Hunter Squadron

by Robert Jackson

  ‘I don’t like it, either,’ the Colonel told him. ‘I have a sixth sense that tells me when things are not as they should be, and right now it’s giving me all manner of warnings.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Koppejans grunted. ‘For a start, I thought that Nkrombe was planning to commit the whole of his native units to the assault on the river frontier, but there seem to be an awful lot of African troops still in and around Kerewata town. I ask myself why. I bumped into one of their officers earlier today, and he just wouldn’t talk to me. Clammed up and walked away. I shouted at him, ordering him to come back, but he took no notice. Some of his men were nearby, and they started giving me some very funny looks. I mustered whatever dignity I could find and beat a hasty retreat, as they say.’

  ‘Look,’ the Colonel said, ‘couldn’t you quietly pull your men back here, to the airfield? I’ve a feeling we may need each other’s support before long.’

  Koppejans agreed immediately. ‘All right. I’ll filter them back in small groups, so as not to arouse suspicion.’ He had a sudden thought. ‘There are four of my boys guarding Nkrombe’s residence, though. I’ll have to leave them where they are, or it will give the game away.’

  The Colonel shrugged. ‘They’ll just have to take their chance,’ he said. ‘Are you in radio contact with them?’

  Koppejans shook his head. ‘No, but I’ll drive into Kerewata and have a quiet word with them. If there’s the slightest hint of trouble I’ll give them orders to get out as fast as they can, and to hell with Nkrombe. As you rightly say, there’s something fishy going on. I’ll fight like hell on anybody’s behalf, so long as they pay me well for doing it, but I’m not going to be played for a sucker.’

  They wished each other good luck. Koppejans climbed into his jeep and drove off towards Kerewata, stopping en route at the spot where his men were camped to have a word with his officers. Then, taking three of his more experienced mercenaries with him, he went on into Nkrombe’s capital.

  As they entered the town, they passed several army trucks parked by the side of the road. Some African soldiers were squatting close by. As Koppejans’ vehicle roared past in a cloud of dust, one of the Africans rose to his feet, his eyes murderous, his hands clutching a machine-pistol. A colleague restrained him, placing a hand on his arm.

  ‘Not yet, my brother,’ he murmured. ‘The time is not yet. Be patient. Before the dawn, the white dogs will be spilling their guts on the ground. They suspect nothing.’

  He was wrong. As Koppejans drove on, he turned quietly to his companions and said: ‘I was right. There is trouble brewing. Did you see the markings on those trucks we just passed? They belong to a unit which is supposed to be about to take part in the attack on Warambe. Make sure your weapons are cocked and ready. You never know what we might run into.’

  Significantly, Koppejans noted, the streets of Kerewata seemed to be empty of civilians. Small groups of African troops stood at almost every street corner, displaying a vigilance which had been conspicuously lacking until now. Their eyes, almost without exception, showed hostility as Koppejans and his men passed by.

  Curiously, there were no native infantry in the vicinity of Nkrombe’s residence. Two of Koppejans’ mercenaries were guarding the entrance; the others were inside, off duty. Koppejans called them all together and told them of his suspicions.

  ‘Who’s inside?’ he asked, indicating the residence. The senior of the guards answered him.

  ‘Nkrombe and his son, and the usual bunch of servants.’

  ‘No African troops anywhere about?’ The mercenary shook his head.

  ‘No, none at all, as far as we know.’

  Koppejans nodded. ‘All right. Is your vehicle still okay?’ He referred to the Willys quarter-ton command reconnaissance truck which the guards had at their disposal. It had a fifty-calibre machine-gun mounted on it. The guards confirmed that it was in working order.

  ‘Okay, then,’ Koppejans told them. ‘Here’s what you do. If there’s any sign of trouble at all, grab Nkrombe and his son and bundle them into the Willys along with yourselves. Go hell for leather for the airfield. If you have Nkrombe and the boy, it should make the opposition think twice about trying to stop you.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t?’ one of the guards asked grimly. Koppejans looked at him.

