‘Risky.’
‘Would you expect anything else in war, Mister Mannix?’
‘You did well last night, Captain. It was a fine operation.’
He nodded gravely. ‘Yes, we did well. But you all did well, especially Mister McGrath. He is very efficient. Without him it might not have come about.’
I knew that and didn’t want to dwell on it. I would have liked to admire McGrath whole-heartedly but found it impossible. I was pleased to hear that Sadiq had sustained no losses among his men, and only a couple were wounded.
Our losses were worse.
The Russian was dead. Lang was in a bad way and lay on Dr Kat’s operating table. Proctor had a bullet graze on the leg and Kemp on the shoulder, and others had an assortment of bruises and abrasions. But a roll call proved one man missing. After a search we found the body of Ron Jones, shot through the head and stomach by machine-gun bullets.
It was ten o’clock before Sadiq took his chance on the bridge. First he wanted the tractor shifted so that if necessary he could get troops across fast, and we were wary of sending anyone out of cover to do that until we felt fairly sure, it was safe. Sadiq would not send scouts across, as being too dangerous. He was going to cross first himself in the Scorpion tank, which was a brave thing to do because even a lone infantryman might have a tank-killing weapon. He was taking three men with him, a driver, a gunner and a radio operator, and he left instructions that nobody was to move until he came back or sent a coded all clear signal.
Before that we’d cleaned up the camp, repairing what was possible and listing what needed repair when we could spare the time. Luckily Maksa’s men had not destroyed much of importance, though there were two car windows shattered and sundry minor damage done here and there. Bishop and Bing, with help from the others, got a food supply moving, and on the rig the medical people were kept very busy.
Max Otterman’s body had been found at the foot of the rig with a bullet in his back and two ribs broken, presumably by the fall though the damage could have been done by a boot. It was an appalling death. We organized a digging party off the road and held a mass funeral service.
Otterman, Burns, Ron Jones and Andrei Djavakhishkili, a Rhodesian, an American, a Welshman and a Russian, shared one grave, though we gave them each separate headboards. In another grave were two of Sadiq’s men and with them four rebels, all with the common bond of being Nyalans.
Both the ailing infant and the hospital’s other serious patient, Sister Mary, had survived the night. But the two doctors and the nursing staff were under great strain and an urgent discussion on ways and means was long overdue.
Astonishingly, during the early hours of the morning we had visitors.
Sandy Bing, carrying a bucket of hot water towards the rig, stopped and said, ‘I’ll be damned, Mister Wingstead! Just look at them.’
In the distance, quietly and almost shyly, little clumps of Nyalans were reappearing, still mostly women and children, to stand in respectful yet wary homage to their travelling talisman. Some of them spoke to the soldiers, and Dr Kat and two of the Nyalan nurses went down among them, to return with news that the vast majority had melted away just far enough to be within earshot of the fight, and close enough to come back if they felt all was safe again. It was truly extraordinary.
‘I think it may mean that the other soldiers have all gone,’ Dr Kat told us. ‘They speak of them as evil, and they would not come back if they were still close by.’
‘But they’d be across the river, Doctor Kat. How could these people know?’
‘I think you call it the bush telegraph,’ the surgeon said with his first smile for a long time. ‘It really does work quite well. You will see, the Captain will return to give us an all clear. In the meantime, they have brought me a woman who broke her leg last night. I must go back and see to her.’
I went to have a look at the Saracen that had caught fire. I was curious to see why it had happened; an armoured car isn’t a paper bag to be burned up by a Very flare.
It was simple enough when we reconstructed what had occurred. At the time that the shooting started someone must have been filling the gas tank and in the hurry to get things moving the fuel tank cap hadn’t been screwed back on properly. When the Very ignited, a spark must have gone straight into the tank, blowing up the vehicle in fine style. We found the cap still on its hinge, military fashion, but hanging loose.
I had another job to do that I didn’t relish, and that was to speak to McGrath alone. I started by telling him about the Saracen and he grinned approval.
‘Dead lucky. We have to have some of it,’ he commented.
I said, ‘McGrath, there’s something bothering me.’
‘Why then, let’s have it,’ he said calmly.
‘In the warehouse you told us that Maksa was getting ready to burn it down with us inside. But I found no petrol drums anywhere near the warehouse, and there’s no fuel of theirs this side of the river. Our tanker is still locked and nobody took the keys.’
‘Well, maybe they were going to do it another way,’ he said easily.
