Harare International Airport, and our Boeing 727. Here scurry different uniforms, and more plainclothes men, in all directions.

  In the chaos I am sat next to our flight engineer. Five minutes later a heavyweight CIO officer sees us talking. The man throws a fit, shouting and screaming and lashing out at underlings. But I have heard from him what I fear: the other whites, Simon Witherspoon, Charles, Lyle, and others, the hardcore ex-EO guys, are having a really rough time.

  He has seen one of them being held out of a second-floor window by his ankles. Screaming.

  They take me to a room and we start going around and around again – just as we had the day before.

  ‘Why are you torturing the men who were with me?’ I ask the man that I had identified as the senior CIO officer. The others shut up while he stares at me.

  ‘Why are we going round and round like this? I’ve told you the story plainly enough. What more do you think you’re going to get out of the others? I’m the senior guy here. Ask me.’

  ‘Will you write out what you told me yesterday? If you’ll do that I’ll stop what is happening to the others. You can have a Coke, and something to eat as well.’

  ‘Sure – I’ll write it out … but do you give me your word … about the others, I mean?’

  ‘You have my word.’ His English is perfect, with a slight Zim accent. Stupidly, that makes me trust him, although, as things turn out, I’m right: his word is good. The savagery against the others stops from that point.

  With a can of Coke (I’ve never had better), I sit down and write a bald account of the coup plot. As I finish each sheet, the CIO officer, whose nom de guerre is Guava, speed-reads it, grunts, then hands it to one of his men, for photocopying in another room nearby.

  These are the old Parachute Regiment ops offices – not changed since the days of the Rhodesian War, when their Fire Force would have been there – when they weren’t firing. (The legendary Fire Force helicopter-led counter-insurgency units were first deployed in Zimbabwe, at that time Rhodesia, in January 1974, to trap and eliminate ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas in lightning strikes. Fire Force relied on covert intelligence on the ground to react quickly to enemy ambushes or attacks on farms.)

  Later they drive me to yet another police station, Heathfield, and its holding tank. I eat a hamburger and drink another Coke as reward for my efforts. While the writing has been going on so has more questioning. Evasion is pointless. With the others telling all to the SA Police, they already have everything. Now they want it from me.

  Whenever I partly tell them something, they know there is more. They want it. When they have all of it, they know that too. They’re ticking off what’s in front of them already.

  CIO officer Guava has all my personal stuff: phone, laptop, notebook, my loose-leaf A4 notebook. He is searching. I thank God that I have used a security program. In Jo’burg I deleted large amounts off my laptop in a secure manner. The program double-overwrote the deleted text. I did it the night before flying up to Zim, two days before my arrest. I had been expecting trouble.

  I wished I’d done more.

  Guava looks through my loose-leaf notebook – in which is my address book.

  ‘Mark Thatcher – he’s in here, Mann. Was he involved in the coup?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why is he in your address book then?’

  ‘He’s a friend.’

  ‘Only that? No business between you?’

  ‘No. He’s a friend – that’s all.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘You’re lying, Mann.’

  He shuts the notebook and walks off. He does not look worried. He knows.

  I am lying. I hope to get away with it because Thatcher, although an officer within the Op, does have better cover than anyone else. That cover had been set up precisely because of his high profile – his vulnerability to low-flying shit.

  This vulnerability is mostly brought about by his extreme toxicity. It’s a toxicity that – in his determination to be l’enfant le plus terrible – he does his best to broadcast.

  If anyone can pull us out of this Zim mess, it is Mark. He has the connections, to the top and the near top, and the leverage, the money. He has money for them. They’ll listen.

  Therefore keeping Mark clear of the wreckage is a worthwhile goal. The Boss will make sure Mark does his best for us. The Boss understands leverage.

  Next morning there is the same long and frightening wait, but I am getting used to that. They come for me at midday, surprising me yet again.

