Tenth Man Down

EIGHT

We were on the river bank at 0400, ninety minutes before first light. The stars were still bright in the sky, and the air was cool. Knowing how hot we were going to get, I’d stripped off my fleece jacket, but for the time being I was shuddering.

From the odd, quick remark that Phil let out on our way down the path, I could tell he was well hepped up. So was I. The argument about getting involved had lasted well into the night, but now it was too late. We’d taken the decision, and here we were, following the assault force down. Although I was apprehensive, I wasn’t really scared. It wasn’t as if Phil and I were going into battle; our role, I kept telling myself, was to stay at the back, out of trouble, and advise Joss if things started to go wrong. We’d done as Pav suggested, and lent him one of the covert radios. Keeping in touch should pose no problem.

The assault force of thirty-two men moved quietly through the dark, yet silence was hardly needed, because round that side of the hill we were well away from the mine, and in any case the hippos were putting on a staccato pre-dawn chorus. With their booming and barking they sounded like a flotilla of ships lost in fog. Without being able to see them, it was hard to tell what kept setting them off. One minute they were quiet, then suddenly they were honking all out.

Our first setback came at the water’s edge. We found the end of the pontoon wire easily enough, but there was no rope to pull the boat across to our side. We knew the huts on the far bank were inhabited, because we’d seen cooking fires there the evening before. We couldn’t shout for a lift, in case the guys over there raised the alarm. The only solution was for some of the Alpha guys to swim the river, take out the guards, and bring the ferry back across.

Joss had already selected three men for the task and dosed them with one of Jason’s preparations that was supposed to ward off crocodiles. Rumour told us the stuff was made from snakes’ bladders. At least it gave the guys full psychological protection. That was obvious as they stripped off and slipped into the water, armed only with their machetes, to carry out a silent attack. Far from showing any sign of nerves, they looked as though they were on a high and positively enjoying their role. At that point the river was about two hundred metres wide. Through binoculars I watched the three black shapes gradually diminish as they moved along the guide-wire into deeper water. After a couple of minutes only their heads and shoulders were showing.

From upstream the hippo chorus continued erratically. It was during one of the quiet periods that a croc put in its hit. I’d been more than half expecting it, but when it happened, the speed of the attack took my breath away. One second the surface of the river was smooth and calm; the next, a furrow was streaking diagonally across it from our left, heading downstream fast as a torpedo, with the water boiling at the point and a V-shaped wake spreading out behind. There was hardly a sound — just a splash, and one gasping groan that ended in a gurgle — but suddenly one of the men had gone, dragged bodily under water.

‘Firekin ’ell!’ went Phil, beneath his breath. ‘I bet the other two aren’t half shitting themselves.’

The Kamangan squaddies had no binoculars, so they could only guess what had happened, but they had a pretty good idea. Joss and a couple of his subordinate commanders knew full well that one of their guys had gone under, and they weren’t going to put the wind up the rest. So nobody said anything. I found myself swallowing, from the thought of those jagged teeth slicing through human limbs. Would blood, spreading downstream, alert others and bring them speeding to the scene?

The two survivors forged on. By the time they were into the shadow of the far bank, even binoculars couldn’t pick them out any more.

A tense wait followed. As if wanting moral support, Joss came up beside me.

‘They must be ashore by now,’ I muttered.

‘Guess so. Let’s get the boat over here!’

He sounded lit up by the prospect of action, as if he couldn’t wait to reach the other side. I wasn’t altogether happy: already I was thinking this could go wrong if he got too excited.

Between bursts of hippo talk, we listened intently. Nothing. Then Phil, who had a hand on the wire, said quietly, ‘They’re on their way back. I can feel the vibration.’

Through my glasses I saw the little ferry loom up square and black in mid-river. A couple of minutes later it came silently into the bank. Joss rapidly quizzed the pilots in Nyanja, then translated: ‘They killed two guards with their knives.’

While the swimmers got back into their clothes, the first load went across. Until I saw the pontoon at close quarters, I hadn’t realised how it was powered. Two crewmen sat on boards, one at the front, one at the back, each pulling on a single primitive wooden oar like a thick baseball bat, with a notch cut out near the end. The notch fitted over the wire hawser; when a rower exerted horizontal pressure, the oar locked on to the wire and pulled the craft forward.

The system was slow but effective, and soundless. With twelve men on board, the pontoon was almost awash, but I timed each crossing at only four minutes. The little craft was over and back inside nine minutes. Phil and I waited with Joss as the first two loads went across.

‘Aren’t hippos as dangerous as the crocs?’ I whispered.

‘On land, yes. If you get between them and the water, they charge. But I think they’re used to the pontoon. It doesn’t bother them.’

Back it came for the last time. We walked aboard and knelt down as two of the squaddies pulled us out into the stream. The current was running faster than it looked from the bank: I could feel it tugging us sideways against the guide-wire. On the far side we bumped gently against the bank and walked ashore.

