Solo (15 page)

‘Take ’em away, Dawie,’ Breed shouted at one of the other white mercenaries and the men wheeled around and, beginning a chant, started to jog out of the village in pursuit of the rest of the Zanzari soldiers fleeing back up the road to what they hoped was safety.

Breed whooped encouragement at them. ‘I just love that,’ he said to Bond, taking out a pack of Boomslangs and offering it to Bond. They both lit up.

‘Great show, isn’t it?’ Breed said. ‘That fetish priest is worth a thousand men. They won’t fight without his blessing.’

‘What does all the mumbo-jumbo mean?’ Bond asked.

‘He makes them immortal, you see,’ Breed said. ‘If they die today they come back as spirits and continue the fight. You can’t see them but they’re fighting beside you.’ He chuckled. ‘Now they’re fearless, those boys. They even want to die – to become a “ghost warrior”. Amazing.’ He dabbed at his weeping eye. ‘If they catch those Zanzaris it’ll be quite a picnic, I tell you.’ He turned away. ‘Let’s head back,’ he said. ‘I just wanted you to see this – good copy for your newspapers, eh?’

Bond was happy to leave the village and its shade tree with its hanging fruit of dangling corpses.

‘We’ll pull back,’ Breed said. ‘Mine the embankments. They’re attacking us all over the place at the moment – but there’ll be no way through here.’

They walked back towards the Peugeot.

‘I want to speak to Adeka,’ Bond said. ‘Can you help?’

‘You must be joking,’ Breed said. ‘Even I can’t get to see him.’

‘How do you communicate?’

‘Most of the time I get these written orders. Reinforce there. Destroy that bridge. Move more men there. Repel this attack. Fall back and regroup. He seems to see the big picture, Adeka. It’s uncanny, man. And he distributes all the ordnance from the Janjaville flights – you get what he gives you. He seems to know what he’s doing – for a black brigadier.’ He smiled at Bond. ‘Fancy a drink?’

He didn’t wait for a reply and led Bond over to a US Army jeep with a canvas canopy and a tall whippy aerial. In the back was an impressive-looking, many-dialled radio set and a young man in an over-large tin helmet sat there listening to the traffic. Breed reached into a knapsack and brought out a bottle of schnapps. He fished around some more and came up with two cloudy shot glasses. He set the glasses down on the jeep’s bonnet and poured them both a drink. Bond didn’t feel like drinking with Breed but perhaps some hard liquor was required after what he’d witnessed in the village.

‘
Proost
,’ Breed said, and they both knocked back the schnapps in one. Bond felt his throat burn. Strong stuff. Breed topped them up.

‘So,’ Bond said. ‘Matebeleland, 1966 . . . Rhodesian African Rifles?’

‘No. Light Infantry. The good old RLI.’ Breed pointed at the two scars on his cheek. ‘I got shot in the face by a ZANLA terr. Thought he’d killed me. I was six months in a hospital in Salisbury then I was invalided out of the army. Lucky for me Hulbert Linck came by recruiting. Five thousand US a month in any bank in the world you choose. Hard to resist. So me and a few of my RLI mates signed up for Dahum. They’re a good bunch of guys, though, the Dahum grunts. When the juju man fires them up they’ll fight till they drop.’ He grinned. ‘That’s why, in spite of everything, we’re winning. We’ve got bigger balls than the Zanzaris.’

Bond said nothing. Breed poured another schnapps.

‘What do you think, Bond?’ he suggested. ‘There’s a little club in town – nice atmosphere, good music, European alcohol, very obliging girls. They like us white boys fighting for their country. Want to meet there tonight?’

Bond did not want to go out on the town with Kobus Breed. Not in a thousand years.

‘Actually, I’m not sure I can make it. Copy to file.’

Breed’s finger tapped the Dahum flag on Bond’s jacket.

‘You could pass for one of us.’

There was an audible crackle of static from the radio in the jeep and Breed turned to see what was going on. The operator was intent, concentrating, nodding.

‘It’s for you, Boss.’

Breed strode over and put on the headphones. As he listened he looked progressively more serious.

‘Yah. OK – roger that.’ He took off the headphones and wiped his eye.

‘What’s up?’ Bond asked.

‘A pretty major shit-storm. All this stuff we did here today was a feint. There’s another Zanza Force column moving on the airstrip.’ He gestured at the radio, ‘That came from Adeka.’

