Standing next to me, half a dozen teenagers with guns wiped the rain out of their eyes. One was no more than twelve. Without warning, the rebels on the other side of the road opened fire. It was impossible to tell at whom. They ran. Then our guys ran, and Nick and I – abandoning our plan in unison – ran with them towards the unseen enemy. I panned and zoomed, jumped the camera about, trying to focus on rebels firing into the tree line.
‘It’s all outgoing,’ Nick shouted above the din. ‘You’re okay.’
With my eye to the viewfinder, I didn’t spot the decomposing body of a Government soldier the LURD had laid across the road as a juju scarecrow. A piece of rib bone stuck to my trainers, putrid flesh clung to my laces. My foot had gone straight through him.
‘Fucking hell! Tell me where I’m going!’ I bellowed at Nick. ‘I can’t see shit when I’m filming.’
I kept running, fiddling with the zoom, while my brain screamed You’ve got guts on your shoe!
The attack petered out. I had shooting on tape, but no exchange of fire. The enemy, if there’d been one, used perverse tactics: for three days in a row they’d charged into town down the main road, taken casualties, and then retreated with nothing to show for the injuries they’d sustained.
I wiped my shoe in the sodden grass. It smelled like the bodies on the pathway two days before: heady and sick-making.
Back on the balcony, I re-played the tape on the clam-shell VCR. Two dozen rebels, and Nick, gathered around. If the radio had won over the commanders, this won over everyone else. I’d made them the stars of their own mini-TV show. With almost no idea what I should be filming, I’d just gone with the flow of the action. It was raw, shaky, and it just about worked. I felt proud of myself. Laughing, shouting, back-slapping – the kids with guns wanted to watch again, and again. Deku came up to see what the fuss was about.
‘We gonna sho’ y’ so’ rea’ military ac-shan,’ he promised, grinning. ‘Ju’ wai’.’
Later that afternoon, once the rebels had disappeared, Nick and I tried to relax. We sat there like old housemates killing time before the pubs opened. The things he’d told me about his army days were intriguing, and I wanted to know more about his career as a hired gun.
‘How do you feel about being called a mercenary?’ I asked.
The words were out before I knew I would speak them. He looked at me quizzically.
‘Cobus doesn’t seem to mind. Actually, I think he’s quite proud of it,’ I clarified, quickly.
Nick had taken his boots off and rolled his trouser legs up, the better to examine his mosquito bites. With his open sandy shirt and pale legs, he looked like he’d been transported from Blackpool beach.
‘Really it’s just a technical term to describe people who conduct unofficial operations, but it’s become a swear-word. I prefer “professional soldier”. Ag, do you know any soldiers who don’t get paid to fight? Even these guys …’ He jerked his head towards the din of the rebels’ chatter in the square below. ‘… specially these guys are in it for what they think will be a big pay-day when Taylor goes. The guys from Executive Outcomes were really proud of what they did. They didn’t see it as a bad thing. It was just like being in the regular army, but fighting for a different government. We were invited there by the official, recognised president. All right, it was a military junta, but we oversaw the transition to democratic elections. I don’t think of that as mercenary work. It’s security work, like I’m doing now.’
What about shooting down helicopters? I wondered to myself. In what sense is that ‘security work’, exactly?
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I developed my main business in armaments.’
‘What, you sell weapons?’
This was news to me.
‘Ja, I’ve got this company with Paul, my business partner, called MTS – Military Technical Solutions. We started off with mainly parts for aeroplanes, but we also broker deals for arms and ammo.’
Matter-of-fact and very open, Nick seemed happy to chat about his trade. I was fascinated to learn how it worked. Everything I thought I knew about arms dealing derived from James Bond films and Frederick Forsyth novels.
‘Ja,’ Nick agreed, surprisingly, ‘you get those characters, but I try and steer clear of them. I get a lot of ammo from Uganda. One of my contacts drives a truck up to the front line where the Government is fighting – or supposed to be fighting – the rebels, and buys AKs and ammunition from their commanders. The commanders then tell the Government that they’ve been in heavy fighting and ask to get a re-supply. The soldiers don’t say anything, because they don’t want to fight.’
