Tenth Man Down (37 page)

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Authors: Chris Ryan

BOOK: Tenth Man Down
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‘Was Whinger with it?’ Mart wanted to know.
‘Not really. He was coming and going. Mostly going – lucky for him.’ I paused, thinking back. ‘The thing was, the woman must have known where she was, all along. During the time she was with us, I mean. She was never as confused as she pretended. All that crap about needing glasses to read. It was shite. She knew bloody well we’d attacked the mine, and that the rebels had captured the convent. She was just waiting to get back there, to join up with them again.’
I held out the mug in a silent request for more water. ‘Anyway, from the convent, she went ahead in another vehicle. She was at the next place when we arrived. There was a delay – twenty minutes or half an hour. Then we were taken into a hut like a classroom, and in comes Mr Big himself.’
‘Muende?’ said Danny.
‘Him.’
‘What does he look like?’
‘A right half-caste. Pale skin, hair like tow. Yellow. Colour’s wrong, but otherwise he’s pretty much Afro-looking. Like the rest of these fuckers, only fatter. Quite sleek. Well oiled in every sense.’
In other circumstances, the lads might have laughed, but none of them even smiled. They knew something horrible was coming. Hardened though they were, the story of Whinger’s end left them looking shattered. As for me, I could hardly tell it. I kept feeling I had to make excuses for not having prevented the disaster.
‘The trouble was, the slag really had it in for him,’ I said. ‘She hated his guts. It didn’t seem to occur to her that killing him was the worst thing she could do. Because he’d got burnt dragging her out of the wreck, she was convinced he’d found the fucking diamond. She was out to get him somehow.
‘Gen and I were knackered, the pair of us. As I said, we were tied to the chairs. There was nothing we could do. Whenever we tried to help, we got hammered with rifle butts, or kicked. The way she handed Muende strips of liver – it was the filthiest thing I’ll ever see.’
Pav, who’d been fond of Whinger, suddenly turned and walked away into the distance. I think he cracked up for a moment – I couldn’t see. When he came back, he was together again, and muttering, ‘Fucking arseholes!’ over and over.
‘What time did you get out of the mud?’ I asked.
‘Midnight,’ Stringer said.
‘Hell of a struggle.’
‘You can say that again. Everyone’s creased. Who’s this bloke who got
you
out, then?’
‘The Yank? Sam something. Former SEAL. That poor bastard’s gone as well. They dropped him just as we were lining up for take-off.’
Phil handed me more water. ‘So the villains are going for the diamond.’
‘No. I mean, I don’t know. I’m sure they will, in time. But without a chopper it’ll take them days to find the wrecked plane. Even if they get hold of my GPS, they may not make anything of the waypoints. In the meantime, there’s a new deal.’
I told them about the cache of nuclear warheads. Then I amazed them, and myself, by saying, ‘I reckon we’d better go for that and clean it up before Muende does.’
Where the idea came from, I’ll never know. It just jumped into my mind, fully formed.
‘
What?
’ Pav was astounded. ‘Have you gone fucking mad? I thought we were on our way out of here.’
‘We were,’ I agreed. ‘But now the goalposts have moved. We need to pull our fingers out and get after those missiles.’
As I said that, I felt myself changing. It was as though I’d been supercharged with rage at Whinger’s death. In the past I’d never been really vindictive, but now I felt mean as sin: I’d dedicate myself to rubbing out the German woman and Muende, along with all his plans, if it was the last thing I did.
‘He’s not fucking getting away with it,’ I announced to the company in general. ‘There’s no way he’s going to get these weapons. You’ll see.’
Pav shot me a peculiar look, as though he thought I’d gone round the twist. By then rehydration had got my brain going again, and I felt well in control of the situation.
I reckoned I’d better give the lads a minute to adjust their ideas, so I said, ‘The first thing is to clear out of here. If the people at the convent have had a message about our escape, they could be out like a swarm of bees at any moment. Before we commit ourselves anywhere else, I need to talk to the Kremlin. Where’s the best place for a temporary LUP? Pav? Phil?’
‘Back up on that ledge at the RV point. Apart from anything else, it’s a great OP, with a view down over the pans and the river. If anyone’s coming, we’ll see them.’
‘That’s it, then. Let’s go.’
‘What about this?’ Mart pointed at the aircraft.
The thing was knackered. Without fuel, it had no future. We couldn’t hide it, and even if we tried to burn it, the tell-tale skeleton would remain.
‘Leave it,’ I said. ‘It’s done its job.’
Half an hour later we were up on the ledge, with the vehicles cammed up between two thorn bushes. As Phil had said, the outlook was brilliant: through binoculars we could see baboons feeding on the river bank, hippos feuding in the water, crocs crawling out onto sandbanks to bask in the sun. If any vehicle had moved, we’d have spotted it at once.
When I first looked into a mirror, I got a shock: my left eye was nearly closed, my mouth stuck out in a pout, and much of the rest of my face was covered by Mart’s dressings. My ribs were bruised black and blue all down my left side, but a check showed none was broken.
I made a quick inventory of the weapons and equipment we’d lost: one pinkie and all its gear, including the Milan post and half a dozen missiles; two 203s, two pistols and six badly needed jerricans of fuel. Needing to re-equip myself, I dug out Andy’s watch, which I’d stowed in the mother wagon for safekeeping, and took over Whinger’s 203, commando knife and GPS. I still had the Colt .45 which I’d taken off the white mercenary.
‘Eh, Stringer,’ I went. ‘Any joy with the satcom?’
‘Yeah, it’s fine. Didn’t you hear? The Kremlin told us about Pretorius and so on?’
‘Oh yeah. What was wrong with it?’
‘I took the handset apart and found a wire had broken inside.’