‘Okay,’ I said quietly to Joss. ‘On you go, and good luck.’

His teeth gleamed white in the darkness as he gave a quick grin, but I couldn’t see the expression on his face.

His men set off silently in three sections, in line ahead. Phil and I waited till the last of them was moving, then tagged on behind. We followed the bank of the river, which swung out southwards round a headland before turning west again. At one point a loud bark burst out on our left, and a hippo, startled on its way back to the water, came blundering across our track. By sheer good luck there was nobody in its path.

After maybe five hundred metres we reached the outside of the bend and started to hear the mine’s machinery running. Already the eastern sky was lightening behind us; in a few minutes the sun would rise, and when it did, it would shine low into the defenders’ faces. Ahead, the small hills rose in knobbly, uneven hummocks — good cover. From low down they looked bigger than they had from above. Phil and I stopped and knelt down as the three sections deployed, fanning outwards. We could just make out the shadowy figures moving up into firing positions. Then Jason himself went on and disappeared. Looking up across the river to the dark bulk of the hill on our right, I imagined Pav and Stringer, on the OP with the machine-gun team. Their role was similar to ours: they were there to advise the Kamangans. The difference was, there was no way they could get involved in the battle, as the river was between them and the mine.

When my watch said 0515 I called Pav, and asked quietly, ‘How’s it going?’

‘All good. We’ve got a great view. The compound’s quiet — nobody in sight at the moment. There was a shift change while you were on the way down — guys back and forth between the accommodation and the main block — but now it’s chilled out again. No movement on the perimeter.’

‘Good,’ I went. ‘We’re across the river. The guys are just getting into position.’

‘Roger.’

‘Stand by, then. As soon as Joss reckons the light’s right, he’ll give you the word.’

‘Roger.’

The plan was to launch the attack in the grey twilight that preceded sunrise, when our own eyes would be accustomed to the gloom, and the defenders, stumbling outside, would be nearly blind for the first few seconds. It was up to Joss to judge the moment when it was light enough for our guys to see, but still dark enough to give us an advantage.

Once the Kamangans were settled, Phil and I crawled forwards and positioned ourselves hull-down behind a rock. We were less than ten metres behind the two-man RPG team, but lower than them, so that we’d be well protected from any incoming. Seeing how, in training, the guys had been inclined to fire their rockets high, I reckoned the RPG team might be the ones who’d need a bit of assistance.

Like the daylight, my adrenalin level came up by the minute. I glanced sideways at Phil and saw he was the same: face tense, eyes gleaming. ‘Look out, you fuckers,’ he was muttering. ‘You’ve a nasty surprise coming.’

‘One minute,’ said Joss’s voice in my earpiece. ‘Covering force ready?’

‘Roger,’ went Pav.

‘Stand by to open fire. Thirty seconds. Twenty. Ten…’

As he counted ‘zero’ we heard the distant boomph of the 81-mil mortars from high to our right. They were out of our sight, in dead ground, so we didn’t see anything, but we heard the whistle as the first salvo of bombs arched high over the river. A few moments’ silence, then bright flashes spurted from the ground way out in front of us. A volley of explosions split the dawn silence.

Joss had ordered his strike force not to open fire until they saw specific targets. But the tension got to them. The mortar detonations triggered their attack impulse, and before any human defenders appeared, they started putting rounds into the walls of the main complex. Maybe it made no difference. Within seconds of the first bombs landing figures emerged from buildings at the run. Three or four raced for the blockhouse at the entrance, coming towards us and crossing to our left. The rest headed away, deeper into the compound.

Presented with legitimate targets, the attackers opened up with short bursts and dropped one of the advancing defenders. But most of the firing was completely wild. Phil jabbed me on the arm and pointed to our right. One of the Alpha guys was standing upright behind a hillock, holding his rifle high above his head, trying to level it with both hands, and firing blindly over the mound without any clue as to where his rounds were going.

Bullets started snapping over our heads, uncomfortably close. From the loudness of the cracks and the heavy hammer in the distance, I realised they were coming from the .50.

‘It’s that fucker in the tower!’ I shouted. I hit my pressel switch and snapped, ‘Pav! Get some fire into the top of the tower. We’re getting bloody murdered by the .50!’

The operator had pin-pointed our position. His first few bursts went high, but then, with a solid, heavy thump, a Kamangan twenty metres to my right took a bullet in the shoulder or chest. He’d been lying face down, but the impact lifted him bodily and flung him backwards down the slope. When he flopped to a halt against a rock, he didn’t stir again.

On my left the RPG team were cowering behind a rock.

‘Get up!’ Phil roared at them. ‘Get up and fucking fire!’