It was a self-fulfilling business prophecy: when journalists reported that the war was escalating, the president justified spending more cash on more guns, some of which he bought from countries like Britain, brokered by men like Nick. It was, at best, a decidedly amoral way to make a living.
‘And what happens to the Ugandan ammo?’
‘It gets shipped to Madagascar and then gets passed on. It ends up everywhere.’
He looked out across the roofs of the town.
Here, I thought, but I held my tongue.
‘I’ve got a contact in Monrovia who is busy with Taylor brokering deals with Libya,’ Nick continued. ‘I need to talk to him in the next few days. He says there’s a big shipment coming into Robertsfield airport on an Ilyushin.’
‘Taylor is importing cargo planes full of weapons from Libya?’
I wondered whom Nick had been talking to on the satellite phone. I’d assumed it had been his wife – but Nick had been gathering intelligence of his own.
‘Ja, it seems that way.’
I tried to calculate what Nick might really be up to.
‘Does Frank know about this?’
‘No, this guy is a friend of mine from the old days. He worked in South African Intelligence; he might still do. He’s a very useful source of info. The Americans have got their own interests.’
I swallowed hard, and thought about how to frame my next question. Putting together the jigsaw puzzle of Nick’s army career made me very uneasy.
‘The arms dealing …’ I said. ‘Did that begin after EO? Actually, when did you join EO?’
At this exact moment, Deku clambered up the steps and joined us on the balcony. Nick nodded in greeting and settled back into the sofa, re-lacing his boots.
‘I came out of the army in ’94—’
Deku cut across him.
‘My ma’, wou’ y’ li’ to make a repor’ abou’ dis?’ He was smiling, clutching a blue A4 notepad. ‘Y’ can see dis wi’ you’ own eye’ now.’
What I saw were lists of names of Government troops, neatly written in Biro, accompanied by the serial numbers of the Kalashnikovs they’d been issued. The most recent entry was that day: 3 July 2002. Under the heading ‘Names of Soldiers Who Went on Attack’, there were thirty-one names, led by Brigadier General William Kamara. Deku’s men had just killed him in an ambush, and found this, his battle diary. It was an extraordinary document: it showed, conclusively, that the Government had been attacking Tubmanburg, a key strategic position, with fewer than forty men. Furthermore, the troops were not regular soldiers but press-ganged militia sent into battle with a few RPGs and little ammunition, and who were paid in ‘gin’ and ‘grass’.
A letter tumbled out of the notepad, addressed to the now-dead ‘Commander in Charge Bomi County (frontline)’. Dated two days earlier, it ordered the now deceased brigadier general to attack Tubmanburg relentlessly. ‘Serious military action will be taken against all the commanders’, the letter promised, ‘if the order is not effectively implemented.’ After the threats, the order ended on a happy note. ‘Military greetings from your Chief of Staff and take good care of your men, may God bless your operations.’ It was signed Christopher Yambo, Chief of Staff, Army Division.
A hastily written note had been drafted in reply the next day. Kamara had been pulverised by a LURD grenade before he’d had the chance to send it. It said: �
�Dear Sir, We were thirty-nine and five have escape, we are only thirty-four man power on the ground.’ Underneath were listed the names of the five deserters.
The LURD were fighting scared civilians. Even Deku looked sad. He said he wanted to kill Taylor’s men, not just anyone.
I considered the documents for a few hours. Nick, Deku and I discussed their veracity and pondered their implication. Then I called the World Service to record an interview for the next Africa Service news bulletin.
Later that evening, Nick called his contact in Monrovia. I heard him chatting in Afrikaans from the balcony as the light faded. To my surprise, Nick beckoned me down, handing me the phone.
‘His name is Piet. Ja, it’s fokken interesting.’
Piet, who turned out to be a ‘military adviser’ to Taylor, had heard the broadcast go out. So had Taylor. He claimed the president had become enraged. It made Piet laugh to think that Nick, his old buddy, was on the ‘wrong’ side.
I asked about the cargo plane from Libya that was due to re-supply Taylor. Yes, it was expected any day. I struggled to find the funny side of pissing off a psychotic head of state with a planeload of weapons and the men to use them – who was sleeping barely thirty-five miles away down a straight, all-but-undefended main road. On balance, Nick agreed I was right to feel a little apprehensive.
