'How far is it?'


'Not far. Half an hour walking maybe.'


I said, 'We're going to take our car down there and have a look. If any white men come by here, tell them to wait for us.'


'Hey, man,' he said, 'that company property. You can't drive there.'


I looked at him in amusement and wondered if Lat-Am knew how lucky they were. 'Harry?'


Zimmerman persuaded him that we were going on company business and Kironji finally gave way to our demands.


The track was better surfaced than I had expected and showed signs of considerable use. Wherever it was rutted the ruts had been filled in with clinker and the repair work was extensive and well done. Presumably Mr Obukwe of Lat-Am Oil had need of this track and we wondered why.


It wasn't all that wide, just enough to take a big truck through the trees. On the right they pressed in thickly but on the left they barely screened the water. The trees showed signs of continual cutting back, the slash marks ranging from old scars to new-cut wood still oozing sap.


The track ran parallel to the main road to the lake shore. We emerged into a clearing to see the sun striking hard diamond reflections from the water and to find yet another fenced compound full of drums. There was also a landing stage, a rough structure consisting of a wooden platform on top of empty oil drums making a floating jetty about ten feet wide and eighty feet long.


There was even a boat, though it was nothing much; just a fifteen-foot runabout driven by an outboard. I walked out onto the landing stage which swayed gently and looked closely at the boat. It was aged and a bit leaky, but the outboard looked to be well maintained. I turned my attention to the lake itself.


The distance to the far side was about four miles and through binoculars I thought I could see the shore and a ribbon of track leading up from it. That was Manzu, a country blessedly free of civil war and as desirable as Paradise. But as far as we were concerned it might as well have been the far side of the moon. It was ironic to think that if we had no-one to worry about but ourselves we four could have crossed this stretch of water to safety in no time.


'Pretty sight, isn't it,' Wingstead murmured as he took his turn with the binoculars. He was thinking my thoughts.


I turned back to the clearing. It was easy now to see the reason for the good road. Delivery to and from this petrol dump was made by water, probably from Fort Pine to this and other drop points along the shore. It would be easier than road transport especially if the fuel came prepacked in drums.


There was a locked wooden shed standing nearby. By peering through the boards we could see that it was a workshop and toolroom. There was every sign that it was used regularly for maintenance work, though everything was tidy. I walked back along the pontoon and prowled around the perimeter of the compound. I found a gate which was also locked and there was a palm-thatched hut just inside it. It crossed my mind that the clearing, which was very long, would be a good place to put the rig and the rest of the convoy off the road and out of sight. The road down was rough but I had learned enough from Kemp to judge it would stand the traffic, and Wingstead confirmed this.


'It's not a bad idea. And it brings us at least within sight of our goal,' he said when I put the proposition to him.


On the far shore we could make out a cluster of buildings where there was possibly another landing stage. On the water itself there were no boats moving. Traffic on Lake Pirie might simply be infrequent or it may have been brought to a halt by the advent of war.


When we got back to the station we arranged for Kironji to load the balance of his Cokes and a few other items into the car. The cabin wasn't exactly a shop but there was some tinned foodstuff for sale and a few bits of hardware that might be useful. He also had a little first aid kit but it wasn't worth ransacking. As Kironji closed the cooler lid on the last load of Cokes I saw something else down there.


'Are those beer cans, Sam?'


'Mine.' He closed the lid defiantly.


'OK, no sweat.' A ridiculous statement in this scorching weather. This train of thought made me wipe my forehead. Kironji watched me, hesitated, and then said, 'You want a beer?'


'You'd be a hero, Sam.'


He grinned and handed me a cold can. 'I got a few. Only for you and your friends. I not sell them.'


It tasted wonderful. Our warm beer had long been finished.


I looked around as I drank. The interior of the cabin was neat and tidy. It was a combination of office and store, with a few tyres in racks and spare parts on shelves. I thought that Hammond could make something of all this, and in fact he had already been browsing through the stock. At the back was a door which led to Kironji's living quarters; he was a bachelor and preferred to live where he worked, presumably to protect his precious Lat-Am property. There was a supply of tools here too, and a small workbench.


'Do you do all your own repair work, Sam?'


'I got plenty tools, sir, and much training. But mostly I work by the lake.' The shed we had seen housed a fair amount of stuff, a well-equipped workshop for boats as well as vehicles.


'Who does the boat belong to?' I asked.


To me. I go fishing sometime.'


'I'd like to hire it from you. I want to have a look at the lake.'


He shook his head at my folly but we agreed on a hire fee, and he jotted it down on what was becoming a pretty healthy tab. He wasn't going to be done out of a penny, either by way of business or personally.


Wingstead came in and to his great delight Kironji handed out another beer. He disposed of it in two swallows.


Kironji asked, 'You say you have other people coming. What you doing here, man?'


'We were going to Bir Oassa with parts for the oilfields,' Wingstead said. 'We met the war and had to turn back. Now we must try to get back to Lasulu.' He said nothing of the Manzu border. Kironji pondered and then said, 'You know this hospital?'


'Which hospital?' I asked, thinking he meant that there was one in the vicinity. But his reply only proved the efficiency of the bush telegraph once again.


'I hear it go travel on a big truck, lots of sick people. The other they follow where it go, all through the country.'


'By God,' Wingstead exclaimed. 'The juggernaut's famous! If Sam here has heard about it it'll be all over the damn country by now. I don't know if that's good news or bad.'


I said, 'Yes, Sam, we are travelling with that hospital. The sick people are on a big trailer, all the way from Doctor Katabisirua's hospital in Kodowa.'


He brightened. 'Doctor Kat! I know him. He very good doctor. One day he fix my brother when he break a leg.' That was good news; if our doctor was well thought of his name was a reference for the rest of us.


'He'll be here later today, Sam,' Wingstead said.


Kironji looked only mildly incredulous.


Hammond came to the doorway. 'The Captain's here, Mister Mannix. He's asking for you.'


I tossed him two beers .' One for you and one for Harry,' I said, 'but don't go back and boast about it. There isn't any more.'


'You said no soldiers,' said Kironji reproachfully as I passed him.


'Not many, and they are friends. Doctor Kat knows about them.'


Sadiq was waiting outside. I thanked him for his message, and went on, 'I've suggested to Mister Wingstead that we stop here, and he's agreed. There's a good road down to the lake and it's well hidden. We can put the whole convoy there, including the rig, and your men too if you think fit.'


Sadiq liked the idea and went to see for himself. Kironji watched him go from the cabin doorway.


'Sam,' I said, 'have you ever used the ferry?'


'Me, no. What for? I not go Manzu, I work here.'


'Who does use the ferry?'


He considered. 'Many truck from Manzu go to oilfields. Farmers, Government people. Many different people go on ferry.'


In happier times the international border here was obviously open and much-used. It was the only route to the Bir Oassa fields from countries north of Nyala. Kironji's information that trucks crossed on it suggested that it was larger than I would have expected, which was encouraging news.


Geoff Wingstead beckoned to me.


'When the rig gets here we will get it off the road. We're a little too close to Fort Pirie for comfort, and there's no point in buying trouble. There's plenty of room at the lakeside and it can't be seen from up here. But we'll have to widen the turn-off.'


For the next hour he and I together with Zimmerman and Hammond laboured. Widening the turn for the rig involved only a few modifications. We heaved rocks and equipment to one side, uprooted vegetation and chopped down a small spinney of thorn bushes, and generally made a mess of Sam Kironji's carefully preserved little kingdom. If it hadn't been for the fact that Zimmerman was from Lat-Am Kironji would never have allowed us to do it. As it was he could barely bring himself to help.


Four hours later the rig was bedded down in the clearing by the lake, its load resting on the ground and the weight taken off the bogies. The clearing held most of the vehicles and those that couldn't be fitted in were scattered off the road where they could leave in a hurry, or be used to block the way to the rig. We might have, been bypassed and remain invisible if it wasn't for the Nyalans who were still doggedly following us. They camped in the trees all about us, chattering, cooking, coming and going endlessly. According to Sam Kironji many lived nearby but preferred our company to their homes.


Sadiq set his men to try and persuade them to leave us but this was a wasted effort. The rig was a magnet more powerful than any of us could have imagined, and politely but obstinately its strange escort insisted on staying. The countryside was steadily pillaged for whatever food could be found, and Sam Kironji's chickens disappeared before we could bargain for them.


I found Sister Ursula tearing a little pile of bedding she'd found in Kironji's cabin into bandaging strips and said to her, 'Let me do that. You've got more important things to do.'


'Thank you.' She had discarded her coif and her hair, cut close to the scalp, was sheened with sweat.


'How are things, Sister?'


'Not too bad,' she said briskly. 'We've lost no more patients and I really think the infant is going to make it, thanks be to God. We worry about Mister Lang, though.' He had taken Max Otterman's place as their most serious case. 'Doctor Marriot says that Sister Mary is a little better. But she shouldn't exert herself in the slightest. We do need to get to a hospital soon though. What are our chances?' she asked.


I put her in the picture. 'Do you know of any hospitals in Manzu?' I then asked.


She didn't, and hadn't heard that we intended to try and reach the neighbouring country. Few people had as yet, for the sake of security, but now I told her.


'It's a fine idea, and just what we need. All these poor people who are following us, they do need a place to settle down in peace once more.'


'But they're Nyalans. They'd be in a foreign country without papers.'


She laughed. 'You're naive, Mister Mannix These people think of it simply as land, Africa. They haven't much nationalistic fervour, you know. They cross borders with little fear of officialdom, and officialdom has better things to do than worry about them. They just go where the grazing and hunting is good.'


I wished it was as simple for us, but we had a lot to do first. I left the Sister to her bandages and went to find Hammond, McGrath and Sam Wilson.


We walked down to stand at the pontoon, looking out over the water. Hammond said, 'I don't see many possibilities. If there was a bridge we could at least fight for it.'


'The ferry point is swarming with rebels,' I said,. 'I don't think we've got the force we'd need.'


'You know, I was getting really worried about fuel,' Hammond said. 'It's ironic that now, when we can't go anywhere, we've got all we want and more.'


'I've been thinking about that,' said McGrath. 'We could float petrol down to the ferry and set it alight, construct a fire ship.'


Wilson said, 'Pleasant ideas you have, Mick,' and I caught an undertone I recognized; here was someone else who mistrusted the Irishman.


Hammond said, 'We can get people across Manzu in threes and fours, with this little boat ... or perhaps not,' he added as he crossed the pontoon to look down into it. He hopped up and down, making the pontoon bobble on the water, then came back ashore looking thoughtful.


'I wonder why they have a pontoon instead of a fixed jetty,' he said.


'Does it matter?' I was no sailor and the question wouldn't have occurred to me, but Wilson took up Hammond's point. 'A fixed jetty's easier to build, unless you need a landing stage that'll rise and fall with the tide,' he said. 'Only there's no tide here.'


'You can see the water level varies a little,' Hammond said. He pointed out signs that meant nothing to me, but Wilson agreed with them. 'So where does the extra water come from?' I asked. 'It's the dry season now. When the rains come the river must swell a lot. Is that it?'


'It looks like more than that. I'd say there was a dam at the foot of the lake,' Hammond hazarded. McGrath followed this carefully and I could guess the trend of his thoughts; if there was a dam he'd be all for blowing it up. But I didn't recall seeing a dam .on the maps, faulty though they were, and hadn't heard one mentioned.


But this wasn't Hammond's line of thinking at all.


'They have level control because the lake rises and falls at times. That's why they need a floating jetty,' he said.


'So?'


The point is that the jetty is a tethered raft.' He pointed to the dinghy. 'That isn't very seaworthy but if we cut the pontoon loose it could be towed across the lake with people on it.'


Now he was giving me ideas. 'Only a few at a time,' I said.


'But we could build a bigger one. We might find other outboards,' Hammond went on, growing interested in his own hypothesis.


'Supposing you could do it. What does everyone do at the other side without transport? It's a long way to Batanda.'


'I hadn't got that far,' he admitted glumly.


I looked around. One boat, one pontoon, one outboard motor, plenty of fuel, a workshop ... a work force . . . raw materials . . . my mind raced and I felt excitement rising. I said, 'All of you go on thinking about this. But don't share your ideas with anyone else for the time being.'


I got into the Land Rover and shot off up the road to the filling station and went up to Sam Kironji's cabin, which was latched. He let me in with some reluctance.


He said bitterly, 'You come, now they all come. Stealers! You didn't tell me this big crowd come. They steal everything I got. They steal things I don't got.' He was hurt and angry.


'Relax, Sam. We didn't bring them, they followed us. You said yourself you heard the travelling hospital was big magic.'


'That not magic. That theft. How I relax? How I explain to Mister Obukwe?'


'You won't have to. Mister Zimmerman will explain and Lat-Am Oil will be very pleased with you. You'll probably get a bonus. Got another beer?'


He stared at the desk top as I opened the cooler, which was empty, and then looked along his shelves which were as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard. Kironji looked up sardonically. 'Stealers! I tell you. Here.' He reached under the desk and came up with a beer can which he thrust out at me as if ashamed of his own generosity. I took it thankfully and said, There's still lots of stuff here, Sam.'


'Who eat tyres? Who eat batteries? You tell me that.'


I sat down on the edge of his desk. 'Sam. You know all those petrol drums you've got outside and down by the lake?'


'Why? You want to steal them?'


'No, of course not. How big are they?'


He addressed the desk top again. 'Forty-two gallon.'


'Imperial?'


'What you mean? Gallons, man - that what they are.'


Forty-two imperial gallons, which is what they probably were, equalled about fifty American. I had tried to decipher the marks on one but they were pretty rusty.


'Sam,' I said, 'please do me a big favour. Give me some paper and a pen or a pencil, let me borrow your office, and go away for a bit. I have to do some calculating, some planning. I'll be really grateful.'


He reluctantly produced a pad of paper with Lat-Am's logo on it and a ballpoint pen. 'I want my pen back,' he said firmly and began to retreat.


'Wait a moment. What's the weight of an empty drum?'


He shrugged. 'I dunno. Plenty heavy.'


It didn't matter too much at this stage. 'How many empty drums have you got here?'


Again his shoulders hunched. 'Too many. No supplies come, I use 'em up. Many empty now.'


'For Christ's sake, Sam, I don't want a long story! How many?'


'Maybe a thousand, maybe more. I never count.'


I jotted down figures. Thanks. Sam, that cooler. Where do you get your power from?'