‘Himself?’

‘No. But relayed from him. I got to move, man. This is serious.’

‘Mind if I tag along?’ Bond suggested, spontaneously.

Breed looked at him, a little askance. When he spoke his voice was heavy with scepticism.

‘You ever been in combat?’ Breed asked.

Bond smiled, tiredly. ‘You ever heard of World War Two?’

Bond stood with Breed on a small bluff and looked through binoculars at the view. A little bit of orientation and a few glances at Breed’s map had made everything fairly clear.

The village of Kololo, the main Dahumian strongpoint guarding this eastern approach towards Janjaville, had been lost, abandoned. Some huts in the village were on fire – apparently there had been a MiG airstrike. The troops that had been manning it had fled the village and had retreated across the 200-yard causeway that ran above a great swathe of swampland and had regrouped on the far side, barricading the road with logs and oil drums, ready to repel any new advance out of the village along the causeway.

Bond could see that the village was thick with Zanza Force soldiers and he could spot one Saracen armoured car with a roof turret sheltering by the gable end of a mud hut that was close to the road leading to the causeway. He suspected they were waiting for the MiGs to return before they continued their advance. He remembered Blessing’s remarks about their lack of military zeal.

‘Well, at least there’s only one direction they can attack from,’ Bond said. ‘But that barricade will last twenty seconds in the face of that Saracen.’ He turned to Breed. ‘You don’t have enough men.’

Breed had explained the problem. Eighty per cent of the Dahumian army faced the Zanza Force advance astride the transnational highway that led to Port Dunbar. That’s where the tanks were, and the artillery. It was a stand-off that could be maintained forever, each army waiting for the other one to blink. Consequently most of the action in these later stages of the war consisted of skirmishes as Zanza Force units explored other routes into the rebel heartland. Breed and his flying columns were able to confront and repel any of these secondary thrusts – they were more aggressive in their soldiering and they had the power of the fetish priest and his juju on their side, whereas the Zanzari soldiers could only be persuaded to muster on the promise of free beer and cigarettes. Bond had seen the consequences with his own eyes that morning. Dahum’s hinterland was now so small that sufficient troops could be rushed here and there to repel any new attempt at incursion. Except today they had been caught out – Breed’s mercenaries and two heavily armed companies were chasing fleeing Zanzaris through the forest. And in the meantime Kololo had fallen.

Breed took the binoculars from Bond.

‘I suppose we could try and blow the causeway,’ he said vaguely, peering out over the swamp.

‘That’s no good. You have to retake Kololo.’

‘Oh yeah, good idea. Why didn’t I think of that? That’s easy, man.’

‘You have to be on the other side of the causeway. Dug in back in the village.’ Bond gestured at the troops huddling behind their barricade. ‘Look at your guys. Wait until the MiGs get here. They’ll blow you away.’

Breed turned and looked at him resentfully.

‘So what do you suggest, General?’

Bond shrugged. ‘It’s not my war – you’re the one getting the big pay cheque. But you’re going to be in real trouble if you let them get established this side of the causeway.’

Breed swore and spat on the ground. Bond could see he was worried.

‘Have you any second line you could defend back up the road? Another creek, a bridge?’

‘No,’ Breed said. ‘We could fell some trees, I suppose.’

‘Then you’d better get your axes out,’ Bond said, reclaimed the binoculars and surveyed the panorama in front of him again. There was no way around the swamp that the causeway traversed. On the Dahumian side of the swamp he could see that a deep artificial gully had been dug – probably some old flood-prevention device. An idea was forming in his head. He might be able to apply some useful advantage here, he thought. This situation might just be the opportunity he was waiting for.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ Bond said. ‘But I need to know what firepower we have.’

He and Breed slithered down from the bluff to the makeshift positions occupied by the soldiers who had fled Kololo. Bond saw at once that any resistance would be purely token. The Saracen alone would brush them aside and then the troops following the armoured car would have a field day.

Bond surveyed the offensive possibilities. There were two 4.1-inch mortars with a couple of boxes of bombs and one heavy .50-calibre machine gun. Then he saw about a dozen galvanised buckets with curious bulbous lids on them.

‘What’re they?’ Bond asked.

Breed sneered. ‘They’re our Dahumian home-made piss-poor landmines. They call them “Adeka’s Answer”.’

‘Do they work?’

