by Chris Ryan
Loader kept on staring at him. His face was a picture of indecision. Torn between his loyalty to Mallet and his sympathy for an old friend. Then his face appeared to relax, and he tapped a finger against his chin.
‘I’ve heard about these ceremonies,’ he said. ‘Down in Peru. People go there to take ayahuasca. My missus told me all about them. Mary’s always reading the news. Got a brain on her, she does,’ he added proudly.
‘I don’t follow. What’s that got to do with opioids?’
‘Mary reckoned a lot of addicts go to these ceremonies. To cure themselves. Drug addicts, alcoholics, all kinds of people. Cleanses your body or something. I didn’t understand it myself. But you might want to look into it. Once we’re out of here, like.’
Bowman smiled at his mucker. ‘Thanks, Tiny.’
‘Don’t thank me just yet. I’ll keep this between us for now. But if you can’t get your habit under control, I’m going straight to John.’
‘It won’t come to that,’ Bowman said. ‘I’m not gonna let this beat me.’
‘I hope not.’ Loader flashed a cheeky grin. ‘After all, if you get kicked off the team, who’s going to be my wingman?’
‘With your crap dance moves, Tiny, the only thing you’re at risk of pulling is a muscle.’
Loader laughed. ‘Come on, you Cockney bastard. Let’s go.’
They turned and headed for the stairs.
04.38 hours.
Fifty-two minutes until first light.
Twenty-Seven
They stepped out to a hive of frenetic activity. Teams of Karatandan soldiers were toiling away in the eerie predawn. Four of them worked in pairs, digging gun pits in the lawn either side of the eagle-topped fountain. One other guy hacked at the trunk of a palm tree. His mate bucked another felled tree into six-foot-long logs using a petrol chainsaw. A third soldier lifted up one of the logs and hauled it over to the nearest gun pit. He stacked it beside the heaped soil at the edge of the hole. Another soldier began covering the timbers with the backfilled earth, compacting it with the flat head of the shovel. The wood and soil would create an area of frontal cover strong enough to stop a small-calibre round. Further to the east, a hundred metres away, two other Karatandan soldiers were stacking garden rocks and stones from the pagoda around the rim of their shallow trench. Creating a classic murder hole. The guys would leave a gap in the rocks wide enough to stick their rifle barrels through, allowing them to cut down the enemy without exposing themselves to incoming rounds. The remainder of the local troops were hastily clearing the fields of fire across the ground on the north side of the estate, burning down trees and bushes.
Mallet stood beside the soldiers at one of the half-finished fire pits, bellowing at them. ‘Call that a fucking pit? I’ve seen puddles deeper than that. Keep digging.’
He caught sight of Bowman and Loader and beckoned them over. Mallet scowled at them both. ‘Where have you two idiots been?’
Loader started to reply but Mallet cut him off with a wave of his hand, chopping air.
‘Save your breath.’ He thrust an arm at the irrigation ditch running north to south beyond the garden wall. ‘Set up the Claymores over there. That ditch is the most vulnerable area of the estate. If the rebels cut through the fence, they could use it to crawl right up to us.’
‘Like the battle of Little Bighorn,’ said Bowman. ‘When the Plains Indians used the dead ground to advance on the cavalry.’
‘Exactly. Except Custer didn’t have a couple of Claymores to play with. We do. So let’s fucking use them.’
‘Where are the other guys?’ asked Loader.
‘Alex is on the mortar with one of the major’s lads. The others are on the roof. Patrick has got the AWC. You two will operate the Gimpys. I’ll be up there as well with the .50 cal. Between us, we’ll cover the approaches to the stronghold.’
‘What about Mike?’
‘He’s got one of the spare radios. He’ll cover the front of the stronghold with one of the platoon’s Gimpys. If the rebels manage to cut through the fence, he’ll take them down.’
‘And the local troops?’
‘We’re posting four other guys at the front. Two on top of the guest house, two others in a pit to the east. Four others in defensive positions guarding the west flank. The major will man the second platoon Gimpy in the gun pit to the rear. If they start taking rounds from any rebel forces from that direction, he’ll let us know.’
