by Chris Ryan
Before Bald could reply a staccato burst of cracks sounded outside, rumbling across the city like distant strokes of thunder. Porter glanced at his mucker. Both men recognised the noises instantly. The unmistakeable sound of gunfire.
A look of alarm flashed across Solomon’s face. ‘What was that?’
‘Nothing,’ Bald lied. ‘Probably just an engine backfiring.’ He pointed to the German. ‘Take him away, and make space in one of the rooms for the hooker. Go!’
Solomon turned and manhandled the old man down the corridor towards the stairs. The hooker grabbed her handbag and hurried after them. Then Porter and Bald turned back into the junior suite and rushed over to the window.
Three hundred metres to the east of the hotel Porter could see a worn athletics track with a ramshackle pavilion at one end. Three hundred metres further east of the track there was a massive roundabout with a large baobab tree in the middle of it, the tree’s copper-coloured trunk topped with the strange distinctive branches that resembled a bunch of upturned roots. Beyond the roundabout Porter spotted a loose cluster of injured ECOMOG troops hurrying up the road from the direction of the Aberdeen Road Bridge. At least a dozen of them. Some of the Nigerians were limping or had makeshift bandages wrapped around their heads or limbs. More gunfire erupted in the distance. The Nigerian troops picked up the pace as they scrambled past the roundabout, away from the sound of the firefight and towards the fifty other ECOMOG troops stationed at the front of the access road. Porter felt his guts turn to ice.
‘Looks like the rebels are attacking the bridge,’ he said.
‘Bastards are getting closer,’ Bald growled.
‘How much longer do you think the Nigerians on the bridge will hold out?’
‘Fuck knows. But whatever evacuation plan Hawkridge and his mates are cooking up, they’d better hurry up. We won’t be able to hold out for long once things start going noisy here.’
‘No.’
‘At least we’ve got this,’ Bald said, digging out the PSM pistol he’d nicked from the German.
Porter raised an eyebrow. ‘What good is that gonna do us against hundreds of bloody rebels?’
Bald shook his head. ‘This isn’t for the chogies.’
Porter stared at his mucker in horror.
Bald said, ‘There’s no way I’m letting those fuckers outside take me alive, pal.’
Porter turned away from the window and made for the corridor.
‘Where are you going?’ said Bald.
‘To move Soames,’ Porter said. ‘Before that lot outside come crashing through the doors.’
FOURTEEN
1322 hours.
The gunfire continued to crack and boom in the distance as Bald and Porter bolted down the stairs. They hit the second-floor landing and paced down the corridor leading towards Soames’s hotel room. There was no sign of Tully. Porter guessed he was still busy with Fischer sealing off the exits on the ground floor. He passed a loose line of forty or so distraught-looking guests being escorted out of their rooms by the volunteers. They were led down the corridor, towards the landing and the safety of the upper floors. Most of the guests left their rooms without complaint. A few kicked up a fuss with the volunteers, but they quickly shut up once they heard the sounds of the firefight raging in the distance. The air inside the hotel was stale and hot and Porter could feel the sweat pasting his shirt to his skin. I could murder a cold beer right now, he thought. Christ, I can almost taste it on my lips. But the moment passed and he focused his thoughts on the mission.
Protect Soames. Protect the wanker who torpedoed my career.
All we’ve got to do is keep him away from the Russians for a few more hours, Porter told himself. As soon as the evacuation is sorted we’ll get him on the first chopper out of the city and fly him home. Then it’s job done and I can get back on the voddie.
Unless the rebels kill us all first.
He swiped open the door to room 201 with the key card Tannon had given him earlier. The door clicked open and Porter swept inside, with Bald a step behind him. Tully’s hooker sat on the edge of the bed, staring sullenly at her feet. Soames was pacing up and down in front of the balcony, wearing a trench line into the faded carpet. He stopped and looked up as the two operators entered.
‘What the devil’s going on out there?’ he said.
‘The rebels are assaulting the bridge,’ Porter answered. ‘Some of the Nigerians have fallen back to the cordon in front of the hotel. We don’t know how long the others will hold out.’
