The Spoilers / Juggernaut

by Desmond Bagley

  He sighed. ‘Then you are going to turn back.’

  ‘To Kodowa, yes. And then south or west. Probably west. Do you know the town of Makara? Is there a medical station there?’

  But he said that Makara patients had always been brought to him at Kodowa. There wasn’t even a trained nurse, only a couple of midwives. Then he brightened. ‘There is the cotton factory,’ he said. ‘They have very large well-built barns but I have heard that they stand almost empty and the factory is idle. It would make a good place to put all my patients.’

  ‘If it’s still intact, yes.’ And, I thought, if some regiment or rebel troop hasn’t turned it into a barracks first.

  Shortly afterwards the two Russians and the Frenchman arrived. The Russians were as alike as peas in a pod, with broad Slavic features and wide grins. They had polysyllabic unpronounceable names and neither spoke more than ten words of English. God knows how they’d managed in earlier days. Zimmerman, who had worked alongside Russians laying pipelines in Iran, was able to interpret reasonably well. Later they became known as Brezhnev and Kosygin to everybody, and didn’t seem to mind. Probably the way we said the names they couldn’t even recognize them. They were hauling a load of pipe casing northwards to the oilfields.

  The Frenchman spoke fair English and was called Antoine Dufour. He was carrying a mixed load for Petrole Meridional. They were all glad of company and resigned to a return journey, but they were unwilling to quit their trucks, especially when they found we had a store of reserve fuel. After a lot of trilingual palaver, Wingstead’s French being more than adequate, they agreed to stick with us in a policy of safety in numbers.

  So did Russ Burns and Zimmerman. But they had a different problem.

  ‘I hear you have gas,’ Burns said. ‘We’re about dry.’

  ‘We’ve got gas,’ I told him. ‘But not to burn up in your goddam air-conditioning, or hauling all that chrome around Africa.’ I walked over to look at their car. The overhang behind the rear wheels was over five feet and the decorations in front snarled in a savage grin. ‘Your taste in transport is a mite old-fashioned, Texas?’

  ‘That’s a good American car. You won’t find me driving one of those dinky European models. Hell, I can’t get my legs under the wheel. Anyway, it’s a company car. It wouldn’t look good for an oilman with Lat-Am to drive an economy car; that would show lack of confidence.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ I said, ‘but so far you’ve been on the blacktop. Suppose we have to take to the country roads. That thing will lose its exhaust in the first mile, and the sump in the next. It’ll scrape its fanny every ten yards.’

  ‘He’s right, Russ,’ said Zimmerman.

  ‘Oh hell,’ Burns said sadly, unwilling to give up his status symbol.

  I pointed to a tractor. ‘Can either of you drive one of those?’

  ‘I can,’ said Zimmerman promptly, ‘I started my working life as a trucker. I might need a bit of updating tuition, though.’

  ‘Well, you know our problem. Five guys walked out and two of them were drivers. You won’t be asked to drive it coupled up, Kemp wouldn’t buy that. I’m leaving the hire car here because it’s never going to make the dirt roads. You’ll have to do the same, because you get no gas from me. You drive the tractor uncoupled, and take care of the sick folk up on the roof.’ I turned to Burns. ‘And you can drive with me in the Land Rover. There’s plenty of leg room there.’

  He sighed and patted his car on the hood. ‘So long, baby. It’s been nice knowing you.’

  It was dark as I’d guessed it would be before Atheridge and his party returned, quiet and dispirited. The ravine crossing which he remembered from many years before was now overgrown, the ledges crumbled and passage impossible. Thorpe told me privately that they had had quite a job persuading Atheridge to return with them; he was passionately determined to try crossing on his own, but he was quite unfit to do so.

  Eventually the entire camp settled down to an uneasy night’s sleep. The five mutineers, strikers, whatever one wanted to call them, had vanished, their gear gone. Wingstead and I felt itchy with unease about them, both for their safety and for our own future without their expertise. I’d had a guard of soldiers put around every vehicle we possessed, just in case any of them decided to try to collar one. There wasn’t much left to say, and at last we all turned in and slept, or tried to, and awaited the coming of morning.

