We returned to the convoy and the cyclist dropped me without ceremony at Kemp’s car, then shot off to pass orders to the rest of the military escort. Kemp stared and I realized that for the second time in that long day he was seeing me dusty and scratched from a trip through the bush.
‘That war you didn’t like to think about is just a piece up the road,’ I told him. ‘We can’t get through for wrecked tanks. There are four of them, stragglers from Hussein’s outfit. All kaput. We need the spare tractor and a damn good driver. I’d like it to be McGrath. And a couple of other guys. And you, too; you are in the heavy haulage business, aren’t you?’
I may have sounded just a touch hysterical. Kemp certainly looked at me as if I were.
‘You’re not kidding me?’
‘Jesus, maybe I should have brought one of the bodies as evidence.’
‘Bodies?’
‘They happen in a war.’
I looked along the road. The rig was crawling towards us, but ahead of it was the extra tractor, driven by Mick McGrath. I waved him down and he stopped alongside,
alive with curiosity. Everyone had seen the sudden activity of our military escort and knew something was up.
‘Basil, get the rig stopped. Better here than too close,’ I said.
Kemp looked from me to the rig, then slowly unhooked the microphone from the dashboard of the Land Rover. Stopping the rig was a serious business, not as simple as putting on a set of car brakes, more like stopping a small ship. For one thing, all three tractor drivers had to act in concert; for another the rig man, usually either Hammond or Bert Proctor, had to judge the precise moment for setting the bogie brakes, especially on a hill. Although they were all linked in a radio circuit, they were also directed by a flag waved from the control car; a primitive but entirely practical device. Now Kemp poked the flag out of the car window, and followed his action with a spate of orders over the mike. McGrath got out of his tractor and strode over. ‘What’s going on, Mister Mannix?’
‘A war.’
‘What does it look like over there?’
‘Like any old war. Hussein got shot up from the air and lost four tanks. One of them should be no trouble to move, but three are blocking the road. We’ll need your help in clearing the way.’
By now several of the men were milling around talking. McGrath overrode the babble of conversation.
‘Any shooting up there now, Mister Mannix?’
‘No, and I don’t think there will be. We think that both sides will leave us alone. We’re precious to them.’
McGrath said, ‘Any bad corners on the way there?’
‘None that matter. It’s pretty easy going.’
‘Right you are then. I’ll take Bert from the rig. Barry, you whip a team together and follow us up. Tell the fuel bowser boys to stay back, and leave the airlift team behind too. We
could do with your car, Mister Mannix. OK? Sandy, go and send Bert to me, then you stay up there and tell Mister Hammond what’s going on.’
He issued this stream of orders with calm decision, then strode off back to the tractor. I was impressed. He had taken the initiative in fine style and seemed to be dependable. It would be interesting seeing him in action if things got tough, as I was certain they would.
Kemp rejoined me and I briefed him and saw that he approved. ‘He’s a good organizer, is Mick. A bit hot-headed but then what Irish rigger isn’t? Ben will stay here with the rig and the rest of the crew. A detachment of the escort can hold their hands. I’m coming with you. Get in.’
He made no apology for doubting that this might happen. The tension that had gripped him in Port Luard was returning, and I realized with something between horror and exasperation that what was bothering him wasn’t the prospect of an entire country devastated by civil war, but the sheer logistic annoyances of any delays or upsets to his precious transportation plans. He was a very single-minded man, was Kemp.
As we pulled out to overtake the tractor Kemp said, ‘You mentioned bodies. How many?’
‘I saw three, but there’ll be more in the tanks. The rest have scarpered.’
‘God damn it, as though we didn’t have enough problems of our own without getting mixed up in a bloody war,’ he grumbled.
‘It could be worse.’
‘How the hell could it be worse?’
‘The planes could have shot up your rig,’ I said dryly.
He didn’t answer and I let him drive in silence. I was thankful enough myself to sit quietly for a while. I felt drained and battered, and knew that I needed to recharge my batteries in a hurry, against the next crisis.
The scene of the air strike hadn’t changed much except that the bodies had been moved off the road and the fire was out. Sadiq was waiting impatiently. ‘How long to clear it, sir?’ he asked at once.
