Decisive Measures Read online

  Decisive Measures

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Copyright

  Prologue

  The sunset was already reddening the sky and casting long shadows across the hills when the radio crackled into life again. ‘Echo Fourteen. Hostiles reported 179502. Investigate.’

  I suppressed a groan and acknowledged the order. We had been flying for over eight hours, sortie after sortie over a land already scarred by fighting, arriving always too late, to find another village in ruins, another pillar of black smoke reaching up into the sky.

  I banked the heli around and headed north-east over the dusty Macedonian hills. I dropped to low-level as we approached the Kosovan border, and began twisting and turning, hugging the contours of the land. We soared to clear a last mountain ridge and then dropped into the target valley.

  Ahead was a familiar scene: a hamlet, a cluster of houses sheltering in the lee of the hills, surrounded by a belt of woodland. I could see columns of smoke and the flicker of flames piercing the jagged outlines of ruined houses. Of the inhabitants there was no sign.

  I put the heli into a broad turn around the hamlet, my eyes raking the open ground and the edges of the woodland. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a group of rectilinear outlines in the shadows among the trees – trucks or maybe even tanks using the wood for cover. My flesh crept, but I maintained the same course until we had passed out of sight beyond the end of the wood. I radioed base. ‘Possible hostiles sighted. Over.’

  Then I jabbed the intercom. ‘Keep alert, guys. There are at least six vehicles among the trees. I’m making another pass along the edge of the wood. Echo Thirteen, follow me through.’

  I heard a thud behind me as the gunner slid open the door of the cab and swung his gun to cover the target. I swooped in low and fast past the edge of the wood, using my peripheral vision to search for the outlines among the trees. Once more there was no sign of people and no firing, only the tantalising, half-hidden shapes.

  I had now made out eight distinct forms under the trees and a long, tapering black cylinder angled upwards at 45 degrees. It could have been the barrel of a tank gun; it could equally have been a fallen tree. I passed beyond the end of the wood and banked in a tight turn, as my wingman followed me through. The intercom crackled as he completed his pass. ‘Definite hostiles,’ he said. ‘Let’s go for it.’

  I hesitated. ‘Negative. Am not sure. Going in again.’

  As we dropped back towards the wood, I lowered our speed. A flash of the dying sunlight reflected from my co-pilot’s helmet as he turned to look at me. ‘Jesus, Jack,’ he said. ‘How much of an invitation are you going to give them?’

  ‘We’ve got to be sure.’

  ‘We’ll be sure enough when we’re dead.’

  As we reached the midpoint of the wood, I flared the heli, putting it into the hover. The force of the downwash threw the branches aside for a moment and I at last saw movement – figures sprinting towards the vehicles. I sped up and away from the wood.

  I reached for the radio. ‘Figures and vehicles sighted.’

  The answer came back before I had posed the question. ‘Clear engage.’

  I kept circling. My wingman’s voice came over the intercom. ‘What are we waiting for?’

  My co-pilot’s gaze was still fixed on me. ‘Well?’ he said.

  Abruptly I made the decision. ‘Engage.’

  I headed out in a wide loop and then dropped to minimum level, accelerating back towards the long shadow of the wood. The trees rose like a dark wall ahead of us. I held the heli level for a few more seconds as I stared into the cross hairs. They intersected on the largest shape inside the trees and I pulled the trigger once, twice.

  There was a whoosh as the rockets streaked from the pod. I sent the heli soaring up into the sky. A moment later, there was a massive explosion and a bubble of oily flame and black smoke belched upwards through the trees. The gun thundered as the door gunner raked the edge of the wood. There was no answering fire.

  I saw my wingman complete his attack run as I banked for another pass. I dropped in low, the turbines screaming, my finger once more tightening on the trigger. A microsecond before I fired, a figure burst from the wood, a human torch burning from head to toe. The long black skirt flapping around the woman’s legs was a sheet of flame.