  FIFTEEN

  The morning brought the usual crises and problems attendant on any normal start of a run, plus of course the extra ones imposed by our status as a mobile hospital. Somewhere in the middle of it, while Kemp was supervising the recoupling of the tractors to the other end of the rig it was discovered that McGrath was missing. The air was lively with curses as both Kemp and Hammond sought their chief driver. At about the same time Sadiq’s sergeant came to tell us that the hire car was missing too.

  And then suddenly there was McGrath, walking into our midst with one arm flung round the shoulders of a cowed and nervous Ron Jones. Tailing up behind them were Lang and Bob Pitman, looking equally hangdog, pale and exhausted.

  ‘Mister Kemp,’ McGrath called out in a cheerful, boisterous voice, ‘these lads have changed their minds and want to come with us. Would you be taking them back onto the payroll? I promised I’d put in a word for them.’

  Kemp wasn’t sure what to do, and glanced at me for guidance. I shook my head. ‘I don’t hire and fire around here, Basil. Have a word with Geoff.’

  But of course there wasn’t any doubt about it really; the hesitation was only for form’s sake. After a long private talk Geoff announced that the three delinquents were to be taken back into the fold, and a reallocation of driving jobs ensued, somewhat to Harry Zimmerman’s relief.

  It was impossible to find out exactly what had happened; McGrath kept busy and enquiries would have to wait until later. Wingstead did tell me that according to all of them, Bob Sisley and Johnny Burke had refused point blank to return when McGrath caught up with them. It seemed that he had taken the car and gone off at first light. The other three were less committed to Sisley’s cause and Jones in particular had been a most unwilling mutineer. The three of them would bear careful watching but there was no doubt that we were greatly relieved to have them back.

  We camped that night back near Kodowa, but not at the hospital, where Dr Kat decreed that there would be too much danger of infection from the debris left behind. Instead a cleaner site was found further west on the road we were to take. It had been a day wasted. We arrived in the late afternoon and buried our dead, four more, and then began the laborious process of settling in for the night, and of planning the start for Makara in the morning.

  At the end of it I had had a gutful. I was weary of talking and of listening, settling arguments, solving problems and doling out sympathy and advice. The only good news we heard all evening was from Dr Marriot, who told us that Max Otterman seemed to be making progress towards recovery.

  Eventually I went off for a walk in the warm night. There were refugees everywhere and I had to go a long way to put the camp behind me. I had no fear of meeting wild animals, the noise and stench of our progress had cleared both game and predators for miles around, and as I looked back at the cooking fires glowing like fireflies I wondered where the food was coming from.

  I’d been tempted to take the dwindling bottle of whisky with me but had resisted, and now I regretted my selfdenial. I stopped well out of sight and earshot of the camp and sat down to soak in the solitude for a spell. Finally, feeling rested, I started back. I’d gone about ten paces when something ahead of me crunched on dry vegetation and my heart thudded. Then a voice said softly, ‘Mister Mannix—can I talk to you?’

  It was Ron Jones. For a moment I felt a fury of hot resentment at not being left alone even out here. Then I said, ‘Jones? What do you want?’

  He was still downcast, a shadow of his cheery former self. ‘I’m sorry to intrude, Mister Mannix. But I must talk. I have to tell somebo
dy about what happened. But you must promise me not to tell anyone who told you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’ll tell you, if you promise first.’

  ‘Be damned to that, Jones. Tell me or not as you please. But I make no bargains.’

  He paused, thinking about this, and then said, ‘It’s about Bob Sisley. He’s dead.’

  ‘Dead? What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘He’s dead, I tell you. Mick McGrath shot him.’

  Christ, I thought. I’d been right. All along I’d had an uneasy feeling about McGrath, and this news came as less of a shock than a grim confirmation of my thoughts. ‘You’d better tell me all about it. Let’s sit down.’

  ‘But you really mustn’t let on who told you,’ Jones said again. He sounded terrified and I could hardly blame him.

