Presented with legitimate targets, the attackers opened up with short bursts and dropped one of the advancing defenders. But most of the firing was completely wild. Phil jabbed me on the arm and pointed to our right. One of the Alpha guys was standing upright behind a hillock, holding his rifle high above his head, trying to level it with both hands, and firing blindly over the mound without any clue as to where his rounds were going.
Bullets started snapping over our heads, uncomfortably close. From the loudness of the cracks and the heavy hammer in the distance, I realised they were coming from the .50.
‘It’s that fucker in the tower!’ I shouted. I hit my pressel switch and snapped, ‘Pav! Get some fire into the top of the tower. We’re getting bloody murdered by the .50!’
The operator had pin-pointed our position. His first few bursts went high, but then, with a solid, heavy thump, a Kamangan twenty metres to my right took a bullet in the shoulder or chest. He’d been lying face down, but the impact lifted him bodily and flung him backwards down the slope. When he flopped to a halt against a rock, he didn’t stir again.
On my left the RPG team were cowering behind a rock.
‘Get up!’ Phil roared at them. ‘Get up and fucking fire!’
Gingerly, the Number One rose half into an upright position, took a perfunctory aim at the blockhouse and pulled his trigger. Whoosh! went the rocket, slightly to the left and miles above the target, so high that it flew free for the whole of its life until after four seconds and about nine hundred metres it self-destructed with a brilliant flash.
‘Look at that!’ I shouted. ‘He might have been firing at a fucking aircraft!’
Flashes were spurting from the slits in the blockhouse. Now we were under fire from two directions. Our RPG guy was back on the deck. His Number Two was trying to stuff another rocket down the tube while retaining a horizontal position.
‘Fire again!’ I bellowed.
The second round went even higher than the first. I knew the team had only eight rockets between them. At this rate, they’d waste them all before they scored a hit. There was only one thing for it. All good resolutions left my head. There was no way I could keep back and watch such incompetence.
Phil was already putting in the odd short burst with his 203.
‘Keep hammering the tower,’ I shouted. ‘I’m going on the RPG.’
At moments like that, instinct takes over. No matter how much Hereford had cautioned us about not getting involved, no matter how often we’d told each other we’d keep out of trouble, I was not going to lie there and wait to be turned into a rag doll by a round from the .50. The urgent necessity was to silence the big machine gun. Its operator probably couldn’t see individuals, but he’d sussed out where we were accurately enough and was putting venomous short bursts into the rocks that stuck up round us. Splinters were flying in all directions, ricochets screaming away behind.
I wriggled back down the slope into dead ground, ran across, came up again behind the rocket team, held out a hand, and shouted, ‘Eh, give it over!’
The guy with the launcher rolled his eyes, glanced at his mate, then, without speaking, handed the weapon across.
‘Come on! Move!’ I yelled, gesturing violently. ‘For fuck’s sake, get it loaded!’
With fumbling hands the Number Two got a rocket into the barrel. Swivelling to my right, I went up on one knee, settled the weapon on my shoulder, left hand awkwardly behind my right, and laid the cross hairs of the sight on the lower edge of the sandbagged machine-gun nest in the tower. The range was barely 150 metres — a cinch.
Whoosh! Away went the rocket. It hit the left-hand side of the structure and sent pieces of metal flying, but didn’t explode. The contact could only have been a glancing blow. The explosion came a second or two later as the destabilised warhead plunged into the deck beyond the target.
‘Reload!’ I roared. ‘Quick!’
This time the guy handled the rocket as if it was red hot, loading in two or three seconds. I settled into the aim again, holding the upright wire of the reticle on the right-hand edge of the nest.
Impact! That second round went straight in with a brilliant flash. The explosion blew a cloud of shit into the air and enveloped the tower in smoke. As the cloud drifted clear, I saw the mast had been toppled and was hanging down like a minute-hand at five o’clock. The hammer of the .50 ceased. With luck, I’d done for the rebels’ radio as well.
‘Now the blockhouse!’ I shouted.
This time I made no mistake. Again I held to the right, and the round went smack into the middle of the structure. Another big flash, another good explosion. The place burst into flames and began to belch smoke.
I handed the launcher back to its owner. ‘Now one into the gate. The weapon’s going left. Aim right of centre. This much.’
The range was shorter, so I demonstrated with my hands only a couple of feet apart. The Kamangan looked less terrified. He’d seen how effective his weapon could be. Maybe he was planning to take the credit for my hit on the tower. Whatever the reason, his next rocket blew hell out of the gate and left it a sagging wreck.
In the few minutes since things had gone noisy the light had grown stronger. Then, quite quickly, the whole scene turned pink. Screwing my head round, I saw that the sun was halfway over the horizon behind us — a huge, blood-red ball.
Abrupt volleys of small-arms fire made me look left. One poor hippo, taken unawares, had come lumbering back towards the river after its night’s grazing. It didn’t get far. Multiple hits brought it to a halt, then to its knees, and in the end it rolled sideways to the ground where it lay with its stumpy legs kicking feebly.
‘What the hell are they doing?’ I said to Phil.
‘Maybe they’re getting hungry.’
From the far end of the compound a column of black smoke was rising.
‘Fucking roll on!’ Phil shouted. ‘Some stupid bastard’s shot up the fuel store.’
Mortar bombs were still falling near the end of the airfield. Rounds continued to snap over our position, but now the fire was sporadic. What the hell was the Kamangan commander waiting for?
‘Joss,’ I called on the radio. ‘Get ’em going!’
‘Roger.’
He yelled out an order in Nyanja. His section commander passed it on. Leaving half a dozen guys to give covering fire, the rest jumped up and sprinted forward, blasting uselessly from the hip with their AK47s, wasting rounds by the hundred. One man went down before they reached the gate, but the rest piled through, fanned out, and dropped into firing positions inside the compound.
Phil and I stayed where we were, in relative safety. But suddenly I realised that accurate incoming fire was hitting the assault force from the left, from the direction of the accommodation block. One of the guys was slotted, then another. Somebody was shooting far too straight.
‘Left! Left!’ I yelled at the Kamangans still with us. ‘Fire at the white block!’ Rapidly, I scanned the windows, looking for snipers. Over the radio I called, ‘Joss, you’ve got incoming from your left! Swing that way.’
He didn’t answer immediately, so I went, ‘Pav! We’re getting enfiladed from our left. Incoming from the white block. Get the .50 on to it.’
‘Roger,’ he answered. ‘Wait one.’
Seconds ticked past. Rounds were cracking in every direction. Then down came the heavy hammer of our own .50. Its big bullets swept back and forth along the front of the accommodation block, blowing plaster and cement out of its façade. In the middle of the turmoil our RPG let rip at one of the main doors of the equipment shed. The range was about thirty metres, and Number One must have learnt from his earlier cock-ups, because he blew the handle and locking mechanism clean out. With smoke and dust still swirling round the door, his mates rushed at it, ran it half open on its rail, and sprayed rounds inside.