That night I went to bed wearing an eye mask and ear plugs in an attempt to drown out the chatter of the rebels’ radios. I stripped down to my last almost-clean shirt and took a small, blue Valium tablet with my nightly malaria pill. I had been prescribed them years previously as a muscle relaxant after damaging my neck in a whiplash injury. I’d hung onto them in case my shoulder went into spasm again, but now I took the drug secretly and for a different reason: to launch me into sleep above the cloud of menacing images that had gathered above my pillow.
6
WHISKY PAPA
‘We’re under attack.’ Tearing the ear plugs out, the room is filled with the thump-thump-thump of incoming RPGs. Still in the half-light, the room seems suddenly tiny. Nick is dressed, AK at the ready. Inside my head a voice is screaming GET YOUR BOOTS ON! I scramble about getting dressed, loading pockets with tape, spare batteries. As the grenade bursts thin out, sharp reports echo off the buildings in town. Over the top of them crackles a percussion of pops, which rise and fall in waves. I head for the bathroom, shaking the emptiness of Valium sleep from my sluggish limbs.
‘Be quick,’ Nick warns, ‘and get your head down.’
Stray bullets are being sucked up by the zinc and timbers on our roof.
‘We need to get outside.’
I abandon my attempt to urinate, and tear down the stairs, Nick behind me. We stand, and listen. The firing is coming from behind our house, not from the main road.
‘They must have ambushed the back road. Stay here for a minute.’
I walk in a tight circle, fiddling with the camera. Rebels run past. Dragon Master strolls behind them, shouting into a field radio. Nick chambers a round into his AK, and we follow, leaving the courtyard and jogging into the narrow lanes that feed out to the bush at the edge of town. It is instinctive: I do the same; dogs running in a pack.
Filming as I run, heart pounding, my vision narrows. I see the ground in front of me in minute detail – the way a stream breaks around a reed, or stones throw soft shadows in the morning gloom – and hear gunfire and grenades, but no talking. It is as if everyone has been struck mute. And then suddenly we are out in the open. I crouch, and the grass in front of my face twitches. It is a beautiful, iridescent green and smells rich and comforting. The morning is cool, the sky steel-grey, and all around, the grass sways and twitches. Then I see more than the grass. We are being strafed by gunfire. The green blades and reeds that shimmer six inches from my nose are ripped through by rifle bullets.
I run back, then forward; stop; crouch, and then run back again.
‘Fucking hell, they’re coming straight through the bush.’
‘Keep moving. Faster. Keep moving. You’ve got to move.’
Nick is behind me, hand on my shoulder, urging me on. I can’t believe that I am running in battle. All the anticipation, the self-doubt, the angst, disappears. The war is now fact. Don’t think, I tell myself, just run.
We’re taking heavy fire, from both sides. Rebels to my right are firing back through us.
‘Vok, we’re going to get killed by our own guys here,’ Nick shouts, casting round for cover.
‘Cease firing!’ I scream, running, filming. ‘Fucking cease fire!’
After a hundred yards flat-out, I dive for cover. Behind the wall of a house I check my camera, force my fingers to adjust dials and settings, and then peer uphill towards the last house on the edge of town that the Government troops are using as cover. Whooping war cries erupt from the young fighters sheltering around me. A rebel strokes his Mohican, then, changing his magazine, steps back into the line of fire.
More rebels follow. So do I, still unthinking, Nick close behind. I film as I run, framing their rifles balanced above their heads, slant-ways, gangster-style; spent cartridges spew out, burning hot. Government rounds cut up the dust in front of them, us, as we near the house on the hill. RPG traces zoom out into the trees, arcing over town. I hold the camera low now, still rolling, and sprint for cover again.
The attack is over in forty-five minutes. The Government forces retreat. One rebel blasts the bushes in a final act of frustration, and then the gunfire stops.
‘I love the smell of cordite in the morning,’ Nick smiles.
Then we laugh, and exhale hard.
