by Larry Johns
“Deep water. Fast running.”
Mahindru groaned now. “I foresee problems. How many men are you?”
“Forty-four. We’ve got inflatables. Any help?”
Mahindru did some quick mental arithmetic. “That’s going to take forever, Charlie-One.” He picked out the man he was speaking to and lifted a hand. His wave was returned, along with a wry, “Good here, isn’t it.”
Mahindru smiled, despite his misgivings. “Wonderful. Stand by.” He flicked over to the internal system. “Kumar?”
“Here, sir.”
“They have canoes or something. What do you think?”
Kumar, hanging out the belly doors, gazing down at the scene of impossibility, knew better than to say what he really thought. “Be here all day, sir.”
“Quite. Any alternative suggestions? You’re the winch expert; I only fly the damned plane.”
“Your terminology is correct, sir,” said Kumar, risking a little dubious irony of his own. “I’m the winch expert, not a magic man! No-one could winch up through that overhang. How tall are the trees? Seventy feet? More! It will have to be their way.”
Mahindru tightened his lips then went back to McCann. “Charlie-One. Is it wadeable? The river?”
“Out to about fifteen feet. Then we’d start losing people.”
Mahindru juggled his controls against a sudden updraft. When the aircraft was steady again he considered what McCann had said. It was no good, was it? The rotors needed twice that clearance, and Mahindru himself needed as much again as a safety margin. “It’ll have to be the boats, then, Charlie-One. Can you break them out?”
At that point, Kumar broke into the conversation. “Captain!” He was leaning over Mahindru’s shoulder. He pointed at his microphone and jerked his thumb in the direction of the cargo space. Mahindru nodded and called back to McCann. “Stand by, Charlie-One. Conference here.” He switched to the internal system after glancing over his shoulder to make sure his copilot was plugged back in. “Yes, Kumar?”
“We could do it another way, sir.”
“All suggestions gratefully received baba.” It was an Asian term of endearment he rarely used on operations.
“Take us up above the overhang, sir. I’ll send the cable down. They grab it and hold it. Then you bring us back out here, but lower. The cable will be in the water. They can swarm along it and -”
“Brilliant!” Mahindru cut in. “How much flexible ladder do we have on board?”
“A good forty feet, sir. But the less they have to climb, the quicker we can pass on to other things.”
“Well done, Kumar. Stand by.” Back to McCann. “Charlie-One?”
“We’re moving!”
“No. Scrub it!” He told McCann what he had in mind, then spoke to Ranjid Lulla, in the second aircraft. “Did you hear that, Ranjid?”
“I did, sir.”
“Do you have enough ladder aboard?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sure we have.”
“Okay. Standoff. I’ll need all the space I can get on this.”
“Pulling away.”
Lulla’s aircraft surged upwards, turned, and moved upstream. Mahindru eased his controls and his machine lifted, side slipped, was corrected, then slid in over the tree line. “Get it done sharpish, Kumar. These up-currents are murder.” Mahindru’s hands and feet moved in perfect synchronization as the helicopter bucked and kicked under him. The wire snaked down
“Can you see it, Charlie-One?”
“As you are, pilot. Almost here” Then, “Got it!”
“Roger! Kumar?”
“Paying out, sir.”
Mahindru allowed the helicopter to sideslip back out over the river, then began to ease it lower. “Kumar!”
“I’m watching, sir...Twenty feet...Fifteen...Steady...Steady...That’s close enough...Flexible ladder out.” Seconds later. “First man on the wire. How does she feel, sir?”
“It”, the aircraft, felt as skitterish as a newborn foal. “Just don’t let me sink too far.” Mahindru could see absolutely nothing of the area directly below him.
“Perish the thought, sir. Here they come.”
Mahindru risked a quick glance out the side window. Snaking back to shore, the winch wire was alive with crawling men. The first of them disappeared below the fuselage.
“One aboard, sir,” said Kumar. Then, “That’s two...”
