by Chris Ryan
‘Bush fire?’ I asked Joss, who was standing with me.
‘I don’t think so,’ he answered. ‘Smoke’s too concentrated. A bush fire would be more spread out. Looks like somebody’s burnt a village.’
It was Jason, the skinny tracker, who raised the alert. He was on stag in one of the forward OPs when he gave a sudden call.
I looked across, saw him pointing, and hurried over.
‘What is it?’
‘One man.’
‘Where?
‘Two tall trees, over there.’
‘Got ’em.’
‘To the right, open space.’
‘Yes.’
‘One minute, he come out.’
I glued my binoculars to the small, stony plain, not wanting to put Mabonzo down, but hardly believing that a single man could be moving on his own through that huge wilderness.
But hell, the tracker was right.
A tiny figure struggled into view, an African, bareheaded, in rags, limping heavily, leaning on a stick, dragging himself forward a step at a time, four or five hundred yards from us. He was heading vaguely north, on course to pass to our right.
‘Hey, Whinge,’ I called. ‘Look at this.’
‘The poor bugger’s hurt,’ said Whinger immediately. Then suddenly he shouted, ‘No! For fuck’s sake!’
One of the Kamangan sentries had brought his AK47 up into the aim.
‘Don’t shoot!’ said Whinger fiercely. ‘This guy may be some use to us. He’s tabbed it from the direction of the enemy. Hey, Joss!’
The distant fugitive must have heard Whinger’s first yell, because he’d stopped and looked around.
‘Jesus!’ I said. ‘He’s going to do a runner.’
‘Like hell he is,’ said Andy, who’d appeared beside me. ‘He couldn’t run to save his life.’
‘Let’s get down to him, then,’ I went. ‘Andy and I’ll go with Joss. The rest of you keep still and cover us.’
We watched for a couple of minutes to make sure the man was on his own. In the end, unable to identify where the sound had come from, he started lurching forward again, and Andy and I set off towards him, together with Joss and a man called Kaingo, who could speak several tribal languages besides his own. As we moved I kept a patch of thick bush between us and our target, so that he didn’t see us, because I was afraid he might take fright and try to sheer off. The result was that when he finally came in view of us, he was only twenty metres off.
The sight of four armed guys in DPMs, two black, two white, gave him a horrible fright. He jumped backwards, tried to run, fell over, and then raised his hands in a pathetic gesture of surrender. By the time we got to him, he was on his knees, eyeballs rotating like crazy. We could see straight away that he was covered in cuts, with dust and dried blood crusting over them, and that he had metal shackles on his ankles. But it wasn’t until Andy went round behind him and whistled in amazement that we realised how badly he’d been injured. His tattered blue shirt had been torn into vertical strips, and so had the skin on his back. From shoulder to arse he was ripped and scarified, with shreds of skin hanging off, as if he’d been dragged over a bed of nails. The backs of his legs were the same. The wounds were fresh, with some of the blood not yet congealed, and flies crawling all over.
‘Tell him he’s safe,’ I said, and when Joss translated, the man’s fear visibly declined.
‘Water,’ I told Andy. ‘Give him a drink.’
Andy pulled a bottle out of his belt kit and handed it over.
Between gulps, the miserable creature choked out his story. His village had been destroyed by the rebels, he said.
‘First they bombed,’ Joss translated.
‘With aircraft?’
‘No aircraft. With guns. Shells. Some people were killed. Many ran away into the bush. Then the Afundis came and set fire to the huts. They raped the women — themselves first, then with knives in the belly. They cut the children into pieces.’
‘Okay, okay. Where was it?’
The man turned and made a big gesture towards the south. ‘Many days’ walking’ was the only way he could describe the location.
‘How did he get here, then?’
He’d been captured and taken for slave labour, driven off in a truck to rebuild the road from Gutu to the border. Places where floods had washed it away in the rainy season. He’d escaped during the night when a gang of workmen was being transported to a new location further west. He’d managed to secrete a hacksaw blade, and had sawed through the chain of his shackles during the journey.
