‘Can’t be much left of the hyena,’ said Mart, matter-of-factly. ‘They only found it about an hour ago. Just two of them at first. We saw them circling, way up. Then they dropped down, and all the rest came bombing in.’
‘Sure it’s only a hyena?’ I asked. ‘Not one of the poachers?’
‘Nar,’ went Mart. ‘Before the birds arrived we could see it laid on its back with all four feet in the air, like a spotted dog, its stomach blown up like a balloon.’
‘At least it means some of the silvery spoons can shoot,’ said Whinger.
‘Even you might have hit the poor bastard at that range,’ I told him. ‘Listen. The President’s on his way. His Puma’s due into camp at 1645. They asked if we couldn’t clear an LZ for it to land nearer the ambush location, but I refused. I’m not having the exercise buggered up by some darkie rupert.’
‘How are you going to get him here, then?’ Whinger asked.
‘Stringer’ll bring him forward to the Bergen cache, which I’ve downgraded to a transit post. I’ll go back, meet him, brief him and bring him on.’
‘What time will we crack off the action?’
‘No point in keeping everyone hanging about longer than we need. The guys will have had a bellyfull of waiting by then. It’s fully dark by 1800. If old Back-Under’s here by 1830 or so, we’ll go for 1900.’
As I waited with Genesis at the cache, I didn’t know what to feel. On the one hand, it was irritating that Bakunda should muscle in on our exercise, and that I should have to make these special arrangements to deal with him. At the same time, it was flattering that he cared enough about our training task to come out and see some action. So in a way I was looking forward to his visit; after all, a president’s a president, even if his country’s third world and third rate.
The air was so still we thought we might hear the Puma coming into base camp, even though we were several kilometres away. In fact we never heard a thing, and, as dusk was falling, I’d begun to wonder whether there’d been a last-minute cancellation. Then we saw the party approaching across the low ground that fell away behind the grove. Stringer was in the lead, with five black guys following in single file. The one immediately behind him barely reached to his shoulder.
That
can’t be him, I thought, but a moment later I realised it was.
I slipped forward and stationed myself behind a thick trunk at the edge of the grove. When Stringer was about four feet off, I called, ‘Stringer – over here!’ As he stopped, the last guy in the file reacted so violently that he rose clear of the ground.
I stepped out into the open, and said, ‘Welcome to Mantrap.’
‘Hi, Geordie!’ Stringer grinned. ‘Can I introduce the President, General Bakunda? Mr President, this is Sergeant-Major Geordie Sharp.’
‘How d’you do, sir?’ I stepped forward and shook hands.
‘Pleased to meet you.’
In the last of the light, I couldn’t see much except a big white smile, and touches of grey or silver in a clipped moustache. There was more grey in the sideburns that came down below a dark beret, and the broad face put me in mind of that monster from the distant past, Idi Amin. Bakunda hadn’t got the height – he was knee-high to a pisspot – but he was pretty much the same width. I’d feared he might turn up in some Mickey Mouse uniform with rows of phony gongs across his chest. In fact he was wearing plain DPMs, without any insignia, and carrying no weapon except a pistol in a belt-holster. Slung round his neck was a pair of useful-looking binoculars.
‘Good journey?’ I ventured.
‘No problem. We had a nice, smooth flight!’ The accent was very much Sandhurst officer, not bush at all.
‘Well, I can’t offer you any hospitality, I’m afraid. But before we move off I’ll brief you on what we’ve arranged. Then we’ll head on to the location.’
I led the way to a patch of sand in which I’d scratched a map of the ambush, switched on a torch and introduced Genesis. As the President pulled off his beret, revealing short, tight curls of iron-grey hair, the light glinted off beads of perspiration on his forehead. At close quarters he smelt of lavender overlying acrid sweat.
‘We’re now in the Bergen cache, two ks from the location,’ I explained. ‘Those are your guys’ packs, over there.’ I flashed the beam on to them. ‘They’ve left them here so that they can vacate the area at speed as soon as the ambush has gone down. They’ll come back here, recover their kit, and disappear into the bush. That’s all part of the exercise. Normally, this site would be a tactical one as well. That is, it would be under guard, and nobody would show a light like I’m doing now. But with your visit . . .’
Bakunda gave a high-pitched giggle. ‘You mean, I’ve wrecked your plans! That’s what they call me – the wrecker!’
‘No, no. But just imagine this place as dark and quiet as everywhere else, with guys deployed in allround defence. Anway, the plan is this.’
I took him quickly through the scenario, indicating the positions of the targets and the various groups, and telling him that I’d initiate proceedings by firing a flare. As I talked, I was eyeballing his followers. Two of them were really big young lads, well-built and athletic looking – bodyguards, for sure. The other two were older – some kind of staff officers, I guessed – and they looked hellishly uncomfortable.
‘How long will you give them?’ the boss asked.
‘What – to shoot?’
‘Yes.’
‘The centre targets will be up for fifteen seconds, initially. Then a couple more exposures, but shorter. We’ve also got one target way out here, on the right, and one on the left, to simulate people doing runners. Then there are the claymore targets in the central killing ground.’
‘Quite difficult for the chaps, having to react fast after so long a wait.’
‘That’s the whole point of the exercise: to get the feel of what a real ambush is like. Way back in the fifties, when our Regiment was in the jungle in Malaya, the guys sometimes maintained ambushes for five or six days on end.’
He nodded, looking impressed. ‘And who’s giving the orders?’
‘I’ll fire the Shamouli, but after that it’s all Kamangans in command – Major Mvula and his subordinates. Our guys are only there as back-up.’
‘Good, good.’ Bakunda nodded again.
‘There’s only been one hiccup so far.’ I told him about the hyena, and added, ‘Okay, then – if you’re ready, we’ll go. There’s just one thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t want all these people with us.’ I gestured at the entourage. ‘If it’s all right by you, they can stay here, and us two will go on together.’