The sun was a gleaming yellow ball pulling clear of the trees on the eastern skyline as we roared south past the settlement of Lulonga. The sky overhead was clear and bright, but the canyon of trees which was the Zaire River was still in shadow. I did not think we would raise much interest, not in Lulonga. To anyone who saw us flashing by, we would just be another FZA patrol. Mahindru was a minor miracle, a master of his trade. I sat between him and the copilot in the jump seat, and was as impressed as hell. I also gripped the seat-backs tightly. Over my headset I heard him state his flying intentions to the trailing chopper, which was hard on our tail rotor.
“Eighty knots, Baker-Two.”
“Coming back to eight-oh knots, sir,” came the reply.
Mahindru glanced down at the Perspex-covered map pocket on the leg of his flying suit. He looked at me and tapped it with a gloved finger. “Next problem is Mbandaka. Two midstream islands, by the look of it.”
“Three,” I said. “Two almost on top of each other, and a third some miles further downstream. You could fly a 747 down either channel. If you keep the first island on your left hand, it will be between us and the town.”
Mahindru nodded. “You’re well acquainted with this part of the world, colonel.”
“Happy hunting ground. How’s your fuel?”
“We refueled from drums in flight. Ditched them up near Mobeka. We’ll make Kinshasa for certain, provided we don’t make detours. And I’m informed there’s a strip outside Lininga where we can get more on the way back up. That’s inside the Congo border. Know it?”
Lininga was just south of Lukolela, our original embarkation point. I said, “I know it.”
He glanced at me. “Tell me about Kinshasa, colonel.” He hurriedly added, “I don’t mean tell me why it is you’re going there, I mean - “
“I know what you mean, pilot. Do you know the town?”
“Only from the ground.”
“Right. You know the Kikwit road? It’s a freeway now, at least the first few miles are.”
“Is that the one that skirts Pool Malebo?”
“Right,” I said. Pool Malebo was a large lake, some thirty miles long by twenty wide. It was fed by the Zaire River to the north-east, and drained via the Chutes de Zongo - rapids - to the south-west. A rough line through the middle of Pool Malebo, and indeed the Zaire River itself, at least as far north as the Zaire/Ubangui confluence, was the invisible border between the two countries. I had a sudden urge to be witty. “Well, where we’re going is nowhere near there.”
Mahindru and the copilot, who could overhear the conversation, turned and looked at me, faces blank. I shrugged. “Jokes later, eh...Of course, it is. There’s a reserve about six miles out of Kinshasa, on the Kikwit road, called...”
Mahindru suddenly burst out laughing and he slapped his knee. He twisted in his seat and thumped my shoulder. “I like it, colonel! By God, I do like it! I thought a weird sense of humor was the prerogative of pilots only.”
I like to see a professional laugh. “If I didn’t have a weird sense of humor, pilot, none of us would be here today, doing the stupid things we’re doing. Anyway, that’s where we’re headed. The Luano Reserve.”
Mahindru, getting rid of the dregs of his chuckle, asked, “I’m not prying, colonel, but what kind of opposition are we likely to encounter.” He raised a hand. “Before you answer that, I’d better tell you that I have yet to be informed that what we are all doing here is anything less than totally legal and above board.” He smiled.
“You know nothing?”
“No. Nothing. And you don’t have to tell me, eithe
r. I ask simply as a matter of flying interest.”
“Do you want to know?”
“Just about the primary opposition, colonel.”
I said, “It’s all the same thing, pilot. We are on our way to take president Aaron Motanga out of the political arena.”
Mahindru and the copilot exchanged glances and Mahindru’s voice came softly over the headset. “It had to be something like that.”
I said, “It feels like I’ve been rubbing out leaders of this God forsaken country all my life! As to the primary opposition, well, you do stand in danger of having more holes in your aircraft than are strictly called for. But I’ll try and go easy on you. You won’t have to sit on the ground like pregnant ducks. You drop us in then stand off a healthy distance until I call for you to come get us. I’d suggest you find a Wimpy bar and have a cup of coffee while you’re waiting, but I could really use that belly-cannon of yours. Would that fit in with your orders?”