Soames looked startled. ‘Shit. The rebels have never managed to get this close before.’
‘We don’t have a lot of time,’ Porter said. ‘Get moving.’
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘To a more secure room.’
The ex-CO narrowed his eyes at Porter. ‘Somewhere you can keep an eye on me?’ he sneered.
‘It’s for your own safety.’
‘I’m fine where I am. Anyway, I doubt we’re in any serious trouble. The Nigerians won’t abandon their positions. People like myself are too important to be left to the mercy of the rebels. President Fofana knows that. So do the Nigerians, I’m sure.’
He stood his ground, smiling. Porter stared at him, his anger rising in his throat. This tosser might be a close mate of the Whitehall set, but he’s not my fucking CO any more. He’s not pulling the strings now.
‘It’s not up for debate,’ he said. ‘You’re moving rooms and that’s the fucking end of it. Now go. Jock will show you to your room.’
Soames stood still for a moment longer. Then he picked up his jacket and headed for the door, muttering under his breath. Bald followed him out of the room. Porter gestured to the hooker.
‘You too, love. Hurry up.’
The hooker watched the door for a few moments, waiting until she was certain Soames and Bald were out of earshot. Then she manoeuvred around the bed and approached Porter. For a fleeting moment he thought she was going to make a pass at him. She must be desperate for business, he thought. Then he looked into her eyes, and saw the fear in them.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘I must get away. I can’t stay here.’
Porter shook his head. ‘No one’s allowed in or out of the hotel. Not until the rebels have cleared off.’
The hooker took a step closer to Porter. Her lower lip was purpled and trembling, he realised. ‘You must help me,’ she said. ‘You have to keep me away from him.’
‘From who?’
‘Mister Tully.’ She paused and flashed an anxious glance at the door. ‘He hurts me.’
Porter hardened his expression. ‘I can’t help you.’
She reached out and placed her hand on his. ‘You don’t understand. He used to slap some of the girls about. Everyone knows Mister Tully likes it rough. But now it’s worse. He chokes me. Sometimes he kicks me in the stomach and punches me in the face.’
‘Why haven’t you left him?’
‘I tried. He caught me before I could escape. Then he said he was going to teach me a lesson I wouldn’t forget. He raped me twice. Then he told me he knew where my family lived, and if I tried to leave him again he would find my brothers and sisters and kill them.’
Tears rolled down the hooker’s face. She looked away in shame. Porter listened in stunned silence. He remembered what Tully had told him earlier that day. You can do anything you want in these parts. Anything at all. Bob Tully had always been unbalanced, even back in the Regiment. But now the guy was running wild. Raping prostitutes and threatening to murder their families. Bob’s losing the plot, Porter thought.
What else is he capable of?
He shrugged off the disturbing thought as the hooker stepped closer to him. Close enough that he could smell her perfume, feel the warmth of her breath on his face. She looked at him with pleading eyes.
‘You have to save me from Mister Tully,’ she said, reaching a hand down to Porter’s groin. ‘I can give you good time. Better than any other woman. I make yo
u happy.’
Porter grabbed her hand by the wrist and pushed it away. ‘Maybe another time, love. Let’s go.’
‘You keep me from Mister Tully?’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
That seemed to calm the hooker down. Porter led her out of the room, turned left and hurried down the corridor. Ahead of them dozens of guests were being ushered towards the upper floors. Among the faces Porter caught sight of Bald and Soames. They were pacing towards the stairwell leading down to the first floor. Porter quickened his stride and caught up with his mucker. He shoved the hooker towards Bald.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Take her and put her in one of the other rooms. Wherever there’s space. I’ll take Soames down to the storeroom.’
Bald frowned at the prostitute. A question formed in his eyes but then he simply shrugged, took the hooker by the wrist and ushered her in the direction of the guests being led up towards the upper floors. Porter grabbed Soames by the shoulder and thrust him down the stairs leading down to the first floor.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ Soames said. ‘You can still do the right thing and let me go.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘I can give you and Bald both a job.’