Gingerly, the Number One rose half into an upright position, took a perfunctory aim at the blockhouse and pulled his trigger. Whoosh! went the rocket, slightly to the left and miles above the target, so high that it flew free for the whole of its life until after four seconds and about nine hundred metres it self-destructed with a brilliant flash.

‘Look at that!’ I shouted. ‘He might have been firing at a fucking aircraft!’

Flashes were spurting from the slits in the blockhouse. Now we were under fire from two directions. Our RPG guy was back on the deck. His Number Two was trying to stuff another rocket down the tube while retaining a horizontal position.

‘Fire again!’ I bellowed.

The second round went even higher than the first. I knew the team had only eight rockets between them. At this rate, they’d waste them all before they scored a hit. There was only one thing for it. All good resolutions left my head. There was no way I could keep back and watch such incompetence.

Phil was already putting in the odd short burst with his 203.

‘Keep hammering the tower,’ I shouted. ‘I’m going on the RPG.’

At moments like that, instinct takes over. No matter how much Hereford had cautioned us about not getting involved, no matter how often we’d told each other we’d keep out of trouble, I was not going to lie there and wait to be turned into a rag doll by a round from the .50. The urgent necessity was to silence the big machine gun. Its operator probably couldn’t see individuals, but he’d sussed out where we were accurately enough and was putting venomous short bursts into the rocks that stuck up round us. Splinters were flying in all directions, ricochets screaming away behind.

I wriggled back down the slope into dead ground, ran across, came up again behind the rocket team, held out a hand, and shouted, ‘Eh, give it over!’

The guy with the launcher rolled his eyes, glanced at his mate, then, without speaking, handed the weapon across.

‘Come on! Move!’ I yelled, gesturing violently. ‘For fuck’s sake, get it loaded!’

With fumbling hands the Number Two got a rocket into the barrel. Swivelling to my right, I went up on one knee, settled the weapon on my shoulder, left hand awkwardly behind my right, and laid the cross hairs of the sight on the lower edge of the sandbagged machine-gun nest in the tower. The range was barely 150 metres — a cinch.

Whoosh! Away went the rocket. It hit the left-hand side of the structure and sent pieces of metal flying, but didn’t explode. The contact could only have been a glancing blow. The explosion came a second or two later as the destabilised warhead plunged into the deck beyond the target.

‘Reload!’ I roared. ‘Quick!’

This time the guy handled the rocket as if it was red hot, loading in two or three seconds. I settled into the aim again, holding the upright wire of the reticle on the right-hand edge of the nest.

Impact! That second round went straight in with a brilliant flash. The explosion blew a cloud of shit into the air and enveloped the tower in smoke. As the cloud drifted clear, I saw the mast had been toppled and was hanging down like a minute-hand at five o’clock. The hammer of the .50 ceased. With luck, I’d done for the rebels’ radio as well.

‘Now the blockhouse!’ I shouted.

This time I made no mistake. Again I held to the right, and the round went smack into the middle of the structure. Another big flash, another good explosion. The place burst into flames and began to belch smoke.

I handed the launcher back to its owner. ‘Now one into the gate. The weapon’s going left. Aim right of centre. This much.’

The range was shorter, so I demonstrated with my hands only a couple of feet apart. The Kamangan looked less terrified. He’d seen how effective his weapon could be. Maybe he was planning to take the credit for my hit on the tower. Whatever the reason, his next rocket blew hell out of the gate and left it a sagging wreck.

In the few minutes since things had gone noisy the light had grown stronger. Then, quite quickly, the whole scene turned pink. Screwing my head round, I saw that the sun was halfway over the horizon behind us — a huge, blood-red ball.

Abrupt volleys of small-arms fire made me look left. One poor hippo, taken unawares, had come lumbering back towards the river after its night’s grazing. It didn’t get far. Multiple hits brought it to a halt, then to its knees, and in the end it rolled sideways to the ground where it lay with its stumpy legs kicking feebly.

‘What the hell are they doing?’ I said to Phil.

‘Maybe they’re getting hungry.’

From the far end of the compound a column of black smoke was rising.

‘Fucking roll on!’ Phil shouted. ‘Some stupid bastard’s shot up the fuel store.’

Mortar bombs were still falling near the end of the airfield. Rounds continued to snap over our position, but now the fire was sporadic. What the hell was the Kamangan commander waiting for?

‘Joss,’ I called on the radio. ‘Get ’em going!’

‘Roger.’

He yelled out an order in Nyanja. His section commander passed it on. Leaving half a dozen guys to give covering fire, the rest jumped up and sprinted forward, blasting uselessly from the hip with their AK47s, wasting rounds by the hundred. One man went down before they reached the gate, but the rest piled through, fanned out, and dropped into firing positions inside the compound.

Phil and I stayed where we were, in relative safety. But suddenly I realised that accurate incoming fire was hitting the assault force from the left, from the direction of the accommodation block. One of the guys was slotted, then another. Somebody was shooting far too straight.

