The Spoilers / Juggernaut

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘Very good you come. You tell Mister Obukwe I got no trade except I sell Coca-Cola.’

  ‘Sure, I’ll tell him. But if you want to leave, Sam, it’ll be OK. Neil here is right, there could be trouble coming this way.’

  Kironji thought about it and then gave him a great smile.

  ‘I stay. This is my place, I take care of it. Also I not afraid of the soldiers like them.’ He waved a contemptuous hand at his departed fellow inhabitants. ‘You want Cokes, other things, I got them maybe.’

  I said, ‘Sure, we want Cokes and food and all sorts of things. Soon our trucks will come here and we’ll want lots of petrol too.’ Probably more than you’ve ever seen sold in a year, I thought. I pointed to a hard-surfaced track which led away from the road. ‘Tell me, Sam, where does that track go to?’

  ‘The river.’

  ‘But you’re already at the river.’

  ‘It go compound, back there,’ he said, waving a vague hand.

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘Not far. Half an hour walking maybe.’

  I said, ‘We’re going to take our car down there and have a look. If any white men come by here, tell them to wait for us.’

  ‘Hey, man,’ he said, ‘that company property. You can’t drive there.’

  I looked at him in amusement and wondered if Lat-Am knew how lucky they were. ‘Harry?’

  Zimmerman persuaded him that we were going on company business and Kironji finally gave way to our demands.

  The track was better surfaced than I had expected and showed signs of considerable use. Wherever it was rutted the ruts had been filled in with clinker and the repair work was extensive and well done. Presumably Mr Obukwe of Lat-Am Oil had need of this track and we wondered why.

  It wasn’t all that wide, just enough to take a big truck through the trees. On the right they pressed in thickly but on the left they barely screened the water. The trees showed signs of continual cutting back, the slash marks ranging from old scars to new-cut wood still oozing sap.

  The track ran parallel to the main road to the lake shore. We emerged into a clearing to see the sun striking hard diamond reflections from the water and to find yet another fenced compound full of drums. There was also a landing stage, a rough structure consisting of a wooden platform on top of empty oil drums making a floating jetty about ten feet wide and eighty feet long.

  There was even a boat, though it was nothing much; just a fifteen-foot runabout driven by an outboard. I walked out onto the landing stage which swayed gently and looked closely at the boat. It was aged and a bit leaky, but the outboard looked to be well maintained. I turned my attention to the lake itself.

  The distance to the far side was about four miles and through binoculars I thought I could see the shore and a ribbon of track leading up from it. That was Manzu, a country blessedly free of civil war and as desirable as Paradise. But as far as we were concerned it might as well have been the far side of the moon. It was ironic to think that if we had no-one to worry about but ourselves we four could have crossed this stretch of water to safety in no time.

  ‘Pretty sight, isn’t it,’ Wingstead murmured as he took his turn with the binoculars. He was thinking my thoughts.

  I turned back to the clearing. It was easy now to see the reason for the good road. Delivery to and from this petrol dump was made by water, probably from Fort Pirie to this and other drop points along the shore. It would be easier than road transport especially if the fuel came prepacked in drums.

  There was a locked wooden shed standing nearby. By peering through the boards we could see that it was a workshop and toolroom. There was every sign that it was used regularly for maintenance work, though everything was tidy. I walked back along the pontoon and prowled around the perimeter of the compound I found a gate which was also locked and there was a palm-thatched hut just inside it. It crossed my mind that the clearing, which was very long, would be a good place to put the rig and the rest of the convoy off the road and out of sight. The road down was rough but I had learned enough from Kemp to judge it would stand the traffic, and Wingstead confirmed this.

  ‘It’s not a bad idea. And it brings us at least within sight of our goal,’ he said when I put the proposition to him.

  On the far shore we could make out a cluster of buildings where there was possibly another landing stage. On the water itself there were no boats moving. Traffic on Lake Pirie might simply be infrequent or it may have been brought to a halt by the advent of war.

