by Chris Ryan
The sun was fully up now. There were far more rebels out on the streets than there had been earlier that morning, Porter noticed. They were out in force now, looting everything in sight. Scores of them were darting in and out of the hotel to the south of Soames’s office. Some were running out brandishing ornaments or paintings. Others emerged with radios and DVD players. They whooped in excitement, raising their stolen goods above their heads as if they had just won the World Cup. A few rebels were fighting over the loot, arguing about who had stolen what. Among them Porter spied half a dozen guys wearing army and police uniforms.
Fucking hell, Porter told himself. Even the local authorities are abandoning their duties to join in the fun. The situation must be getting desperate now.
A hundred metres further on he saw smoke billowing up from a local police station on the side of the road. The bodies of three cops lay face-down on the ground next to the burning structure, while a couple of rebels gleefully handed out the dozens of AK-47 rifles, shotguns and pistols they had nicked from inside. Six rebels stood in a semi-circle over the bodies of the dead cops, passing round bottles of poyo and ganja joints. Some of the rebels were dressed in layer upon layer of clothes. They were wearing athletic shorts over brightly patterned trousers and several t-shirts underneath their jackets, and mismatched Nike and Reebok trainers.
Porter steered off the main road and guided the Range Rover through the cramped back streets. Everywhere he looked he could see wrecked motors and smashed shop windows and trashed homes. He counted at least a dozen bodies lying slumped along the roadside, some burnt or hacked to bits. Others were riddled with bullets. Bald turned on the radio and worked the tuner. Every station was playing the same message in broken English. A spokesman for the RUF was on the air, announcing that the rebels had seized the state media and the treasury and now effectively controlled the country. The spokesman threw in the usual bullshit about a brave new era for Sierra Leone, and urged the civilian populace to carry on as usual. Bald laughed.
‘No fucking chance,’ he said. ‘Not with these chogie bastards running riot.’ He nodded at another group of rebels lurking by the side of the road, beating a guy in civvies with canes while a woman and her child looked on, screaming hysterically. ‘It’s always the locals who suffer the worst.’
Porter glanced warily at the rebels. ‘I wonder why they haven’t turned on us yet.’
‘They won’t, mate,’ Bald said as he shook his head firmly. ‘Not as long as they’ve got easier targets to rob. It’s when this lot run out of stuff to loot that we need to start worrying.’
Porter took a deep breath. The quicker we get to the hotel, the sooner we can grab Soames and get out of this shithole.
They drove on. After a mile of crawling through the cluttered back streets Porter took a sharp right turn onto Lumley Beach Road. The landscape abruptly shifted as they motored north. Slab of shimmering white sand and palm trees to their left, abandoned villas and apartment blocks to their right. Further on they swept past a derelict golf course, the course green pockmarked with mortar round craters and littered with shrapnel. It looked like a honeymoon resort that had been dumped in the middle of a war zone. Gunfire cracked and whipped in the distance. Smoke darkened the horizon in the east. Like someone had taken a blow torch to the sky.
They passed through two checkpoints. The rebel troops at both checkpoints looked tense and restless and moody. Probably disappointed that they were having to man the roads while their mates indulged in a frenzy of raping and looting. Bald dished out the packs of fags and bundles of Leone currency to the troops, defusing the uneasy atmosphere. On both occasions the troops eagerly seized the goods and waved Porter and Bald through.
After three miles the road opened out and they hit the north-western tip of the city. The secluded beaches were replaced by a sprawl of luxury whitewashed apartment blocks, beachfront bars and trendy restaurants, all of them closed down. Half a mile to the north of the peninsula Porter could see a jetty facing out across the bay, the waves glittering like shards of broken glass beneath the sun. He hooked a right at the next roundabout and motored east for two hundred metres down the Cape Road. Three minutes later, they reached the Ambassadors Hotel.
The place looked like a Seventies tower block that had been cut in half and given a fresh lick of paint. The seven-storey building was set fifty metres back from the street, at the end of a narrow access road lined with palm trees and grass so green it looked like it had been painted on. There was a helipad a hundred metres to the west of the hotel, and a mile to the east Porter could see the faint outline of the Aberdeen Road Bridge stretching over a narrow creek, connecting the coastal peninsula to the rest of Freetown.
