The Spoilers / Juggernaut

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘Maybe a thousand, maybe more. I never count.’

  I jotted down figures. ‘Thanks. Sam, that cooler. Where do you get your power from?’

  ‘Questions. You ask too much questions.’ He jerked his thumb. ‘You not hear it? The generator, man!’

  I had got so accustomed to hearing the steady throb of a generator on the rig that it hadn’t penetrated that this one was making a slightly different sound. ‘Ah, so you do have one.’

  ‘Why? You want to steal it?’ He flapped his hand dejectedly. ‘You take it. Mister Obukwe, he already mad at me.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘Nobody will steal it, or anything else. But buying would be different, wouldn’t it? My company is British Electric. Perhaps we can buy your generator from you.’

  ‘You pay cash?’

  I laughed aloud. ‘Not exactly, but you’ll get it in the end. Now let me alone for a while, Sam, would you?’

  Before he left he went and wrote down one can of beer on my tab.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I had a bit of figuring to do. For one thing, while we Americans think our way of doing things is always best, the European metric system is actually far better than our own multi-unit way, even the conservative British are adopting it, and oddly enough an imperial gallon is a better measure than our American gallon because one imperial gallon weighs exactly ten pounds of fresh water. It didn’t take much figuring to see that a drum would hold four hundred and twenty pounds of water.

  There was some other reckoning to be done and I persevered, even to cutting shapes out of paper with a rusty pair of scissors. At last I stretched, put Kironji’s pen safely back in a drawer, took a hopeful but useless look in the cooler and set off down to the lakeside on foot. It was only a short distance and I used the walk to do some more thinking. I went straight down to look at the pontoon once again.

  It was a rickety enough contraption, just a few empty oil drums for flotation with a rough log platform bolted on top. It was very weathered and had obviously stood the test of time, but it was as stable as a spinning top just about to lose speed and I wouldn’t have cared to cross Central Park Lake on it.

  I yelled for anybody and Bob Pitman responded.

  ‘Bob,’ I said, ‘go round up a couple of people for me, will you? I want Kemp, Hammond, and Geoff Wingstead. Oh, and Mick McGrath. Ask them to meet me here.’

  ‘Will do,’ he said and ambled off. When they had all arrived I found that Zimmerman had got wind of the conference and had made himself part of it, though without his Russian mate. I looked around at them and drew a deep breath.

  ‘I have a nutty idea,’ I started.

  This drew a couple of ribald comments and I waited until they died down before I carried on. ‘It’s crazy and dangerous, but it just might work. We have to do something to get ourselves out of this fix. You gave me the idea, Ben. You and Mick.’

  ‘We did?’ Hammond asked.

  ‘Yes. I want us to build a raft.’

  ‘I know I mentioned that but you shot that idea down in flames. You had a point too.’

  ‘I’ve developed your idea. We don’t use this thing as a basis, we build our own. I’ve done some figuring on paper and I think it will work. The trouble is that the lake isn’t made of paper.’ I filled in for the benefit of the others. ‘Ben suggested that if we towed the landing stage it could form a raft on which we could get people over to Manzu. The pontoon isn’t big or stable enough and we’d need transport on the far shore. But I think I’ve worked something out.’

  ‘Build a bigger raft?’ asked Wingstead.

  ‘How could you power it?’

  ‘What do we make it of?’

  ‘What do you think this is, a navy shipyard?’

  I held up my hand. ‘Hold it. Give me a chance and I’ll explain.’ There were two phases to my scheme and I thought it wiser to introduce them one at a time, so I concentrated on the concept of the raft first. ‘To start with, every one of these drums in the compound, when empty, has a flotation value of four hundred pounds, and there are hundreds of them. We won’t need more than say one hundred for my plan to work.’

  ‘Sounds idiotic to me,’ said Kemp. ‘A hundred of these drums won’t make a raft big enough to take anything anywhere.’ I knew he was trying to visualize the rig floating across the lake on a bed of oil drums and failing, and had indeed done that myself.

  ‘Building a raft is the first part of my plan. And it’ll do to go on with, unless someone has a better one. We can’t stay here indefinitely.’