  ‘You’re going on a trip, Mann. How’s your French?’ asks a goon.

  My heart sinks. My arse goes sixpence, half-crown. That must mean Equatorial Guinea, even if they do speak Spanish. Fuck.

  My kit and I are bundled into a new but tiny car, a Far East brand that I have never seen before. We drive to Harare International Departures and park outside.

  I watch others, free others, going about their travels. I sit in the back, squashed between two goons, filthy in my handcuffs, with leg-irons on and bare feet bruised.

  We sit and sit. Other CIO men come and go, all busy on their mobiles.

  I can’t shake off my fear: I know that if I am taken to EG I will die. They’ll put me in a pot and cook me. The goon tells me that the EG President’s jet is parked on the other side of Departures. That my reservation is confirmed … e-check-in.

  The agony goes on, and then on some more. I watch Guava talk to one of his men. They stand on the pavement not far from our parked car, the windows open because of the heat. My stink. As I guess.

  I overhear Guava: ‘…something’s gone wrong. It isn’t going to happen today… Take him to the 727 anyway…’

  I don’t know what that means. I hope that as much as possible is going wrong. We drive again, but this time back to Manyame Air Base. To my Boeing 727, on the other side of the runway from the terminal buildings.

  Once there, the diminutive owner/driver of our small car – very bright, very black and very well dressed – points back over to the terminals. I see it and swallow. The President’s snazzy private jet.

  ‘Looks like you’re in luck,’ he smiles. ‘You’re not flying – not today at least – but we’ve got plenty of other things for you to do – don’t worry.’

  Still barefoot, still handcuffed and leg-ironed, I am taken over to my 727 then led up the rear stairway and into the aircraft. The familiar racket of the auxiliary power unit howls away. The hold doors are open and a team of Zim Parachute Regiment soldiers are unloading our gear out onto the concrete ramp.

  All around the passenger compartment are the bits and pieces of our planning: fast-food packages, some eaten others smelling, lie on the floor. The small kitbags that had been the allowed baggage of each man are still in the now open overhead lockers.

  They take me towards the cockpit. There are 15 men in a clump, sitting and perched around the forward-most seats, larger than the rest and Club configured so that the front two rows face one another. One man has a full-size video camera on his shoulder, while others also have cameras and tape recorders. On the floor are my two suitcases.

  We start to go through my kit. Every item is logged and filmed. I am asked: ‘What is this for? Why are you carrying it?’

  A competent-looking Warrant Officer Class One, wearing Zim SAS wings (ha ha ha), is running the show. A show is what it is. I’m asked about the floor mat in my suitcase. I joke: ‘I’m
over 50 – I shouldn’t be lying around on floors!’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t be running around doing shit like this, then, should you?’ comes the Warrant Officer’s reply. I won’t be lying on anything other than floors now.

  He grabs my Michelin 1:500,000 road map of Africa, and points to Malabo.

  ‘Ha! That’s proof of where you were going, Mann.’

  ‘I’ve told you where I was going … and look! Here’s a map of bloody Paris…’

  The money that had been in my silver aluminium pilot’s case is gone, of course – US$220,000. The Warrant Officer and the CIO goons are not impressed when I show them another part of the Africa road map. Carefully but casually marked to show our spoof Congo destination. Proof of our cover story. No marks on EG.

  At last that ordeal is over. It feels like a rape of me – going through that stuff. It’s humiliating – but humiliation, I know, will now be my every day.

  They take me down the stairs, then onto the ramp for what’s next. Once again I am carefully filmed as I describe all the kit coming out of the aircraft holds: combat webbing, boots, uniforms, a field trauma medical set-up, a sack of first field dressings, radios, loud hailers, torches … a rubber inflatable boat.

  Like me, the boat is deflated, but it makes me smile: it isn’t ours. It must have been loaded by mistake, back at Wonderboom Airport. One more fuck-up.

