Dark Heart (26 page)

‘And ideally I would like some kind of artillery or armour in support,' the army man concluded. ‘Especially if they are going against a fortification of any kind. Even a wooden stockade.'

‘Admiral?' Chaka's voice betrayed frustration and anger mounting from volcanic to seismic, thought Richard sympatheti-cally. The admiral's dress whites were at least less laden than those of his colleagues. But his words were only marginally more hopeful.

‘We have five more Shaldag fast patrol boats. They could get up there within eight hours if they can proceed at full speed. But Captain Maina's reports of channels being all but blocked by water hyacinth make me wonder whether we could actually guarantee to get them there even within that time frame. Of course, anything larger, like the one corvette still functioning, couldn't even begin to get up there. Independently of blocked channels, she has far too deep a draft even to consider it. No. Only the Shaldags could make it. Like the FPB004 which is on site already, they could each carry ten commandos or seals doubling as crew. But sixty men isn't much of an army, even though they'll have the back-up of a considerable artillery section of six 20 millimetre guns with twelve 0.5 millimetre machine guns, one pair per boat.'

President Chaka looked around the room, frowning, his anger and frustration erupting at last. ‘That's the best we can do is it?' the ex-General, ex-tank commander snarled. ‘Sixty men, half a dozen 20 millimetre cannon and a dozen or so light machine guns, sometime this afternoon or, perhaps, this evening
if we're lucky
. . .'

Richard cleared his throat and stepped forward, almost literally into the fray. ‘Actually, Mr President, no. It's not the best you can do at all. I believe that, with your permission and with the cooperation of these gentlemen, I can deliver three hundred and fifty troops armed to your specifications, one T80U main battle tank with a 125 millimetre cannon, two RIM 116 missile systems, four 30 millimetre Gatlings, and two 140 millimetre Ogon rocket systems, to a point precisely beside FPB004's present position within six hours of the moment I get your go-ahead. And I can deliver them in a safe environment that will allow all the men and materiel to land on the slope of a bank which I believe lies downhill from the chapel – and which, therefore, will be within a couple of hundred yards of the stockade wall.'

‘What!' spat Minister Ngama. ‘Do you have some kind of Obi magic?'

‘No, Minister,' answered Richard gently. ‘I have a Zubr class air-cushioned landing craft called
Stalingrad
. And she is at your disposal, Mr President.'

‘But she is not armed!' said President Chaka, his frown becoming less apoplectic and more calculating. ‘She has aboard nothing more than the toys with which Mr Asov humiliated Captain Maina – paint-filled warheads, blank rounds. Even the T80U, the upgraded tank he has brought for me to look at, is very limited in the matter of arms and armament. Benin la Bas is not the sort of country that allows unregulated arms imports!'

Unless, of course, you're a smuggler disguised as a UN patrol,
thought Richard. But for once in his life he kept his smart retort to himself. Instead, he said, ‘I believe I have a way round that, Mr President, a way to arm her quickly and efficiently even as she proceeds upriver to her target. I believe I have a plan that will guarantee the best hope for General Nlong's prisoners. And for your daughter, of course. As long as I can count on your cooperation. And that of these gentlemen.'

The president looked round the oval office with eyes as hard as jet. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to wait outside, Captain Mariner,' he said, showing Richard to the door. ‘I'm sure we won't keep you long!'

Half an hour later, Richard was sitting beside Colonel Kebila in a staff car heading for the docks. In the inside pocket of his jungle-proof jacket he carried a letter from the president which was almost the kind of commission familiar to him from the Hornblower novels he had loved in his younger days. ‘To whom it may concern,' it said. ‘You are hereby requested and required to furnish Captain Richard Mariner with any and all assistance he may demand . . .'

It was not so much that the document gave him extra confidence – though there was no doubt that it added considerably to his clout – it was more that it rearranged his priorities by making him, albeit temporarily, an officer of the state.
‘Have you put a tracking device on me, Colonel?' he asked, without giving the question much thought.

