‘Eastern European,’ he said, turning the deep black metalwork over in his hands, completely absorbed by the novelty of it.
I photographed the rifles, the serial numbers and dates of manufacture and called the BBC – who said they could not broadcast the find.
‘That’s a serious allegation,’ the producer informed me, presumably in case I thought accusing state leaders of breaking international law was trivial. ‘We’d need to see evidence of that.’
‘I’m holding it in my hand,’ I said, gesticulating to Nick – who was almost hugging the rifle with excitement – to bring it over. ‘I can read you the serial number for you to run.’
The producer stood his ground. It seemed that breathless, chaotic details about the rebels’ war were fine, but committing an act of journalism was clearly a bridge too far. I hung up in frustration, and then laughed at myself. If I could still find it within me to get cross with them for not seeing the big picture, then at least I was still focused on the story. That was what mattered most. I had crossed the line in many respects, but I was still, somewhere down there, a journalist – not a propagandist, nor a would-be diamond dealer, and certainly not a soldier.
No sooner had I hung up than the first walking wounded from the ambushed ammunition re-supply – that had apparently been hit the evening before – began to limp into town. It had taken them all night to reach Tubmanburg as they staggered along the road from Bopolu. In fact, the muffled explosions that we had heard in the rain hadn’t been an ambush at all. Dragon Master held his head in his hands as he told me the story he’d pieced together from the survivors. Packed with ammunition, mortar bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, the looted ambulance (the same one that had accompanied us to Tubmanburg eighteen days before) was also carrying another precious commodity: petrol. Riding shotgun on the roof, a rebel guard had flicked away his cigarette butt only for it to be sucked into the ambulance through an open window. The entire cargo had gone up like a fuel bomb. There had been uncounted casualties.
Dragon Master was unable to look me in the eye. Deku shook his head and confessed that an even larger consignment of ammunition had been diverted to other troops in Gbarnga, who were loyal to LURD chief of staff, Prince Seo. Deku claimed that Seo wanted the victory for himself, and was deliberately thwarting the men in Bomi Hills.
It was then we knew it was over. Retreat was certain.
‘Let’s go and help them,’ Nick said, disappearing into our room to fetch the medical bag and a handful of burn dressings.
* * *
Unable to capitalise on their two raids, the rebels fell back to what they knew best: waiting. Only one day passed – enough time to continue treating the wounded from the ambulance disaster – until the attack began. Re-supplied and reinvigorated, the Government army came at us with sustained, unprecedented force.
Every new day that passed in Tubmanburg posed the same question: why continue filming? An irrational feeling of self-justification spurred me on. The only reason I was there was to film. If I wasn’t filming, what was I doing? The alternative was unthinkable. Watching – and not shooting – the war felt uncomfortably like being a tourist.
What was perhaps harder to understand was why Nick continued enthusiastically to plunge into combat with me. Unpaid, and with nothing more to gain from helping me steal snap-shots of the increasingly lethal battles, his motivation remained mysterious. We never discussed it. If I wanted to film, he assessed the situation, and dived in with me. He never refused and he never complained.
Over the next few days more prisoners were captured, interrogated and executed. I tried to save one man – a machine gunner who had been captured but not tortured. It would, I tried to convince the commanders, send a signal to the Government troops that if they surrendered to you, they would not be harmed. It was an idea supported by Dragon Master. The prisoner was led off to an old police cell while Deku considered the proposition. The next morning, Deku walked him out into the forest after dawn, and shot him.
I felt defeated. The only time they’d done as I asked was when I’d suggested attacking the enemy. Hungry and disorientated, battle fatigue began to settle in. I stopped taking notes. I realised that I was scared of losing my mind. In bed at night I felt as if I was falling in the darkness. My left ear throbbed intermittently; dense, inexplicable scabs had risen on my legs and scrotum; my head itched uncontrollably. Nick’s health was failing, too, though he remained the quiet professional, uncomplaining if increasingly thin and pale.
Twenty-four hours later, with a sense of grim inevitability, disappointment and relief, Deku announced that Tubmanburg had to be evacuated. Almost all of their ammunition had been used up – what remained was enough to fight a planned and ordered retreat.