  Finally, they let me relax. I smoke a cigarette under the wing, out of the sun. Anywhere else the concrete is too hot for my bare soles.

  The smart little car owner, who seems to be in charge, or maybe is Guava’s number two, looks at me, smiling. ‘Why have you got police blue lights and loud hailers, Mann?’

  ‘Because we would have used those to get people out of the way, off the streets.’

  ‘You know, having met you – and having been through what you were carrying – and why you were carrying it – I’m now quite sure that any coup organised by Captain Simon Mann would be a very gentlemanly affair – very politely done… Yes! You see! Mann’s coup would have been gentlemanly…’

  ‘So why don’t you let me go and do it, then?’

  The Warrant Officer and I laugh. Even so, he meant it to be a compliment. Little does he know. I turn to the Warrant Officer.

  Guava’s number two has asked him: ‘Would you go on something like this? A coup – organised by Simon Mann – a coup like this one?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I would… If the pay was right.’

  This is idle chat. Nothing is going to get me out of the pile of shit that I am in. My life is over. I’ve messed up everything for Amanda and for the children. I feel sick.

  That night – the night of the Op – the night that I was arrested – I thought that I might die – but in EG, in a firefight. I had known that we were compromised. How could we not be compromised? When two NI agencies had given us explicit green lights, and when God knows how many other NI agencies knew some or all of what was about to happen?

  I had braced myself for the worst, which I imagined to be death or wounding. I had even made practical plans for the worst. I’d loaded handguns as our weapons of last resort. An Executive Outcomes golden rule, back in the days of our Angola and Sierra Leone Ops: nobody must be taken a prisoner by blacks.

  The EO men all used to carry a last-resort hand grenade. If capture could be no longer staved off, then they planned to blow their own heads off.

  Death had been my worst-case downside. The trouble is, I realise now that my being a prisoner is far worse for Amanda and the children to cope with. And for me too. Fucking hell.

  But I’m not going to try to explain the real story to these Zim CIO and Army officers. They aren’t that interested. Zim had been an enthusiastic seller of arms, without paperwork. We had been welcomed as buyers. Where the arms were going was not their concern.

  Niek and I had promised them intelligence, about the DRC and about the Katanga rebels, things that – because of their President’s stake in the Congo diamonds racket – the CIO badly needed.

  They had stopped the sale and arrested us, the buyers, because someone had blown the whistle on us, telling Zim. At that point Zim had no choice but to turn against us.

  Who?

  As I am handed another ready-lit cigarette, still chatting to my captors, I take time to enjoy the design of my purchase: the Boeing 727-100, tail number N4610. It’s the first time I’ve seen the aircraft in daylight. Even now, I feel this strange love of flight. I have since a child… I stare, and stare again. In the bright sun I see that the brand-new white paintwork, near the tail fin, has covered but not hidden the logo of the previous owner: ‘UNITED STATES AIR FORCE’.

  Shit.

  That evening they take me to yet another police holding tank, the one at Greendale, another Harare suburb, with another misplaced name of somewhere leafy. Somewhere pleasant and law-abiding. When I arrive the tank is already crowded. As time passes, more and more of les misérables get thrown in. It is a Thursday night, so the week’s action must be warming up. Friday night will be worse.

  A white man joins us, greatly overweight. A Boerer, or something like one. Not long after he first comes we are let out into the wire-mesh dog run outside that tank. His wife has brought food, so I watch him tear into hamburger and chips. He knows about me.

  He says that I should hope to be taken to Chikurubi Maximum Security, because once there I will be safe. I wish that I were there already. I know that Bob’s Gestapo can do whatever they like with me while I’m in the tanks. I might disappear any time. Croc feed. Mugabe likes to be called the African Hitler, so Gestapo is just how the CIO want it. In this reign of terror, it is the job of the CIO to be terrifying.