Bakunda glanced up quickly. ‘Are you giving me orders?’
‘No, sir.’ I looked straight at him. ‘I just said what I’d prefer. I thought it had been arranged over the radio, in any case.’
He sidestepped my remark and said, ‘What’s the objection to them coming?’
‘There’d be too much noise. Don’t get me wrong, but your soldiers aren’t totally reliable. We’ve seen that in training. We saw it again with the hyena. There’s supposed to be no firing until a flare goes up – but somebody freaked on that animal. If they hear a party crashing through the bush, they could easily open up on us.’
‘By Jove, they’d better not!’ he said.
‘If they did, it might be too late to worry. Besides, space in our OP’s constricted. These other guys of yours wouldn’t be able to see anything, even if they reached it safely.’
‘Well . . .’ Bakunda looked round at his men. ‘I make it a rule: never move without my big fellers around me.’
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘There’s nobody going to touch you. Half your special force is lying in ambush out there. It’s up to you.’
For a few seconds he stared at me – not that he could see much in the starlight. Then he suddenly gave me a playful punch on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey! Your name’s Sharp. You are sharp! I like it.’ Turning away he said, ‘All right, chaps. Wait for us here.’
In the starlight it wasn’t easy to navigate accurately. I was walking on a bearing of 84 mils, and several times I recognised the lie of the land. But similar features kept recurring – open areas, patches of scrub, stands of trees, one after the other – and I needed the way-marks I’d memorised during my earlier trips.
About halfway to the location, lions started calling from the same quarter as the night before. I stopped to listen, not sure how my companion would react. I was amazed when he whispered, ‘An old male.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘The depth of the voice.’
‘You’re a lion expert, then?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. But I grew up in the bush. When I was a boy, we saw lions every day.’
‘Where was that?’
‘Here, man, right here!’ He gave his high-pitched giggle again and pointed behind us. ‘I was born in a hut in Mbiya, the village where the camp is.’
‘So that’s why you opted to come out on this exercise?’
‘Partly, yes. I wanted to see you fellows in action, but it’s always nice to come home.’
The lions had gone quiet, and I started forward again, wondering how the hell a ragamuffin boy raised in one of those grass huts could have climbed to the top of the tree. This guy must have both brains and guts, I decided.
In a few more minutes we reached a single big rock which stood in the open about 200 metres short of the Kopje. I stopped beside it and gave the pressel on my radio two jabs.
‘Green One?’ Whinger’s voice came low but clear in my earpiece.
‘At the rock,’ I told him. ‘Our visitor’s with me. Everything okay?’
‘One ND.’
‘I thought I heard something. Nobody injured, is there?’
‘No, no.’
‘When was it?’
‘About an hour ago. Otherwise, no problem. Come on in.’
‘Roger. With you in a couple of minutes.’
‘What happened?’ Bakunda asked.
‘They had an ND – a negligent discharge. Somebody let off a round by mistake. Come on – let’s get in there.’
Over that last stretch I moved with extreme care, partly to impress my companion, partly from a sense of self-preservation. When I warned him about the danger of getting fired at, I hadn’t been bullshitting. I knew that by now the Kamangans must be well on edge, expecting action any moment: after the fiasco with the hyena, it wouldn’t have surprised me if one of them loosed off at any noise he heard, and bugger the pre-set arcs of fire. The news of the ND only strengthened my suspicions.
As we crawled the last few yards up the ridge of the Kopje, I saw Whinger’s head appear above a rock. I’d already told Bakunda who we’d be meeting, so I just whispered introductions and moved him up to the good vantage point, in the gully between two rocks. The starlight was bright enough for all the main features to show clearly.
‘There you are,’ I whispered. ‘The River Congo. The killer group’s straight down below us. Right-hand cut-off group over there, left-hand there. See the baobab? That’s the divider between the arcs of fire on that side.’
‘How do the groups communicate?’ Bakunda whispered. ‘Radios?’ He gestured at my earpiece.
I shook my head. ‘No. The guys are lying very close to each other – only three or four feet apart. The commander of each group has a comms cord. At this stage, one pull will mean “enemy coming in”, two, “enemy on target”.’
It took only a minute to show him our dispositions. Then I pulled back to make final checks with my own guys out front. When Phil, Andy and Pavarotti all reported satisfactorily, there seemed no point in waiting any longer, so I said, ‘Green One to all stations. Action in figures two minutes from now. Wait out.’
I’d already got five shamoulis laid out on a flat patch of grass among the rocks. Now I pulled out the safety pins on their white cords, so that the brass triggers dropped down, ready for firing. I handed the first of them to Whinger, who stood it on the ground and held it at an angle, like a mortar.
‘Green One. Thirty seconds . . .’ My own heart was going faster than usual, even though I’d been through this many times before. ‘Twenty . . . ten . . . five . . . stand by, stand by.’
I raised a thumb at Whinger. WHOOSH! went the rocket, racing up over the killing ground. The para-flare burst with a soft pop, and suddenly the whole area was bathed in harsh white light. Whinger waited a second, then, as soon as he saw the chute starting to float left-handed, put up another rocket to the right.
BRRRRRPPPP! A burst of automatic fire ripped out from below us. Tracer rounds skimmed away high over the bush ahead, way above any possible target on the ground.
‘CUNT!’ roared a voice which I recognised as Andy’s. ‘Wait for the fucking targets!’
‘Ground targets,’ I said quietly over the radio.
With a faint rattle in the distance, eight figure targets sprang into view. At the same moment Pav switched on the battery-powered ambush lights, flooding the scene with light.
From in front and below us a high African voice screamed out the order ‘
Rapid fire!
’