My words were cut short by a new burst of firing from our left. I heard Pavarotti yell ‘Stop!’ but several more rounds cracked off, and to my consternation I saw tracer streak towards the killing ground. We already had guys out there. Something was badly wrong.
There was more yelling, another burst of rounds, tracer hurtling vertically into the sky. When the firing ceased, the commotion continued, with several voices shouting and the sound of a struggle.
‘Pav,’ I went on the radio, ‘what the fuck was that?’
There was a pause before he answered, and when he did, he was panting. ‘Little local difficulty,’ he gasped. ‘One of the bastards flipped.’
‘Anybody hurt?’
‘I wouldn’t call it that. Let’s say he lost his head.’
I swallowed an exclamation. Knowing Pav, I was pretty sure what he meant. All I said was, ‘Can you handle it?’
‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you shortly.’
The extra shooting put the fear of God into the guys round the targets. The search parties came flying back, the cut-offs first, then the killer group, each commander calling out, ‘Last man… in.’ Then suddenly everybody had gone. We heard footsteps crashing away towards the north, and soon the only noise was the crackling of the flames beyond the river.
When the disturbance broke out, Bakunda had still been lying on the ground between the boulders, so that he hadn’t appreciated the full extent of the fuck-up occurring out to his left. But now he was on his feet and asking, ‘What happened over there?’
‘Not sure,’ I said non-committally. ‘Sounded like somebody dropped his rifle and it started firing automatically. We’ll hear when we get back.’
That seemed to satisfy him, and he asked, ‘What next, then?’
‘Your lads are already on their way back to the Bergen cache, fast as they can go. They’ll grab their packs, and then our guys will beest them about fifteen ks to the east.’
‘Beest?’
‘Hustle them on. Your commanders have to navigate, find their way to an RV. Our guys just keep the pace up. The point is to simulate a fast evacuation from the ambush location. That’s what we’d do in a live situation — get the hell out. Tonight we’ve arranged for a truck to go round and wait at the RV, to bring everyone back to camp.’
I was still struggling to get my mind round the dust-up in Pavarotti’s group. From his laconic answer, I felt certain the silveries were going to arrive back at base one man deficient.
To take my mind off that worry, I said, ‘How about a quick look at the targets?’
‘Sure.’
The fire had already retreated from the killing ground as it ate into the bush beyond, and we needed our torches to get a clear look at the figure eights, most of which once again were flat on the deck. All the ground-mounted group in the centre had been well riddled, but the tree targets had taken only a couple of rounds apiece. The right-hand runner had one bullet through the shoulder, and the left-hand target was untouched. So, too, were the two edge-on figures, set for the claymores.
‘Look at these,’ I said. ‘I told them they’d got their mines too far apart,’ I said. ‘This’ll be a good lesson to them.’
‘What about the fire?’ Bakunda asked.
‘Nothing we can do about it. But it’ll burn out when it comes to the next sand river.’
The President didn’t say much as we trekked back to camp. I thought he was maybe worried or annoyed by the lack of discipline his guys had shown. We passed straight through the Bergen cache, pausing only to pick up his escort of heavies. I was afraid we’d see one pack still sitting on the ground, but the whole lot had gone, and nothing was said.
Once we reached base, Bakunda became very matey. He started calling me ‘Old Boy’ and chattering away about his time at Sandhurst. He’d done two years there as an officer cadet, he told me: No. 1 Company in Victory College. He was quite disappointed when he found I hadn’t been there too and couldn’t swap reminiscences.
The cooks had prepared a special supper table for the presidential party, but he insisted that we all got together, so the tables were pushed up into one, and we ate in a single group — spiced meat balls, rice, tinned pineapple. The heavy bodyguards looked ill-at-ease using knives and forks; I reckoned it was normally fingers. Then, after the meal, Bakunda said to one of them, ‘Hey, Basil, where’s that beer?’
Out came cans of King Lion lager, brewed in Mulongwe, and soon we were swapping stories round our fire. Normally, I wouldn’t have started drinking until the exercise was well and truly finished, but I knew that with Pavarotti and Genesis in charge the last phase of it was in good hands, and in any case I felt I had a duty to entertain our visitor. At first I was on edge, but when a radio call confirmed that the party had reached their transport and was on its way in, I was able to relax.
‘In my day,’ the President was saying, ‘we didn’t have anything like the equipment you chaps have. Satellite communications, for instance — unheard of. Spy satellites — ditto. GPS — nothing like it existed. We had to find our own way around.’
‘In my day’. That was one of his favourite phrases. It came out again and again. It was clear he’d enjoyed his time at Sandhurst, and he had nostalgic feelings about England. Apart from anything else, he’d managed to lay some white woman there during a passing-out dance. He’d got her into some attic room, and banged the back of his head on the sloping roof when he stood up after the performance. But at the same time he genuinely admired our modern equipment and methods.
By the time we were on our third round of beers the atmosphere had grown quite mellow. Chalky White was well away, trying out his few, newly acquired words of Nyanja on the President.
Bakunda himself was becoming indiscreet, and I felt the moment had come to ask a few pertinent questions. I turned to Whinger, and said quietly, ‘Crack out a bottle of rum — see if we can get this guy going.’ Then I turned back to our guest, and said, ‘I don’t want to seem rude, but can you explain why we’re here?’
‘Because I asked for you!’ he exclaimed with his bark of a laugh. ‘I asked Her Majesty’s Government for assistance in fighting the Afundi rebels, and here you are!’
‘Yeah, but HMG get a lot more requests than the SAS can fulfil. Again, no offence, but what’s special about Kamanga?’
‘My dear fellow, the well-being of our country is critical to the stability of the whole region. If we come apart at the seams, the rot will spread very fast. Zaire, Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi — every country will be in danger. They could go down like dominoes.’
He lit off into a political tirade, talking angrily, denouncing Marxists and revolutionaries in general. I couldn’t help smiling at the thought of him, personally, coming apart at the seams. He looked as though he might do that at any moment, so tight was his tunic stretched over his stocky torso, and his out-of-date colonial expressions gave his speech a wonderful period flavour.
The only thing that broke his flow was Whinger looming up at his elbow and offering him a plastic cup, with the words, ‘Try this, General.’
Bakunda sniffed it, and rolled his eyes theatrically. ‘Rum! I thought rum was reserved for the British navy. Splicing the mainbrace, and all that.’
‘It is,’ Whinger agreed. ‘But we get it too when we’re on arduous duties.’
‘You call this arduous?’ Bakunda beamed round at us. ‘I call it a holiday! A busman’s holiday — when you do what you normally do, but for fun!’
‘Cheers, anyway,’ I said, raising the cup that Whinger had given me. ‘Sod the rebels.’
‘Agreed!’ He took a mouthful, rolled his eyes again, grimaced, swallowed, smacked his lips, and said, ‘Hey! This is the real McCoy!’ Then he cleared his throat and went on: ‘You want to know why you’re here? I’ll tell you. Uranium. Don’t pass it on, but that’s the secret.’