by Chris Ryan
I began studying the fence with binoculars, looking for signs of an alarm system, but saw none.
‘How many d’you suppose there are?’ I asked.
‘Guards?’ said Joss. ‘Can’t tell. They’ll be on a shift system, so half of them are probably asleep. Twenty altogether? And maybe the same number of workers.’
‘What about them?’ Phil asked. ‘Are they Afundis as well?’
‘Expect so. By now they’ll have replaced any outsiders that used to work here.’
‘They must have weapons as well — for an emergency.’
‘Yeah,’ said Joss scornfully. ‘But we’re going to hit them by surprise.’
‘You reckon to drop any civilians as well?’ I asked.
‘Why not? They’re only Afundis, and anyway, how do we tell which is which?’
I shot Phil a look, and said, ‘Well, it’s up to you.’
Joss didn’t seem to hear that, or if he did, he paid no attention. All he said was, ‘It’s going to be easy!’
‘Don’t bank on it,’ I told him. ‘Lots of things can go wrong. But I tell you what. If you guys capture this place, you’re going to have to strengthen the defences. Sooner or later, the Afundis are going to come looking to kick the crap out of you.’
‘Sure, sure,’ he went. ‘First things first, though.’
‘That blockhouse’ll need sorting, too,’ said Phil.
Beside the main gates a small building had been fitted into the perimeter fence, in the position the guardroom would occupy in a normal barracks. From far out it had looked like a tin shack, but from closer in we could see it was more solid, with an outer cladding of corrugated iron, inside which were walls of sandbags.
The big, free-standing building was obviously the cookhouse-cum-accommodation block. We deduced that from the way a trickle of blacks went in and out carrying their eating irons, mugs and so on. Because the far side of the main complex was out of our view, we couldn’t tell exactly what everyone was doing, but Joss was obviously right: men were working shifts, for production to continue round the clock.
During the time we were watching, nobody left the compound on foot, heading for the pontoon. There seemed to be no reason for anyone to come in our direction — and that was good. The only event of the morning was the arrival of a four-truck convoy. When we saw a dust-cloud approaching from the south, my first thought was: shit — reinforcements.
‘Watch this,’ I went. ‘Maybe they did hear the elephant rumpus. Joss, you may have to think again.’
But I was wrong. Two of the trucks drove to the cookhouse building and unloaded boxes which were obviously rations. The other two went to the fuel dump and deposited forty-five-gallon drums. The vehicles didn’t stay long. The crews, two or three men from each, disappeared into the accommodation block, presumably for a meal, and within half an hour were on their way back.
‘That’s okay, then,’ I said to Joss. ‘Your plan holds. Your covering group deploys right here, where we are. They’ll have one gympi and the five-oh with them. The mortars can fire from that hollow just behind us and put bombs down beyond the far wire. Keep off the airstrip, though. You’re going to need that. The assault force will cross the river in the dark before dawn and deploy on those outcrops to our left. After the initial fire-fight, they’ll go in from there to clear the buildings. Is that what you’re thinking?’
‘Fine, fine.’ He nodded vigorously.
‘When the shit hits the fan, your guys should be able to drop quite a few of the enemy straight away. But after the first couple of minutes the survivors will go to ground in one of the buildings, probably the main one. They’ll barricade themselves in, for sure. Your lads are going to have to winkle them out.’
‘RPG into the doors,’ said Joss, laconically. ‘Another couple of rockets into the tin walls. That’ll get them jumping.’
‘It might torch the place as well.’
Joss shrugged. ‘If it does, it does. There’s not much to burn inside — looks like it’s all metal.’ He turned to look at me, and said, ‘By the way, I hope you fellows are going to join the party.’
‘Well, we hope to. Phil and me are planning to come in behind assault force. We’ll keep in touch and give you whatever back-up we can. Pavarotti will do the same up here with the cover group. The rest of us will remain on standby with the vehicles. How’s that?’
‘Fine, fine. No problem.’
