Celt_The Journey of Kyle Gibbs

by Wayne Marinovich

  ‘Well then, let’s put this action to the vote,’ Mason said.

  Chapter 17

  Lobito vicinity, west coast, Angola, Africa - 2019

  Ten men huddled around the ashes of the smouldering campfire, holding steaming coffee and eating local rusks for breakfast. The sun had yet to start warming up their part of Africa, but the cacophony of the cicadas was already deafening. A sweltering day lay ahead for them.

  Gibbs and his team spent the rest of the morning inspecting the forty-five new African recruits who had covertly appeared out of the bush during the night. The tall, stern-faced men had all arrived in simple civilian clothes with cloth bags over their shoulders. One or two looked intimidated by the well-armed soldiers who they were about to go into battle with, but an hour later, they had all changed into old army fatigues and suddenly had the makings of a competent fighting force.

  ‘Quite a few have really old AK-47 machine guns,’ Shredder said. ‘We can get to work on them and repair the odd one. Other types could be useable with just a bit of oil and a good clean. None of them have any ammunition though, so it’s lucky that we brought enough.’

  ‘Okay then, take JP and do a thorough inspection of all their hardware. Fix as many of the weapons as you can because I don’t want to give them any of the new machine guns that they have never used before.’

  ‘Killey, you and I can take a few of the 32 Battalion boys through the handling of the M203 grenade launchers. I don't think they’ve used them before either. Let’s all meet up again at eighteen hundred this evening to run through the strike plans one more time. I am not sure when they will call the strike, and want everyone prepared for action,’ Gibbs said.

  ***

  The crack of a dry twig underfoot caused Gibbs to turn around quickly, his finger moving down to the trigger. JP and four 32 Battalion troops were slowly making their way down the steep incline of the hill that overlooked the refinery. They crouched low as they crept forward, stopping at regular intervals to ensure their movement had not been detected.

  Twenty minutes later they reached Gibbs’s position, and all knelt in the dry brown grass next to him, focusing on their target. Silence fell again with only the incessant cicadas’ humming and the occasional mourning dove ringing out.

  ‘It all looks too quiet, boss,’ JP whispered.

  ‘I tell you, mate, it’s bloody weird.’

  ‘Both machine gun turrets are manned, but the guards posted there look fast asleep,’ JP said.

  ‘They haven’t moved in the hour that I have been here,’ Gibbs said.

  ‘I thought this was supposed to be a big strategic target.’

  ‘Well, according to Kirkwood it is. Killey was here all day yesterday doing reconnaissance and said that most of the guards finished work at six p.m. yesterday, and all jumped into a truck that went towards the town centre.’

  ‘I don’t like it at all,’ JP said. ‘Do you think it is a trap?’

  Gibbs shook his head. Instinct told him that there was no trap. They had been watching the refinery for the past three days and would have seen any obvious attempts to entrap them.

  ‘Nearly dawn,’ JP said.

  Gibbs looked down at his watch. Five minutes to go.

  He looked through the night scope at the left-hand machine gun turret just as the gunner stretched his arms and yawned. He stood up and shouted something to the other gunner in the right-hand turret. They chatted for a minute and shared a joke, oblivious to the men who watched them.

  Gibbs flipped his arm over again to look at the time then waited for a few seconds before he lined up the sights on his SA80 assault rifle and slipped his hand down to the grenade launcher’s grip. He took a last look at the machine gun post on top of the refinery’s main admin building. Gently squeezing the trigger, he sent the first grenade off towards its target. In a single movement, the men around him rose to their feet and started down the hill towards the Lobito Refinery.

  Gibbs reloaded and fired two more grenades, neutralising both the machine gun turrets above the gates. It was time for him to get down into the battle.

