by Chris Ryan
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, the 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.
The system was slow but effective, and soundless. With twelve men on board, the pontoon was almost awash, but I timed each crossing at only four minutes. The little craft was over and back inside nine minutes. Phil and I waited with Joss as the first two loads went across.
‘Aren’t hippos as dangerous as the crocs?’ I whispered.
‘On land, yes. If you get between them and the water, they charge. But I think they’re used to the pontoon. It doesn’t bother them.’
Back it came for the last time. We walked aboard and knelt down as two of the squaddies pulled us out into the stream. The current was running faster than it looked from the bank: I could feel it tugging us sideways against the guide-wire. On the far side we bumped gently against the bank and walked ashore.
‘Okay,’ I said quietly to Joss. ‘On you go, and good luck.’
His teeth gleamed white in the darkness as he gave a quick grin, but I couldn’t see the expression on his face.
His men set off silently in three sections, in line ahead. Phil and I waited till the last of them was moving, then tagged on behind. We followed the bank of the river, which swung out southwards round a headland before turning west again. At one point a loud bark burst out on our left, and a hippo, startled on its way back to the water, came blundering across our track. By sheer good luck there was nobody in its path.
After maybe five hundred metres we reached the outside of the bend and started to hear the mine’s machinery running. Already the eastern sky was lightening behind us; in a few minutes the sun would rise, and when it did, it would shine low into the defenders’ faces. Ahead, the small hills rose in knobbly, uneven hummocks – good cover. From low down they looked bigger than they had from above. Phil and I stopped and knelt down as the three sections deployed, fanning outwards. We could just make out the shadowy figures moving up into firing positions. Then Jason himself went on and disappeared. Looking up across the river to the dark bulk of the hill on our right, I imagined Pav and Stringer, on the OP with the machine-gun team. Their role was similar to ours: they were there to advise the Kamangans. The difference was, there was no way they could get involved in the battle, as the river was between them and the mine.
When my watch said 0515 I called Pav, and asked quietly, ‘How’s it going?’
‘All good. We’ve got a great view. The compound’s quiet – nobody in sight at the moment. There was a shift change while you were on the way down – guys back and forth between the accommodation and the main block – but now it’s chilled out again. No movement on the perimeter.’
‘Good,’ I went. ‘We’re across the river. The guys are just getting into position.’
‘Roger.’
‘Stand by, then. As soon as Joss reckons the light’s right, he’ll give you the word.’
‘Roger.’
The plan was to launch the attack in the grey twilight that preceded sunrise, when our own eyes would be accustomed to the gloom, and the defenders, stumbling outside, would be nearly blind for the first few seconds. It was up to Joss to judge the moment when it was light enough for our guys to see, but still dark enough to give us an advantage.
Once the Kamangans were settled, Phil and I crawled forwards and positioned ourselves hull-down behind a rock. We were less than ten metres behind the two-man RPG team, but lower than them, so that we’d be well protected from any incoming. Seeing how, in training, the guys had been inclined to fire their rockets high, I reckoned the RPG team might be the ones who’d need a bit of assistance.
Like the daylight, my adrenalin level came up by the minute. I glanced sideways at Phil and saw he was the same: face tense, eyes gleaming. ‘Look out, you fuckers,’ he was muttering. ‘You’ve a nasty surprise coming.’
‘One minute,’ said Joss’s voice in my earpiece. ‘Covering force ready?’
‘Roger,’ went Pav.
‘Stand by to open fire. Thirty seconds. Twenty. Ten . . .’
As he counted ‘zero’ we heard the distant boomph of the 81-mil mortars from high to our right. They were out of our sight, in dead ground, so we didn’t see anything, but we heard the whistle as the first salvo of bombs arched high over the river. A few moments’ silence, then bright flashes spurted from the ground way out in front of us. A volley of explosions split the dawn silence.
Joss had ordered his strike force not to open fire until they saw specific targets. But the tension got to them. The mortar detonations triggered their attack impulse, and before any human defenders appeared, they started putting rounds into the walls of the main complex. Maybe it made no difference. Within seconds of the first bombs landing figures emerged from buildings at the run. Three or four raced for the blockhouse at the entrance, coming towards us and crossing to our left. The rest headed away, deeper into the compound.
Presented with legitimate targets, the attackers opened up with short bursts and dropped one of the advancing defenders. But most of the firing was completely wild. Phil jabbed me on the arm and pointed to our right. One of the Alpha guys was standing upright behind a hillock, holding his rifle high above his head, trying to level it with both hands, and firing blindly over the mound without any clue as to where his rounds were going.
