by Chris Ryan
‘By no means. The Kamangans cancel all international flights because of the war. There is no way I can get out of Mulongwe. Probably they put me in gaol because I am Namibian. If I go to hospital for my leg, I catch Aids. Quite sure. Mulongwe — no.’
I was thinking, you’ll go where you’re fucking well told. In any case, how did she know what was going on in the Kamangan capital?
Luckily, someone forestalled further argument by shouting for me from our living area. I just said, ‘Sorry, I’ll see you in a minute,’ and walked away.
I couldn’t quite make out what it was that was making me feel so pissed off. The woman’s arrogance didn’t help, but if we were going to get rid of her within twenty-four hours, what did it matter? I also realised I was tired. We’d been up most of the night, and once the adrenalin of the assault had drained away, there was bound to be a sense of let-down. Yet none of this quite accounted for the black feeling that seemed to have settled on me.
I kept trying to analyse the reason. It wasn’t the state of affairs at the mine; for the time being I didn’t much care what was going on there. We’d helped Alpha Commando recapture it, and there our responsibility ended. It didn’t take us to get the machinery going again or to keep an eye on the diamonds — that was down to the Kamangans. I wanted to help old Boisset, but if he preferred to stay put, that was up to him. We needed to get his message through, and maybe we could do that in the evening. The trouble was that for the moment our comms were down. You get these periods when satcom phones don’t work, and there’s nothing you can do but wait for the system to sort itself out.
Whinger was on my mind, as well. But suddenly I realised, or thought I realised, what the real trouble was. The day before, I’d taken my weekly anti-malaria tablet, Lariam. Back in Hereford the MO had issued each of us with two little foil packs of the big white bombers, one to be taken every week for eight weeks on end, without fail. Everyone said that Lariam was dodgy stuff, but that it was the only drug still proving effective in the part of Africa where we’d be working. The mozzies, apparently, had wised up to all the older drugs like Paludrine and Mepacrine. Several of the lads, particularly Chalky, had been quite nervous of the possible side-effects of Lariam, printed on the leaflet that came with each packet. They’d tried to take the piss out of the warnings, but they hadn’t convinced themselves.
Now I remembered Pavarotti putting on a phoney doctor’s voice as he read out, ‘Most common unwanted effects: dizziness, vertigo, loss of balance, headache, sleep problems. Less common unwanted effects: psychiatric reactions which may be disabling and last for several weeks, unusual changes in mood or behaviour, feelings of worry or depression, persecution, crying, aggression—’ At that point there’d been loud cries of ‘For fuck’s sake!’, and he’d laid off. But I know that Andy, for one, had binned his tablets rather than swallow them, and I suspect a couple more of the guys had done the same, just as they’d rejected the anti-nerve gas stuff handed out before the Gulf War in 1991. I’d taken my Lariam regularly, and so far had had no problems.
But now I felt so peculiar that I began to wonder: was the stuff getting to me at last? If it was, there was nothing I could do about it, and maybe it was this thought that relaxed me. In any case, I drifted off to sleep.
I was woken by Phil shaking my shoulder.
‘Rise and shine, mate,’ he went.
I sat up, sweating all over. ‘Christ! What’s the time?’
‘Midday.’
I’d been out for nearly three hours. I should have felt refreshed, but even when I’d scrubbed my face with a wet rag I still had the same thick sensation in my head, and Phil did nothing to clear it by starting in again about the woman.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said as I sat there trying to get myself together. ‘You had a run-in with her as well?’
‘She fucking started it. She shouted at me as I was going past.’
‘What did she want?’
‘She’s found out where we are, more or less.’
‘How?’
‘One of the silveries told her we were close to the river Kameni.’
‘Fuck it!’
‘Yeah, and now she’s screaming about a place called Msisi.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Christ knows.’ Phil scratched his head. ‘She claims it’s on the river. Therefore she reckons we can’t be far from it. She says it’s a hospital, run by Roman Catholic nuns.’
‘A hospital? I thought such things didn’t exist around here.’
