by James Steel
Jean-Baptiste scrambles towards him along the line of men to him, his face full of intensity. ‘I have four machine-gunners ready to fire.’
‘Good.’
Alex rolls over onto his other side and grabs the radio-phone off the backpack of his signaller and gets on the net.
‘S’arnt Hooper, this is Black Hal. 2 Platoon to advance along the ridge under cover from 3 Platoon and Fire Support Group.’
The problem is that there is a limited amount of space on the ridge so he can’t bring his other men into play. Jean-Baptiste has got all their machine gunners together to act as a Fire Support Group. Rifle fire at this range won’t be much use. The AA guns have got small armour plates in front to protect their gunners but their legs stick out under them so the machine gunners can try and hit them and it will at least put off their aim as 2 Platoon advances.
Alex sits up and yells to his left, ‘Mortars ready?’
A team is balancing precariously on the slope, trying to dig the baseplate into the mud with entrenching tools. It needs to be firm or it will be useless when the mortar fires.
‘Two minutes, sir!’
‘Major Delacroix, get the mortar bombs passed back along the line!’ Each man has two in his backpack.
Along the line to his left, Sergeant Matt Hooper lies on his front next to his signaller; the top of his radio aerial gets snipped off by a bullet and goes spinning away down the ridge. Rounds are cracking over them constantly.
He thinks about sticking his head up into that lot and the idea hits a brick wall.
They will have to crawl along on their stomachs under whatever covering fire can be given. He turns and shouts back down the line, ‘2 Platoon, fix bayonets! Prepare grenades!’
Stein is screaming at the men, ‘Sort it! We go!’
Alex gets on the radio to organise a final tactic to cover the advance. ‘Beyoncé and Shakira, this is Black Hal. I need a rocket strike from you.’
Arkady’s voice crackles in his ear, ‘Black Hal, this is Beyoncé, it will be extreme range and danger close.’
‘Beyoncé, roger that, we don’t have any choice.’
He knows that the gunships will have to stay a couple of clicks out from the ridge to keep away from the guns. One hit from a 23mm shell and their delicate flying machines will be toast. The rockets are unguided and at extreme range they could spray over 2 Platoon as well, who are on the outside of the ridge exposed to their fire. He prays Arkady’s aim is good today and keys the mike again.
‘S’arnt Hooper, this is Black Hal. Prepare for danger close airstrike and assault guns immediately after it!’
Up on the ridge, the waiting and the fear are getting to Matt. He rolls over onto his back and thinks, ‘Jesus Christ – jump up over that line of earth and run into a wall of lead coming over it?’
He thinks about Danielle.
‘I didn’t sign up for this.’ His face goes white.
Stein scrambles next to him, takes one look at his frozen face and goes mad. He grabs his webbing and pulls his head up close to him and screams at him.
‘You fucking pussy! We wait rockets, we go! I lead!’
His pupils are dilated, his nostrils flared, his brutal face white with the cold fury of a man about to kill. The ferocity of it hits Matt like a punch.
Like fear, courage is contagious and Matt nods vigorously, snapping himself out of it.
Stein goes back to getting the platoon organised. ‘2 Section covering fire! Potts over there!’ He directs Sean and the other machine gunner to the back of the line of men.
His absolute resolve galvanises them and they lock and load fresh mags, fit their bayonets and loosen pins in grenades.
‘Smoke grenades!’ Stein gets the men to hurl them forward as far as they can to give them some cover.
Then his heavy hand thumps down on Jason’s webbing shoulder strap and drags him forward.
‘Hall, you follow me!’
Sean readies his PKM machine gun. ‘More link!’
A soldier slips an ammo belt wrapped around his waist from under his flak and passes it down the line. More belts are passed along and Sean slaps one into the feed tray and snaps the cover shut. He nestles down on his belly and gets the butt in tight against his shoulder ready to stick his head up.
Matt takes the radio telephone away from his ear and screams, ‘Air thirty seconds, take cover!’
