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 available. 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.
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!’
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.
‘Pack 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 oddlyshaped ‘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 calf love.
‘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.