‘Left! Left!’ I yelled at the Kamangans still with us. ‘Fire at the white block!’ Rapidly, I scanned the windows, looking for snipers. Over the radio I called, ‘Joss, you’ve got incoming from your left! Swing that way.’

He didn’t answer immediately, so I went, ‘Pav! We’re getting enfiladed from our left. Incoming from the white block. Get the .50 on to it.’

‘Roger,’ he answered. ‘Wait one.’

Seconds ticked past. Rounds were cracking in every direction. Then down came the heavy hammer of our own .50. Its big bullets swept back and forth along the front of the accommodation block, blowing plaster and cement out of its façade. In the middle of the turmoil our RPG let rip at one of the main doors of the equipment shed. The range was about thirty metres, and Number One must have learnt from his earlier cock-ups, because he blew the handle and locking mechanism clean out. With smoke and dust still swirling round the door, his mates rushed at it, ran it half open on its rail, and sprayed rounds inside.

Then suddenly Pav was on the air again. ‘Listen,’ he called. ‘Watch yourselves. There’s some guys out in the bush away to your left.’

‘Outside the wire?’

‘Well outside. They must have done a runner from the compound.’

‘How many?’

‘I’ve seen three. Could be more. They’re in light-coloured DPMs.’

‘Weapons?’

‘Affirmative. Rifles or gympis.’

‘Where are they?’

‘There’s a single bare tree with a big fork in the top.’

‘Got it.’

‘From here, they’re on a ridge, two o’clock and fifty metres from the tree.’

‘That puts them about four hundred metres from us.’

‘Spot on.’

‘Okay. We’re going after them. Tell me if they move.’

‘Roger.’

Phil needed no orders or encouragement. He’d heard the conversation and was on his way. Together we scuttled back off our hill, into hollows, and used dead ground to work our way fast round towards the south. We hustled along, twisting to keep in the hollows. Behind us, to our right, the battle was raging. Explosions that I reckoned were hand-grenades punctuated the small-arms fire. Then, as we came up to a ridge, I realised that some of the shots were going off from close in front of us.

‘Bastards!’ gasped Phil. ‘Sniping from way out.’

‘Get behind them,’ I panted.

We dropped back and took another swing to our left. More single shots cracked out.

‘There’s the marker tree,’ said Phil. ‘Get up to that.’

Ten metres from the top of the bank, we dropped on to hands and knees. For the last little stretch we went into a leopard crawl until we could peep over the crest. Less than forty metres off three guys were down on their bellies in firing positions, weapons levelled, taking controlled shots at the compound. We were nearly abreast of them, slightly behind, so they were looking away from us, concentrating on their targets.

‘Hey!’ I whispered. ‘Take the outer two. You the left, me the right. Count from five. Ready?’

‘All set.’

I put my sight on the right-hand man’s ribs, just behind his shoulderblade.

‘Five, four, three, two, one.’

Crash! Our weapons went off simultaneously. Neither target moved, except to jerk and slump forward. Suddenly I realised there was something out of place about the man in the middle. He was white.

Before he could react I put another burst into the ground beside his head, and yelled, ‘Throw your weapon away!’

For a few seconds he held on to it, glancing desperately to left and right. When he saw both his companions were dead, he pushed the rifle away to his right and left it lying on the ground at arm’s length.

‘Stay down!’ I yelled. ‘Get rid of your weapon! Right out in front of you! More! Hands on your head. Stay on your belly.’

The man did as ordered.

‘Come on,’ I told Phil. ‘If he tries anything funny, slot him.’

We went forward with 203s levelled until I was a couple of paces from the broad back. Phil walked in front of him with his weapon pointed down at his head. I went and felt under him. My hand lit on a holster containing a pistol. I pulled it out — a Colt .45 with worn wooden grips. I pushed the weapon into my belt and told the guy to stand up.

He got up warily. He was older than I expected, in his forties, with a lined face and grey stubble on his chin.

‘All right,’ I went. ‘Who the fuck are you, bonny lad? And what are you doing here?’

‘No information.’

I gave him a kick in the groin, which made him stagger, then tried again. His answer was the same. The few words were enough to confirm he was South African — that edgy eccent.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘If you don’t fucking talk to me, there are government forces down there, and they’ll make you talk.’

A movement above us caught my eye. Another man had appeared on the skyline, a long way off. I saw him only for a second, but I realised from his build — his broad, stocky frame — that he couldn’t be an African. Before I could react he’d ducked down and disappeared.

I hit my pressel, and called, ‘Pav! We’re by the tree. We’ve got one white guy, but there’s somebody else moving above us. To you they’ll be two o’clock from the tree.’

‘Got ’em!’ he cried. ‘Two guys, three. Running like hell. Away from you.’

‘Let ’em go,’ I said. ‘We’ll bring this one down with us.’