He shrugged. “My orders were, are, to bring you out if at all possible. That’s the trouble with these efforts; no-one explains what really needs explaining.”
I had sympathy for him. “How would you define if at all possible?”
Again he shrugged. “I’m not sure whose welfare they were referring to when they said that. Yours, or ours. But I have the feeling that we’re expendable.”
“Not to me, you’re not. Let’s work on the assumption that none of us is expendable, and take it from there, eh?”
He nodded. “Sounds fair, colonel. Just tell me what you want.”
The copilot cut in. “Mbandaka coming up, sir.”
The river up ahead was still a highway of mist and we’d left the cloud cover well behind us. The landscape was trees as far as the eye could see, undulating gently away into nothingness. Of the town there was nothing yet to be seen, though the islands stood out clearly in midstream. Mahindru said, “Ranjid?”
“Sir,” came the reply from the other chopper.
“Come up to a hundred knots and keep close in. Let’s get our feet wet. We’ll take the starboard channel.”
The reply was a groan. I gripped the seats tighter. I guessed that when a man like Mahindru talked about getting feet wet, he meant just that. We sank down until the mist seemed to be brushing our wheels. The gap between island and shore loomed up.
Mbandaka came and went without incident, other than a personally tightened sphincter. I looked at my watch. It was six-fifteen and we had been in the air for forty minutes. “What’s the ETA,Kinshasa, pilot?”
“We could make it by eleven hundred.”
“Right. I’d like to talk to my sergeant, if I may.”
“On Baker-Two?”
“Unless he got left behind.”
Mahindru nodded. “Hold on.” He pressed a button on the control column. “Baker-Two!”
“Go ahead, Baker-One.”
“You have an NCO with you.”
“He’s up front now. Shall I put him on?”
“Yes.” Mahindru turned to me and indicated the air-to-air transmit button. I pressed it. “Brook?”
“Here, sir.”
“Any problems?”
“No, sir.”
“Right. Tactics. Arrange two sections. Blue-One and Blue-Two. Blue-One to take the west wing. Blue-Two to take out any aircraft on the strip. Do you remember the sketch?”
“Clearly, sir.”
“Good. The communications tower should be visible from the air as we come in. That’s your priority. Half a dozen grenades should take it out if the belly cannon doesn’t. Try it both ways, but that mast has got to come down before you do anything else. Got it?”
“Yes, sir. Same alternate as before?”
“Right. Put down on the roof if the lawn isn’t a lawn any more. You were Red-One in the original scheme, weren’t you?”
“Yes, sir. The blockhouse. Blue-One now, I suppose.”
“Who’ll you assign to Blue-Two?”
“Corporal Chinde is with me, sir. I’ll give it to him. I’ve also got Swafi. I’ll keep him with me since he knows the layout.”
“Fine. We’ve got until eleven-hundred to put it together. Get the weapons clean and dry, and sort out the heavy artillery.”
“We’ve got two B.A.R.s, sir. I’ve already assigned teams, and I’ve put a man on the belly cannon.”
“Good man. Keep the sections tight, but the plan loose. At least over and above the priorities. We’re doing it in full daylight now, which is good and bad. It’s good because we’ll be able to see the layout, especially the radio mast, as we come in. It’s bad because they’ll be able to see us. The name of the game is keep low until the last possible moment. I don’t think we’ll draw that much attention until we hit Malebo. After that it’s improvise. Okay?”
“Right as rain. sir.”
“Okay. Go for it.” I turned to Mahindru. “We’re heading into airfield country shortly, pilot. You’d better get your radar warmed up. I’m going back to talk to my men.”
SEVENTEEN
Dawn came sedately to the Luana Reserve.
The sun had not yet risen but a delicate glistening of dew could be seen in the slowly gathering light. Also it was very quiet. Gradually, the trees became trees, the bushes became bushes, and the tall grass became tall grass. From somewhere far off a hyena barked. It was a stark, lonely sound, in keeping with the surroundings. Then there was silence again as the sky took on a pale yellow translucency that was quite breathtaking. The brochures of the Inkisi Springs Hotel, situated on the western fringe of the Luana Reserve, described Kinshasa dawns in just that way: “...breathtaking...from black and star-studded, to a deep azure, changing quickly, yet imperceptibly, to an incandescent yellow, the like of which can be seen nowhere else in the world...The sublime majesty of the sun, bursting over the distant horizon, a triumphant fiery orb, must be seen to be believed...”