  ‘All right, I promise. Now tell.’

  ‘It was like this. When we left we took as much of our kit as we could carry and went off towards Kodowa. Bob wanted to nick a truck but they were all guarded. Then he said we’d be sure to find transport in Kodowa. After all, there were lots of cars left behind there.’

  He said nothing about the events which had led up to the mutiny, nor about his own reasons for going along with it, and I didn’t ask. All that was past history.

  ‘We didn’t get very far. Walking, it’s not like being in a motor, not out here especially. It was bloody hot and hard going. Those Nyalans, they’re pretty tough, I found out…anyway we pushed on for a while. We’d nicked some food and beer, before we left. Brad Bishop didn’t know that,’ he put in, suddenly anxious not to implicate the cook in their actions. It was things like that which separated him from Bob Sisley, who wouldn’t have cared a damn.

  ‘Then we heard a car and up comes Mick on his own. He tried to talk us into going back, but pretty soon it turned into an argument. He and Bob Sisley got bloody worked up. Then Bob went for him but Mick put him down in the dust easy; he’s the bigger man by a long chalk. None of the rest of us wanted a fight except maybe Johnny Burke. But he’s no match for Mick either and he didn’t even try. To be honest, Barry and Bob Pitman and me, we’d had enough anyway. I really wanted to go back.’

  He hesitated and I sensed that the tight wound resolution was dying in him. ‘Go on. You can’t stop now. You’ve said too much and too little.’

  ‘Then Mick took us off the road and—’

  ‘How do you mean, took you? You didn’t have to go anywhere.’

  ‘Yes we did. He had a gun.’

  ‘What kind of gun?’

  ‘An automatic pistol. He took us off the road and down into the bush, where nobody else could see us. Then he said we had to go back or we’d die out there. He said he could beat us into agreeing, one at a time. Starting with Bob Sisley. Bob had some guts. He said Mick couldn’t keep us working, couldn’t hold a gun on us all the time. He got pretty abusive.’

  ‘Did they fight?’

  ‘Not again. Sisley said a few things he shouldn’t and…then Mick shot him.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Yes, Mister Mannix. One second Bob was standing there, and the next he was on the ground. That bloody Irishman shot him through the head and didn’t even change his expression!’

  He was shivering and his voice wavered. I said, ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘Nobody said anything for a bit. Someone upchucked—hell, it was me. So did Barry. Then Mick said again that we were to go back. He said we’d work the rig, all right. And if any of us talked about what had happened he’d get kneecapped or worse.’

  ‘Kneecapped—that was the word he used?’

  ‘Yes. Bob Pitman got down to look at Sisley and he was stone dead, all right. And while we were all looking. Johnny Burke he took off and ran like hell, through the bush. I thought Mick would shoot him but he didn’t even try, and Johnny got clean away.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to him?’

  ‘Nobody does.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Well, we said OK, we’d go back. And we’d shut up. What else could we do? And anyway we all wanted to come back by then. Christ, I’ve had this bloody country.’

  ‘What happened to Sisley’s body?’

  His voice shook again. ‘Mick stripped it and him and Barry put it down in a gulley and covered it up a little, not buried. Mick said the wildlife would get him.’

  ‘He was right about that,’ I said grimly. ‘You did the right thing, telling me about this. Keep your nose clean and there’ll be no more trouble out of it for you. I’ll do something about McGrath. Go back to the camp now, and get a good night’s sleep. You’re out of danger, or at least that sort of danger.’

  He went, thankfully, and I followed more slowly. I had one more lousy job to do that night. Back at camp I strolled across to the Land Rover and got into it on the passenger side, leaving the door open. There was still some movement here and there and as one of the men walked past I called out to him to find McGrath and tell him I wanted to see him.

  I switched on the interior light, took the shotgun I had liberated, emptied and reloaded it. Previously, when I’d tried to put in a fourth shell it wouldn’t go, and I had wondered why, but now I had the answer; in the States pump and automatic shotguns are limited to a three-shot capacity when shooting at certain migratory birds. To help remind hunters to keep within the law the makers install a demountable plug in the magazine, and until it’s removed the hunter is limited to three fast shots. I guessed the gun makers hadn’t bothered to take out the plugs before exporting these weapons.

