The US Navy might have had helis coming out of their ears, but they weren’t going to send more than they had to into a hot zone. At least they were coming: Gary’s idea of using the Sea Knight to refuel was in train at last.
None of the team was dancing jigs about it. We knew what was in the boxes now, and what Gary and the royal sisters had died for – everything from Mobutu’s string of houses on the French Riviera to a new private 747.
The Saviour of the People was going to do quite well out of this little job, which no one would remember in a month’s time. Meanwhile, Gary’s kids would get fucked over by our government, as surely as this one slowly dying on the wagon had got fucked over by his. And Princess Margaret’s granddaughters would wonder why Nanny had never made it home for Christmas.
Each of the fourteen wooden boxes weighed 162 pounds. And there were eleven of us, including Annabel, the general, Gary and the kid. The total payload was about 4200 pounds, easy in weight terms for a helicopter to lift, but not when it came to bulk.
The carrier fleet’s UH-60 Seahawks, the Navy’s version of the Blackhawk, were designed to take eight combat troops and their gear, so a two-ship had been scrambled. Their escort was a two-ship Cobra attack force, armed with three-barrel 20mm cannon. The plan was for them to provide top cover as we screamed out of the gates to the open ground the Seahawks needed for landing. We’d load Mobutu’s gear on to one, and ourselves on to the other. Then all four aircraft would fuck off back to the coast, via one of the Sea Knights parked up somewhere in the desert.
I did what I could to comfort the wounded boy, but it wasn’t easy. We didn’t share a language and I wouldn’t exactly get a job as Ronald McDonald. Besides, I wasn’t even sure he could hear me. The field dressings on his leg and head were so bulky he looked like a mummy.
Sam – just below us – was more withdrawn than I’d ever seen him. His conscience was giving him hell, and I didn’t feel too good about what we’d done either. We hadn’t had much option, but that didn’t help.
I’d killed people before, but this was different. Kids like this one should have been too young to be anybody’s enemy. The guys who’d forced these poor fuckers to carry weapons should be the ones lying out there in the sand.
Standish finished with the fleet. ‘OK, they’ll be here just after first light. We move out the moment we hear them. We’ll have two minutes to get everything aboard.’
Sam looked up. ‘Well, we’d better get your blood money on a wagon then, hadn’t we?’
15
05:47 hours
The crates were loaded. Davy and the guys were up top on stag. There was nothing to do but wait. Even the general was quiet.
I studied my burned hand in the moonlight, and watched Sam try his best for the kid. There wasn’t a lot more he could do: the wounds were plugged up and probably infected, but at least he was alive.
Sam was deep in thought. There was a lot more going on in there right now than commanding this job. I felt bad enough, and that was without worrying about an afterlife and a Big Guy with a white beard I had to answer to.
Standish broke the silence: ‘They’re over the coast and inbound. Let’s get on the wagons.’ He punched numbers into the pad; Sam called the guys and we started to board.
‘Commissioner, I’m preparing the team now. I’ll contact you as soon as I’ve made visual contact with the aircraft.’ He passed the handset to Annabel and went to look through the hole in the wall.
The rebels were still out and about, even this close to first light. Fires burned, vehicle lights bounced around in the distance. The boys were still partying hard. But come first light, I wasn’t sure which was going to be more dangerous – that lot out there, or the Cobra two-ship escort piloted by trigger-happy Americans.
We’d soon know. Light was brushing the far horizon and the sun would follow shortly. The Renaults coughed themselves to life and the compound filled with fumes.
At least it kept the flies off.
16
06:04 hours
All of us bar Davy were aboard just three wagons. He lay prone at the open gates, bipod dug into the sand, covering the ground the other side of the wall. We could see now that most of the bodies ripped open out there were kids’, but we ignored it. Or tried to . . .
Sam’s wagon was going to be first out, with me on the gun. Standish, Annabel and the kid were on the floor behind us. The next wagon had the general sitting in Frankenstein’s old seat, with the wooden boxes and remaining four blokes on the floor. The third wagon had just a driver, and Davy with the RPG. If he had to fire, he didn’t want to worry about live bodies getting in his way or taking the backblast. His only cargo was the Yammy 175, the three remaining RPG rounds, Gary and the royal sisters. The fourth wagon’s fuel had been siphoned and shared.
The mush of the sat comms cut out as Standish put the handset to his ear. The plan was that the Cobras would swoop in and protect us as we headed back the way we’d come and down into the dead ground where the Seahawks would pick us up. No one was sure how it was going to work, because there weren’t any comms between us and the helis.
‘They’re five minutes from target.’
Davy gave an urgent shout: ‘I’ve got vehicles at about seven or eight hundred. They’re kicking up a shitload of dust.’
Sam jumped out of the wagon and crawled alongside Davy in the gateway.
Almost immediately, he was up and running again. He jumped behind the wheel and reached for the ignition. ‘We got too much coming. We can’t wait for the helis. They’ll have to find us.’
17
06:23 hours
Our truck was first out of the gates. Sam’s foot was hard to the floor, and it wasn’t just so he could make it over the bodies we hadn’t been able to move. The front three enemy vehicles were no more than four hundred metres away. At least another dozen were lined up in the dust trail behind them.
‘I can’t cover that arc!’ I was out of my seat. ‘Gonna have to shift.’
Sam braced himself. ‘Go for it.’ He knew what I had to do.
I jumped on to the sandbags, manoeuvring myself until I was lying at a diagonal through the dashboard and across the bonnet. My arse was just about in Sam’s face, but at least I had a solid platform, bipod wedged into the sandbags, from which the gun could point east as we raced south.
The wagon lurched and I almost careered off it. Sam grabbed my leg and steadied me as I got back into a fire position. I wasn’t going to put down rounds yet, though: I’d be aiming at moving vehicles, from a moving vehicle. Every round had to count. It was whites-of-their-eyes time. Where the fuck were those gunships?
Sam had to steer one-handed as he gripped me with the other. The rebels’ vehicles careered towards us like a stampeding herd. The sun was less than a third above the horizon, but it was getting hard to look east, even
