by Chris Ryan
‘How long will you give them?’ the boss asked.
‘What – to shoot?’
‘Yes.’
‘The centre targets will be up for fifteen seconds, initially. Then a couple more exposures, but shorter. We’ve also got one target way out here, on the right, and one on the left, to simulate people doing runners. Then there are the claymore targets in the central killing ground.’
‘Quite difficult for the chaps, having to react fast after so long a wait.’
‘That’s the whole point of the exercise: to get the feel of what a real ambush is like. Way back in the fifties, when our Regiment was in the jungle in Malaya, the guys sometimes maintained ambushes for five or six days on end.’
He nodded, looking impressed. ‘And who’s giving the orders?’
‘I’ll fire the Shamouli, but after that it’s all Kamangans in command – Major Mvula and his subordinates. Our guys are only there as back-up.’
‘Good, good.’ Bakunda nodded again.
‘There’s only been one hiccup so far.’ I told him about the hyena, and added, ‘Okay, then – if you’re ready, we’ll go. There’s just one thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t want all these people with us.’ I gestured at the entourage. ‘If it’s all right by you, they can stay here, and us two will go on together.’
Bakunda glanced up quickly. ‘Are you giving me orders?’
‘No, sir.’ I looked straight at him. ‘I just said what I’d prefer. I thought it had been arranged over the radio, in any case.’
He sidestepped my remark and said, ‘What’s the objection to them coming?’
‘There’d be too much noise. Don’t get me wrong, but your soldiers aren’t totally reliable. We’ve seen that in training. We saw it again with the hyena. There’s supposed to be no firing until a flare goes up – but somebody freaked on that animal. If they hear a party crashing through the bush, they could easily open up on us.’
‘By Jove, they’d better not!’ he said.
‘If they did, it might be too late to worry. Besides, space in our OP’s constricted. These other guys of yours wouldn’t be able to see anything, even if they reached it safely.’
‘Well . . .’ Bakunda looked round at his men. ‘I make it a rule: never move without my big fellers around me.’
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘There’s nobody going to touch you. Half your special force is lying in ambush out there. It’s up to you.’
For a few seconds he stared at me – not that he could see much in the starlight. Then he suddenly gave me a playful punch on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey! Your name’s Sharp. You are sharp! I like it.’ Turning away he said, ‘All right, chaps. Wait for us here.’
In the starlight it wasn’t easy to navigate accurately. I was walking on a bearing of 84 mils, and several times I recognised the lie of the land. But similar features kept recurring – open areas, patches of scrub, stands of trees, one after the other – and I needed the way-marks I’d memorised during my earlier trips.
About halfway to the location, lions started calling from the same quarter as the night before. I stopped to listen, not sure how my companion would react. I was amazed when he whispered, ‘An old male.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘The depth of the voice.’
‘You’re a lion expert, then?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. But I grew up in the bush. When I was a boy, we saw lions every day.’
‘Where was that?’
‘Here, man, right here!’ He gave his high-pitched giggle again and pointed behind us. ‘I was born in a hut in Mbiya, the village where the camp is.’
‘So that’s why you opted to come out on this exercise?’
‘Partly, yes. I wanted to see you fellows in action, but it’s always nice to come home.’
The lions had gone quiet, and I started forward again, wondering how the hell a ragamuffin boy raised in one of those grass huts could have climbed to the top of the tree. This guy must have both brains and guts, I decided.
In a few more minutes we reached a single big rock which stood in the open about 200 metres short of the Kopje. I stopped beside it and gave the pressel on my radio two jabs.
‘Green One?’ Whinger’s voice came low but clear in my earpiece.
‘At the rock,’ I told him. ‘Our visitor’s with me. Everything okay?’
‘One ND.’
‘I thought I heard something. Nobody injured, is there?’
‘No, no.’
‘When was it?’
‘About an hour ago. Otherwise, no problem. Come on in.’
‘Roger. With you in a couple of minutes.’
‘What happened?’ Bakunda asked.
