Soldier N: Gambian Bluff

by David Monnery

  He was also thinking that maybe less British money should be going into places like this, and more into places like the Royal Victoria. But what did he know?

  The large lizard which had been clinging motionless to the nearby tree stump suddenly scuttled away across the grass, almost making him jump. And at that moment a taxi emerged from the trees around the entrance and headed down the road to his right.

  The driver turned left and came to a halt in front of the hospital doors, a few yards from Franklin. Two men climbed out of the front seats, both of them carrying Kalashnikovs. One wore a red T-shirt and black trousers, the other, Mansa Nouma, was dressed in an ordinary blue shirt and jeans. Franklin thought they both looked about twenty.

  ‘Is this the place for Dr Greenwell?’ Nouma asked Franklin.

  He nodded.

  Red Shirt opened one of the taxi’s back doors to let out Lady Jawara and the four children.

  ‘Go and find him for us,’ Nouma asked Franklin, airily waving the gun’s barrel to reinforce his request.

  Franklin walked past them and through the doors into the entrance lobby. From there doors to left and right led into the two wards, while straight ahead there was a single large office for the sisters in charge. Dr Greenwell, as Franklin well knew, was waiting in that office. He knocked, went in and gave the doctor the prearranged signal.

  By this time the two rebels had brought Lady Jawara and the four children into the lobby. Red Shirt was checking the window onto the men’s ward, while Nouma was looking back through the open doors at the grounds outside.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Dr Greenwell asked cheerily.

  ‘She will tell you,’ Nouma told him, gesturing with the gun towards Lady Jawara.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dr Greenwell said, ‘but exactly who is it who is sick?’

  ‘All my children. And myself,’ Lady Jawara said.

  ‘Then you must come this way,’ the doctor said smoothly, gesturing them towards the women’s ward.

  The two rebels started to follow.

  ‘No, no,’ he said firmly. ‘You cannot bring weapons through here. You will frighten the patients to death.’

  ‘These are our prisoners,’ Nouma said angrily.

  ‘They will still be your prisoners,’ the doctor said. ‘We are only going to walk through a room full of sick women. Please, either wait here with your guns, or come with us and leave your guns behind. They will still be here when you get back.’

  Nouma hesitated, then shrugged his acquiescence. It had been a masterful performance by the doctor, Franklin thought, but maybe they were also getting some help from a lack of confidence in the rebel camp.

  The party walked down through the women’s ward, Dr Greenwell in the lead, Lady Jawara behind carrying one child, the three other children and finally Nouma and Red Shirt, who seemed unsure of what to do with the hands that no longer held the Kalashnikovs.

  At the end of the ward twin doors led through to another corridor, which ran between a series of offices and a line of curtained cubicles. Dr Greenwell opened one of the office doors and ushered in Lady Jawara and the children. Nouma was about to follow when the door closed gently in his face.

  ‘Surprise, surprise,’ Wynwood said, as he and Caskey emerged from behind the curtains, Brownings in hand. The two rebels looked round for escape, and found Franklin’s Browning also pointed their way.

  The day had started badly for Mamadou Jabang, and it did not seem to get any better. He ate the breakfast that was placed in front of him, but not because he had any appetite – his mind was too busy racing through unpleasant possibilities to consider his body’s needs. The thought that Jawara might refuse their terms gnawed at him mercilessly, because he could think of no other solution which gave him the chance of life with honour. They could certainly fight and die, as Taal had said, but it seemed such a waste. They could kill the hostages as they had threatened, but he had no real appetite for that either.

  After two hours of chasing the same unwelcome thoughts around his brain it suddenly occurred to Jabang that no one had notified him of Lady Jawara’s return. With a sinking feeling in his stomach he sent someone to the gates to find out if Nouma and the hostages had indeed come back.

  The answer was no. He sat there for a moment, palms together across his nose, wondering how he could have been so stupid. ‘Get me the Medical Research Centre on the phone,’ he told the messenger.

