by Chris Ryan
I opened my eyes. The eagles were still circling, as if keeping an eye on our puny struggles, or maybe hoping we would flush out some prey.
‘Pav,’ I croaked.
‘Hullo.’
I turned my head and realised he was lying on the ground a few feet away.
‘We can’t fuck about any more. We’ve got to get Whinger into dock. As soon as we get the pinkie out, I’m going to drive on with him and Genesis, and leave you to carry on extracting the mother wagon. D’you have any problem with that?’
‘Fine by me,’ he went, ‘but take the woman with you too, eh? She’s driving the guys round the bend, and if the Alpha guys follow up, the last thing we need in the middle of a fire-fight is a hysterical Kraut.’
‘Will do, mate.’
‘How long will you be?’
‘Can’t say. We’ve got to find the place first. But I’ll be surprised if it’s much more than an hour ahead of us. Maybe three hours for the round trip.’ I looked at my watch. ‘If we leave at midday, we should be back by 1600 at the latest. Well before dark, anyway.’
‘Okay.’ Pav sat up and slapped at a tsetse fly that had landed on his shin. ‘Supposing we get out, what d’you want us to do?’
‘Stick around,’ I said. ‘If there’s anything wrong with the hospital’s radio – if we can’t get Whinger casevacked, for any reason – we can’t just leave him there. We’ll get what drugs we can for him, but we may have to bring him back for the time being.’
‘We’d better RV on higher ground,’ said Pav. ‘Up there, for instance.’ He pointed to the north, where a tree-covered ridge formed the skyline. ‘See that single tree standing out on the little shelf? If we get clear, we’ll make for that and get cammed up in the best location near it.’
‘Fine,’ I agreed. ‘Provided we get back in daylight, no problem.’
Pav asked, ‘What’s your route going to be?’
‘Good question.’
I dug out our reliable map. Its scale was too small for it to be much use, but it gave the general lie of the land.
‘All we can do is head straight south, for the river, which I reckon should be just out of our sight.’ I indicated the spot where I thought we were. ‘Then we turn right and follow the north bank, as closely as we can.’
Looking back on that terrible day, I realise how vague and speculative our plans were. We didn’t have any precise idea of where we were; we didn’t know where the convent was; we weren’t confident that the mother wagon could be rescued; and we knew that a strong Alpha force might well come on the scene. Our little party was in an extremely dangerous situation. Yet necessity drove us on. Necessity and exhaustion: we were all too worn out to see the risks or take rational decisions.
At last we managed to turn the bogged pinkie round. Once we’d got it lined up in the right direction, we started to make slow progress by digging in front of its wheels, slipping sand-tracks under the tyres at a slight upward angle, and winching the vehicle forward two or three feet at a time. The process was desperately laborious, but it worked. Gradually, as we drew near the edge of the pan, the mud became shallower and the rate of advance speeded up. At last Phil gunned the pinkie the final few yards under its own power, and a cheer went up, half ironic, half relieved, as it went up on to dry land under its own power. The time was 1145. Every part of the under-carriage was packed with mud – axles, steering arms, track rods, hubs, brake-tubes – but nothing seemed to be damaged, and as we had no spare water, any attempt to wash parts clean was out of the question.
It took Genesis and me only a few minutes to get organised. Because we wanted to travel light, we left most of our kit behind, taking only our weapons, ammunition, basic rations and a jerrican of water. Rather than take off the Milan post, we left it in place, even though the chances of our firing it seemed negligible.
Gen had already recced a route to the river bank, and away we went, with him in the back to keep an eye on Whinger, and Inge sitting up front beside me. Tired though I was, I sensed she was in a peculiar mood, almost on a high, twisting around on her arse and making bright remarks. I put it down to the fact that she thought she was about to get away from us.
Anyone who’d seen us would have thought us quite crazy. I was still caked in dried grey mud from head to foot (my plan was to have a quick plunge in the river, provided we could find a croc-free pool). Gen was also caked. Whinger was fairly clean, but wearing nothing except a pair of shorts. We were carrying more clothes for him, and sweaters for ourselves, in case it got cold at sun-down.