At first we got the impression he’d just jumped off the truck; then he explained that he’d wriggled down over the side, between the rim of the body and the canvas top, and clung there, not daring to drop because they were travelling so fast. A minute or two later they’d come to a place where thorn bushes had grown over, nearly closing the track, and suddenly he’d found himself being ripped to pieces, all along his back. When the vehicle slowed, he’d dropped off.
‘Can you show us the road, then?’ I asked gently.
The man pointed over the sea of bush ahead of us, and his answer came back via Joss, ‘Half a day.’
‘At his rate, half a day’s only a couple of ks,’ I went. ‘Let’s get down there and have a look.’
‘Wait,’ said Joss. ‘He says he has something important to tell you.’
‘Go on, then.’
‘Tonight a convoy is coming back along this same road…’ The refugee talked in slow, painful sentences, and Joss patiently relayed the details. ‘From the border. It is bringing arms and ammunition for the garrison at Gutu.’
I felt a surge of excitement, but all I said was, ‘How does he know?’
‘He heard Afundi officers speaking.’
‘Tonight — is he sure?’
The man nodded vigorously.
‘How many vehicles?’
‘He thinks three or four. One of them will be the truck he jumped off.’
‘Right, then.’ I glanced at Andy and saw he was thinking the same as me. ‘Kaingo, get Mart to do what he can about his wounds. Andy and I are going down to recce that road.’
The reason we hadn’t spotted the track was that it ran across our front in a long, shallow valley, out of our sight as we were advancing. But there it was, just as the man had described it: a narrow, sandy track, so little used that seedling trees and bushes had sprouted up all over it, and in many places vegetation had closed in from the sides, halving its width. This squared with descriptions we’d heard of how, before the civil war, Bakunda had deliberately let roads serving Gutu go to pot, in a clumsy attempt to increase the security of the mine, while he himself relied on aircraft to lift supplies in and diamonds out. But now, on this one, there were tyre tracks, and a litter of broken twigs that showed a vehicle had recently forced its way through.
One thought was uppermost in all our minds: ambush. Coming so soon after the exercise, this looked like a God-given opportunity to give the Kamangans live practice and prevent a load of weapons reaching the rebels. Joss was all for it. His eyes were gleaming as he said, ‘Oh, wah! Let’s just find a good site, and we’ll get on with it.’
Our recce didn’t take long. There were no footprints in the dust of the track, and we ourselves kept off it, moving parallel with its course until we came to a point where it swung left and right as it crossed a wide hollow, and then straightened as it disappeared over some higher ground beyond. Up there, thick bush was growing, but the depression was open — a great killing ground. For ten minutes we scanned with binoculars to make sure nobody else was on the move.
‘Lovely thicket, just the ticket,’ went Andy, imitating Whinger, but letting himself down by giving both halves of the rhyme instead of one.
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘Let ’em come well down the slope into the open, and we’ve got ’em.’
In many ways the site was better than the one we’d chosen for the exercise, and Joss didn’t need long to work out a pla
n. Positions for right and left cut-off groups suggested themselves immediately. For RPGs and heavy machine guns, the range was point-blank; if the enemy vehicles reached the bottom of the slope, none of them would escape. There was even a bit of a hill out to the left from which a rear cut-off group could put down fire across the track on top of the rise, to take out anyone who tried to run off along it, and also, in the opposite direction, cover our own backs.
With all the drills fresh in people’s minds, everything seemed ridiculously simple. Nevertheless, we took all sensible precautions. Only once during our recce did we set foot on the road, and then we all crossed it together, brushing out our tracks behind us.
After scarcely an hour we were back at our bivouac site, and Joss again made careful models in the sand to brief his men. Then he took the commanders forward for their own recce, and Pavarotti helped them plan a cut-off barrier of claymores, with trip-wire triggers, in the bush on the south side of the track, to catch anybody who tried to break in that direction. We’d agreed that the SAS would take no direct part in the ambush itself, but that we’d be there close behind, in the background, to advise if anything went wrong.