Relaxed and confident in our survival, we walk back to town along a small, overgrown path. Nick is close, just behind me. I film as we walk; a dozen rebels in front of me, trudging through lush grass. They could be ten feet away, and you’d never know it, I think, settling into the walk. The rebels sling their weapons over their shoulders. Camera still up to my eye, I pan to the right, across the dense foliage by the road, and then back up ahead. As I stabilise the shot a Government soldier stands up thirty yards in front and empties his AK at us, at me.
The first round skims my camera microphone, an inch to the right of my face; I feel the second snap past my left ear. I throw myself into the long grass, the air fizzing with lead. The rebels reply with everything they have in incensed, hysterical retaliation. The air buzzes like a swarm of manic, screeching bees. I look up to see Nick snap his safety catch down and level his rifle into the bushes right by the side of the road.
‘Stay low!’ he roars, sensing my hesitant movement.
‘I can’t see, I can’t see. Nick? You’re my eyes, so tell me.’
A volley of rifle fire shreds the bright green leaves in an arc around us.
‘Okay, mind this side. Stay on the left side.’
I get up, and follow him. He walks in a half-crouch, the stock of his rifle at his shoulder, muzzle aiming ahead. Rebels empty their magazines, blind, into the perfect cover of the undergrowth. I stand up, filming, and we inch forward, expecting more fire from the front, sides.
It was over. No one shot at us. It had lasted five minutes. I was exhausted, but euphoric. I had done it. It had taken a week since arriving at the front line; but the heat and sweat and illness and fear and confusion all finally made sense. I had filmed combat.
Back at our house I re-played the tapes. On the mini-VCR, I saw smoke spurt from the barrels of the rebels’ rifles, and bullets lick up the dust around me: modern war, instant re-play. Now, from the comfort of my balcony, I realised how close it had been.
Nick sat and methodically, lovingly, cleaned his AK. After I’d cranked the generator, and hooked up the satellite phone and camera batteries, I returned to the pictures and appraised the shots. Sharp, in the centre of the frame, slightly under-exposed – the pictures were okay, but I was worried about the sound recording. After re-running the Tubmanburg TV show for the rebels, I buried myself in the instruction manual, trying to fathom the enigma of a
udio.
‘You can really see what’s going on, hey?’
Nick was a fan of the video, too.
‘Yeah, but I can’t work out how to split the mic between tracks, the left and right channel.’
I looked up at him. He was engrossed in the video himself, still kitted out in his full Reconnaissance Regiment battle dress.
‘It’s good, man. You’ve got it. We’re getting the film. This is fokken good.’
Later that evening, as the air cooled and storm clouds piled up on the horizon, Deku appeared with our food, and ate with us. In addition to scorching-hot chilli rice, we were given a large bowl of plantain, fried in palm oil: a taste of childhood. After my parents had separated, my mother and I lived in what, with the misery of perspective, now seems like poverty. She kept her wedding ring for the sole reason that she could pawn it, at the end of the week, to buy food. For a treat we would go to Brixton market and buy plantains – which she called Special Bananas – sun-blackened under faraway skies. Deku listened awkwardly. Nick made a disparaging remark about absent fathers, and then snorted at himself. Deku thought that it was harder to be poor in a rich country than in a bankrupt one. I disagreed.
‘When was the last time you called your mother?’ Nick piped up. His thoughtfulness surprised me. It had been over a month since I’d spoken to her.
‘Y’ ca’ tell her Cha’ Taylah tink y’ a big man,’ Deku laughed, as I slipped the satellite phone out of the shoulder bag. ‘We hear on de walkie-talkie da’ de Go’ernmen’ forces ha’ bee’ order’ nah to le’ y’ escape. Dey really wan’ you! Yor code i’ “Whisky Papa” – Whi’ People.’
Taylor was playing his own game in Tubmanburg. It was called ‘wipe out the rebels and grab the white guys’. Far from being obscure, the rules were in fact very simple: there were none. The attacks that day had not been from reluctant militia, but Navy Division troops brought in under the command of Roland Duoh, one of Taylor’s most trusted senior commanders. Deku estimated their strength at 500, a tenfold increase on the last attack.
My Friend The Mercenary Page 12
