McGrath kept up a steady pressure and the tractor moved remorselessly backwards, pushing the armoured car. He judged his angle carefully and there was a grinding crunch as the Saracen was forced against the coping wall of the bridge. But we didn’t want the bridge itself damaged and McGrath stopped short of sending it into the river, which would have shattered the wall.
The Saracen’s engine was ground into scrap and wasn’t going anywhere under its own power. The bridge was effectively blocked to the enemy, and Sadiq was free to get on with the job.
McGrath put the tractor gently into forward gear. There was no opposition as we travelled back across the bridge and stopped to form a secondary blockade. We tumbled out of the cab to an enthusiastic welcome.
‘Where’s Barry?’ I asked.
‘We’ve got him back to the rig. He’s with the medics,’ Proctor said.
McGrath stirred and stretched hugely. I said, ‘That was damn good driving, Mick.’
‘You didn’t do too badly yourself. What the hell did you use on that first Saracen—a flame-thrower?’
‘I fired the Very gun at it. It shouldn’t have worked but it did.’
Looking around, we could see figures heading off towards the river downstream from the bridge. There was some scattered shooting. The remains of Maksa’s force were intent only on escaping back to their own side. More mortars fired and the shooting stopped.
We tensed up at this renewal of hostilities but it was happening a long way off from us, to our relief.
Geoff Wingstead was beside me. ‘I’ve had it. This is Sadiq’s war. Let him fight it from now on. I’m all for going back to being a truck driver.’
‘Me too—only I’ll be happy just to ride that desk of mine.’
McGrath said, ‘I’ll be happier when we’ve got a detachment down here; they still might try to rush that bridge and Sadiq isn’t nearby. We might still be wanted.’
‘I hope to God not. We’ve had one casualty and we don’t want any more.’
Wingstead said, ‘I’m afraid we’ve had more than one.’
I said, ‘Who else, then?’
He pointed to a group of men at the foot of the water tanker, consisting of Harry Zimmerman, a Russian, and Brad Bishop.
‘One of the Russians bought it,’ Wingstead told me. Together we walked over to Zimmerman, who was looking sadly at the huddled body. ‘I’m sorry about this, my friend,’ I said to his fellow countryman, standing impassively by, then to Zimmerman, ‘Who was he—Brezhnev or Kosygin?’ I never could tell them apart.
Zimmerman sighed. ‘His name was Andrei Djavakhishkili and he came from Tbilisi in Georgia. He was a nice guy when you got to know him.’
The remaining two hours to dawn were quiet. Sadiq had joined us, and we sat in the cover of our vehicles, waiting for the morning light. We didn’t expect the enemy to try anything; their only passage was blocked off and the decisiveness of Sadiq’s action, and our own, must have rocked their morale.
With the rising of the sun we could see no sign of movement from across the river. The scene was one of destruction; burnt out vegetation still smouldered, the camp site littered with debris, and the wreckage of the first Saracen huddled in a ditch. We found the bodies of three men near it, one shot and two who had died of burns. There were more bodies up the hill at the soldiers’ camp but Sadiq’s men were taking care of them and we didn’t want to see the site of that battle.
Our tractor blocked the nearside of the bridge and at the far end the second Saracen lay canted over diagonally across the road and forced up hard against the coping. There was no sign of men or vehicles beyond.
I said to Sadiq, ‘What now, Captain?’
He studied the opposite bank carefully through binoculars, holding them one-handed as his left arm was in a sling. He was no longer the immaculate officer whose pants were creased to a knife edge and whose shoes gleamed. He’d lost his boot polish to McGrath. His uniform was scorched and rumpled.
There were lines of strain about his eyes and mouth. Presently he said, ‘We watch and wait for one, two hours maybe. If everything is still quiet I will send scouts across the river.’
‘Risky.’
‘Would you expect anything else in war, Mister Mannix?’
‘You did well last night, Captain. It was a fine operation.’
He nodded gravely. ‘Yes, we did well. But you all did well, especially Mister McGrath. He is very efficient. Without him it might not have come about.’
