Cry Havoc Page 8

  Ha ha. Very funny. Pres jet, eh, Boss?

  But rumours were sure to start now, back in Blighty.

  Once in Jo’burg, we hooked up with Eeban Barlow and Larnie Keller. Expecting us, they had already given me the ballpark numbers for pay and costs.

  Money flew from account to account to account.

  The four of us agreed to use Barlow’s as yet unused company, Executive Outcomes, as the corporate vehicle with which to do this job. Our frantic logistical efforts rushed forward.

  Amanda came down to South Africa for a romantic Valentine’s Day weekend at Ngala, a swanky game reserve to the west of the Krueger’s western boundary. She was so lovely and so much fun… Why go back into a war?

  I asked her to marry me.

  ‘Oh, don’t ask me that now, Pilot. Go and have your lovely adventure. You can come back to London … then ask me some other time.’

  Executive Outcomes recruited a 60-strong team of South African mercenaries. The first EO aircraft flew into Cabo Ledo, a deserted Soviet military camp and disused reinforced-concrete runway, 60 kilometres due south of Luanda, along the coast.

  When the aircraft door opened, I bade welcome to our first EO troops in theatre.

  ‘What took you so long?’

  Working frantically with JD, I had set up their arrangements: water, rations, clean huts, vehicles, weapons, ammo, clothing and webbing, LOs and the rest. I had also made that all-important Afrikaner recce. Where, on the nearby beach, must we put the braai?

  The next day, the MPLA made Tony and me brigadier generals in the Angolan Army. General João de Matos himself gave us our badges of rank. The ceremony was carried out on the orders of El Presidente. They badly wanted Soyo back.

  We were brigadier generals for the same reason that all of the EO men deployed in Angola, from Soyo onwards, were formally enrolled into the recognised armed forces of the sovereign state, the FAA. At the time that seemed like common sense to me, and was done at my request. Without that formality, by what right could any of us open fire?

  As the South Africans enrolled, Joaquim David noted that many of the men shared the same surnames. He took me to one side. ‘I presume these are noms de guerre?’ he said to me conspiratorially. He laughed with me that they were not.

  Our enrolling into the FAA meant that none of us could legally be described as mercenaries – at least not according to the Convention for the Elimination of Mercenaries in Africa 1977. Alarmingly for the Afrikaners, this meant that the EO troops were now subject to Angolan military law. Despite my having squeezed from the Angolans an agreement that the South Africans must keep the right to veto any Soyo attack plan that looked too kamikaze.

  So there it was: in the far-off lands of West Africa – the Heart of Mischief – I had found the dragon I sought.

  I had set up an op of my own. Now I had to figure out how to win it.

  Forget tyro oil tycoon: my career as a mercenary – gun for hire, dog of war, soldier of fortune, condottiero, call it what you will – had begun.

  I thought how good it would have been to phone Richard Westmacott. Ask him to fly down, join the Op. He’d have loved it. We could have done with his ready wit and laughter.

  2333 HRS ZULU, 14 MAY 1993. ANGOLA: MV Bangala: 5NM SSE OF CABO LEDO

  Black sea and black night rolled around the oilfield support vessel Bangala.

  I peered at my watch: 2333 HRS ZULU: H HOUR MINUS 8.

  Like a Hornblower, or a Jack Aubrey, I paced the Bangala’s work-deck. Rough old timber. Sacrificial beams already sacrificed.

  Unlike a Hornblower, or an Aubrey, I was jumpy. The Bangala’s crew could mug me at any moment. So could their skipper, Geordie.

  UNITA could dash out of the darkness. They have patrol boats. They patrol. They surely have plenty of weapons, heavy and light. I curse myself for having only my 9mm HK P9 handgun. Tony had given it to me for the Op, as a present. I have it in a waistband holster on my right hip. Side draw. If I’d had any sense I would have brought at least a PKM machine gun for myself, or an AK. I’m on my own. I’m feeling it.

  I’m not even sure that the South Africans – that’s Steven Mason and Co., now carrying out the recce – are really on side. It’s possible that they have another set of orders entirely, either from their peers or – God forbid – from Pretoria. The Broederbond. UNITA. The CIA.

  I peered at my wristwatch: 2337 HRS ZULU.