Bullets started snapping over our heads, uncomfortably close. From the loudness of the cracks and the heavy hammer in the distance, I realised they were coming from the .50.
‘It’s that fucker in the tower!’ I shouted. I hit my pressel switch and snapped, ‘Pav! Get some fir
e into the top of the tower. We’re getting bloody murdered by the .50!’
The operator had pin-pointed our position. His first few bursts went high, but then, with a solid, heavy thump, a Kamangan twenty metres to my right took a bullet in the shoulder or chest. He’d been lying face down, but the impact lifted him bodily and flung him backwards down the slope. When he flopped to a halt against a rock, he didn’t stir again.
On my left the RPG team were cowering behind a rock.
‘Get up!’ Phil roared at them. ‘Get up and fucking fire!’
Gingerly, the Number One rose half into an upright position, took a perfunctory aim at the blockhouse and pulled his trigger. Whoosh! went the rocket, slightly to the left and miles above the target, so high that it flew free for the whole of its life until after four seconds and about nine hundred metres it self-destructed with a brilliant flash.
‘Look at that!’ I shouted. ‘He might have been firing at a fucking aircraft!’
Flashes were spurting from the slits in the blockhouse. Now we were under fire from two directions. Our RPG guy was back on the deck. His Number Two was trying to stuff another rocket down the tube while retaining a horizontal position.
‘Fire again!’ I bellowed.
The second round went even higher than the first. I knew the team had only eight rockets between them. At this rate, they’d waste them all before they scored a hit. There was only one thing for it. All good resolutions left my head. There was no way I could keep back and watch such incompetence.
Phil was already putting in the odd short burst with his 203.
‘Keep hammering the tower,’ I shouted. ‘I’m going on the RPG.’
At moments like that, instinct takes over. No matter how much Hereford had cautioned us about not getting involved, no matter how often we’d told each other we’d keep out of trouble, I was not going to lie there and wait to be turned into a rag doll by a round from the .50. The urgent necessity was to silence the big machine gun. Its operator probably couldn’t see individuals, but he’d sussed out where we were accurately enough and was putting venomous short bursts into the rocks that stuck up round us. Splinters were flying in all directions, ricochets screaming away behind.
I wriggled back down the slope into dead ground, ran across, came up again behind the rocket team, held out a hand, and shouted, ‘Eh, give it over!’
The guy with the launcher rolled his eyes, glanced at his mate, then, without speaking, handed the weapon across.
‘Come on! Move!’ I yelled, gesturing violently. ‘For fuck’s sake, get it loaded!’
With fumbling hands the Number Two got a rocket into the barrel. Swivelling to my right, I went up on one knee, settled the weapon on my shoulder, left hand awkwardly behind my right, and laid the cross hairs of the sight on the lower edge of the sandbagged machine-gun nest in the tower. The range was barely 150 metres – a cinch.
Whoosh! Away went the rocket. It hit the left-hand side of the structure and sent pieces of metal flying, but didn’t explode. The contact could only have been a glancing blow. The explosion came a second or two later as the destabilised warhead plunged into the deck beyond the target.
‘Reload!’ I roared. ‘Quick!’
This time the guy handled the rocket as if it was red hot, loading in two or three seconds. I settled into the aim again, holding the upright wire of the reticle on the right-hand edge of the nest.
Impact! That second round went straight in with a brilliant flash. The explosion blew a cloud of shit into the air and enveloped the tower in smoke. As the cloud drifted clear, I saw the mast had been toppled and was hanging down like a minute-hand at five o’clock. The hammer of the .50 ceased. With luck, I’d done for the rebels’ radio as well.
‘Now the blockhouse!’ I shouted.
This time I made no mistake. Again I held to the right, and the round went smack into the middle of the structure. Another big flash, another good explosion. The place burst into flames and began to belch smoke.
I handed the launcher back to its owner. ‘Now one into the gate. The weapon’s going left. Aim right of centre. This much.’
The range was shorter, so I demonstrated with my hands only a couple of feet apart. The Kamangan looked less terrified. He’d seen how effective his weapon could be. Maybe he was planning to take the credit for my hit on the tower. Whatever the reason, his next rocket blew hell out of the gate and left it a sagging wreck.
In the few minutes since things had gone noisy the light had grown stronger. Then, quite quickly, the whole scene turned pink. Screwing my head round, I saw that the sun was halfway over the horizon behind us – a huge, blood-red ball.
