Ivory Nation

by Andy Maslen

  For the next twenty-five minutes, Phefo acted as combination tour guide and acclimatisation specialist. Finishing a story about where to get the best barbecue chicken in G-City, he turned onto a red clay back road. Even with the Merc’s superior suspension, the ruts and potholes made their presence felt.

  After a couple of juddering miles, he rolled to a stop in front of a pair of tall steel gates, topped with razor wire. More wire stretched left and right, before disappearing into the trees. A sheet metal sign bolted to the bars read:

  KAGISO GROUP

  PRIVATE PROPERTY

  NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT

  ID OR AUTHORISATION

  Another read:

  !WARNING!

  !LIVE FIRING EXERCISES AT ALL TIMES!

  !DANGER OF DEATH!

  Phefo punched a code into a stainless-steel box mounted on a post to the right of the gates. With a clank from their well-greased hinges, the gates slid open on runners set flush with the red earth.

  Gabriel rolled his window down. Hot air gusted into the car’s cool interior. He listened carefully and, yes, there it was. The distant but unmistakeable sound of small arms fire. His heart thrilled to it and his right index finger twitched involuntarily.

  Ever since leaving the SAS, he’d had occasional invitations to join outfits like Kagiso Group. Either directly from their owners, always ex-military men, or indirectly, from former comrades or ex-soldiers tapping into veterans’ networks.

  He’d always said no. Partly because his job for The Department kept him occupied. Partly because some of the private security firms weren’t too choosy about their clients.

  Brutal dictator putting down an uprising with government troops and mercenaries? Of course, Sir! Yours for a cool couple of million. Unscrupulous energy firm suppressing local protests at chemical spills? We have the men, the muscle and the motivation. Sign here.

  But here he was, about to accept logistical support from one of those self-same operations. Yes. To find the killers of a bunch of Paras. My conscience is clear. On this one, at least.

  The car pulled up in the centre of a tramped-flat red earth square. A white-painted single-storey building occupied the whole of one side. Its double glass doors and etched Kagiso Group logo – an eagle clutching a rifle in its talons – suggested this was the HQ. On the adjacent sides, more white buildings, some with windows, some blank-walled: stores or training rooms, Gabriel guessed.

  The fourth side was empty. The red track they’d arrived on stretched away through the bush.

  Gabriel and Eli climbed out of the car and accepted their daysacks from Phefo, who’d gone straight to the boot. They both stuck bush hats on and donned sunglasses.

  ‘Greetings!’ a male voice shouted. ‘Welcome to Mokolondi.’

  Gabriel and Eli turned. A tall, thickset white man was striding towards them, hand outstretched. No hat, just a sun-browned scalp bisected by a jagged silver scar from crown to forehead. Deep fissures in his cheeks and radiating from the outer corners of his eyes gave his complexion the look of a dried-out river-bed. He wore camouflage fatigues and sand-coloured combat boots, laced to mid-calf.

  ‘George Taylor, at your service,’ he boomed as he arrived, and grasped first Gabriel’s hand then Eli’s. ‘Late of Hammersmith, London, and the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. Now a proud resident of Mageba and CEO of Kagiso Group. Means “peace” in Tsetswana, by the way.’

  Gabriel and Eli each shook his hand and introduced themselves.

  ‘Do you live out here?’ Eli asked.

  ‘Part of the time, dear lady, yes,’ Taylor said. ‘Home’s a delightful little villa on Nelson Mandela Drive. Come on, you must be thirsty after the drive.’

  He led them over to the building bearing the Kagiso Group logo. As Gabriel had guessed, it was the HQ, complete with receptionists, a waiting area, an IT suite, and a variety of conference rooms.

  ‘Impressive,’ he said, as Taylor showed them each function housed within the building, from telecoms and briefing rooms to lecture hall and guest rooms.

  ‘Thanks. We like to think so. We get heads of state, generals, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies coming through here. It projects an air of competence. Reassures them their dollars are going to be well spent.’

  ‘How many men do you have under your command?’ Eli asked.

  ‘In total, nine hundred. We have deployments that could call for anywhere from a team of four to a couple of hundred. Right now, we’ve got three hundred and seventy-five on call. The rest are in the field.’