  ‘I should have thought that would be obvious,’ he said. ‘Shoot the pair of ’em. You won’t have anything to lose, will you?’

  Chapter Eight

  THE ATTACK BY NKROMBE’S FORCES BEGAN ON SCHEDULE at 0200 hours with a mortar barrage against several defended positions along the river frontier. The mortaring was not very accurate, and the defenders, who were well dug in, escaped with only three men slightly wounded.

  Minutes after the initial bombardment, the men of ‘A’ Company, 2nd Battalion the Cumbrian Regiment, who were defending the main river crossing, were subjected to heavy machine-gun fire from the opposite bank. They kept their heads down and suffered no casualties, but a few moments later an armoured car trundled on to the bridge, the flashes of its cannon lighting up its squat bulk. It was followed by several groups of infantry, moving forward in short dashes.

  ‘Let’s have some light on the scene,’ the company commander ordered. There was a brief delay, and then two flares popped into life high over the bridge, throwing the scene into stark relief. The armoured car, and the infantry, went on moving forward.

  ‘They must be bloody mad,’ said the company commander wonderingly. He tapped the shoulder of a man, a sapper, who crouched over a device next to him. ‘Let ’em get halfway across,’ he ordered. ‘Hold your fire, everyone.’

  The armoured car reached the centre span of the bridge. Its cannon barked again, and a 20-mm shell screeched over the British position to explode somewhere in the jungle.

  ‘Now,’ the company commander said quietly. The sapper leaned heavily on the plunger.

  The centre span of the bridge erupted in a series of terrific explosions that lifted the armoured car bodily into the air. It fell into the river with a mighty splash, upside down, accompanied by a shower of screaming bodies and debris.

  ‘More flares!’ the company commander shouted. In their light, the British troops could see the dark shapes of men struggling in the water. Others were milling around on the far end of the bridge. For an instant, the company commander was tempted to let them go unharmed, then common sense prevailed.

  ‘Open fire,’ he ordered. Instantly, machine-guns sited along the length of the defensive position began to chatter, their bullets churning up avenues of foam in the darkened waters of the river, causing dreadful slaughter among the men who had survived the destruction of the bridge. It was all over inside thirty seconds; on the far bank, the groups of infantry who had been massing for the assault broke and fled into the night, while in the river a score of lifeless bodies drifted slowly downstream on the current. A handful managed to flounder ashore, wailing in terror. The machine-guns ceased firing.

  ‘Funny,’ the company commander remarked to his sergeant-major. ‘You’d have thought Nkrombe would have used his white mercenaries in the main assault. That lot were Africans, and poorly-trained Africans at that. They did everything wrong, poor devils.’

  The river frontier was now defended almost entirely by British troops, the Warambe rifles having been quickly assessed as worse than useless and pulled back to the rear. Communications between the various British units were excellent, and it was not long before information that began to filter through to the joint operational headquarters at the airstrip suggested that, although the attackers were being held at the principal danger points, small groups were attempting to infiltrate across the river at more lightly-defended spots. The Cumbrians’ co came up on the VHF and spoke directly to Yeoman, requesting some air support.

  Wing Commander Engineer and his navigator were already sitting in their flare-laden Canberra at the end of the strip, ready to go, and six Hunters were standing by. The Canberra had sufficient endurance
to stay airborne over the river for several hours, if need be, dropping its flares wherever they were required, and the plan called for the Hunters to accompany it in pairs, each pair relieving the other when fuel ran low.

  After take-off, Engineer and the two Hunter pilots in the first relay headed for the southern sector, a thinly-defended stretch where a British outpost had reported what seemed to be Kerewatan troops, equipped with collapsible boats, massing on the far bank of the river. The Canberra and the Hunters were overhead within minutes, just in time to catch the first wave of boats in midstream, making their crossing under cover of mortar and machine-gun fire.