He rolls on his back and watches the two small dots far away in the sky and thinks, ‘What cover?’ as he turns and presses his face into the ridge.
In the lead gunship Arkady wheels into the strike. He keys the mike to his wingman. ‘Shakira, this is Beyoncé, rockets, shooter, shooter, my lead, fire at 2km, me break left, you break right, target anti-aircraft guns on ridge.’
‘Roger that, Beyoncé.’
His gunner squints into the sights on his heads-up display. The AA guns have spotted them coming in and start firing at him. He can see the bright stabs of muzzle flash. The red tracers seem to start out lazily at first and then speed up until they are ripping past his canopy with a noise like tearing metal.
He ignores them and keeps his eye on the two flashing guns on the ridgeline. He squeezes the trigger on his joystick. The pod of 80mm rockets on the wing just down and to the right of him fires off in sequence, one rocket a split second after the other.
Twenty rockets screaming away downrange trailing angry orange propellant fire.
His wingman flows in behind him and does the same.
The first salvo of twenty rockets goes diagonally across the ridge, exploding in orange flame and bursts of bushes and mud. The last half overshoots the guns and goes screaming off into the air before dipping down to smash into the other side of the valley.
Shakira’s salvo is better and runs straight along the top of the ridge, dotting it with explosions that stitch their way across the gun positions.
Jean-Baptiste is screaming at the Fire Support Group, ‘Up! Up! Up!’ They jump up from cover and run into the shot-up gun emplacements to give them a better angle of fire. Six light machine guns start pouring fire at the AA guns.
Matt hears the screaming of the rockets coming in and then a blast wave hits the left-hand side of his face that knocks his jaw sideways and rattles his teeth. Mud and debris whack into him. He clings to the ground and wishes he was inside it.
Sean wriggles forward, rests the end of the machine-gun barrel on its bipod, squints through the sights at the hill and squeezes the trigger. The gun jumps hard against his shoulder, the metal cartridge belt jerks and gets sucked through the chamber in seconds as he pours fire at the enemy. Expended cases pile up by the ejection port on the right-hand side with a metallic tinkling as he hoses down the trenchline.
‘Get some!’ he yells and then slaps a new belt in to give them another hundred.
Stein is up and screaming at the men.
Matt’s ears are ringing and he can’t hear what he is saying. He shoves himself up onto his knees and then runs forward over the edge.
Jason jumps up and with twenty other men of 2 Platoon they follow Stein and Sergeant Hooper in a race for their lives.
Stein leads the charge.
He sprints through the swirling purple smoke bent double with his rifle and bayonet out in front of him. He feels the heavy covering fire from the machine guns snapping through the air just over his head.
The men of 2 Platoon burst out of the smoke and they still have hundreds of metres of open ground to cover. They move like racing snakes, weaving and ducking, not stopping to fire but relying on the rest of the company to keep them alive.
Stein looks ahead and can see that one of the AA guns has been hit by a rocket and is lying on its side, smoke and dust from the strikes still swirling over the position. His legs are pumping and his lungs are bursting.
Enemy soldiers stick their heads up over the trenches and rifle shots chatter out. He feels bullets cracking past his face.
Close now, close enough.
&n
bsp; He throws himself down on the ground, pulls a grenade out of his webbing, rips the pin out with his teeth and lets the lever ping off. The fuse is fizzing in his hand.
One second, two seconds. He glances ahead and carefully lobs it forward.
He watches the green ball sail up into the air and drop down neatly into the trench. There is a shout of fear and then a flat crack and a burst of red dust.
Other men drop to the ground around him and post their grenades.
He waits for the cracks and then he’s up and screaming, ‘Let’s go!’
He has a mad magnetism and the men all jump up and charge forward to the trench line. They stand on the lip and shoot the survivors.
A communication trench runs back away from the front line. They’re still taking fire so Stein jumps down into the forward trench and Jason follows him. The trench turns ninety degrees. They pause and post a grenade round the corner.