‘They go off with a hell of a bang. Huge percussion – burst your eardrums, make your nose bleed, maybe up-end a small vehicle. Saracen’ll drive right over it.’ Kobus sneered. ‘You’ve got a big charge of cordite. I told them to fill the rest of it with nails and bolts – cut people up – but nobody listens to me.’

‘They may just be perfect,’ Bond said, thinking, remembering.

‘So what do we do, wise guy?’ Breed said, with heavy mockery. He was increasingly worried, Bond could see. Any move that threatened Janjaville meant the end of the war. ‘Go on, genius. What do we do?’

‘If I tell you,’ Bond said, ‘there’s one condition.’

‘I don’t do “conditions”,’ Breed said.

‘Fine. All the best of luck to you and your men.’ He turned and began to walk away.

‘All right, all right. What condition?’

Bond stopped and Breed approached.

‘If I show you how to get back into Kololo,’ Bond said, ‘then you have to get me a meeting with Adeka.’

Breed looked at him – Bond could practically hear his mind working.

‘You can get us back in that village?’ Breed said. ‘You guarantee?’

‘You can’t guarantee anything in a war zone. But I think this will work.’

Breed looked down at the ground and kicked at a stone. Bond could tell he was reluctant to ask for help, as if it signalled some lack of military expertise in himself, showed some fundamental weakness. He spat again.

‘If you get us back in that village Adeka will want to marry you.’

‘We don’t need to go that far,’ Bond said. ‘A meeting, face to face, will be fine.’

‘It won’t be a problem,’ Breed said. ‘I promise you. If you get us back across the causeway you’ll be a national hero. But if you fail . . .’ He didn’t finish.

Bond concealed his pleasure at this concession. ‘We won’t fail if you do exactly what I say.’

‘Where do we start?’

‘We retreat,’ Bond said. ‘In panic. As they say in French:
reculer pour mieux sauter
. Take a step back to jump higher, you know.’

Breed looked at him, darkly. ‘You’d better know what you’re doing, man.’

‘Maybe you have a better idea,’ Bond said, amiably.

‘No, no. Over to you, Bond. This is your party.’

Bond managed not to smile and began to issue instructions to the non-commissioned officers. He sent teams of men to bury the bucket bombs in the irrigation ditch. He then positioned and precisely sighted the mortars, taking his time, calculating distances as best he could and adjusting the calibration on the sights minutely.

‘Don’t touch them,’ he said to the mortar teams. ‘Even after you’ve fired and you think the range is wrong. Just keep firing, understand?’

Then he had the heavy machine gun taken up to the bluff and set it down where it had a field of fire over the whole causeway. He gave Breed precise instructions and checked on the village again through the binoculars. The troops were gathering. The Saracen had moved away from the protection of its gable-end and was now close to the entrance to the causeway – obviously they weren’t going to wait for any air strike.

‘We’ll let the Saracen through,’ Bond said. ‘It’ll be going hell for leather. Have some men waiting to engage it further up the track. Then, when we “retreat” we’ll re-form in the trees and be ready to race across the causeway when I give the word.’

‘You seem very confident,’ Breed said.

‘Well, it worked the last time I tried it,’ Bond said.

‘When was that?’

‘1945. The principle being that, in a battle, confusion can be as important as an extra regiment.’

‘Who said that? The Duke of fucking Wellington?’

‘I did, actually,’ Bond said with a modest smile. ‘Now, here’s exactly how I expect everything to happen.’

At midday the sound of the Saracen’s revving and manoeuvring carried across the marsh to the Dahumian positions. It was hot and steamy. Bond was standing by the rudimentary barricade and ducked down as the first fusillade of bullets began to come their way. The Saracen roared on to the causeway, its .30 Browning machine gun firing wildly as the turret traversed left and right, a massed column of troops surging behind it.

‘Right,’ Bond shouted. ‘Everybody run!’

The defending Dahumians took him at his word. With histrionic display they stood up, waved their arms and abandoned their positions with alacrity, pelting down the road away from the causeway, seeking the protection of the forest trees. Leaving the barricade unguarded and undefended.

Bond sprinted back to the mortar crews. Breed was up at the bluff behind the machine gun. Through his binoculars Bond saw the Saracen accelerate, blasting through the log and oil-drum barrier, spraying the forest fringe with its machine gun. Behind it the Zanza Force troops raced forward over the causeway. It looked like a walkover.