Kemp looked dazed.
‘How long, please?’ Sadiq repeated.
Kemp pulled himself together. ‘Once the tractor arrives, we’ll have the tanks off the road in an hour or so. We don’t have to be too gentle with them, I take it.’
I wasn’t listening. I was looking at the ridge of hills ahead of us, and watching the thick black haze of smoke, several columns, mingling as they rose, writhing upwards in the middle distance. Sadiq followed my gaze.
‘My scouts have reported back, Mister Mannix. Kodowa is burning.’
‘Still reckoning on buying fresh vegetables there?’ I couldn’t resist asking Kemp. He shook his head heavily. The war had happened, and we were right in the middle of it.
McGrath and Proctor were experts in their field and knowledgeable about moving heavy awkward objects. They estimated angles, discussed the terrain, and then set about connecting shackles and heavy wire ropes. Presently McGrath shifted the first of the stricken tanks off the road as though it were a child’s toy. The rest of us, soldiers and all, watched in fascination as the tank ploughed to a halt deep in the dust at the roadside, and the team set about tackling the next one.
Sadiq went off in his command car as soon as he was satisfied that our tractor could do the job, heading towards Kodowa with a cycle escort. The work of clearing the road went on into the late afternoon, and Kemp then drove back to the convoy to report progress and to bring the rig forward. He had decided that we would stop for the night, a wise decision in the aftermath of an exhausting and disturbing day,
but he wanted to cover as much ground as possible before total nightfall.
McGrath and Proctor were resting after moving the upturned tank, which had been a tricky exercise, and gulping down the inevitable mugs of hot tea which Sandy had brought along for everyone. I went over to them and said, ‘Got a spade?’
McGrath grinned. ‘Ever see a workman without one? We use them for leaning on. It’s a well-known fact. There’s a couple on the tractor.’
Proctor, less ebullient, said quietly. ‘You’ll be wanting a burial party, Mister Mannix?’
We buried the bodies after giving the soldiers’ identity tags to Sadiq’s corporal. Afterwards everyone sat around quietly, each immersed in his own thoughts. McGrath had vanished, but presently I heard him calling.
‘Hey, Mister Mannix! Bert!’
I looked around but couldn’t see him. ‘Where are you?’
‘In here.’ His voice was muffled and the direction baffling. I still couldn’t see him, and then Bert pointed and McGrath’s head appeared out of the turret of the tank that he hadn’t needed to shift, the one that had run into the ditch. He said cheerily, ‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this one.’
‘You know tanks too?’
‘The army taught me. There isn’t anything on wheels I don’t know,’ he said with simple egotism. Proctor, alongside me, nodded in his grave fashion.
I said, ‘Can you drive it out?’
‘I’m pretty sure so. This thing never got a hit. The crew just baled out and she piled herself up in the dust here. Want me to try?’
‘Why not?’
His head bobbed down and after a lot of metallic noises the engine of the tank burst into noisy song. It moved, at
first forward and digging itself deeper into the ditch, and then in reverse. With a clatter of tracks and to spattered applause it heaved itself out of the gulley and onto the road. There was a pause and then the turret started to move. The gun traversed around and depressed, pointing right at us.
‘Stick ‘em up, pal!’ yelled McGrath, reappearing and howling with laughter.
‘Don’t point that thing at me,’ I said. ‘Once a day is enough. Well, it looks as though we’ve just added one serviceable tank to the Wyvern fleet. Captain Sadiq will be delighted.’
It was an uneasy night. Nothing more happened to disturb us, but very few of us got a full night’s sleep; there was a great deal of coming and going to the chuck wagon, much quiet talking in the darkness, a general air of restlessness. The day had been packed with incident, a total contrast to the normal slow, tedious routine, and nobody knew what the next day would bring except they could be sure that the routine was broken.
The rig had reached the valley where the tanks had been hit, and was resting there. Kemp had no intention of moving it until we knew much more about what had happened in Kodowa, and Sadiq had taken him off at first light to look at the road. I had elected to stay behind.
