The Spoilers / Juggernaut (41 page)

‘Yes, I see all that. I take your point about the food, and water, and possibly fuel. But there’s something else, isn’t there?’

‘Yes indeed. There’s Manzu.’

‘The Republic of Manzu? But we can’t get there by crossing the river with the rig. There’s no bridge. And it’s another country, Neil. We don’t have the necessary papers to enter. We’ve got no business with Manzu.’

I felt a wave of exasperation. ‘Basil, use your head! If necessary we abandon the rig. Yes, abandon it. I know it’s valuable, but the crew matters more. We can get them
across the river, and they’re safe in a neutral country. And as refugees, and whites at that, we’ll get plenty of help and plenty of publicity. I bet nobody would dare touch the rig or the rest of the convoy with a bargepole; they’d be valuable assets for negotiations to either side.’

Actually I didn’t believe this myself. I thought that without our expertise to handle it the rig, abandoned in the rainforest, would be so much junk and treated as such by all parties. But I had to convince Kemp to see things my way. I knew what the priorities were, and they didn’t include taking a team of men into the desert to become hostages to either side in a shooting war. Or food for the vultures either.

‘I’ll have to think about it.’

‘Naturally. There’s a lot we need to know. But keep it in mind. Nothing will happen until we get to Kodowa, and we’re not there yet. And by then the whole picture may have changed.’

‘Right you are. Can we get back to here and now, please? Are you staying with us?’

‘I sure am. I’d hate to try and drive back to the coast without knowing what’s going on there. When do you plan to get started?’

‘Immediately. We should get to Kodowa tomorrow morning. I won’t stop too close to the town, though, not in these circumstances. Will you ride with me in the Land Rover? We can plan as we go. I’ll get someone else to bring your car.’

A little later we were on the move once more. Rumbling along in the dust, the rig and its attendants were left behind as we set off to find out what was happening in Kodowa. Yesterday Kemp had expected to be buying fresh fruit and vegetables in the marketplace; today his expectations were entirely different.

As Kemp pulled ahead of the convoy I saw with approval that two of Sadiq’s motorcyclists shot past us and then slowed down, holding their distance ahead, one at about a quarter of a mile, one at half a mile. Kemp drove fairly slowly, carefully scrutinizing the road surface and checking the bends. Once or twice he spoke over the car phone to the rig but otherwise we drove in silence for some time. He was deeply preoccupied.

After we had gone a dozen miles or so he said, ‘I’ve been thinking.’

The words had an ominous ring.

‘Pull over and let’s talk.’

He asked me to flesh out the political situation and I added my speculations concerning the Air Force and Sadiq’s attitude, I sensed his growing truculence, but when the reason for it finally surfaced I was dismayed. If I had thought of John Sutherland as lacking in imagination he shrank into insignificance beside Kemp.

‘I don’t think much of all this,’ he said. ‘There’s not one solid bit of evidence that any of it is happening.’

‘A while ago back up the road there was a guy who wanted to shoot up the convoy,’ I said. ‘What do you call that?’

‘All they did was threaten, get excited. They may well have been on exercises. The jets that came over—we’ve
seen others before. I’m not sure I believe any of this, Neil. And that army detachment is way ahead of us by now.’

‘How do you know? They may have stopped round the next corner. And there are others, not all necessarily as friendly.’ But I knew I wasn’t getting through to him. Something had set his opinions in concrete, and I had to find out what it was and chip it out fast.

I said, ‘As soon as we get to Kodowa I’m going to have a try at getting back to Port Luard. I may be able to get a plane, or at least an army escort. I want to get the gen from headquarters, and not on the air. Before I go I’ll want the names of every man you’ve got with you.’ I took out a notebook and pen. Kemp looked at me as if I were going crazy.

‘Why do you want to know that?’

I noticed he didn’t query my intention to return to base. Perhaps he’d be pleased to see the back of me. ‘Just tell me,’ I said.

‘I insist on knowing why.’

I thought it wise to be brutal.

‘To tell their next of kin, and the company, if they get killed. That goes for you too, of course.’

‘My God! You’re taking this seriously!’

‘Of course I am. It is serious, and I think you know it. Let’s have those names.’

He was reluctant but complied. ‘There’s Ben Hammond; the drivers are McGrath, Jones, Grafton and Lang. Bert Proctor, on rig maintenance with Ben. Two boys on the airlift truck, Sisley and Pitman—both Bob, by the way. Thorpe, who came with you. Burke and Wilson. In the commissary truck we’ve got Bishop and young Sandy Bing. Fourteen with me. I don’t know their addresses.’ This last was said sarcastically but I treated it as a straight fact.

‘No, we can get those from head office if necessary. You might want to write a message for me to take back to

Wingstead—assuming I get back.’

‘You really mean to try? It could be—’

‘Dangerous? But I thought you said there wasn’t any danger?’

