Warlord

by James Steel

  ‘However, our main problem is getting into the valley in the first place. The entrance to it is heavily guarded. The ridges along the sides are about a thousand feet of very steep wooded slope so an infantry assault up them just isn’t an option.

  ‘They have also got themselves covered from an aerial assault with these four anti-aircraft gun positions up on the ridge on the western side of the valley – the top of the ridge on the eastern side is too narrow for anything to fit on it. There are two positions near the mouth of the valley but the most important are these two at the top of the valley, which have been designated Objectives Jericho and Babylon. Have a look at the next shot in your pack.’

  The men flip on to aerial photos of the gun positions.

  ‘They each mount two twin-barrelled ZU 23mm anti-aircraft guns.’ The men look at the magnified images of the double barrels pointing up out of sandbagged emplacements.

  ‘These have a range of two and a half kilometres so between the four of them they create an interlocking field of fire that effectively shields the whole valley from any helicopter landing. We considered a frontal attack by the gunships to destroy them but it just wasn’t feasible – we cannot afford to lose either of them at the start of the campaign.’

  Alex glances round at his men as they look back up at him. Their faces are tense; they can see that this looks like a tough assault. He keeps his expression controlled and ensures that his voice has the crisp crack of command as he explains his ideas for getting through the air defences. It is a complicated plan with several moving parts and he has to keep confident and inspire them to believe that it will work.

  ‘Now, as you can see, the top of the western ridge is clear of forest but it is sharp, only ten feet wide in places. However, at certain points it is blunter, about thirty feet wide where these gun positions are. They are the only sites available for helicopter landing zones.

  ‘The first landing will be at Objective Jericho. It is a mile along the ridge from Babylon but is out of line of sight from it because of this area of higher ground in the ridge between them which will shelter us when we land.

  ‘Jericho itself is only wide enough to take two helicopters at a time and that will be tight. They won’t be able to actually land, so the lads will have to jump off the tailgate.

  ‘The assault will start with six helicopters in the first wave carrying Echo Company.’ He nods towards Jean-Baptiste, with Matt and his other platoon commanders crouched around him.

  ‘They will land in three waves of two aircraft. I will be in the third wave with Tac so I can direct things from the air as the assault starts.’

  Tac is his Tactical Headquarters, consisting of him, Col, his signallers, Forward Observation and ISTAR officers.

  ‘That is the start of the assault, gentlemen. Can I take any questions from you on it now?’

  He looks at the men as they study the model, thinking hard. They are all experienced soldiers and know that the battlefield is an inherently chaotic place where no plan survives first contact with reality. They are staring at the thin ridgeline, envisaging the hell that will be unleashed on it.

  The FDLR soldier chucks a pair of heavy black army boots caked in red mud onto the floor in front of Joseph and walks on past his dugout.

  ‘Hey, small boy, clean my boots.’

  Joseph sullenly picks them up and glances over at Corporal Habiyakare. He wishes he would stick up for the men of the platoon against the other FDLR soldiers but Habiyakare understands their place as new arrivals in the pecking order of the base and ignores him.

  It’s the 3rd May and they have been posted to an anti-aircraft gun position on one of the high ridges that ring the Lubonga valley like the sides of a bathtub.

  Up here they are at seven thousand feet and it is cold and damp. Cloud often boils under the ridgeline as the air is pushed up over it, producing a damp misty draught through the dugout.

  Joseph wants to have a go on one of the twin-barrelled 23mm guns but the gunners won’t let him. A few times a day men are sent out along the ridge to patrol – hence cleaning the muddy boots – but one look down the steep thousand-foot drop tells you that no one would ever bother trying to get up there.

  Still it’s not all bad. They get good rations of fish and rice and can warm up in the main hut in the evening and watch videos on a TV powered by a car battery. Mainly Nigerian zombie horror films badly dubbed into French but some Chuck Norris and Rambo ones as well, which he loves.