  Making the connection proved easy enough, but Jabang had to threaten sending an armed unit before anyone would admit to knowing anything. Finally a doctor told him that, yes, they had been expecting Lady Jawara and her children for several hours – where were they?

  ‘Are you telling me they never arrived?’ Jabang asked coldly.

  ‘That is correct,’ the doctor said, with the kind of patronizing English accent that made Jabang want to throttle him.

  Instead he simply hung up, and spent an angry few seconds wondering whether to send a lorry-load of men to search the Centre. It would be a waste of time, he knew that. They would not find Lady Jawara. The fat bitch had escaped.

  The sound of distant gunfire startled him out of his unpleasant reverie. It seemed to be coming from the direction of Fajara, though it was hard to tell. Another burst seemed to come from the opposite direction, and closer. What the fuck was happening?

  Right on cue, Taal appeared through the screen door, buckling the holster over the Field Force uniform he still insisted on wearing.

  ‘What is it?’ Jabang asked.

  ‘No idea,’ Taal replied, ‘and no one seems to be reporting in. I’m going to find out. Why don’t you come along? The men would appreciate seeing you.’

  That made Jabang smile, partly with genuine pleasure, partly at the irony of it. ‘I have to talk to General N’Dor,’ he said.

  ‘OK,’ Taal said. He nodded his head in the direction of the latest gunfire. ‘Though that may be N’Dor talking to us now.’

  * * *

  It was, albeit with a certain lack of eloquence. After being informed, soon after eight a.m., of the successful SAS swoop to release Lady Jawara and the four children, the General had spent half an hour letting his rage gradually subside. How dare they mount such an operation without his approval? Who knew what might happen to the other hostages in retribution for Lady Jawara’s escape?

  He knew he was overreacting, and guessed that President Jawara must have sanctioned the operation in person. It was his country, after all, and he had the right to employ whatever foreign help he felt he needed. That, N’Dor realized, was what really hurt – that Jawara had felt he needed more than the Senegalese. And the General knew that this resentment was also irrational. The English had centuries of military tradition, money to burn on training and weaponry, and far more experience of this sort of thing than his own troops could ever hope to have. Even so …

  The General lit a cigarette and walked outside into the yard, where the giant baobab tree loomed over him like Africa incarnate. It was time to do something, he thought, and the English had at least removed the main obstacle to military action. There might still be thirty or so hostages in the depot, but none as prominent as Lady Jawara. It was time to take a small risk, to give the rebels a push and see what happened. They might fight back one way or another, in which case he could stop pushing. Or they might simply collapse, in which case his Senegalese troops would be the heroes of the hour. Africans sorting out an African problem.

  He walked inside to his office, telephoned Colonel Ka, and issued the code-word to activate the contingency plan. Senegalese units would advance on and around the two major roadblocks, and into the area behind them. Flanking forces would liberate the Sunwing and Bakotu hotels at either end of the Bakau-Fajara road, where over a hundred Europeans had been luxuriously trapped for almost a week.

  He went back out to sit in the shadow of the baobab and lit another cigarette. Almost immediately the first sounds of battle drifted in from the north on the warm breeze.

&nb
sp; He had been there about half an hour when an aide emerged from the doorway to tell him that the terrorist leader was on the line. N’Dor looked at his watch as he walked in – it was only ten-thirty-five.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said in Wollof.

  ‘Who is firing those guns?’ Jabang half-shouted at him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ N’Dor lied. ‘Whoever it is sounds nearer to you than to me,’ he added disingenuously.

  ‘If it is your troops it will mean an end to all negotiation.’

  ‘If it is my troops, they will be firing in self-defence,’ N’Dor said. ‘Or without my sanction. You will have no reason to withdraw from the negotiations.’

  ‘I already have one,’ Jabang said. ‘Lady Jawara was taken to the Medical Research Centre under a flag of truce, and this was violated. What more reason do I need?’

