Cry Havoc Page 9

Having walked up to the bridge, I lit another cigarette, saving my night eyesight from the match flare. I tried but failed to radio-check Tony using the Bangala’s HF set. I felt so alone.

  Back on deck I began again my up-and-down sentry-go. I tried to measure the swell height against the hull, now sure that it was bigger, rougher, now sure that the Bangala was moving more than she had.

  All the time I had to keep pushing the fear away. That’s how it was: I kept screwing down the top of my bottle.

  Again I scanned the sea, dodging the binos around the oil platforms’ gas flares. Hanging on to my night vision.

  Slaves. Ivory. Oil. The thoughts jarred me. This West African coast had been a hunting ground for ever. It still was.

  ‘Slaves. Ivory. Oil. Diamonds. Gold. Ladies’ underwear. Next floor is Lower Ground. This lift is going down.’

  Like Harrods. But going down is right.

  Night wasn’t passing.

  Darkness had come for ever.

  I smoked, paced, peered, dreamed. Every so often I had to check myself for thoughts of love, of Amanda. But I threw out those thoughts. I had a job to do.

  I had agreed not to call or radio-check Steven. Other than in an emergency. I’d heard nothing since his ‘Enemy in sight’. Had they been captured? Killed silently? I didn’t dare break his instruction for me not to radio-check him. I just had to keep on waiting. Pacing.

  0245 HRS ZULU and still nothing. Nearly three. H HOUR MINUS FOUR.

  Then it came: a whispered ‘Duchess South’.

  I repeated the code words back. Heard Steven say them over once again. Now we both knew that the other knew that the message was passed.

  Now I had to pass the same message to Tony in Cabinda, using the ship’s HF radio. When I turned it on, all I could hear was feedback, then screaming. By the sound of it, the Spanish deep-sea trawlermen were holding some sort of HF rave-up. For 20 minutes I struggled to get through to Tony.

  No use.

  It didn’t matter.

  Yesterday, as we had said our goodbyes on the stern of the Bangala and had our chat, I had told Tony what to do. I had shocked him: ‘If you haven’t heard from me, from the Bangala, by 0330 HRS ZULU on Tuesday morning, then tell them that you have; tell them that I said Duchess South for the LZ; that one is the best bet anyway…’

  ‘Jesus, Simon! But … OK: 0330 HRS ZULU and Duchess South.’

  It was ruthless, but we had to make this happen. Of course, had something really gone wrong with the recce party, then I would have put a stop to the Mi-17s going in. But I was damned if I was going to let a shit HF radio signal fuck up all our plans. I was damned if I was going to let the South Africans, ours or Pretoria’s, mess this up. By chance or otherwise.

  As it was, I had been forced to trick the South Africans into agreeing to this heli assault. They hadn’t believed the Angolans capable of producing the heli assets. I told them how their reluctance to attack was raising doubts. Were they here for pay, beer, braais on the beach? Were they using the excuse of FAA’s poor combat intelligence as a way of exercising their ‘No Attack’ veto, when in fact they were taking orders not to attack from NI, in Pretoria? After all, South Africa was on UNITA’s side. South African soldiers had fought for UNITA. Some of these men had fought for UNITA.

  No, they said. But they hated the idea of a sea assault.

  OK. So I asked them: if there was a heli assault organised for them, would they attack? Otherwise we might as well own up and pack up. On their mettle they agreed. Sure that the heli assets would not be forthcoming. Not from a bunch of blacks.

  Then it was there: Tony’s HF radio voice, answering my radio-check.

  ‘Hello, Zero, this is One – Duchess South – over…’ Crackle … whistle … Spanish shout.

  ‘Zero – Duchess South – Duchess South – over.’

  ‘One – Duchess South – out.’ Message sent and acknowledged. Message passed.

  Geordie agreed to steer the Bangala further offshore. As dawn approached, I didn’t want to alarm any watching UNITA fighters. I took up my vigil on the deck once more. Mouth and throat smoked dry. I lit another cigarette. Paced the deck.

  There was light, surely?

  There lay the fire dragon: Soyo. Dark along the seashore, fast asleep. There ran a long beach, grey in the low light. A black, scraggly forest lay upon it.