  When we got back to the station we arranged for Kironji to load the balance of his Cokes and a few other items into the car. The cabin wasn’t exactly a shop but there was some tinned foodstuff for sale and a few bits of hardware that might be useful. He also had a little first aid kit but it wasn’t worth ransacking. As Kironji closed the cooler lid on the last load of Cokes I saw something else down there.

  ‘Are those beer cans, Sam?’

  ‘Mine.’ He closed the lid defiantly.

  ‘OK, no sweat.’ A ridiculous statement in this scorching weather. This train of thought made me wipe my forehead. Kironji watched me, hesitated, and then said, ‘You want a beer?’

  ‘You’d be a hero, Sam.’

  He grinned and handed me a cold can. ‘I got a few. Only for you and your friends. I not sell them.’

  It tasted wonderful. Our warm beer had long been finished.

  I looked around as I drank. The interior of the cabin was neat and tidy. It was a combination of office and store, with a few tyres in racks and spare parts on shelves. I thought that Hammond could make something of all this, and in fact he had already been browsing through the stock. At the back was a door which led to Kironji’s living quarters; he was a bachelor and preferred to live where he worked, presumably to protect his precious Lat-Am property. There was a supply of tools here too, and a small workbench.

  ‘Do you do all your own repair work, Sam?’

  ‘I got plenty tools, sir, and much training. But mostly I work by the lake.’ The shed we had seen housed a fair amount of stuff, a well-equipped workshop for boats as well as vehicles.

  ‘Who does the boat belong to?’ I asked.

  ‘To me. I go fishing sometime.’

  ‘I’d like to hire it from you. I want to have a look at the lake.’

  He shook his head at my folly but we agreed on a hire fee, and he jotted it down on what was becoming a pretty healthy tab. He wasn’t going to be done out of a penny, either by way of business or personally.

  Wingstead came in and to his great delight Kironji handed out another beer. He disposed of it in two swallows.

  Kironji asked, ‘You say you have other people coming. What you doing here, man?’

  ‘We were going to Bir Oassa with parts for the oilfields,’ Wingstead said. ‘We met the war and had to turn back. Now we must try to get back to Lasulu.’ He said nothing of the Manzu border. Kironji pondered and then said, ‘You know this hospital?’

  ‘Which hospital?’ I asked, thinking he meant that there was one in the vicinity. But his reply only proved the efficiency of the bush telegraph once again.

  ‘I hear it go travel on a big truck, lots of sick people. The other they follow where it go, all through the country.’

  ‘By God,’ Wingstead exclaimed. ‘The juggernaut’s famous! If Sam here has heard about it it’ll be all over the damn country by now. I don’t know if that’s good news or bad.’

  I said, ‘Yes, Sam, we are travelling with that hospital. The sick people are on a big trailer, all the way from Doctor Katabisirua’s hospital in Kodowa.’

  He brightened. ‘Doctor Kat! I know him. He very good doctor. One day he fix my brother when he break a leg.’ That was good news; if our doctor was well thought of his name was a reference for the rest of us.

  ‘He’ll be here later today, Sam,’ Wingstead said.

  Kironji looked only mildly incredulous.

  Hammond came to the doorway. ‘The Captain’s here, Mister Mannix. He’s asking
for you.’

  I tossed him two beers. ‘One for you and one for Harry,’ I said, ‘but don’t go back and boast about it. There isn’t any more.’

  ‘You said no soldiers,’ said Kironji reproachfully as I passed him.

  ‘Not many, and they are friends. Doctor Kat knows about them.’

  Sadiq was waiting outside. I thanked him for his message, and went on, ‘I’ve suggested to Mister Wingstead that we stop here, and he’s agreed. There’s a good road down to the lake and it’s well hidden. We can put the whole convoy there, including the rig, and your men too if you think fit.’

  Sadiq liked the idea and went to see for himself. Kironji watched him go from the cabin doorway.

  ‘Sam,’ I said, ‘have you ever used the ferry?’

  ‘Me, no. What for? I not go Manzu, I work here.’

  ‘Who does use the ferry?’

  He considered. ‘Many truck from Manzu go to oilfields. Farmers, Government people. Many different people go on ferry.’