Our first sight of the river sent Genesis into ecstasies. ‘Look at it!’ he cried. ‘It could be the Garden of Eden.’
Impala grazed on the far bank. Troops of baboons were scattered along the shore, with babies sitting on their mothers’ backs or hanging round their necks. Crowned cranes paced the sand, and a flight of duck went away low upstream.
‘Okay,’ I agreed. ‘But where’s the serpent?’
‘He’s about,’ Gen admitted. ‘And so are the crocs.’
Every sandbar was carrying what looked like a dead log, which sprang to life and slithered into the water at speed the moment we came into view. I wondered about the bodies thrown in upstream the day before. Had they already been eaten? Or would they have passed this point and gone on downstream by now?
Crocs or no crocs, I had to agree with Gen: the scene was idyllic. At the point where we hit the river the stream was sweeping in wide coils between banks about ten feet high, and the ground on top was almost bare of vegetation. Turning right, I drove for a few hundred metres downstream, sending the baboons racing for cover. The current looked quite fast, especially in shallow stretches, and the water was opaque with grey silt. Gen stood up in the back, spotting for a good place to fill the jerricans, and presently he said, ‘There, that’ll do.’
We pulled up above a little bay, where the stream had carved a sweep out of the bank. The pool was manifestly too small and shallow to harbour a croc, and it was cut off from the main river by a sandbar.
‘My life’s in your hands, Gen,’ I said as I slithered down the bank.
‘Fear not,’ he replied. ‘If it moves, I shoot.’
With him poised above me, 203 at the ready, I walked through the pool, just to make sure it was uninhabited, then lay down full length and scrubbed myself furiously. Never mind that the water was full of decomposing bodies, crocodile shit, bilharzia and other delicacies, its coolness was sheer delight. When the relatively stagnant pool turned the colour of milky coffee, I rolled sideways into the faster-flowing shallow race and let the current sweep away all the grit, dirt and sweat. With all the grunge went a lot of my anxiety and exhaustion, and I came up feeling renewed.
Genesis followed me in, fully dressed, and washed his clothes on him, knowing they’d dry in minutes under the burning sun, while I stood over him with a weapon loaded and cocked. The German watched all this with a condescending air, as if we were lunatics; we ignored her and climbed back into our seats, dripping but refreshed. Whinger hadn’t stirred. His eyes were open, and he turned his head slightly when I told him we were moving on, but otherwise he was frighteningly inert.
The drive took far longer than we’d anticipated. We were never lost, as we always had the river to follow, but it swung back and forth in huge loops, and we were constantly forced away from the bank by tributaries coming down to it from the north. Most of them were dry – just beds of sand – but many were deep, with vertical sides, and some still had water in them, so we had to search for places where we could cross. Each time, before we committed ourselves, we took it in turns to walk ahead and check the ground, because we couldn’t afford to get bogged again. As the flies were still a pain, I put some clothes back on, and by then Gen had fully dried out.
At last, about 1630, with the sun going down straight ahead of us, we hit on our first trace of civilisation: a dirt road running along the bank. By the look of the dust, no vehicle had been up it for months, but at least it
was a man-made track. Gratefully we rolled on to it and increased our speed. Then, in the hazy distance ahead, we made out higher ground above the river, a little plateau, with tall trees growing on it, silhouetted black against the sun.
‘The bluff!’ we both said simultaneously.
‘This is Msisi?’ went Inge.
‘Looks like it.’
‘Wunderbar!’
‘We’d better get some covering over Whinger,’ I said, pulling up. ‘Don’t want to give the nuns a fright.’
He gave a couple of delirious curses as we pulled a blanket over him. His body was hot to the touch, his breathing short and laboured. When I accidentally brushed my hand against his burnt arm, he gave a groan of pain.
The closer we came, the higher the plateau seemed to loom over the river. Probably the cliff was only a hundred feet tall, but in that flat environment it looked enormous. Perhaps that’s why they put the hospital up there, I thought: healthier, away from swamps and mozzies, catching the breeze. I felt adrenalin driving off some of my exhaustion; the sheer relief of having found the place was exciting.
