by Wilbur Smith
Bruce smiled sardonically as he remembered the humanitarian arguments that had been given to him by the Minister of the Interior.
‘It is our duty, Captain Curry. We cannot leave these people to the not-so-tender mercy of the tribesmen. It is our duty as civilized human beings.’
There were others cut off in remote mission stations and government outposts throughout southern Kasai and Katanga; nothing had been heard of them for months, but their welfare was secondary to that of the settlement at Port Reprieve.
Bruce lifted the bottle to his lips again, steering with one hand and squinting ahead through the windscreen as he drank. All right, we’ll fetch them in and afterwards an ammunition box will be loaded on to a chartered aircraft, and later still there will be another deposit to a numbered account in Zurich. Why should I worry? They’re paying me for it.
‘I don’t think we should mention the diamonds to my boys.’ Ruffy spoke sadly. ‘I don’t think it would be a good idea at all.’
Bruce slowed the truck as they ran into the industrial area beyond the railway line. He watched the buildings as they passed, until he recognized the one he wanted and swung off the road to stop in front of the gate. He blew a blast on the hooter and a gendarme came out and inspected his pass minutely. Satisfied, he shouted out to someone beyond the gate and it swung open. Bruce drove the truck through into the yard and switched off the engine.
There were half a dozen other trucks parked in the yard, all emblazoned with the Katangese shield and surrounded by gendarmes in uniforms patchy with sweat. A white lieutenant leaned from the cab of one of the trucks and shouted.
‘Ciao, Bruce!’
‘How things, Sergio?’ Bruce answered him.
‘Crazy! Crazy!’ Bruce smiled. For the Italian everything was crazy. Bruce remembered that in July, during the fighting at the road bridge, he had bent him over the bonnet of a Land Rover and with a bayonet dug a piece of schrapnel out of his hairy buttocks – that had also been crazy.
‘See you around,’ Bruce dismissed him and led Mike and Ruffy across the yard to the warehouse. There was a sign on the large double doors Depot Ordinance - Armée du Katanga and beyond them at a desk in a glass cubicle sat a major with a pair of Gandhi-type steel-rimmed spectacles perched on a face like that of a jovial black toad. He looked up at Bruce.
‘Non,’ he said with finality. ‘Non, non.’ Bruce produced his requisition form and laid it before him. The major brushed it aside contemptuously.
‘We have not got these items, we are destitute. I cannot do it. No! I cannot do it. There are priorities. There are circumstances to consider. No, I am sorry.’ He snatched a sheaf of papers from the side of his desk and turned his whole attention to them, ignoring Bruce.
‘This requisition is signed by Monsieur le President,’ Bruce pointed out mildly, and the major laid down his papers and came round from behind the desk. He stood close to Bruce with the top of his head on a level with Bruce’s chin.
‘Had it been signed by the Almighty himself, it would be of no use. I am sorry, I am truly sorry.’
Bruce lifted his eyes and for a second allowed them to wander over the mountains of stores which packed the interior of the warehouse. From where he stood he could identify at least twenty items that he needed. The major noticed the gesture and his French became so excited that Bruce could only make out the repeated use of the word ‘Non’. He glanced significantly at Ruffy and the sergeant major stepped forward and placed an arm soothingly about the major’s shoulders; then very gently he led him, still protesting, out into the yard and across to the truck. He opened the door of the cab and the major saw the case of whisky.
A few minutes later, after Ruffy had prised open the lid with his bayonet and allowed the major to inspect the seals on the caps, they returned to the office with Ruffy carrying the case.
‘Captain,’ said the major as he picked up the requisition from the desk. ‘I see now that I was mistaken. This is indeed signed by Monsieur le Président. It is my duty to afford you the most urgent priority.’
Bruce murmured his thanks and the major beamed at him. ‘I will give you men to help you.’
‘You are too kind. It would disrupt your routine. I have my own men.’
‘Excellent,’ agreed the major and waved a podgy hand around the warehouse. ‘Take what you need.’
