by Chris Ryan
‘How is it?’
At first he didn’t make any sense. He was, like, ‘Shit!’ and ‘Fucking hell!’ But while he was sounding off I got a look at him and saw he had burns up his right forearm and the right side of his face. The hair on his arm had gone, and the skin looked red and raw. There were scorch-marks all down the right leg of his DPMs. In several places flames had burned through the material, and I could see blackened skin underneath.
As the shock wore off, he became more rational and started to laugh in reaction. ‘Fuck me!’ he went. ‘That was a near one.’
Looking closely at him, I saw that his right eyelashes and eyebrow had been singed off. Blisters were already forming round his temple and on top of his head. I pulled a water-bottle out of my belt kit and poured the contents over him, in the hope that it would keep the swelling down.
‘How’s your vision?’ I asked.
‘Seems okay.’
‘Close your left eye. Look at me. What am I doing?’
‘Blinking,’ said Whinger. ‘You’ve lost most of your front hair as well.’
I reached up and felt short, frizzy ends.
‘Shit!’ I went. ‘But at least your eyes are okay. I’m calling Mart up right away.’
It was Pavarotti who came on the radio. ‘You lot all right?’
‘More or less. See the fire?’
‘We sure can. Any survivors?’
‘One woman, unconscious. Listen. Whinger’s got some bad burns, face, arm and leg. We need Mart up to where we’ve left our pinkie. Quick as he can. He’ll be able to follow our wheel marks. Okay? We’re on our way down. RV there soonest.’
For the first time I took a proper look at our survivor. She was dressed much the same as the men, in bush kit, but with a safari-style tunic and long trousers. As she lay on the ground, she stirred slightly but showed no other sign of coming round.
‘She’s taken a whack on the head.’ Whinger pointed at a livid bruise on her right temple.
I knelt beside her, looking her up and down. With finger and thumb I opened her eyelids on the right side. Her eyeball showed no reaction. Cautiously, I moved her head, feeling with my fingers on the back of her neck. Had she taken a bang on the spinal cord as well? All I could think of was the little Kamangan boy who’d been hit on the head by the truck, and how he died in his mother’s arms. Another head injury. Two more deaths. Two more white deaths. Jesus, I thought. This makes it three to the witch doctor. If this woman freaks out, it’ll be four.
Whinger startled me by saying, ‘What do we do, give her a bullet?’
‘Hell, no!’ I stared at him. ‘We can’t do that.’
‘Why not? It might be best for her, as well as for us. She may die anyway.’
‘She may. But also she may not. Until she snuffs it, she’s coming with us.’
‘Fancy her, do you?’
‘Piss off, mate. She’s better looking than you, anyway.’
Yet as I looked at her, I saw she wasn’t that rough – jaw a bit heavy, perhaps, but a handsome, rather Teutonic face. Fine, straight fair hair cut short round the temples and left long on the back of her neck. She had elegant hands, too, no rings, fingernails short but in good nick. I guessed she was about thirty. I ran my hands over her arms and legs, checking for breaks, but couldn’t detect any damage.
Behind us the aircraft was still burning. Cracking, clicking noises kept breaking out, but already the flames were dying down. The blaze had been so fierce that the skin on the fuselage and wings had melted or burned away, leaving the framework twisted, scorched and bare.
‘That’s the finish of any maps or documents they were carrying,’ I said. ‘Their kit’s gone, too. Until our lady comes round, we won’t know where they were from.’
‘They probably put out a mayday call. Somebody may come looking.’
‘I doubt it. Not out here. We’re too far from anywhere.’
I saw Whinger starting to grimace again as the pain got to him, so I said, ‘Come on, let’s go.’
Grabbing a wrist and an ankle, I swung the woman on to my shoulder in a fireman’s lift and started down the hill. With a last look back I noticed how the stony outcrops round the crash site had contained the fire and confined it to a small area. In that broken ground, with dark rocks everywhere, and the relics of bush fires scattered across the landscape, it would be difficult to detect the remains from the air. Only if a spotter plane or helicopter passed dead overhead would the crew have a hope of seeing it – a million-to-one chance in such a vast expanse.