‘Sarry,’ he said, looking crestfallen at the news he brought as we stood on our balcony.
‘Ja, it’s time to go,’ Nick replied.
I didn’t know what to say to Deku.
‘It’s okay,’ I tried to reassure him, ‘you’ll get to Monrovia after the rains.’
And then to Nick, as I turned to get my stuff: ‘I’m good to go.’
I took one last look around our bedroom, and then rejoined Nick on the balcony. I had come to Liberia for a three-week filming trip and had ended up spending twenty-one days in Tubmanburg alone, almost all of them under fire. Below us, Deku marshalled his soldiers and dished out the precious remaining bullets. All the rebels who left were allowed one full magazine. The rest were given to the fighters who had ‘volunteered’ to stay. We walked down to greet him. He pledged to make a stand in the centre of town long enough for us to get clear.
‘Y’ see me in Bopolu,’ he promised. ‘I’m a jongle warriah, so I move fas’.’
We shook hands and he turned his back on us, marching off to meet the inevitable attack.
‘Deku,’ I called after him. He stopped and looked back. ‘Are you ready?’ I shouted, smiling.
‘Yeah!’ he laughed in reply. ‘An’ we prepare’!’
* * *
At 11 a.m., on 19 July, Nick and I walked out of town ahead of Deku and the LURD main force, accompanied by around 400 civilians. I had packed my camera away, and given the bag to a porter. I felt liberated.
‘After you, Mr Brabazon,’ Nick smiled, ushering me ahead as we turned our backs on the old mining town.
In an orderly file, we marched through slag heaps of iron tailings from disused mines, and I saw for the first time the lush, green bush to the north of the town. It was only as we left, as this vista opened up, that I suddenly realised how claustrophobic Tubmanburg had been. For the first time in three weeks, I could see further than the end of the street. It was a beautiful sensation.
My relief at leaving, though, was smothered by the increasingly brutal throbbing in my ear. As we trudged into the long grass, and as the rhythm of my feet hitting the ground gathered momentum, the pain became severe. Each footfall jarred my ear canal like a swingeing blow to the head. I stopped suddenly and vomited against a tree. Nick gave me our last painkiller, and then, from his webbing, produced a miracle: penicillin.
‘That should set you right,’ he promised. ‘I was saving them for an emergency.’
As I swallowed two massive 1,000mg caplets with a gulp from his water bottle, I clenched my jaw and marched. I prayed the antibiotics would kill the infection before the infection finished me. I felt dead on my feet, and the walk hadn’t even begun.
Taylor’s army had left us one route out – a narrow hunters’ trail barely six inches wide, snaking off into the forest behind the old mine works. Battered by near-constant rains, the terrain was sodden. We passed through one last village, whose dilapidated houses hardly kept the encroaching jungle at bay. Deserted, it reeked of putrid flesh. We marched in silence, and out of the shadow of a decrepit hut thatched with torn raffia hobbled a child covered with infected burns. Her limbs were swollen with gangrene. She stood and watched us pass her. The stench was unbreathable. No one stopped. No o
ne spoke. We carried on in silence and left her there to die.
When I had walked into the jungle six weeks earlier, the war had come out to meet me, worsening by degree: the wounded men, those first fallen fighters whose corpses I had made light of. Now, as we walked out of the war, I felt like a ghost of that traveller: pity, compassion, empathy – these luxuries were gone; in their place grew determination, and disgust.
‘I always prefer’, Nick said, as we sloshed our way between the flooded tree trunks, ‘never to take the same road twice. It’s good that we’re going back a different way. We’ll get to see more of the country.’
I was back on the hiking trip from hell with my dad.
After seven hours of marching, the distant boom of RPGs signalled the attack on Tubmanburg. Their faint rumble belied its severity. The LURD rear-guard would now try and catch up with us.
