About halfway to the location, lions started calling from the same quarter as the night before. I stopped to listen, not sure how my companion would react. I was amazed when he whispered, ‘An old male.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘The depth of the voice.’
‘You’re a lion expert, then?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. But I grew up in the bush. When I was a boy, we saw lions every day.’
‘Where was that?’
‘Here, man, right here!’ He gave his high-pitched giggle again and pointed behind us. ‘I was born in a hut in Mbiya, the village where the camp is.’
‘So that’s why you opted to come out on this exercise?’
‘Partly, yes. I wanted to see you fellows in action, but it’s always nice to come home.’
The lions had gone quiet, and I started forward again, wondering how the hell a ragamuffin boy raised in one of those grass huts could have climbed to the top of the tree. This guy must have both brains and guts, I decided.
In a few more minutes we reached a single big rock which stood in the open about 200 metres short of the Kopje. I stopped beside it and gave the pressel on my radio two jabs.
‘Green One?’ Whinger’s voice came low but clear in my earpiece.
‘At the rock,’ I told him. ‘Our visitor’s with me. Everything okay?’
‘One ND.’
‘I thought I heard something. Nobody injured, is there?’
‘No, no.’
‘When was it?’
‘About an hour ago. Otherwise, no problem. Come on in.’
‘Roger. With you in a couple of minutes.’
‘What happened?’ Bakunda asked.
‘They had an ND — a negligent discharge. Somebody let off a round by mistake. Come on — let’s get in there.’
Over that last stretch I moved with extreme care, partly to impress my companion, partly from a sense of self-preservation. When I warned him about the danger of getting fired at, I hadn’t been bullshitting. I knew that by now the Kamangans must be well on edge, expecting action any moment: after the fiasco with the hyena, it wouldn’t have surprised me if one of them loosed off at any noise he heard, and bugger the pre-set arcs of fire. The news of the ND only strengthened my suspicions.
As we crawled the last few yards up the ridge of the Kopje, I saw Whinger’s head appear above a rock. I’d already told Bakunda who we’d be meeting, so I just whispered introductions and moved him up to the good vantage point, in the gully between two rocks. The starlight was bright enough for all the main features to show clearly.
‘There you are,’ I whispered. ‘The River Congo. The killer group’s straight down below us. Right-hand cut-off group over there, left-hand there. See the baobab? That’s the divider between the arcs of fire on that side.’
‘How do the groups communicate?’ Bakunda whispered. ‘Radios?’ He gestured at my earpiece.
I shook my head. ‘No. The guys are lying very close to each other — only three or four feet apart. The commander of each group has a comms cord. At this stage, one pull will mean “enemy coming in”, two, “enemy on target”.’
It took only a minute to show him our dispositions. Then I pulled back to make final checks with my own guys out front. When Phil, Andy and Pavarotti all reported satisfactorily, there seemed no point in waiting any longer, so I said, ‘Green One to all stations. Action in figures two minutes from now. Wait out.’
I’d already got five shamoulis laid out on a flat patch of grass among the rocks. Now I pulled out the safety pins on their white cords, so that the brass triggers dropped down, ready for firing. I handed the first of them to Whinger, who stood it on the ground and held it at an angle, like a mortar.
‘Green One. Thirty seconds…’ My own heart was going faster than usual, even though I’d been through this many times before. ‘Twenty… ten… five… stand by, stand by.’
I raised a thumb at Whinger. WHOOSH! went the rocket, racing up over the killing ground. The para-flare burst with a soft pop, and suddenly the whole area was bathed in harsh white light. Whinger waited a second, then, as soon as he saw the chute starting to float left-handed, put up another rocket to the right.
BRRRRRPPPP! A burst of automatic fire ripped out from below us. Tracer rounds skimmed away high over the bush ahead, way above any possible target on the ground.
‘CUNT!’ roared a voice which I recognised as Andy’s. ‘Wait for the fucking targets!’
‘Ground targets,’ I said quietly over the radio.
With a faint rattle in the distance, eight figure targets sprang into view. At the same moment Pav switched on the battery-powered ambush lights, flooding the scene with light.
From in front and below us a high African voice screamed out the order ‘Rapid fire!’
As one, the killer group opened up. After the night silence, the noise seemed phenomenal. I could hear the AK47s firing short bursts of three or four rounds, with the gympis putting in longer bursts among them. Somebody’s rounds were going very low. Dust exploded in front of the targets and boiled up in the lights, obscuring the figures. Tracer showed that many rounds were flying way over the trees.
I counted to fifteen, then ordered, ‘Ground targets down.’
The figures vanished, but the firing continued for several seconds. As soon as it ceased, I called, ‘Tree targets up.’
This time the response was much slower. Whinger and I could see the new targets, which had swung into view round the trunks of trees, but through the dust haze nobody else spotted them. At last the Kamangan commander yelled out, ‘Engage single targets!’ and another fusillade began.
Again we gave them fifteen seconds, then a pause with nothing in sight. Next I got Pav to bring up four of the ground targets for five or six seconds only, and in the middle of that barrage I got Andy to fire the claymores.
Ba-boom! With blinding flashes the two heavy explosions went off almost simultaneously. Seething dust blotted out the entire killing ground.
‘Runner targets,’ I ordered.
Up they went, single figures way out to right and left. The right-hand cut-off group opened up instantaneously, but the guys on the left were slow. I heard Pavarotti roar, ‘Fucking fire!’ but they only got five or six rounds off before their target vanished again.
The claymores had set fire to the bush beyond the killing ground. Red flames began to run along the ground and surge up into clumps of grass. Loud crackling noises reached us. I heard the commander of the killer group shout, ‘Watch and shoot!’
‘Ground targets up,’ I ordered.
Now the figures were just visible through the swirling smoke, showing up as silhouettes against the flames behind them. Again there was rapid fire.
‘Down! I called. Then, ‘Runners again.’
This time Pavarotti’s guys pulled themselves together and blazed away like lunatics. Finally I ordered, ‘All targets down. Search parties out.’
I heard our guys pass on the instruction, and the Kamangan commanders repeat them. Then suddenly the bush was full of running figures as dark, camouflaged shapes sprinted forward to the river bank. Most of them were shouting and screaming with the release of tension. Pavarotti had doused the ambush lights, and the last of Whinger’s Shamoulis was burning out some distance off to the left, so that the main illumination was a red glow from the fire.
‘How was that?’ I said, standing up behind the President.
‘Fantastic! Splendid show! Some wild shooting, but who wouldn’t? What are they doing now?’
‘Clearing the area. In a real ambush, they’d be making certain there was no one left alive in the box. Now, we’ve told them to count the hits on the targets and get back in fast. As soon as—’