Juggernaut

We were all very quiet as we set off.

We'd made our farewells, temporary ones I hoped. Dr Kat said that Lang might not live to see Manzu. I wondered how many of us would.

I had one curious experience on the journey. I hadn't forgotten McGrath's belligerence on the beach, and twice since he'd jibbed at instructions in a way that I could only think of as petulant. He wasn't just important to the success of our mission, he was vital. I had to find out what was bothering him.

'McGrath, I want to talk to you.'

He turned away.

'Now!'

I moved crouching away from the others and felt some relief that he followed me. We made our way forward, where small waves broke coldly over our faces.

'Mick, what the hell is eating you?' I asked.

He looked sullen. 'Nothing. I don't know what you mean,' he said. He didn't look at me.

'If you've got a gripe for God's sake say so.'

'We're not in the army, Mannix. You're not my officer and I'm not your bloody sergeant.'

'Oh Jesus!' I said. 'A goddamn prima donna. What's your beef?'

'Stop bloody ordering me about. I'm fed up with it.'

I took a deep breath. This was crazy.

I said, 'Mick, you're the. best driver we've got. You're also the nearest thing we've got to a soldier, and we're going to need your know-how more than anyone else's, even Sadiq.'

'Now don't think I'll jump when you say so, Mannix, just for a bit of flattery,' he said. To my disbelief his tone was one of pique.

'OK, McGrath, no flattery. But what's really eating you?'

He shrugged. 'Nothing.'

'Then why go temperamental on me? You've never been afraid to speak your mind before.'

He made a fist with one hand and banged it into the other. 'Well, you and me were friendly, like. We think the same way. But ever since Makara and that bit of a fight at the bridge, you've hardly said a word to me.'

I regarded him with profound astonishment. This tough and amoral man was behaving like a schoolboy who'd been jilted in his first calflove.

'I've been goddamn busy lately.'

There's more to it than that. I'd say you've taken a scunner to me. Know what that means, Yank?'

'I don't know what the hell you're talking about. If you don't take orders I can't trust you and I won't let this whole operation fall apart because of your injured feelings. When we arrive at Kanjali you stay back on the raft. Damned if I'll entrust Bing or anyone else to your moods!'

I rose abruptly to go back to the shelter of the truck. He called after me, 'Mannix! Wait!'

I crouched down again, a ludicrous position in which to quarrel, and waited.

'You're right. I'm sorry. I'll take your orders. You'll not leave me behind, will you?'

For a moment I was totally lost for words.

'All right,' I said at last, wearily. 'You come as planned. And you toe the line, McGrath. Now get back into shelter or we'll both freeze.'

Later I thought about that curious episode.

During his stint in the army and presumably in Ireland too he had never risen in rank; a man to take orders, not quite the loner he seemed. But the man whose orders he obeyed had to be one he respected, and this respect had nothing to do with rank or social standing. He had no respect for Kemp and not much for Wingstead. But for me, perhaps because I'd had the nerve to tackle him directly about Sisley's murder, certainly because he'd sensed the common thread that sometimes linked our thoughts and actions, it seemed that he had developed that particular kind of respect.

But lately I had rejected him. I had in fact avoided him ever since we'd found the body of Ron Jones. And he was sensitive enough to feel that rejection. By God, Mannix, I thought. You're a life-sized father figure to a psychopath] Once again as we neared Kanjali dawn was just breaking. The sky was pinkish and the air raw with the rise of the morning wind. Hammond instructed the engine handlers to throttle back so that we were moving barely faster than the run of the current. Before long the two bulky outlines, the ferry and the buildings on the bank, came steadily into view. Sadiq gave quiet orders and his men began handing down their rifles from the truck.

Hammond brought us close to the bank some way upstream from where he intended to stop, and the raft nuzzled into the fringing reeds which helped slow its progress. A dozen men flung themselves overboard and splashed ashore carrying mooring lines, running alongside the raft until Hammond decided to go no further. I thought of his fear of crocodiles and smiled wryly. The noise we were making was enough to scare off any living thing and I could only pray that it wouldn't carry down to the men sleeping at Kanjali.

We tied up securely and the weapons were handed ashore. Hammond set his team to separating the two parts of the raft into their original 'B'-gon shapes and transferring the two outboards to a crossbeam on the section without the truck. This was to be either our escape craft or our means of crossing to Manzu to seek help in handling the ferry.

Once on shore I had my first chance to tell Hammond privately about Dufour's truck. 'Harry saw six cases of the stuff, and checked one to be sure. If we have to we're going to threaten to use it like a fire ship. Harry's got a firing mechanism worked out. He'll come back here, set it and cut the raft free.'

'It might float clear before it goes off, Neil,' Hammond said. His horror at this amateurish plan made me glad I hadn't told him about it sooner. 'Or run aground too soon. The firing mechanism might fail. Or blow itself to smithereens and never touch Kanjali at all!'

'You know that and I know that, but will they? We'll make the threat so strong that they won't dare disbelieve it.'

It was a pretty desperate plan but it was all we had. And it didn't help that at this point Antoine Dufour approached us and said, 'Please, Monsieur Mannix, do not put too much faith in my cargo, I beg of you.' He looked deeply troubled.

'What's the matter with it? If it's old and unstable we'll have to take our chances,' I said brusquely.

'Aah, no matter.' His shrug was eloquent of distress. I sensed that he wanted to say more but my recent brush with McGrath had made me impatient with other men's problems. I had enough on my plate.

Sadiq and his men moved out. The rest of us followed, nervous and tense. We moved quietly, well down in the cover of the trees and staying far back enough from Sadiq's squad to keep them in sight until the moment they rushed the buildings. We stopped where the vegetation was cut back to make way for the landing point. I had a second opportunity to look at the moored ferry where it was caught in the sun's first rays as though in a searchlight beam.

This time I recognized what had eluded me before.

This was no modern ferry. It was scarred and battered, repainted many times but losing a battle to constant rust, a valiant old warhorse now many years from its inception and many miles from its home waters. It was an LCM, Landing Craft Mechanized, a logistics craft created during the war years that led up to the Normandy landings in 1944. Developed from the broad-beamed, shallow-draughted barges of an earlier day, these ships had carried a couple of tanks, an assortment of smaller vehicles or a large number of men into action on the sloping European beaches. Many of them were still in use all over the world. It was about fifty feet long.

What this one was doing here on an inland lake up an unnavigable river was anybody's guess.

I turned my attention to Kanjali, lying below us. There were five buildings grouped around the loading quay. A spur from the road to Fort Pirie dropped steeply to the yards. Running into the water was a concrete ramp, where the bow of the ferry would drop for traffic to go aboard. A couple of winches and sturdy bollards stood one to either side. Just beyond was a garage.