‘This is the only one, apparently. Part convent, part Krankenhaus.’
‘So what?’
‘She wants us to take her there,’ said Phil. ‘She reckons the nuns’ll sort out her ankle.’
‘I don’t believe it. What does she think they’ve got? Fucking X-ray machines that work without electricity? Wait till they hear her. That’ll finish her chances. What’s wrong with Mulongwe, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Dunno,’ said Phil. ‘She just won’t hear of it.’
‘This place, Msisi. Is it on the map?’
‘Not this one.’ Phil picked up the bum map and scanned it. ‘Not if it’s on the river.’
‘How does she know about this convent, anyway?’
‘Her party was going to land there on their way across, just to make sure the nuns were okay.’
‘In that case it must be to the west, somewhere downstream. Try the good map.’
While Phil dug it out, I was turning the idea over in my mind: a quick run down to Msisi would be one way to get Braun off our hands. If the nuns had an airstrip, they could get her flown out from there. Also, maybe they could give Whinger better treatment than we could. Certainly the environment of even a primitive hospital would be less dangerous to someone with major skin loss than the shitty conditions in which we were living. The nuns might have better drugs, too.
But then Phil came back, saying, ‘Nothing. I’ve followed the river all the way down.’
‘Is it supposed to be a village, or what?’
‘No, just a group of buildings on some sort of bluff.’
‘No wonder it isn’t marked, then. Wait a minute, though. I tell you who’ll know: the old Belgian. We’ll go back down and ask him.’
‘Fair enough.’ Phil folded the map away. ‘She’s obsessed about the plane, too. Keeps asking questions.’
‘Like?’
‘It ken fly again, yes?’ He imitated the German intonation perfectly. ‘I told her, “Can it hell?”’
‘She already knew it got burnt out. I told her that myself.’
‘She can’t seem to accept that. She was on about her passport and stuff. “Vot heff zey finded?” I told her you’d found bugger all. She started asking me about Whinger. Did he get into the plane? How did he get burnt? Then it was, “Ve can go back zere, yes?” “No way,” I said. “We’d never find the spot.”’
‘It’s as if she wanted to recover something,’ I said.
‘I suggested that. But she said no, she just wanted to see the place where her companions died.’
‘Stick to that line, Phil. Tell her the place is impossible to find. And don’t take it so hard. I know she’s a pain in the arse, but think of it from her point of view. She’s well in the shit, by any reckoning. Friends dead, plane kaput. Stuck in the middle of Africa. You can’t blame her for panicking a bit.’
We were heading down to the river crossing again when a volley of shots rattled out from below.
Phil’s eyes lit up. ‘Maybe it’s a counter-attack.’
‘More like someone taking it out on the hippos,’ said Pav.
He, Phil and I were on our way to check things at the mine. Because we’d stood down the OP on the cliff, we had no eyes on the compound, and I wanted to know how Joss and his guys were getting on with the machinery. We also needed to quiz Boisset about the convent.
When we reached the bank, we were pulled up short. The pontoon was on the far side, and the Alpha guys who’d taken charge
of it were lounging around, having a brew; but when we called to them to come across for us, they just gave us the fingers.
‘Bastards!’ I muttered. ‘What are they playing at?’ Then I yelled, full force, ‘Get that boat over here, in double time!’
At least that made one of them stand up. He started to yell back, and at first we couldn’t understand him. Then we made out, ‘Major Mvula say, no one across.’
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ said Phil, angrily.
‘Turds!’ growled Pav. ‘I’ll wade it. I’ll go over and fucking sort them out.’
‘Nobody’s wading,’ I told him. ‘You didn’t see what happened this morning. The crocs are horrendous. Watch this, though. I’ll soon put the frighteners on them.’
Moving slowly, I unslung my 203 and ostentatiously raised it to my shoulder.
‘Come across now!’ I bellowed. ‘Or I shoot.’