  He doesn’t like the horror films; they contribute to the bad dreams he has. He sees the events of the attack on the village play out again in his head. He dreams in vivid colour of forests, gunfire, screaming faces, the rape and then the face of the woman that he shot with the rags in her mouth and her stupid terrified expression. All the events are chaotic and he has got clumps of blood-red mud stuck all over his clothes that he can’t get off. He scrabbles angrily at it and shouts at the people in the dream but they don’t listen to him.

  That night he lies awake in the barracks hut. In the hills below the ridge he can hear a distant gun battle going on between militias. There’s a thock-thock-thock of heavy machine-gun fire, then a pause before a faint popping of rifles answers it.

  The sound takes his mind off the events of the day and he drifts off to sleep thinking, ‘I wonder who’s firing?’

  Jason Hall nervously pulls the magazine off his rifle for the third time and checks that the rounds are sitting snug in the top of it and that the lips aren’t dented. He clicks it back into the port and looks at Sean Potts. His lips are pressed together and he is rocking back and forth slightly as they sit on the ground.

  Sean looks back at him, mutters, ‘Come on, for fuck’s sake,’ and looks over with irritation at the command tent set up at the side of the helicopter landing pads. They and the rest of Echo Company are waiting to load into the six big Mi-17s that are sitting on the pads with their engines running and rotors turning. Their exhausts glow red-hot and the caustic smell of avtur fuel is in the air.

  The choppers are painted white and have ‘UN’ written on each side of them in big black letters. UN Mi-17 helicopters are frequently seen over Kivu so Alex hopes it will deceive anyone who sees their approach to the target. With the sabotage of the mobile phone stations and the Rwandans cutting off the internet connection to Kivu, claiming a technical fault, he hopes they can create a news blackout in the area for a few days to allow him to get his troops in and fight the main battle without a huge international reaction blowing up and getting in his way.

  It’s nine o’clock in the morning of the 4th May and the men have been grouped in chalks waiting to load for an hour now.

  Jason agrees with Sean’s obvious irritation. He grins and has to shout over the hiss of the helicopter turbines, ‘Fucking head shed, sort it out mate.’ Colonel Devereux is in there with Major Delacroix, RSM Thwaites and the rest of Tac, waiting for God knows what.

  Yesterday was a very sombre day in the camp as everyone had to do their last-minute preps before the assault, stripping and cleaning weapons, readying medical packs but also writing their letters home: ‘To be posted in the event of my death.’

  Jason’s been through it before but it gets him every time. His letter read:

  Dear Mum and Dad

  If you are reading this I am afraid it is bad news, I have been killed in action. I want you to know before I go that I am so proud of you and I wanted to say thank you for all that you have done for me, so please stop crying.

  I’m sorry I wasn’t a better son. But this is the job I love doing and it has its downsides – I suppose you could say that I had a really bad day at work.

  I love you both very much

  Jase

  A lot of the lads were pretty emotional, some walking off to the base perimeter, smoking and staring off into the distance with their thoughts. There’s no privacy in the barracks blocks to hide the tears so Jason just had to sit on his bunk, sniff and write through them.

  S
ean shouts to Matt Hooper, ‘Sarge, I’m going for a piss,’ and clambers to his feet under the load of his equipment, heading off to the edge of the landing pads; a stream of men is coming and going to the makeshift latrine as the tension builds.

  They all have a full load of combat gear, flak jackets, rifles, spare magazines and grenades, belts of link ammunition wrapped round them to feed the squad machine guns and two 81mm mortar bombs in their backpacks to supply the mortar crews. They have been briefed on the mission and there’s a feeling of fear but also excitement. Sean shares a grin with Daz Vitriano as he walks back past him.

  Matt Hooper stands and looks over his men. They are ready to go, the tough training has shaken out the wrinkles and bonded them together. He looks at Corporal Stein, who is even bigger than normal with all his equipment on, and sees that he is smiling quietly at the anticipation of violence; the bloke’s a nutter. He is usually stony-faced, spending most of his time doing pull-ups and bench presses with the weights they have made out of old ammo boxes filled with gravel. Now that combat is approaching he looks like a kid expecting Christmas.

