He made a fist with one hand and banged it into the other. 'Well, you and me were friendly, like. We think the same way. But ever since Makara and that bit of a fight at the bridge, you've hardly said a word to me.'
I regarded him with profound astonishment. This tough and amoral man was behaving like a schoolboy who'd been jilted in his first calflove.
'I've been goddamn busy lately.'
There's more to it than that. I'd say you've taken a scunner to me. Know what that means, Yank?'
'I don't know what the hell you're talking about. If you don't take orders I can't trust you and I won't let this whole operation fall apart because of your injured feelings. When we arrive at Kanjali you stay back on the raft. Damned if I'll entrust Bing or anyone else to your moods!'
I rose abruptly to go back to the shelter of the truck. He called after me, 'Mannix! Wait!'
I crouched down again, a ludicrous position in which to quarrel, and waited.
'You're right. I'm sorry. I'll take your orders. You'll not leave me behind, will you?'
For a moment I was totally lost for words.
'All right,' I said at last, wearily. 'You come as planned. And you toe the line, McGrath. Now get back into shelter or we'll both freeze.'
Later I thought about that curious episode.
During his stint in the army and presumably in Ireland too he had never risen in rank; a man to take orders, not quite the loner he seemed. But the man whose orders he obeyed had to be one he respected, and this respect had nothing to do with rank or social standing. He had no respect for Kemp and not much for Wingstead. But for me, perhaps because I'd had the nerve to tackle him directly about Sisley's murder, certainly because he'd sensed the common thread that sometimes linked our thoughts and actions, it seemed that he had developed that particular kind of respect.
But lately I had rejected him. I had in fact avoided him ever since we'd found the body of Ron Jones. And he was sensitive enough to feel that rejection. By God, Mannix, I thought. You're a life-sized father figure to a psychopath] Once again as we neared Kanjali dawn was just breaking. The sky was pinkish and the air raw with the rise of the morning wind. Hammond instructed the engine handlers to throttle back so that we were moving barely faster than the run of the current. Before long the two bulky outlines, the ferry and the buildings on the bank, came steadily into view. Sadiq gave quiet orders and his men began handing down their rifles from the truck.
Hammond brought us close to the bank some way upstream from where he intended to stop, and the raft nuzzled into the fringing reeds which helped slow its progress. A dozen men flung themselves overboard and splashed ashore carrying mooring lines, running alongside the raft until Hammond decided to go no further. I thought of his fear of crocodiles and smiled wryly. The noise we were making was enough to scare off any living thing and I could only pray that it wouldn't carry down to the men sleeping at Kanjali.
We tied up securely and the weapons were handed ashore. Hammond set his team to separating the two parts of the raft into their original 'B'-gon shapes and transferring the two outboards to a crossbeam on the section without the truck. This was to be either our escape craft or our means of crossing to Manzu to seek help in handling the ferry.
Once on shore I had my first chance to tell Hammond privately about Dufour's truck. 'Harry saw six cases of the stuff, and checked one to be sure. If we have to we're going to threaten to use it like a fire ship. Harry's got a firing mechanism worked out. He'll come back here, set it and cut the raft free.'
'It might float clear before it goes off, Neil,' Hammond said. His horror at this amateurish plan made me glad I hadn't told him about it sooner. 'Or run aground too soon. The firing mechanism might fail. Or blow itself to smithereens and never touch Kanjali at all!'
'You know that and I know that, but will they? We'll make the threat so strong that they won't dare disbelieve it.'
It was a pretty desperate plan but it was all we had. And it didn't help that at this point Antoine Dufour approached us and said, 'Please, Monsieur Mannix, do not put too much faith in my cargo, I beg of you.' He looked deeply troubled.
'What's the matter with it? If it's old and unstable we'll have to take our chances,' I said brusquely.
'Aah, no matter.' His shrug was eloquent of distress. I sensed that he wanted to say more but my recent brush with McGrath had made me impatient with other men's problems. I had enough on my plate.