‘Better that way,’ Loader said. ‘The last thing we need is a blue-on-blue.’
Bowman nodded in agreement. The men in Mavinda’s platoon seemed brave enough, but they weren’t trained to an elite level. Giving them designated sectors of fire lessened the chances of an inexperienced soldier accidentally slotting a friendly.
‘Get a move on,’ Mallet says. ‘Once you’ve got those Claymores rigged, give us a shout. There’s still lots to do before we’re ready.’
He gave them his back and marched over to the soldiers at the gun pit. Bowman and Loader left the porch and sprinted across the driveway to the Land Cruiser. They grabbed the satchels containing the two Claymores from the boot and ran at a brisk clip towards the western garden. Casey was kneeling beside the mortar pit in front of the ruined wall on the north side of the garden. The second guy on the mortar team, the lanky Karatandan sergeant, sat next to her. They worked together, Lanky emptying the shells from their boxes, Casey taking the pin out of the nose of each projectile and lining them up at the side of the mortar cannon. Prepping them for the fight.
Bowman and Loader hastened past them, ducked around the corner of the garden wall. They climbed down into the southern end of the drainage ditch, crawled forward twenty metres, stopped and placed the charges facing out towards the northern end of the ditch.
‘Line them up here,’ Bowman said. ‘We’ll turn this area into a massive IED.’
They carefully removed both mines from their bandoliers, flipped out the scissor legs and planted the Claymores in the grass, sighting them down the ditch. They screwed the blasting caps into the detonator wells, sprinkled grass and leaves over the mines to camouflage them, rechecked the sights. Then Bowman and Loader unwound the coils of electrical wire and retreated around the wall, back towards the mortar pit. They made sure the safety bails were flipped up on their firing devices, then connected the electrical wires to the clackers.
‘You triggered one of these before?’ Loader said to Casey.
She gave him a long hard stare. ‘Take an educated guess.’
‘Just checking.’ He indicated the clackers. ‘The safetys are on. Don’t fire them until one of us gives the word from the rooftop. We’ll need to nail as many of the enemy as possible. No point wasting them on one or two attackers.’
‘Got it.’
She set the clackers down beside the cannon, went back to setting up the mortar. Loader grinned.
‘That’ll give those fuckers a nasty surprise,’ he said to Bowman.
Bowman glanced back at the ditch. The Claymores would repel any rebels attacking from the dead ground to the north of the garden. As soon as the enemy neared the southern end of the channel, Casey would detonate the mines, annihilating them in a lethal torrent of steel balls. Anyone caught in the blast radius would be torn to pieces.
‘Tiny! Get the rest of the Gimpy ammo on the roof.’ Mallet yelled at them from across the front drive. ‘Josh, start putting down some range markers for the mortar and sniper teams.’
Loader bounded back over to the Unimog. He started unloading the remaining boxes of 7.62 mm belt for the Gimpys, garlanding the linked brass around his neck. Meanwhile Bowman tapped the pressel switch on his webbing and raised Webb on the tactical radio. The latter was on the mansion rooftop, scanning the estate through the Schmidt & Bender Mark II variable sight attached to his rifle.
The two soldiers worked together, Bowman pacing out various distances from the stronghold and setting down visual markers, then reporting them back over the comms to Webb, who t
hen made notes of the ranges with a pencil and paper. Creating a series of reference points for the guys on the roof to help determine the distance to the target. Bowman paced out fifty metres, set down a large rock from a water feature in the garden. He placed more markers at fifty-metre intervals, all the way to the fence, and then the treeline. Which was five hundred metres from the mansion. The demarcation line for the mortar. Everything between that line and the two-hundred-metre mark was mortar-lobbing territory. Anything shorter than that would land dangerously close to the defenders.
If we have to start putting down rounds at that range, thought Bowman, the enemy will have breached the estate.
And we’ll have our backs to the fucking wall.
He laid a final marker at the edge of the clearing, then jogged around the estate, checking the condition of the perimeter fence. Looking for any weak points or gaps big enough for a human to sneak through. He deposited stones beside the largest gaps, so the defenders could easily concentrate their fire on those areas.
