The following night, once they’d begun to shake their jetlag, we all headed out to the bars of Conakry. Jonathan was adamant that he wanted to experience the local music scene, see what this part of the world was like when it wasn’t consumed by a war. He had a point. It had never occurred to either Nick or me to venture out much in Conakry: it was a transit point in which to lie low; somewhere to recover from the jungle; a place of secret meetings and double-dealings.
‘This is a very different sort of front line we’re going to now,’ Nick explained to Jonathan as we bumped our way along the dimly lit and deeply rutted streets of the capital city. ‘Tonight I suspect you are going to meet the Night Fighters.’
I had no idea what Nick was talking about, but nodded sagely anyway, taking in the dark city that parted around the windscreen. I’d asked the taxi driver to take us ‘somewhere interesting, with music’. He’d taken one look at us – a Boer soldier, a pale, skinny Brit, a Jewish film director and an elaborately moustachioed gadget freak – and driven us into the heart of Conakry’s red light district, or at least a part of town that looked enticingly sleazy. Clearly these four men could be united only in one quest: that for beer and brasses.
A single bare light bulb hung over the door of the club like a dubious Pole Star, luring us onto the rocks of moral shipwreck. We stepped inside to be greeted, immediately, by dozens (and dozens) of barely dressed, beautiful young women. They fell upon our affluent American friends in a web of elegant arms and a burst of flashing smiles. Jonathan’s face wore a resigned expression of martyrdom.
Nick was untouched. Surrounded by some kind of unfathomable Afrikaner aura, he threaded his way through a sea of slinky, sweaty black dresses and ordered a beer from the overworked barman without so much as having to deflect a single grope or lunge. Meanwhile, I was busy fending off an advance of thigh-stroking party girls. Perhaps ten or more women had dived at me as I stepped further into the club, pulling me this way and that.
It was an overwhelming atmosphere. There was something deeply sexy about the women and the music and the whole surreal scene. As the heat and sweat and perfume hit me, it was suddenly easy to believe that, in here, normal rules might not apply.
‘Are they all prostitutes?’ I bellowed over the thumping bassline.
Nick laughed at that. I sounded more awestruck than inquisitive.
‘No, man. I don’t think they’re all pros, as such. It’s just a bit of extra income for them. You are a walking wallet. There’s vok-all else for them to do. These people is just fokken poor. In Sierra Leone we used to call them the Night Fighters. They are very cunning and set very good ambushes.’ Nick leaned in again. ‘And just in case you’re thinking of getting a bit friendly, Mr B, remember that there is no antibiotic for that adventure.’
The four of us re-grouped at the bar. Chatting and drinking and wondering out loud what the trip ahead was going to bring us. Even though they’d watched my tapes, for Robert and Jonathan it was a trip into the unknown; for me and Nick, it would be like returning to our own, familiar hell. Would there be fighting? Where was the Government army? Would the rebels protect us? The Americans plied us with questions. Robert guessed it, rightly, to be an extreme version of what we’d seen together in Sierra Leone the year before. For Jonathan, meanwhile, Liberia was an unfathomable repository of fear, and an amazing opportunity. We propped up the bar into the small hours, losing ourselves in the drinks and the small talk and camaraderie of the club, pretending to forget for an hour or two about what awaited us over the border.
‘Da man die.’ Sekou Conneh, the LURD rebels’ national chairman, spread his hands out and looked from me to Nick and back again. He was sitting, sweating, on the veranda of his headquarters in Voinjama, where I’d first met him with Nick four months before.
‘How?’ I asked.
I’d been back inside rebel-held Liberia for less than five hours and things were rapidly disintegrating.
‘Cholera?’
He pronounced it clorah, and offered it apparently more as a suggestion, or a denial, than a statement of fact. Nick and I stared at him. He stared back, and then looked to Jonathan and Robert for some sort of approval.
‘I’ wa’ las’ week, or, er, I tink i’ wa’ two week’ ago he die fro’ clorah.’
It was difficult to know what to think. The intrigue and uncertainty of war had returned in an instant.
‘That’s a great shame. He was a mad fighter,’ I said, speaking to Sekou’s shoes. ‘He really looked after us.’