Later that evening I passed Hereford such details as we’d been able to muster.
‘The plane was a Beechcraft twin turbo-prop,’ I told Pete Dickson over the satcom link. ‘Registration G-SAF. That’s all I know about it.’
‘We’ll check it out. What about the personnel?’
‘We could only ID one of the guys. The other didn’t have any documents on him.’
‘Okay. So who’s the one we have?’
‘Surname, Pretorius. Christian names, Hermann Adolf. Born, Bloemfontein, 3 November 1954. Citizen of the Republic of South Africa.’ The passport had been issued in Johannesburg.
When I’d given the date and number, Pete asked, ‘And the woman?’
‘Surname, Braun. Christian name, Ingeborg. Citizen of Namibia. Born Windhoek, 30 June 1969.’
‘Is that all we know about her?’
‘No, there was a business card in her passport. She’s a rep for a firm called SWAG – South West African Game. Seems to be some kind of big-game management service. There’s an address in Windhoek, too.’
‘Okay, let’s have it.’
I read it out, and said, ‘Her clothes are a mixture of South African and German. The tunic’s from David Lyndon Classics, the upmarket outfitter in Parktown, Joburg. Slacks from Powder Keg, in Melville. Her boots are Meindl – German.’
‘Got that. What was the location of the crash?’
‘Wait one.’ I knew he’d want that, and to cover ourselves – to make it look as though we were less far south – I’d invented some coordinates that put the site about a hundred kilometres north of its real position. I persuaded myself it wouldn’t make much difference: for the Beechcraft, it would have been only twenty minutes’ flying time. But if the Kremlin realised how far we’d advanced already, they might start pissing about and ordering us back.
I gave the duff gen, and added, ‘When we first saw the plane, it was coming from the east.’
‘Okay. What state’s the woman in?’
‘Still unconscious, but stable. Mart reckons she’ll make it.’
‘Can’t you find a hospital to put her into?’
‘Hospital! You’re fucking joking. There’s no hospital within a million miles. There’s no town, no road, no phone, no power, no water – nothing.’
‘What are your plans for her, then?’
‘Good question. We’ll see what she says when she comes round. If we find out where she took off from, we may be able to call in another plane to exfil her.’
‘How’s Whinger?’
‘Stable also. Mart’s cleaned him up as best he can and given him pain-killers. It looks pretty bad, but it could have been worse.’
I was afraid Pete was going to ask why we didn’t get the woman out by calling in the Kam-Ex Cessna that had lifted Andy’s body. The answer was that I knew we were too far from Mulongwe, but I didn’t want to admit it. Luckily he said nothing on those lines, and I ended the call by asking him to put over any information Hereford could dig out.
The plane crash and its aftermath had delayed us by several hours, and we didn’t make it to the ridge of the hills by nightfall. Not knowing how the land lay on the other side, I didn’t want to go over in the dark, so as dusk was falling our force deployed defensively in a level area just short of the crest.
Whinger was on his feet, but pretty miserable. After Mart had treated him he seemed in reasonable shape, but obviously he was getting a lot of pain, and there�
��d been an uncomfortable flare-up when Genesis had suggested going back up to bury the bodies and say a prayer.
‘Fuck the bodies!’ Whinger had shouted. ‘I’ve just been fried, and if you come up with any more religious shit, I’m going to fucking drop you.’
The atmosphere was tense all round. I took Gen aside and said, ‘Look, ease off the bible-bashing. You’re starting to piss the guys off in a big way.’
‘Sorry,’ he went, innocently. ‘I didn’t realise I was annoying anyone.’
For the woman, we’d cleared space in the back of our mother wagon and put her in there in an American cot, in case we had to move out in a hurry. Mart had fixed her an IV drip, to keep up the level of her body fluids, and we arranged a rota of guys to monitor her, checking her eyes, making sure her pulse and breathing were okay. We all had the same instinct: to get her out, back to safety, as soon as possible, before her condition started to deteriorate. None of us wanted to be burdened with her. Whinger, who hated Germans on principle, nearly shat himself with rage when he realised that it was a Kraut he’d dragged from the wreckage.
