The Journey of Kyle Gibbs Box Set

by Wayne Marinovich

  Gibbs nodded.

  ‘We need to keep that plant safe and under our control. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  • • •

  Gibbs knocked on Christina’s door and heard her soft footsteps approaching. She opened the door, and her face lit up with a wonderful smile. She was in her usual business suit and looked ravishingly elegant.

  ‘This is a nice surprise,’ she said.

  ‘Seems that my departure to Givet has been brought forward,’ he said.

  ‘What? When?’ she asked with a hint of panic in her voice.

  ‘I am due to leave today,’ he said.

  Christina launched herself at him and threw her arms around his neck. ‘I thought we had more time together. When will I see you again?’

  ‘No idea. I guess I’ll see you when I see you,’ Gibbs said.

  Christina pulled back and looked into his eyes. ‘Be careful, will you?’

  ‘I will,’ he said and leant forward to kiss her.

  Later that afternoon, Gibbs and his Phoenix Guard unit sat in small sailing boats, headed inland on the flooded Thames River. The tide was at its highest and about to turn, so they hastily made it to the old ruins of Putney Bridge, where they could then turn south. They sailed through the old flooded high street, where once countless shoppers would have been walking around spending money on things they didn’t need. All that was left were the shells of the windowless shop fronts.

  They moored up a few hundred yards from Wimbledon Common and waited for the rebel troops of the London warlord to meet up with them. Sitting around in the boat, the men slept and played cards until the sound of four large horse-drawn trailers arriving, mobilised them. The horses reared at the sight of all the water, causing a further delay as the drivers struggled to calm them long enough for Gibbs and his men to load their gear onto the carts.

  ‘Welcome, gentlemen. Nice to see you again. I take it you got settled into life in the Phoenix Compound?’ a smiling Tom Scott said.

  ‘Jesus, I’ve never seen so much water,’ Gibbs said. ‘The damage it’s caused is astounding.’

  Tom laughed. ‘That’s an understatement, mate. The tidal surge does more damage each time it comes in, but people have gotten used to it now and are making a living of sorts.’

  ‘How the hell do they do that? I saw so many destitute faces looking down at us from the premises above the destroyed shops as we sailed up the main street.’

  ‘With guts, determination and the age-old will to survive. Only the tough survive out there, and people are starting to make new lives for themselves. In a generation’s time, this will all be normal to our children.’

  ‘You are a bit of an optimist, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s my job as the Warlord of London. Help those who have survived to have as good a quality of life as possible.’

  ‘I saw trucks back there, could we not have used those instead of these ponies? Might have been quicker,’ Gibbs asked.

  ‘There are many trucks that the GGC own in London, but they are all being used at the moment. I had booked two to make this journey, but you must have pissed someone off in the Council. They were taken away,’ Tom said.

  Gibbs smiled.

  Beggars flocked to the horse trailers in droves as they made their way south. Screams for food and money filled Gibbs’s ears, and occasionally one of the beggars would try and get onto a trailer. They were pushed back with rifle butts.

  ‘They don’t look like they are coping all that well.’

  ‘I said they’re starting to get used to it. Tens of thousands are still below the breadline and suffering extreme poverty.’

  A gunshot in the air cleared the way, and soon they left the suffering Floodlanders behind and carried on for another hour through the green countryside, finally coming to a large security gate down a winding country lane.

  Tom Scott said. ‘Welcome to what once was the Woldingham Golf Club and now serves as one of the GGC airfields.’

  Heavily armed men saluted them as they passed through, and then as they rounded four old aeroplane hangars, the old girls came into view. Three old DC-3 Dakotas stood waiting to take Captain Kyle Gibbs and his Phoenix Guard on their first mission.

  Chapter 18

  Djibouti, East Africa, - 2028

  The four men walked up the rickety gangplank with their backpacks hanging off their shoulders. Chilemba glanced back at the heap of weapons on the ground that was growing larger as everyone was forced to surrender submachine guns, pistols, knives, spears and even their beloved machetes. They felt horribly naked as they boarded the old ship and stepped reluctantly onto the wooden deck.

