Warlord

by James Steel

  ‘Oh right, so you think that would be a good place to get some shirts? What’s it called again? Boutique Oiseau? What’s the address …’

  He flinches and yanks the phone away from his head as a loud burst of static comes out of it and the line goes dead.

  He looks at the phone for a second and then a slight smile spreads over his face.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Zacheus lies in the bush and waits for the rockets to come over him.

  He pats the man next to him on the arm and gives a thumbs up. The signal is passed on down the line and all ten men pull black balaclavas on their heads, get their submachine guns off their backs and cock them.

  The rockets are on a downward trajectory into the valley and skim just over the ridgeline. Being under them is like standing on the edge of a railway platform as an express train goes past. They smash the air aside and the pressure wave pushes down on the men who press their faces into the trembling earth.

  The satanic screaming overhead goes on for twenty seconds but Zacheus forces himself up at the start of it and drags the man next to him up as well. The line of ten men scramble forward, grabbing onto bushes and tufts of grass to heave themselves up the last steep slope.

  As his line of sight comes up over the curve of the ridge, Zacheus is tensed, expecting to see figures with rifles pointing down at him. Instead he sees three tatty wooden shacks with the two gun emplacements dug in front of them.

  Some men are crouching down around them in terror at this sudden visitation from the devil, staring overhead at the rockets. Others are standing with their backs to him watching with horrified fascination as the first munitions explode over their headquarters buildings two miles down the valley. A rolling barrage of airbursts carpets the area and the distant crumps of the explosions echo off the valley sides. A large cloud of smoke and dust slowly mushrooms up into the air.

  The Unit 17 men take their chance.

  The ten submachine guns spit bullets and the soldiers are knocked off their feet. The men clear the gun emplacements first, shooting dead the crews, and then start on the shacks, chucking grenades in through the doors and then bursting in and finishing off survivors with gunfire.

  A few men try to run off along the ridge and are shot down at longer range. Two men in a trench look up with terrified faces and hold their hands up to surrender but are shot dead.

  In a little over a minute of intensive machine-gun fire and grenade bursts thirty-three enemy are killed.

  Zacheus calmly changes the magazine on his weapon and keys the mike on the radio. ‘Black Hal, this is Striker 1, Jericho is down. Repeat, Jericho is down.’

  Alex acknowledges the signal and Zacheus then sets his men to stripping rifles and ammunition from the dead and gets them into defensive positions. Now he has to make sure he can hold onto the gun emplacement until the helicopters get here. The aircraft are fifty miles away and even at top speed it will take them twenty minutes. He glances anxiously along the ridge to the west towards Objective Babylon; the gun emplacement a mile away, hidden behind a knoll of higher ground halfway between them.

  Zacheus then looks away from Babylon and turns towards the spectacular view from the ridge, rugged lines of green hills marching away into the distance. He ignores the aesthetics and prays to see the dots of the helicopters appearing in the blue sky.

  In the Babylon gun position Joseph runs out of the kitchen shack at the sound of the rockets. The men are standing and staring at the explosions going off down below in the valley.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asks Lieutenant Karuta but the man ignores him and runs over to get on the radio to his counterpart in Jericho along the ridge.

  Alex, Col, Jean-Baptiste and the rest of Tac run out of the command tent towards the waiting helicopters, which are winding up their engines to lift off.

  They duck their heads down under the fierce rotor wash and keep clear of the exhaust being pumped out by the red-hot turbines. They run in under the high tail boom of the Mi-17 and up the ramp into the cargo bay packed with twenty-five pumped-up soldiers, all sitting on the floor facing the ramp with their feet around the person in front.

  As soon as they are in, the loadmaster hits the hydraulics and the ramp rises up and locks, leaving a gap above it. Alex and Col scramble forward over the men to the front of the aircraft, Alex needs to plug into its radio to keep in touch with the other units.

  He sticks his head through the open door into the cabin. The two Russian pilots are side by side surrounded by dials and switches on the dashboard and overhead. The copilot passes him a spare headphones and mike set and he is relieved to be back connected to the command net.