'Questions. You ask too much questions.' He jerked his thumb. 'You not hear it? The generator, man!'


I had got so accustomed to hearing the steady throb of a generator on the rig that it hadn't penetrated that this one was making a slightly different sound. 'Ah, so you do have one.'


'Why? You want to steal it?' He flapped his hand dejectedly. 'You take it. Mister Obukwe, he already mad at me.'


'Don't worry,' I told him. 'Nobody will steal it, or anything else. But buying would be different, wouldn't it? My company is British Electric. Perhaps we can buy your generator from you.'


'You pay cash?'


I laughed aloud. 'Not exactly, but you'll get it in the end. Now let me alone for a while, Sam, would you?'


Before he left he went and wrote down one can of beer on my tab.


CHAPTER 24


I had a bit of figuring to do. For one thing, while we Americans think our way of doing things is always best, the European metric system is actually far better than our own multi-unit way, even the conservative British are adopting it, and oddly enough an imperial gallon is a better measure than our American gallon because one imperial gallon weighs exactly ten pounds of fresh water. It didn't take much figuring to see that a drum would hold four hundred and twenty pounds of water.


There was some other reckoning to be done and I persevered, even to cutting shapes out of paper with a rusty pair of scissors. At last I stretched, put Kironji's pen safely back in a drawer, took a hopeful but useless look in the cooler and set off down to the lakeside on foot. It was only a short distance and I used the walk to do some more thinking. I went straight down to look at the pontoon once again.


It was a rickety enough contraption, just a few empty oil drums for flotation with a rough log platform bolted .on top. It was very weathered and had obviously stood the test of time, but it was as stable as a spinning top just about to lose speed and I wouldn't have cared to cross Central Park Lake on it.


I yelled for anybody and Bob Pitman responded.


'Bob,' I said, 'go round up a couple of people for me, will you? I want Kemp, Hammond, and Geoff Wingstead. Oh, and Mick McGrath. Ask them to meet me here.'


'Will do,' he said and ambled off. When they had all arrived I found that Zimmerman had got wind of the conference and had made himself part of it, though without his Russian mate. I looked around at them and drew a deep breath.


'I have a nutty idea,' I started.


This drew a couple of ribald comments and I waited until they died down before I carried on. 'It's crazy and dangerous, but it just might work. We have to do something to get ourselves out of this fix. You gave me the idea, Ben. You and Mick.'


'We did?' Hammond asked.


'Yes. I want us to build a raft.'


'I know I mentioned that but you shot that idea down in flames. You had a point too.'


'I've developed your idea. We don't use this thing as a basis, we build our own. I've done some figuring on paper and I think it will work. The trouble is that the lake isn't made of paper.' I filled in for the benefit of the others. 'Ben suggested that if we towed the landing stage it could form a raft on which we could get people over to Manzu. The pontoon isn't big or stable enough and we'd need transport on the far shore. But I think I've worked something out.'


'Build a bigger raft?' asked Wingstead.


'How could you power it?'


'What do we make it of?'


'What do you think this is, a navy shipyard?'


I held up my hand. 'Hold it. Give me a chance and I'll explain.' There were two phases to my scheme and I thought it wiser to introduce them one at a time, so I concentrated on the concept of the raft first. 'To start with, every one of these drums in the compound, when empty, has a flotation value of four hundred pounds, and there are hundreds of them. We won't need more than say one hundred for my plan to work.'


'Sounds idiotic to me,' said Kemp. 'A hundred of these drums won't make a raft big enough to take anything anywhere.' I knew he was trying to visualize the rig floating across the lake on a bed of oil drums and failing, and had indeed done that myself.


'Building a raft is the first part of my plan. And it'll do to go on with, unless someone has a better one. We can't stay here indefinitely.'


'It sounds like you have a pretty big job lined up,' Wingstead said. He didn't sound encouraging. 'Let's hear it.'


'Think about the raft. To make it we need material and muscle. And brains, I guess. We've got the brains between us and there's a hell of a lot of suitable raw material lying about. As for the muscle, that's how the pyramids were built, and the Great Wall of China. God knows we've got enough of that.'


The Nyalans?' Hammond asked. He was beginning to kindle with excitement. I wanted them all to feel that way.


'We'll need a work force. The women to plait lianas to make a lot of cordage, and some of the men to cart stuff about. I've got the basic blueprints right here.' I held up the pad of paper.


Zimmerman and Hammond looked ready for any challenge. Kemp had a stubborn set to his jaw and I knew that he was thinking about the rig to the usual exclusion of everything else, and ready to oppose any plan that didn't involve saving it.


Geoff Wingstead was oddly lacklustre, which disappointed me. I'd hoped to enrol his enthusiasm first of all, and wondered why he was hanging fire. McGrath had said nothing and was listening intently in the background. With the odd, unwanted rapport that I sometimes felt between us I knew he was aware that I had something tougher yet to propose, and he was waiting for it.


Hammond said, 'How do we persuade the Nyalans to cooperate? We can't pay them.'


'Sister Ursula gave me the answer to that. We can take as many of them across to Manzu as want to go. When the war's over they'll probably drift back again, but right now they're as threatened as we are. I think they'll help us.'


Kemp had been drawing in the sand, and now he said, 'Look, Neil, this is ridiculous. To build a raft big enough to take maybe a couple of hundred people is crazy enough, but to take vehicles across on them is beyond belief. Good God, each tractor weighs forty tons. And how do we embark and disembark them?'


I said, 'You're thinking the wrong way. I agree with you, and I've already rejected that idea. We don't build a raft to get people to Manzu.' It was time to drop the bombshell.


'What? Then what's all this about?'


I said, 'We're going to use it to capture the ferry.'


They stared at me in total silence. McGrath's face warmed into a broad grin of appreciation.


Wingstead said at last, 'You're out of your mind, Neil.'


'OK, what the hell do we do? Sit here and eat ants until the war goes away? We have to do something. Any immunity as foreigners and civilians we might have had was shattered when we met up with Maksa's force. We played soldiers then. And I have a bad feeling about this war; if the Government forces were going to win they'd have done so by now. The rebels are gaining strength and if they take over they aren't going to be exactly lenient.'


Wingstead said, 'You're right. It just seems so far-fetched.'


'Not at all,' said McGrath. 'It's a lovely idea, Mannix. Lovely. How did I give you the idea, if I might ask?'


'You mentioned fire ships,' I said shortly. I needed him desperately but I was damned if I could make myself at ease with him. 'We're going to attack the ferry from the water, the one thing they won't expect.'


I had him with me, naturally. I thought I had Hammond too. He was fully aware of the danger but absorbed by the technical challenge. Kemp might disapprove but couldn't resist putting his mind to the problem.


Hammond said, 'I think at this stage you want to keep this rather quiet, don't you, Mister Mannix?'


'Yes. Why?'


'I'd like Bert Proctor in on it from the start. He's got a good head, and I've worked with him on projects so often -'


I said, 'Yes, of course. Go get him.'


He went off at the double and Wingstead smiled. 'They really are quite a team, you know.' I was still worried about his lack of enthusiasm. He was the kingpin of the team and they looked to him for direction.


Proctor, grave and attentive as always, listened as I recapped. He calmly accepted the idea of Wyvern Transport men turning into privateers, and I understood why Hammond wanted him.


I showed them my idea for building the raft. I hadn't yet calculated the load but I reckoned on as many men as we could muster, at least one or maybe two trucks and whatever we could develop in the way of weapons - a formidable prospect. They were dubious but fascinated and the engineers among them could see the theoretical possibilities. We had to build a raft before considering the rest of the plan.


To Kemp I said, 'Basil, I've got an idea about the rig too. I know how important it is. We'll talk about that later.' This was a sop; I had no ideas about the rig but I couldn't afford to let him know it.


McGrath asked, 'How many men do you think we'll have?'


I said, 'All of Sadiq's men, that's twenty-three. We can't conscript our crew but I don't think anybody will want to be left out. I make that sixteen. Thirty-nine in all.'


'Say thirty-five, allowing for accidents,' said McGrath.


'Fair enough.'


'What did Sadiq have to say about the ferry?'


'They have a guard detachment there. Exactly how many we don't know, but it doesn't sound formidable. If we come out of the dark yelling at them they'll probably scatter like autumn leaves.'


Faces brightened. It didn't sound quite so bad put that way.


McGrath said, 'We'd need much more accurate information than that, Mannix.'


'Oh, I agree. By the way, I haven't spoken to Sadiq yet, but we will soon. I want to propose an expedition, using Sam Kironji's boat. You, McGrath, Geoff, Sadiq and myself. It won't take any more. Down river by night.'


Wingstead said, 'Oh my God, Neil, I don't think we should do that.'


I was dumbfounded. 'What the hell's the matter with you, Geoff? I'm depending most of all on you. For God's sake stop being such a damned pessimist.'


I'd never let fly at an executive in front of his men before. But it was vital to keep morale high and a waverer at the top of the command line could ruin all our plans. He made a strangely listless gesture and said, 'I'm sorry, Neil. Of course I'm with you. Just tired, I guess.'


Zimmerman broke into the embarrassed silence. 'I don't think Geoff should go anyway, Neil. He's got enough on his plate already. Let me come instead.'


I was relieved. Damn it, I wanted Wingstead with me, and yet in his present mood he might be a liability. I wished I knew what was eating him.


'Suppose we succeeded, took the ferry. What then?' Hammond asked. 'Wouldn't their main force get to know about it?'


'Very likely, but they're at Fort Pirie and we'd silence radios and prevent getaways,' I said. 'The only thing we have to pray for is that the ferry is operative, and from what Kironji told me it's been in regular use recently so it ought to be.'


Then what?' Wingstead asked.


'We bring up the rig and get all the invalids on board the ferry, cram it full of people and shoot it across to Manzu. When it comes back we pile on as many vehicles as it can take, trucks for preference, and the last of the people. Once in Manzu it's a doddle. Get to Batanda, alert the authorities and send back transport for the stragglers. I bet they've got cold beer there.'


They chewed on this for a while. I had painted a rosy picture and I knew they wouldn't entirely fall for it, but it was important to see potential success.


Hammond stood up and rubbed out the sketch marks in the sand with his foot. 'Right - how do we start?' he asked practically.


Wingstead looked up, absurdly startled. His face was pale under its tan and I wondered fleetingly if he was simply afraid. But he hadn't been afraid back in the warehouse at Makara.


'I don't know,' he said uncertainly. 'I'd like to think about it a bit, before we start anything. It's just too -'


The hesitation, the slack face, were totally unfamiliar. Doubt began to wipe away the tentative enthusiasm I had roused in the others. Wingstead had cut his teeth on engineering problems such as this and he was deeply concerned for the safety of his men. I had expected him to back me all the way.


The problem solved itself. He stood up suddenly, shaking his head almost in bewilderment, took a dozen paces away from us and collapsed in the dust.


We leapt up to race over to him.


'Go and get a doctor!' Kemp barked and Proctor ran to obey. Gently Kemp cradled Wingstead whose face had gone as grey as putty, sweat-soaked and lolling. We stood around in shocked silence until Dr Kat and Dr Marriot arrived.


After a few minutes the surgeon stood up and to my amazement he looked quite relieved. 'Please send for a stretcher,' he said courteously, but there was one already waiting, and willing hands to carry Wingstead to the mobile hospital. Dr Marriot went with him, but Dr Kat stayed behind.


'I should have seen this coming,' he said. 'But you may set your minds at rest, gentlemen. Mister Wingstead will be perfectly all right. He is not dangerously ill.'


'What the hell is it then?' I asked.


'Overstrain, overwork, on top of the injuries he suffered in the plane crash. He should have been made to take things more easily. Tell me, did you notice anything wrong yourselves?'


I said, feeling sick with anger at myself, 'Yes, I did. I've seen him losing his drive, his energy. And I damned well kept pushing at him, like a fool. I'm sorry -'


Kemp cut me off abruptly.


'Don't say that. I saw it too and I know him better than anyone else here. We must have been crazy to let him go on like that. Will he really be all right?'


'All he needs is sleep, rest, good nourishment. We can't do too much about the last but I assure you I won't let him get up too soon this time. I might tell you that I'm very relieved in one respect. I have been afraid of fever - cholera, typhoid -any number of scourges that might strike. When I heard that Mister Wingstead had collapsed I thought it was the first such manifestation. That it is not is a matter of considerable relief.'


The Doctor's report on Wingstead was circulated, and the concern that had run through the convoy camp like a brush fire died down.


I found Hammond. 'I want to talk to all the crew later this evening. The medical staff too. We'll tell them the whole plan. It's risky, but we can't ask people to work in ignorance.'


Then I went to find Sam Kironji.


'Sam, what's in that little hut inside the compound?' I asked him.


He looked at me suspiciously. He'd already found the compound gate unlocked and Harry Zimmerman and two others counting empty drums, much to his disgust. 'Why you want to know?'


I clung to my patience. 'Sam, just tell me.'


There was nothing much in it. The hut held a miscellany of broken tools, cordage, a few other stores that might be useful, and junk of all sorts. It was where Sam put the things he tidied away from everywhere else.


I made a space in the middle of it, had Kironji's desk brought in, and established it as my headquarters. The roadside cabin was too far from the camp and too exposed. Some wag removed a Pirelli calendar from the cabin wall and hung it in the hut, and when Kironji saw this I think it hurt him most of all.


'Stealers! Now you take my women,' he said tragically.


'Only to look at, same as you. You'll get them back, I promise. Thank you for the desk and the chair, Sam.'


He flapped his hand at me. 'Take everything. I not care no more. Mister Obukwe, he fire me.'


Hammond was listening with amusement. 'Never mind, Sam. If he does I'll hire you instead,' I said and hustled him outside. I sat down and Hammond perched on the end of the desk. We each had a pad of paper in front of us.


'Right, Ben. This is what I've got in mind.'


I began to sketch on the pad. I still have those sketches; they're no masterpieces of the draughtsman's art, but they're worth the whole Tate Gallery to me.


Take an empty drum and stand it up. Place around it, in close contact, six more drums, making damn sure their caps are all screwed home firmly. Build an eight-sided wooden framework for them, top, bottom and six sides, thus making a hexagon. No need to fill the sides solidly, just enough to hold the drums together like putting them in a cage. This I called the 'A' hexagon, which was to be the basic component of the raft. It had the virtue of needing no holes drilled into the drums, which would waste time and effort and risk leaks.


How much weight would an 'A' hexagon support?