  Then – quickly after the night’s long wait – there was the attack: four Mi-17s carrying the South Africans. Two Mi-24 gunships in support, firing into the bush below. One carried Tony – although I didn’t know it then. The six-ship attack looked puny in such a big panorama. The 17s sank down into the black forest. The 24s circled.

  Firing. Firing. Firing.

  We watched.

  Then the 17s rose out of the trees, turning to fly north, now lightened of heavily armed fighters. The 24s circled some more, strafing with their chin cannons, then followed.

  As an afterthought – so it seemed – a twin 23mm, almost on the beach, opened up on the rear 24. I had seen these UNITA 23mms before.

  Their tracer-laced fire had chased Jesus and me in our SU-22 as we made our kamikaze photo recce weeks earlier: our high-speed, low-level pass. The lines of burning steel trying to catch and kill. The recce sortie that had to be flown. The recce sortie that gleaned vital intelligence about UNITA positions at Soyo. The recce sortie that had told any reluctant South Africans that they were going to have to either shit or get off the pot.

  If the South Africans were only here for the pay, beer and braais on the beach – or if they were secretly following orders from SA NI not to attack UNITA – they no longer had a legitimate excuse to hide behind. No longer could they use the lack of FAA Combat Intelligence about UNITA to delay the op. The choice was straightforward. Shit now, or trek back: from Luanda to Voortrekkerhoogte.*

  I could hear the 23mms over the sea’s noise. Over the ship’s engine thrum. Over the distance. Each burst of fire was a machine roar, the sound of each round joined to the next.

  Fire spat. Body-smashing. Chainsaw rip.

  As the sleepy gunner chased his Mi-24 target, so 23mm tracers flew over the Bangala, over Geordie and me, and into the sea behind.

  ‘I thought you said there were nowt ’ere t’ shoot more ’an 1,000 yards!’ wailed Geordie.

  ‘Sorry, Geordie. Only kidding.’

  ‘Fer fuck’s sakes! I’m gettin’ ’er art ta sea.’

  ‘Quick as you like, Geordie.’

  ‘Bloody right!’

  As we sailed away from the beach, I searched out to sea, east-south-east, with the binos. As I scanned, I saw what I wanted … then lost it. I had to be sure that I really could see the LCT … but there it was: sailing towards the target.

  I found it and held it. That was the vital element. Even though, to land in this swell, they were going to have to know what they were about.

  Once sure of the LCT, I told Geordie to head north for Cabinda Roads, an order that made the poor man grin for joy. He wanted his ship well away from the firefight.

  The Bangala skirted Soyo peninsula at a safe distance, then set course for Cabinda. She churned along at her best speed, a snail’s six knots. I found myself cut off, in an eerie flat calm, knowing that a momentous storm – the attack that I’d kicked off – my dragon fight – was raging all around.

  VHF radio contact with Steven had been lost as soon as we’d sailed from the landing. The HF had not worked since I’d sent the code words through to Tony early that morning. Still armed with Geordie’s binoculars, I climbed onto the lookout atop the bridge-house.

  Aft, I scanned the peninsula for any signs of the action that must be taking place, but could see none. At least there were no UNITA patrol boats chasing us.

  I tried to keep a sharp lookout on the waters ahead of the bow, since Geordie had asked me to. Great hardwood tree trunks, almost submerged, were a hazard in this, the mouth of the Congo estuary. Flotsam of the great forest upstream, and carried by the vast river, these tru
nks could do serious damage to the Bangala if she was struck. They were like rotten but still poisonous old teeth, fallen from the mouth of the worm – dragon Congo.

  I looked upstream towards where I knew the city ports of Matadi and Boma must lie, but saw nothing. I could only just make out the waterway into Banana Creek.

  Beneath us sank a vast deep. The Congo is so mighty that its waters have carved out a submarine canyon. The water we bustled through was sweet. Not salt. River water, despite our being miles out to sea.

  As the vessel closed with the Cabinda shoreline, I was surprised to make out what looked like a modern port. I climbed down off my perch and joined Geordie on the bridge.

  He saw me looking at the distant pier and cranes. ‘Tha’s na Cabinda. Tha’s Malongo … the oil terminal and port!’

  This was our oil port. That with the first-rate medical facility. The one that Joaquim David had promised us: to take care of any of our own casualties. I looked in another direction, to where Geordie’s grimy finger pointed: some houses clinging to the beachline, the dark forest ready to roll over them. There was no port at all: just a handful of rusty hulks anchored half a mile off.