Our best policy was obviously to leave our vehicles where they were, under guard, well out of the way, and move into position on foot. At 1630, after a meal, I gave everybody the same kind of bollocking as before, but tougher, telling them that this time the action was going to be for real, and they couldn’t afford any NDs or general faffing about.
‘The sky’s clear,’ I told them, looking up. ‘That means it’s going to be a fairly light night. The convoy will probably be driving without lights. If the wind gets up, we may not hear the engines until the last minute. So everybody needs to be on full alert. Your aim is very simple: destroy every enemy vehicle, and make sure no one gets out alive.’
With that, everybody tabbed forward, with three Kamangans humping the gun, spare barrel and tripod of their .50 machine gun, and two other guys carring spare ammunition.
Before the sun set at 1740 the whole party was in position. To keep things simple, I’d assigned the same back-ups as in the exercise: Pav behind the left cut-off, Andy behind the right, Genesis with the rear, Mart with myself and Whinger in the centre. We’d lent Joss one of our covert comms sets so that we could keep in touch with him, and we were close enough to talk to the rest of our lads, who stayed back with the vehicles, ready to move up as and when we called them.
Night fell as quickly as if a black curtain had been drawn down over earth and sky. Apart from the background chorus of crickets, not a sound disturbed the silence. I kept thinking about the big owl that had swooped over the village, expecting to hear that low hoo-hoo any minute — but if owls were flying, none called near us.
Whinger and I were lying at a comfortable angle — heads up, feet down — on a sandy bank that gave good protection from the front. If anyone started firing in our direction, we’d only have to lower our heads to be in dead ground. Also, we were far enough back from the Kamangan line to be able to talk in whispers without being heard. Not that we had much to say to each other at that point: we were both weary, and hoping the convoy would arrive early, rather than wait till four in the morning to put in an appearance.
Time dragged. To hurry it up I tried to imagine the map of Africa, fitting in all the countries like the pieces of a jigsaw. South Africa, at the bottom, was easy enough. Next up on the left came Namibia. I’d spent a week there once, and knew most of it was barren desert. Next up again was Angola, scene of one of the longest-lasting civil wars. Inland, beside Angola, was Botswana. I’d been there, too, and had spooky experiences in the Tsodilo Hills, where one of our guys had been killed falling off a mountain. I remembered how the RAF had flown a Hercules over the spot and how, when they tried to throw a wreath out the open back door, in tribute to the dead man, it had blown back into the aircraft three times, an uncanny fluke that left the crew twitching.
It was Andy, on our right, who heard the noise first.
‘Green Two,’ said his voice in my earpiece. ‘Something moving ahead.’
‘Vehicles?’
‘Pass. Sounds more like people on foot, coming through the bush.’
‘Has your squad heard it?’
‘Sure.’
‘Wait out, then.’ I listened intently for a few moments. My watch was reading 2155. As I watched, a shooting star hurtled down the sky towards the south. Then I called, ‘Green Three? Any noise in your sector?’
‘Negative,’ came Pav.
‘You heard Andy?’
‘Roger.’
‘Green Four?’
‘Definitely,’ said Genesis. ‘There’s movement up ahead.’
‘Green Five, you heard that?’
Joss took a moment to answer, maybe feeling for his pressel switch. Then he came up with: ‘Roger. We’re ready.’
‘All stations, stand by.’
We listened, straining to catch the slightest sound. The air was completely still. The moon was well up, casting a black shadow behind every silver-grey bush and tree, pitting the land with inky patches. I held my breath and uttered a silent prayer that none of the Kamangans would open fire prematurely.
As I let my breath go, I felt wind on my right cheek, that sudden, curious night wind, starting again. Quickly a surge built up, gusting from the north, sighing through the scrub. But this little squall never reached the intensity of the one that had blown up during our exercise. In a couple of minutes it died away again, and silence returned, the huge, all-embracing silence of the African night.