  In happier times the international border here was obviously open and much-used. It was the only route to the Bir Oassa fields from countries north of Nyala. Kironji’s information that trucks crossed on it suggested that it was larger than I would have expected, which was encouraging news.

  Geoff Wingstead beckoned to me.

  ‘When the rig gets here we will get it off the road. We’re a little too close to Fort Pirie for comfort, and there’s no point in buying trouble. There’s plenty of room at the lakeside and it can’t be seen from up here. But we’ll have to widen the turn-off.’

  For the next hour he and I together with Zimmerman and Hammond laboured. Widening the turn for the rig involved only a few modifications. We heaved rocks and equipment to one side, uprooted vegetation and chopped down a small spinney of thorn bushes, and generally made a mess of Sam Kironji’s carefully preserved little kingdom. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Zimmerman was from Lat-Am Kironji would never have allowed us to do it. As it was he could barely bring himself to help.

  Four hours later the rig was bedded down in the clearing by the lake, its load resting on the ground and the weight taken off the bogies. The clearing held most of the vehicles and those that couldn’t be fitted in were scattered off the road where they could leave in a hurry, or be used to block the way to the rig. We might have been bypassed and remain invisible if it wasn’t for the Nyalans who were still doggedly following us. They camped in the trees all about us, chattering, cooking, coming and going endlessly. According to Sam Kironji many lived nearby but preferred our company to their homes.

  Sadiq set his men to try and persuade them to leave us but this was a wasted effort. The rig was a magnet more powerful than any of us could have imagined, and politely but obstinately its strange escort insisted on staying. The countryside was steadily pillaged for whatever food could be found, and Sam Kironji’s chickens disappeared before we could bargain for them.

  I found Sister Ursula tearing a little pile of bedding she’d found in Kironji’s cabin into bandaging strips and said to her, ‘Let me do that. You’ve got more important things to do.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She had discarded her coif and her hair, cut close to the scalp, was sheened with sweat.

  ‘How are things, Sister?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ she said briskly. ‘We’ve lost no more patients and I really think the infant is going to make it, thanks be to God. We worry about Mister Lang, though.’ He had taken Max Otterman’s place as their most serious case. ‘Doctor Marriot says that Sister Mary is a little better. But she shouldn’t exert herself in the slightest. We do need to get to a hospital soon though. What are our chances?’ she asked.

  I put her in the picture. ‘Do you know of any hospitals in Manzu?’ I then asked.

  She didn’t, and hadn’t heard that we intended to try and reach the neighbouring country. Few people had as yet, for the sake of security, but now I told her.

  ‘It’s a fine idea, and just what we need. All these poor people who are following us, they do need a place to settle down in peace once more.’

  ‘But they’re Nyalans. They’d be in a foreign country without papers.’

  She laughed. ‘You’re naïve, Mister Mannix These people think of it simply as land, Africa. They haven’t much nationalistic fervour, you know. They cross borders with little fear of officialdom, and officialdom has better things to do than worry about them. They just go where the grazing and hunting is good.’

  I wished it was as simple for us, but we had a lot to do first. I left the Sister to her bandages and went to find Hammond, McGrath and Sam Wilson.

  We walked down to stand at the pontoon, looking out over the water. Hammond said, ‘I don’t see many possibilities. If there was a bridge we could at least fight for it.’

  ‘The ferry point is swarming with rebels,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we’ve got the force we’d need.’

  ‘You know, I was getting really worried about fuel,’ Hammond said. ‘It’s ironic that now, when we can’t go anywhere, we’ve got all we want and more.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said McGrath. ‘We could float petrol down to the ferry and set it alight, construct a fire ship.’

  Wilson said, ‘Pleasant ideas you have, Mick,’ and I caught an undertone I recognized; here was someone else who mistrusted the Irishman.

  Hammond said, ‘We can get people across Manzu in threes and fours, with this little boat…or perhaps not,’ he added as he crossed the pontoon to look down into it. He hopped up and down, making the pontoon bobble on the water, then came back ashore looking thoughtful.

  ‘I wonder why they have a pontoon instead of a fixed jetty,’ he said.