Porter laughed.
‘I’m serious,’ Soames continued. ‘You two did well to track me down, after all. It can’t have been an easy mission, especially with the situation outside. I’m always on the lookout for good men. Once this business with the RUF blows over, I’ll need extra security for the mine. You could do well for yourselves. Very well indeed.’
‘If you think I’m taking orders from you again, you’re fucking deluded.’
‘Don’t be a fool all your life, man. Things are different on the Circuit. Talk to your friend Tully if you don’t believe me. Life here is dirt cheap. You get all the women and drink you want, whenever you want it. And the salary is competitive. Extremely competitive. You’d be making a lot more money than you do working for some line manager over at Thames House.’
They hit the first-floor landing. Porter gritted his teeth, listening to Soames argue his case as they paced along the corridor.
‘Think about what I’m offering you! What happens if you take me back to London, eh? You’ll just go back to being a grunt again, working for the Firm for a pittance. That’s no kind of existence for a good Hereford man. Let me go, and you and Jock Bald will live like kings. You have my word.’
Porter still said nothing. Soames kept arguing with him as they marched towards a door at the far end of the corridor. Giving him the hard sell. Maybe Soames is right, the voice inside Porter’s head said. Maybe you should walk away from the Firm. What have they ever done for you? For an instant he was tempted to take up Soames on his offer. But then he remembered who he was dealing with. You can’t trust this guy, a second voice told him. You know what Soames is like. He’s more slippery than a butcher’s prick. He’ll say anything to get what he wants. Five minutes ago Soames was slagging me off. Now he’s offering me the job of a lifetime. Which made Porter wonder: Why is my old CO so desperate to stay in Sierra Leone?
They arrived in front of the storeroom. An unmarked brown door situated midway down the corridor. Porter dug out the set of keys Crowder had given him. He tried a bunch of them until he found the one that unlocked the storeroom door. He pushed Soames into the room and flicked the light switch on. A single fluorescent bulb sputtered into life, casting weak light over the room and revealing a cramped space with bare breeze-block walls and shelves at the back piled high with cardboard boxes. There was a desk to the right of the storeroom and a dirty sink to the left with a toaster and a kettle. Several large bottles of industrial cleaning agents were stacked in a cabinet above the sink. Every surface was coated in about an inch of dust. Soames glanced around. Wrinkled his face in disgust.
‘You’re not going to leave me in here, surely.’
‘I’ll have someone bring you food and drink when the evening meal’s ready,’ said Porter. ‘As soon as the evacuation is underway, we’ll come and fetch you. Until then you’ll stay here.’
Soames’s expression hardened. ‘You can’t do this to me, Porter. Think about who you’re dealing with. I’ve got friends, you know. They won’t be pleased when they find out how you’re treating me.’
Porter shook his head. ‘I don’t give a crap what your mates think. Right now, all I care about is keeping us alive.’
‘What if I need to go to the bathroom?’
‘Piss in the sink.’
Porter pulled the door shut then twisted the key, locking Soames inside. The guy shouted obscenities through the door as Porter made his way back down the corridor towards the main landing. Ahead of him Bald trotted down the stairs from the upper floors. He marched over to Porter, nodded at his mucker.
‘That’s the night fighter sorted. What now?’
‘Now, we sit tight and wait,’ said Porter.
And pray that the evacuation team gets here in time.
The afternoon passed in a frenzied blur. Bald and Porter regrouped with Tully in the lobby and the three men did a quick recce of the exit and entry points on the ground floor, checking that each one had been securely boarded up. They took a brief detour into the underground car park to check that the metal shutters had been lowered over the exit and all the service doors were blocked. Once they were satisfied the hotel had been sealed off, they beat a path to the manager’s office and made photocopies of the map Bald had drawn up indicating the fire points on each floor. Crowder handed the copies to his staff and ordered them to be distributed to the volunteers, so that everyone would know where to go in the event of a fire breaking out.