Then I changed the subject, and the chairman never mentioned Deku again.
We were all to be billeted in the same building that we’d slept in on the original trip, which relaxed me – the fewer unknowns the better at this stage, I reasoned. I shared a room with Robert, Nick with Jonathan. While we strung up hammocks, Nick went back in to see Sekou alone.
‘What’s he up to?’ Robert asked, as he unpacked his antibacterial hand wash and T-shirts with his company logo on. ‘Sneaky intel?’
‘Yeah, something like that. He’s hoping we can get some sort of idea about what’s going on. Everyone seems pretty subdued. That shit about Deku is worrying.’
‘Who was he, again? The crazy motherfucker who liked shooting prisoners but loved his wife and kids?’
‘Yup, that’d be him. Tough bastard. I’ve never heard of anyone dying of cholera here. It’s bullshit. I just don’t know what order of bullshit.’
As Robert unpacked, I thought about the first trip to Liberia and Deku running towards me in Tubmanburg, dripping with sweat, shaking his AK in the air. ‘Ehn y’ saw me? Ehn y’ saw me? I tol’ y’ no monkay ca’ try i’ any day!’ he’d shouted, triumphantly. However it had happened, it wasn’t surprising that he was dead. After what I’d seen in Tubmanburg, it would have been more remarkable if any of those rebels were still alive. What was harder to understand was that, in the relative safety of the rebel HQ, I felt sad that he was gone. I hadn’t expected that. It was more than wanting the comfort of a familiar Liberian face to welcome me back into the war. I felt a genuine sense of grief at his passing. A murderer and a criminal without doubt, he had also been – albeit in Nick’s shadow – a part of the miracle of my earlier survival. I owed him a debt for that, which could now never be repaid.
Nick returned an hour later with news.
‘Ja, well.’ Nick pulled up and straddled a white plastic chair. ‘It’s not great. The only territory they can hundred-per cent confirm they control is here.’
‘Fuck, what about the east – Zorzor or Gbarnga?’ I asked.
Nick shrugged.
‘This is it. Sekou hasn’t been back here since we all left together two months ago, which has pissed off the senior commanders. He says they’re preparing a counter-attack, but most of their men are in Guinea. They’ve got the same numbers, but there’s been a problem with the supply of weapons and logistics.’
Voinjama was barely over the border. In a couple of months the LURD had gone from controlling up to half of the country to being confined to a tiny, fetid toe-hold in the northwest corner. Conneh also claimed that the LURD were holding secret talks with presidents Kabbah and Wade of Sierra Leone and Senegal – but were refusing direct communication with Taylor, the legitimacy of whose government they still did not recognise.
Nick’s gloomy assessment continued. ‘Sekou says the LURD HQ in Macenta was looted by Guinean troops. The rebel commanders had a lot of things stolen, and all their houses were raided. It might have been a local problem. Sekou seems to think it’s resolved now.’
Jonathan asked the only question now really worth worrying about.
‘So where’s the nearest fighting?’
‘There’s fighting in Foya and Kolahun. They lost both of them, but they’re pushing now to get them back. The fighting is most likely quite heavy, like what we saw in Tubmanburg, James. Taylor is using those RUF guys and re-supplying them by helicopter. Most of the rebels’ best fighters is down there. If they don�
��t control that area, they can’t move any supplies south.’
‘Do you reckon they’ll let us film that?’ Robert asked.
‘I don’t know. Sekou says they can’t let us go yet because they don’t have any fighters to send with us. Voinjama is quite lightly defended.’
It was a familiar state of play. We waited; we ate rice and what Nick called ‘slop’ – bitter cassava leaves stewed like spinach, loaded with chillies. We filmed interviews with the local commanders and fighters; we sat and sweated, unmoving, at midday; we shot tape of new recruits being drilled and trained; and, when we’d filmed every possible angle of Voinjama and interviewed each other, we sat and read novels on our veranda, and waited some more.
I was, at least, gaining valuable understanding of the rebels’ situation. Their position was disastrous. There were now dozens of child-soldiers in the headquarters camp, many under the age of ten, who were barely taller than their Kalashnikovs. They styled themselves the Small Boys Unit – in direct parody of President Taylor’s squad of the same name in the previous war.