  ‘Does it matter?’ I was no sailor and the question wouldn’t have occurred to me, but Wilson took up Hammond’s point. ‘A fixed jetty’s easier to build, unless you need a landing stage that’ll rise and fall with the tide,’ he said. ‘Only there’s no tide here.’

  ‘You can see the water level varies a little,’ Hammond said. He pointed out signs that meant nothing to me, but Wilson agreed with them. ‘So where does the extra water come from?’ I asked. ‘It’s the dry season now. When the rains come the river must swell a lot. Is that it?’

  ‘It looks like more than that. I’d say there was a dam at the foot of the lake,’ Hammond hazarded. McGrath followed this carefully and I could guess the trend of his thoughts; if there was a dam he’d be all for blowing it up. But I didn’t recall seeing a dam on the maps, faulty though they were, and hadn’t heard one mentioned.

  But this wasn’t Hammond’s line of thinking at all.

  ‘They have level control because the lake rises and falls at times. That’s why they need a floating jetty,’ he said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘The point is that the jetty is a tethered raft.’ He pointed to the dinghy. ‘That isn’t very seaworthy but if we cut the pontoon loose it could be towed across the lake with people on it.’

  Now he was giving me ideas. ‘Only a few at a time,’ I said.

  ‘But we could build a bigger one. We might find other outboards,’ Hammond went on, growing interested in his own hypothesis.

  ‘Supposing you could do it. What does everyone do at the other side without transport? It’s a long way to Batanda.’

  ‘I hadn’t got that far,’ he admitted glumly.

  I looked around. One boat, one pontoon, one outboard motor, plenty of fuel, a workshop…a work force…raw materials…my mind raced and I felt excitement rising. I said, ‘All of you go on thinking about this. But don’t share your ideas with anyone else for the time being.’

  I got into the Land Rover and shot off up the road to the filling station and went up to Sam Kironji’s cabin, which was latched. He let me in with some reluctance.

  He said bitterly, ‘You come, now they all come. Stealers! You didn’t tell me this big crowd come. They steal everything I got. They steal things I don’t got.’ He was hurt and angry.

&n
bsp; ‘Relax, Sam. We didn’t bring them, they followed us. You said yourself you heard the travelling hospital was big magic.’

  ‘That not magic. That theft. How I relax? How I explain to Mister Obukwe?’

  ‘You won’t have to. Mister Zimmerman will explain and Lat-Am Oil will be very pleased with you. You’ll probably get a bonus. Got another beer?’

  He stared at the desk top as I opened the cooler, which was empty, and then looked along his shelves which were as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. Kironji looked up sardonically. ‘Stealers! I tell you. Here.’ He reached under the desk and came up with a beer can which he thrust out at me as if ashamed of his own generosity. I took it thankfully and said, ‘There’s still lots of stuff here, Sam.’

  ‘Who eat tyres? Who eat batteries? You tell me that.’

  I sat down on the edge of his desk. ‘Sam. You know all those petrol drums you’ve got outside and down by the lake?’

  ‘Why? You want to steal them?’

  ‘No, of course not. How big are they?’

  He addressed the desk top again. ‘Forty-two gallon.’ ‘Imperial?’

  ‘What you mean? Gallons, man—that what they are.’

  Forty-two imperial gallons, which is what they probably were, equalled about fifty American. I had tried to decipher the marks on one but they were pretty rusty.

  ‘Sam,’ I said, ‘please do me a big favour. Give me some paper and a pen or a pencil, let me borrow your office, and go away for a bit. I have to do some calculating, some planning. I’ll be really grateful.’

  He reluctantly produced a pad of paper with Lat-Am’s logo on it and a ballpoint pen. ‘I want my pen back,’ he said firmly and began to retreat.

  ‘Wait a moment. What’s the weight of an empty drum?’

  He shrugged. ‘I dunno. Plenty heavy.’

  It didn’t matter too much at this stage. ‘How many empty drums have you got here?’

  Again his shoulders hunched. ‘Too many. No supplies come, I use ‘em up. Many empty now.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Sam, I don’t want a long story! How many?’