‘Of course, Captain. It is in your Benincom phone. When Mr Bourne arranged for one to be sent to Heritage Mariner I had a bug put in as a matter of simple expediency. You are not the sort of man I wish to have running around my country unobserved. That is why I was tracking your movements personally right from the moment you deplaned at the international airport. Look at what you and Mrs Mariner became involved in on your last visit. What uncalculated consequences arose from a simple attempt to negotiate some oil concessions with the previous administration. A near civil war and a new president being perhaps the least of them. It is the way you seem to do things. Cause things. Do you remember Sergeant Major Tchaba, my driver here? All you did to him was to steal his boots.
Borrow
his boots, perhaps;
in a good cause
of course – that goes without saying. But now he has a false foot. Uncalculated consequences. This part of Africa is full of them after all, is it not? The uncalculated consequences of your ancestors setting up the slave trade. The uncalculated consequences of a European and American rush for ivory, rubber, copper, gold and diamonds. And oil, I need hardly add. And the new, wider, imperatives. Cassiterite and coltan; tin and tantalum. The western lust for things as innocent as baked beans and mobile phones – let alone for motor car tyres, petrol engines, jewellery and so forth – simply leads to my countrymen being enslaved and slaughtered. And crippled.'

‘Perhaps it is you who should be running for president, Colonel,' said Richard stiffly.

‘If I thought I could send the IMF, the World Bank, the CIA –' he paused meaningfully – ‘the UN, the NGOs, the charities, Exxon, Shell, Mobil, De Beers, Bashnev-Sevmash and, yes, Heritage Mariner, and all they represent packing, then I might perhaps consider it. But alas, I, like you, live in the real world. In which it is necessary to employ a Russian hovercraft armed with American and European weaponry to transport one African army to confront another African army – in order to rescue several hundred African children, and, more importantly it appears, half a dozen
non-African
nuns and priests.'

‘And the president's daughter,' added Richard shortly, his mind distracted by something of a revelation – the way Kebila had coupled the World Bank and the CIA – could that explain the delectable Dr Bonnie Holliday?

‘Yes.' Kebila looked straight ahead, frowning. Richard remembered what Robin had said on the night of the white-tie reception. The colonel loved Celine Chaka more than anything and anyone else on earth. ‘As you say,' whispered Laurent Kebila. ‘And the president's daughter.'

As Kebila's staff car drew up at the slipway beside the mooring point occupied yesterday by the crippled
Otobo
, so Zhukov eased
Stalingrad
back to the place where his massive fans had all but destroyed the buildings through which the limousine was driving. This time, however, the three great motors were on near-idle, and the airstreams coming from them were pointing safely out to sea. The broad rounded bow of the Zubr slid ashore, the inflated skirts making no differentiation between sea and land, except that the metre-high wall of spray around them fell away to nothing. Then they slowly deflated and the massive vessel settled on to the ground. A fore-section opened and lowered itself on to the concrete with a
clang
and Richard found himself looking into a rectangle of darkness twenty metres wide and eight metres high, whose depth he could only guess at – though he reckoned fifty metres at least. Kebila gaped. ‘And you expect to get this beast up the river?' he breathed.

‘Its draft is less than a Shaldag's, even without the skirts inflated and fully laden. With the skirts up, it will ride over anything up to and including two metre walls. Irrespective of water hyacinth, shallows, sandbars and mud flats, of course. My only real worry is the ruined crossing at Citematadi. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, as they say.'

Richard stepped out of the staff car and closed the door. He looked in at Kebila's thoughtful profile for a moment, then he turned and walked swiftly and purposefully towards the Zubr. The Benincom phone in his jacket pocket tapped rhythmically against his thigh and for a moment he considered chucking it into the harbour. But then he thought better of the childish action. He would almost certainly need to use the local cellphone network – and he really didn't give a damn if Kebila knew exactly where he was during the next twelve hours or so – because he was going to be as far upriver and as near to the heart of the delta as he could get, and it would probably be safer if his movements were known at all times.