Sadiq and his men moved out. The rest of us followed, nervous and tense. We moved quietly, well down in the cover of the trees and staying far back enough from Sadiq's squad to keep them in sight until the moment they rushed the buildings. We stopped where the vegetation was cut back to make way for the landing point. I had a second opportunity to look at the moored ferry where it was caught in the sun's first rays as though in a searchlight beam.
This time I recognized what had eluded me before.
This was no modern ferry. It was scarred and battered, repainted many times but losing a battle to constant rust, a valiant old warhorse now many years from its inception and many miles from its home waters. It was an LCM, Landing Craft Mechanized, a logistics craft created during the war years that led up to the Normandy landings in 1944. Developed from the broad-beamed, shallow-draughted barges of an earlier day, these ships had carried a couple of tanks, an assortment of smaller vehicles or a large number of men into action on the sloping European beaches. Many of them were still in use all over the world. It was about fifty feet long.
What this one was doing here on an inland lake up an unnavigable river was anybody's guess.
I turned my attention to Kanjali, lying below us. There were five buildings grouped around the loading quay. A spur from the road to Fort Pirie dropped steeply to the yards. Running into the water was a concrete ramp, where the bow of the ferry would drop for traffic to go aboard. A couple of winches and sturdy bollards stood one to either side. Just beyond was a garage.
The largest building was probably the customs post, not much bigger than a moderate-sized barn. Beyond it there was a larger garage, a small shop and filling station, and a second barn-like building which was probably a warehouse.
Sadiq's men fanned out to cover the customs post front and rear, the store and warehouse. Our team followed more hesitantly as we decided where to go. Kemp, Pitman and I ran to our post, the landing stage, and into cover behind the garage. Thorpe was at my heels but I told him to go with McGrath and he veered away.
We waited tensely for any sounds. Kemp was already casting a careful professional eye on the roadway to the landing stage and the concrete wharf beside it on the shore. It was old and cracked, with unused bollards along it, and must have been used to ship and unship goods from smaller craft in the days before the crossing had a ferry. But it made a good long piece of hard ground standing well off the road, and Kemp was measuring it as another staging post for the rig. The steep spur road might be a problem.
We heard nothing.
'Shall I go and look?' Pitman asked after several interminable minutes. I shook my head.
'Not yet, Bob.'
As I spoke a voice shouted and another answered it. There were running footsteps and a sudden burst of rifle fire. I flattened myself to peer round the corner of the garage. As I did so an unmistakably male European voice called from inside it, 'Hey! What's happening out there?'
We stared at one another. Near us was a boarded-up window. I reached up and pounded on it.
'Who's in there?'
'For God's sake, let us out!'
I heaved a brick at the window, shattering glass but not breaching the boards that covered it. The doors would be easier. We ran round to the front to see a new padlock across the ancient bolt. Then the yard suddenly swarmed with figures running in every direction. There were more rifle shots.
I struggled vainly with the padlock.
Kemp said, 'They're on the run, by God!'
He was right. A few soldiers stood with their arms rai
sed. Some slumped on the ground. Others were streaking for the road. Someone started the Volvo but it slewed violently and crashed into the side of the warehouse. Sadiq's men surrounded it as the driver, a Nyalan in civilian clothing, staggered out and fell to the ground. The door to the main building was open and two of our soldiers covered as men ran across the clearing and vanished inside, Bishop, Bing, McGrath and I thought Kirilenko, en route I hoped for the radio.
Sadiq's men were hotfoot after stragglers.
Neither Kemp, Pitman nor I were directly involved and within five minutes from the first shout it was all over. It was unnerving; the one thing my imagination had never dared to consider was a perfect takeover.
Hammond came away from one of the trucks grinning broadly and waving a distributor cap. Sadiq was everywhere, counting men, posting sentries, doing a textbook mopping up operation. We went to join the others, leaving whoever was in the locked garage to wait.
'Christ, that was fantastic. Well done, Captain! How many were there?'
Hammond said, 'We reckon not more than fourteen, less than we expected.'
'Any casualties?'
