The Major sucked through his teeth and said nothing.
A soldier stepped out and waved us down. Our small convoy pulled over and the Major got out. I decided to stay where I was, as I didn’t want the man to be seen to reduce his standing by having a young and attractive white woman tell him what to do. I was getting enough curious and admiring glances from the drivers, soldiers and other travellers as it was.
That thought stuck with me.
A white woman.
I knew I was white, but I no longer thought of myself as anything other than a woman.
That scared me. How could I forget a lifetime of conditioning so quickly?
I glanced at Harvey.
This man had known me in both guises and seemed happy to treat me as to how I appeared. Had I really changed that much?
I glanced at my reflection in the wing mirror. I did look attractive, I suppose. I think I looked more like a Hollywood starlet dressed in combat gear for that sexy look, as perfected by the Bunny Girl in Under Siege with Stephen Segal, than a real soldier. I laughed with little humour. Had I been male, even I might have fancied me.
The Major and his minion spoke heatedly with much arm swinging and gesticulating. After a few minutes the good major returned and opened my door.
“Ma’am, the presidential convoy has passed through five minutes ago. The soldiers were waiting for him and they have proceeded together towards Juminka, the capital.”
“What happened to asking them to wait?” I asked.
He smiled apologetically.
“It seems, Ma’am, that someone in Accra thought it best if they got over the border as soon as possible.”
It made sense, for now whatever happened wasn’t a Ghanaian problem.
“Could you authorise our papers to move through to Mgombi, please Major? We have the necessary Mgombi stamps already,” I asked.
Chapter Seventeen.
To give Major Mahama his due, he was efficient at shouting and this seemed to work. Within a few short minutes we had left him waving at the border and were hurtling along a very pot-holed road towards Juminka. I thought Ghanaian roads were bad, but the Mgombi roads were ten times worse.
I tried to put myself in Malcolm Mombossu’s shoes. What would I do to eradicate the problem of G’ymbai returning?
I’d try to eliminate him before he got back, because that way no popular rising would take place in the immediate vicinity. Also, with G’ymbai dead, the popular rising would fail and that meant a restoration of power to Malcolm Mombossu.
If that failed then I could send a crack team of soldiers to do the job immediately after he crossed, but there would always be a danger of not achieving the goal. No, The most effective way would be to assassinate him on home turf in Juminka, the capital, where I’d have a strong and loyal group close by to ensure that any uprising would be quashed, while troops loyal to G’ymbai was in a position of disadvantage, like in transit and not prepared.
“My guess is that they’ll wait until he gets to Juminka before trying anything, particularly if the large detachment of troops loyal to G’ymbai has met with the escorting group. Of course, he could set up an ambush and do the deed somewhere in between.”
“So you want me to overtake them?” Harvey asked.
“Can you?”
He nodded out the window. We’d caught up with the convoy.
It had stopped in a small town. People were everywhere, cheering and waving flags or anything they could get their hands on. I saw one woman waving her baby.
The soldiers were trying in vain to push people way to keep the vehicles clear, but there were too many people.
The 4x4s were up front, with several olive green military vehicles at the rear. The armed soldiers were facing the crowd, but everyone was smiling and there was no hostility at all. G’ymbai was standing on the bonnet of one of the trucks waving his arms to try to get the people to be quiet. I saw him glance our way. He waved at me, so I returned the wave.
“Can we go round?” I asked.
Harvey just laughed and swung off the road, heading through the scrubland to the north of the buildings. At one point we drove over what might have been a football pitch, as a group of semi-naked boys stared at us for a moment and then continued to play with no boots and a half-deflated ball.
We rejoined the road a few kilometres further on. It was only fifty kilometres to the capital.
I used the walkie-talkie to inform the others of the development and then used the satellite phone to contact the office. I wanted as much intelligence as I could get on the whereabouts of Malcolm Mombossu and those loyal to him. I needed to know how many and how well armed they might be.
I hadn’t thought about meeting him again, but realised that in a funny sort of way I wanted to. I also wanted him to know who I was, but knew that I would probably never get the chance.
The road was bad. Not only was the road surface quite simply appalling at best and non-existent at worst, but also the traffic was impossible. Broken-down trucks or accidents blocked the road every few kilometres, so we drove for long stretches through the bush, avoiding trees, some of the larger boulders and holes in the ground. Several yam farmers were probably cursing us, but we did make slow and steady progress.
The terrain started to change as we climbed slightly into some hills. The trees became larger and the hills steeper. I began to get an uneasy feeling.
“Harvey, pull over, there’s a love,” I said, and at the next suitable spot, he pulled over to the right, behind some trees so we were hidden from the road.. The other vehicles pulled in along side.
“If you were going to pick a spot for an ambush, what sort of terrain would you select?” I asked Harvey, staring at the countryside around us.
He stared at the thickness of the trees and the commanding views available from the hillsides on both sides of the road.
“How do we do this?”
I picked up the phone. I marvelled at the power that the organisation to which I belonged held so casually. I shook my head in wonder. Had I, as a British Army Captain, requested a satellite fly by with live feed to me as a commander on the ground, I’d have been laughed at throughout the Ministry of Defence.
Now, I asked and it happened after only twenty minutes wait.
My hunch had been correct. The observers in the control room somewhere in the US informed me that a group of what appeared to be armed men with all terrain vehicles were dispersed some two kilometres further on from my position. The valley narrowed to almost be a gorge at this point, widening out again afterwards. They counted approximately sixty men, and even managed to feed the information to us on the laptop that Harvey connected to the phone.
We could even see ourselves parked line abreast in the small field.
Sixty men wasn’t a large force, but then it didn’t need to be as they were planning a surprise attack, and one that the victims would never get close enough or live long enough to count them.
I studied the still images of the scene, checking my map and making some marks so that I knew exactly where they were and where we were.
“They’ve got fifteen up high on the north side, and the rest are to the south of the road amongst the trees. If I was them, I’d put missiles, heavy machine guns and snipers up high, and ensure that the others had mortars, grenades and heavy fire power to get the job done without giving the prey a chance to get a fix or fight back.”
“Orders?” Harvey asked.
I was still looking at the images.
“They’ve managed to get their vehicles off the road, so it looks like there’s a track here, but it’s not on the map. It’s probably a forestry or farm track or similar, so not brilliant. If we can take out their vehicles then they can’t escape at any speed. I think it would be a mistake to take them on too soon before their target arrives, so we should get ourselves into a commanding position, so that we can engage them just before they attack the convoy. We need to get word to the convoy, and warn them of what’s going to go down.”