Before he reached the huge hovercraft, however, he turned smartly right and crossed to the security barrier that protected the Naval HQ. ‘I'd like to see the CO,' he said in his rough Matadi, making first use of his letter of authority. The presidential signature and stamp worked wonders and he was ushered into the camp commander's office five minutes later. ‘What can I do for you, Captain?' asked the officer in flawless, if French accented, English.

‘
Otobo
's chief engineer. Is he available?' asked Richard.

‘He is aboard at the moment, inspecting the fire damage and the water damage and preparing his report for the admiral's inquiry.'

‘Is there any way I can communicate with him?' asked Richard, and five minutes later he found himself in the room that Kebila and Anastasia had been standing in last night when the first news from the Shaldag had arrived.

‘The chief's name is Oganga,' the communications officer in smart lieutenant's whites told Richard. Redundantly, as it turned out.

‘Chief engineer Oganga here,' barked the radio suddenly, in locally accented English. ‘What is it now?'

‘Chief Oganga, my name is Richard Mariner and I'm sorry to disturb you. I know you're doing vital work and it can't be any fun for you.'

‘Well?' asked the chief, clearly somewhat mollified.

‘I have to ask you a couple of things. They are vitally important. The first is about power aboard
Otobo
, and the second is about your own personal availability to participate in a little project that we're planning for later in the day . . .'

After his conversation with Chief Oganga, Richard went back to the CO's office. ‘Chief Oganga needs half a dozen of his engineering crew out on
Otobo
as soon as you can get them there. And some equipment. Here's a list,' he said. ‘It's an urgent matter or I wouldn't be bothering either of you.'

‘It's no trouble at all, and I can get all of these men, I think,' said the officer affably enough after a quick glance at the list. ‘And everything else. I also have Shaldag FPB002 immediately available. Everything and everyone will be there within the hour.'

Richard was hurrying back towards the Zubr when his Benincom cellphone rang. He slipped it out and answered it on the run. It was Anastasia. ‘Are you going back up the river?' she asked without introducing herself or indulging in any pleasantries.

‘Yes. How did you find out?'

‘Kebila. I'm at the hospital with Esan and Ado. He came in to collect his smuggler for a question and answer session down in his torture chamber. I offered to help but he said no. We're coming with you. Don't go anywhere without us.'

Richard was silent for a heartbeat – two strides. On the one hand he was weighing what Max's reaction to his daughter's plan would be – especially as it was his vessel under the command of his men. On the other hand, here were the three people who knew the river, the situation, the compound and the Army of Christ the Infant best of all. ‘Of course,' he said. ‘Get to the dock as quickly as you can.'

‘You took enough time making up your mind,' observed Anastasia icily.

‘I must be getting old,' he countered. ‘My reaction times are slowing down. I suggest you come via
Nellie
if there's anything aboard her that you want.'

‘Nothing there,' she answered shortly. ‘Kebila's men took all our guns. And we've all been supplied with everything else. Whether we wanted it or not. Everything except what we
really
wanted . . . Like children . . .'

‘Don't worry about that. We'll have enough guns to satisfy even you.'

‘Boy!' said Anastasia. ‘Do you ever know the way to a girl's heart! Maybe you're the one with the Obi.'

And that was all it took to set something off in Richard's mind. After he broke contact with Anastasia he contacted the Granville Royal Lodge Hotel and asked for Andre Wanago in person. A few moments later, as he was slipping the mobile back into his pocket, the first of the army trucks came rumbling past at about ten miles per hour, its canvas rear section packed with well-armed men. He leaped up on to the footplate at the back, grabbed a handhold and was carried aboard
Stalingrad
with the first of the soldiers.

The space inside the Zubr was massive, echoing like a hangar. Twenty-five metres wide and fifty metres deep, the floor space was twelve hundred and fifty square metres. It stood eight metres high so the cubic capacity was just on ten thousand cubic metres. It was more like a level on a multi-storey car park than anything one would expect to find aboard a fighting vessel smaller than an aircraft carrier. The truck drew up beside a T80U main battle tank that was simply dwarfed by the size of the chamber it was parked in.