by Chris Ryan
‘Cheers, anyway,’ I said, raising the cup that Whinger had given me. ‘Sod the rebels.’
‘Agreed!’ He took a mouthful, rolled his eyes again, grimaced, swallowed, smacked his lips, and said, ‘Hey! This is the real McCoy!’ Then he cleared his throat and went on: ‘You want to know why you’re here? I’ll tell you. Uranium. Don’t pass it on, but that’s the secret.’
‘Yeah?’ I replied, deliberately casual. ‘I know you’ve got uranium mines, but what about them?’
‘I’ve had overtures,’ he said darkly. ‘People wanting to buy the stuff. People your government doesn’t approve of.’
‘Such as?’
‘You can guess. That crazy fellow in Libya, for one. Another madman in Baghdad. Both have made serious offers.’
‘I bet. But you aren’t playing ball?’
‘Of course not. How could I? If we moved an inch in that direction, we’d be hit by international sanctions. The UK, US – everybody would clamp down on us.’
‘But I thought the uranium mines were in the north.’ I pointed over my shoulder.
‘That’s right.’
‘So what’s the worry?’
‘The Afundis. They’re the worry. And in particular, Muende. Why don’t you use your special skills to go and, say, take him out?’
‘Who’s Muende?’
‘Gus Muende, the Afundi leader. He should damn well know better. But he’s another lunatic. He’s a friend of Gadaffi. I ask you! Worse than him, even. Last year he went to Tripoli and got practically a royal welcome.’
Bakunda was working himself up, talking louder and louder. He downed the rest of his rum in one swallow and waved the empty cup around.
‘Treacherous bastard!’ he cried.
‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘You tell me! His mother was a Scottish voluntary worker in Kamanga in the sixties. She abandoned him when he was only five, and I helped him. I got him into the military academy at Mulongwe, then I got him sent to America. I got him his place at West Point. I got him his military education. Without me, he’d be nothing. This is his way of saying thank you.’
Whinger circled round to Bakunda’s elbow and skilfully refilled his cup. The President took a big swig, and shouted, ‘Get him! Make the sun shine through him! That’s what you chaps need to do. That’s what you’re here for.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Our brief is to train Alpha Commando, not to go assassinating people.’
‘That’s what HMG say. But what they’d like is for you to put Muende underground. Their fear is the same as mine: that he’ll take over the whole of Kamanga. If that happens, God help us. God help you. Gadaffi and Saddam Hussein will get all the uranium they ask for. What about that, hey? How’s that for a scenario?’
It was hardly for me to tell the President to take it easy, but that was what I felt like doing. The veins in his neck were bulging; beads of sweat were standing out on his forehead, even though the night air was cool. A change of subject seemed in order.
‘These guys we’re training,’ I said, gesturing round about. ‘I gather they’re Kaswiris. Different from the Afundis, obviously.’
‘Different! By George! Different language, different customs, different everything. We hate the Afundis’ guts.’
‘We – you – you’re a Kaswiri?’
‘Of course. What else?’ He drew himself upright on his ammunition box and thrust out his chest. ‘We Kaswiris know how to behave.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, Mr President, but discipline isn’t the force’s strongest point yet.’
‘Are you criticising Alpha Commando?’
‘Not at all.’ I held up a hand in token appeasement. ‘Just pointing out the need for good control. You saw how high some of them were firing – all that tracer into the stratosphere.’
‘Okay, okay,’ he went. Then he leaned his grizzled head closer to me, and said confidentially, ‘As you know, some of these chaps are not long down from the trees. So of course they need training. That’s why you’re here!’
‘What about Bididis?’ I asked. ‘Where do they come in?’
‘Bididis?’ He seemed surprised. ‘They’re okay. They don’t cause trouble. Why?’
‘There’s one at least in the commando, and he seems a useful fellow.’
‘Well, that’s a turn-up.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we have jokes about the Bididis. Like you and the Irish. They’re the thick men of Africa – not a brain in their heads.’
‘How about this Muende?’
‘Muende!’ The President gave a snort. ‘He’s the Afundi of Afundis, the worst. The fundamental orifice of the Afundis. Ha ha!’
‘What age is he?’