  N’Dor resisted the temptation to blame the English. ‘Your soldiers drove her straight to an embassy,’ he said, ‘where they released Lady Jawara and then asked for political asylum for themselves.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Jabang said automatically. He did find it hard to believe that Nouma would betray him, but then he had felt the same about Sallah. ‘Which embassy did they drive to?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ N’Dor said. ‘For obvious reasons. You could simply march in and take Lady Jawara back.’

  ‘I could march into all the embassies,’ Jabang retorted.

  ‘You could. But that would damn you in the eyes of the entire international community, so you won’t.’

  There was a silence at the other end, in which the sound of several muffled voices could be heard.

  ‘Can you please wait a minute?’ Jabang suddenly asked with a courtesy that N’Dor found utterly incongruous. He lit another cigarette and waited.

  In the Field Force depot command room Jabang, his hand over the mouthpiece, was hearing a report from Taal. ‘It’s impossible to tell if it was a coordinated attack,’ Taal was saying, his eyes shining with excitement, ‘but if it was they made an utter balls-up of it. At both roadblocks our men fired a few shots at the Senegalese, more to slow them down than stop them, but on the Fajara road the Senegalese simply retreated to their original positions and on the Banjul road they just turned tail and ran. Another unit which tried to outflank us on the Banjul road was attacked by a pack of dogs. I tell you, Mamadou, it’s a farce out there.’

  ‘But why?’ Jabang wanted to know. He had never dreamed of news this good.

  ‘They’re just disorganized, that’s all.’

  ‘So it won’t last. You’re not saying we have any chance of victory?’

  ‘Oh, no, none at all,’ Taal said, crushing the hope that Jabang already knew was ridiculous. ‘But it must improve our negotiating position.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jabang agreed. He took his hand away from the mouthpiece. ‘General,’ he said, ‘your attack on our positions has apparently failed. You have obviously not been negotiating in good faith, but I am prepared to give you one last chance. I would have asked you to remove your troops to their previous positions, but my fighters seem to have done that for you.’

  ‘I have not …’

  ‘Just listen, General,’ Jabang said contemptuously. ‘I expect to hear President Jawara publicly accept our terms on the radio at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. If this happens, then all the children will be released immediately. If it does not, I shall begin executing the hostages until it does. Have I made myself clear, General?’

  ‘Very,’ General N’Dor said. ‘But I …’

  There was a click as the line went dead.

  After having delivered Lady Jawara and the children to the British High Commission, the three SAS men had shared a celebratory drink with Bill Myers on the back verandah, and then retraced their path southwards along the beach. They had arrived at the back door of the Bakotu Hotel just as the Senegalese troops arrived at the front. The rebel guards had already vanished. Seventy tourists who had spent a nerve-racking week around the swimming pool reading thrillers were informed that they would soon be able to go home.

  All three SAS men were dog-tired, but from what Lady Jawara had told them Caskey thought it more important than ever that General N’Dor sanction the much-postponed assault on the depot. The rebels were disorganized enough for it to work, and maybe desperate enough to do something stupid if left to their own devices.

  Caskey was also keen to find out exactly what it was the Senegalese were doing. The officer in charge of liberating the Bakotu seemed oblivious to any other operations taking place, but the sound of gunfire to the north told a different story. Caskey only hoped that N’Dor had not decided simply to storm the depot with troops who had no clear idea of what they were doing.

  ‘I’ve got a lift with the Senegalese to Serekunda,’ he told the other two. ‘You two stay here, get a couple of hours’ sleep if you can. I’m going to try and persuade N’Dor to give us a green light for tonight.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Wynwood said drily.

  Colonel Ka arrived back at General N’Dor’s HQ with all the enthusiasm of a Spanish Armada admiral returning to Spain. On the ride over from the outskirts of Bakau his memory had served up just about every childhood and adult humiliation it contained, and now, standing on the threshold of the General’s operations room, he had to muster up all his courage to simply walk on in.

  N’Dor looked up, sighed, and gestured Ka to a chair.

  He took it, wondering why the tongue-lashing had not yet begun. A scene from one of those absurd James Bond films came to mind – the one in which the head villain dispatched one of his underlings, chair and all, into a pool full of piranhas. The Colonel found himself involuntarily searching the floor for signs of a trapdoor.

