it,’ I said to Whinger as we jolted along the sandy track. ‘If they act like that during an exercise, what are they going to be like when they get into a real, live battle?’
‘Fucking awful,’ he replied, and he pin-pointed my own worry by adding, ‘They’re all right for a bit, but then the buggers go bananas. They seem to lose their reason.’
When I had spoken to Hereford over the satcom the previous evening, I’d been deliberately vague about our plans for the next few days. I certainly didn’t tell them that I’d more or less promised the President we’d go as far as Gutu. But that, for better or worse, was what I’d done. I’d developed quite a liking for Rhino. His visit had ended happily and he’d gone off in his Puma highly chuffed, fancying Alpha Commando to win the civil war in a couple of weeks. In his estimation, the sun shone out of the backside of any member of the SAS.
‘Zikomo! Zikomo! ’ he had called, waving graciously as he boarded his chopper. Chalky had given him a few zikomos in return, claiming that the word meant ‘goodbye’ as well as ‘thanks’.
So here we were, driving towards the edge of the disputed zone, with the mine at Gutu our next major objective. All we knew about it was that its buildings stood on a bluff on the south bank of the Kameni river, and that diamonds were being dredged by suction from alluvial deposits in the bed of the stream. We had no information about the strength of the garrison, or about the area immediately surrounding the mine, but from the map the Kameni looked a major waterway.
Our own guys were riding in the two pinkies we’d flown out with us – long wheel-base Land Rovers, with windscreens folded down, all mirrors and lights hessianed-up, cam nets bunched and tied along the overhead roll-bars, and poles for the nets strapped along the sides. Everything had been stripped down in case we had to bomb-burst out of the vehicles. One pinkie had a .50 heavy machine gun mounted on the back, and one a Milan rocket-launcher post.
Our bulky kit was loaded into a seven-ton, four-wheel-drive Zyl lorry, sometimes driven by a local, sometimes by one of us. It was an ugly great lump of a truck, with a square-fronted radiator, a fore-mounted winch and an extra heavy angle-girder welded across the front, low down, to act as a bullbar. In spite of power steering, it was a brute to drive, but it was tough and reliable and had plenty of space. The cab was hot as hell, because it was all metal, with a turret opening in the roof on the passenger side. The back had steel sides about three feet high, and a canvas roof, rolled up on its frame to make a sun-shade. Most of Alpha Commando was travelling in similar vehicles, although they also had four Gaz jeeps of Russian origin.
One obvious problem was the inaccuracy of our maps. We already knew they were dodgy before we started south, but it wasn’t until we started covering bigger distances that we realised just how much imagination they included. That first morning we wasted a couple of hours searching in vain for a dirt road clearly marked in yellow, heading south-east in the direction we wanted; either it had never existed, or it had been over-grown by bush, and we finished up making a three-hour detour along tracks to the west. That was the morning gone, and us scarcely any closer to our objective.
Another problem, we could see, was going to be water. We were carrying our own supplies in jerricans stowed under the false floors of the pinkies, along with our rations, and we had reserves in forty-five-gallon containers aboard the big truck. But the locals went through water like they were going to land up beside a nice big clean river every night, and I kept hearing their ruperts reading the riot act about it.
Even before the civil war the country south of us had been sparsely inhabited. According to Joss, only one village in fifty had a borehole. Now most of the villages had been burned down. Some of the
‘Fucking awful,’ he replied, and he pin-pointed my own worry by adding, ‘They’re all right for a bit, but then the buggers go bananas. They seem to lose their reason.’
When I had spoken to Hereford over the satcom the previous evening, I’d been deliberately vague about our plans for the next few days. I certainly didn’t tell them that I’d more or less promised the President we’d go as far as Gutu. But that, for better or worse, was what I’d done. I’d developed quite a liking for Rhino. His visit had ended happily and he’d gone off in his Puma highly chuffed, fancying Alpha Commando to win the civil war in a couple of weeks. In his estimation, the sun shone out of the backside of any member of the SAS.
‘Zikomo! Zikomo! ’ he had called, waving graciously as he boarded his chopper. Chalky had given him a few zikomos in return, claiming that the word meant ‘goodbye’ as well as ‘thanks’.
So here we were, driving towards the edge of the disputed zone, with the mine at Gutu our next major objective. All we knew about it was that its buildings stood on a bluff on the south bank of the Kameni river, and that diamonds were being dredged by suction from alluvial deposits in the bed of the stream. We had no information about the strength of the garrison, or about the area immediately surrounding the mine, but from the map the Kameni looked a major waterway.
Our own guys were riding in the two pinkies we’d flown out with us – long wheel-base Land Rovers, with windscreens folded down, all mirrors and lights hessianed-up, cam nets bunched and tied along the overhead roll-bars, and poles for the nets strapped along the sides. Everything had been stripped down in case we had to bomb-burst out of the vehicles. One pinkie had a .50 heavy machine gun mounted on the back, and one a Milan rocket-launcher post.
Our bulky kit was loaded into a seven-ton, four-wheel-drive Zyl lorry, sometimes driven by a local, sometimes by one of us. It was an ugly great lump of a truck, with a square-fronted radiator, a fore-mounted winch and an extra heavy angle-girder welded across the front, low down, to act as a bullbar. In spite of power steering, it was a brute to drive, but it was tough and reliable and had plenty of space. The cab was hot as hell, because it was all metal, with a turret opening in the roof on the passenger side. The back had steel sides about three feet high, and a canvas roof, rolled up on its frame to make a sun-shade. Most of Alpha Commando was travelling in similar vehicles, although they also had four Gaz jeeps of Russian origin.
One obvious problem was the inaccuracy of our maps. We already knew they were dodgy before we started south, but it wasn’t until we started covering bigger distances that we realised just how much imagination they included. That first morning we wasted a couple of hours searching in vain for a dirt road clearly marked in yellow, heading south-east in the direction we wanted; either it had never existed, or it had been over-grown by bush, and we finished up making a three-hour detour along tracks to the west. That was the morning gone, and us scarcely any closer to our objective.
Another problem, we could see, was going to be water. We were carrying our own supplies in jerricans stowed under the false floors of the pinkies, along with our rations, and we had reserves in forty-five-gallon containers aboard the big truck. But the locals went through water like they were going to land up beside a nice big clean river every night, and I kept hearing their ruperts reading the riot act about it.
Even before the civil war the country south of us had been sparsely inhabited. According to Joss, only one village in fifty had a borehole. Now most of the villages had been burned down. Some of the
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