by Chris Ryan
‘We?’
‘You, me, Jock and Bob. Who else do you think is going to come? Those boats don’t hold many. It’s our only option.’
‘We’d never make it to the jetty,’ Porter said. ‘The rebels have got this place surrounded. The minute we set foot outside, they’d cut the lot of us down. We’re better off waiting for help to arrive.’
‘Don’t be a damned fool! You won’t be able to hold the rebels off for long. Can’t you see? This whole place is going to be overrun. They’ll massacre the bloody lot of us.’
His booming voice carried down the corridor, reaching the ears of the volunteers dealing with the fires. Porter stepped towards Soames and stared levelly at him.
‘Keep your fucking voice down. Unless you want everyone inside this hotel to start panicking.’
Soames snorted in derision and folded his arms across his chest. ‘I don’t take orders from you, Porter. You have no authority here.’
‘Maybe not.’ Porter shrugged. ‘But this is my world now, not yours. I’m the one calling the shots. Now get back in that room and keep your mouth shut, or you and me have got a fucking problem.’
Soames glowered at him but said nothing. He’s not even offered to give us a hand on the rooftop, thought Porter. This arsehole doesn’t give a toss about anyone but himself. Even when our necks are on the line.
‘Think about what you’re doing,’ Soames said.
‘I have,’ Porter said. ‘And I’m not leaving. That’s final.’
‘At least give me a gun, then. I need to be able to defend myself if the worst happens.’
Porter shook his head. ‘Ammo’s in short supply. We need every spare round for the rooftop.’
‘What am I supposed to do, for God’s sake?’ Soames protested, throwing up his arms. ‘Just sit here and wait to die?’
‘Write yourself a fucking citation. You’re good at that.’
He yanked the door shut and locked it before Soames could reply. Then he turned and raced up the stairs, as the sounds of the battle continued to rage outside.
EIGHTEEN
1149 hours.
The gunfire had almost petered out as Porter hurried towards the roof. He passed a couple of Nigerian soldiers who’d sought cover in the concrete stairwell leading to the top side of the hotel, swept through the crash door, and stepped out into a blinding white heat. Porter shaded his eyes against the sun as he glanced around. Bald had manoeuvred across to the east-facing side of the rooftop with Tully, Nilis and two of the four Belgians, picking off the rebels with occasional bursts from the GPMG. Spray-Tan and the fourth Belgian were still manning the south side of the roof overlooking the rear of the hotel. Porter dropped to his front and crawled around the air-conditioning duct, careful not to present himself as a target to the enemy. Bullets pinged against the side of the water tower as he edged over to the eastern section of the parapet. Porter rejoined the fight alongside Bald, resting his SLR on top of the wall. He peered through the sights as he searched for his next target.
Most of the rebels had begun beating a hasty retreat from the fight. Around forty of them were withdrawing east along the Cape Road. Several rebels stopped to fire at the rooftop, wild bursts that fell hopelessly wide and short. The rest of the enemy had already turned their backs on the defenders and fled towards the main roundabout in the east. A pocket of six rebels stubbornly held their ground at the plantation, but Bald hosed them down with blasts of 7.62mm brass every time they tried to advance and they soon began falling back after their mates. Porter sighted one rebel dragging away a wounded mate with a bloodied patch on his right leg. He lined up the injured rebel in the SLR’s sights and finished the job, shooting him twice in the upper chest. The second rebel let go of his dead mucker, turned and ran on towards the roundabout. He disappeared behind the baobab tree before Porter could put the drop on him.
Bald emptied another burst at a pair of fleeing rebels. A tracer round flashed across the bullet-scarred tarmac and smacked into one of the rebels at the hip, severing his leg. The guy toppled over, blood squirting out of his ragged stump. Bald pumped another burst into him, stitching his guts with lead. The shooting stopped as the last rebels withdrew out of the line of fire. Then a heavy silence settled over the rooftop. Porter eased his finger off the SLR trigger. A palpable sense of relief washed over him. No one said anything for a while. Bald grinned at Porter.
‘That’s the last of them chogie bastards. Looks like we’ve taught them a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry.’