  ‘Cabinda’s over there, man! Cabinda’s shaller water for four cables out. There’s no port – so it’s all lighters: lighters off, an’ bloody lighters on. We’m gonna anchor amongst them ’ulks.’

  Geordie’s eyes could not but glance to the oil port, now just five miles away. That was his home and, once there, the Bangala would be safe from the mischiefs of war. I feared that Geordie might take himself and his ship to safety at the first half-chance. I followed his gaze to the oil port, but could make out little at the distance.

  Beyond the oil port, the coastline bent slightly eastward, out of view. Beyond lay Pointe-Noire, the sea port of Congo Brazzaville.

  Pointe-Noire had been Evelyn Waugh’s location for the plane crash, and temporary death, of that other brigadier general, the great but fictitious hero Ben Ritchie Hook.

  The Bangala readied to drop her best bower anchor. I spotted a speeding launch heading out towards us. No doubt it was for me. Handing Geordie back his binos, I dived below to grab my ready-packed rucksack. As I came back on deck, the launch was already alongside us. Shouts and waves signalled that I must quickly board.

  I turned to Geordie, striving to go eye to eye. I told him that the Bangala could be life and death to the men now ashore at Soyo. He and his vessel must therefore stand by, at anchor in Cabinda Roads. Those were his orders. He was under command – under requisition – in a country at war.

  For this government, at least, a war of survival.

  My heart sank. Geordie wouldn’t hold my eye. It was little surprise, therefore, as the launch dropped me at the jetty and into a waiting army jeep, to see the Bangala slinking off towards her kennel: the oil port. Bitch.

  Sick at what that loss might cause, I cursed Geordie; but I could not really blame him. I wondered if I should have used force to keep my ‘requisition’ on strength. Too late. I could not see how I could have stopped him. Not without great delay. I was soon to learn that the Bangala’s desertion was the least of my worries.

  As I was driven from the jetty to the airport, the jeep driver spoke neither French (the European language of that part of the coast) nor Russian (a language of which FAA soldiers often had a few words – a hangover from the last phase of these endless civil wars). To my boiling frustration, I could glean no picture of what was going on.

  I had a bad, hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. A feeling soon made worse by the faces of Joaquim David and Tony. They were sitting on a broken-down piece of wall, at the back of the two shacks that usually served as Cabinda International’s terminal buildings. Tony was smoking a Cohiba Esplendido. A Woodbine would have been in better keeping with his defeated air.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked.

  ‘Came here as fast as that old tub would go. As we agreed. What’s up?’

  ‘We’re facing a wipe-out…’

  ‘Come, Tony – let us not be pessimists,’ said JD. ‘Simon, well done. Your role last night was successful. How is the Bangala?’

  ‘The Bangala is in one piece, but unfortunately Geordie – against my pleas, and my orders – has buggered off to the oil terminal. I doubt if any threats, or promises, will win him back on strength!’

  ‘Shit, Simon!’ yelled Tony.

  His anger hurt me.

  ‘I’m sorry, Joaquim… Sorry, Tony. Only a full-on armed guard would have stopped him. Even if I had an armed guard to post on board then, what would be the use of that? What are we going to do if he won’t sail for us? Shoot him?’

  JD leaned forward. ‘OK. Tony, allow me to bring Simon up to date, please?’

  ‘Go ahead, Joaquim.’

  ‘So, Simon, after you sent the code Duchess South, we made ready. Tony insisted upon riding in one of the Mi-24 gunships. In went the attack, as you no doubt saw…’

  I grinned at Tony. ‘Couldn’t bloody well resist that, could you?’

  He smiled a quick smile, the first break in his gloom.

  JD went on, ‘The heli assault went as planned – into the Duchess South LZ – which was clear of enemy and of obstacles – as hoped. The recce group was there – Steven and his men. They linked up with the main force. They all moved to the agreed position. From there they could cover the beach landing spot … and they began to build defences.

  ‘Then they were attacked – heavily, and by a strong and determined force. Since then – and now – attacks have followed: one, after another, after another. They have some lightly wounded, and are running low on ammo. They do not know how long they can hold on.’