The blast covers them with dust and Stein sticks his head round and gives it full auto with his rifle and then charges forward screaming. The pair run on and the trench system widens out into an area packed with retreating enemy soldiers who can’t get out of the trench because of the maelstrom of fire over their heads. They turn and look back in terror as Stein runs screaming into them.
He fires and his rifle clicks empty. He runs at them and plunges his bayonet into the nearest man’s chest. Maddened with bloodlust, he twists and pulls it out again, stabbing right with his bayonet and then smashing left with the butt into a man’s face.
Jason comes in behind him and shoots a man before he too clicks dry. He follows Stein into the mêlée with the wicked bright steel of his bayonet.
The two of them go at the enemy like savages, stabbing and yelling.
Alex stands and watches through his binoculars as the attack goes in. Jean-Baptiste and Zacheus do likewise next to him.
He sees the men scamper forward over the open ground, ducking and weaving.
‘Come on lads, come on lads!’
One twists and goes down.
‘Merde!’
Alex can see a large figure at the front. ‘That’s Stein! Look at him go!’
Puffs of dust from the grenades pop up out of the trenches and a second later the distant cracks drift back to them.
‘That’s it! They’re in! Yes!’ Alex clenches his fist in triumph.
Fantastic, they’re out of the shit!
They watch the rest of 2 Platoon close up and secure the trench system and the AA guns.
‘Jesus Christ …’ Jean-Baptiste takes his binoculars away from his face and rubs his eyes.
Alex nods and they share a look.
They both know it was a bloody close thing.
Col runs up, the front of his combat smock and webbing covered in blood. ‘Jensen is …’ He makes a cutting gesture across his throat.
Alex nods; right now he is too busy to do more. The assault is only just starting; they have got a lot more business to attend to. He needs to follow up the rocket strike on the headquarters in the valley and make sure he exploits this opportunity to deliver a crushing blow to the FDLR.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘He’s so sweet.’ Eve lets the fat baby boy get hold of her finger and stick it in his mouth. She is in the gardens of the grounds of Panzi hospital in Bukavu, sitting in the shade of a tree with Miriam and Adele, the boy’s mother.
Paul, the boy, is a rape child and Adele has been in Panzi for six months now being cared for as she has the baby and her operation. She grins at him and he lies on his back and gurgles, lets go of Eve’s finger, grabs his foot and sticks his big toe in his mouth.
‘He’s so fat,’ says Miriam approvingly.
‘Yes, maybe they’ll accept him when I go home?’ says Adele hopefully. Rape children are usually viewed as evil in the villages and cast out.
Eve looks at him and wonders about her lost baby. She hasn’t been able to think about her for months; her mind has simply shut down on the subject. Maybe it’s a good sign that I can think about her again?
‘Do you want kids?’ Miriam asks Eve.
‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘Well, hopefully when down there is fixed and I can go back soon to see my family. I miss them so, so much.’
She had the operation a week ago and the flow of urine dripping out of the catheter has slowed to almost nothing. Dr Bangana says he will take it out tonight and see if the sutures hold. The problem is that as the bladder heals and retains urine, the pressure on it builds up.
In their prayer sessions in the hospital’s Pentecostal church, Eve has been praying that it will heal. Her money has all gone on the operation and she can’t even afford the small amount charged for her board and lodging. It will be back to the life of a miserable outcast in the refugee camp if it doesn’t work.
The women play with the baby and then Eve goes off to her bookkeeping class. She is enjoying the course and picking up the skills quickly; she is a very tidy-minded girl.
That night she wakes up in the hospital ward and her hand darts down between her legs. She gives a sob of pain. She is soaked in urine again.
Alex crosses over to the edge of the ridge and looks down at the mortar crew, who are still trying to dig in.
‘Right, lads, you can stop mucking about down there. Get up here, dig in and give it some welly.’
He and the rest of Tac then spend a few minutes surveying the valley. Zacheus and his Unit 17 men stand at a distance, their job now over.
Alex checks the Tac laptop displaying the images being beamed down from the Heron and Ranger drones overhead.