  ‘It sounds like you have a pretty big job lined up,’ Wingstead said. He didn’t sound encouraging. ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘Think about the raft. To make it we need material and muscle. And brains, I guess. We’ve got the brains between us and there’s a hell of a lot of suitable raw material lying about. As for the muscle, that’s how the pyramids were built, and the Great Wall of China. God knows we’ve got enough of that.’

  ‘The Nyalans?’ Hammond asked. He was beginning to kindle with excitement. I wanted them all to feel that way.

  ‘We’ll need a work force. The women to plait lianas to make a lot of cordage, and some of the men to cart stuff about. I’ve got the basic blueprints right here.’ I held up the pad of paper.

  Zimmerman and Hammond looked ready for any challenge. Kemp had a stubborn set to his jaw and I knew that he was thinking about the rig to the usual exclusion of everything else, and ready to oppose any plan that didn’t involve saving it.

  Geoff Wingstead was oddly lacklustre, which disappointed me. I’d hoped to enrol his enthusiasm first of all, and wondered why he was hanging fire. McGrath had said nothing and was listening intently in the background. With the odd, unwanted rapport that I sometimes felt between us I knew he was aware that I had something tougher yet to propose, and he was waiting for it.

  Hammond said, ‘How do we persuade the Nyalans to cooperate? We can’t pay them.’

  ‘Sister Ursula gave me the answer to that. We can take as many of them across to Manzu as want to go. When the war’s over they’ll probably drift back again, but right now they’re as threatened as we are. I think they’ll help us.’

  Kemp had been drawing in the sand, and now he said, ‘Look, Neil, this is ridiculous. To build a raft big enough to take maybe a couple of hundred people is crazy enough, but to take vehicles across on them is beyond belief. Good God, each tractor weighs forty tons. And how do we embark and disembark them?’

  I said, ‘You’re thinking the wrong way. I agree with you, and I’ve already rejected that idea. We don’t build a raft to get people to Manzu.’ It was time to drop the bombshell.

  ‘What? Then what’s all this about?’

  I said, ‘We’re going to use it to capture the ferry.’

  They stared at me in total silence. McGrath’s face warmed into a broad grin of appreciation.

  Wingstead said at last, ‘You’re out of your mind, Neil.’

  ‘OK, what the hell do we do? Sit here and eat ants until the war goes away? We have to do something. Any immunity as foreigners and civilians we might have had was shattered when we met up with Maksa’s force. We played soldiers then. And I have a bad feeling about this war; if the Government forces were going to win they’d have done so by now. The rebels are gaining strength and if they take over they aren’t going to be exactly lenient.’

  Wingstead said, ‘You’re right. It just seems so farfetched.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said McGrath. ‘It’s a lovely idea, Mannix. Lovely. How did I give you the idea, if I might ask?’

  ‘You mentioned fire ships,’ I said shortly. I needed him desperately but I was damned if I could make myself at ease with him. ‘We’re going to attack the ferry from the water, the one thing they won’t expect.’

  I had him with me, naturally. I thought I had Hammond too. He was fully aware of the danger but absorbed by the technical challenge. Kemp might disapprove but couldn’t resist putting his mind to the problem
.

  Hammond said, ‘I think at this stage you want to keep this rather quiet, don’t you, Mister Mannix?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘I’d like Bert Proctor in on it from the start. He’s got a good head, and I’ve worked with him on projects so often—’

  I said, ‘Yes, of course. Go get him.’

  He went off at the double and Wingstead smiled. ‘They really are quite a team, you know.’ I was still worried about his lack of enthusiasm. He was the kingpin of the team and they looked to him for direction.

  Proctor, grave and attentive as always, listened as I recapped. He calmly accepted the idea of Wyvern Transport men turning into privateers, and I understood why Hammond wanted him.

  I showed them my idea for building the raft. I hadn’t yet calculated the load but I reckoned on as many men as we could muster, at least one or maybe two trucks and whatever we could develop in the way of weapons—a formidable prospect. They were dubious but fascinated and the engineers among them could see the theoretical possibilities. We had to build a raft before considering the rest of the plan.