  ‘Shakira, Beyoncé, all Demons, this is Black Hal, launch now.’

  The engines overhead scream, the noise is deafening, rotors clawing at the thin high-altitude air to haul ten tons of dead weight vertically upwards. Alex feels the fuselage vibrating violently and pressure in his knees as the heavily laden machine waddles up off the ground.

  All around them twelve helicopters rise up as one.

  Demons 1 to 6 are the Mi-17 troopships carrying Echo Company tasked to land at Objective Jericho and then assault Objective Babylon. Demons 7, 8 and 9 carry half of Bravo Company to drop into the valley once the anti-aircraft guns are down. They will have limited fuel to loiter in the area so Alex knows they need to get the guns knocked out quickly.

  Demon 10 is another Mi-17 with a cargo net slung under it full of long green wooden boxes contained rocket reloads for Beelzebub.

  Arkady is flying with his gunner in Beyoncé, with the other Mi-24 gunship, Shakira, next to him. They will escort the assault force in to the target but will have to circle out of range of the guns at Babylon until the troops have captured it.

  Alex feels a flush of fear as the force finally takes off. He adjusts his helmet and is glad of the reassuring weight of the assault rifle across his chest. He won’t be firing it – if the commanding officer of the regiment ever fires his personal weapon then things have gone badly wrong – but it is an important symbol for the troops that he is coming with them and means business. He glances at Col next to him and draws encouragement from his expression of calm determination.

  Their biggest mission yet. It’s a complex operation with a lot of tight timings but it is the only way he can get a chink in the enemy’s armour and then crowbar it open and get in at them.

  At least the weather has been good. It’s a sunny day with patchy white clouds; the benefit of starting the campaign in the dry season. He leans through the door into the cabin to look out of the bulbous front canopy. Ahead of them lies the massive bulk of Mount Karisimbi, its rugged sides covered in bright green jungle. Spread out in front of and below him are five white helicopters. At a distance and against the vast backdrop of the green mountain they look tiny and their spinning rotors make him think of delicate sycamore seeds twirling in the air. As he looks at them, the sun catches and flashes on their discs. In an odd moment he feels he has never seen anything so beautiful.

  Up ahead in Demon One, Jean-Baptiste is also looking forwards out of the cockpit canopy; he is going in on the first wave with 2 Platoon. Whilst 3 Platoon secure the Jericho gun emplacement his men will run off along the ridge to seize Babylon a mile to the west. He is keyed up for the assault; he needs to get to the high ground between the two bases in order to be able to fire down on it and knock out the guns. He looks over the lines of seated troops in front of him and can see Volunteer Sean Potts sitting with his PKM light machine gun upright between his legs. They will need them and the mortar crews to suppress fire from the base.

  The Russian copilot checks his maps and his GPS and keys the mike. ‘Five minutes,’ crackles through on Jean-Baptiste’s earphones. He turns and shouts to Matt Hooper over the din of the rotors, ‘Get them up!’

  Matt nods and slaps the shoulder of the first man in front of him. It is repeated down the lines and the heavily laden troops struggle to their feet in the crampe
d cargo bay. Like all of them Sean hates being packed inside this flying box full of highly explosive fuel. He’s tensed up and ready to burst off the ramp as soon as it bangs down on solid earth. He glances at the soldier next to him. His face is tense and his knuckles are white as he grips his rifle across his chest.

  The hydraulics lower the ramp and they are staring out of the back of the aircraft at lines of forested hills whipping just below them, treetops thrashing in their wake.

  The aircraft banks left to swing round and approach parallel to the ridge to keep them away from the Babylon guns. It forms up next to Demon 2 and they skim low over the hills at one hundred and fifty m.p.h., rising and falling with the terrain to avoid any anti-aircraft fire. They rise up to just under the ridgeline to make a fast approach assault landing. Jean-Baptiste grabs onto a strap on the forward bulkhead – he knows the Russian pilots can be cavalier, pushing the operating envelope of the airframe.

