by Chris Ryan
‘Get the fucking lights on,’ I told him. ‘Keep the shamoulis going. We need maximum illumination. Two, then. Come in, Green Two.’
I waited, tried again. No reply. Andy. It was possible his radio had gone down. It might have fallen out of its pouch if he’d had to move quickly. But deep down I knew at once something bad had happened.
I’ve seen the shit hit the fan often enough, but never as messily as that. Dead or dying elephants were scattered over the killing ground, some roaring and groaning as they struggled to get up. The Kamangans’ discipline had gone like the night wind. Men had abandoned their positions and were running all over the place, putting bursts into the crippled beasts, already whacking into the dead bulls with machetes and commando knives as they started to cut out their tusks. It seemed highly unlikely that there could be an enemy force in the vicinity; if the convoy had been close, it would have turned tail by now. Just as well, because our party was wide open to attack.
‘Fuck it!’ I shouted to Whinger. ‘It’s not down to us to get these bastards back under control. I’m going to find Andy.’
Together we ran towards the spot where he’d taken station, behind the right cut-off group. ‘Andy!’ I yelled. ‘Where are you?’
In the distance the claymore explosions had ignited several bush fires, but the crackling flames only made our immediate surroundings seem darker. The last shamouli had floated off to the west, so that its flare was filling every dip in the ground with black shadow, and we had to check each inky patch individually.
It was Whinger who found him. He gave a sudden yell of ‘Here!’ and stood still, with his torch-beam pointing straight downwards.
In a second I was beside him. Andy was lying on his back, head turned to the right, with his eyes shut and a trickle of blood oozing from his mouth. It was obvious what had happened, because his chest was almost two-dimensional, only two or three inches from top to bottom, crushed flat by a tremendous weight. An elephant must have knocked him down and put a foot right on him, or rolled over him. Kneeling beside the body, I ran my hands up its sides and touched the ends of snapped ribs jagging out under his smock. I saw his 203 lying in the dust a few feet away.
I felt choked. Andy, just married. My mind flew to the day of the wedding. All the blossom had been out in an orchard next to the churchyard. I looked down at his body and thought, ‘Why in a godforsaken place like this?’ I knew we’d had our differences, but he never deserved this. I thought of Penny, a bride of only two months. Now the Families’ Officer would have to call on her. I remembered how they’d broken the terrible news about Kath’s senseless death to me.
‘Jesus!’ I went. ‘It’s that fucking witch doctor. This is his number one, the first of ten.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Whinger. ‘It was just bad luck. I bet the silveries have taken casualties as well.’
‘The more, the better,’ I said savagely. ‘Stupid bastards. Why the hell can’t they control themselves?’
‘This wasn’t their fault,’ said Whinger, doggedly. ‘It wasn’t them who cracked it off. It was the claymores that panicked the elephants.’
I knew he was right, but that didn’t make things any easier. I stood up, getting hold of myself, and used the radio to call our remaining guys together. I couldn’t help feeling irritated when Genesis started to recite a short benediction, commending Andy’s soul to the Almighty, and I shouted at him to shut up.
‘Where was God when the elephants charged?’ I said bitterly. ‘He wasn’t fucking looking after Andy.’
Genesis opened his mouth to say something, but I poked him in the chest with my forefinger and snapped, ‘Eh, just keep quiet.’
We unrolled our one para-silk stretcher and got the body into it, to carry it back to the holding area. By then darkness had settled back on the bush, except where the fires lit up patches in the distance and, closer, a couple of places where Kamangans were feverishly hacking at elephant corpses by torchlight.
‘Joss!’ I yelled. ‘Where are you?’
‘Here.’ He answered from only a few feet away. He must have been coming in search of us.
‘I went, ‘What a fuck-up!’
For the moment he didn’t reply. I think he was choked as well. Then I was aware of him standing beside me, his black face invisible, only his DPMs showing faintly in the moonlight. He pointed at the shrouded body and asked, ‘Who is this?’
‘Andy.’
‘Andy! Oh my goodness! I’m sorry. Was it an elephant?’