  To Kemp I said, ‘Basil, I’ve got an idea about the rig too. I know how important it is. We’ll talk about that later.’ This was a sop; I had no ideas about the rig but I couldn’t afford to let him know it.

  McGrath asked, ‘How many men do you think we’ll have?’

  I said, ‘All of Sadiq’s men, that’s twenty-three. We can’t conscript our crew but I don’t think anybody will want to be left out. I make that sixteen. Thirty-nine in all.’

  ‘Say thirty-five, allowing for accidents,’ said McGrath.

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘What did Sadiq have to say about the ferry?’

  ‘They have a guard detachment there. Exactly how many we don’t know, but it doesn’t sound formidable. If we come out of the dark yelling at them they’ll probably scatter like autumn leaves.’

  Faces brightened. It didn’t sound quite so bad put that way.

  McGrath said, ‘We’d need much more accurate information than that, Mannix.’

  ‘Oh, I agree. By the way, I haven’t spoken to Sadiq yet, but we will soon. I want to propose an expedition, using Sam Kironji’s boat. You, McGrath, Geoff, Sadiq and myself. It won’t take any more. Down river by night.’

  Wingstead said, ‘Oh my God, Neil, I don’t think we should do that.’

  I was dumbfounded. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, Geoff? I’m depending most of all on you. For God’s sake stop being such a damned pessimist.’

  I’d never let fly at an executive in front of his men before. But it was vital to keep morale high and a waverer at the top of the command line could ruin all our plans. He made a strangely listless gesture and said, ‘I’m sorry, Neil. Of course I’m with you. Just tired, I guess.’

  Zimmerman broke into the embarrassed silence. ‘I don’t think Geoff should go anyway, Neil. He’s got enough on his plate already. Let me come instead.’

  I was relieved. Damn it, I wanted Wingstead with me, and yet in his present mood he might be a liability. I wished I knew what was eating him.

  ‘Suppose we succeeded, took the ferry. What then?’ Hammond asked. ‘Wouldn’t their main force get to know about it?’

  ‘Very likely, but they’re at Fort Pirie and we’d silence radios and prevent getaways,’ I said. ‘The only thing we have to pray for is that the ferry is operative, and from what Kironji told me it’s been in regular use recently so it ought to be.’

  ‘Then what?’ Wingstead asked.

  ‘We bring up the rig and get all the invalids on board the ferry, cram it full of people and shoot it across to Manzu. When it comes back we pile on as many vehicles as it can take, trucks for preference, and the last of the people. Once in Manzu it’s a doddle. Get to Batanda, alert the authorities and send back transport for the stragglers. I bet they’ve got cold beer there.’

  They chewed on this for a while. I had painted a rosy picture and I knew they wouldn’t entirely fall for it, but it was important to see potential success.

  Hammond stood up and rubbed out the sketch marks in the sand with his foot. ‘Right—how do we start?’ he asked practically.

  Wingstead looked up, absurdly startled. His face was pale under its tan and I wondered fleetingly if he was simply afraid. But he hadn’t been afraid back in the warehouse at Makara.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I’d like to think about it a bit, before we start anything. It’s just too—’

  The hesitation, the slack face, were totally unfamiliar. Doubt began to wipe away the tentative enthusiasm I had roused in the others. Wingstead had cut his teeth on engineering problems such as this and he was deeply concerned for the safety of his men. I had expected him to back me all the way.

  The problem solved itself. He stood up suddenly, shaking his head almost in bewilderment, took a dozen paces away from us and collapsed in the dust.

  We leapt up to race over to him.

  ‘Go and get a doctor!’ Kemp barked and Proctor ran to obey. Gently Kemp cradled Wingstead whose face had gone as grey as putty, sweat-soaked and lolling. We stood around in shocked silence until Dr Kat and Dr Marriot arrived.

  After a few minutes the surgeon stood up and to my amazement he looked quite relieved. ‘Please send for a stretcher,’ he said courteously, but there was one already waiting, and willing hands to carry Wingstead to the mobile hospital. Dr Marriot went with him, but Dr Kat stayed behind.

  ‘I should have seen this coming,’ he said. ‘But you may set your minds at rest, gentlemen. Mister Wingstead will be perfectly all right. He is not dangerously ill.’