Robert approached one of them, a young boy wearing scraps of outsized camouflage clothing and toting a rusty AK.
‘And what’, he asked, ‘is your war name?’
‘Poo-poo Splattah,’ he replied, intently serious.
‘Why do they call you that?’ Robert persisted, bravely.
One of the other boys answered for him, as peels of laughter rang out into the oppressive October afternoon.
‘Becau’ he scarey when men sta’ shootin’.’
I knew what the butchery was like at the front, and what it would be like for children who were so young and so scared that all they could do was scream and shit themselves. Abused, neglected and fundamentally betrayed by the adults who claimed to protect him, he probably had only days to live.
I was, at one level, sad for the rebels’ cause, too. I wanted the LURD to succeed because Taylor was arguably one of the worst presidents of the modern era – and anything to get rid of him, however imperfect, must surely have been best for the Liberian people. I also wanted them to succeed because I knew them well, because their failure before had nearly cost me my life.
Divisions within their army were growing. Fexon Jackity, the LURD’s director-of-staff and acting chief of staff, had been appointed to take over from Prince Seo after the rout I’d witnessed in July. A carefully spoken man, he seemed almost too intellectual to be a fighter in this obscure war. He treated us with courtesy and respect – always striving to reassure us that Voinjama could not fall – but helping the media was clearly not high on his agenda.
‘What happened to Seo, anyway?’
I wanted to know what fate had befallen the old chief of staff. Jackity adjusted his black beret and hooked a thumb under his rifle’s sling.
‘He wi’ be retire’,’ he answered, directly. ‘A lettah ha’ bee’ writte’ informin’ him o’ dis decishan.’
Apparently, Seo was being given more time to spend with his family in Conakry, in circumstances that sounded not unlike house arrest. Conneh was also alleged to be unhappy with Seo for briefly imprisoning two local journalists in Macenta. It was a useful reminder, if one were needed, that while we were under their protection, we had no guaranteed rights at all.
‘Yeah, that figures,’ I replied, trying to strike up some friendly off-camera banter. ‘What’s the law and order situation like here, generally? Are you managing to set up the civilian structures the chairman was talking about last time?’
‘Yeah, boh Lor’ Forces de autority ’ere, a’ dey been keepin’ everyting undah contro’. We ge’ speshal uni’ da seein’ to dat.’
The foundation of this special unit turned out to be a deeply alarming development.
‘We alreadeh ha’ one execushan. People know who Lor’ is.’
A group of LURD fighters, led by a LURD ‘colonel’, were now taking it upon themselves to cleanse their own ranks – as well as the local population – of any undesirable elements. Effectively a death squad, they had put at least one civilian in front of a firing squad – but on what grounds it was unclear.
‘And what about Deku? The chairman says he—’
Jackity cut me off mid-sentence.
‘Him ow’ men den kill ’im. Maybe i’ wa’ stray bulleh’ or bom’ boh he die righ’ deh.’ He looked at me, as if challenging me to ask more, and then added, ‘I’ wa’ acciden’.’
Deku had been killed by his own man. The questions were over. I went and found Nick – resplendent in a Hawaiian shirt, sitting by our billet – and relayed the contents of my chat with the new military leader.
‘Death squad? No, that is bad; that is kak, man. You can’t cut your own tail off; you will bleed to death. I don’t know how much Sekou has to do with it.’ He picked his rifle up. ‘I think they can turn around and get back to Tubmanburg, but they have to sort this shit out first – otherwise they’re fucking up their people as bad as Taylor.’
The paranoia and uncertainty of being back in Liberia was doing little for my mental state. Although the violent thoughts and images that had been bothering me had evaporated within a few days of crossing the border, physically I had regressed to the state I’d been in at the end of the trip to Tubmanburg. I was feeling increasingly uninspired by the Americans’ project, and bored with all the waiting around. The only thing that interested me – unearthing scraps of intel aside – was filming combat.