  Cruising over the river at five thousand feet, the Canberra released a clutch of flares that stripped away the darkness, revealing the surface of the water dotted with a score of dinghies. The two Hunters swept down to the attack immediately, their 30-mm cannon shells churning into the leading wave of small craft with devastating effect, the screech of their turbojets drowning the cries of men who suddenly found themselves lashed by a rain of high explosive.

  Within seconds, the Kerewatan assault had collapsed in utter chaos. The survivors paddled as hard as they could for their own side of the river, harried by short bursts of machine-gun fire from the small group of British defenders. Overhead, the parachute flares dropped by Engineer sputtered and died out, plunging the area into darkness once more.

  As the two Hunters flew back to base to rearm, Engineer radioed Operations to say that the enemy attack in the southern sector had been broken. He would continue to circle over the central sector of the river so that he could react promptly to any further calls for help.

  Back in Operations, Yeoman and Swalwell were keeping minute-by-minute track of what was happening in the front line. Attacks were still in progress at various points, but they were not being pressed home with any great determination.

  Yeoman, reluctantly, had decided not to fly in the night’s operations, for he was needed to make on-the-spot decisions at the airfield. Engineer and Sharma appeared to be doing their work well, for in the space of an hour the Hunters made three strikes against targets on the river, all with success.

  The Canberra’s flare-dropping activities had not gone unnoticed in Kerewata, where the Colonel’s small band of mercenary pilots were assembled at the airstrip in readiness to begin their patrolling of the river at first light. The Colonel was annoyed with himself; he ought to have foreseen that the British would have some such trick up their sleeve. As more reports came in, telling of the devastating strafing attacks that were being made by the Hunters by the light of the Canberra’s flares, he determined to take some action.

  Placing one of the other Germans in temporary command, he strapped himself into the cockpit of his Sabre and was soon airborne, climbing away towards the river. The Canberra, judging by the confused reports that were coming in, was dropping its flares from a fairly low level, so the Colonel decided to go high, flying parallel with the river at fifteen thousand feet. Far below, he could see the occasional flash of an exploding mortar bomb, and the flicker of tracers darting to and fro across the darkness.

  Suddenly, a burst of white light almost dead ahead of him, and several thousand feet lower down, threatened to destroy his night vision. Blinking, he pushed the control column forward and headed towards the flare in a long, shallow dive. As he did so, three more flares burst beyond the first, forming an avenue of brilliance over the embattled river frontier.

  In the Canberra’s cockpit, Engineer and Sharma, their masked faces glowing in the dull red light of their instruments, were concentrating on making an accurate run so that the Hunters, orbiting off to one side, would have no difficulty in locating their target, three groups of infantry who had succeeded in slipping across the river and who now were digging in on the Warambe side. They were being engaged by the British troops, aided by the light of the flares, and Engineer quickly realized that the two forces were too close together for the Hunters to carry out a strike without serious risk of hitting their own men. He passed on this information to the Hunter pilots, who acknowledged and broke off their preparation for attack.

  Seconds later, the Canberra’s starboard turbojet exploded as a burst of .5-inch bullets tore into it. Shattered compressor blades ripped through the metal skin of the wing, and a terrific vibration shuddered through the airframe.

  Engineer, who had no idea that he was under attack by another aircraft, thought that he must have been hit by ground fire. He yelled a warning to Sharma, telling the navigator to stand by for abandoning the aircraft, and immediately knew that they were too low. Sharma, unlike the pilot, had no ejection seat; his method of escape was to jettison the fuselage hatch and throw himself out into the airflow.

  The pilot kicked the rudder pedals, slewing the Canberra round so that its nose was pointing towards friendly territory. At the same instant, he opened the port throttle, sending a surge of power through the good engine. The nose came up and the Canberra entered a roll, trailing flame and shedding fragments of wing as it went.

  Engineer knew that he had seconds, no more, before the starboard wing disintegrated. The Canberra went over on its back and Engineer shoved the control column forward, raising the nose still further as the aircraft completed its crazy gyration across the night sky. The airspeed had fallen away dramatically, but the manoeuvre had gained a precious five hundred feet.