  ‘What happened?’ N’Dor asked, his voice more resigned than angry.

  ‘We have taken the Bakotu and the Sunwing,’ Ka said. ‘So most of the Europeans who were in the rebel-held zone have now been released. But the advance in the centre was frustrated.’ He paused, wondering how to explain it.

  ‘By the rebels or ourselves?’ N’Dor asked.

  ‘Both,’ Ka said. ‘But mostly ourselves,’ he admitted. ‘Either the instructions given were not clear enough, or individual officers failed to follow them correctly. There seems to have been hardly any attempt on the ground to coordinate the various moves.’ He sat up straighter in the seat. ‘But whatever the reason, the responsibility is mine, and I …’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ N’Dor snapped. ‘It’s mine. And if we don’t take immediate steps to improve the situation, I shall no doubt pay the price of failure.’

  Ka decided it was wisest to say nothing.

  ‘Time also seems to be running out as far as the hostages are concerned,’ the General added, and gave Ka a blow-by-blow account of his conversation with Jabang.

  ‘Then we will have to move before ten o’clock tomorrow morning,’ Ka said. He hesitated for a moment. ‘May I offer a suggestion?’ he asked eventually.

  N’Dor nodded.

  ‘Our unit which was detailed to take the Sunwing ran into some resistance just outside the hotel. In the forecourt and among the gardens to one side. There was an exchange of fire which lasted something like ten minutes before the rebels made a run for it towards the beach …’

  ‘The point?’

  ‘About halfway through this fire-fight two tourists carrying tennis rackets suddenly appeared in the middle of the no man’s land between the two forces. I’ve no idea how or why, but that’s not important. The point is that everyone stopped firing, just like that. Our men and the rebels. These two white men walked calmly across the forecourt and two groups of Africans waited until they had gone before restarting their battle.’

  ‘I am sorry, Colonel,’ N’Dor said, ‘but this does not surprise me.’

  ‘No, sir, but that is not my point. It seems likely to me that the rebel soldiers, like our own, are under strict instructions to avoid any European casualties …’

  �
�Probably.’

  ‘General, if we let the three SAS men lead the assault on the Field Force depot it will probably prove successful. If it isn’t, it’s their failure. But if it is, we can say that we allowed white men to lead our attack because we knew that the presence of their white faces was likely to reduce casualties among our own soldiers.’

  The General looked at him for several seconds with what could only be described as an inscrutable smile, and then suddenly burst out laughing.

  N’Dor was still smiling twenty minutes later when Caskey arrived. ‘As you no doubt know,’ he told the Englishman, ‘our offensive has run into some difficulties. I believe the time has come to launch the operation for which you trained my men.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Caskey said, as pleased as he was surprised.

  ‘One request,’ N’Dor said, in a tone which made it clear that he was not asking. ‘I should like the operation to take place soon after dawn tomorrow – in daylight, that is – as part of a general offensive against all the rebel positions. My regular troops are not equipped for night fighting,’ he added in explanation.

  ‘Very well,’ Caskey agreed, not wishing to push his luck. In any case, he thought, there were also advantages in conducting their operation in daylight. It would certainly make it easier to tell friend from foe once they were inside the depot.

  It did not occur to him that daylight would also make it easier to distinguish black faces from white.

  Chapter 14

  Wynwood stopped suddenly, thinking he had heard a sound off to their right. ‘Hear anything?’ he asked in a whisper.

  Franklin shook his head. The twelve Senegalese behind him were bumping into each other like trucks on a braking goods train.

  It had probably been a representative of the local wildlife. Wynwood started forward again, moving their line of march in a long arc towards the rear of the enemy position. They had not seen anyone moving for some time, around either the barricade in the road or the houses the rebels were using as their camp, but that did not necessarily mean a thing. For all Wynwood knew the bastards were watching them through binoculars right now, and just waiting until they came into SMG range.