by James Steel
Rukuba looks absolutely exhausted and rubs his eyes. He’s wearing a blue shellsuit and is distracted by his weariness.
‘Hmm, it was good. We got what we wanted, heh?’ He peers at Alex sitting next to him on a white plastic chair. Zacheus and Gabriel hover in the background on the veranda of the house but otherwise they are alone.
Alex nods and rubs his face; Rukuba’s exhaustion is bringing out his own. ‘Yes, I can’t believe we have finally got here. God, I’m shattered, I think I need to take a day off, I can’t even see straight sometimes.’ He squints at the view.
Rukuba follows his gaze and then laughs. ‘Yes, that’s the problem with Kivu when you’re tired, everything gets blurred after a while and one hill does begin to look like another. How did you think it went?’
‘Good overall, considering. I mean, obviously the liberal press hate us intrinsically for being Chinese-backed mercenaries but as long as the deal brings peace then they seem to be prepared to hold off from damning us completely. Although did you see this?’
He pulls a printout of the front page of that morning’s New York Times website and shows it to Rukuba who scans it, muttering as he goes. ‘“Kivu experiment brings peace but bodes ill for the future … Rukuba unknown entity … use of white mercenary thugs not to be encouraged.”’ He glances across at Alex who shrugs. ‘“Rumours of war crimes”?’ He glances up with more concern.
‘I think they must mean the battle of Lubonga valley but that was collateral damage. I don’t know how they picked up on it if that is what they mean.’
Rukuba looks into the distance, thinking. ‘You’re right, as soon as the area was safe enough to go back to, I had KPP workers dump the remains into the river after they were burnt – on health grounds it was the only thing we could do. The press couldn’t have got there ahead of them.’
Alex nods. The memory of the burning field of the dead still haunts him but he has got used to pushing it aside. He has rehearsed the collateral damage defence of his actions so many times in his head that he now doesn’t acknowledge of any other view.
He moves on, nodding towards the article. ‘I thought Ciacola went a bit heavy.’
Rukuba scans down a bit. ‘“The United States and United Nations expect a democratic outcome from the national consultation exercise and will be minded to act if it doesn’t happen.”’
Alex asks hesitantly, ‘How’s the plan for the consultation going?’
‘Hmm?’
‘The national consultation exercise on democratic government or …’ he pauses and tries to think of a neutral phrase ‘…other sorts.’
‘Oh, well, I think we need to recover from the conference first and get the militias disarmed before I start on that. I am taking soundings at the moment through KPP and Unit 17 but I need to get the people of Kivu to take some pride in themselves first. I want to build up Kivuan nationalism, to get my people off their knees and thinking about us as a success story.’
He puts down the papers and suddenly swings round on the hammock so that he is facing Alex. ‘There is so much we have to do. I have to name my cabinet, sort out the infrastructure projects and I have many great plans for my country, Alex. I will launch a competition to write our new national anthem and I will perform it on stage, Fang is building me a new stadium here. We will have a national football league and the final will be in a great new stadium in Goma.’
Alex just listens, slightly overwhelmed by Rukuba’s burst of enthusiasm. He lets him rant on for a while and then asks cautiously, ‘And what about the KDF contracts, have you thought any more about that? Fang was telling me he wants us kept on longer than August. I think we need to stay in order to stabilise the country, otherwise you’ll be dependent on the old government troops and they aren’t up to much. It’s 8th June now and I’ll need to start talking to the guys or recruiting new people soon if we want to make it happen.’
Rukuba looks irritated and grunts. ‘Well, Fang has his own ideas. I think Kivu needs to stand on its own two feet.’
‘Well, look, I need a decision from you, Fang is pushing me …’
‘Look, I will make my decision in my own time!’ Rukuba flashes a look of anger at Alex who bows his head and nods.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The two helicopters wind up their engines on the new concrete landing pads and Col has to raise his voice to Sophie as she comes over to him. ‘Here’s a flak jacket and helmet, ma’am.’