‘Don’t mess with me, McGrath. Did you actually hear them say anything like that?’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ he said, driven out of his normal calm, ‘I had to say
something
to get you lot moving! You were just going to stand there and take it. Or try talking your way out, I suppose.’
‘You were safe enough, free and armed. Why the hell did you bother to come back for us?’
‘If I thought I could have got away through this benighted country on my own, Mannix, I’d have done so. I need you,
that’s why.’ He crowned this casually selfish statement with one more shocking. ‘I must say Otterman’s death came in handy. That really did the trick.’
I felt disgusted, and then had another appalling idea.
‘McGrath, did you kill Ron Jones?’
He looked amused rather than alarmed. ‘Why should I do that?’
‘You know why. And you had time to do it. In God’s name, how can I believe you even if you say you didn’t?’
‘Well now, you can’t, Mannix, so if I were you I’d stop worrying about it. I didn’t as a matter of fact, though he’s no great loss for all that. In fact he was more dangerous to you than I’ve ever been.’
I couldn’t help rising to the bait. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he was a bit of a sniveller, wasn’t he? You know that, the way he came babbling things to you that he shouldn’t. He saw you take the shotgun into the warehouse, Mannix, and it was he who told the Colonel about it. I heard him myself.’
Quite suddenly I knew that this was the truth. I recalled Jones’s fear in the warehouse, the way he hung back from Maksa as he’d always hung back from McGrath, perhaps fearing lest he be unmasked before us all for Maksa’s pleasure. Any regret I had for his death ebbed away, and despite myself I felt a nagging touch of understanding of McGrath and his ruthlessness. He’d manoeuvred us into doing the one thing he knew best; fighting and killing. He’d done it all for the most selfish of reasons, and without compunction. And yet he was brave, efficient and vital to our cause; and perhaps justified as well.
I walked away from him in silence. I would never know if he had killed Ron Jones, but the worst of it, and the thing that filled me with contempt for myself as well as for him, was that I didn’t care. I prayed that I wouldn’t become any more like him.
McGrath was a maverick, intelligent, sound in military thinking and utterly without fear. I felt that he might be a useful man to have about in a war, but perhaps on the first day of peace he ought to be shot without mercy, and that was one hell of an assessment.
Sadiq had decided that it was time to go.
‘Mister Mannix, if I do not return I have told my sergeant to take command of the soldiers,’ he said. ‘And they are to stay with you unless given alternative orders in person by a superior.’
‘Thank you. I wish you good luck.’
He saluted and climbed up into the Scorpion, dropping down through the command hatch and dogging it shut. He was taking no chances. The tank trundled slowly across the bridge. Sadiq had reckoned he could pass the wrecked Saracen but might have to nudge it aside and he proved right. Once past it he picked up speed and the driver did not bother to avoid the scattered bodies. I remembered being told back in Korea that if one wanted to sham dead on a battlefield better not to do it with tanks around.
Not a shot was fired as the tank left the bridge. It began to climb the hill beyond, then swerved and entered the bush and was lost to view. We settled down to wait in the hopeful expectation of hearing nothing. It was a long hour before the Scorpion rumbled back up the hill towards us. Sadiq got out and said, ‘There is nothing. They have pulled out and gone.’
There was a ragged cheer from soldiers and civilians alike.
‘Which way, do you think?’ Wingstead asked.
‘Their vehicles must have gone on up the road.’ This wasn’t good news because it was to be our route too. He went on, ‘We found two of them damaged and off the road, and there are many uniform jackets lying there.
I think the Fifteenth Battalion has disbanded. They were nearly finished anyway, and the fight with us has destroyed them.
‘Now that I am certain the bridge is clear I will send scouts further ahead. I will place men to form a holding force while we decide what must be done next.’
And so the next item on the agenda was a council of war.
Sadiq’s active force was down to twenty-two. There were sixteen of us and a medical staff of nine including three semitrained nurses. On the rig were fifteen Nyalans, including the mother and her sick baby. So we totalled some seventy odd people, many of whom could not take care of themselves. We couldn’t stay where we were nor could we turn back, which left us with an obvious conclusion. We had to carry on towards Lake Pirie and possible freedom in Manzu if we couldn’t travel on to Port Luard.
Food and medical supplies were in shorter supply than ever, and our stock of petrol was dwindling fast. The only thing we had in plenty was water. The soldiers had run short of ammunition and had no mortar bombs left. We were ragged, weary and uncomfortable. But morale was high.