  ‘Shit! But where are the FAA? Where’s the Landing Craft? I saw the LCT sailing into the beach…’ I said.

  ‘Well, of course … so for hours your South Africans only just held off the UNITA attacks, which became stronger and stronger. Then – let’s see – about three hours ago the LCT at last landed but … but then – well – disaster has struck…’

  Tony had been gazing into the distance, his face grim. Now he took up the sorry tale: ‘You know how it’s done, Simon. The LCT lets go her kedge anchor – about one cable’s length off the beach – while they ram her bow into it. The kedge is there to stop the stern swinging in, to stop the vessel broaching to … broaching in the surf…’

  Tony stopped. Our eyes met. ‘The fucking warp broke! Can you fucking believe it?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The fucking thing broached to – waves pounding into it – 1,000 men on board – waves pounding into it, and UNITA shooting at it too.’

  ‘Fucking hell!’

  ‘Fucking hell is right. Somehow everyone got ashore. The South Africans gave covering fire. But all the ammo, rations, water, heavy weapons, the tanks – they’re still on the thing: swimming and battered in a half-sunk wreck.’

  ‘So what is happening now?’

  ‘So far as we know, they are still all holding on…’

  At that moment, a Pilatus PC-9 hurtled over our heads, followed by another. We stopped talking and watched the two aircraft. In Cabinda to provide Close Air Support (CAS) to our Soyo battle, 43 miles south, they now turned hard onto a curved left base to land.

  JD spoke: ‘We’ll talk to these pilots while they refuel and rearm.’

  ‘But you say we are holding on?’

  ‘Yes. The South Africans have formed a defensive circle with a helicopter LZ at its centre. The outer circumference is held by our FAA children, and that includes the beach where the wreck is. We are flying the PC-9s non-stop to try to break up the UNITA attacks. We are flying the Mi-17s non-stop, with the Mi-24s in support: ammo in, casualties out. There are no serious South African casualties yet.’

  I saw a look of worry – no, embarrassment – on Joaquim’s face. It didn’t suit him. Tony gave him a scowl of anger. The strength of that look shocked me.

  ‘What’s up? Is there worse?’

  Jo
aquim looked at the ground: ‘Tell him, Tony, please. I am too ashamed.’

  I looked to Tony, amazed.

  He growled out the story, while my heart sank: ‘The oil terminal hospital is off limits. We can’t use it for casualties.’

  Neither man could look me in the eye. They both knew that the South Africans would refuse to carry on if they found out they were fighting without a white man’s casualty plan. It spelled disaster. Not only that: if we had been warned that this was to happen, we could have put other arrangements in place. Now, with a desperate battle in progress, we were more than 1,000 miles from the kind of medical support that we needed.

  A lifetime away.

  Tony went on: ‘I’ve been to the Cabinda hospital, here, at Joaquim’s suggestion. It’s a cesspit … a disgrace. I wouldn’t send my worst enemy there.’

  JD walked off to the terminal shack 20 yards away, now FAA’s forward Tactical Headquarters. To call it a TAC HQ was as ludicrous as calling it a terminal building – or calling Cabinda’s hospital a hospital.

  ‘Fucking hell! We’re really in the shit now…’

  *The town in Pretoria named after the pioneering Voortrekker pilgrims who, between 1835 and 1854, left the Cape Colony and trekked into the interior of what is now South Africa.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  APRIL 2003: JOHANNESBERG SOUTH AFRICA

  In Jo’burg, sure enough, I meet three of the old gang, former members of Executive Outcomes: Coebus, Crause Steyl (the pilot) and Niek du Toit.

  Details of the op are secret. The fewer people who know about the plan, the better. As the British Army would have it, the Op and everything about it is ‘NEED TO KNOW’.

  I don’t mention that the Op is a coup. I don’t mention Equatorial Guinea. They won’t ask. They know better. In this game we’re all up to something, all of the time. Madcap, sketchy schemes are never far from the ears of a mercenary. In the improbable event of these madcap, sketchy schemes ever happening, then their most likely outcome is disaster.

  As Conrad put it in Lord Jim: ‘Nothing offered just then, and, while waiting, he associated naturally with the men of his calling in the port. These were of two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. They appeared to live in a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of civilization, in the dark places of the sea; and their death was the only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable certitude of achievement.’