‘Yep. What about you? Have you got casualties?’
‘Two dead. Two broken legs, one broken arm, one flesh wound from a bullet.’
‘What about casevac?’
‘It will be difficult from here.’
‘You’ve said it. Let’s get back to the holding area and talk about it there.’
I should have bollocked him for letting his men run riot, but I let it go, because I’d seen enough of their behaviour to realise it was utterly unrealistic to expect the sort of discipline that prevails in British forces. Nor did I tell him to call off the guys who were carving up the elephants. I knew the whole Kamangan army was shit-poor, and hadn’t been paid in months, so who was I to deny them the fat haul of dollars they might get from selling tusks?
At 2300 local time — 2100 in the UK — I called Hereford on the satcom phone to report our casualty.
‘What d’you mean, it was an elephant?’ said Pete Dickson, the Duty Officer, incredulously.
‘We were on a night ex,’ I white-lied. ‘A herd of about fifty ellies wandered on to our position and stampeded. Came right through us. There wasn’t time to move or do anything. Andy got knocked down and trampled.’
‘Killed outright?’
‘Instantaneously. When you see the body, you’ll know. His chest is about two inches front to back.’
‘Jesus!’
‘Listen,’ I went on. ‘We need to get him out fast. He won’t last a day in the kind of heat we’re having.’
‘You mean a charter aircraft?’
‘Exactly. There’s a firm called Kam-Ex, in Mulongwe. You can contact them through the embassy.’
‘Are they going to be happy to fly into your area?’
I lied again. ‘There shouldn’t be any problem. We’re still well north of rebel territory.’
‘Okay. And is there a strip close by?’
‘There will be. There’s a straight bush road with a good level surface. It just needs a bit of scrub cleared, and we can do that at first light.’
I gave the coordinates, which I’d punched into my GPS as Waypoint Four.
‘Right,’ said Pete. ‘We’ll see what we can do. But we’ll need a full report on the incident in due course.’
‘Of course.’
‘D’you want to speak to the CO in the morning?’
‘Not unless he wants to speak to me.’
‘Okay, then. Until tomorrow.’
Dawn saw us back on the bush road with a force of forty Kamangans. We’d chosen a stretch on which the scrub was light anyway, and now those razor-sharp machetes came into their own. In the cool of the morning the guys worked well — I had to hand it to them — and in little more than an hour we’d cleared a strip four hundred metres long, cutting back the shrubs on either side of the track to create an open corridor about twenty metres wide. Provided no strong cross-wind got up, a reasonable pilot ought to be able to land and take off without difficulty.
At that stage — 0630 — we had no confirmation that an aircraft was available, but I went ahead preparing the strip anyway. At 0945 I was relieved to get a satcom call from Hereford via the Defence Attaché at the embassy in Mulongwe, confirming that a Kam-Ex aircraft was on its way. Its estimated flight-time, the DA said, was one hour forty minutes, and he gave us a frequency on which we could establish comms with the pilot when he was approaching.
It seemed to me that Joss was observing our preparations with a slightly cynical air. He was sending his own dead and wounded
back to the nearest military base by road, and obviously reckoned our reaction was over the top. At the same time, maybe he was ashamed of the way his guys had behaved, and so felt he wasn’t in a position to start making criticisms. I didn’t feel sorry for his casualties, even the two with broken legs. In fact, I hoped they’d have a rough ride home.
Our pilot came on the air when he was twenty minutes out. His name, he told us, was Steve, and by his accent he was an Aussie or a New Zealander. He was flying a Cessna 210, at 8,000 feet, and having no problems with his navigation as he came towards our location from the north-east.
‘Hold that bearing,’ I told him. ‘We’re ready for you. The strip we’ve cleared runs roughly east and west. Four hundred metres long. Level ground all the way. Wind at the minute is zero, but we’ll light a fire at the north-eastern corner to see what the smoke does.’
‘Roger,’ he went. ‘Sounds dinkum. Where’s my passenger?’
‘We’ll have him by the fire. Suggest you come in from the west and taxi right along.’