‘The most important thing is that nobody clocks on to the fact we’re in the area. That means hard routine tonight: no fires or cooking. You need to get an OP on the ferry, too, Joss. We don’t want any little bugger sneaking across in the night to raise the alarm.’
‘We’ll do that.’
‘And you need to decide what to do if somebody comes this way: grab him, knock him off, or what.’
Behind the OP in which we were lying, a gully ran back towards the hill, in dead ground from the mine; this made it easy for us to pull out and hand over to a relief observation team without any risk of being spotted. We were just about to go when Mart surfaced on the radio to say that Fräulein Inge was at last coming round.
‘Great!’ I said. ‘Tell her I’ll be with her shortly.’
‘She’s not that coherent yet,’ he warned. ‘Besides, she’s talking German.’
‘German!’ snorted Phil. ‘What did Whinger fucking tell you!’
‘What’s she saying?’ I asked.
‘Not too sure. We can’t make much sense of it. She’s hurt her ankle, though. She tried to stand up and went over on it. I see now it’s pretty swollen. She must have sprained it in the crash.’
‘Keep her comfortable. We’ll be with you in twenty minutes.’
Walking back up the hill, Phil, Pav and I drew off to a distance on our own.
‘Listen,’ said Pav. ‘That’s not for real, is it? You going in with them?’
‘Well…’ I began.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ he snorted. ‘Let the silveries shoot hell out of each other. Leave them to it.’
‘We don’t want this first contact to go wrong,’ I said. ‘If we lose touch with Joss, he could blow it. Then we’d all be in the shit.’
‘Give him a radio,’ said Pav. ‘Keep in touch that way. Don’t get involved.’
‘We’re not planning on getting involved,’ said Phil, stubbornly. ‘That’s the point. We’re going to keep well back.’
‘Bollocks,’ went Pav. ‘Once you get down on those mounds, you’ll be in the thick of it.’
The argument continued till we were back in camp. Looking back, I realise it was Phil who was driving things. In spite of what he said, he was hell-bent on getting into a good fire-fight. I should have put my foot down and vetoed the idea, but because I was tired I went along with his claim that our best chance of retaining control was to be on the ground with the assault force.
As we came in, Mart drew me aside until we were out of earshot of the trucks.
‘She needs watching,’ he said.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I think she’s bluffing. When she came round, the first thing she asked, was, “Wo bin ich?” Perfectly clear.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘Nothing. I told her not to worry and that she was safe.’
‘In English?’
‘Of course. But after that, she went to gibberish.’
‘She knows we’re Brits, then. Maybe that’s what turned her off. Make certain nobody says anything operational in her hearing. Nothing about where we are or what we’re doing. Okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘How’s her ankle?’
‘Definitely sprained.’
‘At least she can’t do a runner, then.’
‘Oh, no. The injury’s genuine enough. She can only hobble. She must have caught it under the seats in the aircraft and wrenched it when the thing came down.’
‘More important, how’s old Whinge?’
‘He’s got a fever. That’s only to be expecte
d. I cleaned up his burns again as best I could, but there’s always the risk a bit of shit has got in. I just hope the antibiotics’ll keep him under control.’
I made a detour to see my old mate, but found that he’d dozed off on his cot, so I left him alone, lying on his back under a mozzie net with bandages all up his right leg and arm and a pad of gauze strapped over his right temple. Suddenly I realised that I’d never seen him out of action before, and the sight gave me a jolt. If the plane had blown up a few seconds earlier, I’d have lost him.
The woman was sitting propped up in the back of our seven-tonner, sipping at a mug of tea, with Genesis in attendance. Her eyes had a vacant look, and didn’t seem to be focusing properly. I noticed her pupils were an odd colour, part grey, part yellow. The right eye was looking out level, the left one upwards. Now and then she muttered a word that sounded like German, but nothing I could understand, even though my own German’s quite fluent.
‘I’m Geordie,’ I went. ‘What’s your name?’
No answer.
I tried it in German, but again got no reaction. Then, ‘Wo kommen sie her?’
Still nothing.
