As the sun rose, tsetse flies swarmed out of the grass and increased our desperation. Their easiest target was Whinger, who was too comatose to notice when they landed on him, so we carried his cot out of the back of the stranded pinkie and set it in the shadow of a clump of grass, with mozzie nets rigged up over him. He never made a sound while we were moving him, but every now and then, as we worked, he’d start shouting gibberish.
The nightmare would have been bad enough without the German woman, but she nearly sent us ballistic, hopping about, making idiotic remarks, apparently panicking about the time, as if she was going to miss a plane.
‘I think we are late,’ she kept saying. ‘We should go now. Push harder, please.’
‘Late for what?’ I replied, only just managing to keep expletives out of it. ‘And can’t you see we’re doing our best?’
At around 0830 Pavarotti reappeared, chuffed to bollocks at having laid what he called ‘a couple of nice ones’. He’d buried the mines at places where we’d driven through dry river beds, and he’d raked out the sand above them so that our wheel-tracks appeared to run straight through the hollows. When he saw the state we were in, he was amazed. ‘Christ!’ he exclaimed. ‘You lot remind me of that cabaret we went to in Berlin: hermaphrodites wrestling in mud.’
‘You come and try it, mate,’ Chalky snapped. ‘You won’t think it so fucking funny.’
Pav got stuck in. By 0900, after repeatedly digging away the mud beside the wheels, rather than in front of them, and then winching, we’d dragged the stranded pinkie about halfway round. But the guys looked totally knackered, covered in mud and sweat and visibly drooping, so I called a break and lay down flat on my back, looking up at the sky. High above us two large birds of prey were effortlessly circling, gliding round and round in huge sweeps with no perceptible movement of their wings. There was something faintly ridiculous about their shape: their tails were so short that it looked as though they were flying backwards.
‘What are those, Jason?’
‘Bateleur eagles,’ he answered. ‘Snake eaters.’
‘Some flyers. If we could fly like that, we’d be at Msisi in a couple of minutes.’
When I closed my eyes, I got a sudden, clear vision of the convent hospital. I saw a compound shaded by trees, an airy ward open to the breeze, nuns in white habits ministering to the sick, a sister in an office working the radio. I knew it was wishful thinking, but the pictures were startlingly real, and as I lay there some sort of compulsion took hold of me. We couldn’t wait any longer. We had to get Whinger to this place. We had to get the woman out, for her own safety. We had to send a radio message to the outside world.
I opened my eyes. The eagles were still circling, as if keeping an eye on our puny struggles, or maybe hoping we would flush out some prey.
‘Pav,’ I croaked.
‘Hullo.’
I turned my head and realised he was lying on the ground a few feet away.
‘We can’t fuck about any more. We’ve got to get Whinger into dock. As soon as we get the pinkie out, I’m going to drive on with him and Genesis, and leave you to carry on extracting the mother wagon. D’you have any problem with that?’
‘Fine by me,’ he went, ‘but take the woman with you too, eh? She’s driving the guys round the bend, and if the Alpha guys follow up, the last thing we need in the middle of a fire-fight is a hysterical Kraut.’
‘Will do, mate.’
‘How long will you be?’
‘Can’t say. We’ve got to find the place first. But I’ll be surprised if it’s much more than an hour ahead of us. Maybe three hours for the round trip.’ I looked at my watch. ‘If we leave at midday, we should be back by 1600 at the latest. Well before dark, anyway.’
‘Okay.’ Pav sat up and slapped at a tsetse fly that had landed on his shin. ‘Supposing we get out, what d’you want us to do?’
‘Stick around,’ I said. ‘If there’s anything wrong with the hospital’s radio — if we can’t get Whinger casevacked, for any reason — we can’t just leave him there. We’ll get what drugs we can for him, but we may have to bring him back for the time being.’
‘We’d better RV on higher ground,’ said Pav. ‘Up there, for instance.’ He pointed to the north, where a tree-covered ridge formed the skyline. ‘See that single tree standing out on the little shelf? If we get clear, we’ll make for that and get cammed up in the best location near it.’
‘Fine,’ I agreed. ‘Provided we get back in daylight, no problem.’
Pav asked, ‘What’s your route going to be?’
‘Good question.’
I dug out our reliable map. Its scale was too small for it to be much use, but it gave the general lie of the land.
‘All we can do is head straight south, for the river, which I reckon should be just out of our sight.’ I indicated the spot where I thought we were. ‘Then we turn right and follow the north bank, as closely as we can.’
Looking back on that terrible day, I realise how vague and speculative our plans were. We didn’t have any precise idea of where we were; we didn’t know where the convent was; we weren’t confident that the mother wagon could be rescued; and we knew that a strong Alpha force might well come on the scene. Our little party was in an extremely dangerous situation. Yet necessity drove us on. Necessity and exhaustion: we were all too worn out to see the risks or take rational decisions.
At last we managed to turn the bogged pinkie round. Once we’d got it lined up in the right direction, we started to make slow progress by digging in front of its wheels, slipping sand-tracks under the tyres at a slight upward angle, and winching the vehicle forward two or three feet at a time. The process was desperately laborious, but it worked. Gradually, as we drew near the edge of the pan, the mud became shallower and the rate of advance speeded up. At last Phil gunned the pinkie the final few yards under its own power, and a cheer went up, half ironic, half relieved, as it went up on to dry land under its own power. The time was 1145. Every part of the under-carriage was packed with mud — axles, steering arms, track rods, hubs, brake-tubes — but nothing seemed to be damaged, and as we had no spare water, any attempt to wash parts clean was out of the question.
It took Genesis and me only a few minutes to get organised. Because we wanted to travel light, we left most of our kit behind, taking only our weapons, ammunition, basic rations and a jerrican of water. Rather than take off the Milan post, we left it in place, even though the chances of our firing it seemed negligible.
Gen had already recced a route to the river bank, and away we went, with him in the back to keep an eye on Whinger, and Inge sitting up front beside me. Tired though I was, I sensed she was in a peculiar mood, almost on a high, twisting around on her arse and making bright remarks. I put it down to the fact that she thought she was about to get away from us.
Anyone who’d seen us would have thought us quite crazy. I was still caked in dried grey mud from head to foot (my plan was to have a quick plunge in the river, provided we could find a croc-free pool). Gen was also caked. Whinger was fairly clean, but wearing nothing except a pair of shorts. We were carrying more clothes for him, and sweaters for ourselves, in case it got cold at sun-down.