We got our answer soon enough. While we were talking Sandy Bing reported breathlessly to the office. 'Mister Mannix? I got forty-three and a half gallons into a drum.' He was soaking wet and seemed to have enjoyed the exercise.


'Thanks, Sandy. Go and see how many empties Harry Zimmerman has found, please.' Zimmerman and his team were getting very greasy out in the compound.


The drums were forty-two gallons nominal but they were never filled to brimming and that extra space came in handy now. We figured that the natural buoyancy of the wooden cage would go some way to compensate for the weight of the steel drums, and Bing had just handed me another few pounds of flotation to play about with. We decided that my 'A' hexagon should support a weight of 3,000 pounds: one and a half tons.


But there wouldn't be much standing room. And a floating platform about six by five feet would be distinctly unstable. So my next lot of figures concerned the natural development upwards.


All this would take a little time to produce but it shouldn't be too difficult. Testing the finished product as a floating proposition would be interesting, and finding a way to push it along would stretch a few minds, but I didn't really doubt that it could be done. And the final result, weird of shape and design, was going to win no prizes for elegance. I jiggled with a list of required materials; some of them were going to be hard to find if not impossible. All in all, I couldn't see why on earth I was so confident that the plan would work.


'We have to go up a stage, Ben,' I said,, still sketching. 'Look at this.'


The hexagon is a very useful shape, ask any honey bee, but I doubt if it has been used much in naval architecture.


'Start off assuming we've built an 'A'-gon,' I told Ben. That was how new words came into a language, I guess, though I didn't think this one would last long enough to qualify for Webster's Dictionary. Ben caught on and grinned in appreciation. 'Here's what comes next.'


Take an 'A'-gon and float it in shallow water so that a man could stand on the bottom and still handle equipment. Float another six 'A'-gons round it and fasten together the hexagons of the outer ring. There is no need to fasten the inner one because, like the first drum, it is totally surrounded and pressed in from all sides.


The result is a 'B' hexagon, a 'B'-gon in our new nomenclature, with a positive buoyancy of ten and a half tons, enough to carry over a hundred people or a medium sized truck. We decided to make two of them, which is why we needed a hundred drums.


Hammond was impressed and fascinated. 'How do we make the cages?' he asked.


'We'll have to find timber and cut pieces to the exact size,' I said. 'That won't be too difficult. I'm more concerned about finding planking to deck it, otherwise it'll be unsafe to walk on.


Nyalan women make good cordage, and We can lash the 'A'-gon frames together, which will save nails. But I'm worried about the fastening of the larger 'B'-gons. Rope and fibre won't help us there. We need steel cable.'


'I've got some,' he offered, a shade reluctantly.


'I don't want to have to use that yet. We'll figure out something else.'


I stood up. 'It's only four o'clock and I need some exercise. There's two hours of daylight yet. Let's go build us an 'A'-gon.'


We were just leaving the office when Bing arrived back.


'Mister Zimmerman says they've only found sixty-seven drums.' he said.


At the compound we found Zimmerman, Kirilenko and Derek Grafton looking mucky with old oil and somewhat bad-tempered. It appeared that there were not many empty drums. Kironji seldom got them back, and these had not been placed neatly away from the full drums but stood all over the place. Here Kironji's normal tidiness had deserted him, to our detriment. It didn't help that neither Grafton nor Kirilenko knew why they had to find empty drums, and of the two only the Russian was equable about taking unexplained orders.


I commiserated with them and sent them off for a breather, after we'd rolled eight or nine drums down to the lake shore. Zimmerman stayed with us. Hammond left in search of Kironji, to get the workshop unlocked; he would cut some timber frameworks and we decided to use rope, which we, knew was available, for the prototype 'A'-gon.


'I don't see how we're going to find enough empties,' Zimmerman grumbled.


'Ever hear about the guy who went into a store to buy some eggs? There was a sign up saying "Cracked Eggs Half Price", so he asked them to crack him a dozen eggs.'


Zimmerman smiled weakly.


'You mean empty out full drums?'


'Why not? To start with we'll fill every fuel tank we can with either gas or diesel, and all our spare jerrycans too. If there are still not enough drums we'll dig a big pit somewhere well away from the camp and ditch the stuff. And put up a "No Smoking" notice.'


He realized I wasn't joking and his jaw dropped. I suppose that as an oil man he was more used to getting the stuff out of the earth than to putting it back in. Then we were interrupted by Sam Kironji in his usual state of high indignation.


'You cut trees! You use my saw. You never stop make trouble.'


I looked enquiringly at Sandy Bing who had raced in behind him. 'Yes, Mister Mannix. Mister Hammond found a chain saw in the workshop. But it won't be good for long.. The teeth are nearly worn out and there's no replacement.'


Kironji shook his head sadly. 'You use my saw, you welcome. But you cut tree, you get in big trouble with Mister Nyama.'


'Who's he, Sam?'


'Everybody know Mister Nyama. Big Government tree man. He cut many tree here, with big machine.'


I said, 'Are you telling us that there's a government logging camp near here?'


'Sure.'


'Well where, for God's sake?'


Sam pointed along the lake. 'One, two mile. They use our road.'


I recalled that the road led on past the compound, but I hadn't given any thought as to where it went. A bad oversight on my part.


'Chain saws,' Zimmerman was saying, his voice rising to a chant of ecstasy, 'Axes, felling axes, trimming axes, scrub cutters.'


'Fantastic. Get off there right away. We've got enough drums to be going on with. Take some men, some of Sadiq's if you have to. I'll clear it with him. And Harry, plunder away; we'll make everything good some time. Break in if you have to. My bet is that there'll be nobody there anyhow.'


Zimmerman went off at a run and Kironji said dolefully, 'You steal from Government, you steal from anybody.' Hammond rejoiced at the good news and had some himself. 'Found an oxyacetylene welding kit in there with a few bottles. And a three-and-a-half inch Myford lathe that'll come in handy.'


'Bit small, isn't it?'


'I'll find a use for it. There's another outboard engine, too, and some other useful bits and pieces.'


'Take them,' said Kironji hysterically. 'No need you steal. I give.'


I chuckled. When he saw us pouring his precious gasolene into a hole in the ground he'd be a broken man. 'Come on, let's build our 'A'-gon.'


It took six of us nearly two hours to build the prototype 'A'-gon but then we were inventing as we went along. From the middle distance the Nyalans watched us and wondered. Our people came to watch and make comments. At last we wrestled it down to the water and to our relief it floated, if a trifle lopsidedly. We dragged it ashore again as the light was fading and Bing arrived to say that a meal was ready. I felt tired but surprisingly contented. This had been a fruitful day. I was careful not to dwell on the possible outcome of my plans.


After an unsatisfying meal everybody gathered round, and between us as Hammond and I explained the basics of the scheme. We said little about the military side of the operation and discouraged questions. We concentrated on the more immediate goal, the building of the 'B'-gons.


Grafton was sceptical, possibly because he'd had first-hand experience of the labour involved.


'It took you two hours to make that thing. How many do you need?'


'Fourteen for two 'B'-gons. Possibly more.'


He looked appalled. 'It'll take days at that rate.'


'Ever hear about Henry Ford's biggest invention?'


'The Model T?'


'No, bigger than that. The assembly line.'


Hammond said at once. 'Ford didn't invent that. The Royal Navy had one going in Chatham in seventeen ninety-five for making ships' blocks.'


'I think the Egyptian wall paintings show something like an assembly line,' put in Atheridge.


'We won't be chauvinistic about it,' I said. 'But that's what we're going to do. We build simple jigs, stakes driven into the sand will do, one at each corner to give the shape. Then the teams move along the rows. That's the difference between this line and those in Cowley or Chicago. Each man goes along doing just one job. They lay down the bottom planking, put the drums on top, drop the side members between the stakes and make them fast. Then they put on a top and do likewise.'


They listened intently, and then Antoine Dufour spoke up. His English was good but heavily accented.


'I have worked in such a place. I think it is better you take the Japanese model, piecework is no good here. You will have too many people moving about, getting confused perhaps. You want teams each in one place.'


It took very little rethinking to see that he was right, and I said so.


'Great going, Antoine. It will be better that way. Each team builds one 'A'-gon from the bottom up, complete. Another team to go along doling out material. Another one rolling the drums to them. And a couple of really strong teams to shift the finished 'A'-gons to the water, probably towing them on mats. We've got rubber matting in the trucks.'


I looked at Dufour. 'You say you've had some experience at this. How would you like to be in charge of the work teams, you and Dan?'


He considered and then nodded. 'Yes. I will do it.'


His matter-of-fact acceptance of the feasibility of the programme did a lot to encourage the others. Questions and ideas flew about, with me taking notes. At last I held up a hand for silence.


'Enough to go on with. Now let's hear from Doctor Kat.'


The Doctor gave us a brief report on Lang and on Wingstead, who was sleeping soundly and would be none the worse as long as he was restrained for a few days. 'Sister Mary is much better, and taking care of Mister Wingstead is the perfect job for her. She will keep him quiet.'


I hadn't seen much of the senior nun but if she was anything like Sister Ursula there was no doubt that Geoff Wingstead would shut up and obey orders.


Of the other invalids, he said that as fast as they got one person on their feet so another would go down with exhaustion, sickness or accident. The rickety thatched wards were as busy as ever.


I turned to Harry Zimmerman.


'Harry's got some good news he's been saving,' I said.


'We found a logging camp,' he reported cheerfully. 'We brought back two loads of equipment, in their trucks. Chain saws, axes, hammers, nails and screws, a whole lot of stuff like that. The big power saws are still there but they work.'


'But you did even better than that, didn't you?' I prompted.


'Yeah. Planks,' he breathed happily.


'We'll be bringing in a load in the morning. That means our decking is sorted out, and that's a big problem solved. And we can get all the struts for the cages cut to exact measurements in no time.' The assembly responded with more enthusiasm than one might have thought possible, given how weary they all were.


'It's amazing,' said Dr Marriot. 'I saw your 'A'-gon. Such a flimsy contraption.'


'So is an eggshell flimsy, but they've taken one tied in a bag outside a submarine four hundred feet deep and it didn't break. The 'A'-gon's strength lies in its stress factors.'


She said, 'It's your stress factors we have to think about,' and got a laugh. Morale was improving.


The meeting over, we dispersed without any discussion about the proposed attack on the ferry for which all this was merely the prologue, and I was grateful. Those who were to be my fellow travellers in the boat stayed on to talk. We decided to move out by first light and return upriver in time to get cracking on the coming day's work. Sadiq had been briefed and while not exactly enthusiastic he had agreed to come with us, to see the enemy for himself.


Later I lay back looking at the dark shape of the rig looming over us, a grotesque shape lit with the barest minimum of light. I wondered what the hell we were going to do with it. I had enough thinking to keep me awake all night long.


But when I hit the sack I didn't know a thing until I felt Hammond gently awakening me, three hours before dawn.


CHAPTER 25


In the raw small hours we assembled at the pontoon, keeping our torches hooded and try ing to keep quiet as we crossed the scrubby clearing. We couldn't leave totally unobserved but this was a practice run for later on, when keeping quiet would be vital.


Overnight Hammond had had the boat baled out and the outboard tested and found to run as sweetly as any outboard does, which is to say fitfully and with the occasional lurch and stutter to give you a nervous leap of the pulse. There was ample fuel, a small fluke anchor and a rond anchor for digging into an earth bank if necessary, some water canteens and a couple of long coils of line.


We had found oars for the dinghy but only one rowlock so someone had cobbled up another out of a piece of scrap iron bent to shape in the lathe; this and its more shapely companion were wrapped in cloth to minimize noise. The best we could do for balers were old beer cans with the tops cut out.


The five of us made a pretty tight fit. Hammond and McGrath took the centre thwart to row us out, we'd only start the engine well away from shore, I as the lightest sat forward, and Zimmerman and Sadiq crowded onto the after thwart. It was going to be no pleasure jaunt.


'What about crocodiles?' Hammond asked.


Zimmerman, who'd had years in Africa, snorted. 'Not a chance, Ben. They like shoaling water and they'll be sluggish before dawn anyway. Lazy brutes. Why bother with a boat when the bank's swarming with breakfast?'


Sadiq said gravely, 'Mister Hammond, we need not fear the crocodiles. They seldom attack boats with an engine.'


McGrath said, grinning, 'No, it's the hippos we have to think about,' giving Hammond another direction in which to cast his fears. I told him to lay off. What I didn't say was that, being no sailor even of the Sunday-in-the-park variety, I had a strong conviction that this frail craft was likely to tip us out and drown us at any moment. When we pushed off and the chill water lapped at the gunwales I was certain of it.


We didn't sink, of course, but we did get pretty wet about the feet and the face. After some time Hammond suggested that we start the outboard. This was achieved with only a few curses and false alarms. The little boat rocked wildly before the motor settled down to a welcome steady purr and we began to .pick up some pace. We hugged the shoreline though not too close for fear of reed beds, and the light was beginning to allow us to distinguish details.


We were travelling with the current and so moved along swiftly. Hammond had calculated that we should arrive within sight of the ferry at about five o'clock, an hour before dawn. We would shut off the engine and slip along under oars until we could see the ferry point, then pull back upriver to find a concealed landing place. From there we'd reconnoitre on land.


'What happens if the ferry's on the far shore?' Zimmerman asked.


'We can cross in this thing and collect it. No sweat,' Hammond said. 'Come right a little, Mick.'


'What about the ferry people?' I said. 'They aren't simply going to lend us their craft, are they?'


'No, more likely they'll run it for us themselves, at a price.'


I'd been wondering who was going to handle the ferry. There would be a lot of local knowledge involved apart from familiarity with the craft itself. I said, 'Good thinking. Once we've taken the ferry point here we send a delegation and get the ferry back in business - just for us.'


'Well, it might work,' said McGrath dubiously. His form of payment would probably be a gun at the pilot's belly.


'First let's take the ferry,' I said. Perhaps it would be held by about five men whom we could capture or rout with a minimum of fuss, but I doubted that it would be that easy.


There was no further talk as we cruised steadily on until we saw the shapes of man-made buildings along the bank. We had arrived, and it still lacked half an hour to dawn.


There it is,' I whispered, pointing. Instantly Zimmerman cut the engine and we used the oars to hold us stemming the tide. Shapes were emerging but confusingly, all detail obscured. There was a huge dark shape in the water a hundred yards offshore that we couldn't identify as yet. An island, perhaps? Hammond and McGrath back watered to keep us upstream while we scanned the shore anxiously for movement.


