Casca 12: The African Mercenary (11 page)

The son of a bitch thinks he's so smart
, thought Mtuba.
It's all his fault this happened!

In seconds the convoy lights were lost in the dense jungle as they made it around a curve in the road and put the pedal to the metal. The Saladin kept its small turret facing to the rear, keeping a steady stream of fire going until it too disappeared behind the line of trees and went full out.

Casey cursed his luck, wondering who had sold them out and why. And he was going to find the answers to those questions. Of that he was damned sure.

Casey had them push their vehicles as hard as they could for another hour. Even at that, they usually went no faster than a crawl. The dusty track they were on was not one of the two paved roads of which
Kimshaka could boast; it was more like a goat trail. But they didn't have any choice, and it was heading in the right direction. The first full light of day found the mercs heading south, the capital of Kimshaka eighteen miles behind them. Going over his alternatives, Casey knew that they'd have to get out of the country some way other than the one they'd planned on. He knew the location of the alternate pickup sites, but to get there with the N.F.L.K. this close to them would be impossible. And, he thought, if he were the rebel commander, he would have already called off the pickup, claiming the mercs never showed or were killed in action. It was time to review their options.

Behind him, he knew that
Mtuba or someone like him would most probably be on their trail. But he had to stop and get his bearings before they went too far off course and ran out of fuel. He called a halt on the far side of a narrow wooden bridge straddling about fifteen yards of a steeply banked, dry stream bed. From there they'd have a clear field of fire should the rebels come at them while they were resting. Before he had a chance to settle down, Beidemann approached, grinning broadly.

"Here's a souvenir for you."
Beidemann's grappling hook of a hand forced a Chinese officer he had captured to his knees. "When me and Ali hit the brush during the ambush, we found him hiding behind a tree. He gave us no trouble at all, and I thought you'd probably like to talk to him when you had a chance."

"Good. I'd like very much to know who sold us out and why. But right now I don't have time for him. Put him in the truck with the wounded and keep him tied. Tell whoever you put on guard that if he causes any trouble, shoot him in the legs first. If he still acts up, tell him to do whatever he has to do to keep him quiet."

Beidemann turned his captive over to a South African mere giving him Casey’s instructions. Taking the Chinese man by the shoulder, he yanked him back up to his feet and aimed him in the direction of the truck with a firm boot in the butt. The merc wanted to be certain that the officer would do exactly as he was ordered without any hesitation.

After the Chinese officer was taken away, Casey gave his commanders their orders. Fitzhugh and
Beidemann put the men into position, telling them to chow down now as it might be a long time before they had another chance to do so.

From the side pocket of his camouflage trousers, Casey removed his survival kit which contained emergency rations of dried soup and high potency vitamins, a tiny flare gun, a flexible saw, a fishing line and hooks, and a folded map of the area and
neighboring countries. He tried to estimate their distance from the capital and at just what angle they were from it. The trail had headed mostly south, but there had been several long curves that could have taken them as much as six miles from where he thought they should be.

Once the men were out of the truck and
armored vehicles, Fitzhugh set up a rear guard with the mortar and the 57mm to watch the way they had come. The others did the things they had to: taking a leak or crap, stretching their legs, digging into packs for something to chew on. The medic worked on the wounded, doing what he could with what he had. Van and George moved out, one on each side of the road, going on ahead to get a look at what was in front of them and to see if they could spot any landmarks.

Holding the map in his lap, Casey knew they were in a world of shit and that it was very likely that few, if any of them, would make it back to the airstrip they had so recently left. To the west was
Angola, filled with Cuban soldiers; Tanzania, to the east, was not much better. There was no way they could head north without going right back into the arms of the N.F.L.K. By a process of elimination he decided they'd have to keep going south. If they weren't able to get to the airfield, then they'd have to cross Barotseland until they reached the Zambezi River. Once there, he'd have to make another choice: should they follow the Zambezi east to Victoria Falls and try to get across to Rhodesia, or should they cross the river at Sesheke on the Caprivi Strip? It was the only place he knew of where they'd be able to get their caravan across by ferry. Then they'd have no choice except to just keep going south into the wasteland of the Kalahari Desert until they reached the South African border. That was not a thought to bring one comfort.