‘Fair enough. No rebel forces in the area, I suppose?’
‘Not that we know of. We’ve had a patrol out one k to the south, and they’re reporting the area clear.’
‘Okay, then. I’ll see you in a minute.’
The scrub we collected was so dry our marker fire went off like a torch, but the blaze produced practically no smoke, so we sent one of the Kamangans running to pull some branches off a leadwood tree which was growing a couple of hundred metres away. The dusty-looking leaves crackled fiercely and gave off dense black smoke; after a quick trial, we kept the rest ready until the plane arrived.
We heard it before we saw it. The sun was already high and brilliant, and we had to screw up our eyes against its light when we detected the far-off hum. Then we picked up a little dark dot which rapidly grew into a silver and blue aircraft, already descending.
‘We have you visual,’ I called. ‘Come slightly right of your heading, and we’ll be on your nose. You should see our smoke.’
‘Okay,’ he answered, ‘but there are bush fires all over.’ Then his voice sharpened as he said, ‘Got it! Got the strip. Wait one while I take a look.’
Bringing the Cessna down low, he made a pass to the south, with the aircraft tilted over towards us as he scanned the makeshift runway. As he climbed again a covey of terrified guinea fowl exploded from the scrub beneath him, eight or ten heavy grey birds, scattering desperately.
The smoke from our fire was going up straight as a pillar.
‘Looks okay,’ he said.
I saw his undercarriage go down as he pulled round in a tight turn to line up for an easterly approach. Without further ado he came in low — so low that it looked as though his wheels were going to brush through the tops of bushes short of the strip. Then with twin puffs of dust he was down, bouncing a bit but well under control. He taxied steadily towards us, stopped about thirty metres off, closed down his engine, opened the door and jumped out — a stocky young fellow in bush shirt and shorts, with a shock of fair hair that flopped over his tanned forehead.
I went forward to shake hands, and said, ‘Thanks for coming.’
‘Don’t mention it. Sorry you needed me.’ He gestured at Andy’s body, now zipped into a black bag. ‘Trouble with elephants, I hear.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Dangerous animals.’
‘We thought there were none left. We heard they’d all been shot.’
‘Don’t you believe it. I flew over a big herd right back there.’
‘Maybe that was the lot that ran into us. Well, where d’you want him?’
‘On the floor. We’ve stripped out the seats.’
Four of us picked up the body, which had gone stiff as a board in the night, but now was floppy again, and hoisted it awkwardly through the passenger door.
‘What are you going to do with him?’ Genesis asked.
‘The embassy’s laid on an ambulance to take him straight to the city mortuary. They’re arranging a flight back to the UK as soon as possible.’
That seemed as good as we could get. Steve said a quick goodbye and got back on board, but nobody else spoke. None of us had anything to say. We watched mutely as he started up, carried out his checks, turned, taxied and took off in the opposite direction, waggling his wings in farewell as he swung right-handed and climbed away to the north. I had a strong desire to jump into the co-pilot’s seat and fly clean out of this mess, on the pretext that the body needed an escort. In reality I knew that such an action would never wash, and in any case, it wasn’t in me to leave my own guys in the shit.
We’d sent nothing with Andy, because he had practically nothing to send — no money, credit card or wallet. The only personal items I kept were his watch — a good stainless-steel Rolex, which would certainly have been nicked in the mortuary — and a small folder of green canvas holding two photos of Penny, which I found in the breast pocket of his DPMs. Whatever happened, I’d make sure that those two items got back to the UK safely.
In a couple of minutes, the Cessna vanished into the sky, and our little group was left standing in silence under the hot morning sun. Just before we moved off I noticed that Genesis was fingering the crucifix which he wore on a fine chain round his neck, and that his lips were moving in prayer.
‘Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord,’ he was murmuring. ‘Even so sayeth the spirit, for they rest from their labours.’