‘Don’t count on it, fellas. They’ll be back soon enough,’ Tully said. ‘The rebels won’t give up that easily. They’re stubborn fuckers. Once they’ve licked their wounds, they’ll have another crack at us.’
‘How long until they hit us again?’ Porter said.
Tully shrugged. ‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On whether any of those chogies has got green-army experience. If someone shows up with a military background, they’ll take their time to assess the situation before attacking us. Otherwise, they’ll attack once they’ve smoked a few joints and given themselves some confidence. Either way, we’re gonna get hit again soon. This afternoon, probably.’
‘How long are they gonna keep this up?’ said Bald.
‘As long as it takes,’ Tully responded. ‘Until they run out of bodies.’
Or until we run out of ammo, Porter thought.
Nilis kept his rifle sights trained on the road to the east. ‘X-rays still active at the roundabout,’ he reported. ‘Twenty of them. Seven hundred metres away.’
‘Keep eyes on,’ said Porter. ‘Check the other approaches too. We need 360 coverage. The minute those bastards are on the move again we need to know about it.’
Just then Porter heard a grating groan. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Tannon emerging from the crash door at the top of the concrete stairwell. She stopped by the door and gazed around the rooftop in a kind of daze. Gunpowder and lead particles and smoke hung in the air like a thin, dirty film. A couple of rounds thundered in the middle distance as the rebels grouped by the roundabout continued to take pot-shots at the defenders on the roof. They couldn’t hit a barn door from this distance but Porter didn’t want to take any chances. ‘Stay low!’ he shouted at Tannon. ‘Don’t make yourself a target.’
She snapped out of her daze and dropped low. Then she inched forward, tentatively working her way around the air-con duct to join Porter and the others at the parapet. Tannon cautiously surveyed the bullet-chipped wall and the brass and debris scattered across the ground. Then she stared at Porter with a horrified look. A quick glance at the others explained her reaction. Porter and his fellow defenders cut a terrifying sight. Their hands and faces were blackened with smoke. Their clothes caked in dust, blood and sweat.
‘Is it over?’ she asked.
‘Not by a long shot,’ Porter said. ‘What’s going on with the evacuation?’
Tannon shook her head. ‘I can’t get through. My sat phone is dead, and all the telephone lines in the hotel are down. The radios too. The only station still on the air is the state-run radio, and that’s just repeating the same message from the RUF spokesperson. Nothing’s working.’
‘The rebels must have taken over the main telephone exchange,’ Porter said.
Bald nodded. ‘Oldest trick in the book. Spread your propaganda message over the airwaves and get everyone to turn against the government.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Tannon said.
Her voice was shaking. Like someone plucking a length of tautened string. Her eyes kept returning to the bullet-riddled parapet, as if she expected the rebels to attack again any moment. She’s trying to act as if it’s business as usual, he thought. Trying to put a lid on the anxiety she’s feeling. But she’s not fooling anyone.
Porter dug the sat phone out of his back pocket. The handset was coated in a layer of dust and there was a massive crack running down the screen. But it was still in working ord
er. The battery icon on the display was showing two bars. Roughly three hours of battery life, Porter thought. He passed the phone to Tannon.
‘Use ours. Keep trying until you get through to your boss. This thing only works in open ground. As long as you’re on the rooftop you should be able to get a signal.’
Tannon frowned. ‘You expect me to stay up here? With all this going on?’
‘We don’t have a choice,’ Porter replied in a firm but calm tone. ‘Your boss needs to understand that the situation is urgent. If help doesn’t arrive in the next hour or so, we won’t be able to stop the rebels from storming the hotel. Then we’re fucked.’ He saw the hesitant look on the deputy commissioner’s face and said, ‘If you don’t believe me, go downstairs and have a look in the lobby. There’s a couple of Lebanese down there with their guts hanging out.’
‘I can’t be here,’ Tannon said. ‘I just can’t.’
Porter pointed to a metal rooftop ventilator mounted on top of a concrete post, roughly a metre high. ‘You can stay behind that. The ventilator will cover you from any rounds coming in. Keep calling until you get an answer. And for fuck’s sake don’t stand up and make yourself a target.’