As we approached, the dying sun was straight in our faces, so that we couldn’t make out details. But we caught a glimpse of white walls, and a flag flying from a pole among the trees. Also, joy of joys, we spotted a latticed radio mast. Then we were in under the shadow of the cliff, and following the track up a natural ledge which rose across it, until at the top we came out on the level.
Looking back, it’s easy to see what we should have done. We should have stopped well short of the bluff and concealed the vehicle under a tree. While one of us stayed to guard Whinger and the woman, the other should have recced forward and taken a good look at the convent. The fact was, we were in desperate straits, and too far gone to carry out SOPs. We’d set our hearts on reaching what we thought was a haven, and now we’d found it, relief swept caution away.
Low, whitewashed buildings with corrugated-iron roofs were ranged round a compound. The place looked fairly run-down, with big blotches of mould on the walls and fallen branches lying about. We seemed to have arrived at the back door. Between two of the buildings, set at right angles to each other on a corner of the compound, was a gate of rusty wire mesh.
‘Can’t see any lock,’ I said. ‘We might as well drive through. Try undoing that loop of wire.’
Genesis jumped out, wrestled with the primitive fastening, eventually got it free, and pushed the gate open. I drove forward a few yards and stopped, waiting for him. By evil chance Whinger chose that very moment to surface and say something. I couldn’t make sense of it, but the sound of his voice made me turn to look at him, and when I faced forward again, I got a dreadful shock.
Black soldiers were running at us from both sides. With a glance to my right I took in a line of military vehicles parked down the inner side of the compound.
‘Gen!’ I yelled. ‘Get back in! We’re compromised!’
I slammed into reverse and let out the clutch with a bang. But Gen had just got the gate secured, and it caught the pinkie like a fishing net.
Seconds later the blacks were all over us like baboons, yelling, screaming, brandishing pistols and machetes. I tried to drive forward, but three or four sets of hands seized me by my shirt and dragged me out sideways. As my foot came off the clutch, the vehicle gave a bound and the engine stalled. Everything happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to grab my 203 from its place down beside my right hip. Gen never made it back to the vehicle; other guys were dragging Whinger out of the back.
For a few seconds I was convinced we were going to get lynched. Then the strangest thing happened. Inge pulled herself to her feet, holding the top of the windscreen, and began bellowing in some African language. Quickly the hubbub died down. Into the moment’s silence she shouted something else. The next I knew, we were all face-down in the dust and getting our wrists and arms bound behind our backs. I felt hands going all over me, nicking my watch, pistol, knife, GPS set. Afterwards, I couldn’t think why we hadn’t offered more resistance, but the truth was we were numbed by the suddenness of the attack, too shocked and tired to react quickly.
Once our captors had got us trussed, they heaved us back to our feet. At least, they tried to. Whinger, wearing only his shreddies, just fell down again. Once more the German woman called out some order. I was amazed and horrified to see a couple of the Africans salaaming at her, as if she were some sort of goddess or white witch.
My mind reeled. What the fuck was going on? These soldiers must be rebels. They were rebels: on the epaulettes of their DPMs they were wearing green-and-white stars – Muende’s emblem. And yet they seemed to know her. From the way they were greeting her, it was almost as if they’d been expecting her. How in hell did she know them? How had she got such a hold over them?
I shot a glance at Genesis and saw him looking equally bewildered. Then anger surged up inside me. Somehow the woman had betrayed us. I couldn’t see how she’d done it, but by God, she had. It was she who’d brought up the idea of Msisi in the first place, she who’d gone on about the place being a hospital, she who’d urged us to come here. Dimly I realised she must have known all along the place had been captured by the rebels. She’d shopped us, delivered us into the hands of the enemy.
‘You fucking bitch!’ I roared.
She was still standing in the front of the pinkie, high above everyone else, with a gloating smirk on her face.
‘English soldiers,’ she said, in a mocking voice. ‘You should be pleased. You will now have the privilege of meeting the leader of the Afundi rebels, General Gus Muende.’