  ‘All based in Botswana?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘No. We have twenty here right now. The rest are based at other locations. But this is our African operational base. As I’m sure you can imagine, most of our work is somewhere on this wonderful continent.’

  He took them out to the back of the building. A sweeping deck looked out across the countryside. Wicker chairs and a glass-topped table sat beneath a huge triangular canvas sail strung on galvanised steel poles.

  They sat, and a minute or two later, a woman appeared, dressed in a traditional black-and-white maid’s uniform, complete with frilled apron and cap. She set down a tray of frosted mugs of beer.

  Taylor beamed up at her.

  ‘Thanks, Mary. Can you tell chef we’ll have lunch at one, please?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Taylor,’ she said with a smile, before leaving them to enjoy the cold beer and unbroken view of trees and scrub that stretched to the horizon.

  ‘Cheers!’ Taylor said loudly before downing half of his beer.

  ‘Cheers!’ Gabriel and Eli said in unison.

  ‘How did you meet John?’ Taylor asked.

  ‘Didn’t he tell you?’ Gabriel replied.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

  Gabriel frowned. ‘We met at the funeral of one of the lads who were massacred. Guy called Steve Wallingham.’

  Taylor smiled, seemingly satisfied.

  ‘Sorry. Just doing my due diligence. I like to know who I’m dealing with. And you’re ex-regiment, is that right?’

  ‘Eight years. I was badged in in 2005 and I left in 2012.’

  ‘How about before that?’

  ‘Paras.’

  ‘Ever see action in Africa?’

  Gabriel nodded.

  ‘I was part of Operation Barras. September 2000 in Sierra Leone. We supported the SAS against the West Side Boys. You ever hear of them?’

  ‘Nasty bunch,’ Taylor grunted, taking another pull on his beer.

  ‘They’d taken British hostages,’ Gabriel said. ‘We recovered the hostages and some British army trucks and blew the West Side Boys’ heavy weapons to shit.’

  Taylor turned to Eli.

  ‘How about you, Eli? You must have something special about you if you ended up out here,’ he said, sweeping his free arm in a wide semi-circle.

  ‘IDF then the Mossad. Now I work with Gabriel in a government role.’

  Taylor gave a low, appreciative whistle.

  ‘Mossad, eh? Kidon?’

  He was referring to the secretive unit within the Mossad responsible for targeted assassinations of Israel’s enemies. Those recruited to join the “tip of the spear” were drawn exclusively from Israeli Special Forces.

  Eli smiled.

  ‘If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.’

  Taylor stared at her for a couple of seconds, then laughed loudly, startling a pair of grey-and-turquoise parrots that had perched on the edge of the sail canopy.

  ‘I believe you would, too,’ he said, finally, wiping his eyes with a spotless white handkerchief. ‘Although whether you’d get out of Bots in one piece is another matter.’

  She inclined her head.

  ‘I think I’d manage.’

  After a little more banter, Taylor straightened in his chair and slapped his hands down on his knees.

  ‘You didn’t come all this way just to swap war stories,’ he said. ‘Do you want to follow me? We’ll go and meet Frank.’

  ‘Frank?�
�� Eli asked.

  ‘Onagweyo. Our quartermaster.’

  They walked together along a track for a hundred yards until they reached a white-painted blockhouse, roughly sixty yards to a side. Recent rains had splashed red mud up against the first foot of the walls, giving them the look of bloodstained plaster.

  Inch-thick steels bars striped the windows, which were backed with a reflective film, preventing anyone from seeing in. A steel plate reinforced the door and the lock looked serious enough to withstand anything less powerful than a thermic lance.

  Taylor smiled.

  ‘Welcome to Toyland,’ he said, as he entered a code into the stainless-steel box mounted on the wall.

  15

  Once inside, Gabriel and Eli nodded with the respect of professional soldiers. Beyond a plain grey steel front desk, they could see sturdy drilled-metal racks of equipment. Uniforms, Bergens, boots, canteens, zipped battlefield first aid kits, olive-green steel boxes, fat, camouflaged sausages that looked like tents – all the enterprising paramilitary team would need to do anything from protecting a goldmine to staging a small military coup.

