Joss had already selected three men for the task and dosed them with one of Jason’s preparations that was supposed to ward off crocodiles. Rumour told us the stuff was made from snakes’ bladders. At least it gave the guys full psychological protection. That was obvious as they stripped off and slipped into the water, armed only with their machetes, to carry out a silent attack. Far from showing any sign of nerves, they looked as though they were on a high and positively enjoying their role. At that point the river was about two hundred metres wide. Through binoculars I watched the three black shapes gradually diminish as they moved along the guide-wire into deeper water. After a couple of minutes only their heads and shoulders were showing.
From upstream the hippo chorus continued erratically. It was during one of the quiet periods that a croc put in its hit. I’d been more than half expecting it, but when it happened, the speed of the attack took my breath away. One second the surface of the river was smooth and calm; the next, a furrow was streaking diagonally across it from our left, heading downstream fast as a torpedo, with the water boiling at the point and a V-shaped wake spreading out behind. There was hardly a sound — just a splash, and one gasping groan that ended in a gurgle — but suddenly one of the men had gone, dragged bodily under water.
‘Firekin ’ell!’ went Phil, beneath his breath. ‘I bet the other two aren’t half shitting themselves.’
The Kamangan squaddies had no binoculars, so they could only guess what had happened, but they had a pretty good idea. Joss and a couple of his subordinate commanders knew full well that one of their guys had gone under, and they weren’t going to put the wind up the rest. So nobody said anything. I found myself swallowing, from the thought of those jagged teeth slicing through human limbs. Would blood, spreading downstream, alert others and bring them speeding to the scene?
The two survivors forged on. By the time they were into the shadow of the far bank, even binoculars couldn’t pick them out any more.
A tense wait followed. As if wanting moral support, Joss came up beside me.
‘They must be ashore by now,’ I muttered.
‘Guess so. Let’s get the boat over here!’
He sounded lit up by the prospect of action, as if he couldn’t wait to reach the other side. I wasn’t altogether happy: already I was thinking this could go wrong if he got too excited.
Between bursts of hippo talk, we listened intently. Nothing. Then Phil, who had a hand on the wire, said quietly, ‘They’re on their way back. I can feel the vibration.’
Through my glasses I saw the little ferry loom up square and black in mid-river. A couple of minutes later it came silently into the bank. Joss rapidly quizzed the pilots in Nyanja, then translated: ‘They killed two guards with their knives.’
While the swimmers got back into their clothes, the first load went across. Until I saw the pontoon at close quarters, I hadn’t realised how it was powered. Two crewmen sat on boards, one at the front, one at the back, each pulling on a single primitive wooden oar like a thick baseball bat, with a notch cut out near the end. The notch fitted over the wire hawser; when a rower exerted horizontal pressure, the oar locked on to the wire and pulled the craft forward.
The system was slow but effective, and soundless. With twelve men on board, the pontoon was almost awash, but I timed each crossing at only four minutes. The little craft was over and back inside nine minutes. Phil and I waited with Joss as the first two loads went across.
‘Aren’t hippos as dangerous as the crocs?’ I whispered.
‘On land, yes. If you get between them and the water, they charge. But I think they’re used to the pontoon. It doesn’t bother them.’
Back it came for the last time. We walked aboard and knelt down as two of the squaddies pulled us out into the stream. The current was running faster than it looked from the bank: I could feel it tugging us sideways against the guide-wire. On the far side we bumped gently against the bank and walked ashore.
‘Okay,’ I said quietly to Joss. ‘On you go, and good luck.’
His teeth gleamed white in the darkness as he gave a quick grin, but I couldn’t see the expression on his face.
His men set off silently in three sections, in line ahead. Phil and I waited till the last of them was moving, then tagged on behind. We followed the bank of the river, which swung out southwards round a headland before turning west again. At one point a loud bark burst out on our left, and a hippo, startled on its way back to the water, came blundering across our track. By sheer good luck there was nobody in its path.
After maybe five hundred metres we reached the outside of the bend and started to hear the mine’s machinery running. Already the eastern sky was lightening behind us; in a few minutes the sun would rise, and when it did, it would shine low into the defenders’ faces. Ahead, the small hills rose in knobbly, uneven hummocks — good cover. From low down they looked bigger than they had from above. Phil and I stopped and knelt down as the three sections deployed, fanning outwards. We could just make out the shadowy figures moving up into firing positions. Then Jason himself went on and disappeared. Looking up across the river to the dark bulk of the hill on our right, I imagined Pav and Stringer, on the OP with the machine-gun team. Their role was similar to ours: they were there to advise the Kamangans. The difference was, there was no way they could get involved in the battle, as the river was between them and the mine.
When my watch said 0515 I called Pav, and asked quietly, ‘How’s it going?’
‘All good. We’ve got a great view. The compound’s quiet — nobody in sight at the moment. There was a shift change while you were on the way down — guys back and forth between the accommodation and the main block — but now it’s chilled out again. No movement on the perimeter.’
‘Good,’ I went. ‘We’re across the river. The guys are just getting into position.’
‘Roger.’
‘Stand by, then. As soon as Joss reckons the light’s right, he’ll give you the word.’
‘Roger.’
The plan was to launch the attack in the grey twilight that preceded sunrise, when our own eyes would be accustomed to the gloom, and the defenders, stumbling outside, would be nearly blind for the first few seconds. It was up to Joss to judge the moment when it was light enough for our guys to see, but still dark enough to give us an advantage.
Once the Kamangans were settled, Phil and I crawled forwards and positioned ourselves hull-down behind a rock. We were less than ten metres behind the two-man RPG team, but lower than them, so that we’d be well protected from any incoming. Seeing how, in training, the guys had been inclined to fire their rockets high, I reckoned the RPG team might be the ones who’d need a bit of assistance.
Like the daylight, my adrenalin level came up by the minute. I glanced sideways at Phil and saw he was the same: face tense, eyes gleaming. ‘Look out, you fuckers,’ he was muttering. ‘You’ve a nasty surprise coming.’
‘One minute,’ said Joss’s voice in my earpiece. ‘Covering force ready?’
‘Roger,’ went Pav.
‘Stand by to open fire. Thirty seconds. Twenty. Ten…’
As he counted ‘zero’ we heard the distant boomph of the 81-mil mortars from high to our right. They were out of our sight, in dead ground, so we didn’t see anything, but we heard the whistle as the first salvo of bombs arched high over the river. A few moments’ silence, then bright flashes spurted from the ground way out in front of us. A volley of explosions split the dawn silence.
Joss had ordered his strike force not to open fire until they saw specific targets. But the tension got to them. The mortar detonations triggered their attack impulse, and before any human defenders appeared, they started putting rounds into the walls of the main complex. Maybe it made no difference. Within seconds of the first bombs landing figures emerged from buildings at the run. Three or four raced for the blockhouse at the entrance, coming towards us and crossing to our left. The rest headed away, deeper into the compound.