Abrupt volleys of small-arms fire made me look left. One poor hippo, taken unawares, had come lumbering back towards the river after its night’s grazing. It didn’t get far. Multiple hits brought it to a halt, then to its knees, and in the end it rolled sideways to the ground where it lay with its stumpy legs kicking feebly.
‘What the hell are they doing?’ I said to Phil.
‘Maybe they’re getting hungry.’
From the far end of the compound a column of black smoke was rising.
‘Fucking roll on!’ Phil shouted. ‘Some stupid bastard’s shot up the fuel store.’
Mortar bombs were still falling near the end of the airfield. Rounds continued to snap over our position, but now the fire was sporadic. What the hell was the Kamangan commander waiting for?
‘Joss,’ I called on the radio. ‘Get ’em going!’
‘Roger.’
He yelled out an order in Nyanja. His section commander passed it on. Leaving half a dozen guys to give covering fire, the rest jumped up and sprinted forward, blasting uselessly from the hip with their AK47s, wasting rounds by the hundred. One man went down before they reached the gate, but the rest piled through, fanned out, and dropped into firing positions inside the compound.
Phil and I stayed where we were, in relative safety. But suddenly I realised that accurate incoming fire was hitting the assault force from the left, from the direction of the accommodation block. One of the guys was slotted, then another. Somebody was shooting far too straight.
‘Left! Left!’ I yelled at the Kamangans still with us. ‘Fire at the white block!’ Rapidly, I scanned the windows, looking for snipers. Over the radio I called, ‘Joss, you’ve got incoming from your left! Swing that way.’
He didn’t answer immediately, so I went, ‘Pav! We’re getting enfiladed from our left. Incoming from the white block. Get the .50 on to it.’
‘Roger,’ he answered. ‘Wait one.’
Seconds ticked past. Rounds were cracking in every direction. Then down came the heavy hammer of our own .50. Its big bullets swept back and forth along the front of the accommodation block, blowing plaster and cement out of its façade. In the middle of the turmoil our RPG let rip at one of the main doors of the equipment shed. The range was about thirty metres, and Number One must have learnt from his earlier cock-ups, because he blew the handle and locking mechanism clean out. With smoke and dust still swirling round the door, his mates rushed at it, ran it half open on its rail, and sprayed rounds inside.
Then suddenly Pav was on the air again. ‘Listen,’ he called. ‘Watch yourselves. There’s some guys out in the bush away to your left.’
‘Outside the wire?’
‘Well outside. They must have done a runner from the compound.’
‘How many?’
‘I’ve seen three. Could be more. They’re in light-coloured DPMs.’
‘Weapons?’
‘Affirmative. Rifles or gympis.’
‘Where are they?’
‘There’s a single bare tree with a big fork in the top.’
‘Got it.’
‘From here, they’re on a ridge, two o’clock and fifty metres from the tree.’
‘That puts them about four hundred metres from us.’
‘Spot on.’
‘Okay. We’re going after them. Tell me
if they move.’
‘Roger.’
Phil needed no orders or encouragement. He’d heard the conversation and was on his way. Together we scuttled back off our hill, into hollows, and used dead ground to work our way fast round towards the south. We hustled along, twisting to keep in the hollows. Behind us, to our right, the battle was raging. Explosions that I reckoned were hand-grenades punctuated the small-arms fire. Then, as we came up to a ridge, I realised that some of the shots were going off from close in front of us.
‘Bastards!’ gasped Phil. ‘Sniping from way out.’
‘Get behind them,’ I panted.
We dropped back and took another swing to our left. More single shots cracked out.
‘There’s the marker tree,’ said Phil. ‘Get up to that.’
Ten metres from the top of the bank, we dropped on to hands and knees. For the last little stretch we went into a leopard crawl until we could peep over the crest. Less than forty metres off three guys were down on their bellies in firing positions, weapons levelled, taking controlled shots at the compound. We were nearly abreast of them, slightly behind, so they were looking away from us, concentrating on their targets.
‘Hey!’ I whispered. ‘Take the outer two. You the left, me the right. Count from five. Ready?’
‘All set.’
I put my sight on the right-hand man’s ribs, just behind his shoulderblade.
‘Five, four, three, two, one.’
Crash! Our weapons went off simultaneously. Neither target moved, except to jerk and slump forward. Suddenly I realised there was something out of place about the man in the middle. He was white.