  Both the guards in the machine gun turrets were blown out of their lofty perches. One of their bodies thudded to the ground right in front of the closed metal gate, the other got tangled up in the barbed wire fencing above the eight-foot wall, hanging like a macabre Damien Hirst work of art. Gibbs lifted his SA80 as he ran, focusing on the door of the main gate guardhouse. It swung open, slamming on its hinges, and government troops streamed out firing wildly into the vanishing night sky. Gibbs picked off the first two men as he ran, then heard another grenade launcher fire from behind him. He dropped down to one knee to cushion himself for the blow.

  The main gate shuddered as the grenade exploded against it, the right-hand side of the metal gates ripped open like an aluminium can. More confused guards fired in all directions, unable to see the attacking men from within their well-lit guardrooms from where they had clearly decided to stay put and fight. One of the rebel soldiers ran past Gibbs, ignoring his call to back down. The man fired wildly into the guard house and as he reached the open doorway, recoiled backwards, shuddering as bullets tore into his body. Gibbs loaded another grenade into the launcher and fired it through the open doorway. The explosion shattered all the windows and blew open the rear door. Shouting more orders to JP and two of his men, they slowly made their way up through the open refinery gate.

  At that early hour, the main courtyard was deserted of any workers and administration buildings were all locked up. The men fanned out and positioned themselves around the courtyard walls, waiting for any counter attacks.

  Gibbs forced long breaths of dusty air into his lungs from all the exertion and suppressed the urge to sneeze. Sheltering behind a parked pick-up truck, he was about to cross the empty courtyard when a set of office windows on the ground floor shattered, and two machine gun barrels appeared between the horizontal window blinds. The staccato snapping of an old Uzi machine gun sent a hail of bullets into the walls around the men who were taking cover.

  ‘Fucking bastards!’ screamed JP and slipped a fresh magazine into his SA80.

  ‘JP, lay down cover fire into that room for me. I have one grenade left so will head across the courtyard to those two air conditioner units,’ Gibbs shouted.

  ‘Gotcha, boss. Go on three.’

  Counting down, JP and two soldiers fired into the window of the offices, the blinds ripping apart under the barrage. Gibbs sprinted across the courtyard and slid to a stop against the wall with a thud, the wind driven from his lungs on impact.

  The Angolans fired another burst at him, hitting the solid metal structure of the air conditioner units which shielded him. JP then popped up to lay a second burst into the windows which gave Gibbs his chance.

  Gibbs lifted the SA80 and held his breath for a second then squeezed the trigger of the M203. The grenade looped into the smashed windows then the brief shouts of terror came from within. The explosion masked the screams as the remaining glass and debris were blasted out into the courtyard.

  ‘JP,’ Gibbs shouted. ‘Take two men and break down the doors to the main administration block.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Set up our command post in the reception area and get the radioman up and running.’

  Gibbs covered the men as they got up and walked along the wall. Is that it? Surely there must be more Angolan soldiers.

  From an area to the south-west of the refinery, where Shredder and Killey had mounted their attacks, he could still hear the odd explosion and sporadic echo of gunfire.

  ***

  ‘Job done, boss,’ Shredder said as he walked up to Gibbs thirty minutes later.

  ‘Everything secure then?’ Gibbs asked.

  ‘Yeah. We set up the agreed watch posts, and the boys are digging the mortars in which will cover the road from the south,’ Shredder replied. ‘Everything go to plan here?’

  ‘We only had one casualty who got hit as we came
through the main gates. Our mortars are already set up, covering the road north. We just need Killey to cover off securing the refinery tanks,’ Gibbs said.

  Killey walked in a few minutes later. ‘The gas tanks are all secure, and I have set up three teams to patrol the water’s edge, but if we are attacked from that direction over the next few days, we will be extremely exposed from the main seafront. It’s a massive area to patrol bearing in mind our limited resources.’

  ‘I know it is, mate,’ Gibbs replied. ‘But depending on the news from Luanda we might have to change plans. If the coup has been a failure, I believe a counter attack will most likely come from the north-east, not the sea front.’

  Gibbs turned and looked at the map. ‘So while we wait for news, JP, can you take two men and head back up to the hill opposite the main gate? It has a fantastic vantage point of the approaching road. Set the men up with radios and rations. I want a twenty-four-hour watch on that road.’