Coming over and squatting down beside him, Harrison brought up another option. He stroked his trim
mustache with what was probably the only clean pair of hands in the group and said, "Look, Casey, if you can get us to an airfield of any kind, I can get us out of here and save a lot of wear and tear on our arses in the process." He rubbed his butt to illustrate the discomfort of the armored car's hard canvas seats. `Besides that, we don't have a hell of a lot of petrol left for these fuel guzzlers. If we don't get some more, I'd guess we won't do more than another fifty miles before they run dry. I really believe that would be the best approach to the matter."

Casey grunted. "That's true, and I'm in agreement. Now
," he showed Harrison his map, "just where do you think we'll be able to get a plane without getting a bunch of our people killed first? By now the word is out, and every strip that we know for certain would have planes on it within a hundred miles of here will be armed to the teeth with people who would love to have our guts on a string. However, if we are lucky enough to find a plane anywhere along the way, you'll certainly be the first to know. Okay?"

Harrison walked off mumbling to himself about the "bloody, smart mouthed son of a bitch."

Fitzhugh climbed on top of the truck with a set of binoculars to watch in the direction from which they had come. Casey saw him and nodded approvingly. He was finishing off a smoke, waiting for Van and George to return, when Fitzhugh called down to him, "Dust over the trees about ten minutes away!"

Instantly the mercs went into defensive profiles as they waited for Casey's orders. Should they run for it or fight? The answer was obvious. There was no way of telling what they'd run into up ahead. Here, with the steep banks of the river bed and narrow bridge, they'd have the best chance to slow down their pursuers.

A shadow said that Van and George had returned.

"What's it like up ahead?"

Van shook his head. "Not so good. A couple of hundred meters on, the ground is open as far as the eye can see. Just low hills and brush."

That did it. If the N.F.L.K. were in any strength and caught up with them on open ground, they'd be dog meat. It was time to get things organized. Casey told one of the mercs to take Fitzhugh's place on top of the truck. "Fitzhugh, take some of the mortar rounds and set them to blow the bridge. Van, take over the fifty seven, load it with high explosive, and when they get on the bridge, take out the lead vehicle but give Fitzhugh a few seconds' warning so he can time his charges. Gus, you take four men and cover the left flank. George, you do the same on the right. Use my thirty four." Van,
Beidemann, and George trotted off, picking up men as they went to set up their fire zones.

Fitzhugh took four of their precious few mortar shells and a hand grenade for each, and headed for the bridge. In only a few minutes he had each of the shells rigged with a grenade to serve as a detonator and placed where it would blast through a supporting strut of the bridge. The pins on the grenades had been straightened out. It would take only a light tug at the lines attached to their rings to pull them out. Fitzhugh ran the lines back to where he had some cover behind a clump of sun baked boulders near the edge of the riverbank.

The dust clouds of the approaching vehicles could now be seen by everyone. Casey told the merc on top of the truck to come down; they didn't need him up there anymore. The man scuttled over to join two of his comrades in a hastily dug foxhole.

All their vehicles had been moved out of sight behind a small rise where they'd be easy to reach. The badly wounded went with them to be out of harm's way.

From around the bend the sound of motors reached them. Trucks in low gear were navigating around potholes big enough to crack their axles if they hit one hard enough.

Now they had to wait out the next few minutes until the enemy came into view. As always, the minutes stretched into hours. Beads of perspiration gathered on Casey's forehead, then followed the paths of least resistance down his face and cheeks, cutting clean channels through the coating of reddish dust. He licked his lips to moisten them, and waited.

"Here they come!" Casey barked.

The lead truck's motor changes sounds, shifting ... changed sounds, shifting into a higher gear as it reached the clear path leading to the flimsy bridge.

Good
, Casey thought.
They're too anxious. They've already forgotten that sometimes one's prey will turn and fight when least expected.