McGrath was beside me, grinning with scorn. 'Not to us and hardly to them. A few sore heads, mostly. Those laddies were half asleep and didn't know what hit them. A few ran off, but I don't think they'll be telling tales. They thought we were demons, I reckon.'
I looked around. Several faces were missing.
'Bing?' I asked.
'He's fine, already playing with that dinky radio set of theirs. Brad and Ritchie are with him,' McGrath said., 'The Volvo's had it,' said Hammond, 'but the other vehicles are fine. We can use them any time we want to. They didn't even have a sentry posted.'
It wasn't too surprising. They had no reason to expect trouble, no officer to keep them up to the mark, and probably little military training in the first place. I said, 'We've found something interesting. There's someone locked in the garage by the landing. There's a padlock but we can shoot it off.'
We gathered round the garage door and I yelled, 'Can you hear us in there?'
A muffled voice shouted back, 'Sure can. Get us out of here!'
'We're going to shoot the lock off. Stand clear.'
One of Sadiq's men put his gun to the padlock and blew it and a chunk of the door apart. The doors sagged open.
I suppose we looked as haggard and dirty to the two men who emerged as they looked to us. Both were white, one very large and somewhat overweight, the other lean and sallow-skinned. Their clothing was torn and filthy, and both were wounded. The big man had a dirtily bandaged left arm, the other a ragged and untreated scabby gash down the side of his face. The lean man took a couple of steps, wavered and slid gently to his knees.
We jumped to support him.
'Get him into the shade,' Kemp said. 'Fetch some water. You OK?'
The big man nodded and walked unaided. I thought that if he fell it would take four of us to carry him.
I left Kemp to supervise for a moment, and took Sadiq aside.
'Are you really in full command here?' I asked. 'What about the men who ran off?'
'They will probably run away and not report to anyone. But if they do I hope it will be a long time before others get here.'
'Do you think it's safe to bring the convoy here? If we can work the ferry we won't have any time to waste.' Already hope was burgeoning inside me. Sadiq thought in his usual careful way before replying.
'I think it is worth the chance.'
I called to Kemp. 'Basil, take your team and get back to Kironji's place. Start shifting the convoy. Leave the fuel tanker and the chuck wagon. Bring the rig and tractors, and cram the rest into a truck or two, no more.'
The two newcomers were being given some rough and ready first aid. Bishop had found the food stores and was preparing a meal for us, which was welcome news indeed.
I went back to squat down beside the recent prisoners.
'I'm Neil Mannix of British Electric, and this mob works for Wyvern Transport. We're taking stuff to the oilfields… or were when the war started. The soldiers with us are loyal to Ousemane's government. We're all in a bit of a fix, it seems.'
The big man gave me a smile as large as his face.
'A fix it certainly is. Bloody idiots! After all I've done for them too. You're American, aren't you? I'm pleased to meet you — all of you. You've done us a good turn, pitching up like this. My name's Pete Bailey, and it's a far cry from Southampton where I got my start in life.' He extended a vast hand to engulf mine. Good humour radiated from him.
His hand bore down on the shoulder of his companion. 'And this here is my pal Luigi Sperrini. He talks good English but he doesn't think so. Say hello, Luigi, there's a good lad.'
Sperrini was in pain and had little of his friend's apparently boundless stamina but he nodded courteously.
'I am Sperrini. I am grateful you come,' he said and then shut his eyes. He looked exhausted.
Tell the lads to hurry with that food,' I said to Bishop, and then to Bailey, 'How long were you two guys locked in there?'
'Four days we made it. Could have been a little out, mark you, not being able to tell night from day. Ran out of water too. Silly idiots, they look after their bloody cattle better than that.' But there didn't seem to be much real animosity in Rim, in spite of the fact that he and his companion seemed to be a fair way to being callously starved to death.
I braced myself for the question I most wanted to ask.
'Who are you guys anyway? What do you do?'
And I got the answer I craved.
'What do you think, old son? We run the bloody ferry.'
CHAPTER 27
'Will she run?'
Bailey came close to being indignant at the question.