  ‘I’ll stay up there with them for a while,’ JP said. ‘The buggers will probably fall asleep on the job or get bored and disappear back into the bush.’

  ‘Fine and no drinking with them either, okay,’ Gibbs said, winking at him. ‘I know how you like a few brandies while you wait.’

  ***

  The following morning, Shredder walked into the ops room just before sunrise after what had proved to be an uneventful night. Large local maps had been hung in the old reception area windows near to a small radio station that had been set up for operation communications. Two guards were standing at the main doors keeping watch and nodded at him as he walked past. Another one of the troops had set up a kettle and was making coffee and preparing breakfast packs.

  ‘Morning, boss. Any news from Luanda?’ Shredder asked, taking a cup of coffee from the soldier.

  ‘Not a bloody word,’ Gibbs said.

  ‘Hmmm… it’s been over twenty-four hours.’

  ‘I know. I’ve tried to contact them on both frequencies we were given, and still bloody nothing,’ Gibbs said.

  ‘Well, that can’t be good news then. What do you want us to do?’ Shredder asked.

  ‘After sun up, if we still have radio silence from Luanda, I’ll contact Kirkwood directly to see what is going on. The strike on Luanda should have occurred a few hours after our attack, so I guess from the radio silence the old plan is out of the window.’

  ***

  Gibbs flipped the page of an old Wilbur Smith novel he had found in the ops room. Sitting on a tattered old couch, he heard JP over the radio. ‘Alpha one, Alpha one, this is Bravo one.’

  He rushed over to the table. ‘Go ahead, Bravo one,’ Gibbs replied.

  ‘We have a military truck approaching your position. It’s being driven at speed by men in army uniforms. Heading past our current position, Alpha one, should I engage? Over.’

  ‘Confirm it is just a single truck, over,’ Gibbs asked.

  ‘Affirmative, Alpha one. Do I engage? Over,’ came JP’s excited reply.

  ‘Negative, Bravo one, let it through. We will engage it here if necessary, copy over,’ Gibbs said, and put out a call to Shredder and Killey.

  The team in the admin block sprang into action and quickly opened the compound gates to allow the inbound truck inside. Gibbs’s men were stationed on either side of the courtyard, facing the gate, and with orders to hold their fire until they got the command.

  Minutes later the old drab green truck stopped just short of turning into the refinery. Both the driver and passenger put their hands out of the window to show that they were unarmed. A couple of Gibbs’s team appeared from up in the hillside and surrounded the truck, quickly performing a search of the contents in the back of the covered Mercedes. When all was deemed safe, they signalled to the driver to pull the truck into the compound.

  Gibbs and Shredder led the two young rebel fighters away from the truck into the ops room to interrogate them. They were very shaken up by their journey south from Luanda and sat timidly on the old beige reception couch. Both were dressed in dirty green fatigues with black worn army boots, and one of them had dried blood covering most of his sleeve and shoulder.

  Gibbs dragged an office chair over to the couch and sat down in front of the men. ‘Has João Baptista taken over the government buildings in Luanda?’

  ‘No, sir, he is dead!’

  ‘Have the rebels taken control of the radio and television building?’

  The men shook their heads. ‘It is finished, sir. Even our second in command, General De Govea, was assassinated.’

  ‘Did the army stop the coup?’ Gibbs asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. They and the white soldiers from England were waiting for us.’

  ‘What?’ Gibbs shouted. ‘Are you saying there were men like us fighting against you?’

  ‘Yes, sir, in the same clothes as you. They killed Mr Baptista.’

  ‘Boss?’ Shredder said, and nodded towards an adjacent room.

  They pushed their way into an abandoned office and walked over hundreds of office documents scattered around on the carpeted floor, then stopped to look through the dust-covered windows, overlooking the main courtyard windows.

  ‘Possibly other mercenaries?’ Shredder asked.

  ‘It would seem so,’ Gibbs said.

  ‘I wonder what the hell happened. How did they know about the coup?’