I knew that and didn’t want to dwell on it. I would have liked to admire McGrath whole-heartedly but found it impossible. I was pleased to hear that Sadiq had sustained no losses among his men, and only a couple were wounded.
Our losses were worse.
The Russian was dead. Lang was in a bad way and lay on Dr Kat’s operating table. Proctor had a bullet graze on the leg and Kemp on the shoulder, and others had an assortment of bruises and abrasions. But a roll call proved one man missing. After a search we found the body of Ron Jones, shot through the head and stomach by machine-gun bullets.
TWENTY-TWO
It was ten o’clock before Sadiq took his chance on the bridge. First he wanted the tractor shifted so that if necessary he could get troops across fast, and we were wary of sending anyone out of cover to do that until we felt fairly sure, it was safe. Sadiq would not send scouts across, as being too dangerous. He was going to cross first himself in the Scorpion tank, which was a brave thing to do because even a lone infantryman might have a tank-killing weapon. He was taking three men with him, a driver, a gunner and a radio operator, and he left instructions that nobody was to move until he came back or sent a coded all clear signal.
Before that we’d cleaned up the camp, repairing what was possible and listing what needed repair when we could spare the time. Luckily Maksa’s men had not destroyed much of importance, though there were two car windows shattered and sundry minor damage done here and there. Bishop and Bing, with help from the others, got a food supply moving, and on the rig the medical people were kept very busy.
Max Otterman’s body had been found at the foot of the rig with a bullet in his back and two ribs broken, presumably by the fall though the damage could have been done by a boot. It was an appalling death. We organized a digging party off the road and held a mass funeral service. Otterman, Burns, Ron Jones and Andrei Djavakhishkili, a Rhodesian, an American, a Welshman and a Russian, shared one grave, though we gave them each separate headboards. In another grave were two of Sadiq’s men and with them four rebels, all with the common bond of being Nyalans.
Both the ailing infant and the hospital’s other serious patient, Sister Mary, had survived the night. But the two doctors and the nursing staff were under great strain and an urgent discussion on ways and means was long overdue.
Astonishingly, during the early hours of the morning we had visitors.
Sandy Bing, carrying a bucket of hot water towards the rig, stopped and said, ‘I’ll be damned, Mister Wingstead! Just look at them.’
In the distance, quietly and almost shyly, little clumps of Nyalans were reappearing, still mostly women and children, to stand in respectful yet wary homage to their travelling talisman. Some of them spoke to the soldiers, and Dr Kat and two of the Nyalan nurses went down among them, to return with news that the vast majority had melted away just far enough to be within earshot of the fight, and close enough to come back if they felt all was safe again. It was truly extraordinary.
‘I think it may mean that the other soldiers have all gone,’ Dr Kat told us. ‘They speak of them as evil, and they would not come back if they were still close by.’
‘But they’d be across the river, Doctor Kat. How could these people know?’
‘I think you call it the bush telegraph,’ the surgeon said with his first smile for a long time. ‘It really does work quite well. You will see, the Captain will return to give us an all clear. In the meantime, they have brought me a woman who broke her leg last night. I must go back
and see to her.’
I went to have a look at the Saracen that had caught fire. I was curious to see why it had happened; an armoured car isn’t a paper bag to be burned up by a Very flare.
It was simple enough when we reconstructed what had occurred. At the time that the shooting started someone must have been filling the gas tank and in the hurry to get things moving the fuel tank cap hadn’t been screwed back on properly. When the Very ignited, a spark must have gone straight into the tank, blowing up the vehicle in fine style. We found the cap still on its hinge, military fashion, but hanging loose.
I had another job to do that I didn’t relish, and that was to speak to McGrath alone. I started by telling him about the Saracen and he grinned approval.
‘Dead lucky. We have to have some of it,’ he commented.
I said, ‘McGrath, there’s something bothering me.’
‘Why then, let’s have it,’ he said calmly.