He fiddled with the car keys. ‘I’m not totally stupid, Mannix. Of course I realize there could be trouble. But your plan—’

At last we were getting to the root of his problem. Something about my hastily formulated escape plan had touched a nerve, and now I could guess what it was. ‘I’ll leave you a written letter too, if you like. If there is danger and the rig looks like holding up any chances of your all getting clear, you’re to abandon it immediately.’

I had guessed right. His face became set and stubborn. ‘Hold on a minute. That’s the whole thing. I’m not abandoning this job or the rig just on your say-so, or for any damned local insurrection. It’s got too much of our sweat in it.’

I looked at him coldly. ‘If you’re the kind of man who would trade a pile of scrap metal for lives you can consider yourself fired as of now.’

His face was pale. ‘Wyvern has a contract. You can’t do that.’

‘Can’t I? Go ahead and sue the company; you’ll be stripped naked in public. Christ, man, the transformer is worth ten times as much as the rig and yet I’m prepared to drop it like hot coal if it hinders getting the men out alive. I can order you to leave the rig and I’m doing it. In writing, if you like. I take full responsibility.’

He couldn’t find words for a moment. He was outraged, but perhaps at himself as much as at me. He had seen the chasm under his feet: the moment when a man puts property before life is a crisis point, and as a normally ethical man he had realized it.

‘Come on, Basil.’ I softened. ‘I do understand, but you’ve got to see reason. Damn it, British Electric will have to make good if you abandon your rig on my say-so. You’d have your money back in spades one day.’

‘Of course the chaps’ lives come first—my own too. It’s just that I…I can’t get used to the idea of—’

‘Leaving it to rot? Of course not. But war does funny things to men and equipment alike, assuming there is going to be a war. And we dare not assume otherwise. Think again.’

He sat silent, pale and shaken. Then at last he said, ‘All right, if we have to do it, we will. But not unless we absolutely must, you hear me?’

‘Of course not. And in any case, you don’t have to throw it off a mountain top, you know. Just park it in some nice lay-by and you can come and pick it up when the shooting’s over.’

He gave me a wan smile.

‘I’d like to drive back to the rig,’ he said. ‘I want a word with Ben. And we could do with something to eat.’ It was a truce offering, and I accepted.

The rig was crawling along into the growing heat of the day, moving so slowly that it disturbed relatively little dust. Strung out ahead and behind were the rest of the convoy and the military vehicles. There was a timeless, almost lulling atmos phere to the whole scene, but I wondered how much of it I could take. The rig drivers must be specially trained in patience and endurance.

Kemp signalled the chuck wagon out of line and Bishop started a brew up and a dispensing of doorstep sandwiches. My hired car had suddenly come into its own as a delivery wagon, to Kemp’s pleasure freeing the Land Rover from that chore. ‘We’ll keep this car on,’ he said. ‘We should have had an extra one all along.’

‘I’m sure Avis will be delighted.’

Sadiq reported that he had sent scouts ahead to find out how things were on the Kodowa road. He had stationed a similar escort well behind the convoy lest anything else
should come up from the direction of the bridge. He was working hard and doing quite well in spite of the unexpected pressures.

Over tea and sandwiches Hammond and Kemp had a long conversation which seemed to be entirely technical, something to do with the rig’s performance since the air bags had been removed. It wasn’t a major problem but one of those small hitches which enthrall the minds of technicians everywhere. Presently Kemp said that he wanted to drive alongside the rig for a while, to watch her in action, and invited me to join him.

Just as we were starting we heard a whisper from the air and looked up to see the contrails of jets flying northwards high up. There were several of them, not an unusual sight, and nobody mentioned it. But our eyes followed them thoughtfully as they vanished from sight.

The rest of that morning moved as slowly as though the mainspring of time itself had weakened. We were entering the foothills of the escarpment which separated the scrubland from the arid regions ahead, and there were a series of transverse ridges to cross so that the road rose and dipped like a giant roller coaster. We would crawl up a rise to find a shallow valley with the next rise higher than the last. At the crest of every rise the dim, blue-grey wall of the escarpment would become just that little more distinct. Kemp now had three tractors coupled up to haul on the hills and control the speed on the down slopes. When he got to the escarpment proper he would need all four.

Curiously enough the vegetation was a little lusher here and the country seemed more populous. There was a village every mile or so and a scattering of single huts in between. The huts were made of grass thatched with palm leaves, or double walls of woven withies filled with dried mud. If one burnt down or blew over it could be replaced in a day.

The villagers grew corn, which the British called maize, and sweet potatoes, and scrawny chickens pecked among the huts. They herded little scraggy goats and cows not much bigger, and thin ribby dogs hung about looking for scraps. The people were thin too, but cleanly clothed and with a certain grave dignity. They lined the route to watch us go by, clearly awed and fascinated but not in a holiday mood. In one village a delegation took Sadiq away to talk to their headman, and the men of the village seemed a little threatening towards the troops. No women or children were to be seen which was unusual.