We left the two bodies where they lay. The blacks had been firing AK47s, but the white guy had a good-looking sniper rifle with a vari-power telescopic sight. While he glowered at us in silence, I picked the weapon up and slung it over one shoulder.

Below us, the battle was fizzling out. The firing had become sporadic.

I wasn’t going to waste time arguing.

‘Get moving,’ I told him. ‘Back to the mine.’

With us two right behind him, I didn’t think he’d try doing a runner — and if he had, we’d have dropped him without compunction. We steered him down the gullies by ordering ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ until we came up behind the covering force. Just as we reached them, Joss called them forward, and as they ran into the compound, we followed.

In spite of his orders not to cause unnecessary damage, the attackers had shot the place to pieces. The blockhouse was still smouldering, and a far bigger fire was blazing out of the fuel store: barrels of diesel had ignited and were sending a column of dense black smoke boiling high into the sky. The dredging machinery had ground to a halt. The doors of the main building, big enough to admit trucks, had been blown off their guide-rails and were hanging drunkenly. The corrugated-iron walls were riddled with bullet holes. No other prisoners had been taken. Bodies lay everywhere, most of them relatively intact, but several hacked into bloody lumps in an orgy of killing. Away to our left some of the Alpha guys were smashing their way into the single-storey block.

I grabbed the first two men we came to, and said, ‘You two, guard this prisoner.’

They looked a bit shattered, so I added, ‘Just stay here and keep him covered until I get Major Mvula.’

The air inside the main building was full of dust and smoke. Through it I made out inner walls — the secure area, a windowless box maybe fifteen feet high, with the conveyor belt from the dredger arm coming high over it and down through the ceiling. The place was full of men running around screaming and shouting.

‘Joss!’ I yelled. ‘Where the fuck are you?’

Any answer he may have given was drowned out by a volley of shots, deafening inside the steel walls, as somebody emptied his magazine into the locks on one of the secure unit’s doors, trying to blast his way in.

‘Joss!’ I roared. ‘Get these guys under control. Get ’em out of here!’

It took him a few minutes to impose his authority, his men were on such a high. But in the end he managed it. Once all the shouting died down, it became possible to talk.

‘Listen,’ I told him as we stood in the main doorway. ‘We’ve got one white prisoner outside. Take charge of him, and keep a good eye on him. We’ll need to interrogate him to find out what the hell’s been going on. And get some of your guys moving. We know three enemy at least made a breakout and got away to the south. There may have been more. The defenders may have broadcast an SOS before we took out the radio. A counter-attack may come in. Send out clearance patrols to check our immediate surroundings. Get people digging in on the perimeter. Leave the .50 section where it is, across the river, but bring the rest of your guys over soonest. You need an immediate resupply: ammunition and rockets.’

Joss nodded. But somehow he looked strange. His eyes were half closed, as if he’d just taken something or had a big drink. Suddenly I realised that in the heat of the moment I’d given him a stream of orders. Had I offended him?

‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you what to do. I was just saying what I thought ought to be done.’

‘Fine, fine,’ he said, but he sounded vague.

‘Another thing. See that single tree on the rock up there? There’s two bodies just this side, of it. Let’s get them brought in. First, though, I need some men in here with me and Phil, to help clear the secure area. Can you spare me five?’

I had a feeling I’d blown our relationship, and I wasn’t sure whether he was going to detail anybody to help.

The next few minutes were tense. Inside, the dust was settling, but the heat was horrendous, like in an oven. I took off my Bergen and began sorting some det cord. The walls of the secure area looked pretty solid: there were concrete blocks on the outside, and I expected there’d be a lining of steel on the inside. The door was as solid as the wall, with a heavy-duty lock — a serious, precision-made combination job, with three dials. The bullets fired at it had bounced off, leaving practically no marks. Phil took one look at it, and said, ‘We’ll not pick that bugger.’ So I made up a charge with a couple of ounces of PE, and I was taping it in position when five guys shambled in.

‘Thank God,’ I muttered to Phil. ‘He’s still on side.’

I turned to the Kamangans, and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to blow the door. I expect some of the mine staff to be inside. Once the door’s open, I want you to go in and round up anyone who’s in there. All right? Take prisoners. No shooting unless you’re fired at first. Understood?’

The senior man, a corporal, nodded.

‘We’re going to need these people to get the machinery going again,’ I said. ‘That’s why it’s important — no killing.’

With everyone round the corner out of the way, I cracked off the charge. Inside the tin walls, the noise and shock-wave were stupendous. The door swung ajar. Beyond it, black darkness. We needed torches. For a few seconds I stood with my back flattened against the outer wall, listening. Wild yells were still coming from the direction of the bungalow, but inside the building there was silence, except for the noise of water splashing. Then came a sudden rumble, a shuddering noise and a hum as, somewhere in the depths, a small engine started up. An emergency generator. Lights came on, dim and flickering.