  ‘No idea, mate, but how much do you want to bet that we will be their next targets?’

  Chapter 18

  Lobito vicinity, west coast of Angola, Africa - 2019

  ‘Do you think they were the same mercenaries who were supposed to be leading the coup?’ Killey asked. ‘More of Kirkwood’s men?’

  ‘That was my initial thinking, but it makes no bloody sense, I mean, why would they plan the whole bloody thing and have us take control of this refinery, only to assassinate the man they were trying to get into government?’ Gibbs said.

  ‘What if we were only meant to be a diversion?’ Killey asked.

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ Shredder said. ‘The army forces that were guarding this place were undertrained, and I expected, at least, three times more firepower here than we encountered during our attack.’

  ‘I agree. There was no real resistance here to meet us,’ Gibbs said. ‘This couldn’t have been a diversion. These guys looked as though they were going about their normal daily routine. Taking this refinery would have had no real effect on any coup. In the long term, it might have been important, I guess, but short term I don’t believe that it could have been used as a diversion.’

  ‘Maybe we are being set up as scapegoats if the coup failed,’ Killey said.

  Gibbs nodded. ‘I am starting to think we are. If that is the case, then we can expect a few angry visitors at the gate shortly.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Killey said. ‘Best we roll out the welcome mat then.’

  ‘JP, do you need more men on the hill? You know, more eyes and all that?’ Gibbs asked.

  ‘No, boss, I think we have enough men up there, and we are well dug in, ready for anything,’ JP said. ‘Now that we think we might be attacked, you probably will need the additional men down here more. Do you want me to stay down here with you blokes?’

  Gibbs shook his head.

  ‘What else do you want us to do?’ Shredder asked.

  ‘Well, we have to assume they will try and catch us off-guard and mount either an evening or early morning attack.’

  Gibbs turned to the big South African and said, ‘Sorry, mate, you’ll have to head back up to the lookout point and watch that bloody road like a hawk. Select a few of your best men and send them a kilometre further north. That should buy us a little more time. Once they spot the Angolan forces moving in, you can alert us, and we'll all be in a good position to attack from the hillside. It would mean that their troops will be outflanked and caught in the crossfire.’

  ‘When do think they will hit us?’ Shredder asked.

  ‘Based on the timeline since the coup was
quashed, I guess tomorrow morning or maybe the next.’

  ‘Bastards’ Shredder said. ‘Do you think that Kirkwood or Mason knew about all this?’

  ‘Maybe Kirkwood is simply supplying both sides with mercs,’ Killey said.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past the money-grabbing little git,’ Gibbs said.

  ***

  ‘Alpha one, Alpha one, this is Bravo one, come in, over.’

  Gibbs grabbed the handset from the radio man. ‘Go ahead, Bravo one.’

  ‘The forward position has been compromised, and the men have pulled back to my position, over,’ JP said.

  ‘Did they sight enemy troops, over?’

  ‘Affirmative, Alpha one. Ten trucks carrying troops and two trucks carrying Olifant tanks, copy over.’

  ‘Confirm two Olifant tanks Bravo one, over,’ Gibbs said, looking across at Shredder.

  ‘Affirmative, over,’ JP replied.

  Gibbs threw the headset down on the table. ‘Shredder, I need you to head up to JP’s position and see if there is any possible way we can negate the tanks from up there. Let me know if it is possible to use the mortars on them before they make their move.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do, boss,’ he replied.

  Gibbs nodded silently and turned back to the map on the table. They had to weather the initial attack to buy them more time to find out what was going on. He picked up the satellite phone and dialled the number he had been trying for the past two days. The single dial tone teased him until eventually the robotic voice told him to leave a message.

  ‘Bastards!’ he screamed and threw the phone down on the table. Gibbs walked across to the dirty windows that overlooked the courtyard. Looks like we are on our own on this one.

  ***

  Gibbs sat at the radio table and called again. He had been trying for thirty minutes to raise JP on the radio. ‘Brave one, Bravo one, this is Alpha one, come in over.’