‘She’s not a Kraut,’ I told him. ‘She’s a Namibian.’
‘Bollocks,’ he went. ‘All white Namibians are Krauts. How could she be anything else, with a name like that?’
He knew perfectly well that she was called Ingeborg – Inge for short, almost certainly – but because her surname was Braun, he started straight in, referring to her as Eva, like Hitler’s girlfriend, Eva Braun.
‘Firekin’ roll on!’ he cried, his temper not improved by the stinging of his burns. ‘What do we want with her? She’ll bring us nothing but bad luck. Better do what I suggested in the first place: put a bullet through her and leave her for the hyenas.’
‘No way,’ I told him. ‘I want to have a little chat with her and find out what she was up to. I’ve been thinking about the scene of the crash. When we found the two guys lying dead, there wasn’t a mark on their clothes. Those shirts and shorts were clean as clean. Whatever else that party was doing, it hadn’t been on safari.’
SEVEN
We went over the hill at first light, and by 0700 we were established in an excellent OP, looking down through binoculars on the mine from a distance of seven or eight hundred metres. After so much dry, sandy terrain, our first sight of the river valley was quite something. Away to our left, upstream, the Kameni was wide and shining, flowing gently towards us between borders of brilliant green.
‘Phragmites,’ said Joss.
‘What’s that?’
‘The reeds by the water. Spiky leaves. They can be ten feet tall.’
The surface of the river was dotted with what looked like dozens of little sandbanks, and it was only when some of them moved that we realised they were hippos, basking in shallow water. Beyond them, on the far shore, stood a small settlement: a square enclosure fenced with dried reeds, with the conical roofs of four grass huts showing above the walls.
A short way downstream, and close in under us, the land was higher. On our side, the base of the hills reached out to the river bank, and on the far bank rocky, scrub-covered outcrops rose from the water’s edge, framing a shallow gorge, through which the stream tumbled in rapids. The mine was on the far bank at the bottom of that run, where the land levelled out again and the river reverted to a smooth flow. The sun, coming in low from our left, lit up ugly, corrugated-iron buildings clustered on flat ground above the water, with a long, covered gantry reaching out over the centre of the channel and down to river level. A rectangular central block with a pitched roof had been extended piecemeal by having sections of different shapes and sizes bolted on to it. The whole structure looked as though it had expanded bit by bit. Rising above it was a slender tower, square in section, topped by an open gallery under a flat roof. From the top of the roof rose a high, lattice-work radio mast.
Beyond that central assembly lay a compound surrounded by a security fence. Another large building, with two storeys of windows, stood apart, to the right as we looked – the accommodation, perhaps. There was also a dump of red forty-five-gallon fuel drums stacked inside a retaining wall built with concrete blocks. Further off, a low, white-washed bungalow range ran along inside the far perimeter.
Outside the fence a dirt airstrip stretched away into the bush downstream, to the south-east. The only road we could see left the compound in the opposite direction and followed the far bank of the river upstream before swinging off to the south. Transport didn’t seem to be the outfit’s strong suit: we could make out two old Gaz-type jeeps, a bulldozer and a couple of dump-trucks, and that was all. I guessed that because the place was so remote, most personnel and supplies came in by air.
The country beyond the compound was rockier than the terrain we’d come through: everywhere stony outcrops poked up out of the scrub and tall grass. There were also numerous black, burnt-out patches, and the vast, mottled plain faded off to a hazy horizon. The mine itself was particularly graceless: all vegetation had been scraped away to create a level, dusty, stony platform, without a single tree to soften its harsh outlines.
Looking down on the airstrip, I had a sudden idea.
‘Eh,’ I went. ‘I don’t suppose the Beechcraft came from here.’
‘It was going in the opposite direction,’ said Phil. ‘When we first saw it, it was flying westwards, towards here.’
‘True. In that case, was it heading for the mine?’