  In half an hour it would be Tuesday. D DAY for Soyo. The attack was still planned for first light, some seven hours yet. Forty minutes earlier, my recce team had shoved off into the darkness, their rubber inflatable bobbing up and down on the swell. The south-west-facing beach of Soyo peninsula was less than a mile away, north-east, and as yet unseen through the darkness of night. As dark and opaque as a barrel of crude. The sea darker.

  Six minutes back, Steven had signalled me on his VHF handheld: they were close to the beach. Steven plus three would land, to carry out the recce, while the other two would crew the boat. To sit at sea, a cable or two out from the beach. From there they would await events, and orders.

  Orders? I ran over our ramshackle plan. Our orders, now in mid-stride, hurried, never ready from the start:

  Ground and Situation: Enemy Forces: UNITA occupy the port, airport and peninsula of Soyo with 3,000 of their finest. Plus some guest stars, we suspect. They are dug in, and they have medium-heavy weaponry. This includes 82mm mortars and radar-controlled ZU 23mm 2AN twin cannons, plus small boats, captured from oil companies when they took the town. They also have Strela-3 Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs). The 23mms and the Strelas I know about. They fired at Jesus and me last week. I will not forget them.

  Our London office – Devon Oil and Gas – has been warned that UNITA are ready for us, and will kill us if we attack. They know we’re coming. God knows how many UNITA spies are within the FAA. Many of the FAA were UNITA only months before.

  Elsewhere in Angola, UNITA control 80 per cent of the country. All of the country dwellers are UNITA; UNITA are the people of the land, as MPLA are those of the cities. Savimbi’s UNITA are successfully attacking the FAA and MPLA wherever they can. UNITA (and whoever are backing them) are winning the war.

  Situation: Friendly Forces: We have 60 South Africans plus the six-man recce party with me on the Bangala. Those 60, plus Tony, are by now in Cabinda town, city of the Angolan possession, the Cabinda enclave, just to the north, on the other side of the mouth of the Congo. With them are four Mi-17 support helicopters (SHs), two Mi-24 gunships and four Pilatus PC-9 trainers, now in the role of Close Air Support (CAS). They are armed with 64mm rocket cannon pods.

  Back in Luanda, what’s left of the FAA air wing are ready to join our Soyo attack. That will mean Fighter Ground Attack (FGA) sorties, flown at intervals by the ageing Sukhoi SU-22s, now down to four flying aircraft.

  My friend, Jesus. My front-seater.

  Meanwhile, there are 1,000 children in FAA uniform on a Landing Craft Tank (LCT) steaming towards Soyo beach under the gruesome command of one Colonel Pepe. They are to beef up our 60 South Africans. With these ten hundred 16-year-olds are two T54 tanks, our own 82mm mortars, ammo, fresh water, rations … and stores sundry.

  Why did our enemy UNITA have 3,000 of their finest, but we 1,000 boys? How come?

  UNITA had cheated the Bicesse Accords, that’s how. Makes you think that their promises of peace had never been more than poppycock (a word which, incidentally, derives from the Boer War Afrikaans expression pappi kak, soft shit). UNITA had lacked candour. The troops that they had sent to the demob camps had been their dross, the weapons their cast-offs. Their good troops and their good weapons, they had kept hidden in the bush: a piece of information that must have been available to the CIA … except that it was probably a CIA idea, a CIA plan, in the first place.

  The governing MPLA, on the other hand, had been much easier for UN Peacekeepers – and CIA busybodies – to keep an eye on. They had not cheated. Not only had they not cheated. They hadn’t pai
d their men on demobilisation. As a result, when the call-to-arms came again, those unpaid men had said, ‘No, MPLA. We will not fight for you again. With no pay.’

  Mission: Our mission – and the terms of the deal by which we would be paid our money – was that we would take and hold Soyo for 90 days.

  Execution: General Outline: Secure a helicopter LZ – on the south-west-facing shore of the peninsula – and a defensive position such that it would cover a beach landing point for the LCT. This would be achieved by a surprise helicopter assault at first light.

  With the LCT and the 1,000 boys would be set up a beachhead, from which operations could begin. UNITA would be removed from the Soyo peninsula.