Mtuba
was in a rage. It had taken him nearly an hour to get the pursuit organized and to add four more trucks filled with additional men and arms from a nearby encampment to his now somewhat depleted force. At any rate, he had the foreigners outnumbered by about three to one with his two hundred freedom fighters. The six trucks and his own Land Rover made up his command, one which he desperately desired to retain.

He had to catch them, or the best he could hope for would be to be put in front of a firing squad for losing the Chinese major. The mercenaries hadn't really mattered that much. It was just not considered prudent to have men of such expertise running around who could be used against them in Africa while they were taking over. But the presence of the Chinese advisor to the N.F.L.K. was a most carefully guarded secret. Even though units of the Front were already seizing power throughout the country in the wake of the vacuum created by Dzhombe's death, it was not too late for foreign interests to interfere if outsiders knew that the Chinese were supporting the N.F.L.K. and that the insurgents had no intention of living up to their agreements with the white contractors. Damn Major Xaun for his arrogance! He had insisted on being present at the ambush. His conceit could lead to the ruin of several years of painstaking, cautious negotiations. Everything had been kept highly secret. Now, when they almost had all they needed in their grasp, the fool screws things up and the foreign mercs had him. The Chinese were said to be a hardy race, but Mtuba had the feeling that the men who broke through his ambush would know how to get every last iota of information out of Major Xaun. If that happened before they were ready, all their plans would be ruined. There would be no highly trained battalions of North Korean volunteers to offset the influence of the Cubans sent into Angola by the Russians. Nor would there be massive shipments of modern arms and equipment to enable them to subdue their neighbors, add strength to their own forces, and once and for all remove all signs of the white pestilence from the African continent.

Mtuba
nearly cracked his head against the windshield of his Land Rover as the driver suddenly swerved and hit the brake to avoid a pothole. He slapped the man across the side of the face, then looked ahead to the flat country where he would at last catch up to his quarry and either retrieve Major Xaun or kill him to prevent him from talking. He hit the driver again, urging him to use greater caution and faster speed.

Fitzhugh
signaled with a jerky up and down movement of his arm. The first of the enemy trucks was in sight. Without seeing them, Casey could feel the tenseness of his men, ready and expectant. He nodded to Fitzhugh. He would let him use his own judgment as to when to pull the pins of the grenades and detonate the mortar shells. Everyone hunkered down even further, out of sight.

The lead truck picked up speed as it neared the bridge. Before crossing the bridge, the truck, a British Leyland, shifted down, then began to ease its weight across the structure. The second truck started across the bridge while the Leyland was still ten yards from the side where the mer
cs sat in ambush. Mtuba was in his Land Rover between the third and fourth trucks.

They had gone far enough. Van
signaled Fitzhugh, adjusted the sight on the 57mm resting on his shoulder, and fired.

The front of the Leyland burst into flame as the high explosive round from the 57mm smashed into it, killing the driver and the man riding shotgun. Before the explosion reached its peak, the mercenaries cut loose on the rear truck, blowing the tires to stop any retreat. Fitzhugh had timed the speed of the lead truck and pulled the cords to the grenade detonators five seconds earlier. While not as effective as detonator cord and C 4, the combined blast effect of the 57mm mortar shells cut the supports out from under the bridge, dropping the two trucks into the dry gully. The screams of the N.F.L.K. troops merged with that of the machine gun and automatic rifle fire from the mercs who were taking advantage of the "fish in a barrel" situation.

Mtuba's Land Rover swerved to the side into a clump of brush. Behind and in front of him, his four remaining trucks screeched to a halt as their cargo of men unloaded and raced for cover.

Casey's mercs rushed to the edge of the riverbank, pouring every round they could into the trucks, cutting down anything that moved. Back and forth, they raked the river bottom. Most of the nearly one hundred and sixty men in the ambushed trucks had not been able to get out of them and were badly hurt when they hit the riverbed. It made no difference; wounded or whole, they all got the same treatment. Several hand grenades finished the action, exploding the gas in the trucks' tanks. Three men ran from the burning vehicles, their, bodies covered in oily flames. Casey knew what fire like that felt like. To end their pain, he gave the word for them to be shot down.