‘Thirty? Thirty-two? I don’t know. What does it matter?’ He turned and scowled at me, his jokiness veering towards irritation. ‘Why don’t you do me a favour: get down there and put some bullets through him?’
It wasn’t the moment for a serious argument about the extent of our commitment. Bakunda was too far gone for that. So I just said casually, ‘Well, of course we’ll do anything we can to help.’
‘Good man!’ Bakunda leant over to slap me on the shoulder, missed because his arm was so short, and nearly swung himself off his perch. ‘In the morning, we’ll settle details. But in any case you’ll go as far as Gutu.’
It was more a statement than a question.
‘The mine there,’ I said, stalling. ‘Is it that important to you?’
‘Of course! Gutu means diamonds. Muende’s smuggling the diamonds out over the border, into South Africa, Namibia, everywhere. He’s getting so much revenue that his strength is increasing all the time. He’s buying all the weapons he wants. Look here! Only yesterday we heard that he’s brought in foreign mercenaries to fight for him.’
‘Mercenaries?’ said Whinger, sharply. ‘Where from?’
‘How do I know?’ Bakunda waved his cup about, slopping rum. ‘Somebody said America.’
‘Americans!’ I went. ‘Jesus. If we don’t watch out, we’ll find ourselves fighting former SEALs.’
‘Seals?’ barked Bakunda. ‘What are they? Fish, are they not? How can you be fighting fish?’
‘US special forces – sea, army and land. Like the SAS. When American guys finish their service, they often take mercenary jobs.’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Bakunda. ‘I was only trying to be funny.’
The conversation was interrupted by the sound of an engine: the truck coming back in.
‘Excuse me a minute,’ I said. ‘I’ll just check everyone’s okay.’
I got up and moved off quickly, afraid that Bakunda would try to come with me. Luckily the troops were debussing some distance off, out of earshot, and I picked out the tall, bulky figure of Pavarotti. As soon as he’d squared things away with Joss, I drew him aside.
‘Everything all right?’
‘One silvery down.’
‘I thought so. What happened?’
‘This guy opened up on the search party as it went forward. Apparently he’d been feuding with one of the lads in it – tried to take him out as he ran towards the targets.’
‘But he missed.’
‘Yeah. His mates didn’t miss him, though. One of them snatched his AK47 off him, and another whacked him with a panga. One swing, head off, clunk.’
‘Christ! What did the rest of them do?’
‘Nothing. They left him where he dropped. I told them to bring the body in, but Manny, the group commander, just said, “Food for hyenas. Let’s go.”’
‘These people!’ I said. ‘Like I was saying the other night: Kaswiris, Afundis – one lot are as bad as the other.’
‘Yeah,’ went Pav. ‘They need watching. It wouldn’t take much to make some of them turn on us. They got really pissed off with us for forcing them to lie out all day.’
‘Nobody threatened you?’ I said.
‘No, but they came pretty close. I just think everyone ought to be
aware they’re pretty volatile. Maybe we’d better slack off a bit.’
‘Screw that, Pav. We’re here to train the bastards, not entertain them.’
I looked back to the fire and went on. ‘Listen. We’ve been chatting up Bakunda. We’ve got him well pissed already. He’s spouted quite a bit. Get some food down your neck and join us. But for fuck’s sake don’t mention this business. I don’t think he realised what happened – or at least, if he did, he doesn’t want to know.’
Whatever the President suspected, no further mention was made of the incident that evening. We continued to hammer the rum, and after a while Joss joined the party, along with Pavarotti, Andy and Genesis. I hadn’t seen Joss drinking before, and now he began to worry me a bit. It may have been that alcohol started to bring out his true character, or it may have been that he was trying to impress the President, or both. In any case, he started saying that the time when Kamanga needed the services of the West was coming to an end.
‘The whole of Africa’s independent now,’ he shouted. ‘We’re in charge of our own destiny.’
‘But you still need blokes like us to help with your military training,’ Phil told him.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ said Joss, louder than he need have. ‘This could be the last assignment the SAS gets in Kamanga.’
‘Now then,’ said Bakunda, and he quickly followed up with some remark in his own language. Joss looked abashed and took a big gulp from his mug.