With that she turned and gave another order. Our escorts frog-marched us forward, past our abandoned vehicle, into the compound itself. Too late I saw that the flag, which to us had been just a black rag against the sunset, bore the same green-and-white design. Too late I saw that the whitewashed walls were pockmarked with bullet holes, and that the sign proclaiming MSISI HOSPITAL – CONVENT OF POOR CLARES had been riddled with small-arms fire. A couple of soldiers began dragging Whinger like a sack of coal, but when Inge spoke sharply to them, they picked him up and carried him. That puzzled me, as well. Why should she care what happened to Whinger?
The sun was setting, and the light was already dim, but not so dim that I couldn’t see, lying along one wall, a line of bodies. Somebody had thrown a sheet over them, but it didn’t cover the legs, and the legs were those of elderly white women. White undergarments had been ripped off and thrown aside. The nuns. I felt sick. The nuns, butchered. No doubt they’d been raped as well, probably with bayonets. What the hell were these people going to do to us?
There was a brief delay as we were herded into a small room close to the main gate, Whinger on the deck, Gen and myself hemmed into a corner by a crowd of stinking soldiers, all jabbering with excitement. From the notices pinned on a wall-board, still listing patients and treatments, I saw the room must have been the hospital office. Where had the patients gone, for God’s sake? Probably they’d been murdered, too.
Next door somebody was trying to get a voice transmission through on the radio, yelling the same message over and over again. Then I heard Inge take over, talking in a native language, until suddenly she said in English, ‘Yes, they are coming now . . . No, but we make them talk.’
I was thinking furiously, how wrong can you be? Somehow it had never occurred to us that the convent could be in enemy hands. We’d believed all along that the rebel forces were away to the south, that the mine at Gutu was the most northerly point they’d reached. In our eyes, the fact that the convent was on the north bank of the river had given it extra security. In any case, we’d assumed that a religious hospital wouldn’t come under attack. All of us had been totally blind.
Minutes later, all three of us were face-down on the steel floor of an open-backed truck, Whinger in the middle, and we were driven out of the compound with four or five armed soldiers ranged along the seats on either side, stamping their boots on us whe
never they felt a need to relieve their feelings.
ELEVEN
Think positive. That’s what I’ve always been taught. When you’re in trouble, think as hard as you can about possible options. For one thing, the process takes your mind off present hardships, and for another, it may produce a good idea. The trouble is, when you’re face-down on the steel floor of a truck being driven at lunatic speed along African bush roads in the dark, it isn’t easy to think of anything except immediate survival.
The first few minutes of that marathon journey were relatively gentle. The truck ran downhill for a minute or two and then on to a pontoon. We never saw the ferry, but we could tell from the movement we were afloat. The driver switched off his engine, and after a quiet five-minute crossing we thudded ashore against the far bank. That’s one thing the Boisset slipped up on, I thought: he’d said there was no means of crossing the river at Msisi. That was one of the factors that had encouraged us to believe it was a safe place to visit.
On the far side, all three of us were soon getting severe stick from the bumps in the road: we were repeatedly thrown in the air and smashed down on the deck, without having our hands free to steady ourselves or lessen the impacts. If I lifted my head, or tried to turn on one side, or spoke, I got a boot between the shoulderblades or on the backs of my knees. Oddly enough, as I realised after a while, Whinger was probably suffering the least of the three. He was so far gone with his fever, and so full of painkillers, that he didn’t seem to care much what anyone did to him.
As we were getting thrown into the truck, I’d hissed at Genesis, ‘Estimate the time.’ I got a clout in the ear with a rifle butt for my pains, but he registered my message: that to find out where we were being taken, we needed to guess the time the journey took. Gauging our speed was difficult: from the violence of the ride, it felt like seventy or eighty kilometres an hour, but I reckoned that because of the roughness of the road, we weren’t doing more than forty, if that, and would probably average twenty-five. At one point we went up a long hill, or over a range; the driver kept changing down, grinding upwards in low gear, and negotiating sharp bends. Then came a protracted descent, with the brakes squealing as we approached corners. From the way we were continually enveloped in a dust-cloud, I assumed another vehicle was travelling ahead of us as escort or leader.