‘Thanks.’ She takes them but doesn’t put them on. It’s her first trip out on a mission with the KDF but she wants to make the point that she is not part of the military. She’s in her jeans and tee shirt as ever and apart from that is relying on her day-glo Hope Street waistcoat to distinguish her from the troops.
It’s 14th June and she has been living in Camp Heaven for a month now in a wooden bungalow hastily built by the Chinese work gangs. A little group of houses has been made in a separate area in the base for the teams of NGO workers that are helping with the demilitarisation process of the militias. The Red Cross and other UN humanitarian agencies are coordinating with First Regiment as the military campaign moves over into policing work.
Alex hurries over to them carrying his flak jacket, helmet and rifle, bent down under the growing rotor wash. Although the mission is simply to go and talk to a village chief with links to a mai-mai militia he isn’t taking any chances.
He pulls a map out of his flak jacket front pocket and talks to Sophie. ‘Right, the village is called Violo. It’s ninety miles west out into the bush in the Biasi river valley, so it’s beyond the range of any of our artillery firebases.’
A mai-mai militia group that has agreed to disarm at the peace conference controls the long forested valley. Now Alex needs to start working out the mechanics of actually implementing the disarmament process. Getting the men with guns to give them up after so many years of violence is a tricky process. A connection through Unit 17’s intelligence network has found a local village chief who is willing to act as an intermediary between the KDF and the militia.
Although it is risky going out there, this is exactly the sort of first-hand contact that Alex is desperate to get in order to gauge the mood on the ground and work out a process for other handovers. He can only tell so much from sitting in his ops tent listening to intelligence briefs from Mordechai and Unit 17 people.
Sophie is coming with them to discuss arrangements for reintegrating the mai-mai troops into society. She has been hard at work for the last month getting the project going in Camp Heaven. Although she is wary of the military and wouldn’t admit it, she is actually interested to be going off on a mission, having been watching the helicopters coming in and out for weeks.
Jean-Baptiste joins them, and after shouted introductions he points to the two chalks of soldiers drawn up next to the pads and nods to Alex. ‘OK, let’s load up.’
Jason and Sean scuttle forward and board the dark green Mi-17, Sean clutching his PKM machine gun. As they pass the colonel they glance at the tall girl with the NGO waistcoat and, once past, Jason winks at Sean.
Alex, Col, Sophie, Jean-Baptiste and the rest of Tac cram into the back of the aircraft, the ramp closes over half the view and the rear gunner loads a fresh belt into his machine gun and settles himself into position next to Sophie. She edges away from him. Because of the risk of the area they are going in with two platoons from Echo Company, totalling forty-five soldiers, and a mortar team as well.
The aircraft sways airborne and heads off west over the mountains fringing the lake. She peers over the edge of the ramp as the upland pastures begin to give way to rugged tree covered hills. What would have taken well over a day by road takes them a mere twenty-five minutes by air.
Alex squeezes up to the front of the aircraft and talks on the radio to a KPP worker in the village in French to guide them into it. They fly over a steep-sided valley with lines of fields and meadows cut out along the banks of the river in the bottom of it.
A purple s
moke flare guides them in and the two big choppers slow and thump down on a meadow.
‘Let’s go!’ shouts Sergeant Matt Hooper and the men are out and on their belt buckles, forming a perimeter and scanning the village and the hillsides for threats. The helicopters are airborne straightaway, hauling themselves back over the ridges out of the line of any fire.
No threats emerge from the trees around the edge of the village so the troops form up and Tac advances with them to the edge of it. The local headman walks out with a group of elders and Alex and Sophie and Tac settle down to the meeting in the shade of a large tree on the riverbank. Jean-Baptiste deploys both platoons of men in a defensive screen in case of any trouble.