Tannon pursed her lips. ‘You really think the rebels are going to attack us again?’
‘It’s a question of when.’
She nodded then turned and crawled over to the ventilator. Slid down behind it and started operating the sat phone. Porter watched her for a moment then turned to Bald.
‘Find Crowder. Tell him we need water and medical supplies. Plus any ammo. We’ll need every spare round going.’
‘What about the Nigerians? Some of them might still have a few clips,’ Bald said. ‘It’s not as if they’ve got any fucking use for them, is it?’
Porter nodded. ‘Grab what you can.’
Bald hurried across the rooftop towards the stairwell. Porter moved back from the wall and slumped down. Exhaustion washed over him. Adrenaline had kept him going during the skirmish, along with a grim determination not to let the enemy win. But now Porter felt the tiredness deep in his bones. Like a comedown from a drug. He was sweating hard from the stress of the firefight and the heat emanating from the rifle barrels and the sun beating down on their heads. He was filthy and thirsty and knackered. He wanted nothing more than to close his eyes for a moment and sleep.
You can’t rest now, the voice inside his head told Porter. Push through it. If you fail, a thousand people will die.
The minutes ticked by. Tannon tried to get through to the commissioner without success. The two Lebanese in their cheap grey suits arrived on the rooftop, carrying the spare rounds they had retrieved from the dead rebels in the lobby. Porter took turns with Tully to keep a mark-one eyeball on the rebel position beyond the roundabout to the east. But the enemy remained hidden behind the vegetation around the baobab tree and showed no signs of movement. Maybe they’ve had enough, Porter thought. Or maybe they’re just biding their time and waiting for their mates to arrive. He periodically crawled across the rooftop to the north, his sights switching between the empty garage and the banana plantation. There was no sign of any enemy activity. Just the awful stillness of the downtime, the glinting of spent jackets under the sun and the twisted corpses lying in the road.
After twenty minutes Bald returned with Crowder and the giant, Solomon, in tow. Crowder was carrying a multi-pack of one-litre bottles of mineral water. Some expensive-looking French brand that Porter had never heard of. He also carried a medical supply kit in a green satchel bag slung over his shoulder. Bald lugged a bucket filled with clips for the SLRs while Solomon carried a couple of metal boxes of ammo. Each box was the size of a toolbox, painted green with yellow text stamped down the side: 200 RDS. 7.62mm BALL. L2A2. UN 0012. They looked tiny in Solomon’s huge grip. Like a couple of kids’ lunch boxes.
Solomon carted the ammo boxes over to Porter and Tully and dumped them beside the GPMG. At the same time Crowder started distributing water bottles among the shooters. Porter grabbed one, tore off the cap and took a long, refreshing gulp. Twenty-four hours ago I was necking vodka out of a water bottle, he thought. Now I’m grateful just for the plain stuff.
Bald emptied the clips onto the ground, then ducked back inside the stairwell with Solomon and Crowder to fetch the rest of the supplies. After the second trip Crowder looked like he might have a heart attack. Sweat rolled down his face and his cheeks were reddened with the effort of bounding up and down seven flights of stairs. Along with the extra mags for the SLRs they retrieved two RPG launchers, plus a pair of binoculars and three old Makarov semi-automatic pistols chambered for the Russian-manufactured 9x18mm round. They dumped everything in the middle of the rooftop and handed out the spare clips among the defenders. Porter counted up the spare ammo. Four hundred rounds for the gimpy, plus ten mags for the SLRs. Which worked out to two extra mags each. Forty more rounds per man. Two hundred rounds in total for the rifles. Not much, Porter thought.
If they come at us with everything they’ve got, we’re fucked.
While the rest of the guys loaded up on supplies, Bald decided to instruct Solomon in how to piece together belts of ammo for the gimpy. He knelt down beside the machine gun and scooped up a handful of the discarded link that had ejected from the feed tray and collected at the foot of the parapet. Then he called over Solomon. The man-mountain watched as Bald spread out the small black metal clips in front of him. Some of the links were a little rusty but they were all in a reusable condition. Bald took the first round from the first box of 7.62mm brass, gathered up two pieces of link, and pushed them together to line up the two sets of loops. Then he pushed the bullet through the loops to make the first round in the link. He pieced together a few more rounds before leaving it to Solomon. The guy fumbled awkwardly with the clips at first. But he soon got the hang of it and began assembling the belts, his face a picture of concentration.