Talk over breakfast was sporadic and I could sense the crew’s tension. Certainly I knew they had been discussing their own safety and the chances of their coming through the conflict unscathed, with less than full confidence, and I suspected that Johnny Burke and Bob Sisley were pushing the shop floor angle rather hard. That could bear watching. I began to put some words together in my mind, against the time when I’d have to give them reasoned arguments in favour of doing things my way. They weren’t like Sadiq’s army lads, trained to obey without question.
Ben Hammond had gone with Kemp to look at the road. McGrath and three or four of the men were still playing with the tank, which they had cheerfully but firmly refused to turn over to the military until they had tinkered with it for a while longer. The others, including myself, were doing nothing much; everything looked remarkably peaceful and normal if one ignored the three tanks piled up in the gulley by the roadside.
When the interruption came it was heart-stopping.
There was a mighty rush of air and a pounding roar in our ears. Men sprang to their feet like jack-in-the-boxes as five air force jets screamed overhead at low altitudes, hurtling up over the ridge beyond us.
‘Christ!’ A pulse hammered in my throat and my coffee spilled as I jerked to my feet.
‘They’re attacking!’ someone yelled and there was a dive for cover, mostly under the shelter of the rig itself, which would have been suicidal if an attack had followed. But no missiles or bombs fell. The formation vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Men resurfaced, staring and chattering. Soldiers grabbed belatedly for their rifles.
‘Was it an attack?’ Ritchie Thorpe asked me. Having driven up with me he’d been tacitly appointed the position of spokesman.
‘No. They were going much too fast. I’m not sure they were even aware of us.’
‘Where do you think they’re going?’
‘God knows.’ I felt as if we were on a desert island, with no news getting through. ‘Are you sure you can’t raise anything on the radios? Any local station?’
‘Sorry, Mister Mannix. It’s all static. Everything’s off the air, I think. Mister Kemp said he’d call in on the half-hour, so I’ll be listening in then. Maybe he’ll have some news for us.’
There was a distant roar and our faces snapped skywards again. One of the jets was returning, but flying
much higher, and as we watched it made a big sweeping circle in the sky and vanished in the direction of the rest of the formation. For a moment it seemed to leave a thin echo behind, and then I stiffened as I recognized what I was hearing.
‘Bert. There’s another plane. A small one. Can you see it?’
He too stared round the sky.
‘No, but I can hear it.’ He raised his voice to a shout. ‘Any of you see a light plane?’
Everyone stared upwards, and three or four of them scrambled up onto the rig for a better vantage point. It was Brad Bishop on top of the commissary truck who first shouted, ‘Yes, over there!’ and pointed south.
A moment later I’d seen it too, a small speck of a plane flying low and coming towards us. Longing for binoculars, I kept my eyes glued to the approaching plane and felt a jolt of recognition. I’d never been a flier myself, and though I’d logged hundreds of hours in small company planes as well as in commercial liners I had never developed an eye for the various makes, but this one I definitely knew.
‘It’s the BE company plane,’ I called out. ‘We’ve got visitors.’
‘Where can they land?’ Thorpe asked me.
‘Good question. Kodowa’s got a town strip somewhere but I don’t know if it’s going to be usable. He can’t land here, that’s for certain.’
But that was where I was wrong.
It wasn’t an intentional landing, though. As the plane came nearer we recognized signs of trouble. It was flying in a lopsided, ungainly fashion. A thin trail of smoke came from it, and the full extent of the damage became visible. Part of the undercarriage was missing, and the tailfin was buckled out of alignment.
‘She’s going to crash.’
‘Do you think the jets attacked her?’
I said, ‘No—too high, too fast. That was a ground attack. Damn it, she’s not a fighter plane, not even armed!’
We watched in alarm as it began a wobbly circle over the bush country, slowly spiralling downwards.
‘Bring up the water carrier!’ I shouted, and sprinted for the hire car. Three or four others flung themselves in beside me. The car was ill-equipped for bouncing off the road into the bush but with the Land Rover gone there wasn’t much choice. The water tanker and some of the military stuff followed. I concentrated on charting the course of the stricken plane and on avoiding the worst of the rocks and defiles in front of me. The others clung on as they were tossed about, leaning out of the car windows in spite of the choking dust clouds to help keep track of the aircraft.