  Matt’s gut twists with fear. They all know it is going to be a tough assault up on that high ridgeline and Two Platoon will be in the first wave of helicopters to land.

  The only thing that keeps them all from running off is the grim determination not to show their fear and weakness in front of each other. He touches the pocket on his thigh again and checks that his morphine injection pack is in there.

  Colonel Devereux walks out of the command tent with Major Delacroix, looking grim-faced.

  At least he’s coming with us, though; he must believe in the plan.

  All the men’s eyes are on Alex, waiting for the first order in a complex chain of events.

  The noise from the turbines makes any verbal orders impossible.

  Alex’s hand jabs forward decisively towards the helicopters and he mouths, ‘Load up.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  While the troops wait by the helicopters, Zacheus is lying in a bush, freezing cold, soaked in dew and shivering. He clamps his mouth shut so his teeth don’t chatter. He is barely twenty feet away from the enemy.

  He and his team of nine Unit 17 men climbed the steep forested slope up to the ridgeline in the dark, pulling themselves up hand over hand using tree trunks and branches. It’s 9 a.m. and they have been waiting in the bushes just down the slope from Objective Jericho since 4 a.m. They are at seven thousand feet and the temperature is not far above freezing.

  Dense morning mist hangs around them but Zacheus can hear the men in the anti-aircraft gun emplacements coughing, spitting and urinating off the edge of the ridge. They talk a bit and someone bangs around getting a cooking fire going.

  Zacheus’s hand shakes as he checks his radio in his backpack and adjusts the earpiece on his head. He feels the comforting weight of the submachine gun slung on his back. He hopes he will warm up and stop shaking soon; they don’t have long till the assault is due to start. He looks around at the man lying next to him, who is also shivering.

  Three hundred metres east along the ridgeline from him, away from Objectives Jericho and Babylon, another team of two men have slipped over the ridge in the night and are laid up in the bushes further down the slope inside the valley.

  They have tied an aerial to a bush above them. One man sits with a pair of headphones on, monitoring a small computer linked to the aerial. The other man operates an encrypted UHF radio tucked into the uphill side of a tree trunk next to him.

  Ten miles away from Lubonga the old truck sits in the remote clearing in the forest. The team of five men Zacheus left with it are getting busy.

  As dawn comes up they climb onto the truck and start undoing bolts and pulling off the wooden supports on its sides. Once these are stripped away, they unload the sacks of charcoal from the top. Although the truck looks as if it is piled high with them there is actually only a single layer. They dump the sacks off the side and clear away a tarpaulin, exposing a wide block of three-metre-long metal tubes like drainpipes.

  The truck engine starts and its hydraulics whine. Stabilisers expand out from under the rusty body panels that have been fixed to it and plant themselves firmly in the ground. The end of the tubes nearest the cab rise up into the air, showing that there are in fact forty tubes all packed together in a box shape. The end of the box swings round to point the forty barrels of the BM-21, 122mm multiple launch rocket system towards the Lubonga valley.

  Rukuba is oozing warmth and bonhomie into a satellite phone as he talks to the leader of the FDLR.

  ‘Ah, General Musoni, how are you?’

  He is sitting in the ops room in the headquarters building in Camp Purgatory talking into a phone in Swahili with the whole of the ops room staff gathered around staring at him.

  There’s a pause as the general replies and then Rukuba sparks up again. ‘Yes, very good, thank you. And how was your wife’s surgery in Paris?… She’s OK, uh huh.’ He nods sympathetically as he listens to the FDLR commander describe his wife’s varicose vein operation at a clinic in Paris.

  Rukuba continues as if he is alone in his sitting room having a chat with an old friend. He leans his head over to one side and lays his thin fingers along his cheekbone.