‘They had an ND – a negligent discharge. Somebody let off a round by mistake. Come on – let’s get in there.’
Over that last stretch I moved with extreme care, partly to impress my companion, partly from a sense of self-preservation. When I warned him about the danger of getting fired at, I hadn’t been bullshitting. I knew that by now the Kamangans must be well on edge, expecting action any moment: after the fiasco with the hyena, it wouldn’t have surprised me if one of them loosed off at any noise he heard, and bugger the pre-set arcs of fire. The news of the ND only strengthened my suspicions.
As we crawled the last few yards up the ridge of the Kopje, I saw Whinger’s head appear above a rock. I’d already told Bakunda who we’d be meeting, so I just whispered introductions and moved him up to the good vantage point, in the gully between two rocks. The starlight was bright enough for all the main features to show clearly.
‘There you are,’ I whispered. ‘The River Congo. The killer group’s straight down below us. Right-hand cut-off group over there, left-hand there. See the baobab? That’s the divider between the arcs of fire on that side.’
‘How do the groups communicate?’ Bakunda whispered. ‘Radios?’ He gestured at my earpiece.
I shook my head. ‘No. The guys are lying very close to each other – only three or four feet apart. The commander of each group has a comms cord. At this stage, one pull will mean “enemy coming in”, two, “enemy on target”.’
It took only a minute to show him our dispositions. Then I pulled back to make final checks with my own guys out front. When Phil, Andy and Pavarotti all reported satisfactorily, there seemed no point in waiting any longer, so I said, ‘Green One to all stations. Action in figures two minutes from now. Wait out.’
I’d already got five shamoulis laid out on a flat patch of grass among the rocks. Now I pulled out the safety pins on their white cords, so that the brass triggers dropped down, ready for firing. I handed the first of them to Whinger, who stood it on the ground and held it at an angle, like a mortar.
‘Green One. Thirty seconds . . .’ My own heart was going faster than usual, even though I’d been through this many times before. ‘Twenty . . . ten . . . five . . . stand by, stand by.’
I raised a thumb at Whinger. WHOOSH! went the rocket, racing up over the killing ground. The para-flare burst with a soft pop, and suddenly the whole area was bathed in harsh white light. Whinger waited a second, then, as soon as he saw the chute starting to float left-handed, put up another rocket to the right.
BRRRRRPPPP! A burst of automatic fire ripped out from below us. Tracer rounds skimmed away high over the bush ahead, way above any possible target on the ground.
‘CUNT!’ roared a voice which I recognised as Andy’s. ‘Wait for the fucking targets!’
‘Ground targets,’ I said quietly over the radio.
With a faint rattle in the distance, eight figure targets sprang into view. At the same moment Pav switched on the battery-powered ambush lights, flooding the scene with light.
From in front and below us a high African voice screamed out the order ‘Rapid fire!’
As one, the killer group opened up. After the night silence, the noise seemed phenomenal. I could hear the AK47s firing short bursts of three or
four rounds, with the gympis putting in longer bursts among them. Somebody’s rounds were going very low. Dust exploded in front of the targets and boiled up in the lights, obscuring the figures. Tracer showed that many rounds were flying way over the trees.
I counted to fifteen, then ordered, ‘Ground targets down.’
The figures vanished, but the firing continued for several seconds. As soon as it ceased, I called, ‘Tree targets up.’
This time the response was much slower. Whinger and I could see the new targets, which had swung into view round the trunks of trees, but through the dust haze nobody else spotted them. At last the Kamangan commander yelled out, ‘Engage single targets!’ and another fusillade began.
Again we gave them fifteen seconds, then a pause with nothing in sight. Next I got Pav to bring up four of the ground targets for five or six seconds only, and in the middle of that barrage I got Andy to fire the claymores.
Ba-boom! With blinding flashes the two heavy explosions went off almost simultaneously. Seething dust blotted out the entire killing ground.
‘Runner targets,’ I ordered.
Up they went, single figures way out to right and left. The right-hand cut-off group opened up instantaneously, but the guys on the left were slow. I heard Pavarotti roar, ‘Fucking fire!’ but they only got five or six rounds off before their target vanished again.