The sad truth was that very few of the tourists tempted to the Inkisi Springs Hotel by that description actually witness “...from your bedroom window...” all of the phenomenon they paid good money to see. The sky, in all its moods, they do see. The sublime majesty of the sun bursting over the horizon, a triumphant fiery orb, they do not. This, for the very simple reason that standing - now - atop the slopes to the east of the Inkisi Springs Hotel, in exactly the wrong place, is a large airplane hanger, and by the time the sun rises above this horizon, it is nothing but the sun rising above an airplane hanger. Those few extra degrees of height having effectively robbed the moment of its promised glory.
If the airplane hanger in question had belonged to anyone other than Aaron Motanga, personally, the management of the Inkisi Springs Hotel might well have complained most bitterly to the Kinshasa Trade Association, demanding a compensation that, in all probability, would have been granted. As things were, the Inkisi Springs Hotel management learned to live with the problem. Their description of the Kinshasa dawns was still half right, and thus far none of the guests had complained - they merely wondered privately what all the fuss was about. Some, however, had been unsympathetic enough to suggest that they could see the same thing in Luton!
Another thing the guests of the Inkisi Springs Hotel did not get to see, and which was not described in any brochure, was the airfield on the other side of that hanger; on the eastern slopes of the Luana Reserve. It was a supremely indifferent airfield in any case, certainly no loss to the tourist industry. But it did have several interesting facets and anomalies.
The runway was long enough to accommodate anything but Concorde, yet the control tower was a ramshackle wooden hut with panes of glass missing. The hanger - the hanger - was large enough to accommodate Concorde, yet it had never garaged anything larger than a FZA MiT helicopter, or Motanga’s own Beechley Sparrow. The runway could only accept daylight traffic (of the larger variety, anyway) since it possessed, as yet, only the most rudimentary of runway lighting systems. Yet the football pitch, set someway back from the northern end of the north-south runway; a foot
ball pitch complete with accurately-measured and painted white lines, and the requisite number of goal posts, was blessed with floodlights that any Premier League club would not have sniffed at for very long.
Aaron Motanga had three especial delights in his life; football, flying and being fawned over by high ranking officials of the (other) major world powers. These in no specific order of preference.
The very name - The Luana Reserve - suggested that people could go there to look at the wildlife. But the Luana Reserve was almost completely encircled by a twelve-foot high, barbed-wire-topped fence, and no-one was allowed anywhere near the wildlife, which in any case consisted of only a few mangy hyenas, the rest having long since been moved elsewhere. It was thought that the hyenas, wily to a fault, hid in the trees during the evacuation.
One of the reasons for the fence was that Aaron Motanga, on his days off, liked to wander the lush meadows (avoiding, presumably, the hyena shit) in total seclusion. Another reason had to do with the FZA manouvres that periodically took place there. Also, his command centre, enclosed by a high wall, adjoined the Luana Reserve on its northern perimeter. The main gate to that compound was also the entrance to the Luana Reserve. Stationed at strategic points were armed guards.
Luana Reserve was, in fact, since it was so close to - yet so far away from - Kinshasa, perfect for everything Aaron Motanga liked to do. All of which underlined why the management of the Inkisi Springs Hotel considered the loss of the odd few seconds of the odd sunrise very small potatoes indeed. After all was said and done, in the off season, the sun’s path was more to the north, and it could be seen rising, and over something other than a large airplane hanger.
This dawn, as far as the Luana “airfield” was concerned, was an unusual one, in that the hanger was for once full of airplane - a 707 of the United States Air Force, and that the floodlights of the football pitch had been lit for most of the night illuminating, not a football match, but the modifying of two FZA helicopters into crop sprayers. The necessary appendages having been transported from the USA in the 707.