Soon it dipped to the horizon, then went below it at a sharp angle. I tried to force another fraction of speed out of the labouring car. The plane reappeared briefly and I wondered if it had actually touched down and bounced. Then it was gone again and a surge of dust swirled up ahead.
My hands wrenched this way and that to keep the car from slewing sideways in the earth. I brought it joltingly through a small screen of thorn bushes and rocked to a halt, and we looked downhill towards the misshapen hulk that had been airborne only moments before.
We piled out and started running. The danger of fire was enormous. Not only would the plane erupt but the bush was likely to catch fire, and we all knew it. But there was no fire as yet, and the plane was miraculously upright.
As we got to the plane a figure was already beginning to struggle to free himself. The plane was a six-seater, but there were only two men visible inside. Our men clambered up onto the smashed wing and clawed at the pilot’s door. The water tanker was lumbering towards us and Sadiq’s troops were nearer still; I waved the oncoming vehicles to a halt.
‘No further! Stay back! If she burns you’ll all be caught. No sparks—don’t turn your ignition off,’ I shouted. ‘Wilson, you and Burke start laying a water trail down towards her.’
As one of the big hoses was pulled free and a spray of water shot out, the door was pulled open and the two men inside were helped out. I ran back to the car and brought it closer. One of the plane’s occupants seemed to be unhurt; two of our men were steadying him but he appeared to be walking quite strongly. The second was lolling in unconsciousness, carried by Grafton and Ron Jones. As they came up to my car I recognized both new arrivals.
The unconscious man was Max Otterman, our Rhodesian pilot. The other was Geoffrey Wingstead.
Max Otterman was in a bad way.
He’d done a brilliant job in bringing his plane down in one piece, upright and more or less intact, but at a terrible cost to himself. His left arm was broken, and he had contusions and cuts aplenty, especially about the face in spite of goggles and helmet. But there was something more drastic and this none of us was able to diagnose for certain. He recovered consciousness of a sort in the car as we drove him and Geoff Wingstead back to the rig site, moving as gently as possible. But he was obviously in great pain and kept blacking out. We got him bedded down in the rig’s shade eventually, after letting Bishop have a good look at him. Bishop had first aid training and was pretty useful for dayto—day rig accidents, but he didn’t know what was wrong with Otterman, apart from being fairly sure that neither his neck nor his back was broken.
It was the most worrying feature so far of a very worrying situation.
Wingstead was in good shape apart from one severe cut on his left shoulder and a selection of bruises, but nevertheless both Bishop and I urged him to take things very
carefully. He saw Otterman bedded down, then sank into a grateful huddle in the shade with a cold beer to sustain him.
The men tended to crowd around. They all knew Geoff, naturally, and it was apparent that they thought a great deal of their boss. Their astonishment at his unorthodox arrival was swamped in their relief at his safety, and curiosity overrode all.
Presently I had to appeal to them to leave him for a while.
‘Come on, you guys. He doesn’t exactly want to give a press conference just this minute, you know,’ I said. I didn’t want to speak too sharply; it would be unwise to trample on their good will. But they took my point and most of them moved a little way off.
Wingstead said, ‘I’ll have to thank everybody properly. You all did a damned good job, back there.’ His voice was a little shaky.
‘None better than Max,’ I said. ‘There’s plenty of time, Geoff. Time for questions later too. Just rest a bit first.’
In fact I was aching to know what had brought him up to us, what he knew and what the situation was that he’d left behind him. Kemp and Sadiq should hear it too, though, and one account from Wingstead would tax him quite sufficiently. So I went a little way off, and saw Wingstead’s head droop forward as he surrendered to the sleep of exhaustion. I was anxious for Kemp to rejoin us. He seemed to have been gone for ever, and I was eager to give him our latest piece of dramatic news. But it wasn’t until nearly noon that we saw Sadiq’s escorted car returning, and I walked down the road to intercept them.