As all dawns do in central Africa, this one came in minutes. The air became grey and hazy, a shaft of early sunlight sprang out across the water and it was as if a veil had been lifted. Several voices whispered together.


'It's the ferry!'


She was anchored offshore, bobbing gently, a marvellous and welcome sight. She was big. Visions of a hand-poled pontoon, one-car sized and driven by chanting ferrymen, not at all an uncommon sight in Africa, receded thankfully from my mind. Kironji had said it took trucks, and trucks he meant. This thing would take several vehicles at one crossing. And there was something else about her profile in the watery light which nagged at me: a long low silhouette, bow door's slanted inwards to the waterline and a lumpy deck structure aft. She was a far cry from the sleek and sophisticated modern ferries of Europe.


We slid out from under the shadow of her bow and made rapidly for shore. Hammond rowed us out of sight of the ferry point and tucked into the bank in as secretive a spot as we could find, setting both anchors. We disembarked into the fringe of vegetation.


I looked to McGrath. He and Sadiq were the experts now, and I wasn't sure which of the two was going to take command. But there wasn't any doubt really; with assurance Sadiq started giving instructions, and McGrath took it with equanimity. I think he'd approved of Sadiq as a fighting man and was prepared to take his orders.


'Mister Mannix, you and Mister Zimmerman come with me, please,' Sadiq said. 'Mister McGrath will take Mister Hammond. We are going towards the buildings. We three will take the further side, Mister McGrath the nearer. Nobody is to make any disturbance or touch anything. Observe closely. We must know how many men and officers are here, and what weapons they have. Where they keep the radio and telephone. What transport they have. The layout of the terrain. Whether there are people on the ferry, and what other boats there are.'


I whistled silently. It was a tall order. All he wanted to know was absolutely everything.


'If you are caught,' he went on, 'make as much outcry as you can, to alarm the others. But try not to reveal that they exist. If the opportunity arises for you to steal weapons do so, but do not use them.'


He looked intently at McGrath who showed no reaction but that of careful attention. Sadiq said, 'I think that is all. Good luck, gentlemen.'


The astounding thing was that it worked exactly as he planned it. In my imagination I had seen a hundred things going drastically wrong: ourselves captured, tortured, shot, the site overrun with soldiers armed to the teeth, the ferry incapacitated or nonexistent. . . every obstacle under the sun placed between us and success. In fact it was all extremely easy and may well have been the most fruitful reconnaissance mission in the annals of warfare.


This was because there were so few men there. Our team made a count of fifteen, McGrath said seventeen, and the highest-ranking soldier we could spot was a corporal. They had rifles and one light machine-gun but no other weapons that we could see. There was a radio equipped with headphones and another in one of the cars, but it was defunct; Hammond reported having seen its guts strewn about the passenger seat.


There were two trucks, one with a shattered windscreen, a Suzuki four-wheel drive workhorse and a beat-up elderly Volvo.


This was a token detachment, set there to guard something that nobody thought to be of the least importance. After all, nobody from Manzu was going to come willingly into a neighbouring battle zone, especially when the craft to bring them was on the wrong side of the water.


The two teams met an hour and a half later back at the dinghy and compared notes. We were extremely pleased with ourselves, having covered all Sadiq's requirements, and heady with relief at having got away with it. Perhaps only McGrath was a little deflated at the ease of the mission.


I would have liked another look at that ferry but anchored as she was out in midstream there was no way we could approach her unseen. Whatever it was about her that bothered me would have to wait.


We did some energetic baling with the beer cans and set off upriver, again keeping close to the bank and using oars until we were out of earshot of the ferry point. It was harder work rowing upstream, but once the outboard was persuaded to run we made good time. It was midday when we got back.


We reported briefly on our findings which cheered everyone enormously. We had discovered that the landing point was called Kanjali, although the joke of trying to call it the Fort Pirie Ferry, a genuine tongue twister, had not yet palled. But we didn't know if the ferry itself was in good running order. It might have been sabotaged or put out of action officially as a safeguard. And the problem of who was to run it was crucial.


After a light meal we went to see the raft builders at work.


Dufour had a dry, authoritative manner which compensated for his lack of Nyalan, which was supplemented by Atheridge. With Sadiq's men as interpreters they had rounded up a number of Nyalans who were willing to help in return for a ride to Manzu, and some who didn't want even that form of payment. These people were free in a sense we could hardly understand, .free to melt back into the bush country they knew, to go back to their villages where they were left to get along unassisted by government programmes, but also untrammelled by red tape and regulations. But the rig had come to mean something extra to them, and because of it they chose to help us. It was as simple as that.


One of our problems was how to fasten the outer ring of 'B'-gons together. We'd not got anywhere with this until Hammond gave us the solution.


'You'd think we could come up with something,' he said, 'with all the friends we've got here pulling for us.'


'Friends,' I murmured. 'Polonius.'


'What?'


'I was just thinking about a quote from Hamlet. Polonius was giving Laertes advice about friendship.' I felt rather pleased with myself; it wasn't only the British who could play literary games. 'He said, "Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel." I could do with some hoops of steel right now.'


Hammond said, 'Would mild steel do?'


'You mean you've got some?' I asked incredulously.


He pointed to an empty drum. 'Cut as many hoops as you like from one of these things.'


'By God, so we can! Well done, Ben. Is there a cutting nozzle with the oxyacetylene outfit?'


'Hold on, Neil,' he said. 'Those drums will be full of petrol vapour. You put a flame near one and it'll explode. We have to do it another way.'


'Then we need a can opener.'


'You'll have one,' he promised.


Hammond's idea of a can opener was interesting. If you can't invent the necessary technology then you fall back on muscle. Within an hour he had twenty Nyalan men hammering hell out of the empty drums, using whatever they could find in the way of tools, old chisels, hacksaw blades, sharp-edged stones. They made the devil of a row but they flayed the drums open, cutting them literally into ribbons.


At the 'A'-gon construction site Dufour had assembled four teams and it took each team about one hour to make one 'A'-gon. In a factory it would have been quicker, but here the work force chatted and sang its way through the allotted tasks at a pace not exactly leisurely but certainly undemanding. Dufour knew better than to turn martinet and try to hurry them.


In some of the old school textbooks there were problems such as this; if it takes one man six hours to dig a pit seven feet long by six feet deep by two feet wide, then how long will it take three men to perform the same task? The textbook answer is two hours, which is dead wrong. Those who have done the dismal job know that it's a one-man operation because two men get in each other's way and three men can hardly work at all.


Dufour, knowing this, had seen to it that nobody could get in each other's way and not one motion was wasted. For an inexperienced work force it was miraculous, any efficiency expert would have been proud of it. Altogether it was a remarkable operation.


It started at the sawmill where a team cut timber into precise measurements, and the wood was hauled down to the shore. Sufficient pieces were doled out to the construction groups, each one a fair way from the next along the shore. Each team consisted of one Wyvern man, three Nyalan men and a few women, including even those with babies on their backs or toddlers at their sides.


The four men would each lay a beam on the ground, setting them between pegs driven into the sand so that they would be in exactly the right place. Meantime another force was rolling empty, tight-bunged drums along the shore from the compound and stacking them at each site, seven at a time. The four men would stand the drums on the crossbeams inside the circle of vertical stakes which formed the primitive jig. Little pegs were being whittled by some of the elderly folk, and these went into holes drilled in the ends of each crossbeam. The sidebeams would then be dropped to stand at right angles.to the bases, the pegs slotting into holes drilled close to the bottom. Another set of pegs at the top of each side beam held the top cross-members in position, and halfway up yet another set of horizontal struts completed the cage.


At this stage the 'A'-gon was held together only by the pegs and the jig in which it rested. Now the women bound it all together with cordage. This was the longest part of the operation so the men would move to a second jig.


Once the 'A'-gon was finished a strong-arm team would heave it out of the jig. It was here that the binding sometimes failed and had to be redone. They would dump it on a rubber car mat and drag it the short distance to the water to be floated off. Then the whole process started again. The guy called Taylor who pioneered the science of time and motion study would have approved.


In the water a bunch of teenagers, treating the whole thing as a glorious water carnival, floated the 'A'-gons to the 'B'-gon construction site. Four teams took about an hour to make enough basic components for one 'B'-gon. I reckoned that we'd have both 'B'-gons, plus a few spare 'A'-gons, finished before nightfall.


I went to visit Wingstead on the rig during the early afternoon. I filled him in on progress. He was wan but cheerful, and that description also precisely suited his nurse, Sister Mary, of whom he seemed in some awe. I also looked in on Lang and was saddened by his deterioration. All the nursing in the world couldn't make up for the lack of medical necessities. I found Grafton on the rig as well. He had broken his ankle slipping between two 'A'-gon drums, and this accentuated the need for decking our extraordinary craft.


This was solved by a trip to the logging mill. There were tall young trees which had been cut and trimmed for use as telegraph poles, and it was a fairly easy job to run them through the cutters so that the half-sections would form perfect decking. Getting them back proved simple, with so many hands avail able. This operation was in the hands of Zimmerman and Vashily, who had emptied enough empty drums for both 'A'-gons and the steel lashings. Zimmerman said that he never wanted to have anything more to do with oil for the rest of his life.


The day wore on. The Nyalan foragers had found some food for everybody. Teams of swimmers were lifting floating planks onto the deck of the first completed 'B'-gon. It was an ungainly structure, with odd scalloped edges and splintery sides, but it floated high and lay fairly steadily in the water. On measuring we found that we could get one truck of not more than an eight foot beam on to it. Provided it could be driven on board.


Zimmerman, still scrounging about the camp for useful materials, came to me for a word in private.


'Neil, you'd better know about this,' he said. 'I checked all the trucks including the Frog's.' Dufour had been careful with his truck, always driving it himself and parking it away from the others at camp stops.


'He's carrying a mixed cargo of basic supplies. Ben will be happy to know that there is some oxygen and acetylene and some welding rods. But that's not all. The guy is breaking the law. He's carrying six cases of forty per cent blasting gelignite and they aren't on his manifest. That's illegal, explosives should never be carried with a mixed cargo.'


'We ought to stop him carrying it, but what the hell can we do with it? Dump it?'


'Must we?' he asked wistfully. Explosives were his profession.


'OK, not yet. But don't let Dufour know you're on to him. Just make sure nobody smokes around his truck. No wonder he parks it way off.' It was a possible weapon with Zimmerman's expertise to make the best use of it.


Progress on the second 'B'-gon was going well, but I called a halt. We were getting tired and this was when accidents were most likely to occur.


It was time for a council of war.


After the evening meal the crew gathered round and I counted and assessed them. There were fifteen men but I discounted two at once.


'Geoff, you're not coming.' Wingstead had been allowed to eat with us and afterwards he must have given his watchdog nurse the slip. He was very drawn but his eyes were brighter and he looked more like the man I'd first met.


He said ruefully, 'I'm not quite the idiot I was a couple of days ago. But I can sit on your council, Neil. I have to know what you plan to do, and I might be able to contribute.'


'Fair enough,' I said. Just having Wingstead there was a boost.


'And Derek's also out of it. He can't walk, ankle's swollen like a balloon,' Wingstead said. 'He's pretty mad.'


'Tell him I'll trade places,' offered Thorpe.


I said, 'Not a chance, Ritchie - you're stuck with this. You should never have been around in Port Luard when I needed a co-driver.'


'Wouldn't have missed it for the world,' he said bravely.


I turned to the next lame duck.


'Dan,' I said gently, 'it's not on, you know.'


He glanced down at his still splinted arm and heaved a sigh. 'I know. But you take bloody good care of Antoine here, you hear me?' He and the Frenchman exchanged smiles.


'Bert, how's your leg?'


Proctor said, 'Good as new, Mister Mannix. No problem, I promise you,' for which I was grateful. He was one of the stalwarts and we needed him. Kemp's shoulder would not hamper him, and there were no other injuries among us.


I said, 'Sadiq has got twenty-one men. There's one down with dysentery. With twelve of us that makes thirty-four to their seventeen: two to one. With those odds, I don't see how we can fail.'


A figure slid into the circle and I made room for him to sit beside me. It was Captain Sadiq.


I said, 'Basically what we have to do is this. We're going downriver on the 'B'-gon. We get there before first light. We try to overpower them without much fighting. We've got a few weapons and we'll be able to get theirs if our surprise is complete. Ideally we don't want any shooting at all.'


'Squeamish, Mannix?' asked McGrath.


'Not at all,' I said coldly. 'But we don't know how near any reinforcements might be. We keep this as quiet as possible.'


There was a slight stir around the circle at our exchange.


'We have to get their radio under control, don't we?' Bing asked.


I had refrained, against my first instincts, from forbidding him to join the expedition. He was nineteen and by medieval standards a grown man ripe for blooding, and this was as near to medieval warfare as you could get. He was fit, intelligent and fully aware of the danger.


'Yes, that's going to be your baby,' I said. 'Your group's first priority will be to keep it undamaged and prevent their using it. The one in the car looks out of action but you'll make sure of that too. Brad, you run the interference for Sandy, OK?' He may not know American football terms, but the inference was obvious and he nodded fervently. Bing was his responsibility.


'Captain?' I turned to Sadiq.


'My men will make the first sortie,' he said. 'We have weapons and training which you do not have. We should be able to take the whole detachment without much trouble.'


Zimmerman whispered hasty translations to Kirilenko.


'Bert, you and Ben and Antoine immobilize all the transport you can find,' I said. 'Something temporary, a little more refined than a crowbar through the transmission.'


'Not a problem,' Bert said, his usual phlegmatic response.


'Mick, you cover Bing in the radio room and then check their weapon store; pile up everything you can. Use . . .' I was about to assign Bob Pitman to him, but remembered that Pitman had no reason to trust McGrath. 'Use Harry and Kirilenko.' They would make a good team.


I waited to see if McGrath was going to make any suggestions of his own but he remained silent. He didn't make me feel easy but then nothing about McGrath ever did.


I turned to Pitman.


'Bob, you stick with me and help me secure the raft. Then we cover the ramp where they load the ferry, you, me and Kemp. We'll want you to look at it from a transportation point of view, Basil.' If he thought for one second that he could get his rig on board the ferry he'd be crazy but he needed to be given at least some faint reason for hope in that direction. I looked round.


'Ritchie, I need a gofer and you're the lucky man. You liaise between me, Captain Sadiq and the other teams. I hope you're good at broken field running.'