‘Das Flugzeug — wo kam es her?’
Nothing. But hadn’t there been a flicker in her eyes when I mentioned the aircraft? I glanced across at Genesis and got a faint nod, showing he’d seen it too.
‘What about something to eat? Essen?’
Either she wasn’t hungry, or she was playing dumb.
She — or somebody — had taken off her boots and socks. Her left ankle was swollen and black with bruises.
‘How are you for food, Gen?’
‘I’ve eaten, thanks.’
‘Okay to stay with her a bit longer, then?’
‘Fine.’
‘I’ll be back.’
As always, he was being saintly, and putting in more time with the patient than anyone else. But I didn’t feel guilty as I went back to the others, who were sorting stores under a vehicle cam net. Maybe he was fancying the woman, too. Maybe he enjoyed being with her. As for me, I had a gut feeling that something about her didn’t add up.
Pav and I sat under the net and ate some cold rations, discussing what to do about Whinger. Then Phil came over and started stirring up a debate about the woman.
‘I mean, what are we going to do with her?’ he demanded. ‘We don’t need this shit. If the rebels get hold of her, you know what they’ll do to her. We can’t have her round our fucking necks for the next two weeks.’
‘Relax,’ I told him. ‘We’ll shunt her somehow. And the first chance will probably be tomorrow.’
Our understanding was that when or if Alpha Commando recovered control of the mine, a transport plane or planes would come down from Mulongwe bringing engineers to take over the running of the plant, and troops to form a new garrison. Alpha would then be free to continue its marauding progress southwards.
‘Don’t worry,’ I added. ‘When that aircraft comes in from the capital, she’s going to be the first passenger on the return flight.’
Phil said nothing, but shot me one of his looks. I could see he really didn’t want the responsibility of looking after her, in case she came to a bad end. I knew his instincts tended to be pretty accurate, and when he said that this Krautish blonde was sure to foul up our plans, I didn’t argue. I agreed with him that the sooner we got rid of her, the better.
A bigger worry, that afternoon, was Whinger. In spite of all the care Mart had taken cleaning his burns and covering them with Flammazine, an infection had set in up his arm, which was swollen and angry-looking, and his temperature climbed to 103. He didn’t want any food, and it was an obvious effort for him to talk.
‘Keep drinking, anyway,’ I told him, ‘and don’t worry about the attack. It’s going to be a cinch — and you’re going out on the resupply tomorrow.’
As I came to the cookhouse area for supper, Mabonzo the beanpole tracker approached me shyly holding two little screws of paper in his right hand. We already knew he was the Kamangans’ answer to Mart — an amateur quack who specialised in natural remedies — and now he was offering medicine for our patients.
‘This one good for head,’ he said, handing over the larger packet. ‘Good for lady. And this one for fever.’
‘Thanks.’ I took them carefully and cupped them in my palm. ‘I appreciate your help. How much do they need to take?’
‘All.’ He made a tipping-up gesture with his hand, showing the potions should be downed in one.
‘Okay. We’ll give them a go.’
Cautious investigation showed that each twist of coarse paper contained a small amount of powder. The dose for fever was white, the one for the head, grey. I thought of how the witch doctor’s potion had blazed up that bilious green when I threw it on the fire.
‘Bin them, for Christ’s sake,’ said Pavarotti, once we were out of Jason’s hearing. ‘You know what the head powder’s made of?’
‘What?’
‘It’s the bark of some tree, taken from down by the root, ground up and burnt together with dried dog-shit.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘Joss told me.’
‘Delicious! Talk about kill or cure.’
‘Give her some,’ said Phil savagely. ‘It might grow hair on her chest!’
‘We’ll see how she comes on,’ I told him. ‘I’ll give Mart the stuff to keep for the time being, anyway.’
EIGHT
We were on the river bank at 0400, ninety minutes before first light. The stars were still bright in the sky, and the air was cool. Knowing how hot we were going to get, I’d stripped off my fleece jacket, but for the time being I was shuddering.