Thirty Nigerian soldiers were standing guard at the front of the access road, forming a line two-deep in front of a restless crowd of civvies. Another twenty troops were stationed behind two separate piles of sandbags either side of the access road, keeping a wary eye on a crowd that had gathered opposite. The soldiers were all decked out in green army uniforms and helmets covered with camouflage netting and twigs. The ECOMOG troops, Porter realised.
‘Looks like it’s all kicking off here,’ Bald said, gesturing at the crowd.
Porter ran his eyes over the heaving throng. They were mostly locals, and there had to be at least a hundred of them. Some had radios glued to their ears, listening to updates from the state-run news station about the coup attempt. Others were arguing with the Nigerian troops, begging to be let through to the relative safety of the hotel. The Nigerians shouted at the crowd to stay back, lashing out at anyone who came too close with their night sticks. Porter cast a professional eye over the troops and noted that they were armed with self-loading rifles. A couple of them were shouldering RPG-7 anti-tank launchers. One guy brandished an FN MAG 7.62mm belt-fed general-purpose machine gun. At least they looked the part, he thought.
Porter slowed down and eased the Range Rover to a halt at the side of the Cape Road. Then he and Bald clambered out of the wagon and paced towards the crowd standing in front of the ECOMOG troops. There was a tense atmosphere outside the hotel. Porter could sense it in the air as he threaded through the dense press of bodies and made for the line of Nigerians guarding the access road. As far as he could tell, there seemed to be some kind of standoff between the locals and the Nigerians. A few Westerners and Lebanese waved their passports at a burly-looking sergeant. His subordinate cross-checked each of their names against a list on a clipboard before the sergeant waved them through. Every time one of the Westerners slipped through the cordon, the crowd shouted of vitriolic abuse at the soldiers. Some of the locals pleaded with the Nigerians to let them through but they stood firm, keeping the crowd at bay.
Porter elbowed his way past a couple of civvies and approached the sergeant. The man stepped forward from the ranks and flashed a sweaty palm at the two Blades, ordering them to halt.
‘Passports!’ The Nigerian had a deep, booming voice that was dripping with hostility.
Bald and Porter handed over their documents. The sergeant thrust them at his subordinate, who referenced their names against a long list on his clipboard. The man shook his head then passed the documents back to the sergeant.
‘Turn around,’ the sergeant ordered. ‘You are not on the list. Only guests are allowed to enter the hotel.’
Bald glared at the Nigerian. ‘We’ve got business inside.’
The sergeant stood his ground. ‘That isn’t my problem. You can’t come in unless you’re a guest, or registered with the charities. Major-General Bassey’s orders.’
Bald took a step closer to the soldier. Made a face like he was chewing on a bag of dicks. ‘I couldn’t give a crap what your boss said. We’ve got orders to RV with our contact, and she’s inside that hotel. For fuck’s sake, let us through.’
‘No. I cannot allow it.’
Porter could see that his mucker was about to snap. He stepped forward and pressed twenty dollars into the Nigerian’s palm. ‘Lo
ok, mate. We’re friends of the deputy commissioner. Dominique Tannon. She’s inside that hotel, and we need to talk to her right now. If you don’t let us through, the commissioner’s going to go through the fucking roof. It won’t be us getting it in the neck then. It’ll be you.’
The sergeant closed his fist around the twenty bucks and stared warily at Porter. Then he stepped aside and nodded in the direction of the hotel entrance. ‘Okay. You may go. But make sure you have something for me when you leave, okay?’
Porter and Bald headed back to the Range Rover while the Nigerians started clearing a path through the crowd. As Porter opened the driver’s side door a panicked shout went up from the crowd. He looked east down the Cape Road and caught sight of a Toyota Hilux racing towards them. Four RUF fighters were standing on the back platform, their AK-47s pointed at the sky. The Hilux slowed as it passed the crowd, the rebels on the back shaking their fists and making throat-slitting gestures at the Nigerians in front of the access road. The Nigerians stood their ground but looked around at one another uncertainly.