'Me? Run? I used to come last at everything, Mister Mannix,' he said earnestly. 'But I'll run away any time you tell me to!'


Again laughter eased the tension a little. I was dead tired and my mind had gone a total blank. Anything we hadn't covered would have to wait for the next day. The conference broke up leaving me and Sadiq facing one another in the firelight.


'Do you think we can do it, Captain?' I asked.


'I think it is not very likely, sir,' he said politely. 'But on the other hand I do not know what else we can do. Feeding women and pushing oil drums and caring for the sick - that is not a soldier's work. It will be good to have a chance to fight again.'


He rose, excused himself and vanished into the darkness, leaving me to stare into the firelight and wonder at the way different minds worked. What I was dreading he anticipated with some pleasure. I remembered wryly a saying from one of the world's lesser literary figures, Bugs Bunny: Humans are the craziest people.


CHAPTER 26


By late afternoon the next day the lakeside was in a state of barely controlled turmoil. Tethered to the shore as close as possible without grounding lay the first 'B'-gon. It was held by makeshift anchors, large rocks on the end of some rusty chains. A gangplank of half-sectioned logs formed a causeway along which a truck could be driven on to the raft. Beyond it lay the second raft, just finished.


Nyalans clustered around full of pride and excitement at seeing their home-made contraptions being put to use. A few had volunteered to come with us but Sadiq had wisely vetoed this idea. I don't think he was any happier about us either but here he had no choice.


From the rig patients and nurses watched with interest. Our intention was to have the truck ready on board rather than manoeuvre it in the dark of the following morning.


'Why a truck at all?' Wingstead had asked. 'If you take Kanjali there'll be transport in plenty there for you. And there'll be no means to unload this one.'


'Think of it as a Trojan Horse, Geoff,' I'd said. 'For one thing it'll have some men in it and the others concealed behind it. If the rebels see us drifting towards them then all they'll see is a truck on a raft and a couple of men waving and looking helpless. For another, it'll take quite a bit of equipment, weapons and so on. They'll be safer covered up. It's not a truck for the time being, it's a ship's bridge.'


Hammond approved. He was the nearest thing to a naval man we had, having served in a merchant ship for a short time. I had appointed him skipper of the 'B'-gon. 'Inside the cab I've a much better view than from deck.'


There was a fourth reason, but even Hammond didn't know it.


The gangplank was ready. Kemp as load master beckoned the truck forward. The driver was Mick McGrath. It was going to be a ticklish operation to get the thing safely on board and he was the best we had, apart from Hammond himself. Zimmerman disappeared behind the truck as McGrath started to drive down the shore.


There was a sudden high grinding scream from the truck's engine and the vehicle lurched, bucked and came to a standstill. McGrath's face, looking puzzled and annoyed, appeared at the cab window. Voices shouted simultaneously.


'Christ, watch out! The rear wheel's adrift!1'


McGrath jumped down and glared at the damage. One tyre was right off its axle and the truck was canted over into the dust, literally stranded.


'Fetch the jacks!' he called.


I said, 'No time - get another truck. Zimmerman, go drive one down here! You men get cracking and unload the gear.' I gave them no time to think and Kemp, always at his best in a transport crisis, was at my elbow. Considering that I'd anticipated the accident and he hadn't, he coped very well. Swiftly he cleared a path through the littered beach so that a second truck could get around the stranded one and still be able to mount the causeway. An engine roared as Zimmerman returned with the replacement.


Antoine Dufour sprang forward, his face suddenly white.


'No! Not that one - that's my truck!' he yelled.


His vehemence startled the men around him.


'Come on, Frenchie, any damn truck'll do,' someone said.


'Not that one!'


'Sorry, Dufour; it must have been the nearest to hand,' I said crisply. Dufour was furious but impotent to stop the truck as it passed us and lined up precisely at the causeway. Zimmerman leapt out of the cab for McGrath to take his place, but Dufour was on top of him.


'You not take my truck, by God!' He lapsed into a spate of French as he struggled to pass Zimmerman who held him back.


Tack it in!' Kemp's voice rose. 'Dufour, ease off. This truck's part of the convoy now and we'll damn well use it if we have to.'


I said urgently, 'McGrath - get in there and drive it on fast.'


He looked at me antagonistically.


'There are other trucks, Mannix. Let the Frenchy alone.'


'Will you for God's sake obey an order!' I hadn't expected opposition from anyone but Dufour himself. McGrath's eyes locked with mine for a moment and then he pushed his way past Dufour and Zimmerman, swung himself aboard and gunned the motor. He slammed the truck into gear and jerked it onto the causeway. Then common sense made him calm down to inch the truck steadily onto the oddly-shaped 'B'-gon raft. The thing tipped under the weight but to our relief did not founder, and although water lapped about the truck's wheels it was apparent that we had a going proposition on our hands. The cheer that went up was muted. The onlookers were still puzzled by Dufour's outburst.


Kemp got men to put chocks under the truck's wheels and make lashings fast. The gear was loaded. Then the raft was hauled further out to lie well clear of the bank.


I turned my attention to Dufour.


He had subsided but was pale and shaken. As I passed Zimmerman I gave him a small nod of approval, then took Dufour's arm.


'Antoine,' I said, 'come with me. I want a word.'


As we walked away he stared over his shoulder at his truck where it rode on our ridiculous raft offshore and out of his reach.


We stopped out of earshot of the others.


'Antoine, I apologize. It was a dirty trick to play.'


'Monsieur Mannix, you do not know what you have done,' he said.


'Oh yes I do. You are thinking of your secret cargo, aren't you?'


His jaw dropped. 'You know?' 'Of course I know. Zimmerman found it and told me. It's his trade, don't forget. He could probably sniff out gelignite at a mile.'


Dufour stared at me appalled. I had to reassure him on one point at once.


'Now, listen. I don't care a damn why you have the stuff. Or where you got it. It's no bloody business of mine. But right now that stuff you've got is the best weapon in our whole arsenal, and to get ourselves and everyone else out of this mess we need it.'


'Oh, my God.' As he looked at me and I saw a bitter smile on his face. 'Gelignite. You want to use my truck to blow up the enemy, yes?'


'I hope not. But it's a damn good threat. Harry Zimmerman will pass the word around, and the assault team will know that we've got a bomb out there. It'll be like pointing a cannon. The rebels have no weapon that can reach us, and we've got one that can devastate them. That's why we have the second 'B'-gon along; if we need to we evacuate the first, aim it at the landing point and let her rip. Now do you understand?'


'Suppose I told you the gelignite was worthless.'


'Don't try. We need it.'


He sat down as if his knees had given way. After a couple of minutes he raised his face and said, 'Yes, I understand. You are a clever man, Monsieur Mannix. Also a bastard. I wish us all luck.'


Back at the camp I put my affairs in order. I wrote a personal letter to leave with the Doctor, and gave Sam Kironji an impressive-looking letter on British Electric notepaper, promising that my company would reimburse him for all expenses and recommending him for a bonus. This I implemented with a cash bonus of my own which impressed him even more.


Wingstead and I discussed the rig. If we took the ferry the convoy would move to Kanjali so that the patients could be transferred. And there the rig would have to be abandoned.


'We have to be careful of Kemp, though,' Wingstead said. The rig means a lot more to him than to me. It's extraordinary; personally I think he's been bitten by the juggernaut bug as hard as any of the Nyalans.'


'I wonder what they'll do when it grinds to a halt and we abandon it,' I said idly.


'Go home again. It'll probably end up in their mythology.'


'And the rig itself?'


'Whoever gets into power will engage someone to.drive it up to Bir Oassa, I suppose. It'll be an interesting exercise in international finance, sorting out the costs and legalities involved. But I'll tell you one thing, Neil, whoever takes it it won't be me. I've had it here. I'll sell it to the best offer.'


'And what then?'


'Go back home with Kemp and Hammond and build a better one. We've learned a hell of a lot out here.'


'Stick to hydroelectric schemes in Scotland, will you?'


He laughed. 'That's the way I feel now. As for later, who knows?'


For the second day running we embarked in the chill small hours to sail down the Katali River to Kanjali. I felt very apprehensive. Yesterday had been an unnerving experience for anyone untrained in guerrilla warfare. Today was terrifying.


The two 'B'-gons were barely visible. We used the runabout as a tender, poling it over the dark water to lie alongside the 'B'-gon on which stood the darker bulk of the truck. We scrambled aboard, passing our weapons up to be stowed in the truck.


Hammond and his work team had lashed the two 'B'-gons together, slotting hexagon shapes into one another, adding a couple of 'A'-gons here and there and assembling the thing like a child's toy.


The truck barely fitted on the after section, a foot of space to spare around it. With its high rear section and flat forward deck it was a travesty of the ferry at Kanjali. Aft on a crossbeamed structure Hammond had mounted Sam Kironji's outboard motors; one was a seven horsepower job and one six, which meant they were close enough in motive power not to send us in a circle. He had a man on each throttle and would control their speed and direction from the cab of the truck.


We were all very quiet as we set off.


We'd made our farewells, temporary ones I hoped. Dr Kat said that Lang might not live to see Manzu. I wondered how many of us would.


I had one curious experience on the journey. I hadn't forgotten McGrath's belligerence on the beach, and twice since he'd jibbed at instructions in a way that I could only think of as petulant. He wasn't just important to the success of our mission, he was vital. I had to find out what was bothering him.


'McGrath, I want to talk to you.'


He turned away.


'Now!'


I moved crouching away from the others and felt some relief that he followed me. We made our way forward, where small waves broke coldly over our faces.


'Mick, what the hell is eating you?' I asked.


He looked sullen. 'Nothing. I don't know what you mean,' he said. He didn't look at me.


'If you've got a gripe for God's sake say so.'


'We're not in the army, Mannix. You're not my officer and I'm not your bloody sergeant.'


'Oh Jesus!' I said. 'A goddamn prima donna. What's your beef?'


'Stop bloody ordering me about. I'm fed up with it.'


I took a deep breath. This was crazy.


I said, 'Mick, you're the. best driver we've got. You're also the nearest thing we've got to a soldier, and we're going to need your know-how more than anyone else's, even Sadiq.'


'Now don't think I'll jump when you say so, Mannix, just for a bit of flattery,' he said. To my disbelief his tone was one of pique.


'OK, McGrath, no flattery. But what's really eating you?'


He shrugged. 'Nothing.'


'Then why go temperamental on me? You've never been afraid to speak your mind before.'


He made a fist with one hand and banged it into the other. 'Well, you and me were friendly, like. We think the same way. But ever since Makara and that bit of a fight at the bridge, you've hardly said a word to me.'


I regarded him with profound astonishment. This tough and amoral man was behaving like a schoolboy who'd been jilted in his first calflove.


'I've been goddamn busy lately.'


There's more to it than that. I'd say you've taken a scunner to me. Know what that means, Yank?'


'I don't know what the hell you're talking about. If you don't take orders I can't trust you and I won't let this whole operation fall apart because of your injured feelings. When we arrive at Kanjali you stay back on the raft. Damned if I'll entrust Bing or anyone else to your moods!'


I rose abruptly to go back to the shelter of the truck. He called after me, 'Mannix! Wait!'


I crouched down again, a ludicrous position in which to quarrel, and waited.


'You're right. I'm sorry. I'll take your orders. You'll not leave me behind, will you?'


For a moment I was totally lost for words.


'All right,' I said at last, wearily. 'You come as planned. And you toe the line, McGrath. Now get back into shelter or we'll both freeze.'


Later I thought about that curious episode.


During his stint in the army and presumably in Ireland too he had never risen in rank; a man to take orders, not quite the loner he seemed. But the man whose orders he obeyed had to be one he respected, and this respect had nothing to do with rank or social standing. He had no respect for Kemp and not much for Wingstead. But for me, perhaps because I'd had the nerve to tackle him directly about Sisley's murder, certainly because he'd sensed the common thread that sometimes linked our thoughts and actions, it seemed that he had developed that particular kind of respect.


But lately I had rejected him. I had in fact avoided him ever since we'd found the body of Ron Jones. And he was sensitive enough to feel that rejection. By God, Mannix, I thought. You're a life-sized father figure to a psychopath] Once again as we neared Kanjali dawn was just breaking. The sky was pinkish and the air raw with the rise of the morning wind. Hammond instructed the engine handlers to throttle back so that we were moving barely faster than the run of the current. Before long the two bulky outlines, the ferry and the buildings on the bank, came steadily into view. Sadiq gave quiet orders and his men began handing down their rifles from the truck.


Hammond brought us close to the bank some way upstream from where he intended to stop, and the raft nuzzled into the fringing reeds which helped slow its progress. A dozen men flung themselves overboard and splashed ashore carrying mooring lines, running alongside the raft until Hammond decided to go no further. I thought of his fear of crocodiles and smiled wryly. The noise we were making was enough to scare off any living thing and I could only pray that it wouldn't carry down to the men sleeping at Kanjali.


We tied up securely and the weapons were handed ashore. Hammond set his team to separating the two parts of the raft into their original 'B'-gon shapes and transferring the two outboards to a crossbeam on the section without the truck. This was to be either our escape craft or our means of crossing to Manzu to seek help in handling the ferry.


Once on shore I had my first chance to tell Hammond privately about Dufour's truck. 'Harry saw six cases of the stuff, and checked one to be sure. If we have to we're going to threaten to use it like a fire ship. Harry's got a firing mechanism worked out. He'll come back here, set it and cut the raft free.'


'It might float clear before it goes off, Neil,' Hammond said. His horror at this amateurish plan made me glad I hadn't told him about it sooner. 'Or run aground too soon. The firing mechanism might fail. Or blow itself to smithereens and never touch Kanjali at all!'


'You know that and I know that, but will they? We'll make the threat so strong that they won't dare disbelieve it.'


It was a pretty desperate plan but it was all we had. And it didn't help that at this point Antoine Dufour approached us and said, 'Please, Monsieur Mannix, do not put too much faith in my cargo, I beg of you.' He looked deeply troubled.


'What's the matter with it? If it's old and unstable we'll have to take our chances,' I said brusquely.


'Aah, no matter.' His shrug was eloquent of distress. I sensed that he wanted to say more but my recent brush with McGrath had made me impatient with other men's problems. I had enough on my plate.


Sadiq and his men moved out. The rest of us followed, nervous and tense. We moved quietly, well down in the cover of the trees and staying far back enough from Sadiq's squad to keep them in sight until the moment they rushed the buildings. We stopped where the vegetation was cut back to make way for the landing point. I had a second opportunity to look at the moored ferry where it was caught in the sun's first rays as though in a searchlight beam.


