'What the fuck's going on?' I shouted to Jhundo, ic (in command) of the gun.
'Dunno, Mr Steve. We thought we saw something over there on the ridge.' He was pointing to an area about 100 metres over to the left.
We'd been caught in the narrowest part of the track so far. It could prove an ideal ambush site if the enemy had kept on firing. Not a place to hang around in.
'Tell them to stop firing, for frig's sake,' screamed Jimmy. 'If "they" ain't firing and you can't see fuck all, then don't shoot. Save your ammo.' He zigzagged down the line of the convoy, still shouting his orders. For a brief second I felt very alone and very scared.
Some of our troops had seen us get out of our wagon so they decided to do the same, thinking they might be sitting targets otherwise. It was all getting chaotic. There was no more incoming as I could make out, but there was a hell of a lot of our boys letting off a bit of nervous tension. Empty bullet cases began flying all around the place. A combined smell of spent cartridges and diesel fumes filled the air.
I ran up to the lead vehicle, which was an old BRT 60 (a Russian-built armoured personnel carrier, wheeled), and told the commander to get ready to move. Although we were in radio contact with each other, it was impossible to get any coherent transmission between our troops once something like this started. I looked back down the line of trucks and could just see Jimmy through the dust as he headed towards the rear of the convoy. He was sorting out those soldiers who had disembarked, trying to encourage them back on to their vehicles. The rest of the convoy I couldn't see because the track dipped and turned sharply to the right, but I guessed it was strung out about 300 metres. Brad and Josh, the two other Specialists, were bringing up the rear. They would be sorting out their group — I hoped.
Seconds later the radio crackled. 'Alpha One, Alpha One, this is Bravo One, send sit-rep. Over.'
It was Brad trying to find out what was happening.
'Yeah. Roger Bravo One, this is Alpha One. Two bursts of gun fire from our left. No casualties. No damage, but our boys are letting off a bit of steam. How you? Over,' I said.
'No casualties and no damage. I can see Jimmy coming down the line. I'll get a quick sit-rep off him and send him back up. Let's get the fuck out of here ASAP. Over.'
'Alpha One, Roger. We're ready to move as soon as Jimmy gets back. Over,' I replied.
The radio crackled and his voice disappeared for a second, then, 'Roger out,' Brad puffed. I reckoned he had two cigarettes on the go. He sounded really nervous.
Brad, a grey-haired, wiry six-footer pushing 50, had been working in and around Mozambique for years, ever since he had left the Regiment, yet as he once told me he still couldn't get used to being shot at. An obvious statement you might think, but he had more experiences in firefights than you could have shaken a stick at, and you would have thought he'd be used to it by now. But I guess you never do get used to it.
He was the most experienced bloke amongst the four of us and had got into all sorts of shitty little conflicts in this part of the world. I could never understand why he always put himself in the firing line. At his age I would want to be tucked up back in England with my pipe and slippers, but no, Brad wasn't having any of that. 'You're a real hardcore bastard with an age complex,' I used to joke to him. 'Always thinking you're still 21.'
Anyway, right now, there was no need to have a cosy chat exchanging war stories. Brad was right. It was best we left the area soonest.
Meanwhile, our 100 or so freewheeling hitchhikers had run off into the bush at the first sign of trouble. Most of them were making the trip up to Gurué to see relatives they'd been separated from for the past year because of guerrilla activity there, but it was looking likely that they wouldn't see them this trip — not unless they could get to the next major village, Mutuali, 20 ks south. Mutuali was to be one of our watering stops and we had planned to rest up there for an hour or so before heading further south and on to another village, Lioma, the halfway stage, then finally on to Gurué.
The hitchhikers had all been in full voice since leaving Cuamba, our main base. It was like travelling with the Mozambique equivalent of a Welsh Male Voice Choir — nice for ten minutes but a real pain in the arse for ten hours. The harmony turned into mayhem as soon as the first shots rang out, then their screams of anguish got fewer and fewer as they put more distance between the ambush site and themselves. Hell, these people could run barefoot through fields of six-inch nails if they had to! I thought. Where the frig were they off to? We were in the middle of nowhere!