  Back inside, the crowding is bad. Every inch of the filthy floor is taken up by body. Then I am taken outside again. They push and punch me. Sit me down. Kick me. I can’t understand what’s happening. Since I’d told them the truth, this thuggery had stopped.

  Once the kicking ends, they make me sit still. They are back to their taunts about how tough a white man is compared with a black. They ask me how I feel about being next to blacks in the tank. Living with them.

  They’re upset that the colour of the men I’m with doesn’t bother me.

  The men in there are each worth a hundred of any of these arseholes – and that has nothing to do with skin colour.

  By the time they shove me back into the tank, it is dark. There’s no light in there. The stink is dreadful. I push people away, to win back my place, and squeeze down. The white guy is shaking. I can feel him next to me.

  After 20 minutes of his shaking growing stronger he bursts. ‘I can’t make it. I can’t stand this. I need space. God – God! Please, help me… I can’t stand this…’

  I try to talk to him, to calm him, but I can hear the panic flood up – swamping what is left of his strength. I try to help him by saying that we have to treat it as a joke. The worse it gets, the more we must laugh at it. Bad? Pah! This isn’t bad…

  It was the old army game. Cold? You’re cold? But this is nothing… I remember when it was so cold that…

  That game goes down badly. His panic floods ever higher. Just then one of the street boys, one that this big fat white had been cursing earlier, calls out.

  ‘Simon, send him over here … over here I have some space for him.’

  With a group effort the man is led over – through the crowded darkness – to where the street boy is. I don’t know how much more space is really there, but at least he goes quiet. At least I am not the one having to deal with him.

  Afrikaner, meet Rent Boy.

  Lengthwise I cannot stretch out without laying my shins under or over someone else’s. Crosswise I must lie on one side, squashed between two other men. We all have to lie like that, and we all have to lie on the same side, so that we stick together like spoons. When it becomes too painful, then we turn, but everyone in our row has to turn together.

  One prisoner says that he had been one of the freight handlers
out at Manyame Air Base: one of the ZDI gang there to help put our kit into the 727’s hold. The guy is friendly. He chats. Then he spits it out: ‘This government of ours – here in Zimbabwe – is shit … some of us are ready to fight it. Let me join you, then we can fight Mugabe.’

  I don’t want a war with this guy. A stool-pigeon? Others, I have already noticed, treat him with respect – or fear.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘so you want to be with us… Are you very strong? Let me feel your arm… Let me see if you are strong enough.’

  That wins a laugh, out of the street kids at least. He shuts up.

  Every 30 to 40 minutes, I’m woken and made to go outside. I don’t have a watch, so have to guess the interval. Sometimes it seems short, others long. I don’t know… Maybe it just feels short or long.

  The difficulty is that each time I go out of the tank, I lose my space on the floor. When I come back there is a struggle just to get back my filthy sliver of floor space. Each time it is smaller.

  At about 11 that night, I guess, I am woken again. Now I am scared. Outside are more than a dozen men and women, all in the British Army type of khaki service dress that is worn by the Zimbabwe National Army and the Zimbabwe Prison Service (ZPS). Army? ZPS? God knows who they are – but this is it.

  I think that Mugabe has sent his so-called War Veterans along, to finish me off. They loathe the Brits. They are the Brown Shirts.

  Most of the group carry before them a candle lantern. They stand still. Silent. In the middle is an old man, also in uniform, with a great row of medals. He is wearing the medals themselves, not just the ribbons. He carries no lantern but the two either side hold up theirs for him.

  They make me sit down in front of this bizarre parade. There is a feeling of something ceremonial – religious – as if this is a ritual… A ritual killing?

  I have no idea who they are, or what they want, while I fear the worst. There is something Ku Klux Klan about this.

  I’m scared now.

  After ten minutes, during which the old man only once comes forward, to look at me more closely, they leave. Once again I have to fight my way back inside. Elbows and knees win back my place. My relief at having not been executed is overshadowed by the fear that those same uniforms will be back.