  ‘What the hell is it then?’ I asked.

  ‘Overstrain, overwork, on top of the injuries he suffered in the plane crash. He should have been made to take things more easily. Tell me, did you notice anything wrong yourselves?’

  I said, feeling sick with anger at myself, ‘Yes, I did. I’ve seen him losing his drive, his energy. And I damned well kept pushing at him, like a fool. I’m sorry—’

  Kemp cut me off abruptly.

  ‘Don’t say that. I saw it too and I know him better than anyone else here. We must have been crazy to let him go on like that. Will he really be all right?’

  ‘All he needs is sleep, rest, good nourishment. We can’t do too much about the last but I assure you I won’t let him get up too soon this time. I might tell you that I’m very relieved in one respect. I have been afraid of fever—cholera, typhoid—any number of scourges that might strike. When I heard that Mister Wingstead had collapsed I thought it was the first such manifestation. That it is not is a matter of considerable relief.’

  The Doctor’s report on Wingstead was circulated, and the concern that had run through the convoy camp like a brush fire died down.

  I found Hammond. ‘I want to talk to all the crew later this evening. The medical staff too. We’ll tell them the whole plan. It’s risky, but we can’t ask people to work in ignorance.’

  Then I went to find Sam Kironji.

  ‘Sam, what’s in that little hut inside the compound?’ I asked him.

  He looked at me suspiciously. He’d already found the compound gate unlocked and Harry Zimmerman and two others counting empty drums, much to his disgust. ‘Why you want to know?’

  I clung to my patience. ‘Sam, just tell me.’

  There was nothing much in it. The hut held a miscellany of broken tools, cordage, a few other stores that might be useful, and junk of all sorts. It was where Sam put the things he tidied away from everywhere else.

  I made a space in the middle of it, had Kironji’s desk brought in, and established it as my headquarters. The roadside cabin was too far from the camp and too exposed. Some wag removed a Pirelli calendar from the cabin wall and hung it in the hut, and when Kironji saw this I think it hurt him most of all.

  ‘Stealers! Now you take my women,’ he said tragically.

  ‘Only to look at, same as you. You’ll get them
back, I promise. Thank you for the desk and the chair, Sam.’

  He flapped his hand at me. ‘Take everything. I not care no more. Mister Obukwe, he fire me.’

  Hammond was listening with amusement. ‘Never mind, Sam. If he does I’ll hire you instead,’ I said and hustled him outside. I sat down and Hammond perched on the end of the desk. We each had a pad of paper in front of us.

  ‘Right, Ben. This is what I’ve got in mind.’

  I began to sketch on the pad. I still have those sketches; they’re no masterpieces of the draughtsman’s art, but they’re worth the whole Tate Gallery to me.

  Take an empty drum and stand it up. Place around it, in close contact, six more drums, making damn sure their caps are all screwed home firmly. Build an eight-sided wooden framework for them, top, bottom and six sides, thus making a hexagon. No need to fill the sides solidly, just enough to hold the drums together like putting them in a cage. This I called the ‘A’ hexagon, which was to be the basic component of the raft. It had the virtue of needing no holes drilled into the drums, which would waste time and effort and risk leaks.

  How much weight would an ‘A’ hexagon support?

  We got our answer soon enough. While we were talking Sandy Bing reported breathlessly to the office. ‘Mister Mannix? I got forty-three and a half gallons into a drum.’ He was soaking wet and seemed to have enjoyed the exercise.

  ‘Thanks, Sandy. Go and see how many empties Harry Zimmerman has found, please.’ Zimmerman and his team were getting very greasy out in the compound.

  The drums were forty-two gallons nominal but they were never filled to brimming and that extra space came in handy now. We figured that the natural buoyancy of the wooden cage would go some way to compensate for the weight of the steel drums, and Bing had just handed me another few pounds of flotation to play about with. We decided that my ‘A’ hexagon should support a weight of 3,000 pounds: one and a half tons.

  But there wouldn’t be much standing room. And a floating platform about six by five feet would be distinctly unstable. So my next lot of figures concerned the natural development upwards.