  He takes a quick last glance through the front window and glimpses a tiny streamer of purple smoke on the huge bulk of the ridgeline; Zacheus has popped the smoke grenade, indicating they are clear to land.

  The smooth whirr of the rotors slows to a rhythmic clatter – whop, whop, whop – as they slow down. The pilot flares hard, putting the nose up and using the underbelly as an airbrake. The packed lines of men lurch towards the front of the chopper and grab onto each other; it’s a gut-wrenching ride.

  With the last forward momentum, they bank right and pop up over the top of the ridge. The pilot swings the tail round so that they are facing out of the valley and Demon 2 does likewise next to them.

  The copilot is hanging out of the side window shouting distance instructions over the intercom. They are only going to touch the ramp down, they don’t want to be on the exposed ridge a second longer than necessary.

  At last the ramp bangs down on the ground.

  In ten seconds all twenty-five men bolt out of the back of it, throw themselves on their belt-buckles in an arrowhead formation and both choppers are taking off again. Engine notes scream and rotor wash blasts out mud and bits of grass as they lift away and then drop down the ridge to leave the LZ clear for the next wave.

  The soldiers have their heads up over their rifle sights scanning for targets through their goggles.

  Matt is up and shouting at them, ‘Get up! That way!’ His outstretched arm points west down the ridge towards Babylon.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Alex hangs on as Demon 6 flares and they decelerate hard.

  The landings are going according to plan. The first two waves of two aircraft have each dropped their men on the ridge and slipped down away from it. The four platoons are forming up on the narrow flat area.

  Demons 5 and 6 are coming in next to each other now.

  The aircraft swings round hard and the men stagger. He glances out of the side door and sees Demon 5 next to him on his right touch down its ramp and the lads start running out. His own troops do the same.

  Over the noise of the rotors he hears the sound of heavy calibre automatic gunfire. Demon 5 lurches sideways towards him. He can see explosions on the far side of it, it’s hit and on fire. The blokes aren’t all off yet and some are thrown off the ramp as it rises up to escape the threat.

  His own pilot sees it and jerks the control column to the left; Alex and Col are thrown onto their knees.

  Get out of this flying fuel can!

  The pilot panics and starts taking off. Alex can see the last of his guys jump off the ramp as the aircraft lifts clear.

  I am not going to be separated from my men.

  ‘Go! Go! Go!’

  He scrambles to his feet and he and Col both run towards the opening at the back of the aircraft as the chopper dips its nose and starts dropping off the ridge.

  He sees the ground falling away under them; the gap is opening up.

  They both hurl themselves off the ramp.

  Alex lands on his chest with an explosive gasp. His flak jacket stops the rifle strapped across his chest from breaking his ribs but it digs in hard and smashes the air out of him. He can’t breathe but his hands scrabble frantically to grab a bush to stop himself falling back down the slope.

  Next to him Demon 5 takes a 23mm round in the gas tank and explodes. Its main rotor detaches and spins off into the void and the white body of the aircraft drops like a stone, tumbling in flames nose over tail down the ridge, bodies of the men inside thrown clear and smashing into trees.

  Alex gasps for breath and pulls himself up. He’s in agony from the blow to his chest but he is determined to get back to commanding his men.

  Col crawls up the slope next to him and they stick their heads up to see what is happening.

  Alex glances to his left and sees two streams of bright tracers flashing down at them from the high ground between Jericho and Babylon. Somehow the enemy has dragged the two anti-aircraft guns up on the hill and now has a perfect vantage point to fire down on them. The weapons roar out, each spitting sixteen hundred rounds a minute and the clattering bursts of fire roll down the valley and echo back and forth like metallic thunder.

  He pushes himself up onto his knees and sees the rounds smashing into the camp, destroying the three shacks and setting them alight, shooting up the two Jericho guns. Their ammunition starts cooking off, banging and popping.