Maybe, I told myself, it was only an eddy of air that the guys had heard. But soon, when nothing else happened, I got a different idea. I began to wonder if the breeze had betrayed our presence to rebel scouts, moving ahead of their convoy. Had they got our scent and quietly turned back? Surely none of the Kamangans could have been such an idiot as to light a cigarette? Most of them stank like polecats, and BO on its own might have been enough to raise the alarm.
‘What d’you reckon it was?’ I whispered.
‘Animals, I expect,’ Whinger murmured. ‘Probably an antelope.’
He’d hardly spoken when, somewhere beyond the killing ground, a branch snapped. I knew instinctively that the crack was too loud to have been made by an impala or a puku. Antelopes are delicate animals that nibble at leaves and twigs; except when running for their lives, they do not break thick branches by treading on them.
‘All stations,’ I said again, ‘stand by.’
I was expecting — hoping — to pick up the rattle of a truck travelling slowly, or the grind of engines turning steadily at low revs. The next sound we got was almost mechanical, but utterly different: a huge, raucous intake of air, like a giant snort.
‘Firekin ’ell!’ went Whinger out loud. ‘Elephants!’
Before I could hit my pressel again, the night split apart in a blinding flash and the shock-wave of an explosion buffeted us in the face.
‘Jesus!’ I shouted. ‘They’re in the trip-wires!’
Boom! went another claymore. Violent screams burst out, as harsh and loud as if giants were tearing up sheets of corrugated iron. One, two, three, four — primeval cries of fear and alarm ripped out all over, building into a chorus of panic. Another booby trap exploded, setting fire to the bush in the background. All across our front the Kamangans opened up, pouring rounds into the killing area.
‘Stop!’ roared Pavarotti. ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’
His words were lost in the uproar. From being dead quiet, the night had turned crazy with noise. Like the elephants, the Kamangans had gone hyper. They were firing bursts often or twelve rounds, half of them high into the sky. The heavy hammer of the .50 was continuous. Two RPGs went scorching into the bush and exploded in brilliant flashes. A fourth claymore detonated, then a fifth.
Why the hell hadn’t Joss switched on the ambush lights? Why hadn’t he fired a flare? He had the shamoulis. I’d hardly had time to wonder what he was doing when I rea
lised that hefty black shapes were hurtling towards us like tanks — not three or four, but dozens — crashing headlong through any scrub in their path as they charged across the killing ground.
One of them was coming straight for me and Whinger.
‘Watch this fucker!’ I yelled. But before we could move it veered to its left and swung off in a circle, like a truck with a punctured tyre. I knew it had taken rounds and was disabled. Another went down, head over heels, and rolled to a halt like a seven-ton truck with all four wheels seized. The rest of them kept coming.
At last a rocket soared up and a flare deployed, yet the sudden illumination only increased the chaos. Presented with a clear view of fifty charging elephants, the Kamangans leapt to their feet and ran in all directions, back, sideways, forwards, loosing off wildly. Human yells merged with the louder animal noises. The effect was to increase the general panic and accelerate the stampede. Huge creatures thundered forward, ears raised, trunks up, screaming all out in a rolling cloud of dust. My instinct was to get up and run, or join in the firing, but I knew that any movement would expose us to still greater risk of getting trampled or knocked over.
‘Keep down!’ I yelled.
Whinger and I clung to the earth, on the back of our little mound. I felt the ground tremble as the nearest elephant hurtled past, three or four yards to my left. With it came a hot, fierce, animal smell, like that of cows, but more intense. Spurts of warm liquid sprayed on to us. In a few seconds the whole herd was through our position and past us, crashing away into the distance along the line of the road.
When the firing died down, I found myself shaking from a massive charge of adrenalin, and my finger trembled as I hit the pressel of my radio.
‘Come in, all stations.’
There was a pause before Pav answered, ‘Green Three.’
‘You okay?’
‘Fine.’
‘Okay. Green Four?’
‘Roger,’ went Genesis.
‘Five?’
‘No problem.’ Joss’s voice sounded high and strained.