The claymores had set fire to the bush beyond the killing ground. Red flames began to run along the ground and surge up into clumps of grass. Loud crackling noises reached us. I heard the commander of the killer group shout, ‘Watch and shoot!’
‘Ground targets up,’ I ordered.
Now the figures were just visible through the swirling smoke, showing up as silhouettes against the flames behind them. Again there was rapid fire.
‘Down! I called. Then, ‘Runners again.’
This time Pavarotti’s guys pulled themselves together and blazed away like lunatics. Finally I ordered, ‘All targets down. Search parties out.’
I heard our guys pass on the instruction, and the Kamangan commanders repeat them. Then suddenly the bush was full of running figures as dark, camouflaged shapes sprinted forward to the river bank. Most of them were shouting and screaming with the release of tension. Pavarotti had doused the ambush lights, and the last of Whinger’s Shamoulis was burning out some distance off to the left, so that the main illumination was a red glow from the fire.
‘How was that?’ I said, standing up behind the President.
‘Fantastic! Splendid show! Some wild shooting, but who wouldn’t? What are they doing now?’
‘Clearing the area. In a real ambush, they’d be making certain there was no one left alive in the box. Now, we’ve told them to count the hits on the targets and get back in fast. As soon as—’
My words were cut short by a new burst of firing from our left. I heard Pavarotti yell ‘Stop!’ but several more rounds cracked off, and to my consternation I saw tracer streak towards the killing ground. We already had guys out there. Something was badly wrong.
There was more yelling, another burst of rounds, tracer hurtling vertically into the sky. When the firing ceased, the commotion continued, with several voices shouting and the sound of a struggle.
‘Pav,’ I went on the radio, ‘what the fuck was that?’
There was a pause before he answered, and when he did, he was panting. ‘Little local difficulty,’ he gasped. ‘One of the bastards flipped.’
‘Anybody hurt?’
‘I wouldn’t call it that. Let’s say he lost his head.’
I swallowed an exclamation. Knowing Pav, I was pretty sure what he meant. All I said was, ‘Can you handle it?’
‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you shortly.’
The extra shooting put the fear of God into the guys round the targets. The search parties came flying back, the cut-offs first, then the killer group, each commander calling out, ‘Last man . . . in.’ Then suddenly everybody had gone. We heard footsteps crashing away towards the north, and soon the only noise was the crackling of the flames beyond the river.
When the disturbance broke out, Bakunda had still been lying on the ground between the boulders, so that he hadn’t appreciated the full extent of the fuck-up occurring out to his left. But now he was on his feet and asking, ‘What happened over there?’
‘Not sure,’ I said non-committally. ‘Sounded like somebody dropped his rifle and it started firing automatically. We’ll hear when we get back.’
That seemed to satisfy him, and he asked, ‘What next, then?’
‘Your lads are already on their way back to the Bergen cache, fast as they can go. They’ll grab their packs, and then our guys will beest them about fifteen ks to the east.’
‘Beest?’
‘Hustle them on. Your commanders have to navigate, find their way to an RV. Our guys just keep the pace up. The point is to simulate a fast evacuation from the ambush location. That’s what we’d do in a live situation – get the hell out. Tonight we’ve arranged for a truck to go round and wait at the RV, to bring everyone back to camp.’
I was still struggling to get my mind round the dust-up in Pavarotti’s group. From his laconic answer, I felt certain the silveries were going to arrive back at base one man deficient.
To take my mind off that worry, I said, ‘How about a quick look at the targets?’
‘Sure.’
The fire had already retreated from the killing ground as it ate into the bush beyond, and we needed our torches to get a clear look at the figure eights, most of which once again were flat on the deck. All the ground-mounted group in the centre had been well riddled, but the tree targets had taken only a couple of rounds apiece. The right-hand runner had one bullet through the shoulder, and the left-hand target was untouched. So, too, were the two edge-on figures, set for the claymores.