After that he’s on the radio to the remaining choppers. ‘Demon 7, Demon 8 and Demon 9, this is Black Hal, you are cleared to land at LZ Sidon.’
‘Beyoncé and Shakira, good shooting. I want you to cover second wave landing at Sidon.’
Now that they have a toehold on the ridge it has become their friend and not their enemy. They can get the mortars set up and fire on the enemy down the length of the valley, like shooting fish in a barrel.
Jean-Baptiste has already gone off with Echo Company along the ridge to attack the remaining two AA gun positions.
The battle has only just started though. Alex knows that he needs to get the first wave of five Demons back to base, re fuelled and loaded with the second half of Bravo Company and half of Foxtrot. He can then get all of Bravo into the valley to sweep the enemy down it whilst Foxtrot is inserted just over the bridge at the bottom of the valley as a blocker detachment to crush the enemy between the two of them. He’ll bring Alpha Company forward as well, put their mortars and machine guns on the ridge to act as a Fire Support Group and their rifles into the valley, as soon as the choppers are free.
This has to be a decisive victory. He knows that any enemy troops that escape will disperse into the bush and start murdering civilians; it’s the FDLR’s standard response to any attacks on it and has been very successful in preventing UN forces from attacking them.
He also wants to get into the enemy headquarters area as soon as possible and search it for information before anyone left alive down there can remove it. He needs the intelligence immediately to set up the next wave of strikes on the FDLR in order to keep them on the back foot. Mordechai Eisenberg’s team, Unit 17 and the Rwandan intelligence officers are all fired up at Camp Purgatory ready to translate and process the information.
He looks up from an aerial photo of the valley and sees a group of soldiers approaching his command post. There are three enemy prisoners being escorted by four soldiers. The enemy troops look in poor shape after the assault; there’s two boys carrying an older man between them. One of the boys has his shirt off and blood-soaked bandages wrapped around his chest. The other has a huge swelling on one side of his face that has closed his right eye.
The older man carried between them has a patchy beard and his trousers have been cut down to shorts in order to bandage up grenade splinters in his legs.
Col and the rest of Tac gather
round behind Alex to look at them. The lead soldier salutes him and says in a heavy South London accent, ‘Major Delacroix sends three prisoners from the assault, sir. Twenty-three dead and a few legged it. We got these ones though.’
Alex looks at him. The soldier has taken off his helmet and his hair is slicked flat with sweat, the front of his combat jacket soaked in drying blood and mud. He checks the name-tape written in black indelible ink on his chest, ‘Thank you very much, Volunteer Hall, very good of him. I see you bashed this lot about a bit.’ He is grinning broadly.
Jason grins back with pleasure. ‘Yeah, me and Corporal Stein sir, ’e’s a bloody legend, sir. Really got stuck in ’n’ smacked ’em about like. I copped this lad round the ’ed wiv me rifle butt, went down like that.’
Jason is a good storyteller. Alex and the rest of Tac roar with laughter, letting off steam after the hideous tension of the landings.
Joseph is shaking with fear as the men gather round and look at him. He knows what happens to prisoners of war, he’s seen these groups of men laughing and then beating prisoners to death. He flinches as the tall officer peers at his face. He has no idea who these strange soldiers are.
‘Right, let’s see what they know, we need some int on the HQ. Cuff them and let’s split them up. I’ll interrogate this lad. Col, you take this old chap.’ He looks round and allocates another French speaker in Tac to the other boy.
They’ll make use of the shock of capture to extract information through tactical questioning. Joseph starts shaking as his wrists are cuffed tight in front of him with black plastic zip ties.
‘Bring him over here.’ Alex pulls his large-scale aerial photo of the valley out of his combat jacket front and walks away.
Joseph squeals with fear and Jason shoves him forward with his rifle. Alex makes him sit down on the ground and lays the aerial photos in front of him. The kid is clearly in shock so he takes it slowly. ‘We are here.’ He points to the position and makes sure the kid understands.
‘Where is headquarters?’