  A blast of air entered the cockpit as Sharma kicked away the exit hatch. Engineer knew that he had sufficient control left for one more roll. Another few hundred feet would spell the difference between life and death for the navigator.

  ‘Wait until I tell you!’ the pilot screamed. Behind him and to the right, Sharma, who was still plugged into the intercom, acknowledged hoarsely and undid his seat harness, fighting against the centrifugal force that glued him to the side of the cockpit as the aircraft went into its second roll. This time, as the Canberra went over on its back, Engineer felt the controls go sloppy in his hands.

  ‘Now!’ he yelled, and glimpsed the dark bulk of Sharma’s body silhouetted in the hatch before it tumbled out into the night. Almost instantly, there came a series of hammer-blows as the starboard wing started to break up. As it did so, the Canberra flopped over on an even keel, and it was this that saved the pilot’s life; had it been otherwise, he would have ejected upside down, straight into the jungle.

  He seized the seat-pan handle and pulled it with all his strength, blasting out through the cockpit canopy. Shocked and stunned, he had no recollection, later, of the seat dropping away and his parachute canopy opening.

  Below him, and away to one side, the Canberra impacted in the jungle in a gush of blazing fuel. An instant later, its remaining flares exploded in a great ball of light that lit up the countryside for miles around. In it, with relief, Engineer caught sight of his navigator’s parachute, floating to earth some distance away.

  The breeze carried Engineer away from the thickest part of the jungle and he landed heavily at its fringe, breaking an ankle. Unable to walk, he stayed put until he was collected some time later by a British search party, which had also located Sharma.

  The crash of the Canberra had been reported back to base by the two Hunter pilots who had accompanied it. Like Engineer, they believed that the aircraft must have been hit by ground fire, for they had seen no sign of any other aircraft in the vicinity.

  Yeoman was delighted to hear that Engineer and Sharma had escaped with relatively minor injuries, but perturbed by the loss of the aircraft. Without its flare-dropping capability, it would now be impossible for the Hunters to carry out any further attacks before dawn, and by that time the enemy might have succeeded in pushing substantial forces across the river. Once they were swallowed up by the jungle on the Warambe side, they would prove extremely difficult to locate and eliminate. In the meantime, they might do an immense amount of damage, especially if they got near the airstrip. It all depended on how far the Kerewatan forces were prepared to go, and that was something only ti
me would tell. The only thing to do, in the meantime, was to wait and hope that the defences on the river would hold against any major onslaught.

  On the other side of the river, the Colonel, back at base after shooting down the Canberra, was also playing a waiting game. It was now 0345, and at any moment he expected to receive word that the operation against Warambe’s uranium mines had been carried out successfully. After that, it would merely be a matter of pulling back the diversionary forces with the help of the air cover that would be provided by his Sabres.

  What the Colonel had no way of knowing, however, was that the whole scheme was going badly awry.

  *

  In the shadow of the long-extinct volcano, it was pitch black, affording additional cover for the men who lay motionless under cover of the rocks that were scattered between the base of the volcano’s cone and the cliff-top.

  Fifty yards away, farther along the cliff, another group of men stood clustered around the geological fault that ran from the base of the volcano down through the cliff face. They were completely unaware of the fact that they had been under constant surveillance for the past two nights.

  Major Danglin’ Jones grinned in the darkness. It was time to bring matters to a head. The bait had been laid; all that remained now was to reel in the fish. He tapped the shoulder of the SAS trooper who lay next to him, and the man tripped a switch.

  Instantly, the group of men by the chasm were bathed in the glare of a powerful searchlight that had been concealed among the rocks. They swung round, startled, and before they had the chance to get over their surprise a burst of machine-gun fire crackled over their heads. Some of them, in terror, hurled themselves to the ground.

  Jones’ voice rang out, and its authority and message were plain to the men of the Warambe Rifles, even though some of them knew no English. It was plain, too, to the white officer in charge of them.