  Taylor called out.

  ‘Frank?’

  A tall, solidly-built black man in sand-coloured fatigues rounded a corner and smiled when he saw them. He came hurrying over and shook hands with Eli and Gabriel.

  ‘Frank, I want you to meet Gabriel and Eli. They’ve come over from England to investigate those murders over in Kgalagadi,’ Taylor said.

  ‘Bad business,’ Frank said, shaking his bald head. ‘You going to find the bastards who did it?’

  ‘We hope so,’ Gabriel said. ‘That accent. Are you from South London?’

  Frank’s eyes widened.

  ‘I am, as it happens. Brockley. Don’t normally get officer-class types with that sort of ear for accents, ’specially ones from my neck of the woods.’

  Gabriel smiled.

  ‘I had a friend who came from Peckham.’

  Frank nodded, as if that were all the explanation he needed or wanted. He half-turned and extended an arm.

  ‘Welcome to my little empire,’ he said. ‘Want the tour?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Eli said.

  ‘I’ll leave you in Frank’s capable hands,’ Taylor said. ‘Come and find me once you’ve finished up here.’

  Frank led them down the central aisle, pointing out different items like a proud department store manager aiming to impress important customers.

  Gabriel inhaled and smiled as his brain processed the universal aroma of military kit: grease, gun oil, cold steel and brass and musty canvas.

  ‘Nice, isn’t it?’ Frank said, catching sight of Gabriel’s half-closed eyes.

  ‘Wonderful. Did you serve with George then?’

  ‘Ten years. Best bloody battlefield commander I ever saw. Never asked us to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.’

  ‘The mark of a good leader,’ Eli said.

  Frank nodded.

  ‘One time, just outside Kandahar? We’re closing in on a Taliban machine gun nest. They’d had us pinned down for six hours, so Major Taylor says, “Right, lads, I’ve had enough of this. We’re going to wait till nightfall, then go up there and annihilate the fuckers.”

  ‘We waited till it got dark, then we made our move. It was all going to plan, then they hit us with a searchlight. They lit us up and only me and Major Taylor survived. Our machine gunner, Dicky Salmon, got his head shot off. Major Taylor grabbed his GPMG, and him and me ran on.

  ‘I chucked a grenade towards their position and Major Taylor, he got the GPMG on his hip and opened up. I arrived a few seconds after him and started feeding the belt to stop it jamming, you know?

  ‘We killed them all. Four with the GPMG, then when we ran through the first belt, him and me, Major Taylor I mean, we went for it. The major, he used to go into battle with this tomahawk. He won it in a bet with a US Marine Corps gunnery sergeant. He did two of them with it. Split their heads open like fucking melons. Then we—’

  Frank stopped mid-sentence. He frowned, and scratched his bald dome. Gabriel saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down in his throat, picked up on the increased muscle tone in his facial muscles, caught the minute flicker of his eyes.

  ‘You OK, Frank?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine. Sorry, you shouldn’t get me started on old war stories.’ He inhaled. ‘Right. What say we go and look at the real toys?’

  He led them to a section of the building protected by a further set of locked steel-reinforced doors. Beyond lay the heart of the armoury: the firearms.

  Racks of assault rifles: a United Nations of models. Russian AK-47s with their antiquated wooden stocks and fore-ends, and more modern guns, from American M4s to British SA80s and German G3Ks.

  Beyond the assault rifles, submachine guns and compact carbines more suited to firing from within vehicles or in confined combat situations.

  Finally Frank pointed to rows of pistols and knives.

  ‘Take your pick,’ he said, simply.

  For Gabriel, the rifle was a simple decision. If he’d had backup from a battalion armourer, or a supply line, the SA80 would be his choice any day of the week, in any situation. But he didn’t know how long he and Eli would be in the bush, alone, with only their personal weapons and limited ability to clear jams.

  ‘I’ll take an AK with a folding stock,’ he said.

  ‘Good choice,’ Frank said, lifting down one of the gleaming rifles, fitted with a telescopic sight. ‘Old as the hills and just as reliable. Drive a tank over one of these and you’d still be able to shoot it.’

  ‘No IWI ACEs?’ Eli asked.

