‘Where are the other guys?’ asked Loader.
‘Alex is on the mortar with one of the major’s lads. The others are on the roof. Patrick has got the AWC. You two will operate the Gimpys. I’ll be up there as well with the .50 cal. Between us, we’ll cover the approaches to the stronghold.’
‘What about Mike?’
‘He’s got one of the spare radios. He’ll cover the front of the stronghold with one of the platoon’s Gimpys. If the rebels manage to cut through the fence, he’ll take them down.’
‘And the local troops?’
‘We’re posting four other guys at the front. Two on top of the guest house, two others in a pit to the east. Four others in defensive positions guarding the west flank. The major will man the second platoon Gimpy in the gun pit to the rear. If they start taking rounds from any rebel forces from that direction, he’ll let us know.’
‘Better that way,’ Loader said. ‘The last thing we need is a blue-on-blue.’
Bowman nodded in agreement. The men in Mavinda’s platoon seemed brave enough, but they weren’t trained to an elite level. Giving them designated sectors of fire lessened the chances of an inexperienced soldier accidentally slotting a friendly.
‘Get a move on,’ Mallet says. ‘Once you’ve got those Claymores rigged, give us a shout. There’s still lots to do before we’re ready.’
He gave them his back and marched over to the soldiers at the gun pit. Bowman and Loader left the porch and sprinted across the driveway to the Land Cruiser. They grabbed the satchels containing the two Claymores from the boot and ran at a brisk clip towards the western garden. Casey was kneeling beside the mortar pit in front of the ruined wall on the north side of the garden. The second guy on the mortar team, the lanky Karatandan sergeant, sat next to her. They worked together, Lanky emptying the shells from their boxes, Casey taking the pin out of the nose of each projectile and lining them up at the side of the mortar cannon. Prepping them for the fight.
Bowman and Loader hastened past them, ducked around the corner of the garden wall. They climbed down into the southern end of the drainage ditch, crawled forward twenty metres, stopped and placed the charges facing out towards the northern end of the ditch.
‘Line them up here,’ Bowman said. ‘We’ll turn this area into a massive IED.’
They carefully removed both mines from their bandoliers, flipped out the scissor legs and planted the Claymores in the grass, sighting them down the ditch. They screwed the blasting caps into the detonator wells, sprinkled grass and leaves over the mines to camouflage them, rechecked the sights. Then Bowman and Loader unwound the coils of electrical wire and retreated around the wall, back towards the mortar pit. They made sure the safety bails were flipped up on their firing devices, then connected the electrical wires to the clackers.
‘You triggered one of these before?’ Loader said to Casey.
She gave him a long hard stare. ‘Take an educated guess.’
‘Just checking.’ He indicated the clackers. ‘The safetys are on. Don’t fire them until one of us gives the word from the rooftop. We’ll need to nail as many of the enemy as possible. No point wasting them on one or two attackers.’
‘Got it.’
She set the clackers down beside the cannon, went back to setting up the mortar. Loader grinned.
‘That’ll give those fuckers a nasty surprise,’ he said to Bowman.
Bowman glanced back at the ditch. The Claymores would repel any rebels attacking from the dead ground to the north of the garden. As soon as the enemy neared the southern end of the channel, Casey would detonate the mines, annihilating them in a lethal torrent of steel balls. Anyone caught in the blast radius would be torn to pieces.
‘Tiny! Get the rest of the Gimpy ammo on the roof.’ Mallet yelled at them from across the front drive. ‘Josh, start putting down some range markers for the mortar and sniper teams.’
Loader bounded back over to the Unimog. He started unloading the remaining boxes of 7.62 mm belt for the Gimpys, garlanding the linked brass around his neck. Meanwhile Bowman tapped the pressel switch on his webbing and raised Webb on the tactical radio. The latter was on the mansion rooftop, scanning the estate through the Schmidt & Bender Mark II variable sight attached to his rifle.
The two soldiers worked together, Bowman pacing out various distances from the stronghold and setting down visual markers, then reporting them back over the comms to Webb, who then made notes of the ranges with a pencil and paper. Creating a series of reference points for the guys on the roof to help determine the distance to the target. Bowman paced out fifty metres, set down a large rock from a water feature in the garden. He placed more markers at fifty-metre intervals, all the way to the fence, and then the treeline. Which was five hundred metres from the mansion. The demarcation line for the mortar. Everything between that line and the two-hundred-metre mark was mortar-lobbing territory. Anything shorter than that would land dangerously close to the defenders.
If we have to start putting down rounds at that range, thought Bowman, the enemy will have breached the estate.
And we’ll have our backs to the fucking wall.
He laid a final marker at the edge of the clearing, then jogged around the estate, checking the condition of the perimeter fence. Looking for any weak points or gaps big enough for a human to sneak through. He deposited stones beside the largest gaps, so the defenders could easily concentrate their fire on those areas.
He didn’t feel tired now. Adrenaline was taking over, juicing his bloodstream, boosting his fatigued body. Adrenaline, and the iron will to win that lived within all SAS men.
The odds of the team getting attacked in the next few hours were high, Bowman knew. The Machete Boys would expect their scout to return from the mansion shortly.