Immediately inside the main door I could see a small, box-like cubicle partitioned off, with a window in the side — the place where workers were checked in and out. Peering cautiously in, I found the rest of the first room was empty — a kind of air-lock. I beckoned the others after me and slipped through the door.

Going into that enclosed space reminded me of a week I’d once spent on an aircraft carrier, when a simulated battle was being fought and the whole ship was sealed against nuclear, biological or chemical attack. Now I got the same feeling of instant claustrophobia, intensified by the fact that the air-conditioning system had gone down and the room was stiflingly hot.

With the five Kamangans lined up covering me, I tried the door in the far wall. Locked. But this was a flimsier affair altogether. Det cord round the lock and handle would sort it. Phil moved the Kamangans out of the way along one wall while I taped some cord into place.

I was on the point of cracking it off when suddenly I heard a movement on the far side. Somebody was fiddling a key into the lock. I whipped back against the wall, pulling my pistol out. The handle turned and the door opened slowly, inch by inch, as though the person pushing it was scared of what might lie beyond. There was a scuffling sound, as if several people were milling about. Then a hand appeared, and the sight of it amazed me, because its skin was white.

I stood transfixed as the owner emerged into view: an aged white ghost of a man, bent and shuffling, bald on top of the head, with a few wisps of long grey hair straggling down over his ears and white stubble bristling from his cheeks. He was wearing a filthy yellow T-shirt that hung loose over his bony shoulders, and even filthier grey trousers, with the remains of a pair of tennis shoes lashed round his bare feet. He looked as though he’d just risen from his grave, so deathly pale was his complexion.

When I made a sound, and he turned and saw me, he started, as if I’d stuck a knife in his ribs, and gave a croak of ‘Mon dieu!’ For a second I wasn’t sure what he’d said. I’d expected something in English, and didn’t recognise the French. Before I could answer, he buckled at the knees, and the next thing I knew he was stretched out full-length, face down on the deck, still in the doorway.

‘Pull him through!’ I snapped at Phil. ‘Get this door shut.’

In a flash I whipped out the key, closed the door and locked it from the outside. We dragged the old guy through the ante-room and sat him up against the wall in the main building, where the heat wasn’t quite so devastating. He looked even closer to death, but when I poured the contents of a water-bottle over his head, he came round.

As his eyes opened, I said, ‘Take it easy. You’re all right.’

Phil handed him another bottle with the top open, and asked, ‘Who are you?’

‘Boisset,’ he replied. After a long swallow, he added, ‘François Boisset.’

‘You’re French?’

‘Belgique.’

‘Belgian! You speak English?’

‘A little.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Je suis I’ingénieur… I am the engineer. I am in command of the machin, the machinery. You are who?’

‘British,’ I told him. ‘We’re helping the government forces.’

‘L’armée du gouvernement? Dieu merci!’

Even in the dim light of the shed, the old man was having trouble with his eyes, screwing them half shut.

‘You seem very weak,’ I said. Maybe the blacks had been starving him. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘Hungry? No.’ He sounded surprised. ‘I am a prisoner. Since more than a year I am a prisoner of these Afundis. In one whole year I have not seen daylight.’

In short sentences, often lapsing into French, he told his story. When the rebel forces took over the mine, they’d shot most of the staff. But they’d kept him and a few key workers to run the machinery. He himself had spent most of the time confined to a cell inside the secure area, only being brought out when something went wrong and his specialist knowledge was needed. Having no radio, he’d completely lost touch with the outside world.

‘So who’s inside the works now?’ I asked.

‘Seven men. Four workers, three Afundi guards.’

‘Do they have weapons?’

‘Two Afundis only.’

‘Can you talk to them in their own language?’

‘Of course. They sent me out to see what was happening.’ A gleam came into his watery blue eyes as he added, ‘So, for the first time, I have the key!’

I looked at Phil. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Those guys have got to come out. I don’t think the Afundis are going to have much chance once they get outside, but there’s no way they’re stopping in there.’

‘Salauds!’ exclaimed Boisset with surprising force. ‘Je m’en merde.’

At that moment, Joss appeared in the main doorway.

‘Eh,’ I called. ‘Come here a minute.’ Turning to Boisset, I said, ‘This is the commander of the government force.’

Joss was pouring with sweat, but so spaced out that he didn’t seem to register the fact that an extra European had appeared. ‘Oh wah!’ he went when I told him the score. ‘Bring them out. We’ll deal with them.’

‘Okay,’ I said to Boisset. ‘Tell them to come out, and say they’ll be all right.’

With a fine Gallic shrug, he said, ‘Pourquoi pas?’

The old fellow seemed suddenly rejuvenated. He heaved himself to his feet, lurched, steadied himself and turned back to the door.

‘You send them out,’ I told him. ‘We’ll wait here.’