  Gabriel smiled. Eli was loyal as always, to products of Israel Weapon Industries.

  ‘Sorry, no. It was based on the AK originally, you know that?’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m an IWI fangirl. OK, I guess I’ll have an AK too.’

  ‘Smart. You can share magazines that way. We use mags from the AK-103.’

  ‘What’s the ammunition load?’

  ‘You get three hundred and ninety rounds in thirteen mags. The most you can get with a twenty-two-pound carry weight.’

  ‘We’ll have more in the truck, yes?’

  Frank nodded. Then ducked under the racking and came out with two leather scabbards. He drew the blade from one, a fifteen-inch, spear-pointed bayonet with a blood-channel grooved along each side.

  ‘For when the rounds run out,’ he said.

  Gabriel and Eli nodded silently. They’d both been in contacts that outlasted the ammunition. Then, fire fights turned into knife fights, fist fights or whatever-you-can-lay-your-hands-on fights.

  They spent another ten minutes selecting pistols – a SIG Sauer P226 for Gabriel and a Glock 17 for Eli – plus rucksacks, a tent and sundry survival equipment, and they were done.

  As they were leaving, Gabriel drew Frank to one side. He called out to Eli, ‘Go ahead and find Taylor. I won’t be long.’

  Once the door had closed on silent hinges behind Eli, Gabriel turned to Frank.

  ‘Earlier, when you were telling us about you and Major Taylor taking out the machine gun nest, you stopped.’

  Frank ran a hand over his shining scalp.

  ‘Yeah, I was running off at the mouth with me old war stories. I mean, we’ve all got ’em, right?’

  ‘We do. Look, please don’t take this the wrong way, but are you OK?’

  Frank’s brow crinkled.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Was he about to step into a minefield and risk upsetting the armourer? Gabriel ploughed on.

  ‘I mean, in your head. Listen,’ he continued, holding up a hand as Frank’s mouth opened, ‘I left the army after my last mission went badly wrong. That guy I mentioned, the one with the same accent as you? He was killed. We had to leave him behind. I struggled with PTSD for years afterwards. I’m still not out of the tunnel. I’m just saying, if you needed someone to talk to…’

  He left the words hanging in
the air between them like gun smoke drifting across a battlefield.

  ‘You got all that from me tailing off mid-story?’ Frank asked after a long pause.

  Gabriel shrugged.

  ‘You get to recognise the signs.’

  ‘PTSD,’ Frank said.

  ‘Yes. I still see a shrink from time to time. I do yoga, all kinds of weird shit to keep myself sane.’

  Frank’s shoulders, which Gabriel had watched creep towards his ears as they were talking, suddenly dropped. He sighed out a breath and ran a hand over his skull again.

  ‘Lot of my mates are suffering. You know, back home. Couple topped themselves. Divorced. Drinking problems, nightmares, anger issues, all of it.’

  ‘Are you? Suffering, I mean?’

  Frank blew out a whistling breath through narrowed lips. He shook his head.

  ‘I was. Drink, mainly. But other stuff. Then I hit my wife, didn’t I? Broke her jaw. She asked for a divorce. I didn’t stand in her way. How could I? I might have killed her in my sleep.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘Two. Scott and Zara.’

  Frank reached into an inside pocket and took out a worn, brown leather credit card wallet. Extracted two photos. A girl and a boy, both smiling from beneath comically oversized Santa hats. Behind them a Christmas tree was swathed in decorations. Tinsel and fairy lights spread protective branches over mounds of brightly wrapped presents.

  Gabriel took the photos and studied the children’s faces. So happy. So untroubled. The girl had a gap where an incisor had yet to come through. He handed them back.

  ‘Nice-looking kids.’

  ‘Yeah. They’re older than that, now.’

  ‘Do you see them much?’

  Frank shook his head.

  ‘I came out here to try and save myself. I had to get away. I love them so much but I was worried I might hurt them, too. Sometimes it gets too much. Then I just grab a Jeep and go off into the bush with a rifle and a box of ammo and shoot until I’m calm again.’

  Gabriel pulled out his wallet and took out a card, which he handed to Frank.

  ‘That’s my personal number,’ he said. ‘If you ever need to talk.’