The village headman is called Malike Kasongo. He is old with wiry white hair sticking up around his head like a ragged cloud and wears a tatty suit jacket and stained jeans. At one stage in Congo’s many wars he was shot through the mouth as punishment for speaking out against a militia. The bullet smashed out his teeth and made a hole through both cheeks. No one had the plastic surgery skills to mend it, so his voice has a whistling sound.
He sits on the seat of honour, a roughly made three-legged stool, the wood old and stained brown with wear. A cluster of ten old men from the village sit around him on the grass in a semicircle and a gaggle of curious children stand at the edge of the village gawping at the new arrivals.
Alex sits and exchanges ritual pleasantries with the chief about his family’s health and thanks him for allowing them to come into the area to see him. Sophie then presents gifts of three boxes of Ugandan Supermatch cigarettes and they wait while tea is brewed in a battered metal kettle. The strong brew is sweetened with local cane sugar that leaves a sticky residue on their teeth as they sip it and offer thanks.
The chief has to drink in sips, carefully holding the liquid in the front of his mouth and then knocking his head back. He passes the cigarettes round the group. Alex and Sophie politely refuse and the village elders all lick the side of their cigarettes to slow the burn rate and savour the flavour.
Alex feels very humbled to see the poverty of the area, the grey, malnourished faces of the people and how, despite all the years of suffering engraved on his face, the old man has preserved his decency and generosity.
He begins the discussion in French and they talk about arrangements for disarming the mai-mai group in the valley. ‘They are just here to protect us,’ says the old man. ‘We don’t mind them, they are our tribe. And no one else will protect us.’
The discussion continues and the sun rises up to midday, washing out the bright green of the foliage on the forested valley sides to a muted grey-green. All shadows disappear as it moves directly overhead.
After they agree an outline plan for handing over weapons, Sophie is curious to know more. ‘What do you think will happen next in Kivu? Do you want a democracy here?’
The old men squatting on the ground grumble and the chief puffs air out through his cheeks. ‘What’s the point of an election? The government will just steal it. What good did democracy ever do us? I can’t eat votes!’ He gestures as if he were putting food in his ruined mouth.
‘We don’t want a democracy, we want a Kagame!’ He jabs a finger east towards Rwanda’s strongman ruler. ‘We just want someone to come in and sort out this mess! We don’t want to have a local militia, we just want peace!’ There are furious nods of agreement from the circle of men.
Alex and Sophie exchange a quick look.
The discussion moves on and Alex tries out another new idea. ‘I’d like to leave a satellite phone and some solar batteries with you so that you can call us if there is a security problem in the area and we can scramble a helicopter to come and sort it out. Or you can report any intelligence. Would that be acceptable?’
The chief discusses it with the elders in their local tribal language for a while and there are nods and shrugs.
‘Yes, that would be acceptable.’
He receives the bulky satphone with a confused look and Sophie explains how to dial the stored numbers in it. It is a strategy that they have been working on as part of the demilitarisation process.
The meeting is beginning to come to an end when Jean-Baptiste slips in next to Alex and whispers something in his ear.
‘Excuse me,’ Alex says and ducks out of the circle to look at the laptop that Jean-Baptiste has brought with him. It shows an image from the small tactical drone they brought with them in the helicopter as it circles the valley scanning the forest with an infrared eye.
‘There are groups advancing from upstream and from downstream on both sides of the valley, about fifty men in each of the four groups.’
Alex looks at the ghostly white forms with rifles and RPG launchers that he can see running through the woods. Two hundred enemy soldiers.
‘How long till they are here?’
‘Five minutes.’
‘Do we know if they are mai-mai?’
Jean-Baptiste shrugs.
Alex looks away from the screen and his practiced eyes quickly scan up and down the valley assessing the tactical situation. The sides are steep and hard to climb; they are caught in a trap with forty-five soldiers against two hundred. They can’t get the choppers in to extract them with that number of weapons in the trees either side of the valley.
‘Right, I’ll check with the chief that it isn’t the local mai-mai but I think we are going to have to stand and fight and then work out how we can extract ourselves. Pull the men back in from the screen and get them up on that bluff there.’ He points to a spur of high ground sticking out into the main valley between two small streams.