‘Can’t have been,’ said Pav. ‘I don’t reckon the pilot knew this place existed. He was on the wrong side of the hills. If he had known about it, he’d have made straight for the strip when his engines started to fail.’
‘True again. Bin that one, then. We’ll have to wait on Inge to find out.’
Continuous noise rose from the plant. Even from a range of half a mile, the drumming of heavy machinery reached us loudly, augmented every now and then by violent outbursts of clattering, which sounded like rocks coming up the suction pipe from the river bed. I imagined a torrent of water, sand, rock and gravel pouring out on to a moving belt and being transferred automatically to a series of sieves or screens. From what I’d heard of the process, the whole lot got progressively washed and refined until diamonds were left glittering among the residue. From earlier briefings we knew that there was a secure area somewhere in the heart of the mine, where the diamonds were sorted and stored; now I made a mental note to take a supply of det cord and PE in my Bergen, in case we needed to blast our way in.
‘Interesting,’ I said, as we lay and watched. ‘This whole flank’s naturally protected by the river. No need for any defence on this side.’
‘Yeah,’ went Phil. ‘But we can take some of the bastards out from this side.’ He stuck an arm forward, and added, ‘If we get guys on to that last little ridge down there below us, they can fire over the water and put rounds down anywhere in the compound, no bother. From that point the range can’t be more than three hundred metres.’
‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘But the assault force is going to have to cross the river. How deep d’you think it is?’
‘Up where the hippos are, not deep at all,’ said Joss. ‘You know they can’t swim?’ Seeing my look of surprise, he gave his high-pitched giggle. ‘That’s right – they just tip-toe along the bottom.’
‘We could wade it, then,’ I suggested.
‘Never!’ Joss was emphatic. ‘Crocs. The water’s full of them. When the sun gets higher, they’ll come out on the sandbanks. You’ll see.’
‘Maybe we could drive them off with a few grenades.’
‘Then you’d compromise us – tell everyone we’re here to join the party.’
‘Show the crocs your arse, Pav,’ went Phil. ‘That’ll put the frighteners on them.’
‘Zikomo, mate.’
Joss was looking at Pav in consternation.
‘He’s got eyes tattoed on his backside,’ I explained. ‘One either cheek.’
‘Oh, wah!’ Joss grinned. Then his face turned serious,
and he said, ‘You know, my father was taken by a croc.’
‘Never,’ I went.
‘He was.’
‘How come?’
‘He was a ranger in the park. Some old white settler guy used to hang about the river bank and go for a swim. One day he disappeared – all they found was his shoes. My father, he had to organise a hunt, and somehow he got snatched too. Eventually they shot the killer. It was a monster, twenty-two feet long. And when they cut it open, what d’you think they discovered in its stomach? Two hands, one white and one black.’
‘Phworrh!’ went Phil. ‘How old were you then?’
‘Five or six. If they hadn’t got that croc, he might still be alive today. You know they can live to be a hundred? They go on growing all their lives.’
For a couple of minutes he went on chatting as he swept his glasses back and forth over the mine. He reckoned that after a croc hit you’d be temporarily anaesthetised by shock; he didn’t think you’d feel anything when the teeth crunched through your bones. I knew that was true of being hit by a high-velocity round, but a croc bite? I wasn’t so sure.
‘Leave the crossing for a moment,’ I said. ‘We’ll get over somehow. What then?’
‘Wait a minute.’ Joss was eyeballing the straw hut settlement upstream. ‘You know what that is? A pontoon station. You can see the boat in the water, down by the bank.’
‘Oh aye,’ I said. ‘Great!’ I could just make out a flat-bottomed wooden craft, like a wide punt.
‘There must be a wire across the stream,’ said Joss. ‘Two men pull the boat across, back and forth, along the cable.’
‘All right, then, we cross on the pontoon.’
‘Got to get the fucker across to this side first,’ said Phil.
‘There’ll be a rope that you can pull,’ Joss told him. ‘No problem.’
‘We’re across, then,’ said Pav. ‘Several trips, by the look of it. How many are you taking in the assault group, Joss?’
‘Thirty? Could be more. Depends what we see in the next hour or two.’