‘No wonder the bastard wouldn’t work. So you’ve been through to Hereford?’
‘Sure.’
‘What’s the buzz?’
‘We asked for an exfil. There’s a Herc on its way down. It’s going to stage through Harare and wait for us to call it in.’
‘What’s its ETA?’
‘Dunno yet. We need to get confirmation.’
I thought for a moment, then called, ‘Phil, where’s the good map?’
‘It was in your pinkie.’
‘Ah, shit. What about the other?’
‘Here.’ He brought it over. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Place called Ichembo. Somewhere to the west. Christ, there it is. I found it straight away. That must be a sign.’
‘A sign of what?’
‘That we’re supposed to go there.’
Phil shot me a hard look as he asked, ‘What is it?’
‘The dump where these nuclear warheads are lying.’
By the time I’d got sorted, Andy’s watch was reading 0745.
‘What time will it be in Hereford?’ I asked Stringer.
‘Minus two – 0545.’
‘Let’s go through to them.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yeah. I need to catch up on things.’
This time the satcom worked perfectly, and in a few seconds I was talking to a signaller in the Comcen at Stirling Lines.
‘Who’s the Orderly Officer?’ I asked.
‘Max Davidson.’
‘Oh, right.’ I’d met the man – a tall, sandy-haired rupert who’d recently joined from the Parachute Regiment – but I hardly knew him. ‘Put him on, then.’
‘There’s been a runner sent to get him. He was talking to the DA in some dump called Mulongwe.’
‘Christ, that’s us. I mean, it’s to do with us. I’ll hold.’
From where I stood waiting, I could see the body-bag in the back of the truck. I was thinking, we can’t take Gen with us in this heat. We’re going to have to bury him, and then, if we can, come back for him later.
‘Orderly Officer speaking,’ said a Scots voice in my ear.
‘Hello. Geordie Sharp here.’
‘I’ve just been talking about you.’
‘What was the buzz?’
‘You’re blacked,’ said Davidson, jokily.
‘Great! What have we done?’
‘You attacked the Kamangan government forces without provocation and ran away. Now you’re deliberately fomenting civil war.’
‘Like fuck we are. Listen, you’ve not swallowed any of that shit, I hope?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Reality’s different. The Alpha commander suddenly turned round and told us to bugger off. We heard he was sending an assassination squad after us in the middle of the night, so we did a flit.’
‘Quite right,’ went Davidson. ‘Where are you now?’
I gave him our coordinates, and filled in more background. Then he said, ‘We’ve got problems at this end as well. Kamanga’s broken off diplomatic relations with the UK.’
‘Charming,’ I said.
‘Yeah. They’re refusing landing rights to British aircraft. The FCO are trying to negotiate. But if push comes to shove, the Herc can nip in across the Namibian border, permission or not. How are things with you?’
‘Bloody awful. We’ve lost two more.’
‘Oh, God! Since midnight?’
‘One before, one after.’
‘Who? Tell me.’
As quickly as I could, I brought him up to speed. I didn’t tell him about the diamond, and I didn’t say exactly what had happened to Whinger. I couldn’t. I just said he’d been murdered at the instigation of the German, that Gen and I had escaped in the light aircraft, but that Gen had collected a bullet.
‘But listen,’ I ended up. ‘The thing now’s this dump of nuclear missile heads. We’ve got to go for it.’
‘Say that again.’
‘We’ve got to grab the stuff before this nutter Muende gets his hands on it. We’re well placed. The location’s only about three hours west of where we are now. We can beat the opposition to it.’
‘Wait one. I think you need to talk to the Ops Officer and the CO before you go ahead on that.’
‘If we’re going, we can’t piss about. It’s now or never.’
‘What are you proposing?’
‘To lift the stuff out before anyone else gets there. What we need to do is find an LZ near the site and guide the Herc in.’
‘Geordie,’ went Davidson, as if he was speaking to a kid. ‘Take it easy. Your ideas are running away with you. All
we’re
looking to do is pull the remains of the team out before anyone else goes down.’
‘Where’s the Herc, then?’
‘Right now’ – he paused, as if looking at some schedule – ‘it’s en route to Harare. ETA there zero five hundred Zulu.’
‘That’s all right then. It can easily make it here by midday. But we’re going to need NBC suits for all crew members, and our own guys.’
‘Geordie, I say again: you need clearance on this one.’
‘Clearance!’ I shouted. ‘For Christ’s sake, we need help, not clearance. We’re trying to avert a fucking nuclear catastrophe.’
As I broke off the call, I again saw Pav looking at me in a strange way, but he didn’t make any comment, and I said, ‘Before we do anything else, we’d better get Gen underground.’
Nobody argued about that; we’d all seen what the heat and flies did to a body. Flies would be into the nose, eyes and mouth and lay eggs in a matter of hours. In a day or so the eggs would hatch into maggots, the maggots would start eating away, and the belly would explode with gas. Our immediate future was so uncertain that burial was essential. The only question was, where to excavate the grave. We could see that digging would be easiest down in the sand and mud around the pans, but for one thing we didn’t want to go down there, close to the river, and for another we reckoned there would be less risk of animals digging the body up again if we put it in the rocky ground high up. I kept remembering how the warthog had erupted from a hole at the site of the training ambush, and how Joss had told us that aardvarks make enormous excavations every night.
After a search, Phil found a site which he reckoned would do – a level patch, with a little grass growing out of sand – but Jason immediately told him there was rock close beneath the surface.
‘How far down is it?’ Phil asked.
‘Like this.’ The tracker held his hands about a foot apart.
‘How do you know?’
‘I feel.’
Phil glared at him, not liking to be contradicted, and started to dig anyway, with one of the short-handled, pointed shovels that we carried on the pinkies. Sure enough, just over a foot down he hit solid rock and had to admit defeat.

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