This time I recognized what had eluded me before.


This was no modern ferry. It was scarred and battered, repainted many times but losing a battle to constant rust, a valiant old warhorse now many years from its inception and many miles from its home waters. It was an LCM, Landing Craft Mechanized, a logistics craft created during the war years that led up to the Normandy landings in 1944. Developed from the broad-beamed, shallow-draughted barges of an earlier day, these ships had carried a couple of tanks, an assortment of smaller vehicles or a large number of men into action on the sloping European beaches. Many of them were still in use all over the world. It was about fifty feet long.


What this one was doing here on an inland lake up an unnavigable river was anybody's guess.


I turned my attention to Kanjali, lying below us. There were five buildings grouped around the loading quay. A spur from the road to Fort Pirie dropped steeply to the yards. Running into the water was a concrete ramp, where the bow of the ferry would drop for traffic to go aboard. A couple of winches and sturdy bollards stood one to either side. Just beyond was a garage.


The largest building was probably the customs post, not much bigger than a moderate-sized barn. Beyond it there was a larger garage, a small shop and filling station, and a second barn-like building which was probably a warehouse.


Sadiq's men fanned out to cover the customs post front and rear, the store and warehouse. Our team followed more hesitantly as we decided where to go. Kemp, Pitman and I ran to our post, the landing stage, and into cover behind the garage. Thorpe was at my heels but I told him to go with McGrath and he veered away.


We waited tensely for any sounds. Kemp was already casting a careful professional eye on the roadway to the landing stage and the concrete wharf beside it on the shore. It was old and cracked, with unused bollards along it, and must have been used to ship and unship goods from smaller craft in the days before the crossing had a ferry. But it made a good long piece of hard ground standing well off the road, and Kemp was measuring it as another staging post for the rig. The steep spur road might be a problem.


We heard nothing.


'Shall I go and look?' Pitman asked after several interminable minutes. I shook my head.


'Not yet, Bob.'


As I spoke a voice shouted and another answered it. There were running footsteps and a sudden burst of rifle fire. I flattened myself to peer round the corner of the garage. As I did so an unmistakably male European voice called from inside it, 'Hey! What's happening out there?'


We stared at one another. Near us was a boarded-up window. I reached up and pounded on it.


'Who's in there?'


'For God's sake, let us out!'


I heaved a brick at the window, shattering glass but not breaching the boards that covered it. The doors would be easier. We ran round to the front to see a new padlock across the ancient bolt. Then the yard suddenly swarmed with figures running in every direction. There were more rifle shots.


I struggled vainly with the padlock.


Kemp said, 'They're on the run, by God!'


He was right. A few soldiers stood with their arms raised. Some slumped on the ground. Others were streaking for the road. Someone started the Volvo but it slewed violently and crashed into the side of the warehouse. Sadiq's men surrounded it as the driver, a Nyalan in civilian clothing, staggered out and fell to the ground. The door to the main building was open and two of our soldiers covered as men ran across the clearing and vanished inside, Bishop, Bing, McGrath and I thought Kirilenko, en route I hoped for the radio.


Sadiq's men were hotfoot after stragglers.


Neither Kemp, Pitman nor I were directly involved and within five minutes from the first shout it was all over. It was unnerving; the one thing my imagination had never dared to consider was a perfect takeover.


Hammond came away from one of the trucks grinning broadly and waving a distributor cap. Sadiq was everywhere, counting men, posting sentries, doing a textbook mopping up operation. We went to join the others, leaving whoever was in the locked garage to wait.


'Christ, that was fantastic. Well done, Captain! How many were there?'


Hammond said, 'We reckon not more than fourteen, less than we expected.'


'Any casualties?'


McGrath was beside me, grinning with scorn. 'Not to us and hardly to them. A few sore heads, mostly. Those laddies were half asleep and didn't know what hit them. A few ran off, but I don't think they'll be telling tales. They thought we were demons, I reckon.'


I looked around. Several faces were missing.


'Bing?' I asked.


'He's fine, already playing with that dinky radio set of theirs. Brad and Ritchie are with him,' McGrath said., 'The Volvo's had it,' said Hammond, 'but the other vehicles are fine. We can use them any time we want to. They didn't even have a sentry posted.'


It wasn't too surprising. They had no reason to expect trouble, no officer to keep them up to the mark, and probably little military training in the first place. I said, 'We've found something interesting. There's someone locked in the garage by the landing. There's a padlock but we can shoot it off.'


We gathered round the garage door and I yelled, 'Can you hear us in there?'


A muffled voice shouted back, 'Sure can. Get us out of here!'


'We're going to shoot the lock off. Stand clear.'


One of Sadiq's men put his gun to the padlock and blew it and a chunk of the door apart. The doors sagged open.


I suppose we looked as haggard and dirty to the two men who emerged as they looked to us. Both were white, one very large and somewhat overweight, the other lean and sallow-skinned. Their clothing was torn and filthy, and both were wounded. The big man had a dirtily bandaged left arm, the other a ragged and untreated scabby gash down the side of his face. The lean man took a couple of steps, wavered and slid gently to his knees.


We jumped to support him.


'Get him into the shade,' Kemp said. 'Fetch some water. You OK?'


The big man nodded and walked unaided. I thought that if he fell it would take four of us to carry him.


I left Kemp to supervise for a moment, and took Sadiq aside.


'Are you really in full command here?' I asked. 'What about the men who ran off?'


'They will probably run away and not report to anyone. But if they do I hope it will be a long time before others get here.'


'Do you think it's safe to bring the convoy here? If we can work the ferry we won't have any time to waste.' Already hope was burgeoning inside me. Sadiq thought in his usual careful way before replying.


'I think it is worth the chance.'


I called to Kemp. 'Basil, take your team and get back to Kironji's place. Start shifting the convoy. Leave the fuel tanker and the chuck wagon. Bring the rig and tractors, and cram the rest into a truck or two, no more.'


The two newcomers were being given some rough and ready first aid. Bishop had found the food stores and was preparing a meal for us, which was welcome news indeed.


I went back to squat down beside the recent prisoners.


'I'm Neil Mannix of British Electric, and this mob works for Wyvern Transport. We're taking stuff to the oilfields . . . or were when the war started. The soldiers with us are loyal to Ousemane's government. We're all in a bit of a fix, it seems.'


The big man gave me a smile as large as his face.


'A fix it certainly is. Bloody idiots! After all I've done for them too. You're American, aren't you? I'm pleased to meet you - all of you. You've done us a good turn, pitching up like this. My name's Pete Bailey, and it's a far cry from Southampton where I got my start in life.' He extended a vast hand to engulf mine. Good humour radiated from him.


His hand bore down on the shoulder of his companion. 'And this here is my pal Luigi Sperrini. He talks good English but he doesn't think so. Say hello, Luigi, there's a good lad.'


Sperrini was in pain and had little of his friend's apparently boundless stamina but he nodded courteously.


'I am Sperrini. I am grateful you come,' he said and then shut his eyes. He looked exhausted.


Tell the lads to hurry with that food,' I said to Bishop, and then to Bailey, 'How long were you two guys locked in there?'


'Four days we made it. Could have been a little out, mark you, not being able to tell night from day. Ran out of water too. Silly idiots, they look after their bloody cattle better than that.' But there didn't seem to be much real animosity in Rim, in spite of the fact that he and his companion seemed to be a fair way to being callously starved to death.


I braced myself for the question I most wanted to ask.


'Who are you guys anyway? What do you do?'


And I got the answer I craved.


'What do you think, old son? We run the bloody ferry.'


CHAPTER 27


'Will she run?'


Bailey came close to being indignant at the question.


'Of course she'll run,' he said. 'Luigi and I don't spend a dozen hours a day working on her just for her looks. Katie Lou is as sweet a little goer as the girl I named her for, and a damn sight longer lasting.'


The time we spent between taking Kanjali and waiting for the convoy to arrive was well spent. We found a decent store of food and set about preparing for the incoming convoy. We found and filled water canteens, tore sheets into bandaging, and checked on weapons and other stores. We seemed to have stumbled on a treasure house.


The radio was a dead loss; even with parts cannibalized from the other Bing couldn't make it function, which left us more frustrated for news than ever. Bailey and Sperrini could tell us little; we were more up to date than they were. We were fascinated to learn, however, that the Juggernaut had already been heard of.


The hospital that goes walkabout,' said Bailey.-'It's true then. We thought it just another yarn. They said it had hundreds of sick people miraculously cured, magic doctors and the like. I don't suppose it was quite like that.'


'Not quite,' I said dryly, and enlightened them. Bailey was glad that there were real doctors on the way, not for himself but for Sperrini, whose face looked puffy and inflamed, the wound obviously infected.


'One of their laddies did that with his revolver,' Bailey said. 'First they shot me in the arm, silly buggers. If they'd been a little more polite we might have been quite cooperative. As if I could run away with Katie Lou -I ask you! She can't exactly go anywhere now, can she?'


'Except to Manzu,' I said, and told him what we wanted. 'I'm surprised you didn't think of it yourselves.'


'Of course we could have taken her across,' he said tolerantly, 'but I didn't know we were supposed to be running away from anything until it was too late. The war didn't seem to be bothering us much. One minute we're unloading a shipment and the next the place is swarming with laddies playing soldiers. The head man demanded that we surrender the ferry. Surrender! I didn't know what he was talking about. Thought he'd got his English muddled; they do that often enough. Next thing they're damn well shooting me and beating up poor old Luigi here. Then they locked us both in.'


His breezy style belied the nastiness of what had happened.


'We tried to break out, of course. But I built that garage myself, you see, and made it good and burglar-proof, more fool me. They didn't touch Auntie Bess but the keys weren't there and I couldn't shift her. Tried to crosswire her but it wouldn't work. Must say I felt a bit of an idiot about that.'


'Who, or more likely what, is Auntie Bess?' I asked. We hadn't been to look in his erstwhile prison yet.


'I'll show you but I'll have to find her keys. And to be honest I'd really rather get Katie Lou back into service first.'


Getting the ferry into service proved quite simple. There was a small runabout which Bailey used to get out to it, and in lieu of his trusty Sperrini he accepted the aid of Dufour, Zimmerman and Kirilenko. 'Parkinson's Law, you see,' he said with easy amusement. 'Three of you for one of him. She only needs a crew of two really, but it's nice to have a bit of extra muscle.'


He took his crew out to Katie Lou and with assured competence got her anchors up, judged her position nicely and ran her gently up onto the loading ramp, dropping the bay door on the concrete with a hollow clang. He directed the tying up procedure and spent some time inspecting her for any damage. He found none.


Sperrini waited with resignation.


'He very good sailor,' he said. 'He never make mistake I ever see. For me, first rate partnership.'


Bailey was like Wingstead, engendering respect and liking without effort. I never had the knack; I could drive men and direct them, but not inspire them, except maybe McGrath, which didn't please me. I'd never noticed it before. The difficult journey we'd shared had opened my eyes to some human attributes which hadn't figured very strongly in my philosophy before now. On the whole I found it an uncomfortable experience.


I complimented Bailey on Katie Lou's performance and he beamed.


'She's a bit rusty but by God she can do the job,' he said. 'I knew we were on to a good thing from the start.'


'How the hell did she come to be here anyway?' I asked.


'Luigi and I used to run the old ferry. We've been in this trade for donkey's years, the two of us. The old ferry was a cow to handle and very limiting; only deck cargo and passengers and not too many of them. I saw that cars and trucks would want to cross as trade improved and the oilfields opened up. Manzu hasn't got any oil itself but it's got a damn sight better port for off-loading heavy gear.'


I made a mental note to remember this for later, assuming there would be a later.


'The two countries negotiated a traffic agreement. At a price, of course. We started to look for something better, and I'd always had these old bow loaders in mind. Saw them in action on D-Day and never forgot them. Remember, I've been in this trade all my life. Started in Southampton docks as a nipper.'


'Me too, I sail with my father from a boy,' Sperrini put in.


'Don't ask us how we got her down to Nyala, laddie. It's a long tale and I'll tell it one day over a cold beer. But the long and short of it is that I got wind of this old LCM lying beached up on the North African coast and bought her for a song. Well, a whole damn opera really. Then we sailed her down the coast to Manzu and arranged to bring her overland to Lake Pirie.'


I whistled. With the first-hand knowledge of large rig transport that I'd gained lately I knew this to be possible, but a hell of a job all the same. I said as much and he swelled with pride.


'A lovely operation, I tell you. Not a scratch on her - well, not too many. And has she ever paid off! Luigi and me, we're doing just fine.' He became pensive. 'Or we were. But when things get back to normal we might go looking for something bigger.'


Sandy Bing was prowling back and forth from the ferry yards up to the main road. His failure to get the radio going had niggled him and he was restless and anxious. Suddenly he ran towards us, interrupting Bailey's story with news of his own. The convoy was on the way.


I said to Bailey, 'We'll start to load invalids onto the ferry at once, plus any other Nyalans who want to go. I'd like one vehicle on board. The Land Rover, say.'


'No problem there.'


'How long will it take to unload and return? On the second run we'll want a couple of trucks. The more transport we have the better. Would there be time for a third trip?'


He said, 'I usually cross twice a day but that's not pushing it. With luck I can be back in two hours. I doubt if there'll be anybody to help at the other side, it'll take time to get your sick folk unloaded. But we'll be back as soon as we can make it.'


Sperrini pushed himself up.


'Me, I come too,' he announced firmly. 'I maybe not work so good, but I watch out for you.'


Bailey said, 'Of course you'll come, mate. Couldn't do it without you. We'll need some of your lads, Neil.'


'You'll have them.'


He said, 'If there's trouble before I get back, what will you do?'


'We've got the transport we came here with. And by God, Pete, that's something you'd have to see to believe!' But I had my doubts about the 'B'-gon. It was moored too far away to be of use in a crisis. Bailey gave me one of his great smiles.


'Well, I've got the very thing if you need it. In fact I'd appreciate it if you'd bring it across anyway. You can use Auntie Bess.' 'Just what is Auntie Bess' 'A duck,' he said, and laughed at my expression.


'A duck?' I had a sudden vision of Lohengrin's swan boat. 'We're going to float across the lake on a giant mutant muscovy, is that it?'


'Come and see,' he said. 'You'll love this.'


Zimmerman, Kirilenko and I followed him to the garage. We pulled the double doors wide and stared into the gloom. A long low shape sat there, puzzling for a moment and then marvellously, excitingly explicit.