As far as I could see, the ground around had been baked dry by the sun and was rock hard. Water was not a common element in these parts, in fact it hadn't rained properly for years. Apart from an earthy type of sand with a few football-sized rocks scattered around, the landscape was filled with bizarre brown shrubs: a cross between the most vicious of cacti with two-inch, needle-sharp spikes sticking out all over the place and bonsai trees. No higher than five feet, they were almost impenetrable at pace. The entire area for miles around was covered with these 'bastard' bushes, so named because, every time you had to walk through a clump of them you invariably got spiked and ended up cursing: 'Bastard!'
As I was skirmishing back to the Land Rover, my radio crackled into life again. I could see Jimmy running back up to join me, ducking and darting, keeping his head down low. Most of our soldiers had stopped firing now, but there were sporadic bursts, seemingly from both sides. One or two of the enemy would fire a short burst during what we presumed was their retreat. This was enough for both Jimmy and I to keep moving down as low as we could.
Jimmy was also listening into the transmission.
'Alpha One, Alpha One. Let's get moving and put your foot down!' I replied to Brad's most obvious of requests. He really did sound nervous by now, I guess he had every right to be, stuck back at 'tail end Charlie'. A cigar-shaped barren strip of greyish rocks ran for about 100 metres parallel to the track we had been caught on. Brad and half the convoy still had to drive through what we all knew was the middle of the ambush, the so-called 'killing ground', and there was no real way of knowing what lay behind the high ridge on the left. Not a lot, I would have thought, having seen our men pour half the world's lead resources into it over the past few minutes. If anything, it had kept the Renamo heads down, those who had been firing at us, and if we were to believe past 'enemy contact reports' they would be miles away by now.
Not in this case though. As soon as Jimmy and I were in the Land Rover, a very familiar sound came from our left. At the same time Jimmy gave the horn three long honks and the vehicle in front started to move. We turned to face each other.
'Was that a fucking mortar or what?' Jimmy growled, not really sure.
'No, it was fucking TWO of the bastards! Shit!' I screamed.
I would know that noise anywhere. It was like a muffled version of the sound you get when you blow the top off an empty Smarties tube; that build-up of pressure as you blow into the tube and then 'pop' as the top comes off. Only with mortars, the result was totally different.
There were at least two rounds in the air as we roared off. I checked to see if the trucks behind were following. They were. I radioed Brad and gave him the good news about our leaving present. He was too far back to hear or see what had just gone on, but replied with a muted grunt as if to say, 'What's fuckin' new?' It didn't require any response from me.
The point about not getting too worked up in a situation like this is that you have to know 'your enemy'. It's not a case of having a cocksure attitude or anything like that. Many soldiers who've experienced war and who understand about weapons would know that mortars — in particular the type Renamo used — are small, lightweight, two-inch jobs. A good piece of kit, but only in the right hands. It would have had to be effectively aligned to have made any impact.
Only two rounds were in flight and I hadn't heard any more, and I knew that these bastards had to carry everything on foot and their training was pretty poor, so the c
hances of one or both rounds hitting us were pretty remote. They would have had to fire off at least two rounds just to get their trajectory and their point of impact right — presumably the track we were travelling on. In this instance, it was a waste of their ammunition.
Suddenly two bangs, like the sound of an aerosol tin exploding in a fire, came from an area some distance to our right. The mortars had landed well off target. We were safe for the time being. Those two mortars signified the end of the ambush, since no more incoming was expended in our direction.
Once through the ambush site, the going became easy. The track straightened, and for the first time since leaving Cuamba I could see at least a couple of miles ahead. The ground around us was flat well into the distance, and the covering of the bastard bushes wasn't so dense now. Jimmy reckoned this was a good place to have a check of the convoy. He drove up along side the BTR and shouted to the commander to stop. In turn everyone got the message and the convoy came to a halt.
