‘AK47s,’ said Phil. ‘They’ll have gympis somewhere, as well.’
‘Look at the tower,’ I said. ‘That open gallery, where the sandbags are. There’s something nasty in there. Looks like a five-oh.’
‘It is,’ Phil confirmed. ‘That’ll need taking out right away.’
‘Hear that, Joss?’ I went. ‘Put a good man on the RPG, and tell him to spray the tower.’
I began studying the fence with binoculars, looking for signs of an alarm system, but saw none.
‘How many d’you suppose there are?’ I asked.
‘Guards?’ said Joss. ‘Can’t tell. They’ll be on a shift system, so half of them are probably asleep. Twenty altogether? And maybe the same number of workers.’
‘What about them?’ Phil asked. ‘Are they Afundis as well?’
‘Expect so. By now they’ll have replaced any outsiders that used to work here.’
‘They must have weapons as well — for an emergency.’
‘Yeah,’ said Joss scornfully. ‘But we’re going to hit them by surprise.’
‘You reckon to drop any civilians as well?’ I asked.
‘Why not? They’re only Afundis, and anyway, how do we tell which is which?’
I shot Phil a look, and said, ‘Well, it’s up to you.’
Joss didn’t seem to hear that, or if he did, he paid no attention. All he said was, ‘It’s going to be easy!’
‘Don’t bank on it,’ I told him. ‘Lots of things can go wrong. But I tell you what. If you guys capture this place, you’re going to have to strengthen the defences. Sooner or later, the Afundis are going to come looking to kick the crap out of you.’
‘Sure, sure,’ he went. ‘First things first, though.’
‘That blockhouse’ll need sorting, too,’ said Phil.
Beside the main gates a small building had been fitted into the perimeter fence, in the position the guardroom would occupy in a normal barracks. From far out it had looked like a tin shack, but from closer in we could see it was more solid, with an outer cladding of corrugated iron, inside which were walls of sandbags.
The big, free-standing building was obviously the cookhouse-cum-accommodation block. We deduced that from the way a trickle of blacks went in and out carrying their eating irons, mugs and so on. Because the far side of the main complex was out of our view, we couldn’t tell exactly what everyone was doing, but Joss was obviously right: men were working shifts, for production to continue round the clock.
During the time we were watching, nobody left the compound on foot, heading for the pontoon. There seemed to be no reason for anyone to come in our direction — and that was good. The only event of the morning was the arrival of a four-truck convoy. When we saw a dust-cloud approaching from the south, my first thought was: shit — reinforcements.
‘Watch this,’ I went. ‘Maybe they did hear the elephant rumpus. Joss, you may have to think again.’
But I was wrong. Two of the trucks drove to the cookhouse building and unloaded boxes which were obviously rations. The other two went to the fuel dump and deposited forty-five-gallon drums. The vehicles didn’t stay long. The crews, two or three men from each, disappeared into the accommodation block, presumably for a meal, and within half an hour were on their way back.
‘That’s okay, then,’ I said to Joss. ‘Your plan holds. Your covering group deploys right here, where we are. They’ll have one gympi and the five-oh with them. The mortars can fire from that hollow just behind us and put bombs down beyond the far wire. Keep off the airstrip, though. You’re going to need that. The assault force will cross the river in the dark before dawn and deploy on those outcrops to our left. After the initial fire-fight, they’ll go in from there to clear the buildings. Is that what you’re thinking?’
‘Fine, fine.’ He nodded vigorously.
‘When the shit hits the fan, your guys should be able to drop quite a few of the enemy straight away. But after the first couple of minutes the survivors will go to ground in one of the buildings, probably the main one. They’ll barricade themselves in, for sure. Your lads are going to have to winkle them out.’
‘RPG into the doors,’ said Joss, laconically. ‘Another couple of rockets into the tin walls. That’ll get them jumping.’
‘It might torch the place as well.’
Joss shrugged. ‘If it does, it does. There’s not much to burn inside — looks like it’s all metal.’ He turned to look at me, and said, ‘By the way, I hope you fellows are going to join the party.’
‘Well, we hope to. Phil and me are planning to come in behind assault force. We’ll keep in touch and give you whatever back-up we can. Pavarotti will do the same up here with the cover group. The rest of us will remain on standby with the vehicles. How’s that?’
‘Fine, fine. No problem.’
‘The most important thing is that nobody clocks on to the fact we’re in the area. That means hard routine tonight: no fires or cooking. You need to get an OP on the ferry, too, Joss. We don’t want any little bugger sneaking across in the night to raise the alarm.’
‘We’ll do that.’
‘And you need to decide what to do if somebody comes this way: grab him, knock him off, or what.’
Behind the OP in which we were lying, a gully ran back towards the hill, in dead ground from the mine; this made it easy for us to pull out and hand over to a relief observation team without any risk of being spotted. We were just about to go when Mart surfaced on the radio to say that Fräulein Inge was at last coming round.
‘Great!’ I said. ‘Tell her I’ll be with her shortly.’
‘She’s not that coherent yet,’ he warned. ‘Besides, she’s talking German.’
‘German!’ snorted Phil. ‘What did Whinger fucking tell you!’
‘What’s she saying?’ I asked.
‘Not too sure. We can’t make much sense of it. She’s hurt her ankle, though. She tried to stand up and went over on it. I see now it’s pretty swollen. She must have sprained it in the crash.’
‘Keep her comfortable. We’ll be with you in twenty minutes.’
Walking back up the hill, Phil, Pav and I drew off to a distance on our own.
‘Listen,’ said Pav. ‘That’s not for real, is it? You going in with them?’
‘Well…’ I began.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ he snorted. ‘Let the silveries shoot hell out of each other. Leave them to it.’
‘We don’t want this first contact to go wrong,’ I said. ‘If we lose touch with Joss, he could blow it. Then we’d all be in the shit.’
‘Give him a radio,’ said Pav. ‘Keep in touch that way. Don’t get involved.’
‘We’re not planning on getting involved,’ said Phil, stubbornly. ‘That’s the point. We’re going to keep well back.’
‘Bollocks,’ went Pav. ‘Once you get down on those mounds, you’ll be in the thick of it.’
The argument continued till we were back in camp. Looking back, I realise it was Phil who was driving things. In spite of what he said, he was hell-bent on getting into a good fire-fight. I should have put my foot down and vetoed the idea, but because I was tired I went along with his claim that our best chance of retaining control was to be on the ground with the assault force.
As we came in, Mart drew me aside until we were out of earshot of the trucks.
‘She needs watching,’ he said.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I think she’s bluffing. When she came round, the first thing she asked, was, “Wo bin ich?” Perfectly clear.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘Nothing. I told her not to worry and that she was safe.’
‘In English?’
‘Of course. But after that, she went to gibberish.’