by Chris Ryan
Phil, as always, was for pressing ahead. So were Pavarotti and, to a lesser extent, Stringer. Chalky, Danny and Mart were more cautious. But, as I say, it was Jason who swung the vote when he said quietly, ‘I know Ichembo.’
‘You know it!’ went Pavarotti. ‘How?’
‘One brother-law, he come from that place. I visit his family there.’
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘A village?’
‘No village — boma. Small town.’
‘Can you find the way there?’
Jason nodded.
For a moment I felt seriously pissed off with him for not having divulged such vital information sooner. Again, it was out of habit of holding things back, but I didn’t bollock him on it because I knew it was his nature to be self-effacing, and also because he was shy about his limited English, and didn’t like speaking it more than he could help.
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘I’ve just thought of something. The Yank, Sam, said the place was outside the war zone. If we beat Muende to it, maybe we can just cruise in and get some legit fuel from a garage.’
Again, Jason nodded, and said, ‘I think so.’
‘That’s it, then. Let’s go.’
‘What about the Kremlin?’ Stringer asked. ‘Shall we tell them what we’re doing?’
‘Not yet,’ I told him. ‘We’ll find out the score first and tell them after.’
‘Another suggestion,’ said Chalky. ‘Why not call your friend Back-hander and chat him up? If you went through to the embassy on the satcom, they might pull him across to talk to you. You could tell him Joss has flipped, and we’re in the shit. He might believe it, coming from you. It might stop him swallowing whatever crap Joss has sent back through his own headquarters. He might even send his chopper to lift us out. After all, you and he were great buddies when he came to the ambush.’
‘Yeah, well,’ I went. ‘It’s an idea.’ I remembered how we’d laughed when Bakunda had said, ‘Some of these fellows are not long down from the trees.’ Now I thought, too fucking right.
‘Good idea, Chalky,’ I said. ‘Let’s try it.’
When we punched in the number for the DA in Mulongwe, the call went through like clockwork. But the response was not what we’d hoped for: instead of a live human, we got a female voice on a tape honking, ‘The British Embassy in Mulongwe is temporarily closed. Urgent calls should be redirected to the British Embassy in Harare.’ There followed a string of numbers, but I switched off in the middle of them.
‘Cancel that one,’ I told the lads. ‘Like the Ops Officer said, they’ve broken off diplomatic relations. We’re on our own in glorious Kamanga. We’d better shift our arses, because if what Sam said was right, we’re in a race.’
Any race is easier to manage if you know what competition you’re up against. If you can see the other runners, and watch how they’re performing, you can at least pace yourself. But on that blazing hot morning we had only a hazy idea of what the enemy were up to. We believed that Muende was heading up with some sort of a force from the camp where I’d been held prisoner. Whether his South African mercenaries were still with him, or whether they’d formed a splinter group, we couldn’t tell. What we knew for sure was that Joss and his Alpha Commando were somewhere behind us, to the east, probably following our tracks. Had they got wind of the weapons cache, and of Muende’s new agenda? Again, we had no means of knowing. In the circumstances, all we could do was crack on as fast as possible.
Thanks to Jason, our move westwards went perfectly. How he navigated, I never quite made out. Riding in the front of the pinkie, with Pav driving, he never looked at the map, still less at a compass. His eyes were constantly sweeping the horizon, and every now and then he would glance up at the sun, as if to check his bearings. For the first hour he directed us through the bush, not on any road, but twisting and turning along one game trail after another. Then we came on to a sandy, overgrown track and followed that to the north at a good speed until we came to a T junction and joined an earth road leading east and west.
Half an hour westwards along that, and at last we saw signs of normal African life. After days without setting eyes on a civilian, it gave everyone a lift to find patches of cultivation and meet men and women walking along the road with bundles on their heads. When we stopped beside a little group and Jason made enquiries, the news was electrifying: the next village ahead possessed a borehole, and had plenty of fresh water. I was frantic to press ahead, but, whatever happened, we needed water, so I called a quick halt. The community was tiny — only twenty or thirty grass huts — but somehow it had been awarded a development grant, and there in the centre stood the borehole: a hand pump with a chute that ran water off into a galvanised metal tank, all under a conical grass roof set up high on wooden posts.