There was no rest that evening. The fear was that the Navy Division would follow them – and us. As night fell, we moved deeper into the forest, walking at first in the gloom of twilight, and then in the pitch black. I could see absolutely nothing – not my hand in front of my face, not the path: nothing at all. Unseen roots tripped me up; tree trunks loomed up like icebergs in the dense black sea of the forest. I held the hand of the woman who walked in front; Nick clutched the back of my shirt. Torches were forbidden. Occasionally, the moon would break through the monsoon clouds and flit through the leaves high above. All it showed us was the thin silver ribbon of the sandy path snaking north.
Day broke and we walked still. By mid-morning sounds of fighting – an RPG blast every few minutes, a volley of shots in between times – flared up in the distance. At times it grew closer, and then ebbed away, lost in the trees. We were being hunted.
‘Best to keep moving,’ said Nick. ‘Just keep moving. Those Government guys are not well disciplined. They’ll probably give up or get bored of marching.’
March we did. Sixty hours after leaving Tubmanburg, with one night-time rest in a jungle village, we arrived in Bopolu. The penicillin had begun to work, but my knees were so weak I could walk only by leaning heavily on a stick. One fighter, a stout, tough guy called Abe, carried my six-foot-four frame on his back for a five-mile stretch, my feet dragging on the floor. I lay my head on his shoulder like I had done on my father’s back when I was a child.
When Abe and Nick and I emerged from the bush into town, the elders laughed at us as he helped me down, and called me Moses as I leaned on my staff and shook the sweat out of my beard. Our entourage dispersed through town, looking for shelter for the night. I sat and smoked a cigarette in the town square, while Nick checked his GPS. I looked up to see the familiar lumbering gait of Deku running towards me.
‘Mah man, I tol’ y’ I wou’ see y’ here.’
He took a cigarette off me and recounted the evacuation of Tubmanburg: there were no casualties; all rebel heavy weapons were abandoned; it was a decisive victory for Taylor. It had taken the Navy Division a mere thirty-five minutes to occupy the town that Deku’s men had controlled for twenty-three weeks. Now we were only a day ahead of the Government army. A detachment of fighters would remain in Bopolu – Deku himself had forged ahead of the troops coming from Tubmanburg along a disused shortcut. I asked him when he thought the LURD would be able to attack Tubmanburg again.
‘Ou’ plennification i’ to move ba’ to Tocmanbur’ an’ make shu’ we control i’, becau’ das ou’ military targe’.’ He paused, perhaps in recognition of how unlikely that now seemed. ‘Fro’ he’,’ he concluded, ‘we bea’ i’ all de way ba’ to Guinea.’
All the way to Guinea could be more than 200 miles – which, through dense jungle, would feel like twice that. It was a daunting prospect. I didn’t know if I was up to it. To take my mind off the task ahead, I called my mother with the news that I was on my way home.
‘That’s great, darling,’ she said when I told her, her voice full of the contentment of a woman who did not know her son had seen so much death. ‘Listen, I’ve got some important news for you,’ she continued.
My gut tightened at the prospect of some bad news, but it was just an invite to a wedding in Dublin I had failed to reply to. It made me laugh, to remember what was important, and what was not.
‘Will you be home in time?’
I had no idea – but asked her to book me a flight and a hotel, anyway. It was something to hold onto, something normal and nice to look forward to. She was making small talk to keep me on the line.
‘It won’t be long now, Mum. Promise,’ I interrupted her, but then the connection went dead.
In the morning more fighters joined us with more ammunition, and at dawn we were walking again. My knees were now tightly strapped, and my ear was greatly improved, but I was depressed about the journey ahead. Promises of finally seeing the war up close had sustained me through the long slog down; but the road out was just an unpleasant necessity to be completed as quickly, and painlessly, as possible.
‘No one knows who controls the roads,’ Nick said, sensing my frustration as we stepped off into the bush, ‘so it is best we stick to these little paths.’
We walked for five days, stealing snatches of sleep in wrecked houses that rose up like wounded giants in villages that had otherwise been almost completely razed. Two days after leaving Bopolu, we heard explosions and small-arms chatter that signalled the Government’s arrival in the town. We had put an extra day between us and the Navy Division. I could imagine what had delayed them: the civilian population would be paying a severe penalty for hosting the rebels, even if they had done so unwillingly.