SIX
We started south again in a sober frame of mind. The fiasco of the ambush had been damaging on two counts: first, we’d taken casualties; second, far from achieving anything, we’d given our presence away. We had no means of telling where the arms convoy had been when things went noisy; but even if it was still too far out for the guys on it to hear the gunfire and explosions, they must have seen the concentration of bush fires raging up ahead of them, and they’d be bound to suspect that a military force was operating in the area. Nor did we know anything about their comms. Had they been in contact with the mine at Gutu and reported the disturbance? Even if they hadn’t, the mere fact that the convoy had failed to come through must have told the garrison something was wrong. We needed to put space between ourselves and the ambush location.
In the morning we’d revisited the scene — and a horrible one it was. In the killing ground we found seven dead elephants: five mature animals and two babies, densely covered with flies, their stomachs blown out like grey barrage balloons. The one that sprayed blood over me had collapsed just past the spot where Whinger and I had been lying. Two more had been killed by the claymores: one had had the lower half of a hind leg blown off, and had dragged itself away for a couple of hundred yards before it bled to death. We found it lying in a gully in a pool of blood. The air was still too cool for the thermals to have got going, and most birds of prey weren’t yet airborne, but something had already alerted two vultures, which were perched in a bare tree to the south, watching and waiting to begin a colossal feast.
The futility of the whole thing made me angry. I was feeling the loss of Andy, too, and although I said nothing more about the witch doctor, I felt certain that somehow the old bastard had put a spell on us.
‘I can’t figure out the rebels’ strategy,’ I said as I sat beside Whinger in the front of one of the pinkies. ‘Bakunda reckoned they’ve got five hundred armed men, at most. With a force that size there’s no way they could control an area as vast as this.’
‘Not a chance,’ Whinger agreed. ‘All they can do is hold on to one or two key points. If they’re getting diamonds from the mine, they can buy in weapons from other countries. Meanwhile, they terrorise the population by burning villages while they build up their strength. The arms convoy was supposed to be part of that build-up. Even if we only delayed it, we may have done ourselves a favour.’
‘I wish to hell we’d hit it, though,’ I said. ‘It would have been nice to see a few tons of ammo go up in smoke.’
‘By the way,�
�� said Whinger, ‘what did you make of Joss last night?’
‘I don’t know. Until then I’d thought the guy was all for us. But I suddenly got the feeling he doesn’t like us that much.’
‘Not a lot we can do about it.’ Whinger beat a tattoo on the wheel with his fingers spread. ‘And anyway, in about three weeks we can say goodbye to him.’
By noon that day we were well into rebel territory, and everyone was getting hyped up with the feeling that we were driving into danger. Our relatively carefree time of training, pure and simple, was over. From now on we might come under attack at any moment. Already we were exceeding our brief from Hereford, but I told myself that if anything did develop, we’d pull back and let the Kamangans handle it.
The overgrown track had swung more to the east than we wanted, but for the time being it still seemed our best option, and we followed it, moving cautiously in short bounds, conscious of the fact that somebody might be coming out to meet the missing convoy. One of our pinkies ranged ahead, with Pavarotti driving, Joss beside him, Phil on the .50 in the back, and two silveries sitting on the bonnet to watch the surface of the road for any sign of disturbance. It seemed unlikely the Afundis would have mined a track their own vehicles were using — but we weren’t taking any chances.
The speed of our advance depended on the terrain. In places where the bush was thick, we moved slowly, but when vegetation was sparser and visibility better, we accelerated. The scout vehicle would press ahead until it came to a natural look-out point; there it would halt, and once Pav had satisfied himself the coast was clear, he’d call up the rest of the force by radio.
Stopping and starting, we progressed without incident until late in the afternoon. All the way Pav was following the single set of wheel marks left by the truck from which the wounded refugee had escaped. But then at about 1630, with the sun turning red as it sank towards the horizon behind us, he called a halt after only a short stretch on the move.
‘Wait out,’ he called. ‘We’ve got more tracks here.’ A couple of minutes later he came through with: ‘We’re on a Y junction. There’s one road coming from the east, and another heading south. Quite heavily used. Fresh tracks. Several different vehicle types. Looks like the remains of a village in the distance as well.’