One of the rebels loosed off a three-round burst at the sky, causing panic. People ducked low, grabbing hold of their children and screaming. Then the Hilux driver gunned the engine and the truck took off down the road, the rebels roaring with laughter, jeering as they fired more volleys into the sky. Porter watched them speeding off west in the direction of Lumley Beach.
‘Is that supposed to scare us?’ he said, grinning.
But Bald didn’t share the joke. He simply stared at the shrinking Hilux and tensed his jaw. ‘That show wasn’t for us, mate.’
‘What do you mean?’
Bald cocked his chin in the direction of the Nigerians. ‘The rebels are testing their nerves. Trying to unsettle them. Psych them out.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Looks like it’s working and all.’
Gritting his teeth, Porter glanced back at the Nigerians. Bald was right, he realised. The soldiers’ faces were stitched with fear. With a restless crowd breathing down their neck and the rebels threatening them, Porter figured it was only a matter of time before the ECOMOG troops bricked it and abandoned their post. If they did, the guests inside the Ambassadors Hotel would be left at the mercy of the rebels. They’d be fatally trapped inside.
And we’d be trapped in there with them.
TEN
0812 hours.
Porter gunned the Range Rover engine, steered past the security cordon and barrelled down the access road leading towards the hotel entrance. Fifteen metres from the entrance, the access road split into two, separated down the middle by a grassy verge. The left side of the road led directly to the glass doors at the front of the hotel. The right side sloped down into an underground car park. There were no free spaces outside the front of the hotel, so Porter pointed the Range Rover down into the car park, a subterranean space bathed in apricot light. He found a spot close to the service doors, parked and cut the ignition. Then the two Blades debussed and quick-walked towards the nearest stairwell. They pushed through the service door and climbed the concrete steps leading to the reception.
A tidal wave of humanity confronted the operators as they swept into the lobby. It seemed like every foreigner in Freetown had crammed inside the hotel. Porter heard more languages than a Hong Kong whorehouse. French, German, Scandinavian, plus a smattering of American accents. A group of twelve Lebanese businessmen in bright-coloured suits crowded around the reception desk, shouting demands at the harassed-looking receptionist. People clustered in tight knots in every inch of free space, with groups sleeping on the floor or resting against the walls. Luggage was strewn everywhere. In one corner of the lobby several aid agencies had set up emergency stalls using tables and chairs. They were struggling to process the huge crowd of people inside the hotel, shouting to make themselves heard above the sounds of angry businessmen and anxious expats.
Bald said, ‘Fuck me. There’s hundreds of people here.’
‘Five hundred,’ Porter guessed. ‘Maybe more.’
‘If the Nigerians scatter, the rebels will have a field day cutting this lot up.’
Porter said nothing as he scoped out the lobby, looking for their contact. A few moments later a professional-looking woman pushed through the crowd in front of one of the aid agency desks and beat a quick path over to Bald and Porter. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, with mousy-brown hair that ran down to her shoulders and slender lips and big round eyes that glowed like a pair of polished coins. She wore a plain white blouse under a black jacket, with a dark knee-length skirt. She looked corporate, athletic – and out of her depth. It was there in the uncertain way she carried herself, the forced smile, and the nervous look in her eyes. Like a mid-level manager who had suddenly been promoted to company CEO, Porter thought.
‘Dominique Tannon. Deputy at the High Commission here in Freetown,’ she said, offering her hand. She had a Home Counties accent, and she spoke a little too quickly, he thought. ‘I’m assuming you’re the two gentlemen Angela told me about.’
‘That’s us, love.’ Porter shook her hand and the two Blades introduced themselves. Tannon struck him as very businesslike and corporate. Part of the new breed. The Firm was chock-full of them these days. The ones who drank herbal tea and snacked on gluten-free bars and got up at five a.m. for their morning run. They were sober, dependable, clean. The opposite of guys like me and Bald.
‘I’m afraid you’ve joined us at a difficult time.’ Tannon smiled apologetically and swept her hand across the lobby. ‘As you can see.’
‘What’s going on?’ said Porter.