In he went, calling out in Nyanja. Less than a minute later he was back at the head of a little procession. We hardly needed him to tell us which of the Africans were which. The first four looked downtrodden and apprehensive, and were wearing filthy T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops.

‘The workers,’ I said, and when he nodded, I motioned them to one side of the room. ‘Stand over there.’

The last three were altogether different. Dressed in bush shirts and DPM bottoms, they had an arrogant look about them, and two carried AK47s. I’m afraid Boisset had told them that during the battle their own side had beaten off the attackers, and they thought they were walking out to a celebration. When they saw Phil and me standing there, they did a terrific double-take, but by then it was too late. In a flash our escort cut off their retreat, grabbed them, and wrenched their weapons off them. They also removed a large bunch of keys from the boss figure, and hustled all three out into the open.

Exactly what happened next, we never knew, but our ears told us enough. The three may have tried to do a runner. They may have just stood near the main doorway. All we heard was a burst of yelling, a volley of gunfire, very loud and close, and another roar of shouts and cheers.

Boisset looked at me and nodded, muttering, ‘C’est fini.’ Then he turned to the mine workers and said something in Nyanja. For a moment they didn’t believe him, and he had to repeat himself, using different words. Then the message got through, and suddenly all four were transformed from zombies into human beings, laughing and joking like they’d just got a year’s extra pay.

‘These men have not been outside, either,’ Boisset told me. ‘Not for more than a year.’

‘You can go out in a minute,’ I said, magnanimously. ‘But you’d better wait till the excitement dies down. This wouldn’t be a good moment. Now, how much damage has been done to the mine?’

‘Il me faut… I must make checks. The main problem is loss of power. The generators have stopped.’

‘That’s because the fuel tanks have been ruptured.’

‘C’est ça?’

‘Yeah. The fuel depot’s on fire.’

‘No wonder we are en panne.’

At my request Boisset took the keys and led us on a quick tour of the mine. He showed us the machine room, where the conveyor belt came in from the river inside a big metal pipe and spewed its load onto a series of wire-mesh trays which normally had water washing through them. Huge fans suspended from the roof should have been keeping the air on the move, he explained, but with the loss of current they’d stopped, and the heat was formidable.

‘Normally, the sieves are agités.’ He held out a hand palm-down and moved it rapidly back and forth. ‘The washed aggregate passes this way, into this next room.’ He unlocked a door and let us through. ‘Here, more washing, more shaking. Enfin…’ He unlocked yet another door. With only the emergency lamps flickering, the light was very dim. ‘Here, we are in the most secure area — and there are the diamonds.’

‘Diamonds?’ said Phil, scornfully. ‘Where?’

‘These.’ Boisset reached down and scooped up a handful of what looked like gravel from the floor of a stainless-steel tank. ‘Normalement we have bright light.’ He squinted up at the spotlamps close overhead. ‘Specialist workers can see them easily. Look, this is one.’

Between finger and thumb he held up what looked like a crumb of broken glass, the size of a pea, which flashed brilliantly when he turned it.

‘Yeah,’ I went, suddenly remembering something I’d read. ‘Guys with eyes like the shithouse rat stand here and pick them out.’

A faint smile lit up Boisset’s face. ‘C’est vrai. But it is expert work.’

‘Does this mine sometimes produce big stones?’ I asked.

‘Mais oui! We have had diamonds so large.’ He held his thumb and forefinger at least an inch apart.

‘Like an egg,’ I said. ‘One that size must be worth millions.’

‘Of course. One stone like this would finance an entire civil war.’

Beyond that final sorting room lay a kind of laboratory, with raised benches on which the diamonds were sorted, and beyond that again a strongroom where they were stored. Apparently, an aircraft came in every week to lift out the loot.

‘What sort of plane?’

‘Myself, I have never seen it. But I am told it is of medium size. It always bring ten or twelve soldiers. A change for the garrison. Also it has a guard in case of attack.’

‘And where does it go?’

‘Sometimes to South Africa. Sometimes to Sentaba, the camp where General Muende has his headquarters.’

‘General now, is he?’

‘Leader of the Afundi rebels. Yes.’

‘Has he ever been here?’

Boisset shook his head.

Without the primitive air-conditioning, the heat was becoming impossible.

‘Let’s get back into the open,’ I suggested.

Boisset locked up behind us and led us back. As we passed the open sinks, I was sorely tempted to scoop up a handful of the diamond-laden gravel and stuff it into one of the pouches on my belt kit. Then I thought, set an example! and carried on. Boisset diverted to show us the squalid little apartment in which he’d been held prisoner: two tiny, windowless rooms, with a cold tap and a hole in the floor for a bog. It seemed a miracle that he’d stayed sane.

‘What did you eat all the time?’ Phil asked.

‘Filth. Whatever they brought me. My stomach has been very bad.’

Poor old bugger, I thought. On impulse, I asked, ‘How old are you?’, and I was shocked when he answered, ‘Fifty-two.’ From his appearance I’d have given him seventy at least.