– 3 –
Again Bruce glanced at his wristwatch. It was still twenty minutes before the curfew ended at 06.00 hours. Until then he must fret away the time watching Wally Hendry finishing his breakfast. This was a spectacle without much appeal, for Hendry was a methodical but untidy eater.
‘Why don’t you keep your mouth closed?’ snapped Bruce irritably, unable to stand it any longer.
‘Do I ask you your business?’ Hendry looked up from his plate. His jowls were covered with a ginger stubble of beard, and his eyes were inflamed and puffy from the previous evening’s debauchery. Bruce looked away from him and checked his watch again.
The suicidal temptation to ignore the curfew and set off immediately for the railway station was very strong. It required an effort to resist it. The least he could expect if he followed that course was an arrest by one of the patrols and a delay of twelve hours while he cleared himself; the worst thing would be a shooting incident.
He poured himself another cup of coffee and sipped it slowly. Impatience has always been one of my weaknesses, he reflected; nearly every mistake I have ever made stems from that cause. But I have improved a little over the years – at twenty I wanted to live my whole life in a week. Now I’ll settle for a year.
He finished his coffee and checked the time again. Five minutes before six, he could risk it now. It would take almost that long to get out to the truck.
‘If you are ready, gentlemen.’ He pushed back his chair and picked up his pack, slung it over his shoulder and led the way out.
Ruffy was waiting for them, sitting on a pile of stones in one of the corrugated iron goods sheds. His men squatted round a dozen small fires on the concrete floor cooking breakfast.
‘Where’s the train?’
‘That’s a good question, boss,’ Ruffy congratulated him, and Bruce groaned.
‘It should have been here long ago,’ Bruce protested, and Ruffy shrugged.
‘Should have been is a lot different from is.’
‘Goddammit! We’ve still got to load up. We’ll be lucky if we get away before noon,’ snapped Bruce. ‘I’ll go up to the station master.’
‘You’d better take him a present, boss. We’ve still got a case left.’
‘No, hell!’ Bruce growled. ‘Come with me, Mike.’
With Mike beside him they crossed the tracks to the main platform and clambered up on to it. At the far end a group of railway officials stood chatting and Bruce fell upon them furiously.
Two hours later Bruce stood beside the coloured engine driver on the footplate and they puffed slowly down towards the goods yard.
The driver was a roly-poly little man with a skin too dark for mere sunburn and a set of teeth with bright red plastic gums.
‘Monsieur, you do not wish to proceed to Port Reprieve?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Yes.’
‘There is no way of telling the condition of the permanent way. No traffic has used it these last four months.’
‘I know. You’ll have to proceed with caution.’
‘There is a United Nations barrier across the lines near the old aerodrome,’ protested the man.
‘We have a pass.’ Bruce smiled to soothe him; his bad temper was abating now that he had his transport. ‘Stop next to the first shed.’
With a hiss of steam brakes the train pulled up beside the concrete platform and Bruce jumped down.
‘All right, Ruffy,’ he shouted. ‘Let’s get cracking.’
Bruce had placed the three steel-sided open trucks in the van, for they were the easiest to defend. From behind the breast-high sides the Bren guns could sweep ahead and o
n both flanks. Then followed the two passenger coaches, to be used as store rooms and officer’s quarters; also for accommodation of the refugees on the return journey. Finally, the locomotive in the rear, where it would be least vulnerable and would not spew smoke and soot back over the train.
The stores were loaded into four of the compartments, the windows shuttered and the doors locked. Then Bruce set about laying out his defences. In a low circle of sandbags on the roof of the leading coach he sited one of the Brens and made his own post. From here he could look down over the open trucks, back at the locomotive, and also command an excellent view of the surrounding country.
The other Brens he placed in the leading truck and put Hendry in command there. He had obtained from the major at Ordinance three of the new walkie-talkie sets; one he gave to the engine driver, another to Hendry up front, and the third he retained in his emplacement; and his system of communication was satisfactory.
It was almost twelve o’clock before these preparations were complete and Bruce turned to Ruffy who sat on the sandbags beside him.
‘All set?’
‘All set, boss.’