Out in the lobby, the hotel staff and volunteers were like an army of termites, boosting furniture from the lounge and carrying it across to the back of the ground-floor restaurant, blocking the windows and doors overlooking the grounds to the rear of the hotel. Rendering the weak points in the structure impassable. Others carried fire extinguishers upstairs or lugged up boxes of non-perishable goods in case the enemy breached the lower floors and the guests found themselves cut off from the food supplies stored in the kitchen. Porter, Bald and Tully supervised the operation. Tannon had set up shop in the back office, putting in regular calls to her superiors, demanding updates on the evacuation. Only the twelve Lebanese refused to help. They hung around in a corner of the lobby, smoking foul-smelling cigarettes and nervously watching the Nigerian troops.
For the rest of the afternoon Bald and Porter alternated between keeping an eye on the situation outside through the lower-floor windows, and checking in with Tannon for any new information. Porter also periodically checked in on the sat phone to see if Hawkridge had tried to reach out to them. But he heard nothing. At least battery life wasn’t an issue: Tannon had managed to source a spare satellite-phone charger from a staffer at the Dutch embassy, allowing Porter to keep the unit plugged in on a side desk in the back office.
Sporadic bursts of gunfire continued to ripple across the peninsula as the day wore on. Bald, Porter and Tully did a quick recce of the rooftop to try and get a better view of the situation to the east. By now several plumes of jet-black smoke were drifting lazily up into the sky from the direction of the Aberdeen Road Bridge as the gun battle there continued to rage. A steady trickle of wounded Nigerians staggered back towards the hotel from the bridge, and Porter privately feared that the remaining troops would abandon their position before long. Once the main body of enemy soldiers had broken through there would be nothing to stop them attacking the hotel, he knew.
The gunfire ceased some time around dusk. The distant crack of rifle reports faded as the dying embers of sunlight burnt themselves out on the horizon. Like a cigarette being stubbed out in a giant ashtray. Then the sky went dark, and the streets of Freetown were soon filled with wild cheers and the booming thud-thud of gangsta rap as the rebels celebrated another day’s looting. After the final roster of guests had taken their evening meal and
returned to their rooms, Porter divided the staff into groups of six and detailed them to take turns on the night watch. They would work in three-hour shifts throughout the night, making sure the landings were empty and looking for any signs of a potential breach by the enemy. Then Porter left to have a drink.
He crossed the litter-strewn lobby, glancing outside as he made for the bar adjacent to the hotel restaurant. Through the double-doors at the front of the hotel he could see the Nigerian troops on stag at the end of the drive. They were sitting around in small groups and smoking cigarettes, their belt kits off and their guns resting on their laps. They didn’t exactly look like a determined force to Porter. There’s not a good fighter amongst them, he thought.
The bar doors were closed but unlocked. Someone had turned the lights off, but Porter could see several bottles of spirits on a rack behind the bar. He breezed past the tables and chairs and made a beeline for the counter. Most of the good stuff had already been cleared out by thirsty punters but there was a bottle of Absolut vodka hidden behind a couple of flagons of empty Cockburn’s Special Reserve port. Porter grabbed the vodka bottle and slumped down in a chair at the nearest table. Then he unscrewed the cap and took a long pull straight from the bottle. His first sip in almost twenty-four hours. The liquid slicked down his throat and flowed into his veins, dulling his nerve endings. A warm glow washed over him. Sweet Jesus, but that felt good.
He felt a sudden wave of tiredness wash over him. Porter glanced at his watch and realised it had been well over two days since he’d had a decent night’s kip. For the past several hours he’d been running on fumes, and now the stress and exhaustion came rushing back at him with a vengeance. His eyelids felt heavy, as if someone had sewn hockey pucks into them. A kind of dull fog settled behind his eyeballs. He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed.
‘Mind if I join you?’
Porter looked up and saw Tannon standing a few feet away. She had removed her jacket and rolled up the sleeves on her crinkled white blouse. Strands of her brown hair clung to the slender lines of her face. The deputy commissioner looked stressed, Porter thought. I know the feeling.