  Tasks: Steven’s night-time recce – launched from the Bangala by me – had the task of making a recce of the two possible LZ sites: Duchess North and Duchess South (see map on page xiii). This was to prevent the possibility of the Mi-17s flying into a UNITA defensive position, or an ambush. A support heli has no more defence against small-arms fire than does a family Volvo. The heli will be travelling slower, when it drops off troops.

  An hour or two later – H HOUR PLUS TWO – the LCT carrying our 1,000 FAA boys would land on the beachhead to expand and reinforce the defensive position. The whole Op was in fact planned to go down around the very spot where the Agip onshore production facility had a massive round crude-oil storage tank.

  The LCT’s approach and landing on the beach was crucial, and one that needed seamanship. As she came to within a cable of the beach, she must let go her aft kedge anchor. That hook would then hold her stern off, as her bow ran up the beach, thus stopping her from broaching: turning sideways on to the surf.

  Between the Mi-17s, the LCT and the Bangala, the landed force would be well supported from Cabinda. This was the base for our equipment – our sinews of war. Plenty.

  Casualty evacuation (Casevac) and treatment for our white mercenary troops was to be by helicopter to the Malongo oil base hospital, just north of Cabinda town. A first-world facility manned and equipped to first-world standards.

  This was all-important for our South Africans. Fighting as a mercenary is not the same as fighting for Queen and Country. There is no Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Those who were fighting for their country, or their bit of their country, the black FAA boys, would not be so treated.

  I paced another six lengths of the Bangala’s work-deck. Each ran from her rounded open stern for’ard to the aft side of her meagre superstructure, itself placed as close to the bow as possible. This design gave the biggest work-deck.

  I needed the heft of the HK against my hip. Without command my hand went to the pistol grip, touching it as though for luck. I thought back over the haste-crammed day.

  Earlier that morning, Tony and I had loaded ourselves into one of the Mi-17s. The six-man recce party – including the commander, Steven – and their weapons, plus a rubber boat and outboard engine – were already on board.

  We flew at low level up the 60 kilometres of road from Cabo Ledo to Luanda. Passing through the Mad Max shambles of Luanda International, with a boat and eight heavily armed white men, was a high point in our careers as diplomats and persuaders. In fact, it was only a chance meeting with a Sonangol employee, a man loyal to Joaquim David, who luckily knew something of what was afoot, that saved the day.

  Two Sonangol oil company 4x4s took us to Ilha beach. Luanda Sunday traffic cared nada for our task; our haste. On the beach, families watched with smiles and frowns as the rubber boat was quickly pumped up. It was there that we found that hiding a PKM (the Russian equivalent of the GPMG, the NATO General Purpose Machine Gun) beneath one groundsheet doesn’t work.

  Tony and I were ferried first, out to our oilfield support vessel, the MV Bangala. We climbed up the boarding ladder. The rubber boat headed back empty to the beach, to pick up the rest of the party. Tony and I were met by the skipper of the Bangala, Geordie. From Hull, of course.

  Six days earlier, we had been on board the Bangala for a recce. Joaquim had hired the boat commercially, under the pretence that we were working for Sonangol and that the boat was needed for oil work.

  That morning, once we made our way to the bridge-house, Tony and I faced Geordie, his back to the wheel. His eyes went back and forth between us. Geordie’s body language said, ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Now fuck off, will ya!’ he said.

  I tried to smile sweetly, but Geordie was not done. ‘I knew you two were naught but trouble the first time I clapped eyes on ya. Why’d Sonangol want t’ charter ship any’ow? In Luanda ’arbour? Don’t make sense, do it? Now fuck off … afore I lose me job – an’ me temper!’

  I was ready for this.

  ‘Geordie, I understand your position. But, in time of war, we are requisitioning this vessel. Charter rates will still apply. I am a brigadier in the Angolan Armed Forces, the FAA. Here is my ID card, and here is a letter of requisition from the Chief of Staff, General João de Matos.’

  Geordie frowned and looked at the papers. It was obvious that I must be telling the truth.

  ‘Can I call me boss?’

  ‘No. No calls or signals off this boat, by any means, until further notice.’

  ‘This is bloody piracy!’ (Later on, Tony and I were charged with piracy, in a case initiated by the US owners of the Bangala, but this was dropped when JD told them that they would never work on the west coast of Africa again.)