  ‘Oh well, I’m very glad that that has been sorted out. Well yes, I’m OK, my cows are doing very well.’ He laughs; both of them are big cattlemen. He continues talking about his breeding programme and how he is improving his meadow.

  Yamba looks at him in astonishment. He cannot believe how cool he is being about the whole thing.

  The two technicians manning the drone desk are staring hard at their screens as Rukuba talks next to them. The tall Israeli intelligence officer, Major Mordechai Eisenberg, peers over their shoulders monitoring the Heron and Ranger drones carefully.

  He looks round at Yamba and whispers, ‘Heron has a fix.’

  Yamba mutters into the throat mike he is wearing to communicate with Col down on the landing pads.

  ‘Heron is fixed.’

  Alex turns away from the troops as they file into the helicopters and walks back into the command tent.

  Col looks up from the small radio he is monitoring with an earpiece strapped to his head. ‘Right, the Heron has got a fix.’

  Alex nods. ‘OK, good, now we just need the other two.’

  He slept fitfully the night before. He dozed off and then the thought of action sent a flood of adrenaline through his system that rinsed the sleep out of him like a cold shower. He finally slept in the early hours only to have the ugly noise of his alarm bust into his head at 5.30 a.m.

  He hates the waiting.

  They’ve checked everything important a hundred times. This morning is the culmination of thirteen months of careful planning and preparation. Until they actually get going he can only fret pointlessly. All the usual worries about personal injuries and death come flooding back.

  But what’s his greatest secret fear?

  That his men won’t obey his orders.

  Then he starts thinking of the men who did obey his orders in the past and died as a result of it.

  Cut it out!

  The men are all volunteers and they know the risks. If they didn’t want to be mercenary soldiers then they should have stayed at home and been traffic wardens instead.

  Rukuba continues chatting. ‘Ah yes, of course, I could send Rousseau over to you. He’s the best bull I have, yes, he has got a lot of spunk!’ He laughs conspiratorially with the general.

  ‘Ranger is fixed.’

  The second drone has locked on.

  Yamba now looks at the radio operator with the UHF set next to him. His face is even more severe than usual.

  The radio operator turns and nods, scribbling down some coordinates on a pad as he does so.

  Yamba mutters into the microphone, ‘DF team has fix.’

  There is a pause as the three bearings are combined and the target’s coordinates fixed.
/>   ‘Transmitting coordinates to Beelzebub now.’

  Another pause as Beelzebub’s targeting computing works out its trajectories.

  ‘Beelzebub is locked on and ready to fire.’

  Alex looks at Col relaying the orders to him on the radio. ‘The Ranger has got a fix as well now.’

  Alex nods. ‘Good. Now we just need the DF team. Come on, boys.’ He grins and looks at Jean-Baptiste who grins back; the guy is a fighter. You can see he just wants to get stuck in.

  ‘OK, DF team has a fix as well. We have triangulation on Jerusalem.’

  There is a pause on the radio and Col receives a fire mission request from the multiple launch rocket system.

  ‘Beelzebub requests permission to fire.’

  Alex looks at Col with narrowed eyes and nods.

  ‘Fire for effect.’

  The radio operator in the ops room repeats what he is hearing on the command net to the men in the operations room. ‘Permission to fire given.

  ‘Beelzebub firing now. Shot twenty seconds.’

  In his mind’s eye Yamba sees the 122mm rockets screaming out of the barrels of the Russian BM-21 multiple launch rocket system, in sequence, two per second, each launched in a loud flash of propellant.

  He’s seen the impact of the weapon before – they used multiple launch rocket systems like it in the Angolan war. It is specially designed for this sort of artillery ambush, to dump several tons of high explosive onto an area within twenty seconds to catch the enemy in the open before they can take cover.

  It is an apocalyptic weapon.

  Yamba looks at Rukuba who is still chatting, immune to all the tension around him. The guy’s ability to dissemble is phenomenal.