I shot a glance at Whinger and saw he was thinking what I was thinking. Time to change the subject.
I turned to Bakunda, and asked, ‘Ever bought a ticket in our national lottery?’
‘No!’ he shouted merrily. ‘How much can I win?’
‘Millions,’ I told him. ‘Up to ten million, anyway.’
‘Pounds or kwatchas?’
‘Pounds, of course.’
Luckily, the conversation became totally frivolous. We began talking about what we’d do, back home, if we won the main prize. Whinger said he’d buy a pub, Pavarotti that he’d hire Concorde for a private trip round the world and have it stop off in Polynesia while he put in a couple of weeks’ shagging. Genesis that he’d buy an island off the Welsh coast and set up a foundation for religious instruction. Chalky fancied buying a luxury yacht and cruising in the West Indies, and Danny reckoned he’d set himself up in business as an international arms dealer.
‘And what about you, Geordie?’ burped Bakunda. ‘What would you do?’
‘I’d hire one really good guy to go and take out Saddam, and another to sort Gadaffi.’
‘Good!’ Bakunda roared. ‘I like it!’
‘General,’ said Phil, always a bit of a joker, ‘what does choka mean?’
‘Choka!’ Bakunda raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s quite a rude word. Who said that?’
‘I dunno,’ said Phil innocently. ‘I heard it somewhere.’
‘Well, it means “piss off’, to put it politely.’
‘Thanks,’ went Phil, who’d known that all along. ‘It might be useful, sometimes. And General, can I ask why you’re called Rhino?’
‘Hey!’ Bakunda stuck out a mock-accusing finger. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘Since we’re all friends, I’ll tell you. Partly it’s this.’ He held out his hands to indicate the width of his torso. ‘Partly it’s because when I was at Sandhurst, I took up rugby. I can see you smiling, but I did. I thought it was wonderful, how all these white wogs were murdering one another on the field. I reckoned that if I joined in I could maybe smash one or two of them. Nothing personal, you understand. Anyway, once I ran into someone – poom!’ He smacked one fist into his other open palm to illustrate the impact. ‘The opposing centre three-quarter. He went straight up in the air, and was laid out cold. When he came round, he said, “Christ! That was like being charged by a bloody rhino!”’
At around 2300 I decided I’d had enough. It was clear no serious discussion would take place until we held a wash-up on our own in the morning. I knew the President’s aides had sorted out somewhere for him to sleep, so I had no compunction about making my excuses. Then, just as I was leaving the fire, a thought struck me.
‘If you come from this village, General,’ I said, ‘you must know the witch doctor.’
‘The sin’ganga? Old Chilukole? Of course. What about him?’
It seemed too late to start on the saga of the dead boy, so I just asked, ‘What d’you think of his spells?’
‘Why, has he witched somebody?’
‘Not that I know of, but I wondered if he can foretell the future. Doesn’t he do something with bones?’
The President’s manner changed. It was as if my question had let the wind out of him. His boisterous good humour vanished, and all at once he looked serious, even alarmed. ‘Did he make a prophecy, some forecast?’
‘No, no.’ Suddenly feeling bad vibrations, I decided to turn the enquiry into a joke. ‘I just thought he might tell us how to win the lottery.’
‘Steer clear of him,’ said Bakunda heavily. ‘You never know what trouble that old devil might stir up.’
I said nothing else, but secretly felt glad that I’d binned the dose formulated to ward off evil. I’d sent the witch doctor five dollars, as agreed, but next morning, instead of taking the medicine, I threw it into the fire, where it went off with a miniature explosion and a spurt of bright green flame.
FIVE
As our little convoy rolled south, Whinger and I had plenty of time to discuss the situation. The morning after the ambush, Bakunda had been up at dawn, none the worse for having put away half a bottle of rum on top of ten or fifteen beers. Far from sporting a hangover, he’d come out, cocked a leg, executed a couple of rhino-power farts, and gone off chatting and laughing with his officers, handing out zikomos and compliments all round.