  ‘When the time comes,’ I told our skipper, ‘you can tell your company – or whatever – that the boat was seized at gunpoint – by eight heavily armed men; and they are heavily armed, Geordie. So are we.’

  My hand moved to my hip. Geordie’s eyes followed.

  Tony and I had a very private chat, by the stern. Then, with the recce party aboard, and Tony back ashore, the inflatable was hoisted. Lashed down to the work-deck. Geordie weighed anchor, so we steamed forth out of Luanda roadstead: Geordie, his five-strong crew of villainous-looking Nigerians, my recce team and me.

  On my orders, the Bangala turned south. Once out of sight, and once night had fallen, she would turn north, for Soyo. I did not really hope to fool the many watchers and spies by that, the oldest naval ruse in the book. It was for form. A matter of etiquette.

  We would arrive off Soyo at around 2200 hrs Z, whereupon the recce party would go ashore.

  Now, as I wait for news from that recce party, I walk up and down the Bangala’s work-deck. From just aft of the superstructure to the flush countered stern was 30 paces. Painted onto the superstructure, and facing the work-deck aft, was a fierce African votive mask with triangular filed teeth. I could just see the outline of the fangs as I neared the forward end of each beat.

  Geordie had told me that the mask was of the Bangala people, a now extinct tribe of cannibals who once lived far up the great Congo River. They had been well known as crews for the Belgian river work boats.

  I didn’t want to be here, eyeing this portrait of a savage. I wanted to be on that dinghy, heading towards the LZ. I’d had a row with Tony over this. He had been adamant that I would not be with the men at Soyo.

  For God’s sake. He was more worried about how he’d break the news to my mother and father, whom he knew, than anything else. Or so he joked. Of course, I could have defied Tony. Gone in. But I couldn’t defy the South Africans.

  They’d made up their minds. This would be their mission. They would not allow me to get involved on the ground. For me to insist upon it would have caused a meltdown. And distrust. And that would make it more dangerous for all.

  I didn’t trust them anyway. Their not wanting me with them worried me. Made me paranoid. But I knew that it was their way. It just wasn’t worth it. And so here I was, alone on the Bangala.

  What I had to do, other than control the Bangala and command the recce party, was relay the signal from Steven to Tony, waiting in Cabinda with the assault group. That message had to be passed not later than 0300 hrs Z. Plenty could go wrong in the meantime.

  Th
e recce team could be bumped, shot, killed or captured. They could get into a firefight with UNITA. We knew that UNITA had boats. What was to say they wouldn’t get caught before they even made the beach?

  Geordie’s binoculars were around my neck. Every tenth length of my walk up and down the deck, I’d stop and peer carefully all around the dark sea.

  I looked further out to sea. Ten miles away, although seemingly much closer, two oil-production platforms flared gas, beckoning with reflected paths of flame. I kept my eyes from the flares to safeguard my night vision, as trained, but those gas flares made me think. The lamps of Europe had once burned spermaceti whale oil. They burned without the lamp owner giving much thought to the great whale fisheries of the Southern Ocean. So is gasoline burned today. Without much thought for what is going on in the places that it comes from.

  Or how ivory had once been a part of so many goods. Or of the slave trade.

  To my north and east – over Soyo peninsula – far away over the great river and its forests – the sky was utterly black, except when zig-zagged streamers of white fire silently ripped from cloud to cloud, cloud to ground. Flashing discharges lighting up vast cathedrals of Cumulonimbus, their thunder deadened by the distance. Unheard.

  Soyo the fire dragon. I lit another Marlboro.

  Beneath the Bangala, the swell moved her. This wave, black and oily in the night, came from the south-west. It ran, therefore, straight in upon the beach. I feared that the swell had grown since I’d launched the recce. The more swell, the more difficult would be the beaching of the LCT.

  Then came whispers over the VHF. Steven: ‘Enemy in sight.’

  I looked towards the beach. I saw lights, then some sort of commotion. With a shock I felt fear’s grasp upon me. Quick as mist blown over a mountain ridge. Excitement, comradeship, wealth … all the drums and bugles … they all ran away.

  I stood alone on the deck. To steady myself I yet again scanned the sea – with care – pausing as I scanned – again just as I’d been trained.