Sadiq came back with bad news. ‘Hussein’s battalion went through here very fast and a child was killed. Nobody stopped and the people are all very angry.’

‘My God, that’s awful.’ Suddenly Kemp looked much more as though he believed in our talk of civil war. I thought of what Napoleon had said about eggs and omelettes, but people weren’t eggs to be smashed. If there were much of this sort of thing going on there would be scant support from the rural populace for either side, not that the local people had any say in what went on.

Kemp asked if we could do anything to help, but was told that it would be best to keep going. ‘They know it wasn’t you,’ Sadiq said. ‘They do not want you here but they have no quarrel with you. You cannot help their grief.’

We moved out again to catch up with the rig and I asked to ride with Sadiq. I had some more questions to ask him, and this seemed like a good moment. As we pulled away I began with an innocuous question. ‘How come there are so many people living here? There seem to be more than at the coast.’

‘It is healthier country; less fever, less heat. And the land is good, when the rains come.’

Then the radio squawked and Sadiq snatched up the earphones and turned up the gain. He listened intently, replied
and then said to me, ‘Something is happening up the road. Not so good. I’m going to see. Do you want to come?’

‘I’d like to.’I hadn’t the slightest desire to go hurtling into trouble, but the more I could learn the better.

He eased out of the line and barrelled up the road. Behind us his sergeant crouched over the earphones though I doubt that he could have heard anything. Several miles ahead of the place where Kemp and I had previously stopped and turned back we came across one of Sadiq’s troop trucks parked just below the top of a rise; the motorcyclists were there too. The corporal who headed the detachment pointed along the road, towards a haze of smoke that came from the next valley or the one beyond.

‘A bush fire, perhaps?’ I asked. But I didn’t think so.

‘Perhaps. My corporal said he heard thunder in the hills an hour ago. He is a fool, he said he thought the rains were coming early.’

‘No clouds.’

‘He has never heard gunfire.’

‘I have. Have you?’ I asked. He nodded.

‘I hope it is not Kodowa,’ he said softly. ‘I think it is too near for that. We shall go and see.’ He didn’t mention the planes we’d all seen earlier.

We went off fast with the cyclists about a mile ahead and the truck rattling along behind. There was nothing abnormal in the next valley but as we climbed the hill a cyclist came roaring back. Sadiq heard what he had to say and then stopped below the crest of the hill. He went back to the truck and the men bailed out, fanning into a line.

He signalled to me and I followed him as he angled off the road, running through the thick scrub. At the top of the ridge he bent double and then dropped flat on his belly. As I joined him I asked, ‘What is it?’

‘There are tanks on the other side. I want to know whose they are before I go down.’

He snaked forward and fumbled his binoculars out of their case. He did a quick scan and then stared in one direction for some time. At last he motioned me to come forward and handed me the glasses.

There were four tanks in the road. One was still burning, another was upside down, its tracks pointing to the sky. A third had run off the road and into a ditch. There didn’t seem to be much the matter with the fourth, it just sat there. There were three bodies visible and the road was pitted with small, deep craters and strewn with debris.

I’d seen things like that before. I handed him back the glasses and said, ‘An air strike with missiles. Hussein?’

‘His tanks, yes. They have the Second Battalion insignia. I see no command car.’

He looked around to where his corporal waited, made a wide sweeping motion with one hand and then patted the top of his own head. That didn’t need much interpretation: go around the flank and keep your head down.

In the event there was no need for caution; there were no living things on the road except the first inquisitive carrion birds. Sadiq had the vehicles brought up and then we examined the mess. The three bodies in the road had come out of the burning tank. They were all badly charred with their clothing burnt off, but we reckoned they had been killed by machine gunfire. The tank that seemed intact had a hole the size of an old British penny in the turret around which the paint had been scorched off until the metal showed. That damage had been done by a shaped charge in the head of a stabilized missile. I knew what they’d find in the tank and I didn’t feel inclined to look for myself. Anyone still inside would be spread on the walls.

Sadiq gave orders to extinguish the fire in the burning tank, and the dead bodies were collected together under a tarpaulin. There was no sign of the rest of the men except
for some bloodstains leading off into the bush. They had scarpered, wounded or not.

I said, ‘Nothing is going to get past here until this lot is shifted. We need one of Kemp’s tractors. Shall I go back and tell him what’s happened? Someone can bring one along. He’s only using three.’

‘Yes, you can ride on the back of one of the motorcycles. I do not think there is any danger—now.’ But we both scanned the sky as he spoke. There wasn’t much that needed discussion, but it seemed evident to me that the civil war had finally erupted, and the Air Force had gone with the opposition. I felt a wave of sickness rise in my throat at the thought of what the future was likely to hold.