Without prompting from us every vehicle commander ordered sentries to get down and stand guard in all-round defence, some five metres off the track into the bush. (This is a basic tactic adopted by all well-trained armies where, for example, troops disembarking from vehicles or helicopters move into circular formations a few metres from their mode of transport, facing outwards, to get into a good fire position with cover from view and cover from enemy fire, so all their arcs of fire are linked, covering all the ground around them.) Quite amazing, I thought. All of them were facing away from the vehicles, weapons to hand and the ones I saw had adopted good fire positions. They were taking this operation very, very seriously.
Back at Cuamba training camp it had been a nightmare task to get the troops to understand the tactical importance of this de-bussing drill. Maybe this morning's brush with the enemy had encouraged them to 'switch on'. Secretly I felt quite proud of these guys. They had survived three months hard training and had adapted really well, considering the shit-poor conditions they had had to endure.
Jimmy and I went down the line of vehicles checking that all was well. The guys were in good spirits and we had a laugh with them, shaking hands as we went. Some were kidding themselves that they had a higher body count than their mates. They were exchanging war stories, using their weapons to re-enact what they imagined they'd done in the first battle! Jimmy reckoned they were head cases.
'Jesus Christ, look at these poor bastards! You'd have thought they'd just shot half the Renamo in Mozambique, fucking arseholes,' he joked as we met up with Brad and Josh.
Josh was another from the school of the 'Old and Bold', of the same era as Brad. A short muscular man with greyish hair like Brad's, he gave the impression that if you got into a fight with him, you either had to put him down with one punch or smack him around the head with something thick and hard, because if you didn't, he would come at you like a pitbull. He had very little dialogue and from what I could make out over the months I worked with him, had no real aims apart from that of soldiering on until he met his Maker. He and Brad were longterm buddies but, strangely, Josh was teetotal, whereas Brad, on a good session on the ale, could quite easily drink for Britain.
'Come on, Jimmy. They did a lot better than we expected, didn't they? We thought most of them would fuck off into the bush at the first sign of trouble,' I argued.
'Yeah, you're right. They did well, but what's gonna happen when they actually see the enemy face to face, and not just hear them from behind a million tons of rock?'
This type of ambush happened every day all over Mozambique. In the bigger picture of things, this was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to get excited about. The only difference was that it was personal to us. Probably its only lasting effect would be getting logged as another Renamo contact by those in Intelligence who considered it necessary to collate such things.
Brad and Josh were in good spirits. We had a quick debrief; no great problems were forthcoming. All the vehicles were still going, water and fuel were not a problem. Our collection of mixed flatbed trucks, mainly Mercedes circa 1960, should have been laid to rest in that great big scrapyard in the sky years ago, but they hadn't. It was remarkable how their 'owners' had kept them going. One of the twin-wheelers had a puncture but was still driveable, and apart from that we'd come out of the contact untouched. Still, we didn't want to hang around for too long. Brad suggested we go for the relatively safe haven of Mutuali at full speed. Full speed was ten miles an hour, max.
As I looked around I saw that some of our hitchhikers had returned to their places on top of the tarpaulin-covered vehicles.
Just before we got under way, I sorted my weapon out. I checked the safety catch to see that it was still on. Cocked it, caught the round as it ejected from the chamber. Locked the working parts back, unclipped the magazine, checked that no dirt had got inside. Gave it a good hard blow. Put the ejected round back into the magazine. Had a quick look down the barrel and inside the weapon itself. All clear. Put the magazine back on, released the working parts. Felt the familiar movement of the working parts picking up a round and delivering it back into the chamber. The weapon was now made ready again.
Constant rechecking of the safety catch was second nature to me, but I looked at it again just to make sure that it was on 'safe' and also did a cursory check over the rest of the weapon to see that no bits had dropped off. This is not really a problem with most weapons, but it has been known for the sights to be knocked off accidentally, so if you weren't switched on to this, you could get into a contact, go to take aim and find you'd got frig all to look through or line up on. Pretty embarrassing, I should think!