  The men from the first waves and the Unit 17 troops have all thrown themselves over the blunt edge of the ridge and are lying flat on the ground with their heads just below the top. The guns turn on them and start chewing up the ground along the edge. Shells smash into it exploding and blasting out mud and steel shards over the men’s helmets.

  Two soldiers are hit by splinters and slide back down the ridge screaming. Mates grab them and stop them slipping off down the slope.

  Someone is roaring over the sound of the explosions.

  ‘Man down! Man down!’

  ‘Who’s hit?’

  ‘Medic!’

  Col jumps up and scrambles along the line over the backs of the men on the ground. As the senior soldier of the regiment it’s his job to get the men organised. He spots the medical officer face down with his medical pack on his back. Col pulls him upright and they sprint bent double along the ridgeline in full view of the enemy towards the casualties.

  ‘Where’s the casualty!’ Col roars.

  ‘Over here!’

  A hand goes up from under the rim of the ridge.

  ‘Who’s hit?’

  ‘Volunteer Rodriguez, he’s T4!’

  Dead.

  Shit.

  The medic turns to the other man with facial wounds and makes a rapid assessment. He’s alternately screaming with pain and sobbing through his hands; his face is covered in blood. The medic holds his hands out of the way so he can get a good look at him. He can’t see any major arteries hit.

  ‘Yer all right, mate!’

  He’s pulling open his pack and getting dressings out when two men stagger along the ridge, dragging a body, one holding him under the arms and one with his legs. The injured man looks completely out of it, head lolling back and eyes rolling up.

  Col sees bloodstains on his chest.

  Shit.

  ‘Over ’ere!’ Col shouts and the men dump him down.

  The medic swaps over to him. ‘Where’s he hit?’

  He checks his pulse – still there in his neck. ‘He’s still here, he’s T3.’

  There’s a loud bang of a shell exploding overhead and they both flinch down.

  The guy is lying still making a gurgling noise, hot spurts of blood coming out of his neck.

  ‘Get his flak off!’

  Joseph jumps into a trench up on the high ground and levels his rifle down at the attackers. He’s excited, and shouts along to Corporal Habiyakare, ‘I’m going to shoot these bastards!’

  When the attack started Lieutenant Karuta quickly organised the thirty men in the base to drag the two weapons up out of their emplacements. They are light mobile fie
ld artillery and have two wheels that fold flat under them when they are in firing position. It took thirty seconds to lever them back into place and then a team of men dragged each one quickly up onto the high ground.

  ‘Who are they?’ someone yells between bursts of fire from the two anti-aircraft guns behind them – they fire at such a rate that clouds of exhaust gases swirl around the crew of two men who sit on low seats behind them.

  Corporal Habiyakare shouts back, ‘I don’t know, they landed in UN helicopters but they’ve got green helmets not blue ones. Doesn’t matter,’ he laughs, ‘let’s just kill ’em!’

  The men all shout and start firing their rifles. At half a mile range the fire is not accurate but it feels good.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Further back along the ridge Alex is collecting Tac, Zacheus and Jean-Baptiste together to coordinate a response. He sticks up his head over the lip of the ridge between bursts of fire frantically trying to see a way out of their predicament. Rifle rounds crack and zip overhead.

  He feels a rising tide of panic in his chest and forces it back down. The assault has hit a lethal obstacle – half of the force is pinned down here on the ridge and the second wave of choppers with Bravo Company on board are in the air waiting to land in the valley once the two gun emplacements are down. They have limited loiter time and will eventually have to turn back to base, which will disrupt the whole momentum of the attack.

  Apart from which he and his men are pinned down under heavy enemy fire on a high ridge with no way off and are gradually being shot to pieces. He thinks of his grandiose schemes for bringing control to Kivu and the irony is painful. The whole mandate of heaven is running into the ground of this blighted outcrop.

  Just sort it out, Devereux.

  A strange calm descends on him as the fury that he normally feels in his soul is suddenly matched by the intensity of events outside him and an equalisation of pressure occurs. He has found a strange peace at last and starts to deal calmly with the problems.