‘How many missing?’ Bruce had learned from experience never to expect his entire command to be in any one place at any one time.
‘Eight, boss.’
‘That’s three more than yesterday; leaves us only fifty-two men. Do you think they’ve taken off into the bush also?’ Five of his men had deserted with their weapons on the day of the ceasefire. Obviously they had gone out into the bush to join one of the bands of shufta that were already playing havoc along the main roads: ambushing all unprotected traffic, beating up lucky travellers and murdering those less fortunate, raping when they had the opportunity, and generally enjoying themselves.
‘No, boss. I don’t think so, those three are good boys. They’ll be down in the cité indigène having themselves some fun; guess they just forgot the time.’ Ruffy shook his head. ‘Take us about half an hour to find them; all we do is go down and visit all the knock-shops. You want to try?’
‘No, we haven’t time to mess around if we are going to make Msapa Junction before dark. We’ll pick them up again when we get back.’ Was there ever an army since the Boer War that treated desertion so lightly, Bruce wondered.
He turned to the radio set beside him and depressed the transmit button.
‘Driver.’
‘Oui, monsieur.’
‘Proceed – very slowly until we approach the United Nations barrier. Stop well this side of it.’
‘Oui, monsieur.’
They rolled out of the goods yard, clicking over the points; leaving the industrial quarter on their right with the Katangese guard posts on the Avenue du Cimetière intersection; out through the suburbs until ahead of them Bruce saw the U.N. positions and he felt the first stirring of anxiety. The pass he carried in the breast pocket of his jacket was signed by General Rhee Singh, but before in this war the orders of an Indian general had not been passed by a Sudanese captain to an Irish sergeant. The reception that awaited them could be exciting.
‘I hope they know about us.’ Mike Haig lit his cigarette with a show of nonchalance, but he peered over it anxiously at the piles of fresh earth on each side of the tracks that marked the position of emplacements.
‘These boys have got bazookas, and they’re Irish Arabs,’ muttered Ruffy. ‘I reckon it’s the maddest kind of Arabs there is – Irish. How would you like a bazooka bomb up your throat, boss?’
‘No, thanks, Ruffy,’ Bruce declined, and pressed the button of the radio.
‘Hendry!’
In the leading truck Wally Hendry picked up his set and, holding it against his chest, looked back at Bruce.
‘Curry?’
‘Tell your gunners to stand away from the Brens, and the rest of them to lay down their rifles.’
‘Right.’
Bruce watched him relaying the order, pushing them back, moving among the gendarmes who crowded the forward trucks. Bruce could sense the air of tension that had fallen over the whole train, watched as his gendarmes reluctantly laid down their weapons and stood empty-handed staring sullenly ahead at the U.N. barrier.
‘Driver!’ Bruce spoke again into the radio. ‘Slow down. Stop fifty metres this side of the barrier. But if there is any shooting open the throttle and take us straight through.’
‘Oui, monsieur.’
Ahead of them there was no sign of a reception committee, only the hostile barrier of poles and petrol drums across the line.
Bruce stood upon the roof and lifted his arms above his head in a gesture of neutrality. It was a mistake; the movement changed the passive mood of the gendarmes in the trucks below him. One of them lifted his arms also, but his fists were clenched.
‘U.N. – merde!’ he shouted, and immediately the cry was taken up.
‘U.N. – merde! U.N. – merde!’ They chanted the war cry – laughing at first, but then no longer laughing, their voices rising sharply.
‘Shut up, damn you,’ Bruce roared and swung his open hand against the head of the gendarme beside him, but the man hardly noticed it. His eyes were glazing with the infectious hysteria to which the African is so susceptible; he had snatched up his rifle and was holding it across his chest; already his body was beginning to jerk convulsively as he chanted.
Bruce hooked his fingers under the rim of the man’s steel helmet and yanked it forward over his eyes so the back of his neck was exposed; he chopped him with a judo blow and the gendarme slumped forward over the sandbags, his rifle slipping from his hands.
Bruce looked up desperately; in the trucks below him the hysteria was spreading.