After that I released my webbing belt and adjusted it all so it hung more easily off the shoulders. Checked to see that everything was where it should be and all the pouches were done up. Squirted a load of delousing powder down my crotch to soak up the sweat that had run down my body during the past 30 minutes or so. Took a couple of swigs of water with a handful of crushed dried biscuits. That was my late 'elevenses'. I was all done and dusted.
This was the regular routine all of us went through, the basics any good soldier adheres to when he gets the chance. Who knows what devilish iron-eating insect might have crawled inside your weapon and devoured the firing pin?
I could see Jimmy doing the same as I got back into the Land Rover, but just after he finished he dropped his trousers, bent over and let out an almighty long staccato fart, followed by a cry of 'Renamo! I've shit 'em.'
Jhundo and his gang roared with laughter as they all pointed to Jimmy's white backside sticking up in the air. Then he ceremoniously pulled up his trousers, turned and walked towards the Land Rover, his left arm and clenched fist held high, victoriously punching into the air to the chant of 'Jimmy white arse'. Here I was, thousands of miles from home in probably the most dangerous and without doubt the most isolated environment I had ever experienced, and my mate Jimmy was mooning in the middle of it!
Then it occurred to me that this was the first time I'd had such a good laugh since arriving in Mozambique.
Christ! Was that only a few weeks ago? I thought. So much had happened since then …
2
COVERT INFILTRATION
L ife can really suck sometimes. I was standing on a platform of Reading Station waiting for a connection to go to Heathrow Airport. Very soon I'd be flying out to Mozambique to make up a five-man team of ex-Regiment guys on a six-month contract to train up the Mozambique Special Forces, a part of the Mozambique Army — called Frelimo — to assist in its war against the South African-backed Renamo terrorists, and I was debating whether to give Lynn, my wife at the time, a quick call. Things had been a bit strained before I left. In some sense she didn't want me to go on this job but didn't go out of her way to try and stop me. For my part, I wanted to go. Now I'd got my head around saying in this 'business', I was keen to get back in the field of fire and get operational again. I had five minutes before my train arrived. I made the call, and I knew immediatel
y there was something wrong. The strained pauses in our conversation made me think the worst. Finally as my train pulled into the station, she said that she was leaving me. I didn't have time to ask the obvious questions: Why? What? When? All I asked was what any man would have asked. 'Who is it?'
Lynn had always been an honest girl and if she'd said there was no other man, I would have caught the next train back to Hereford. But she didn't. She came straight out with it — she was seeing someone. I was stunned. There I was, going off to one of the most dangerous countries in the world with a good possibility of getting my balls blown off, with no time to chat away. I told her that I would call her later. How much later I didn't know. Then I put the phone down with only one thing in mind, to make sure that I caught that flight out to Mozambique. I didn't need a headful of theme tunes during the flight, so mentally I shelved the problem. The last thing I wanted was to carry a load of emotional baggage into a war. That could easily get me killed.
At Heathrow I had over two hours before take-off, so like most travellers I had a couple of beers in the terminal lounge to kill time. A couple went on to a few, so by the time the 'boarding' sign came up for my flight I was well on the way to getting drunk.
I've always found airport bars unreal places. You end up chatting to a total stranger about where you come from and where you're going to. Normally you're both on business. Invariably you cannot speak their language but they always seem to speak English or at least pidgin English, even people from countries you'd have trouble finding on a map.
You always end up telling them even more about yourself than you would someone you might meet on holiday, since in that instance you know that you will at least see them the next day. Sometimes you subconsciously try to cram in as much about your personal life as possible, as if it was a competition between you, before your or their plane leaves and you never see them again. Most times when they've gone you think, Christ! I hope I don't ever see them again! I wonder if they understood what I was talking about, because I sure as hell didn't understand them .
No Fear: The True Story of My Deadly Life After the SAS Page 2