  With the deck jam-packed with men, women and a few children, the Khalil dropped its thick hessian mooring lines and with a steady stream of black smoke from the coal-fired engines, slipped out of Djibouti harbour. Chilemba looked around at the men with machine guns standing guard on the bridge house and felt his stomach tighten. Captain Nasri was visible at the front window looking over the few hundred people assembled on the foredeck.

  Deckhands appeared and hoisted two massive canvas sails up the home-fashioned masts, and the gentle thud of the engine died away. The patchwork sails flapped and floundered for a while as the men expertly trimmed the rigging, and soon the sails filled with air and ballooned proudly. The Khalil increased speed and cut through the waters of the Gulf of Tadjoura, gently rocking forward and backwards on a small swell. As they pushed out into open water, the wind increased, and she listed slightly to the left then powered up towards the Gulf of Aden.

  Captain Nasri stepped into the scorching sunshine from the coolness of the bridge and spoke with an old loudhailer from the steps.

  ‘Woman and children, move to the back of the ship. You and your luggage will be kept there.’ Slowly and nervously, they followed his orders and moved along the side passages of the deck, to the back of the ship.

  ‘Hurry up, people,’ the captain barked.

  Soon only the men were left on the foredeck. Suddenly large hold doors opened beneath their feet. The men tried to back away as the doors ground open, but a few who were unable to get clear fell in, screaming. Chilemba and Jackson only just managed to move back against the railing of the ship.

  ‘All of you are to go down in the hold. Anyone left on deck will be thrown overboard and can swim back to shore,’ Captain Nasri said.

  The men made their way down into the dark hold on a rusty staircase that had no handrail. Chilemba made his way down onto the hold’s slippery floor, and as his eyes became accustomed to the dark, he could see that it was, in essence, a large cage with no windows. The dank, musty smell was only overpowered by the smell of sweat and excrement. Chilemba could smell something else. Fear.

  ‘Men, this is an evil place. Many have suffered and died here,’ he said in a low voice as they huddled around him.

  ‘It will to be a journey from hell,’ Jackson said.

  ‘We need to keep together and watch each other’s back all the time. Is that clear?’ Chilemba whispered. They all nodded.

  ‘Let us roll our sleep mats out against that wall there. It is far enough away from the stairs in case they need volunteers, yet close enough to get out quickly should we need to.’

  Bewildered men milled around aimlessly, getting acclimatised to the ship’s hold, making it easy for Chilemba and Jackson to move around them and create enough space for themselves to settle down for the trip. Men still kept coming down the ladder, and soon it became apparent that they were going to have to sleep a lot closer to each other than they thought.

  Once all the men were in the hold, a large Arabic man with a shaved head, dressed in military fatigues, climbed down the stairs accompanied by two other soldiers. He stopped, turned and faced the men.

  ‘My name is Al Mateeq,’ he shouted. ‘Drop your sleeping mats on the ground and bring all of your bags to the bottom of the stairs.’

  The men did as they were told, and brought their luggage and
worldly possessions to the front, dropping them in front of the sullen-looking man. Once all bags were piled high on the floor, he instructed six men who were closest to him to start carrying them up the stairs and to leave them on the deck.

  ‘Why are we being separated from our luggage?’ one of the men shouted.

  Al Mateeq raised his pistol and shot the man in the chest. The sound was deafening within the confines of the metal hull, and at such close range, the bullet ripped straight through his heart, and he collapsed where he’d stood.

  ‘Any other questions?’ Al Mateeq said.

  With a flick of his pistol, he indicated to the men to continue lugging the bags up on deck. The slow process of moving all the bags up the stairs took a long time, and once they were gone, the six men were told to stay on deck. The slow mechanical grinding started again, and the hold doors slid closed. Darkness fell over the room.

  An hour later, the men returned from the upper deck, and the word was passed around that the six men were forced at gunpoint to throw the bags on the deck. All valuables were taken by Al Mateeq and his men, the rest of their belongings were tossed overboard.