We reckoned that we could make Fort Pirie in three days or less, and it would be downhill all the way, with villages scattered along the route. We debated yet again leaving the rig but there were still too many sick people to accommodate in the other vehicles, and by now the contraption was beginning to take on a talisman-like quality to us as well as to the Nyalans. We’d got it this far: surely we could get it the rest of the way.
Kemp and Hammond went to inspect the bridge. Though well constructed it had taken a battering and they were concerned for its integrity. They decided that it was sound enough to get the rig across but with nobody on board except for the drivers. That meant that the invalids must be
carried across, and Dr Kat set Sister Ursula to organize this with her usual barnstorming efficiency. We had little rest for the remainder of that day. At last we settled down for a final night in the Makara camp, a guard of soldiers on watch, ready to move out at first light.
Kemp and Hammond drove the rig, McGrath had charge of the towing tractor, and Thorpe joined Bob Pitman in running the airlift truck to give the rig its necessary boost. There was a large audience as Nyalans emerged to stare as the rig inched its way across; the Saracen had been towed clear and someone had had the mangled bodies removed. After an hour of tension it was across, and the job of transferring the sick on improvised stretchers began.
It was mid-morning before we really got going. We had quite a selection of vehicles to choose from, our inheritance from the Fifteenth Battalion. In spite of possible fuel problems Sadiq insisted on taking the remaining Saracen, but we ditched some of the trucks. We left the Russian pipe truck but took Dufour’s vehicle with us, at the Frenchman’s insistence. Brad Bishop said that he had so little cooking to do that the chuck wagon might as well be ditched too, but he didn’t mean it.
Kemp, who had been a passenger on the rig because of his shoulder wound, had joined Wingstead and me in the Land Rover. Atheridge drove with Dufour. Their common ordeal at the hands of Maksa’s men had forged a bond between them, just as one now existed between Harry Zimmerman and the Russian, Vashily Kirilenko; with his partner’s death the nicknames had disappeared.
Wingstead said, ‘Ben Hammond can move the convoy out. Let’s drive on. We have to talk about McGrath.’
‘I think he’s psychopathic,’ Wingstead went on. ‘He’s been with you more than with anyone else lately, Neil. What do you think?’
Kemp intervened, ‘He’s an unscrupulous bastard, and it was me who hired him. If you think I’ve made a mistake for God’s sake say so.’
‘Don’t take this personally,’ Wingstead said. ‘If you want my candid opinion, he’s the best bloody truck man you’ve ever hired. He’s a damned marvel with that tractor.’
‘Amen to that,’ I said.
Kemp was still on the defensive. ‘Well, I knew that. I couldn’t afford to turn him down, Geoff. I knew we’d need the top men for this job. But his papers weren’t in order. I advertised for heavy haulage drivers and he applied. He could do the job and had the necessary certificates, but I found discrepancies. I think he’s travelling on a false passport.’
Kemp had come a long way on his own.
I told them what I knew, both fact and speculation. At the end there was silence before either spoke.
Then Kemp said, ‘He
killed
Sisley? But why should he?’
‘He has only one answer to every problem—violence. I think he’s a hard line gunman on the run from Ireland. He’s dangerous. To look at he’s a big amiable Mick straight from the bog. He works at that image.’
Wingstead asked, ‘Do you think he could have killed Burke too?’
‘Not the way Jones told it.’
‘And you’re not sure about Ron Jones’ death.’
‘No, that’s only a gut feeling. But four men saw McGrath gun Sisley down. Burke ran off and is very likely dead by now. Jones is dead. Lang is gravely wounded, though thank God I know that one isn’t at McGrath’s door. That leaves Bob Pitman and if I were he I’d be walking carefully right now. Whatever we know or suspect about McGrath I suggest we keep it buttoned up, or we could find ourselves in deep trouble.’
We turned our attention to the future.
‘There’s a biggish town, Batanda, not far across the Manzu border,’ Wingstead said. ‘I haven’t found anyone who’s been there, but the country itself is known to be relatively stable. There must be a road from Batanda to the ferry on Lake Pirie, because a lot of trade goes on between the two countries at that point. If we can take the ferry to Manzu and drive to Batanda we should be safe.’
‘What’s Fort Pirie like?’ Kemp asked.
‘Another Makara, not much there at all. And there may have been military activity there, so God knows what we’ll find.’
Kemp asked, ‘What are Sadiq’s plans?’
‘He’ll stay with us as far as Fort Pirie, and help us cross the ferry if the road to Lasulu isn’t clear. He won’t cross himself, of course. He’ll keep his men inside his own border. But I think he’ll welcome our departure.’