One night the rebels fired mortars in response to what they thought was an assault. Robert and Jonathan ran around and filmed what they could in the dark, but I slept through it. Certain we were not going to be attacked, I had abandoned my Tubmanburg sleeping protocol, and cocooned myself with ear plugs and Valium. There were no incoming rounds, and Nick left me to sleep. Perhaps he could see that I was exhausted.
By day, Nick hardly touched his AK. Instead he sat on the veranda jotting down notes and disappearing for secretive one-to-ones with Sekou. I read the fact that he had ditched his camouflage and webbing in favour of a variety of increasingly absurd T-shirts as further evidence that we weren’t going to see any bang-bang. I also suspected that Nick wasn’t that keen on the rebels exposing the Americans to battle, either.
I confronted first Sekou and then Jackity, directly, and demanded to see action, like a junkie begging a fix from his dealer. No one said no, but no one was saying yes, either. The answers varied from day to day. Sometimes there were no men for an escort team; then it might be possible in a fortnight; and finally we needed to wait for more ammunition. In the end I got Nick to plead our case personally. I had more or less promised Jonathan and Robert that we would be able to film fighting. Being here, and not getting shot at, was like failing to get laid in the proverbial brothel.
Embarrassed by my determination, the acting chief of staff explained to Nick that he was deeply concerned for the safety of Jonathan and Robert – and the inevitable tidal wave of bad publicity that would follow in the wake of their injury or death; or, as Nick summed it up:
‘He had no objection to me or you getting killed, but he wants to make sure that our American friends enjoy their holiday.’
As it turned out, the war came to us.
Six days after we’d arrived, our afternoon reading was interrupted by the crack-boom of first one, then several RPGs going off in town. The reverberating echo bounced off the walls of the houses around us until it was impossible to tell what direction the firing was coming from. Then, over the rooftops towards the Kolahun road drifted the sickening crackle of incoming small-arms fire. Any fear quickly dissolved as we started to run. Great, I thought, let’s go. Nick, in T-shirt and shorts, was jogging along next to me, AK cupped in his right hand. Jackity stood at the junction near our billet, waving his arms around as if he was directing traffic, in a pair of bright red trousers, a white T-shirt and purple flip-flops. An RPG was slung over his shoulder.
‘Don’ worry, mah man, I wi’ pu’ everyting undah contro’,’ he tried to reassu
re us.
As we ran to film the gun-battle, we were pursued by a gaggle of child-soldiers – and Jonathan, who lumbered behind us, face beetroot from the exertion and heat and the pain of running on his injured leg. But he kept up with us, and threw himself into the moment. Robert was nowhere to be seen. There was no time to go back for him – the attack sounded like it was fading fast.
‘We’re going to have to run to catch this one. Vok. They’re already retreating.’
Nick was right. By the time we reached the battleground, the shooting was all but over. As the fighting petered out, and we stopped to catch our breath, I took in the aftermath of the contact.
A Government soldier captured by the rebels was lying by the side of the road. Young fighters swarmed around him. I pushed my way into the crowd, which parted to show me their handiwork. The man had been partly stripped; his torso was covered in blood. I looked at Nick, who was close by, studying the road ahead. As the crowd ebbed and then wrapped around me, I saw what was happening. It was as if my eyes were adjusting to a sudden spell of darkness – I strained to add up the pieces of what was in front of me into a coherent picture.
The man had been beheaded; the serrated edge of a rifle bayonet had just worked its way through his wind pipe. I squatted on my haunches and focused quickly, carefully composing the head into the golden section of the frame while the failing afternoon sun caught the sinews of the executioner’s arm. It is hard work cutting off a head with a blunt knife and he was sweating from the effort. The rebel audience grinned with approval, the boy-soldiers engrossed by the murder. Rifles were raised in triumph, the familiar rebel chants bleated over and over.
As the camera rolled, I felt calm, and shuffled closer to get a cleaner shot. Unlike in Tubmanburg, when I had filmed the butchery in the centre of town, there was no internal dialogue. It was just happening. I was just there. I was just filming. Only one clear thought lifted above the mental silence. Deep inside, a part of me was pleased that this man had been killed at that precise moment, so that I could film it. This was the ‘epic Liberian journey’ I had promised to Jonathan and Robert. This shot alone proved it.
My Friend The Mercenary Page 20