‘In the warehouse you told us that Maksa was getting ready to burn it down with us inside. But I found no petrol drums anywhere near the warehouse, and there’s no fuel of theirs this side of the river. Our tanker is still locked and nobody took the keys.’
‘Well, maybe they were going to do it another way,’ he said easily.
‘Don’t mess with me, McGrath. Did you actually hear them say anything like that?’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ he said, driven out of his normal calm, ‘I had to say something to get you lot moving! You were just going to stand there and take it. Or try talking your way out, I suppose.’
‘You were safe enough, free and armed. Why the hell did you bother to come back for us?’
‘If I thought I could have got away through this benighted country on my own, Mannix, I’d have done so. I need you, that’s why.’ He crowned this casually selfish statement with one more shocking. ‘I must say Otterman’s death came in handy. That really did the trick.’
I felt disgusted, and then had another appalling idea.
‘McGrath, did you kill Ron Jones?’
He looked amused rather than alarmed. ‘Why should I do that?’
‘You know why. And you had time to do it. In God’s name, how can I believe you even if you say you didn’t?’
‘Well now, you can’t, Mannix, so if I were you I’d stop worrying about it. I didn’t as a matter of fact, though he’s no great loss for all that. In fact he was more dangerous to you than I’ve ever been.’
I couldn’t help rising to the bait. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he was a bit of a sniveller, wasn’t he? You know that, the way he came babbling things to you that he shouldn’t. He saw you take the shotgun into the warehouse, Mannix, and it was he who told the Colonel about it. I heard him myself.’
Quite suddenly I knew that this was the truth. I recalled Jones’s fear in the warehouse, the way he hung back from Maksa as he’d always hung back from McGrath, perhaps fearing lest he be unmasked before us all for Maksa’s pleasure. Any regret I had for his death ebbed away, and despite myself I felt a nagging touch of understanding of McGrath and his ruthlessness. He’d manoeuvred us into doing the one thing he knew best; fighting and killing. He’d done it all for the most selfish of reasons, and without compunction. And yet he was brave, efficient and vital to our cause; and perhaps justified as well.
I walked away from him in silence. I would never know if he had killed Ron Jones, but the worst of it, and the thing that filled me with contempt for myself as well as for him, was that I didn’t care. I prayed that I wouldn’t become any more like him.
McGrath was a maverick, intelligent, sound in military thinking and utterly without fear. I felt that he might be a useful man to have about in a war, but perhaps on the first day of peace he ought to be shot without mercy, and that was one hell of an assessment.
Sadiq had decided that it was time to go.
‘Mister Mannix, if I do not return I have told my sergeant to take command of the soldiers,’ he said. ‘And they are to stay with you unless given alternative orders in person by a superior.’
‘Thank you. I wish you good luck.’
He saluted and climbed up into the Scorpion, dropping down through the command hatch and dogging it shut. He was taking no chances. The tank trundled slowly across the bridge. Sadiq had reckoned he could pass the wrecked Saracen but might have to nudge it aside and he proved right. Once past it he picked up speed and the driver did not bother to avoid the scattered bodies. I remembered being told back in Korea that if one wanted to sham dead on a battlefield better not to do it with tanks around.
Not a shot was fired as the tank left the bridge. It began to climb the hill beyond, then swerved and entered the bush and was lost to view. We settled down to wait in the hopeful expectation of hearing nothing. It was a long hour before the Scorpion rumbled back up the hill towards us. Sadiq got out and said, ‘There is nothing. They have pulled out and gone.’
There was a ragged cheer from soldiers and civilians alike.
‘Which way, do you think?’ Wingstead asked.
‘Their vehicles must have gone on up the road.’ This wasn’t good news because it was to be our route too. He went on, ‘We found two of them damaged and off the road, and there are many uniform jackets lying there. I think the Fifteenth Battalion has disbanded. They were nearly finished anyway, and the fight with us has destroyed them.
‘Now that I am certain the bridge is clear I will send scouts further ahead. I will place men to form a holding force while we decide what must be done next.’
And so the next item on the agenda was a council of war.