‘It’s mayhem,’ she explained. ‘We’re still managing to hold the fort over at the High Commission, but virtually every other institution has been forced to abandon their offices and flee here.’
‘Along with half the fucking city, by the looks of it,’ said Bald.
Tannon shrugged. ‘There’s nowhere else for people to go. All the international radio stations are carrying the same broadcast. If you’re an expat and you’re still inside Freetown, head to the Ambassadors Hotel. Right now, the city is a ghost town.’
‘We know, lass,’ Bald replied. ‘We just drove through the bastard.’
‘Why aren’t these people heading for the airport?’ Porter said, casting his eye around the lobby.
‘Not that easy,’ said Tannon. ‘The rebels have seized the area south of the ferry terminal at Kissy. They’re also in control of most of the roads in and out of the city. It’s too dangerous to risk a run to the airport.’
Bald said, ‘How the hell are we supposed to get Soames out of the country, then?’
‘We’ll have to take our chances.’ Porter turned back to Tannon. ‘What about this lot? What are they going to do?’
‘There’s going to be an official evacuation. My boss is over at the High Commission right now, trying to thrash out an agreement with Downing Street. The Americans and French are doing the same with their respective governments. But nothing will happen until tomorrow at the earliest. This isn’t Bosnia. Sierra Leone is way down on their list of priorities.’
‘What are you supposed to do until then?’
‘Wait here. We don’t have a choice.’
Tannon attempted a smile, but it was trembling at the edges. She’s worried, Porter thought. With bloody good reason. There’s an army of nutters out there, itching to carve up every civvy in this hotel.
‘Where’s Soames?’ he said.
‘In his room.’ Tannon pointed to the staircase at the far end of the lobby. ‘He took off as soon as the lobby started filling up. Him and his friend.’
Porter glanced at his mucker before looking back to the deputy commissioner. ‘Soames is staying here with a mate?’
Tannon nodded. ‘A friend, or maybe a business partner? I didn’t recognise him. But they seemed close. They were hanging out in the lobby for a while this morning, checking the situation outside. Then they headed upstairs.’
‘What room is he staying in?’
/> ‘Room 201. He checked in under his own name. The hotel manager’s a friend of mine.’
Porter gave her a look. ‘Are you friendly with all the managers in Freetown?’
‘Only the ones who are nice to me.’ She flashed Porter a smile. It wasn’t as nervous as her first attempt. ‘I thought Soames might come here. Especially considering there aren’t many safe places for a white man in Freetown right now. So I asked my friend to keep a lookout. As soon as Soames arrived he found him a room, then called me.’
Porter arched an eyebrow at Tannon. This bird might be anxious, he thought. But she’s smart. He wondered what someone with her talents was doing in a backwater like Freetown.
‘What are we waiting for?’ Bald cut in. ‘Let’s get Soames. The sooner we grab him, the sooner we can get the fuck out of here.’
The three of them moved quickly across the lobby and made for the stairs at the far end, picking their way past the baggage scattered across the marble floor. The air was muggy and dry and Porter was sweating profusely beneath his t-shirt. Both he and Bald had ditched their short-sleeve jackets in the back of the Range Rover immediately after leaving the mansion.
Suddenly at their six o’clock they heard a burst of distant gunfire coming from the front of the hotel. They turned and caught sight of the rebels making another broad sweep past the security cordon in their pickup truck, emptying rounds into the air. Porter felt a cold fear slither down his spine. He wondered how long the rebels would wait until they decided to try their luck against the Nigerians.
He turned and vaulted up the stairs after Bald and Tannon, and almost bumped into a party of five white guys descending at the same time. They were burly-looking and sunburnt, and dressed like a bunch of dentists on a safari jolly. They wore long-sleeved bush shirts, dun-coloured knee-length shorts, hiking boots and wide-brimmed leather hats. They were chatting amongst themselves in a language Porter thought sounded a bit like French, or maybe Dutch. They all had the same broad-shouldered, calloused look of manual labourers. Porter had spent enough time on ops in Africa to know the type. Construction workers, maybe. Or engineers flown in to repair the machinery used in some of the bigger mines. Some kind of job that involved specialist knowledge, a lot of outdoor work and heavy lifting.