‘Don’t suppose any of the Nigerians stuck their hand up and offered to help out?’ Porter said, looking from Bald to Crowder.
The hotel manager wiped his brow and made a wry smile. ‘You’re kidding, right? They couldn’t wait to hand over their ammunition. As far as they’re concerned, this isn’t their fight any more.’
Crowder made his excuses and left the rooftop to check on the guests cooped up on the upper floors. Porter smiled weakly at Bald. ‘Looks like it’s just us, then. At least the Belgians are making themselves useful.’
‘First time their country’s been good for anything,’ Bald said. ‘Fucking liberals.’
The two operators shared a half-hearted laugh. Then a shout went up from across the rooftop.
‘Movement, lads!’ Tully cried. ‘East, six hundred metres away. Multiple X-rays, plus technicals.’
Bald and Porter glanced at each other. Then they darted across the rooftop and hit the section of the parapet next to Tully. Porter strained his eyes at the main roundabout, with Bald looking in the same direction through the pair of binoculars he’d lifted from the Nigerians. Around sixty rebels were creeping forward from the roundabout and heading for a two-storey building at the side of the road, a hundred metres due west of the baobab tree. The building was partially obscured by a clump of trees and a sign above the entrance said ABERDEEN POLICE STATION. With the trees restricting their view it was impossible for Bald and Porter to get off a clean shot at the rebels. Besides, at a distance of six hundred metres the rebels were at the maximum range with iron sights, and Porter knew their chances of hitting a moving target were extremely low. They couldn’t afford to waste ammo on long shots. So they looked on helplessly as the enemy disappeared around the back of the building.
In the next beat a couple of pickup trucks came hurtling towards the roundabout at a fast clip. They swung past the roundabout and steered into the patch of muddy ground to the side of the old police station, concealed behind the trees.
‘Supply trucks,’ Bald reported as he peered between the trees using the binoculars. ‘RPG rockets
, plus a couple of mortars. Soviet 82 millis, as far as I can tell. Looks like they’re setting up a forming-up point.’
Porter said, ‘They know they’ll get clobbered if they go just steaming in at us again.’
‘Maybe this lot aren’t as useless as they look.’
‘Maybe,’ Porter said. ‘Or maybe they’ve got someone in charge who knows what the fuck they’re doing for a change.’
He looked on with a rising sense of dread as another wave of forty or so rebels flooded west across to the old police station from the roundabout. Like a crowd flocking towards the turnstiles for the FA Cup Final. Among the rebels he noticed several guys decked out in soldiers’ uniforms and he realised these must be some of the government troops who had defected to the rebel side after the coup. Fighting against a bunch of machete-wielding nutters is one thing, Porter thought to himself. But now we’re dealing with trained soldiers too.
This next assault is going to be a whole lot noisier than the first one.
Bald said, ‘How long do you reckon we have?’
Porter squinted at the road and considered. ‘The rebels will wait for the rest of their forces to arrive from the bridge. Whoever’s calling the shots down there, they won’t want to hit us again until they’ve got all their ducks in a row. I reckon we’ve got an hour, at best. If that.’
‘Fuck.’ Bald shook his head. ‘We need to get some top cover over here. A couple of Black Hawks would go down nicely. They’d soon wipe out these bastards.’
They lapsed into an uneasy silence, both men privately absorbing the seriousness of their situation. Porter observed the enemy for a few moments longer then turned to Bald.
‘Wait here.’
He spun away from the parapet and hastened over to the ventilator. Found Tannon hunkering down behind the concrete post. The sat phone pressed to her right ear, a deep frown lining her brow.
‘Any luck?’ he asked.
‘Not yet.’ Tannon’s fingers were shaking as she hit the red button to end the call. ‘No one’s picking up the phone at the High Commission. I’ve tried the Embassy in Conakry too. I’m getting nowhere.’
