These, I kept telling myself, are the absolute élite of the Kamangan army. Joss had told us some hair-raising stories about recruiting practices down south, how Afundi boys of twelve or thirteen were kidnapped from their villages, taken to a different area, beaten up and forced to become killers with threats of having their arms and legs cut off if they failed to perform. How many of these guys in front of us had been co-opted by such methods? How many believed that if they smeared themselves with palm nut-oil, it would make them bullet-proof? Some did, we knew, because Joss had described a fantastic scene in which one man, having anointed himself, volunteered to act as a target for an RPG.
‘Jesus!’ Phil had said, greatly excited by the idea. ‘What happened?’
‘He stood up on a wall, and somebody fire at him from about thirty metres,’ Joss replied. ‘The rocket killed him, of course. It blew him to pieces.’
‘So how did his fellow believers explain that one?’
‘Easy. They said he’d eaten food cooked by a woman, and that had destroyed the oil’s magic powers.’
I kept thinking of that as Joss went carefully through his plan, first on a blackboard, then in the dust on the ground, using small pieces of wood as individual men. He explained how, when the ambush went down, the directing staff — that is, us, the SAS — would illuminate the area with parachute flares from a Shamouli hand-held launcher. Figure targets would spring into view for a few seconds, disappear, then come back up. He emphasised how quick and accurate the members of the killer group would have to be, and rammed home the need for discipline.
He did the job well, giving clear explanations, repeating himself just the right amount, answering questions. He talked in English, but now and then, if a man didn’t seem to have understood something, he would break into rapid volleys of Nyanja. Although all the Kamangans spoke English, some of them had such peculiar intonation that it was often hard to tell what they were on about.
When he’d finished, he asked if I’d like to say a few words, so I got up and went forward beside him.
‘Zikomo, Major,’ I began. The local word for ‘thank you’ was an easy one, and several of our guys were already using it to each other. ‘Just a couple of things,’ I began, talking slowly. ‘First, I repeat what Major Mvula just said about discipline. In any ambush, the most important thing is self-control. While you’re waiting, no matter how uncomfortable you are, you must keep still. Even if a scorpion’s attacking your bollocks, you don’t move. You’ve all been in the bush. You know how movement catches the eye. If an animal keeps still, you don’t see it. If it flaps one ear, you spot it. No matter how long you have to remain in position, I don’t want to see anyone flap his ears.’
I paused, and saw one or two grins spread across the intent faces.
‘The next thing is, water. Again, it’s a matter of discipline. You must make your water last. Budget for the worst. Expect to be in position all tonight, all tomorrow and most of the next night. Drink as little as possible. Apart from anything else, the less you drink, the less you need to piss.
‘The third thing is this. There’s a chance that the exercise may turn into a live operation. As far as we know, the enemy forces are a good way to the south. But we don’t have any up-to-date intelligence. It’s possible that in the last couple of days one of the Afundi units has moved north. They may have a long-range patrol out — we don’t know. They may be creeping up the very track you’ll be watching. In other words, there’s all the more reason to remain fully alert. If an enemy patrol does come into the killing zone, you want to make sure you drop every single one of them.
‘All right, then? Do your best. We’ll be watching you.’
With that, we were ready to move. We deliberately concealed the fact that the President was due to visit, as we thought it would distract the guys and spoil their concentration. The chances were that even if he did see the ambush go down, he’d arrive on the location and leave it in the dark, so that most of his subjects wouldn’t realise he was there.
The move-up went without a hitch. The column set out on foot in single file at 1730 as the sun was going down behind the trees on the horizon, a vast, blood-red ball. In that latitude, south of the Equator, the light faded fast, and by the time the ambush party reached the site we’d chosen for the final holding area and Bergen cache, at 1910, it was fully dark. The place was easy to find, even at night, because a group of fifteen or twenty tall leadwood trees stood on their own in the middle of a sea of grass. You could see them from some distance off, no matter which way you approached.
The ambush parties left their Bergens neatly set out in formation in a glade among the trees, eight to a row, each touching the next, so that if they came back at night, every man should be able to identify his own by touch. In a last-minute check Joss made sure that everyone had full water bottles, and basic rations in his belt-kit.
We left Genesis in charge of the rear cut-off group. He had four men to maintain all-round defence on the Bergen cache and make sure nobody was trying to follow us up. There was also a Kamangan signaller to man the radio link with base. The rest of us went on. I’d detailed Pavarotti to master-mind the left cut-off group, Andy to take the right, and Phil to stick with the killer group. Whinger and I were going to lurk on the Kopje, keeping behind Joss in a kind of tactical headquarters from which we could control the exercise and react if anything went wrong. With us we had Mart, who’d brought his full medical kit in case a casualty needed immediate attention. That left Chalky, Stringer and Danny back in camp, listening out for messages from Mulongwe, and ready to receive the President, if he came.
Those of us controlling the exercise up front were in touch with each other through our covert radios, but the commanders of the various groups had only comms cords with which to send messages. Once they were in position, one pull would mean ‘Enemy in sight’, two pulls, ‘Fire!’
With only a sliver of crescent moon hanging in the sky, the night was very dark, and it was difficult to move quietly. When the eight-man left cut-off group headed out, they sounded like a herd of buffalo crashing through the scrub, and after a minute or so I went on the radio to Pav.
‘Too much fucking noise,’ I said softly. ‘Tell them to slow down.’
‘I have,’ came the answer.
‘Okay.’
The other groups were no better, and when we ourselves followed them up, I had to sympathise. In long, dry grass the going was bad enough, but in the frequent patches of mopane scrub, where the ground was littered with brittle dead leaves, it was impossible to avoid crackling and crunching. I kept telling myself that if we were in the war zone, we’d be making ourselves very vulnerable, advancing noisily in this fashion, without any forward vision.
Except for the background chorus of crickets, the night was dead quiet, with only the faintest easterly breeze, and from our vantage point on top of the Kopje Whinger, Mart and I heard a good deal of rustling and scraping as the groups settled into position. Then Pavarotti’s voice came up in my earpiece: ‘Left cut-off in.’
‘Roger,’ I answered. A couple of minutes later Phil reported the killer group in. Then came Andy, from away on the right.
‘All stations, listen out,’ I said.
I wondered what the silveries were thinking. Most of them were country lads, who’d come from villages of staw huts, without electricity, so presumably they were used to the dark. But for us Brits it was still an adventure to be out in the African night. Above us the stars were bright as diamonds, far brighter than they ever shine in the northern hemisphere. Diamonds, I thought: that’s why we’re here, to help win back the diamond mines for Bakunda. But why was Whitehall supporting him? What was the Brit government’s interest in shoring up his regime? Nobody in Hereford had been too clear about that. Maybe, if the President did join us, he’d spill a few beans.