  ‘Pigs. Those were our belongings,’ Jackson said in a low voice.

  ‘Our main goal is to get to Europe alive, so keep out of trouble until then. Do not volunteer for anything, if they tell you to do something, do it. It’s going to be a long trip in this boat, and we need to be aware of everything around us.’ All the men nodded.

  • • •

  The Khalil journeyed through the Red Sea and up into the Gulf of Suez. Two weeks later, she reached the Egyptian city of Suez, for years the gateway from the Middle East to Europe. Captain Nasri and his men steered the ship up into the now flooded Suez Canal, before stopping to moor up to collect a Suez pilot. These pilots were supplied by the controlling Suez gangs that ensured safe passage from pirates as well as navigation through the tricky flooded plains.

  Chilemba and his men occasionally got picked to go up on deck and spend the day helping the other deckhands with the rigging. Constant adjustments needed to be made to the old sails, to keep the Khalil moving forward at a good speed. On one sunny day, there was a good stiff breeze coming off the Egyptian floodplains, and they picked up speed as they raced through the Little Bitter Lake. All along the left side of the Khalil, the floodwaters had reclaimed vast tracts of palm trees that were now all dead. On the right side of the ship were the orange desert sands, which voraciously devoured the briny floodwater.

  Orders came to tack, and they jumped up to help grab the thick rope and pull it through the old wooden pulleys. A loud crash resonated across the water, as the rope snapped and the boom shuddered to an abrupt halt. They’d tie the rope down and then sit against the railing again, a process that would be repeated all day.

  The ship meandered past other similar converted sail ships, moving in the opposite direction, all on their way back from Europe. They passed through the Great Bitter Lake and onto the final stretch to Port Said, a step closer to the Mediterranean.

  The following morning as they sat in the dark confines of their ocean prison, knowing that they were close to halfway through the journey, Chilemba looked across at a small group of six men who had been giving them threatening looks for most of the journey. The men were now becoming more vocal, continually trying to bait them.

  ‘You! Mungiki goat,’ the leader shouted, pointing at Chilemba. ‘Why are they always taking you upstairs? Are you being ladies for them? What do the Arab men taste like?’ The group of men all burst into loud laughter.

  Jackson moved forward, and Chilemba placed his hand across his chest to restrain his friend. ‘Wait, brother. Let him say what he likes. Think of why we are here.’

  ‘Maasai jackal, they’d never taste as good as your mothers and daughters did when we raided your villages,’ Jackson shouted back.

  The other group of men dressed in traditional red sheets draped around their bodies slowly came forward, offended by the comment. Hundreds of years of pillaging and slaughter between the Mungiki and Maasai had led to an inbred tribal hatred coursing through his veins.

  Suddenly, the hold door creaked open, and a bright column of light streamed into the blackness. Al Mateeq followed two of his men into the hold and started walking amongst the startled men. The frightened men parted in front of the imposing man as he chose twenty men and split them up into two groups.

  ‘Wangai, you and your men, you will be in the first group again. Make a queue to go up on deck.’

  Chilemba nodded and moved his men towards the metal steps. A loud hissing noise came from a few of the Maasai. Jackson stopped at the steps. ‘Keep walking, brother. Things will come to a head soon enough.’

  A strange smell drifted across the deck of the Khalil as the men sat against the railing, a smell of spicy food, a smell of sewage, the smell of civilisation. They scurried around to drop the sails as Captain Nasri started up the engines. Ahead of them, the trading port of Port Said.

  The Khalil cruised amongst the boats and ships that were crisscrossing the busy harbour. Captain Nasri veered the ship to the left, and she came alongside the raised concrete jetty. Two of the deckhands scrambled to throw the mooring lines to the awaiting harbour workers.

  One of the guards shoved the muzzle of his AK47 into Chilemba’s back as he was about to walk down the wooden gangplank. ‘Hurry up, you scum,’ he snarled. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

  Chilemba walked quickly down the bouncing gangplank and up to three old wooden carts that were drawn by large oxen. He swayed slightly as he walked, a side effect of spending weeks out on the ocean. It felt good to be back on land. Large bags of cabbage and potatoes were piled up in the back of the wooden ox-drawn carts, along with other vegetables and dusty bags of brown rice.