'Of course she'll run,' he said. 'Luigi and I don't spend a dozen hours a day working on her just for her looks. Katie Lou is as sweet a little goer as the girl I named her for, and a damn sight longer lasting.'
The time we spent between taking Kanjali and waiting for the convoy to arrive was well spent. We found a decent store of food and set about preparing for the incoming convoy. We found and filled water canteens, tore sheets into bandaging, and checked on weapons and other stores. We seemed to have stumbled on a treasure house.
The radio was a dead loss; even with parts cannibalized from the other Bing couldn't make it function, which left us more frustrated for news than ever. Bailey and Sperrini could tell us little; we were more up to date than they were. We were fascinated to learn, however, that the Juggernaut had already been heard of.
The hospital that goes walkabout,' said Bailey.-'It's true then. We thought it just another yarn. They said it had hundreds of sick people miraculously cured, magic doctors and the like. I don't suppose it was quite like that.'
'Not quite,' I said dryly, and enlightened them. Bailey was glad that there were real doctors on the way, not for himself but for Sperrini, whose face looked puffy and inflamed, the wound obviously infected.
'One of their laddies did that with his revolver,' Bailey said. 'First they shot me in the arm, silly buggers. If they'd been a little more polite we might have been quite cooperative. As if I could run away with Katie Lou — I ask you! She can't exactly go anywhere now, can she?'
'Except to Manzu,' I said, and told him what we wanted. 'I'm surprised you didn't think of it yourselves.'
'Of course we could have taken her across,' he said tolerantly, 'but I didn't know we were supposed to be running away from anything until it was too late. The war didn't seem to be bothering us much. One minute we're unloading a shipment and the next the place is swarming with laddies playing soldiers. The head man demanded that we surrender the ferry. Surrender! I didn't know what he was talking about. Thought he'd got his English muddled; they do that often enough. Next thing they're damn well shooting me and beating up poor old Luigi here. Then they locked us both in.'
His breezy style belied the nastiness of what had happened.
'We tried to break out, of course. But I built that garage myself, you see, and made it good and burglar-proof, more fool me. They didn't touch Auntie Bess but the keys weren't there and I couldn't shift her. Tried to crosswire her but it wouldn't work. Must say I felt a bit of an idiot about that.'
'Who, or more likely what, is Auntie Bess? ' I asked. We hadn't been to look in his erstwhile prison yet.
'I'll show you but I'll have to find her keys. And to be honest I'd really rather get Katie Lou back into service first.'
Getting the ferry into service proved quite simple. There was a small runabout which Bailey used to get out to it, and in lieu of his trusty Sperrini he accepted the aid of Dufour, Zimmerman and Kirilenko. 'Parkinson's Law, you see,' he said with easy amusement. 'Three of you for one of him. She only needs a crew of two really, but it's nice to have a bit of extra muscle.'
He took his crew out to Katie Lou and with assured competence got her anchors up, judged her position nicely and ran her gently up onto the loading ramp, dropping the bay door on the concrete with a hollow clang. He directed the tying up procedure and spent some time inspecting her for any damage. He found none.
Sperrini waited with resignation.
'He very good sailor,' he said. 'He never make mistake I ever see. For me, first rate partnership.'
Bailey was like Wingstead, engendering respect and liking without effort. I never had the knack; I could drive men and direct them, but not inspire them, except maybe McGrath, which didn't please me. I'd never noticed it before. The difficult journey we'd shared had opened my eyes to some human attributes which hadn't figured very strongly in my philosophy before now. On the whole I found it an uncomfortable experience.
I complimented Bailey on Katie Lou's performance and he beamed.
'She's a bit rusty but by God she can do the job,' he said. 'I knew we were on to a good thing from the start.'
'How the hell did she come to be here anyway?' I asked.
'Luigi and I used to run the old ferry. We've been in this trade for donkey's years, the two of us. The old ferry was a cow to handle and very limiting; only deck cargo and passengers and not too many of them. I saw that cars and trucks would want to cross as trade improved and the oilfields opened up. Manzu hasn't got any oil itself but it's got a damn sight better port for off-loading heavy gear.'
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