From the odd, quick remark that Phil let out on our way down the path, I could tell he was well hepped up. So was I. The argument about getting involved had lasted well into the night, but now it was too late. We’d taken the decision, and here we were, following the assault force down. Although I was apprehensive, I wasn’t really scared. It wasn’t as if Phil and I were going into battle; our role, I kept telling myself, was to stay at the back, out of trouble, and advise Joss if things started to go wrong. We’d done as Pav suggested, and lent him one of the covert radios. Keeping in touch should pose no problem.
The assault force of thirty-two men moved quietly through the dark, yet silence was hardly needed, because round that side of the hill we were well away from the mine, and in any case the hippos were putting on a staccato pre-dawn chorus. With their booming and barking they sounded like a flotilla of ships lost in fog. Without being able to see them, it was hard to tell what kept setting them off. One minute they were quiet, then suddenly they were honking all out.
Our first setback came at the water’s edge. We found the end of the pontoon wire easily enough, but there was no rope to pull the boat across to our side. We knew the huts on the far bank were inhabited, because we’d seen cooking fires there the evening before. We couldn’t shout for a lift, in case the guys over there raised the alarm. The only solution was for some of the Alpha guys to swim the river, take out the guards, and bring the ferry back across.
Joss had already selected three men for the task and dosed them with one of Jason’s preparations that was supposed to ward off crocodiles. Rumour told us the stuff was made from snakes’ bladders. At least it gave the guys full psychological protection. That was obvious as they stripped off and slipped into the water, armed only with their machetes, to carry out a silent attack. Far from showing any sign of nerves, they looked as though they were on a high and positively enjoying their role. At that point the river was about two hundred metres wide. Through binoculars I watched the three black shapes gradually diminish as they moved along the guide-wire into deeper water. After a couple of minutes only their heads and shoulders were showing.
From upstream the hippo chorus continued erratically. It was during one of the quiet periods that a croc put in its hit. I’d been more than half expecting it, but when it happened, th
e speed of the attack took my breath away. One second the surface of the river was smooth and calm; the next, a furrow was streaking diagonally across it from our left, heading downstream fast as a torpedo, with the water boiling at the point and a V-shaped wake spreading out behind. There was hardly a sound — just a splash, and one gasping groan that ended in a gurgle — but suddenly one of the men had gone, dragged bodily under water.
‘Firekin ’ell!’ went Phil, beneath his breath. ‘I bet the other two aren’t half shitting themselves.’
The Kamangan squaddies had no binoculars, so they could only guess what had happened, but they had a pretty good idea. Joss and a couple of his subordinate commanders knew full well that one of their guys had gone under, and they weren’t going to put the wind up the rest. So nobody said anything. I found myself swallowing, from the thought of those jagged teeth slicing through human limbs. Would blood, spreading downstream, alert others and bring them speeding to the scene?
The two survivors forged on. By the time they were into the shadow of the far bank, even binoculars couldn’t pick them out any more.
A tense wait followed. As if wanting moral support, Joss came up beside me.
‘They must be ashore by now,’ I muttered.
‘Guess so. Let’s get the boat over here!’
He sounded lit up by the prospect of action, as if he couldn’t wait to reach the other side. I wasn’t altogether happy: already I was thinking this could go wrong if he got too excited.
Between bursts of hippo talk, we listened intently. Nothing. Then Phil, who had a hand on the wire, said quietly, ‘They’re on their way back. I can feel the vibration.’
Through my glasses I saw the little ferry loom up square and black in mid-river. A couple of minutes later it came silently into the bank. Joss rapidly quizzed the pilots in Nyanja, then translated: ‘They killed two guards with their knives.’
While the swimmers got back into their clothes, the first load went across. Until I saw the pontoon at close quarters, I hadn’t realised how it was powered. Two crewmen sat on boards, one at the front, one at the back, each pulling on a single primitive wooden oar like a thick baseball bat, with a notch cut out near the end. The notch fitted over the wire hawser; when a rower exerted horizontal pressure, the oar locked on to the wire and pulled the craft forward.