‘Look at these,’ I said. ‘I told them they’d got their mines too far apart,’ I said. ‘This’ll be a good lesson to them.’
‘What about the fire?’ Bakunda asked.
‘Nothing we can do about it. But it’ll burn out when it comes to the next sand river.’
The President didn’t say much as we trekked back to camp. I thought he was maybe worried or annoyed by the lack of discipline his guys had shown. We passed straight through the Bergen cache, pausing only to pick up his escort of heavies. I was afraid we’d see one pack still sitting on the ground, but the whole lot had gone, and nothing was said.
Once we reached base, Bakunda became very matey. He started calling me ‘Old Boy’ and chattering away about his time at Sandhurst. He’d done two years there as an officer cadet, he told me: No. 1 Company in Victory College. He was quite disappointed when he found I hadn’t been there too and couldn’t swap reminiscences.
The cooks had prepared a special supper table for the presidential party, but he insisted that we all got together, so the tables were pushed up into one, and we ate in a single group – spiced meat balls, rice, tinned pineapple. The heavy bodyguards looked ill-at-ease using knives and forks; I reckoned it was normally fingers. Then, after the meal, Bakunda said to one of them, ‘Hey, Basil, where’s that beer?’
Out came cans of King Lion lager, brewed in Mulongwe, and soon we were swapping stories round our fire. Normally, I wouldn’t have started drinking until the exercise was well and truly finished, but I knew that with Pavarotti and Genesis in charge the last phase of it was in good hands, and in any case I felt I had a duty to entertain our visitor. At first I was on edge, but when a radio call confirmed that the party had reached their transport and was on its way in, I was able to relax.
‘In my day,’ the President was saying, ‘we didn’t have anything like the equipment you chaps have. Satellite communications, for instance – unheard of. Spy satellites – ditto. GPS – nothing like it existed. We had to find our own way around.’
‘In my day’. That was one of his favourite phrases. It came out again and again. It was clear he’d enjoyed his t
ime at Sandhurst, and he had nostalgic feelings about England. Apart from anything else, he’d managed to lay some white woman there during a passing-out dance. He’d got her into some attic room, and banged the back of his head on the sloping roof when he stood up after the performance. But at the same time he genuinely admired our modern equipment and methods.
By the time we were on our third round of beers the atmosphere had grown quite mellow. Chalky White was well away, trying out his few, newly acquired words of Nyanja on the President.
Bakunda himself was becoming indiscreet, and I felt the moment had come to ask a few pertinent questions. I turned to Whinger, and said quietly, ‘Crack out a bottle of rum – see if we can get this guy going.’ Then I turned back to our guest, and said, ‘I don’t want to seem rude, but can you explain why we’re here?’
‘Because I asked for you!’ he exclaimed with his bark of a laugh. ‘I asked Her Majesty’s Government for assistance in fighting the Afundi rebels, and here you are!’
‘Yeah, but HMG get a lot more requests than the SAS can fulfil. Again, no offence, but what’s special about Kamanga?’
‘My dear fellow, the well-being of our country is critical to the stability of the whole region. If we come apart at the seams, the rot will spread very fast. Zaire, Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi – every country will be in danger. They could go down like dominoes.’
He lit off into a political tirade, talking angrily, denouncing Marxists and revolutionaries in general. I couldn’t help smiling at the thought of him, personally, coming apart at the seams. He looked as though he might do that at any moment, so tight was his tunic stretched over his stocky torso, and his out-of-date colonial expressions gave his speech a wonderful period flavour.
The only thing that broke his flow was Whinger looming up at his elbow and offering him a plastic cup, with the words, ‘Try this, General.’
Bakunda sniffed it, and rolled his eyes theatrically. ‘Rum! I thought rum was reserved for the British navy. Splicing the mainbrace, and all that.’
‘It is,’ Whinger agreed. ‘But we get it too when we’re on arduous duties.’
‘You call this arduous?’ Bakunda beamed round at us. ‘I call it a holiday! A busman’s holiday – when you do what you normally do, but for fun!’