The moment we pulled up beside it, dusty, barefoot children began to assemble, struck speechless by the sight of these peculiar grey men caked in mud. Danny grabbed the pump handle and began to rock it back and forth. Up came a gush of water, cool and crystal-clear. Mart and Pavarotti started filling jerricans, but after days of mud, sand, grit and sweat, the sight of the clean water was too much for Phil, who ripped off his shirt and poured bowlfuls over his head. Stringer and Chalky followed his example. The spectacle of them furiously scrubbing away, and quickly turning white, sent the kids into paroxysms of delight.
Adults appeared from nowhere. One of them — elderly, tall and dignified — introduced himself as the head man of the village. Clearly he fancied a good exchange of news and a lengthy chat.
‘Explain we’re in a hurry,’ I told Jason. ‘And ask if he’s heard anything about the war.’
As the two were talking I dug out a handful of boiled sweets and distributed them to the junior fans. The first little boy made to put the gift straight into his mouth, paper and all, and I had to show him how to unwrap it first.
‘First time the poor little bugger’s ever seen a thing like that,’ I said to Phil. ‘Eh, work the pump while I stick my head under the spout.’
By the time I’d given my head and neck a scrub, and sponged cautiously at the least sore parts of my face, Jason had established that the head man knew nothing about any fighting. He’d heard there was trouble away in the east, but that was all. The rumours hadn’t been bad enough to make his people desert their homes. We tried to get him to pin-point the position of his village, but the map meant nothing to him, and all he could confirm was that Ichembo was straight on in the direction we were pointing.
‘Let’s pay for the water,’ said Pav, as we were about to roll.
The suggestion irritated me. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I told him. ‘They’re not expecting anything.’
‘No, but Christ, look how poor they are.’
‘Well…’ I saw the sense of what he was saying, and felt ashamed of my own grudging attitude. From the general float, kept in the mother wagon, I dug out a ten-dollar bill and presented it to the head man, who held it up in front of his chest in both hands, beaming as if he’d got hold of a million dollars, and bowing his head repeatedly in thanks.
‘He says he buy football for the boys,’ Jason translated.
‘Good, and thanks!’ I smiled, shook the scrawny old hand, climbed back aboard, and off we went. We’d lost ten minutes, but gained a big lift in spirits and a supply of the best water we’d seen in Africa.
Until then, members of the party not driving or navigating had tried to get their heads down and catch up on lost sleep, but after the halt the tension was too great for anyone to relax. Not knowing what lay ahead, we were going to have to rely entirely on the speed and intelligence of our reactions: stealth, speed and surprise would have to be our weapons. There was no disguising that we were some form of army unit. Two military vehicles moving in convoy, the jeep with a .50 machine gun mounted on the back — what else could we be?
Another anxiety lay heavily on me. The rebel column advancing on course to meet us was one thing, but what was going on at Gutu? Had a relief
force arrived and taken over the mine? If it had, what were Joss and his crew up to? Was Alpha Commando again moving southwards, according to their original plan? Or was the assassination squad still on our tail? Or had the South African mercenaries also found out about the nuclear stockpile, and diverted Joss’s hunt towards Ichembo? We’d seen Joss having one of them shot, but had the three we chased off into the hills rejoined his force? Because we had no means of answering such questions, they were preying on my mind.
‘This cache, or silo, or whatever,’ I said to Pav as I drove the pinkie. The surface was fairly good, and we were doing thirty, so I had to pitch my voice loud. ‘It can’t be in the town, or anywhere near it. Not even the Russians would have been such cunts as to locate a nuclear dump in an inhabited area. There’s the health hazard, for one thing. And then, quite separate, there’s the question of security: people would have been walking into it all the time. No, it’s got to be tucked away in some remote area that the locals don’t have any reason to visit. Eh, Jason!’
The tracker leaned forward from his place in the back, and I explained my concept to him in short, shouted takes.
‘As soon as we get to the edge of this town… we need to grab some guy… someone who looks sensible… find out if such an area exists.’