‘We can’t get stuck down in here in the valley being shot at from both sides. Get the mortars dug in and we’ll ambush them as they come across the streams on either side of that bluff.’
He pauses and looks at the blurry black and white images as the drone tracks the incoming soldiers. ‘What the hell has that guy got on his head? It looks like horns …’
Alex needs to be sure that the approaching soldiers are hostiles before he engages them. He doesn’t want a friendly fire incident on the mai-mai just when he is trying to disarm them.
He takes the laptop back over to the chief in the gathering and shows him the image of the horned man running through the bush.
‘Are these mai-mai troops?’
‘No, they’re all down the valley, I was there yesterday.’ He peers at the image, ‘A man with horns?’ he says. ‘That’s the Kudu Noir.’
There is an outburst of muttering from the men around him.
‘You must go.’ The chief stands and picks up his stool and leaves quickly. The group disperses and the people hide in their huts in the village.
Sophie looks at Alex. ‘What’s happening?’
‘We’ve got Kudu Noir forces approaching from up and down the valley. I think you might want to put that on.’ He jerks his head towards her flak jacket and helmet on the ground as he scoops up his own and begins buckling them on with well-practised speed.
‘Right, let’s get up that hill!’ Alex’s voice has the crack of command in it that Sophie hasn’t heard before as he points to the west side of the valley.
Jean-Baptiste is shouting at his troops, pulling them back in, and she sees men running across the fields towards the cover of the trees on the spur of high ground. They run after them and race up through the trees onto the bluff. She’s properly scared now but there is a reassuring sense of purpose about the men’s actions as an experienced war machine gears up.
Jean-Baptiste bellows, ‘De Waal! I want the mortars dug in here!
Alex calls Tac together for a quick briefing. ‘S’arnt Major Thwaites take One Platoon on the north side of the bluff, Sergeant Hooper take Two Platoon south, ambush the enemy as they cross the streams.’
Tac set up in a dip in the ground on the top of the bluff and the four men of Alex’s close protection team get their entrenching tools out and start digging in like demons. Banks of earth b
egin to line the top of the dip and Sophie tries to keep out of the way.
Alex nestles into the side of it with his signaller next to him and gets on the radio. ‘Heaven, this is Black Hal, request you scramble Shakira and two Mi-17s for extraction operation at Violo.’ He reads out their grid reference. ‘We are threatened by enemy infantry force, two groups of fifty men, one to north and one to south on both sides of the valley.’
‘Roger that, Black Hal, will scramble Shakira and two Mi-17s. Advise will be approximately fifty minutes including flight time, Shakira has just returned from a contact and is bombing up.’
‘Roger that, Heaven, ETA fifty minutes. Warn the crews the LZ will be hot. Repeat, LZ will be hot.’
Fifty minutes to fight to stay alive before they have any hope of extraction. A lot can happen in one minute on the battlefield.
Alex looks grim and glances around at the tall trees overhead. No breaks in them to allow a landing zone for a helicopter to get in so they will have to extract from the fields in the valley which will leave the choppers vulnerable to enemy fire. He’s got to neutralise the enemy before they can land.
The men around him have fallen silent as they wait for the attackers to approach. Alex whispers instructions to a circle of his commanders crouched around him in the dip. ‘Major Delacroix, take the drone laptop and direct mortar fire. The enemy will be too close to us to use it on this side of the valley but I want the fire over the other side to keep that group pinned down and stop them crossing the river.
‘Corporal Baker, get ready to talk Shakira onto the target. We’ll try and destroy them on this side in the trees but we’ll need the gunship for across the valley.’ Corporal Baker, the Forward Air Controller, nods and begins pulling out his map case and checking his GPS for grid references.
‘Medics, I want the RAP set up over there.’ The two men move off and unpack their rucksacks and set up the Regimental Aid Post in a sheltered area between the huge buttress roots of a tree.
