‘Come in, all stations.’
There was a pause before Pav answered, ‘Green Three.’
‘You okay?’
‘Fine.’
‘Okay. Green Four?’
‘Roger,’ went Genesis.
‘Five?’
‘No problem.’ Joss’s voice sounded high and strained.
‘Get the fucking lights on,’ I told him. ‘Keep the shamoulis going. We need maximum illumination. Two, then. Come in, Green Two.’
I waited, tried again. No reply. Andy. It was possible his radio had gone down. It might have fallen out of its pouch if he’d had to move quickly. But deep down I knew at once something bad had happened.
I’ve seen the shit hit the fan often enough, but never as messily as that. Dead or dying elephants were scattered over the killing ground, some roaring and groaning as they struggled to get up. The Kamangans’ discipline had gone like the night wind. Men had abandoned their positions and were running all over the place, putting bursts into the crippled beasts, already whacking into the dead bulls with machetes and commando knives as they started to cut out their tusks. It seemed highly unlikely that there could be an enemy force in the vicinity; if the convoy had been close, it would have turned tail by now. Just as well, because our party was wide open to attack.
‘Fuck it!’ I shouted to Whinger. ‘It’s not down to us to get these bastards back under control. I’m going to find Andy.’
Together we ran towards the spot where he’d taken station, behind the right cut-off group. ‘Andy!’ I yelled. ‘Where are you?’
In the distance the claymore explosions had ignited several bush fires, but the crackling flames only made our immediate surroundings seem darker. The last shamouli had floated off to the west, so that its flare was filling every dip in the ground with black shadow, and we had to check each inky patch individually.
It was Whinger who found him. He gave a sudden yell of ‘Here!’ and stood still, with his torch-beam pointing straight downwards.
In a second I was beside him. Andy was lying on his back, head turned to the right, with his eyes shut and a trickle of blood oozing from his mouth. It was obvious what had happened, because his chest was almost two-dimensional, only two or three inches from top to bottom, crushed flat by a tremendous weight. An elephant must have knocked him down and put a foot right on him, or rolled over him. Kneeling beside the body, I ran my hands up its sides and touched the ends of snapped ribs jagging out under his smock. I saw his 203 lying in the dust a few feet away.
I felt choked. Andy, just married. My mind flew to the day of the wedding. All the blossom had been out in an orchard next to the churchyard. I looked down at his body and thought, ‘Why in a godforsaken place like this?’ I knew we’d had our differences, but he never deserved this. I thought of Penny, a bride of only two months. Now the Families’ Officer would have to call on her. I remembered how they’d broken the terrible news about Kath’s senseless death to me.
‘Jesus!’ I went. ‘It’s that fucking witch doctor. This is his number one, the first of ten.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Whinger. ‘It was just bad luck. I bet the silveries have taken casualties as well.’
‘The more, the better,’ I said savagely. ‘Stupid bastards. Why the hell can’t they control themselves?’
‘This wasn’t their fault,’ said Whinger, doggedly. ‘It wasn’t them who cracked it off. It was the claymores that panicked the elephants.’
I knew he was right, but that didn’t make things any easier. I stood up, getting hold of myself, and used the radio to call our remaining guys together. I couldn’t help feeling irritated when Genesis started to recite a short benediction, commending Andy’s soul to the Almighty, and I shouted at him to shut up.
‘Where was God when the elephants charged?’ I said bitterly. ‘He wasn’t fucking looking after Andy.’
Genesis opened his mouth to say something, but I poked him in the chest with my forefinger and snapped, ‘Eh, just keep quiet.’
We unrolled our one para-silk stretcher and got the body into it, to carry it back to the holding area. By then darkness had settled back on the bush, except where the fires lit up patches in the distance and, closer, a couple of places where Kamangans were feverishly hacking at elephant corpses by torchlight.
‘Joss!’ I yelled. ‘Where are you?’
‘Here.’ He answered from only a few feet away. He must have been coming in search of us.
‘I went, ‘What a fuck-up!’
For the moment he didn’t reply. I think he was choked as well. Then I was aware of him standing beside me, his black face invisible, only his DPMs showing faintly in the moonlight. He pointed at the shrouded body and asked, ‘Who is this?’
‘Andy.’
‘Andy! Oh my goodness! I’m sorry. Was it an elephant?’
‘Yep. What about you? Have you got casualties?’
‘Two dead. Two broken legs, one broken arm, one flesh wound from a bullet.’
‘What about casevac?’
‘It will be difficult from here.’
‘You’ve said it. Let’s get back to the holding area and talk about it there.’
I should have bollocked him for letting his men run riot, but I let it go, because I’d seen enough of their behaviour to realise it was utterly unrealistic to expect the sort of discipline that prevails in British forces. Nor did I tell him to call off the guys who were carving up the elephants. I knew the whole Kamangan army was shit-poor, and hadn’t been paid in months, so who was I to deny them the fat haul of dollars they might get from selling tusks?
At 2300 local time — 2100 in the UK — I called Hereford on the satcom phone to report our casualty.
‘What d’you mean, it was an elephant?’ said Pete Dickson, the Duty Officer, incredulously.
‘We were on a night ex,’ I white-lied. ‘A herd of about fifty ellies wandered on to our position and stampeded. Came right through us. There wasn’t time to move or do anything. Andy got knocked down and trampled.’
‘Killed outright?’
‘Instantaneously. When you see the body, you’ll know. His chest is about two inches front to back.’
‘Jesus!’
‘Listen,’ I went on. ‘We need to get him out fast. He won’t last a day in the kind of heat we’re having.’
‘You mean a charter aircraft?’
‘Exactly. There’s a firm called Kam-Ex, in Mulongwe. You can contact them through the embassy.’
‘Are they going to be happy to fly into your area?’
I lied again. ‘There shouldn’t be any problem. We’re still well north of rebel territory.’
‘Okay. And is there a strip close by?’
‘There will be. There’s a straight bush road with a good level surface. It just needs a bit of scrub cleared, and we can do that at first light.’
I gave the coordinates, which I’d punched into my GPS as Waypoint Four.
‘Right,’ said Pete. ‘We’ll see what we can do. But we’ll need a full report on the incident in due course.’
‘Of course.’
‘D’you want to speak to the CO in the morning?’
‘Not unless he wants to speak to me.’
‘Okay, then. Until tomorrow.’
Dawn saw us back on the bush road with a force of forty Kamangans. We’d chosen a stretch on which the scrub was light anyway, and now those razor-sharp machetes came into their own. In the cool of the morning the guys worked well — I had to hand it to them — and in little more than an hour we’d cleared a strip four hundred metres long, cutting back the shrubs on either side of the track to create an open corridor about twenty metres wide. Provided no strong cross-wind got up, a reasonable pilot ought to be able to land and take off without difficulty.
At that stage — 0630 — we had no confirmation that an aircraft was available, but I went ahead preparing the strip anyway. At 0945 I was relieved to get a satcom call from Hereford via the Defence Attaché at the embassy in Mulongwe, confirming that a Kam-Ex aircraft was on its way. Its estimated flight-time, the DA said, was one hour forty minutes, and he gave us a frequency on which we could establish comms with the pilot when he was approaching.