He didn’t feel tired now. Adrenaline was taking over, juicing his bloodstream, boosting his fatigued body. Adrenaline, and the iron will to win that lived within all SAS men.
The odds of the team getting attacked in the next few hours were high, Bowman knew. The Machete Boys would expect their scout to return from the mansion shortly. Once he failed to report back, the Boys would come looking for him. And they would be ready for a scrap.
So will we, thought Bowman. We’re preparing for the fight of our lives.
He hurried over to the Unimog to unpack the remaining boxes of 7.62 mm belt. The soldiers under Mavinda’s command were frantically burning down vegetation or piling earth on top of logs around the fire pits. To the east, two men from the Presidential Guard carted an aerial ladder over to the guest house. One of the guards held the base while the second raised the fly section until the top rung drew level with the guest house rooftop. They braced the ladder against the façade and started scaling towards the roof to set up another firing position.
At the front of the mansion, Gregory and the Karatandan soldier with the toothbrush moustache were preparing one of the platoon’s FN machine guns in a fire pit. The weapon looked essentially the same as the Gimpys used by the Cell. But older, battered and rusting, with a scratched wooden stock.
Mallet checked his watch and shouted across at Bowman. ‘That’s it! We’re going topside. Hurry the fuck up!’
Bowman ripped open the lids from the last three boxes of GPMG ammo. He draped the gleaming belts around his neck, snatched up his rifle, and hastened towards the mansion with Mallet. They ran up the grand staircase, hit the second-floor landing and passed down a hallway lined with portraits of Seguma in various heroic poses: riding a horse, Seguma the hunter posing with a dead lion, Seguma in uniform inspecting the troops. They barged through the emergency fire exit, climbed a dank stairwell and cannoned through the door at the top.
The rooftop was a chaotic cluster of satellite dishes, antennae, solar panels and air-conditioning units. Rubbish and gravel littered the ground. The other members of the team had taken up firing positions along the decorative stone parapet. Loader was covering the eastern approach to the stronghold with one of the two GPMGs. Webb had a spot on the north side overlooking the ground to the front. He was in a kneeling stance, aiming his AWC rifle through one of the perforated gaps in the parapet wall. As well as the heavy weaponry each man also had his primary rifle, pistol and several frag grenades. A massive amount of firepower.
Let’s pray we don’t need to burn through it all.
‘Get on the other Gimpy,’ Mallet ordered. ‘Move!’
Bowman ran past the central skylight and darted over to the second GPMG resting on the floor next to the west-facing parapet. Mallet made for the .50 cal rifle along the southern wall, covering the rear of the estate. Bowman laid out the belts of 7.62 mm ammo he’d carried up from the Unimog, placing them on top of the seven other belts heaped next to the Gimpy. Two hundred rounds per belt. A total of two thousand bullets.
Bowman knelt beside the Gimpy, cocked the bolt on the side of the receiver and engaged the safety. He popped open the top cover, lifted up the belt of 7.62 mm from the top of the pile and inserted the end of it into the feed tray. Closed the cover. Glanced at his watch.
Sixteen minutes until first light.
‘See anything, Patrick?’ Loader said.
‘Nothing,’ Webb replied calmly. ‘It’s all clear out there.’
‘Where do you think they’ll hit us, John?’ asked Bowman.
‘The front,’ Mallet said. ‘It’s the most obvious route into the estate. No gate. If they’re going to attack us, that’s where the bastards will probably come from.’
‘They’re not military geniuses, Josh,’ Loader said dismissively. ‘We’re dealing with the Machete Boys. A bunch of pissed idiots. They’re not gonna sneak up on our flanks.’
‘Alex? You OK down there too?’ Mallet said into his mic.
‘This may come as a huge surprise to you guys,’ Casey said, ‘but I’m doing just fine.’
‘Don’t start putting down rounds with the mortar until I give the order. Stick to your rifle for now. We want to save the heavy stuff until they start coming at us en masse.’
‘Do you want to tell me how to use a gun as well?’
Mallet laughed.