  ‘You men will load all the provisions off those carts and onto the ship, and you had better be quick, we sail in five hours. That is your food you are loading, if you fail to complete loading, you will be very hungry for the rest of the trip,’ Al Mateeq shouted as he walked to the first cart.

  ‘Move it!’

  The men loaded sacks of grain and food for three hours continuously, only stopping for the occasional cup of water. Another group of men worked further down the quay, loading dirty bags of coal into the hold, for the engine.

  Exhausted and weary, they finally boarded the ship again and stood on deck as the captain powered away from the quay and headed out into the centre of the Suez Canal. With a last glance at land, the men were again ushered below deck as they steamed into the blue Mediterranean.

  • • •

  The Khalil sailed west for six more days, hugging the scorched and dry coastline of northern Africa. The wind was more sporadic in the Mediterranean as the heat coming off the North African desert made for difficult sailing. On a steamy afternoon, they sailed into the ancient port city of Tunis where they briefly moored up against the rock jetties that jutted out from the harbour. Four men dressed in cool flowing Thawb robes dragged long black water and diesel pipes onto the deck. Chilemba listened to the strange language that they spoke and could understand the occasional word of his northern African cousins.

  Al Mateeq walked over to the men and paid them the cash, turning to Chilemba. ‘Get ready to leave, Wangai, this is our final stop before we reach France.’

  Once they left Tunis, the boat made headway along the west coast of Sardinia. Chilemba and his men spent more time on deck as the captain alternated from wind power to engine power every few hours.

  As they walked down the metal steps into the dark hold, Jackson said. ‘We are nearly there, brother.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to leave this foul-smelling prison and be done with all this,’ Chilemba replied.

  ‘Why are you, the sons of flea-bitten hyenas, the only ones being allowed up into the fresh air?’ A man shouted as they made their way back to their sleep mats. The Maasai gang was standing in the sleeping spot that Chilemba had occupied for the duration of the t
rip.

  ‘You can sleep elsewhere now. You have not suffered here with the rest of us, so you will not sleep near us,’ the tall Maasai warrior said.

  Chilemba took a step forward. ‘We have tolerated your insults for long enough as it is our wish to reach Europe without incident. Do not misinterpret the fact that I will tolerate your childish jibes about our ancestry, as a weakness. Continue with this, and you will not reach your destination, Maasai baboon.’

  The group stood for a while, staring at the tall, muscular man in front of them. Their collective nerve broke, and they reluctantly moved aside.

  The following morning Chilemba and his men rolled up their mats in their usual position before Al Mateeq called them above deck. The men walked slowly past their dejected and embarrassed rivals. As Chilemba got to the ladder, a commotion and a loud cry rang out from behind him. He spun around just in time to see one of his men, September Mwangi, fall forward clutching his throat, blood pouring out between his fingers.

  Chilemba roared and made a lunge for the Maasai man who stood with a large bloodied shard of glass in his hand. Chilemba grabbed the hand that held the weapon and head-butted the man in the eye socket, feeling the cheekbone crack. The man staggered back and screamed. The sound was drowned out by the rattle of machine gun fire from above. Chilemba fought off Jackson’s restraining hands as he was pulled off the crouching man and they fell back breathless on the dirty floor.

  September was lying motionless by the time Al Mateeq’s men reached him. They also grabbed the injured Maasai man, shepherding him up the ladder and out onto the deck. Jackson tried to calm Chilemba down, pushing him back towards the area where they slept.

  ‘Calm yourself, brother, remember our goal. Think of Europe.’

  ‘That infested rat killed September, right in front of us.’

  ‘Yes, and we will slice him open and dance on his entrails, but not here and not now,’ Jackson said.

  ‘Everybody stand back!’ screamed Al Mateeq from the ladder, as he waved his old Beretta pistol across the throng of black faces. ‘Wangai and your team, move your arses and get up on deck. Everyone else, stand back.’