  Now I began to strip the gun. When McGrath came up I was taking the plug out of the magazine. He looked at it with interest. ‘That’s a fine scatter-gun,’ he said easily. ‘Now, how many shots would a thing like that fire before reloading, Mister Mannix?’

  ‘Right now, three. But I’m fixing it to shoot six.’ I got the plug out and started to reassemble the gun.

  McGrath said, ‘You’ve done that before.’

  ‘Many times.’ The gun went together easily. I started to put shells into the magazine and loaded the full six. Then I held the gun casually, not pointing at McGrath but not very far away from him, angled downwards to the ground. ‘Now you can tell me what happened to Bob Sisley,’ I said.

  If I’d hoped to startle him into an admission I was disappointed. His expression didn’t change at all. ‘So someone told you,’ he said easily. ‘Now I wonder who it could have been? I’d say Ronnie Jones, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Whoever. And if anything happens to any of those men you’ll be in even more trouble than you are now—if possible.’

  ‘I’m in no trouble,’ he said.

  ‘You will be if Sadiq strings you up the nearest tree.’

  ‘And who’d tell him?’

  ‘I might.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not you, Mister Mannix. Mister Kemp now, he might do that, but not you.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ I hadn’t meant the interview to go this way, a chatty debate with no overtones of nervousness on his part, but the man did intrigue me. He was the coolest customer I’d ever met.

  He grinned. ‘Well, you’re a lot tougher than Mister Kemp. I think maybe you’re nearly as tough as me, with a few differences, you might say. We think the same. We do our own dirty work. You’re not going to call in the black captain to do yours for you, any more than I did. We do the things that have to be done.’

  ‘And you think Sisley had to be killed. Is that it?’

  ‘Not at all. It could have been any one of them, to encourage the others as the saying goes, but I reckon Sisley was trouble all down the line. Why carry a burden when you can drop it?’

  The echo of Sadiq, both of them using Voltaire’s aphorism so glibly and in so similar a set of circumstances, fascinated me against my will. ‘I don’t need lessons in military philosophy from you, McGrath,’ I said. ‘What you did was murder.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! You’re
in the middle of a war here and people are dying all around you, one way or the other. You’re trying to save hundreds of lives and you worry about the death of one stinking rat. I’ll tell you something. Those other bastards will work from now on. I’ll see to that.’

  ‘You won’t touch them,’ I said.

  ‘I won’t have to. You found out; the word will spread to everyone, you’ll see. Nobody else is going to turn rat on us, I can promise you…and nobody is going to touch me for it.’

  ‘Why did you really do it, McGrath? Loyalty to Wyvern Transport?’

  ‘Be damned to that, Mannix. I want out of this and I want out alive and unhurt. And the more we’ve got pulling for us, the better chance each man has. You have to have unity on this. You owe it to your people, and they to you.’

  There at last was the political undertone I’d been expecting. I said, ‘All right, what are you, McGrath? IRA or Ulster Loyalist?’

  ‘Do I have to be either.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Unity in face of oppression, casual shooting, kneecapping threats—it’s all there. And I’m not one of your American pseudo-Irish sympathizers. As far as I’m concerned, both of your bloody so-called movements can fall into the nearest bog and the sooner the better.’

  As I’d hoped, this sort of talk did get some rise out of him. He shifted one hand instinctively to his right-hand coat pocket, arresting the movement almost instantly. But it was a dead giveaway.

  ‘All right,’ I said, having achieved what I wanted. ‘We won’t talk politics. Let’s change the subject. Where did you get the gun?’

  ‘I found it in the tank we salvaged.’

  ‘And where is it now?’

  ‘In my cab.’

  I shook my head gently, hefting the shotgun very slightly.

  He actually laughed. ‘You’re in no danger from me, Mister Mannix. You’re one man I look to to get us all out of this mess.’

  I said, ‘I’ll have that gun, McGrath—now.’