Jason’s answer was ‘Yassir.’ He said that to almost all enquiries. But I was sure he’d got the point.
Ever since we’d come on to the east-west road the terrain had remained flat: kilometre after kilometre of featureless, fairly open bush, with dry, sandy ground showing between the vegetation. But then, through the haze far out to our right front, I began to make out higher ground — some kind of a plateau.
‘Jason,’ I called. ‘Is Ichembo down on the flat, or up there in the hills?’
‘Flat, flat,’ he said emphatically, moving his open hand from side to side.
‘So what’s all that high ground?’
‘Is called Meranga Plain.’ Again he indicated level ground, but held his hand higher.
‘Do people live up there?’
‘No people. Ground bad for crop. Too much rock. No water.’
‘So it’s empty.’
‘Yassir. Only army training.’
‘A training area?’
‘One time. Now left.’
‘And is there a barracks in town?’
‘One time,’ Jason repeated. ‘Many Russian soldiers here. Training army.’
‘You mean the camp’s closed now?’
‘Yassir.’
Again I felt pissed off with our faithful tracker. Why the hell hadn’t he said the magic words ‘Russian’ and ‘training area’ before? All the same, I felt the adrenalin rising.
‘Hear that, Pav?’ I went. ‘That’s where our stuff will be.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Pav’s instincts had responded the same as mine. He was sitting up high and eyeballing the country all round for a possible landing strip.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I just had an idea.’
‘Like what?’
‘About how news of this cache suddenly came to light. If the warheads have been lying around for a dozen years, the locals must have forgotten all about them. But someone else remembered. I bet I know who it is — some bloody Russian who’s recently joined Muende’s private army.’
‘One of the mercenaries?’
‘Exactly. Sam said something about there being Russkies in the mercenary team. It’s a hundred to one there’s a guy who served out here in the Soviet army, finished his tour in the forces and signed up with Interaction, just like the South Africans, the Yanks and all the others. And now they’ve sent him to Kamanga because he knows the place.’
‘Possible.’
‘More than that: it’s bloody probable. And, of course, the trouble is, that guy will remember exactly where the stuff’s stored.’
Pav continued eyeballing for a bit, then asked, ‘You got a plan, Geordie?’
‘We need to ID the site first. Then it’ll depend on the strength of the opposition. If we find it, we’ll defend it until we can call in the Herc and an NBC crew.’
‘If, if, if,’ went Pav.
‘I know.’
In the last few minutes we’d started to meet pedestrians again, which made us think the town couldn’t be far ahead. Then came a hoot from Chalky, driving the mother wagon behind us. Stringer, standing up through the turret of the cab, was pointing energetically to our right front. From his high position he’d seen something we couldn’t. I slowed to a halt in a cloud of dust; no need to pull off the road, because we hadn’t seen another vehicle all morning.
‘What is it?’
‘On top of that bank. There’s a long open area that looks good for an LZ.’
‘Not another flood pan?’
‘Well, it could be one. But it’s worth a shufti.’
Stringer was right. Parallel with the road was a strip of ground at least two hundred metres wide which ran on for several kilometres. It appeared to have been levelled by a flood at some stage. Only a few isolated tussocks of grass grew out of the sand, and the surface turned out to be extremely hard. After our experience at the Zebra Pans we were dead cautious about driving on to it, but the seven-ton mother wagon rolled smoothly along for half a kilometre, leaving scarcely a mark.
‘This’ll do,’ I agreed. ‘Get the coordinates, Mart. And Stringer, now we’ve stopped anyway, get through to the Kremlin. First, though, let’s get under those trees, just in case Muende has got his precious chopper airborne and does a fly-past.’
The time was 1125 local — 0925 in Hereford. Because we’d been stirring the shit internationally, I guessed the bigwigs would already be at their desks. As Stringer set up the satcom dish, and I took another look at our one surviving map, Jason came across from the roadside, where he’d quizzed a passer-by, to announce, ‘Ichembo, one hour.’
‘One hour walking?’
‘Yassir.’
‘Five or six ks, then.’