Our food supplies were almost non-existent. We ate what fruit we could find on the trees, and Nick used his rifle to shoot down bunches of green coconuts, which he shared with all the rebels. The juice ran through my beard. It was the first time I’d drunk anything but water for a month. Occasionally, a rebel would throw a grenade into a stream and scoop out the blasted fish.
There was no one living to be seen in the jungle, but on the path a corpse blocked our way. Turned green with decay, his black skin had swollen and cracked; from a deep slash in his stomach, his intestine spilled over his sides and out onto the forest floor. We held our noses and stepped around him.
We walked through Fassama, past the front door to the Spider House, which seemed like a memory from a waking dream. I thought about the interminable games of cards Nick and I had played, my panic at his ‘death’ – and how absolutely unprepared I had been for what had followed. Then we headed out into the forest again, along a path untrodden by us. Nightfall on that fifth evening saw Nick and me hunkered down in the ruins of a mud-walled building. A strong, refreshing wind rushed through the burned timbers and trampled gardens of the village: a monsoon downpour was on its way. We found a tiny strip of dry ground to sleep on, in between piles of rubble. Nick strung a groundsheet over it as protection from the rain.
‘Home sweet home,’ he said, standing back to admire his handiwork.
We ducked inside. Opening above us, the sky emptied gallons of water onto the rebel camp. I rooted around in my bag and felt for the familiar shape of the items I was looking for. A wave of excitement crept up on me.
‘Ag, I think we have run out of food. Maybe they’ve got a little rice left.’
Nick was ravenous; we were marching on empty.
‘Well,’ I announced, feeling like a kid on Christmas Day, ‘this should set you right.’
From my bag I produced a tin of Heinz baked beans and a half-full quarter-bottle of Johnnie Walker.
‘I was saving them for an emergency.’
‘Now that is fokken great news, man!’
His face lit up in the torch beam. We took it in turns to eat the beans, cold from the tin, in secret. Then we each took a long pull on the magic bottle.
‘Ah!’ said Nick. He licked his lips and drew the back of his hand across his mouth, before wiping the bottle as a courtesy to me. ‘That’s like mother’s milk.’
We fi
nished it up, and I carefully swallowed my last Valium – ashamed that Nick might see me.
‘I can’t believe you were keeping that whisky all the time. You are a dark horse, Mr Brabazon,’ he whispered in amazement.
I drifted off to sleep, drunk and high, crammed with Nick into a space no bigger than a coffin.
Daybreak revealed the swollen mass of the River Via, tumbling through the forest a short walk from the edge of the village. Spanning its fierce current was an improvised rope-bridge that hung, in tatters, between enormous trees on the banks.
‘Now you know why I never joined the circus,’ I quipped to Nick, trying not to focus on the eddies and swirls below.
‘Ja, but we don’t exactly have all day. I think Mr Taylor’s men would still like to have a chat with you.’
I took his point and shuffled faster, eyes fixed on the far bank, white knuckles clenching the frayed guide ropes. No one fell. I watched from the far side as women with bundles on their heads and a toddler on each hip crossed over twice as fast as I had managed, unencumbered.
We trudged on, our column of refugees and fighters now stretching for nearly two kilometres. To the right of the narrow defile we struck out on, the trees thinned to reveal an open patch of grass about the size of a football pitch, populated by a lone hut.
‘That would make a great place for an ambush,’ I called out to Nick, behind me.
‘Ja, it’s perfect, hey?’
My steps rose and fell for another five minutes, and then a burst of gunfire sent me flat on my face. From behind us the rebels tried to flee from the AK rounds tearing up the afternoon air, but the path was blocked by frightened civilians. We crouched, and listened as two thuds preceded a lull and then a halt in the firing.
‘Hand grenades,’ said Nick. ‘Ours, I hope.’
No more shots rang out. It was unclear if the Government troops had got around us, or if we’d run into another roving unit and re-created our own front line by chance. We walked on, and I realised how blasé I’d become since leaving Tubmanburg. I thought leaving the town had meant leaving the war. It hadn’t.
My Friend The Mercenary Page 16