'A DUKW!'


Bailey patted its hood lovingly.


'Meet Auntie Bess. Named for the most adaptable lady I've ever known. Nothing ever stopped her. I've found the keys and she's ready to go.'


We gathered round the thing, fascinated and intrigued. It was a low-profiled, topless vehicle some thirty feet in length, one set of tyres in front and two more pairs not quite at the rear, where dropping curved metal plates protected a propeller. It had a protruding, faintly boat-shaped front and was hung about with tyres lashed around what in a boat would be called the gunwale. The body was made of tough, reinforced metal, flanged down the sides, and the headlamps were set behind heavy mesh grilles. An old-fashioned windscreen provided all the cover the driver would get on land or water, though there were points along the sides where a framework could be inserted to carry a canvas awning.


Odds and ends of equipment for both elements on which it could travel were strapped about it; an anchor and line, a life belt, a couple of fuel cans, a tyre jack, shovel and spare tyres. Like the Katie Lou it was rusty but seemed in good repair.


Bailey swung himself in and the engine came to life with a healthy rattle as it slid into the sunlight. He slapped its side with heavy-handed self-approval.


'I did think of calling her Molly Brown,' he said, 'but after all she might sink one of these days. She's got a tendency to ship a little water. But she's crossed this pond often enough and she'll do it once more for you, I promise.'


It could carry so many men that to bring off a dozen or so would be no problem. 'How hard is she to drive?' I asked.


Zimmerman said, 'I handled one on land once. Nothing to it. Don't know about the performance on water, though.'


Bailey said, 'Come on, let's go for a swim. I'll show you.'


Zimmerman swung himself on board and in front of an admiring audience the DUKW pounded down the causeway into the water. Pete Bailey was careful with Katie Lou but with his DUKW he was a bit of a cowboy. It chugged away throwing up an erratic bow wave to make a big circle on the lake.


The rig was arriving as we walked up the curving spur road from the ferry yard. Kemp and Hammond brought it to a stop on the main road that overlooked Kanjali. We got busy transferring the invalids into trucks to take them on board the ferry. Bailey and Sperrini came to see the rig and get medical attention.


The rig was as impressive as ever, its massive cargo still hulking down between the two trailers. The tractors coupled up fore and aft added power to its bulk. The modifications we had imposed made it look quite outlandish. By now the thatching had been blown away and renovated so often that it appeared piebald as the palm fronds weathered. A workmanlike canvas wall framed the operating theatre but the canvas itself was mildewed so that it looked like the camouflaging used during war to disguise gun emplacements. Sturdy rope ladders hung from every level and the faces of the patients peered out from their straw beds.


'Well, I'll be damned,' Bailey marvelled. 'Worth going a mile to see, that is - good as a circus any day. Hello, who's this?'


'This' was the Nyalan escort still following their fetish, overflowing the road and looked down at the ferry yard with curiosity. Sperrini put into words what we had been feeling about this strange parade for so long.


'It is a processions sacra,' he said solemnly. 'As is done to honour a saint.'


I told Kemp and Hammond about Auntie Bess. Hammond was delighted and regretted that he would probably have no time to play with the DUKW himself.


'We may have to use it as a getaway craft,' I said.


'What about the raft and Dufour's truck?'


'We might need it yet, if there's trouble,' I said. 'Ben, you and Harry and Kirilenko could slope off and bring the raft downriver closer to Kanjali. Still out of sight but where we can fetch it up bloody fast if we have to. This is strictly a volunteer assignment, though - what do you think?'


Hammond said, 'I'll do it. It would be a shame not to have a weapon like that handy should we need it.'


Zimmerman spoke rapidly to Kirilenko, then said, 'We're both on.'


'Off you go then. I'll cover for you. Try and make it quick.'


'Very funny, Neil,' Zimmerman said. I grinned and left them.


Unloading had begun. Wingstead and the rest had heard of the taking of Kanjali from Kemp; but none were ready for the sight of the ferry resting majestically on the causeway, the ramp down to form a welcome mat. Bishop and Bing were on board handing out food and water. The invalids were laid on straw mattresses.


Dr Kat was strict about rations. 'They can feed for a month on the other side,' he said. 'But too much too soon is dangerous. Nurse, tell them that the crossing will be less bumpy than the rig and not dangerous; some of them have never been on water before. And say there will be proper food and beds for them in Manzu. Sister Mary! What are you doing carrying that child! Put her down at once. Helen, take over there, please.' His eyes were everywhere, considering a hundred details. The excitement in the air and the prospect of salvation so close made him more cheerful than I'd ever seen him.


'How do you feel, leaving Nyala?' I asked during a lull. He regarded me with astonishment.


'How do you think I feel? Only relief, Mister Mannix. At last I see a hope of saving these poor people. I am tired, sad at our losses, infuriated by this senseless wasteful war and what is happening to my country. But I will come back soon enough. I intend to rebuild the hospital at Kodowa.'


He was a man dedicated and inspired. I said, 'You'll get all the help I can muster, and that's not peanuts.'


He hesitated, then said, 'Mister Lang is not going to live, I fear.'


'But we're so close to safety.'


He shook his head.


Impulsively I took his hand. 'We're all deeply in your debt, Doctor Katabisirua. I hope that will be recognized officially one day.'


He seemed pleased by my words as he went off to supervise the rest of the changeover with vigour.


Sister Ursula upbraided me for allowing Bing to go into battle, and for letting Bert Proctor so neglect his bullet-grazed leg as to risk a major infection. There was no pleasing that woman. She was efficient over Sperrini's face but couldn't get near enough to Bailey to administer to his arm. He was jovial but dismissive and I wondered why she let him get away with it.


By now all the invalids and the Land Rover were on board. The last of the Nyalans who wanted to cross were hurrying on, full of excitement. Those who were familiar with the ferry were explaining it to others.


Hammond, Thorpe and Kemp remained, as well as McGrath, Zimmerman, Kirilenko and Dufour. Bishop and Bing went with the first shipment. So did Pitman and Athebridge and Proctor, to act as crew and help unload at the far end. Only two need have stayed, to drive on the trucks, but there was some reluctance to leave the rig until necessary.


The bow ramp of the Katie Lou lifted, and we watched as she backed off the causeway, her temporary crewmen warping her out to her stern anchor, aided by a gentle reverse thrust of engines. As the anchor came up the current swung her round and the engines carried on the momentum. She pirouetted lazily to face away from us. Bailey waved from the bridge and the Katie Lou moved steadily into midstream, bearing its cargo of refugees away from us and the danger zone to freedom, we hoped, on the other side.


A burden lifted from us. Whatever happened to us now we were responsible for nobody but ourselves. We gave vent to our feelings with cheers of relief.


And then the air exploded. There was a whistling roar and a missile plummeted into the water well astern of the Katie Lou. A fountain of water jetted high into the air, followed by a second which was no closer. A dull thump followed as another missile slammed into the earth just behind the causeway, flinging debris and dust into the air. There was the staccato rattle of machine-gun fire from behind us, and a scream from the roadway.


'Oh Christ, the ferry!' Thorpe gasped.


'She's clear - she's out of range,' I said sharply.


Soldiers boiled out from behind the rig and ran down the spur road. Others erupted from the bush beyond the buildings much as we ourselves had done earlier. Sadiq's men were fighting against huge odds.


Zimmerman said, The raft. It's our only chance.'


He and Kirilenko hurtled down the causeway. They plunged into the water and vanished under the churned-up wake from the ferry. Hammond dropped into the fringing bushes along the lakeside. McGrath, using the dust cloud from the third explosion to mask his disappearance, slipped behind the garage in which Auntie Bess was parked. Dufour, Kemp, Ritchie Thorpe and I stood our ground. The rebels came running towards us and it took a lot of discipline to stand and face them. In a moment we were surrounded.


CHAPTER 28


They were everywhere, poking into the warehouses and garages, examining the rig and the other vehicles of the convoy, beating the bushes for fugitives. On one side of the yard those of Sadiq's men whom they'd rounded up stood under guard. There were more guards around the four of us. We'd seated ourselves on crates to appear as innocuous as possible. I was grateful that they didn't bring Auntie Bess out of her garage, though there was some interest shown by those who went in to look at it. I guessed that Zimmerman had the keys.


It was satisfying that the ferry had got clean away. Whatever weapons they had didn't reach far over the water, and by now the Katie Lou was out of sight and very likely already at her destination. I hoped Bailey would not bring her back; we had discussed this eventuality and he had reluctantly agreed that if he got wind of trouble he was to stay away.


I felt angry with myself. If I hadn't insisted on a second cargo of trucks going across we'd all be safe by now.


There was no sign of the raft team, nor of McGrath. His disappearance was entirely typical, and I could only wish him luck in whatever he might be planning. That he had deserted us I felt was unlikely, as long as we had the DUKW as a means of escape.


After a nerve-racking wait we had more company. The inevitable staff car came down the spur road with two others trailing it, a motorcycle escort and a truckload of soldiers with a 76 mm gun mounted. We stood up slowly as the leading car stopped short of the causeway.


The man who got out of it was a tall, well-turned out officer with the colonel's insignia that I had come to recognize. Like Sadiq, he had an Arabic cast of feature but in his case it reminded me of the nomadic Tuareg I had seen in North Africa, fine-boned, carrying no spare flesh and insufferably haughty of expression. He wore a side arm and carried a swagger stick in gloved hands. He recalled irresistibly to mind my first senior officer in my army days; I'd hated that bastard too.


'Who are you?' he barked.


I glanced at Kemp and then took the role of spokesman. 'I'm Neil Mannix of British Electric,' I said. I was relieved that he seemed not to have heard of us by name, even if the bush telegraph had passed the word about the rig.


'The others?' he snapped impatiently.


'This is Mister Basil Kemp and this is Mister Thorpe, both of Wyvern Transport. And this is Monsieur Antoine Dufour, a friend. Who are you?'


'What?'


'Now you tell us who you are.'


He glowered at me but I was through with servility. I was going to stand by our rights as civilians, foreigners and employees of his country.


He nodded thoughtfully. 'You are angry. Well, Mister . . . Mannix, in your place so perhaps would I be. But I have no quarrel with you personally. You have been ill-advised and manipulated by the corrupt forces of the recent government and its military tyranny, but being ignorant of the destiny of Nyala and of your moral responsibilities towards it, your folly will have to be overlooked. I will redirect you in a more useful and productive fashion. It will be in your best interests to cooperate with good will.'


I suppose I looked as thunderstruck as I felt, and I could see from the faces of the others that they shared my amazement. This was less like Colonel Maksa's approach than anything we could have imagined.


I said, That all sounds most interesting, Colonel. What does it mean?'


'For you, very little. We wish you to undertake some work for us which is not beyond your scope or ability. Though I am afraid something more drastic may be called for in this case.' He indicated one of the cars behind his own. I saw with dismay that it was Sadiq's staff car, and that Sadiq was sitting in it. He was in the back seat between two guards, and he was handcuffed.


'You can't treat a prisoner of war like that. What the hell do you think you're doing?' I asked harshly. Sadiq was a good soldier and had stood by us; we had to stand up for him now.


The officer ignored this and said, 'I am Colonel Wadzi, of the army of the Peoples' Liberated Republic of Nyala. I have certain instructions for you. Are these all of your men?'


'Let Captain Sadiq go and then we'll talk about us.'


He spoke briefly, and the car in which Sadiq was being held pulled out of line and drove up the spur road and stopped at the top.


'Captain Sadiq is not the issue here. He will be tried for his offences,' Wadzi said. 'Now - which of you is in charge of this transporter?'


Kemp stepped forward, his face white.


'Don't you do anything to damage that rig,' he said with the courage of his deepest belief.


Wadzi smiled tautly. 'I would not dream of harming it. My superiors are well aware of its value, I promise you. In fact we wish to offer you an equitable financial return for bringing it safely back to the capital, Mister Kemp, in order to renegotiate with your company for its hire in the immediate future. We intend to carry on with the project at Bir Oassa, and naturally you and your company's expertise are vital.'


As he said all this Kemp's face changed. Incredibly enough he believed all this cant. The rig was to be miraculously saved, driven in triumph to Port Luard, refitted and taken once again upcountry to the oilfields, all in perfect safety and with the blessing of financial security, under the benevolent protection of whoever claimed to be the rightful government of Nyala. And he, Basil Kemp, was the man chosen for the task. It was a daydream coming true, and nothing would free him from his delusion.


Goddamn, Wingstead ought to have been here! He was the only man who could have made Kemp see reason. Me he would ignore; the others he would override; and my disadvantage was that it was only a shadow of suspicion that made me distrust all this fine talk, these promises and inducements. What Wadzi said might be true. He too was only a pawn in a political game. But I believed that there wasn't a word of validity in anything he said. We'd seen too much, been too involved. We were doomed men.


Kemp was afire with anticipation.


'Yes, I'm in charge of the rig,' he said.


'Can you drive it back to Port Luard for us?'


Kemp looked round for Hammond and McGrath. I held my breath lest in his one-track minded folly he should betray them.


'Yes, of course we can. We'll have to get fuel. We need diesel and petrol, and water. I'd have to go ahead to check the road conditions. The starter engine needs servicing, perhaps a complete overhaul. I think we need -'


His brain went into overdrive as he reviewed the most important of the many priorities facing him. Thorpe opened his mouth but caught my eye and subsided. As long as Kemp was in full spate he wouldn't mention the vital fact of the missing drivers.


Wadzi interrupted. 'It can all be arranged. I am pleased that you are willing to help us. What about you, Mister, Mannix? Not so well-disposed?' The silky menace was overt and I felt a pulse thud in my neck.


'I'm damned if I'm well-disposed. Do you know who was in that ferry, Wadzi?'


He said, 'I believe you liberated the ferryman and have been so misguided as to send a number of Nyalans, including medical people of the utmost value to the country, across to Manzu. We must take steps to extradite them; that will be a nuisance. I am not pleased about it.'


'Then you know it was a hospital ship. You damned well fired on a boatload of invalids, women and kids. In my book that makes you a war criminal. You're not fit to walk the earth, Wadzi. You'd disgrace any damned uniform you put on.'


My companions stared at me in horror at this reckless baiting of our captor, but it seemed to be the only way to keep his attention. The 'B'-gon team had to have a chance to get here with our only weapon, though I wasn't clear what we could do with it. Wadzi was a vain man and rose readily to my lure to justify his cause. Under the same circumstances Colonel Maksa would simply have blown my head off.