‘Neil. There’s a pack of problems up ahead of us,’ said Kemp.
‘We haven’t done too badly ourselves.’
Kemp’s eyes immediately flashed to the rig. ‘Problems? Have you been having trouble?’
‘I wouldn’t quite put it that way. Look, I’m damned keen to hear what you’ve got to tell, but I guess our news has priority. We’ve got visitors.’
‘Who—the army?’
Sadiq had got out of the car and already had his glasses unsiung, scanning the road. I knew he wouldn’t see the plane from where we were standing, though. I’d have preferred to discuss the latest developments with Kemp alone, but Sadiq had to be told: he’d find out fast enough in any case.
‘No. We were overflown by some air force planes but I don’t think they were looking for us or had any business with us. But a small plane came up a while ago. It crashed—over there.’ I waved my hand. ‘It had been shot up, I think. There were two men on board and we got them both out, but one’s badly hurt.’
‘Who the hell are they?’
‘You’re going to like this, Basil. One’s your boss. And he’s in pretty fair shape.’
‘Geoffrey!’ As with the men, astonishment and relief played over Kemp’s face, and then alarm. ‘Who was with him—who’s hurt?’
‘It’s our pilot, Max Otterman. He made a damn good landing, probably saved both their necks, but he’s in a bad way. The plane’s a write-off.’
It was sensational stuff, all right. They were both suitably impressed, and had more questions. After a while I managed to get rid of Sadiq by suggesting that the guarding of the plane was probably not being done to his satisfaction. He went away at once, to go and see for himself. Kemp would have gone along too but I detained him.
‘You can look at the wreckage later.’
‘I want to see Geoff and the pilot.’
‘One’s sleeping and the other’s damn near unconscious. You can’t do a thing for either just yet awhile. I’d rather you briefed me on what you’ve found out down there.’
Kemp said, ‘The road is in good shape right up to the environs of Kodowa. The town is in a hell of a mess. It’s been strafed and it’s almost completely burnt up. The people are in shock, I’d say, and they certainly won’t be much use to us, and there’s not enough of us to be much use to them. It’s a pretty ghastly situation. You’re right it is a war.’
It was as much of an apology as I’d get.
‘We didn’t go right in because we got a lot of opposition. They felt ugly about anyone in uniform, and Sadiq didn’t have enough force with him to do much about it. But we’ll have to go back in eventually. Look, did Geoff say anything to you?’
‘Not yet. I didn’t let him. I want to hear his story as much as you do, but I thought he should rest up and wait for you to come back. Where’s Ben Hammond, by the way?’
Kemp made a despairing gesture. ‘You’ll never believe it, but the damned troop truck broke down on the way back. String and cardboard army! Nobody knew what to do about it except Ben, so he’s still out there doing a repair job. Should be along any moment, but Sadiq said he’s sent some men back to give them support if they need it. There’s nobody on the road. They shouldn’t have any trouble.’ But I could see that he was worried at having been persuaded to leave Ben out in the middle of the bush with a broken down truck and a handful of green soldiers. I didn’t think much of the idea myself.
‘He’ll be OK,’ I said hopefully. ‘You’d better get yourself something to eat—and drink.’
‘By God, yes. I could do with a beer.’ He thought for a moment and then said, ‘On second thoughts, no. We’d better go gently on our supplies from now on. I’ll settle for a mug of gunfire.’
We exchanged humourless smiles. The slang term for camp tea had suddenly become alarmingly appropriate.
Ben turned up two hours later, hot, sticky and desperate for sustenance. Kemp broke into the newly-rationed beer stores for him; we hadn’t yet told the men about this particular form of hardship and Kemp was not enjoying the prospect. Wingstead had slept steadily, and we didn’t want to waken him. Otterman, on the other hand, seemed worse if anything. He tossed and muttered, cried out once or twice, and had us all extremely worried.
‘There must be doctors in Kodowa, but God knows how we’ll find them, or whether they’ll be able to help,’ Kemp said fretfully. He was concerned for Max, but he was also disturbed by the increasing rate of entropy about us. The rapid breakdown from order to chaos was something he seemed ill-equipped to cope with.