The fellow who’d got up stood looking. The rest didn’t bother to shift. I switched to automatic, aimed a yard to the right of the boat, and put two short bursts into the sandy bank, just at the waterline. The noise and the explosion of spray had the rest of them on their feet, sharpish. They considered doing a runner; we could tell that from the way they looked round behind themselves. But they saw that if they tried to get away, they’d be in our field of fire for at least fifty metres, and they weren’t going to risk it. Seconds later two of them jumped into the ferry, settled at the little club-oars and began hauling themselves over.
‘Listen, Geordie,’ said Pav, urgently. ‘I don’t know what these cunts are up to, but there’s something funny going on. Crossing could be bad news.’
‘You mean, we could get stuck on the wrong side?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Fuck it,’ I said. ‘I’m not taking this kind of shite from Joss. We’re going over.’ Then, as the ferry was approaching, I added quietly, ‘Don’t take it out on these guys. It’s not their fault. They’re only doing what they’ve been told.’
The oarsmen looked scared to hell. Their eyes were rolling all round their heads, anywhere but at me. Plainly they were expecting me to top them at any minute for insubordination, and feed their bodies to the crocs.
‘Take it easy,’ I said quietly as we set off. ‘Let’s just cross.’ I waited till we were halfway over before asking, ‘When did Major Mvula give that order? What time?’
‘Now.’
‘Right now?’
‘Half hour.’
‘Okay.’
On the far side we set off for the hillocks which had been our firing position in the morning — that was the direct approach to the compound — and we headed for the back of the mounds exactly as we had before first light. Until our setback at the ferry, it hadn’t occurred to me that we’d to have creep up on the mine like this for our second visit, but now I thought we’d take a shufti at what was going on before we walked right in.
Just as well. If we’d come into sight at that moment, things could have turned ugly.
‘Fuck me!’ exclaimed Pav under his breath. ‘A kangaroo court.’
Out in the open compound, between the wrecked mesh gates and the main building, a huddle of twelve or so Kamangans were sitting on the ground in a horseshoe. Halfway round the ring, and just outside it, with his back to us, Joss was poised on a metal chair perched atop a packing case, as if on a throne. Opposite the ends of the horseshoe, like the pillar in the middle of a peepsight, a white prisoner was standing bound with rope to an upright wooden stake. Beside him stood another man wielding a heavy stick, and on the ground close by lay a body.
The prisoner was already far gone. His head was lolling forward, chin on chest, and blood was dripping down his chest. As we eased into view Joss screamed some question at him, and when he didn’t answer, the attendant belted him in the ear with his club, rocking his head violently sideways.
‘Jesus!’ breathed Phil. ‘Isn’t that the guy we brought in?’
‘It is.’ I took a deep breath. ‘What do we do?’
My instinct was to take out the whole of the kangaroo court. With three 203s, we could have done it. Joss as well. But I knew we couldn’t start topping the guys we were supposed to be working for.
‘Rounds over their heads!’ Phil urged. ‘Cause a diversion.’ Already he was pushing his rifle into position.
‘No, no!’ went Pav. ‘For fuck’s sake! They’re so fired up, they’d go completely hyper if they thought we were shooting at them. There’s three of us and about fifteen of them, plus more indoors. We’d get massacred.’
We’d arrived just in time for the final act of a violent drama. Joss screamed the same few words again and again in a high tenor voice, almost a falsetto. When the prisoner gave no answer, he stood up and appealed to the assembled court in a burst of impassioned ranting. Without understanding his exact words, we knew what he was asking: guilty or not guilty? In a single roar a dozen voices gave him the answer he was looking for. Instantly he raised his right hand in a kind of Nazi salute and shouted an order. Half his jurors came up on one knee and levelled their AK47s at the prisoner. Another yelp of command, and cra-cra-crash! A ragged volley riddled the victim, who jerked backward, then slumped into his ropes, with blood pouring from multiple wounds in the chest.
I shot a glance at Phil. His eyes were gleaming. ‘Phworrh!’ he went. ‘Didn’t give the bugger much chance, did they? What the hell did he do?’
‘He was enemy,’ I said, ‘fighting for the Afundis. And he was white. That’s enough.’