'You forget yourself! You are in no position to make such accusations, Mannix, nor question my authority..You do yourself a grave injury in this obstruction and you will pay for it!'


'I've no doubt,' I said grimly.


'I would be within my rights if I were to exercise summary justice in your case, Mannix,' Wadzi said. I wondered sickly if he was so very different to Maksa after all.


Ritchie Thorpe protested bravely.


'You can't just shoot him, Colonel, for God's sake!'


Two soldiers stepped forward, their rifles raised to enforce the threat, and I thought numbly that I'd finally gone too far. But he held them back with a cut of his stick in the air, glowered at Thorpe and said to Kemp, This man Mannix - is he necessary to your transport arrangements? Mister Kemp! I am speaking to you.'


Kemp was miles away, planning the rig's forthcoming journey. He was recalled with a start at hearing his own name, and looked with puzzlement from Wadzi to me. I wasn't breathing too well.


'What's that? Oh, Neil? Yes, of course I need him,' he said abstractedly. Turned out to be very useful on this trip. Need everyone we've got,' he went on, gazing around the yard, Thorpe, where's Ben Hammond? I need him right now.'


In reprieving me he had raised another bogey.


'Hammond? Who is this?' Wadzi demanded, instantly on the alert.


'Mister Kemp sent him on an errand,' Thorpe said the first thing that came into his head.


And at the same moment a babble of voices rose and we all turned to look at the lake. Coming downriver towards the ferry slip, moving extremely slowly, half awash with water and canted over at an acute angle, were the recoupled 'B'-gons. On the front section Dufour's truck stood uneasily, its lashings removed but the chocks still in place under the wheels. Zimmerman and Kirilenko were each handling an outboard on the after section, with Hammond giving steering instructions.


The soldiers' voices died down. Wadzi stared silently.


Handled with great delicacy and precision the raft nuzzled its way onto the ferry slip and the two outboards pushed it inexorably forward until it could go no further. With a grating sound it grounded itself with the forward section half out of the lake, resting firmly on the causeway. Our floating bomb had arrived.


Kemp looked as astonished as the Colonel.


'Neil, what the devil is this?' he asked testily. 'You know we don't need the raft any more -'


'Ah, Hammond!' I shouted to the new arrivals, drowning Kemp's voice with my own. 'Well done! That's the last truck, is it? You'll see that we have company. This is Colonel Wadzi, who's going to take the rig back to Port Luard with our help. He's asked Mister Kemp to take charge of the operation and Mister Kemp is very keen to do so.'


I was trying to give Hammond as much information as possible while at the same time preventing Kemp from saying anything to further rouse Wadzi's suspicions. The Colonel stepped forward and rapped me sharply on the arm. 'Just what is all this about?' he demanded.


'Stores for the convoy, or some of them,' I said rapidly. 'The last of our transport vehicles. We've been waiting for it to arrive.'


'Arrive? Like that?'


'Well, yes, we bought some of them down by water . . .'


Hammond had come ashore and was tying up the raft calmly as if the presence of armed soldiers were commonplace. Now he chipped in and said easily, To save fuel, Colonel. Two seven horsepower outboard engines use a lot less than one truck over long distances, so we've ferried them down this way. I suppose you'll want it added to the rest of the convoy, Mister Mannix?'


The implication appalled me. He was prepared to drive the gelignite-filled truck up among the troops and, presumably, explode it where it would cause maximum alarm and destruction. Whether it would save our lives was doubtful, but it would certainly end his.


And he was waiting for me to give him the go-ahead.


'Not just for the moment, Ben,' I said. 'Have a word with Mister Kemp first about moving the rig. He ... needs your advice.'


Hammond looked at Kemp and at once took in his tense, barely controlled anxiety. He gave a reassuring nod.


'We'll want to plot the mileage charts afresh, Mister Kemp, won't we?' he asked calmly.


Kemp said curtly, 'I've been looking for you. Where are the maps?.'.


They started talking, ignoring the armed men around them. I hoped that Hammond could keep Kemp occupied. He was in a state of dangerous hypertension, and if not controlled he could be as great a threat as the enemy.


Zimmerman and Kirilenko came ashore cautiously, saying nothing. Zimmerman's hands at his side made a curious twisting gesture reminiscent of turning a key, and then he brushed his wristwatch casually. I realized what this implied: he had set a timing mechanism on the lethal truck.


'How long? Harry, how long did the trip take?' I asked loudly.


'Only fifteen minutes, Neil.'


Christ. A quarter of an hour to get us all out of range before Dufour's truck went sky-high; call it ten minutes because no hastily home-made timer could be all that accurate. Or it might never go off at all. Frantically I juggled possibilities while at the same time continuing to face up to Wadzi.


He was disconcerted by my change in attitude. Before I had defied him; now I was cooperating. He said, 'Mister Mannix, are these all your men now?'


'Yes, that's it.' I mentally subtracted McGrath.


'You will all accompany us with your transporter to Fort Pirie. There we will make further arrangements,' he said briskly. 'I understand that you are not one of the drivers. Is that correct?'


I wondered just how much else he knew about us.


'That's right, Colonel. But of course I can drive a truck.'


I glanced round for inspiration. The ferry yard was full of troops and transport. Soldiers surrounded the rig up on the main road and Wadzi had placed guards on our other vehicles. Sadiq still sat in the rear of his own car at the top of the spur road. Auntie Bess crouched hidden in the garage. Of the ferry there was no sign.


Hammond had led Kemp to the far side of the causeway, well clear of the grounded raft, produced a map from his pocket and spread it on the ground so Kemp would have to squat down to study it. It kept his eyes off us, though it meant we would have to manage without Hammond.


Zimmerman stood near the raft-borne truck, hands in his pockets. Kirilenko was behind him, impassive as always. Next to me Thorpe stood rigid and beyond him Dufour, stiff and haggard; his eyes flickered from me to his truck and back, signalling some incomprehensible message.


This is easy, I told myself. You get into the truck, drive it among the soldiers, stall it and fiddle about until the whole damn thing goes sky-high. In the melee, during which with any luck quite a few of the enemy get killed including their gallant leader, your men make a dash for the DUKW and drive it off into the sunset. Nothing to it. The only small problem was that our own gallant leader was most certainly not going to survive the experience either, and I was rooted by something I franti cally hoped wasn't cowardice. Surely it was only sensible to await the play of the card we still had up our sleeve?


Surely McGrath would come up trumps once again?


He had ten minutes at the outside to do so. I swallowed, sucked in my gut and took two steps towards Dufour's truck.


'I'll take it up to join the others, shall I?' I asked Wadzi.


There was a stir among our men. Dufour's gasp was clearly heard and Wadzi reacted instantly. His revolver was out of its holster and held at arm's length pointing straight at me.


'Don't move!' Wadzi snapped.


I didn't.


'Where are the keys to that truck?' he demanded. Zimmerman clenched his fist instinctively and Wadzi saw the movement; his eyes were lynx-sharp. 'I'll have them,' he said, extending a hand with a snap of his fingers.


'Do it,' I said.


Zimmerman put the truck keys into the Colonel's hand and without taking his eyes off me Wadzi flipped them to one of his men. 'Bring that truck ashore,' he said. The words were in Nyalan but the meaning all too clear. The soldier ran down the causeway and swung himself into the cab. I closed my eyes; bad driving might be fatal.


Two soldiers removed the chocks and the truck inched its way onto the causeway, leaving the raft rocking, all but submerged and even closer to disintegration. It was certainly beyond use as an escape device. It was the DUKW or nothing now.


The truck drove slowly up the spur road. Wadzi rammed his revolver back into its holster.


'I advise you to be very careful, Mister Mannix,' he was saying. 'Do nothing without my permission . . . what is it?'


But none of us were listening to him. He whipped round to see what was holding our enthralled attention.


'Christ, it's Mick!' Thorpe shouted.


From behind one of the buildings a man came running, weaving through the troops. The sub-machine-gun in his hands spouted fire in all directions. McGrath closed rapidly in on the slowly travelling truck, hurtling past men too stunned to react.


There was a crack of gunfire. High up on the spur road Sadiq rose in the back seat of the open staff car, his manacled hands clutching a rifle. One of his guards toppled backwards out of the car. He fired again among the soldiers who were closing in on McGrath and they fell back in disarray. One man fell to the ground.


Zimmerman yelled, 'No, Mick - don't take it!' He straight-armed a soldier and at the same moment Kirilenko whirled on another and floored him with a massive kick to the groin. In horror I stared at Dufour's truck. McGrath stumbled just as he reached it and lost his grip on the sub-machine-gun.


'He's hit!'


McGrath heaved himself up and into the cab and hurled the driver out with a violent effort. The truck picked up speed and raced up the spur road towards the rig.


Beside me Wadzi opened his mouth to shout an order.


I threw myself at him and we went down in a tangle of arms and legs. I clawed for the revolver at his belt as Thorpe threw himself down to pin Wadzi's legs. As I scrambled to my feet with the gun I saw Sadiq arch out of the staff car, the rifle flying from his hands. He crashed in a sprawling mass onto the roadway. Kirilenko used his boot again on Colonel Wadzi's breastbone and the officer subsided, coughing and writhing. His men scattered.


I gasped, 'Harry, does Mick know?'


'Yes. I told him! Oh my God - it'll go any second!'


And then Dufour had hold of my arm, gripping it like a vice and shaking me violently. 'Mannix -I tried to tell you, I tried! It will not explode!'


'Of course it will. I've wired it!' Zimmerman snapped.


Dufour stammered, 'Only four bottles of gelignite . . . right in front. . .'


'What?'


As we spoke the truck rocketed up the slope, fired on from all sides. If the timing mechanism failed the bullets would do the job for us. But what in God's name was Dufour trying to say?


'Not. . . gelignite! Mother of God, Mannix, it's gin!'


A blinding light of understanding hit me. Spirits were illegal and therefore precious in Bir Oassa, a predominantly Arab community. The gelignite was a double bluff, to prevent officials from probing further into Dufour's illicit cargo. Few would tamper with such a load. He had been smuggling alcohol to the oilfields.


And now, instead of the shattering explosion that we'd hoped for there would be at most a small thump, a brief shock. The damage would be to the truck itself. McGrath's heroic, insane act would be all for nothing.


'Oh dear God.'


We stood frozen. Wadzi was hurt but alive and he'd be on his feet again any moment. We were still surrounded by armed men, and there was no path to freedom; nowhere to go. The revolver hung loosely in my hand and I felt sick and stunned. We had gambled and lost.


The truck veered off course, clawing its way across the dirt shoulder of the upper road. It was alongside the rig by now. Its erratic steering could only mean that McGrath was badly wounded or perhaps even already dead. It rocked and shuddered to a halt, dwarfed by the enormous structure of the rig. It half tilted off the shoulder and hung over the edge of the sheer drop to the ferry yard. My heart hammered as I saw a figure inside the cab - my last sight of Mick McGrath.


The truck exploded.


It was not, indeed, a very great event. The truck blew apart in a sheet of flame. The men and other vehicles nearby were sheltered from damage by the rig itself, an object too massive to be affected.


But under the truck was the roadway. Years old, carelessly maintained, potholed and crumbling; at this spot it clung to the hillside over a drought-dry, friable crust of earth knitted together with shallow-rooted vegetation. The road had no more stability than a child's sandpit.


The exploding truck tore this fragile structure like a cobweb.


A cracking fissure ran along the ancient tarmac just where the full weight of the rig already bore down too heavily for safety. There was a gigantic roar, a rolling billow of dust, and the entire hillside gave way under the terrible pressure of the rig.


With its load of the three hundred ton transformer and the coupled tractors the rig began to roll and tumble down the slope towards the ferry yard, dreadful in its power. With it came huge chunks of tarmac, earth, boulders and debris. It thundered downwards, gaining momentum, the air split with the tortured scream of metal and the roar of the landslide that came with it.


Men scattered like ants and fled in horror from the monstrous death racing down towards them. Engines screamed into life, rifles clattered to the ground as the soldiers dashed frantically for safety. The rig crashed with appalling, ponderous strength into the first of the outbuildings, crushing them to matchwood. The paving of the yard crumbled under the onslaught.


We stood in shock and terror as the animal we had led about so tamely turned into a raging brute trumpeting destruction. And then there was a scream wilder than any I'd yet heard.


'No! No! Stop it - don't let it happen - '


Kemp burst between us, his face contorted, his eyes bulging in horror, and ran straight towards the rig. We took a couple of steps after him and stopped, helpless to prevent the awful thing Kemp was about to do.


While all other men fled from the oncoming monster, Kemp held his hands out in front of him in a futile, terrible gesture and ran straight into its path. The juggernaut claimed many bloody sacrifices but one went willingly.


Losing momentum on the flat, the rig halted abruptly. From among crushed and unrecognizable fragments the bulk of the transformer rose twisted but identifiable. Billowing dust merci fully hid details of the trail of carnage. Remnants of one of the ferry buildings leaned drunkenly, ripped open and eviscerated.


My knees were as weak as grass stems and the skin of my face was drawn taut and painful. Hammond was sobbing in a hard, dry fashion that wrenched the breath from his body. Kirilenko was on his knees, gripping a rifle in both hands; the barrel was buckled under the strength he had exerted.


Zimmerman had his hands to his face and blood trickled down where some flying debris had cut him. Dufour and Thorpe stood in total silence; Dufour's arms were wrapped around Ritchie Thorpe's shoulders in a grip of iron. Everyone was white and shattered.


The noise of screams and moaning, voices crying for help, buckling metal and splintering wood were all around us, but we stood in a small oasis of silence. There were no soldiers anywhere near us except Colonel Wadzi himself, who was rocking slightly on his feet, his uniform ripped and dirty, his face haggard with shock.


I took a deep gasp of air.


'Let's get the hell out of here.'


Wadzi raised his face to mine, his eyes bewildered.


'My men ...' he said uncertainly, and then more firmly, 'I have much to do. You people, you must go. We do not want you here.'


His voice was drained of every emotion. We were bad news. He had done with us for ever.


Hammond said, 'My God, that poor bloody man.'


I knew he meant Kemp, but it was McGrath I thought of.


Thorpe said softly, 'There's nothing to keep us here now.'


I nodded in complete understanding. Safe from the path of destruction the DUKW was unscathed in its waterside garage.


'Auntie Bess is waiting,' I said. 'Let's go and join the others.'


The end.

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