‘What about the keys?’ I asked. ‘You’d better hand them to Joss. Major Mvula, his name is. He needs to get a guard on the secure zone. There he is, coming now.

‘Joss,’ I went. ‘Meet a great survivor.’

I explained who Boisset was, and what he’d done. Now Joss seemed in a raging hurry, far less friendly than usual. He greeted the Belgian in an off-hand way and made no enquiries about how he was feeling. Instead, he said, ‘Water, man. What’s the water situation?’

‘We get it from the river,’ Boisset answered. ‘Naturally, it has to be filtered before use. The purification plant runs on electricity…’

Joss seemed to be only half listening. Without paying much attention to the answers, he fired off a whole lot of questions about how long it would take to get the mine up and running again. Then he ordered Boisset to draw up a list of any spare parts that would be needed. The old man listened meekly enough, then shuffled off.

‘Listen,’ I said to Joss as he moved away. ‘That guy’s had a hell of an ordeal. He needs looking after.’

Joss glared at me, and said, ‘So does the mine.’

His attitude was starting to piss me off. But also I was worried. His emotional state seemed to be veering about. I had the feeling he might do something stupid at any minute. Hadn’t we just helped him recapture the damned place? But it wasn’t the moment to start anything, so I just asked, ‘Okay. What’s the drill, then?’

‘We’ve been in touch with Mulongwe. The relief aircraft’s coming down in the morning.’

‘So when will you want to move on?’

‘Maybe tomorrow evening.’

‘That’s fine.’

I walked out into the blazing sunshine. Then, on impulse I turned back into the building and sought out Boisset again. By then he was checking the big generators, which, as we thought, had shut down from fuel starvation.

‘I’m sorry,’ I began. ‘That guy wasn’t very polite.’

The Belgian gave a shrug, which said, ‘That’s Africans.’

‘The thing is, what d’you want to do? I imagine you’re wanting out. If that’s right, I’m sure we can get you back to Mulongwe on the relief plane.’

‘Mais non!’ came the answer, with some emphasis. ‘I must stay to look after the mine. It is my child, almost.’

I was quite surprised. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘Certainly. If I can live once more in my bungalow over there.’ He pointed in the direction of the single-storey accommodation. ‘There is just one thing.’

‘Go on.’

‘Perhaps you can send a message to my nephew in Brussels. He is also Boisset, Alphonse, my brother’s son. He is in the book. Alphonse Xavier. He does not know if I am alive or dead. Please tell him I am in one piece.’

‘No problem. We’ll get our headquarters to pass it on.’

‘Merci.’

He had forgotten the telephone number, but wrote the address on a page of my notebook, and I left him pottering among his machinery. It crossed my mind that he must have some ulterior motive for wanting to stay on in such a hell-hole. Maybe, I thought, he’s been burying the odd diamond over the years, and needs time to dig them out. Whatever it was, I hadn’t got time to argue the point with him. If he wanted to stay, that was fine by me.

Outside again, I suddenly felt weak with hunger. I was astonished when I looked at my watch and found it was only 0730. The fire in the gatehouse had gone out, but the fuel depot was still burning well. Across in the bungalow some sort of party seemed to be in progress. There was a lot of wild shouting, laughter and singing. I thought of going across to check it out, but then I saw Banda, one of the black sergeants, heading out of the bungalow towards us.

Something bad seemed to have happened to him. He was moving unsteadily. I thought he’d been shot or had got into a fight, because there was fresh blood all over his face and down his shirt.

‘Hey, Banda!’ I went. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Join the party!’ he shouted, giving a quarter-melon grin as he parroted Joss’s war-cry. ‘Big celebration! South African whisky very good!’

‘What’s all that blood? You been hit, or something?’

‘White man’s liver!’ he cried. ‘White man’s liver very good!’

With that, he staggered past us and carried on.

‘Jesus!’ went Phil. ‘He’s pissed as arseholes. They must have found some hooch where the mercenaries were quartered.’

‘Is that right about the liver?’

‘You bet. That’s what these guys do. Cut out their enemy’s liver and eat it raw.’

‘Fucking savages! D’you reckon they’ve topped the guy we brought in?’

‘More than likely.’

‘Let’s leave them to it.’

Beside the wrecked gate a party of soldiers was filling sandbags and rebuilding the defences of the guard-post. At least some effort was being made. As we walked past, I called up Pavarotti.

‘Pav,’ I went. ‘How’re you doing?’

‘Fine, thanks. All quiet up here.’

‘Down here there’s a fucking shambles. But it’s Joss’s show, so we’re leaving him to it and coming back up.’

‘Roger. There’s one thing I’d better warn you about.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘I just heard from Mart. The Kraut’s come round. She’s making perfect sense.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Never. And you know what cured her? Mabonzo’s medicine.’