We lay still as we watched the court break up and disperse. For the time being adrenalin had cleared my head. I felt apprehensive, but calm.
‘Give ’em a minute or two to cool down,’ I said. ‘If they saw us right now, they might carry on firing.’
‘Let’s pull off,’ Pav suggested.
‘Not a chance,’ I told him. ‘We’re going to sort the bastards out.’
We watched as somebody brought up one of the Gaz jeeps, cut down the body, slung it aboard and loaded up the one already on the ground. The vehicle drove off round the back of the big building, and Joss stalked away into it, throwing strange, dismissive gestures with his right hand. There seemed to be something peculiar about his gait. He was moving stiff-legged, as though on stilts. A couple of squaddies carried away the chair and box that had acted as the seat of judgement.
We gave it five minutes, sweating literally and metaphorically. The afternoon sun beat down on us, and we knew our position was dodgy to a degree. It looked as though Joss was high on something. Power? Drugs? The mercenaries’ hooch? We could have withdrawn and returned later, but that would have entailed loss of face, because sooner or later he’d hear from the boatmen that we’d come across and had been hanging about, too scared to go on. There was only one thing to do: confront him.
We expected to be challenged at the gate, and we were. Two sentries put on a hostile front and barred our way, saying, ‘No visitors to the mine.’ But by then I was quite angry, and the message soon got through. One of them shouted across to the central building, and presently a man came out to wave us across.
‘Chill out,’ I told the others as we went forward. ‘Play it cool.’
We found Joss sitting at a trestle table just inside the big doors, where he seemed to have set up a temporary office. He’d taken off his beret and laid it on one side of the table as he checked names on lists with a corporal standing at his elbow. He looked hot and harassed, and our arrival did nothing to improve his temper.
No cheerful ‘Join the party!’ this time. Instead, he demanded, ‘What do you people want?’
‘Courtesy call,’ I said, easily. ‘We came down to see if you needed any help.’
‘If I want help, I’ll tell you.’
‘Okay, okay.’ Inwardly, I was boiling. Who did this arsehole think he was? Who did he think had planned the attack on the mine in the first place and got his team through it with so few casualties? But all I said was, ‘Sure, but I’d like a word w
ith the old Belgian.’
‘What about?’
‘Private business.’
‘There’s no private business here.’
‘All right, then. I want to ask him about the mission hospital at Msisi.’
‘Msisi? Where’s that?’
‘That’s what I want to find out. Somewhere down river. Whinger’s burns need proper treatment.’
‘Well, you can talk to the man in front of me.’
‘Listen, Joss.’ I kept my voice low, staring into his bloodshot eyes. ‘Watch yourself. I don’t know what’s got into you, but there are one or two things you need to remember. The first is, your president’s getting a full report on this campaign.’
He shot me a glance, but said nothing.
‘We saw you execute those prisoners just now.’
He jerked in his seat, and said angrily, ‘You had no business to be watching.’
‘We didn’t mean to. We stumbled on it. But those shootings might not be entirely to your credit.’
‘The men had been stealing diamonds,’ he said defensively. ‘They were caught with their pockets full of them.’
I felt my scalp prickle, and I said a silent prayer of thanks that I’d fought off the temptation to load up myself.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘The way you maintain discipline’s your business. But I’m also reporting on your attitude in general.’
‘You take it easy!’ He pulled himself upright and swayed about, banging a fist down on the table. ‘Don’t try threatening me. You went into the strongroom. I’ll have you searched as well.’
Still I kept my cool. ‘Search away if you want,’ I said evenly. ‘But I can tell you, there’s no point. I didn’t nick anything, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have it on me now. I’d have hidden it long ago.’
Joss slumped back into his seat. The man was obviously high on something, but the strange thing was I couldn’t smell any alcohol.
I decided to up the voltage a bit, and demanded, ‘Look. What the hell’s the matter with you? Has one of our guys pissed you off or something? What’s got into you? Calm down a bit.’
I saw his broad nostrils flaring with anger. ‘You’re telling a senior officer how to carry on!’ he shouted. ‘You’ve no business to give orders!’