Casey said, ‘Don’t worry about me, guys. Look after yourselves.’
Bowman rested the Gimpy on top of the stone parapet and scanned the ground to the north-west. In the murky half-light before dawn he could make out the ornamental garden below, the mortar pit beside the crumbling wall on the northern edge of the garden. The irrigation ditch to the north of the garden wall, with the two Claymores planted at the bottom of the trench. Further west a pair of gun pits guarded the flank. In the far distance, Bowman could just about see the outline of a clump of trees.
Everyone watched and waited.
Eleven minutes until first light.
‘Still quiet,’ Webb said.
‘Won’t stay that way for long,’ Loader said. ‘The Machete Boys will know we’re here. The only question is when they’re going to hit us. And how hard.’
They continued watching. Mallet checked his phone for messages from Six. Loader ran downstairs to get a brew on. He came back a short while later with a two-litre coffee flask, cups, loaves of bread, a bag of apples. The team helped themselves to mugs of hot black coffee while Webb observed the front approach road. Occasionally, he would get tired of peering through the scope and look up, scanning the ground with his naked eye. The treetops were alive with the predawn chorus of birdsong and primates, announcing the coming of the new day.
Maybe our last, Bowman thought.
Six minutes before first light.
‘Anything, guys?’ Loader called out.
‘Nothing,’ Webb replied.
‘Same,’ Mallet said.
‘Any word on those inbound Hercs?’ Bowman asked.
‘On their way. No change. Still due to land at eight o’clock.’
Bowman checked his watch: 05.25.
There’s a long way to go yet, he thought.
‘Where will they land?’ Loader asked. ‘The main airport is out of action.’
‘They’ll fragment,’ said Mallet. ‘SFSG and the SBS detachments will head for an RV in the north of the country. They’ll retake the airport and secure the infrastructure in and around the capital. D Squadron will land at the private airfield up the road. Twenty miles from here. Which is good news for us. Means they’ll get here sooner.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘Depends,’ said Mallet.
‘On what?’
‘The situation on the ground. The guys might run into an ambush on the way over here. Or they might hit an IED. Any number of things could slow them down.’
‘Or the rebels might attack the airfield,’ Webb said.
‘Not likely. There’s a military contingent based at
the airfield. Two platoons. They’re under orders to protect the airstrip at all costs.’
‘What about air support?’ Bowman asked.
‘I’ve asked the question. It’s a hard no,’ Mallet said. ‘Nothing in the area. No fast air. It’s just us.’
‘This op just keeps getting better and better,’ Loader grumbled.
‘We’ve still got the upper hand. We’ve got the high ground, the hardware. A few hours from now, D Squadron will fly in and roll through the enemy.’
‘As long as they get here before the KUF, I’ll be happy. General Kakuba sounds like an evil bastard.’
Mallet said, ‘We’ve had no reports of KUF paramilitary activity in the area. As far as we know, the only rebels nearby are the Machete Boys.’
A few minutes later, the first pale glimmer of light fringed the horizon. Gradually, the darkness lifted. Bowman sipped coffee and glanced round the estate. He could see the ground to the west more clearly now. The distant trees resolved themselves into a dense palm grove. There was another grassy field to the east of the stronghold leading towards an orchard. He saw the blackened stumps of burned-down trees and bushes at the front of the mansion. The thick woodland a hundred metres north of the clearing. In the far distance he spied a chain of hogbacked hills shaped like the knuckles of a clenched fist, silhouetted against the lightening sky.
A minute passed.
Then another.
Then Webb said, ‘I’ve got movement.’
‘Where?’ Mallet said.
‘The farms across the main road,’ Webb replied.
‘Rebels?’ asked Bowman.
‘Civilians. Unarmed. Men and women, some kids. A big group of them.’
‘What are they up to?’ asked Loader.
Webb said, ‘They’re running into the interior. Moving fast. Looks like they’re expecting trouble.’
‘They must know something we don’t,’ Loader said.
‘It’s the rebels,’ said Bowman. ‘They must be on the way.’
‘Why aren’t these people staying hidden indoors?’