Sadiq’s active force was down to twenty-two. There were sixteen of us and a medical staff of nine including three semitrained nurses. On the rig were fifteen Nyalans, including the mother and her sick baby. So we totalled some seventy odd people, many of whom could not take care of themselves. We couldn’t stay where we were nor could we turn back, which left us with an obvious conclusion. We had to carry on towards Lake Pirie and possible freedom in Manzu if we couldn’t travel on to Port Luard.
Food and medical supplies were in shorter supply than ever, and our stock of petrol was dwindling fast. The only thing we had in plenty was water. The soldiers had run short of ammunition and had no mortar bombs left. We were ragged, weary and uncomfortable. But morale was high.
We reckoned that we could make Fort Pirie in three days or less, and it would be downhill all the way, with villages scattered along the route. We debated yet again leaving the rig but there were still too many sick people to accommodate in the other vehicles, and by now the contraption was beginning to take on a talisman-like quality to us as well as to the Nyalans. We’d got it this far: surely we could get it the rest of the way.
Kemp and Hammond went to inspect the bridge. Though well constructed it had taken a battering and they were concerned for its integrity. They decided that it was sound enough to get the rig across but with nobody on board except for the drivers. That meant that the invalids must be carried across, and Dr Kat set Sister Ursula to organize this with her usual barnstorming efficiency. We had little rest for the remainder of that day. At last we settled down for a final night in the Makara camp, a guard of soldiers on watch, ready to move out at first light.
Kemp and Hammond drove the rig, McGrath had charge of the towing tractor, and Thorpe joined Bob Pitman in running the airlift truck to give the rig its necessary boost. There was a large audience as Nyalans emerged to stare as the rig inched its way across; the Saracen had been towed clear and someone had had the mangled bodies removed. After an hour of tension it was across, and the job of transferring the sick on improvised stretchers began.
It was mid-morning before we really got going. We had quite a selection of vehicles to choose from, our inheritance from the Fifteenth Battalion. In spite of possible fuel problems Sadiq insisted on taking the remaining Saracen, but we ditched some of the trucks. We left the Russian pipe truck but took Dufour’s vehicle with us, at the
Frenchman’s insistence. Brad Bishop said that he had so little cooking to do that the chuck wagon might as well be ditched too, but he didn’t mean it.
Kemp, who had been a passenger on the rig because of his shoulder wound, had joined Wingstead and me in the Land Rover. Atheridge drove with Dufour. Their common ordeal at the hands of Maksa’s men had forged a bond between them, just as one now existed between Harry Zimmerman and the Russian, Vashily Kirilenko; with his partner’s death the nicknames had disappeared.
Wingstead said, ‘Ben Hammond can move the convoy out. Let’s drive on. We have to talk about McGrath.’
‘I think he’s psychopathic,’ Wingstead went on. ‘He’s been with you more than with anyone else lately, Neil. What do you think?’
Kemp intervened, ‘He’s an unscrupulous bastard, and it was me who hired him. If you think I’ve made a mistake for God’s sake say so.’
‘Don’t take this personally,’ Wingstead said. ‘If you want my candid opinion, he’s the best bloody truck man you’ve ever hired. He’s a damned marvel with that tractor.’
‘Amen to that,’ I said.
Kemp was still on the defensive. ‘Well, I knew that. I couldn’t afford to turn him down, Geoff. I knew we’d need the top men for this job. But his papers weren’t in order. I advertised for heavy haulage drivers and he applied. He could do the job and had the necessary certificates, but I found discrepancies. I think he’s travelling on a false passport.’
Kemp had come a long way on his own.
I told them what I knew, both fact and speculation. At the end there was silence before either spoke.
Then Kemp said, ‘He killed Sisley? But why should he?’
‘He has only one answer to every problem—violence. I think he’s a hard line gunman on the run from Ireland. He’s dangerous. To look at he’s a big amiable Mick straight from the bog. He works at that image.’
Wingstead asked, ‘Do you think he could have killed Burke too?’
The Spoilers / Juggernaut Page 54