The fact that one of the Kamangans had lost his head didn’t seem to worry him in the least. He knew what had happened, all right; I had overheard him talking to Joss about the incident. But when I cornered Joss about it after breakfast, and suggested we should recover the body, the answer was, ‘Forget it, Geordie. All our guys knew Chidombo had been witched by a fiti. Sooner or later he was going to die. Now he’s dead, no one would touch his body even if we went looking for it. They think the spell might jump into them. Anyway, it’s probably gone already.’
‘Eaten by animals, you mean?’
Instead of answering straight, Joss gave me a peculiar look, half evasive, half angry. Then, after a pause, he said, ‘Maybe the devil’s got it.’
I wasn’t sure what he meant. There was something odd about his manner. He didn’t sound quite himself. But I sensed there was no point in arguing. The strange thing was that when Pavarotti had gone out with a recovery party to bring back the targets, he’d found no trace of a body. He, if anyone, knew exactly where the scuffle had taken place, and while the Kamangans had collected the figure-eights, he’d gone straight to the spot. As he said, if hyenas had eaten Chidombo, he’d have found traces of blood and chips of crunched-up bone – probably the head, too, or at least the remains of it. In the event, there was nothing – not even any flies around the place. It was as if something had lifted the body whole and whisked it clean away.
As Pav had reported this back, I felt the hair on my neck creep. We’d been getting too many stories about the devil using owls and hyenas for transport, too much stuff about witching.
‘Don’t mention it at the wash-up,’ I had warned Pav. ‘If one of the Africans starts in about it, okay, but otherwise, let it go. I reckon they’ll bin the whole episode and pretend it never happened.’
My hunch had soon proved right. At the debrief, which Bakunda attended, the incident was simply passed over. Joss bollocked men for other mistakes – firing at the hyena, the ND while I was away, somebody walking off his position to have a dump – but never mentioned what had been by far the worst incident of all. It, and poor old Chidombo,
were wiped from the record.
‘I don’t like it,’ I said to Whinger as we jolted along the sandy track. ‘If they act like that during an exercise, what are they going to be like when they get into a real, live battle?’
‘Fucking awful,’ he replied, and he pin-pointed my own worry by adding, ‘They’re all right for a bit, but then the buggers go bananas. They seem to lose their reason.’
When I had spoken to Hereford over the satcom the previous evening, I’d been deliberately vague about our plans for the next few days. I certainly didn’t tell them that I’d more or less promised the President we’d go as far as Gutu. But that, for better or worse, was what I’d done. I’d developed quite a liking for Rhino. His visit had ended happily and he’d gone off in his Puma highly chuffed, fancying Alpha Commando to win the civil war in a couple of weeks. In his estimation, the sun shone out of the backside of any member of the SAS.
‘Zikomo! Zikomo!’ he had called, waving graciously as he boarded his chopper. Chalky had given him a few zikomos in return, claiming that the word meant ‘goodbye’ as well as ‘thanks’.
So here we were, driving towards the edge of the disputed zone, with the mine at Gutu our next major objective. All we knew about it was that its buildings stood on a bluff on the south bank of the Kameni river, and that diamonds were being dredged by suction from alluvial deposits in the bed of the stream. We had no information about the strength of the garrison, or about the area immediately surrounding the mine, but from the map the Kameni looked a major waterway.
Our own guys were riding in the two pinkies we’d flown out with us – long wheel-base Land Rovers, with windscreens folded down, all mirrors and lights hessianed-up, cam nets bunched and tied along the overhead roll-bars, and poles for the nets strapped along the sides. Everything had been stripped down in case we had to bomb-burst out of the vehicles. One pinkie had a .50 heavy machine gun mounted on the back, and one a Milan rocket-launcher post.
Our bulky kit was loaded into a seven-ton, four-wheel-drive Zyl lorry, sometimes driven by a local, sometimes by one of us. It was an ugly great lump of a truck, with a square-fronted radiator, a fore-mounted winch and an extra heavy angle-girder welded across the front, low down, to act as a bullbar. In spite of power steering, it was a brute to drive, but it was tough and reliable and had plenty of space. The cab was hot as hell, because it was all metal, with a turret opening in the roof on the passenger side. The back had steel sides about three feet high, and a canvas roof, rolled up on its frame to make a sun-shade. Most of Alpha Commando was travelling in similar vehicles, although they also had four Gaz jeeps of Russian origin.