‘Stop them – Hendry, de Surrier! Stop them for God’s sake.’ But his voice was lost in the chanting.
A gendarme snatched up his rifle from where it lay at his feet; Bruce saw him elbow his way towards the side of the truck to begin firing; he was working the slide to lever a round into the breech.
‘Mwembe!’ Bruce shouted the gendarme’s name, but his voice could not penetrate the uproar.
In two seconds the whole situation would dissolve into a pandemonium of tracer and bazooka fire.
Poised on the forward edge of the roof, Bruce checked for an instant to judge the distance, and then he jumped. He landed squarely on the gendarme’s shoulders, his weight throwing the man forward so his face hit the steel edge of the truck, and they went down together on to the floor.
The gendarme’s finger was resting on the trigger and the rifle fired as it spun from his hands. A complete hush followed the roar of the rifle and in it Bruce scrambled to his feet, drawing his pistol from the canvas holster on his hip.
‘All right,’ he panted, menacing the men around him. ‘Come on, give me a chance to use this!’ He picked out one of his sergeants and held his eyes. ‘You! I’m waiting for you – start shooting!’
At the sight of the revolver the man relaxed slowly and the madness faded from his face. He dropped his eyes and shuffled awkwardly.
Bruce glanced up at Ruffy and Haig on the roof, and raised his voice.
‘Watch them. Shoot the first one who starts it again.’
‘Okay, boss.’ Ruffy thrust forward the automatic rifle in his hands. ‘Who’s it going to be?’ he asked cheerfully, looking down at them. But the mood had changed. Their attitudes of defiance gave way to sheepish embarrassment and a small buzz of conversation filled the silence.
‘Mike,’ Bruce yelled, urgent again. ‘Call the driver, he’s trying to take us through!’
The noise of their passage had risen, the driver accelerating at the sound of the shot, and now they were racing down towards the U.N. barrier.
Mike Haig grabbed the set, shouted an order into it, and immediately the brakes swooshed and the train jolted to a halt not a hundred yards short of the barrier.
Slowly Bruce clambered back on to the roof of the coach.
‘Close?’ asked Mike.
‘My God!’ Bruce shook his head
, and lit a cigarette with slightly unsteady hands. ‘Another fifty yards—!’ Then he turned and stared coldly down at his gendarmes.
‘Canaille! Next time you try to commit suicide don’t take me with you.’ The gendarme he had knocked down was now sitting up, fingering the ugly black swelling above his eye. ‘My friend,’ Bruce turned on him, ‘later I will have something for your further discomfort!’ Then to the other man in the emplacement beside him who was massaging his neck, ‘And for you also! Take their names, Sergeant Major.’
‘Sir!’ growled Ruffy.
‘Mike.’ Bruce’s voice changed, soft again. ‘I’m going ahead to toss the blarney with our friends behind the bazookas. When I give you the signal bring the train through.’
‘You don’t want me to come with you?’ asked Mike.
‘No, stay here.’ Bruce picked up his rifle, slung it over his shoulder, dropped down the ladder on to the path beside the tracks, and walked forward with the gravel crunching beneath his boots.
An auspicious beginning to the expedition, he decided grimly, tragedy averted by the wink of an eye before they had even passed the outskirts of the city.
At least the Mickies hadn’t added a few bazooka bombs to the altercation. Bruce peered ahead, and could make out the shape of helmets behind the earthworks.
Without the breeze of the train’s passage it was hot again, and Bruce felt himself starting to sweat.
‘Stay where you are, Mister.’ A deep brogue from the emplacement nearest the tracks; Bruce stopped, standing on the wooden crossties in the sun. Now he could see the faces of the men beneath the helmets: unfriendly, not smiling.
‘What was the shooting for?’ the voice questioned.
‘We had an accident.’
‘Don’t have any more or we might have one also.’
‘I’d not be wanting that, Paddy.’ Bruce smiled thinly, and the Irishman’s voice had an edge to it as he went on. ‘What’s your mission?’
‘I have a pass, do you want to see it?’ Bruce took the folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket.
‘What’s your mission?’ repeated the Irishman.