I was right about the Kremlin. Everyone there was buzzing and bobbing like the shithouse fly. But the good news was they’d got their fingers out, and a Herc with crew equipped to handle NBC material was already on the ground at a military airfield just inside the border of Namibia.
‘Brilliant!’ I told Dave Alton, the Ops Officer. ‘We’re a bit north of that, but it can’t be more than two hundred ks — less than an hour’s flying time.’ I gave him the coordinates of the LZ, and a brief description of the area. ‘We’re calling the feature the Mall,’ I said. ‘It’s that flat and straight.’
‘What about hazards?’ he asked. ‘Hills? Power-lines?’
‘Nothing. No hill more than a couple of hundred feet within miles, and as for electricity, there ain’t none in this part of Africa. Listen, you don’t have any info on the cache site?’
‘Nothing’s come up yet. We’re still trying, but we doubt there’s any record.’
‘Roger. We think we’ve got the area pin-pointed, and we’re about to start a CTR.’
‘Good work. What have you done with Genesis?’
‘Buried him. I hope it’s only for the time being. We’re planning to go back for him if we get a chance.’
‘Roger.’
We agreed to open up the satcom link for five minutes every hour, on the hour. Then we shut down.
‘Why not call the Herc in now and fuck off out of it while we’ve got the chance?’ Danny suggested.
‘You can, if you like,’ I told him. ‘Personally, I’m staying to sort that bastard Muende.’ I didn’t mean to sound anti-Danny, but that was how the remark came out, and I saw him looking a bit pained. ‘Nothing personal, mate,’ I added. ‘But you weren’t there when he had Whinger butchered. You didn’t see what a barbarous fucking ape he is.’
By 1150 we were on the move again, with the pinkie leading, and soon the outskirts of Ichembo came into view — the usual string of shacks made from corrugated iron, cardboard, packing cases, pallets and so on. Also in view, and clearer no
w, was the low escarpment to our right, where the land ran up to the plateau Jason had described.
‘Eh!’ exclaimed Pavarotti suddenly. ‘Look at this: the bloody barracks.’
On our right ran the remains of a two-metre chain-link fence. Stretches of wire had been taken down and carried off, and holes cut in the parts that remained. Inside the perimeter lay the wreck of a barracks, long, low huts with doors and windows ripped out, roofs collapsing. Around them was a flat, weedy wilderness of former drill squares and vehicle parks. Under the glare of the sun everything looked baked and dusty and dead.
With minimal warning to Chalky, who was driving behind, Pav swung the pinkie right-handed through one of the gaps in the fence and headed straight across an old parade ground.
‘Stands to reason!’ he shouted. ‘There must be access from this place, straight out on to the training area at the back.’
In less than two minutes his hunch proved correct. The rear fence had scarcely been vandalised, and a pair of exit gates was still closed by a rusty padlock and chain. Rather than alert the neighbourhood with an explosion, we chopped through the chain with bolt shears and hauled the gates open, squealing on their hinges. Beyond them a dirt road went up through a cutting, between walls of grey-brown sandy rock. From the weeds that had sprung up on the track, we could see it hadn’t been used in years.
‘Jesus!’ I shouted to Pav. ‘This is it! We’ve hacked it!’
The little canyon was no more than a hundred metres long, and towards the top our expectations rose even higher when we found the road blocked by a sagging wooden pole, painted pale blue and bound with barbed wire. A metal notice which had once hung on it had fallen off and lay face-down in the dust. I jumped out, picked it up and turned it over. Half the writing had gone, but the red letters that remained were in Cyrillic script.
‘Stringer!’ I yelled, holding the sign up. ‘What does this say?’
‘No entry,’ he translated. ‘Danger. Keep out.’
‘Shit hot!’ went Pav. ‘We’re closing in.’
Again there was no need for a demolition charge. The posts supporting the barrier were made of wood, which had been eaten away to a skeleton by termites. One push from the front of the pinkie and both snapped off in puffs of dust. We crunched over the remains of the barrier and motored to the top of the bank. A wilderness of withered shrubs and knee-high dead grass stretched off into the distance. The plateau had a blasted, lifeless, desolate look.
