One factor in our favour was the heavy dew, which had damped down the dust; without it, the trip would have been a nightmare for the guys at number two and three in the column. As it was, even for those in the rear, the night air felt cool and clean. The people I felt sorry for were the two invalids, who were being continually bounced around in the backs of the vehicles. Afterwards I suspected that the rough passage did a lot to accelerate Whinger’s deterioration.
Our slow progress gave me all too much time to worry. Not only had our training task gone to ratshit, we were in deep trouble. With comms still down, we couldn’t tell Hereford what had happened; there was no chance of the Kremlin getting a Here on its way to exfil us. We weren’t carrying enough diesel to drive all three vehicles back to our original start-point out-side Mulongwe, and anyway, we’d now get a hostile reception wherever we pitched up inside Kamanga. If Joss’s radio was working, and he’d already sent back messages heaping shit on us, it would be highly dangerous for us to approach any military camp or centre of population. We’d suddenly become pariahs, to be shot, or eaten, or at best locked up, by the first native force that could catch us. We badly needed to get a true version of events back to Hereford.
I knew several of the guys were wondering about Jason. Had he made up part or all of his story? We knew he had that habit of not coming out with important facts. Chalky, in particular, had been sceptical, and Danny also voiced his suspicions. I wasn’t sure, but my instinct was to trust him. For the time being there was nothing for it but to put distance between ourselves and the assassination squad. At our first halt, soon after 2300, we switched off our engines and sat listening. After an hour of grinding movement, the silence was beautiful. Then, from somewhere not far ahead, came an extraordinary sound, a volley of harsh grunts, in and out, like somebody sawing wood.
‘What’s that, Jason?’
‘Kaingo. Leopard. It is male, making territorial call.’
Moments later weird squeals and shrieks erupted out to our right.
‘Hyenas,’ said Jason. ‘They dispute kill, maybe with lions.’
In the tension of getting away I’d forgotten that animals were going about their business all round us. The calls of the predators brought home to me even more clearly the fact that we, the foreign humans, were being hunted. Many times in my career I’d been on the run, and the sensation had never been a comfortable one. Now I got the feeling that takes over during escape and evasion exercises, when you have to keep going against the clock, driven by the knowledge that enemy forces are out looking for you, and that the consequences of getting caught will be extremely unpleasant. From being aggressive marauders, we’d abruptly turned into fugitives, committed to escape and evasion on a continental scale, with no safe house to aim for.
‘Try the satcom again,’ I told Stringer. ‘I’d be a lot happier if the Kremlin knew what we’re doing.’
‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘You try. Check everything with me to make sure I’m not cocking up.’
We knelt on a patch of flat, sandy ground and set up the little dish aerial.
‘What bearing do we need?’ I asked.
‘One sixty mills.’
‘Okay. Elevation?’
‘Forty-five degrees.’
I set the dish on those parameters, and went, ‘Frequency?’
‘Five point six eight nine.’
I punched in the figures, waited a few seconds, then squeezed the button on the hand-set, and said, ‘Hullo, Zero. This is Sierra Five Four. Sierra Five Four.’
Holding my breath, I released the button. Nothing but a rush of static. I waited a minute, then tried again, with the same result.
‘You little fucker,’ said Stringer quietly, gazing at the brilliant stars as he addressed the satellite. ‘You’re up there somewhere. I can almost see you with the naked eye.’ Then he turned to me, and said, ‘With the sky this clear, you’d think we’d have continuous comms — nothing to block them.’
‘I know. Maybe it’s to do with the ionosphere.’
‘Check all the connections, anyway.’
We did that next, undoing every one and tightening it again before we tried once more. I imagined the signallers sitting in the bomb-proof Comms Centre in the Kremlin, monitoring calls from all over the world. Why in hell weren’t they responding to ours? There was no question of them having gone for a piss, or being asleep. The centre was run to the highest professional standards and continuously manned. The fault must lie in the atmospherics, or in our set.
‘Try again in an hour,’ I said, and on we went.
For the next stage it was my turn to drive the lead pinkie, and I needed all my concentration to avoid rocks, skirt depressions and weave between trees whenever the bush grew thicker. Towards the end I had a headache, and I felt so shattered I told Pav to keep talking to me so that I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel.
Midnight brought a badly needed respite. We reckoned we’d put fifteen kilometres between us and our last campsite. Because there’d been no sign of any pursuit, it seemed safe to stop and get a brew on, so we lit up our solid fuel stoves and set about making hot drinks. The person who needed liquid most was Whinger. By then he’d more or less stopped talking; he’d only respond to a remark if really pressed, and we had to haul him into a sitting position to get some warm, sweet tea down his neck.
‘Hang in there, mate,’ I told him. ‘We’ll get you to the Krankenhaus first thing in the morning.’ I made my voice sound cheerful, but it choked me to see my old mate sunk so low.
I’d just taken my first sip of cocoa when, very faintly, a dull splutter of small-arms fire popped off in the distance far behind us, then another. The sounds seemed to come from somewhere to the right of the line we’d been driving on.
‘It is a battle? Yes?’ Inge loomed out of the dark. She’d gone walkabout to have a pee, and I noticed she was moving more freely.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, genially. ‘It was a long way off, any road. I see your foot’s on the mend.’
‘It is stronger, yes. I think there is nothing broken. Only bruises.’
The distant noises spurred us on. Whether or not Jason’s version of events had been correct, we knew now that some action was in progress behind us, so we reckoned we’d done the right thing, and I had no regrets as we motored on through the rest of the night, with the moon gradually moving across the sky until it was low over the horizon to our left front.
At the four o’clock halt Stringer came up to me, and said, ‘Still no comms, but I think I’ve hacked Boisset’s message.’
His normal handwriting was small and neat, but on the sheet of paper he handed me the letters were all over the place, thrown by the jolting of the vehicle. Even so, I had no trouble reading them by torchlight. What he’d done was to decipher the condensed French text by opening it out into separate words; then he’d added a translation.
J(OSS)’S VOLTE-FACE PARCE QU’ IL CHERCHE (UNE) PIERRE EXCEPT (IONNELLEMENT) GRANDE TROUVÉE IL Y A QUEL(QUES) JOURS
JOSS’S ABOUT-TURN BECAUSE HE’S LOOKING FOR AN EXCEPTIONALLY LARGE STONE FOUND A FEW DAYS AGO
‘Good on yer, Stringer,’ I went. ‘Hey, Phil, look at this.’
‘What does he mean,’ growled Phil, ‘“an exceptionally large stone”?’
‘Don’t you remember? The old Belgian told us that sometimes rocks the size of pigeons’ eggs come up out of the river. I reckon they found one of those. If it doesn’t have too many faults, it’ll be worth a fucking fortune. This explains Joss’s crazy behaviour. It’s got to be this that flipped him.’