  I jabbed the intercom button. ‘Abort. Abort.’ I peered down. The woman was still wreathed in flame, her arms raised, her hands spread wide in supplication. She threw her head back. I saw her mouth opening in a silent scream. Then she slumped to the ground, a shapeless, burning mound of rags.

  I turned for base, the ground blurring before my eyes as tears trickled down my face.

  Chapter One

  A wall of heat and humidity hit us as the door of the aircraft swung open. Sweat beaded my forehead at once as I watched two Africans in threadbare overalls push a rusting flight of steps to the plane.

  Tom leaned past me and stared out at the airfield. From his expression he was less than impressed. Over forty years old, and a career RAF man, he was finding it hard to adjust to life on the outside. ‘That must be the welcoming committee,’ he said, as a cloud of flies formed around us.

  ‘Welcome to the real world, Tom. Better get used to it. There’s no more soft postings and squadron dinners for us, and no more people to hold our hands and tidy up after us. We’re on our own now.’

  He scowled and the ever-present frown lines deepened on his forehead. ‘What a dump. Remind me what we’re doing here, Jack.’

  ‘We’re doing the only job we know, making a few quid for ourselves and upholding Her Majesty’s vital interests at the same time.’

  He gave a sour smile. ‘Vital interests spelt D-I-A-M-O-N-D-S. If they’re that vital, why doesn’t Her Majesty send some of her own boys to look after them? No, don’t tell me, let me guess: because some things are better done at arm’s length.’

  I met his gaze. ‘Listen, it’s a job of work. We agreed to the terms when we signed the contract. It’s a bit late now for regrets.’

  We hurried down the steps and walked across the potholed concrete towards the terminal building. It was stained and crumbling and its windows were filthy and starred with bullet holes.

  Tom’s thinning, sandy hair was darkened and plastered to his head by sweat. I could feel my shirt sticking to my back.

  Although the shedlike arrivals hall was out of the sun, it felt little cooler. Two soldiers in grease-stained uniforms got up as we approached. They pored over our passports, then dropped them on to the table in front of them. We waited in silence, searching their impassive faces for some clue to the next move.

  A group of African men, women and children, most in torn clothes and ragged T-shirts, stood on the far side of the steel gates beyond the arrivals hall, staring at us without apparent interest. There was a commotion and the group parted to allow two men through. They opened the gates and came striding towards us.

  The leader was a powerful figure, his skin tanned to mahogany from long exposure to the sun and his hair flecked with grey. A broad grin showed beneath his walrus moustache. Ignoring the soldiers, he walked over and slapped us on the back. ‘Glad you made it, boys. Grizz Riley. You can’t imagine how pleased I
am to see you here. I was beginning to think we’d never get another heli crew.’

  As he spoke, his companion, a paunchy African with a gold tooth and a shiny suit, began talking to the soldiers in confidential tones. I recognised the type, a local fixer paid to smooth our way past police, customs and other local piranhas.

  I heard the words ‘Decisive Measures’, and the rustle of leone bills – the local currency. Pocketing the bribe, the two soldiers, now all smiles, handed us back our passports and waved us through.

  Grizz led us outside to a battered pickup. A bullet-headed, square-jawed soldier in faded fatigues stood guard over it. His blond hair was cropped so short that his scalp showed through it, and a network of scar lines gleamed white against the tanned skin. He remained unsmiling, scrutinising each of us in turn.

  ‘Another new kid on the block,’ Grizz said.

  ‘Jack Griffiths,’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  The soldier scowled, but shook my hand. ‘I’m Rudi,’ he said in a thick Afrikaans accent.

  Rudi and the fixer got in the front while we climbed into the back with Grizz. A few heads turned to watch us drive off.

  It was an uncomfortable ride. The airport road was potholed and badly scarred by tank tracks. The rusting, burnt-out wreck of one tank had been bulldozed off the road and then left to rot.

  We reached the main road that led up the peninsula towards Freetown. Its surface was marginally better and we accelerated towards the capital. The sun was now directly overhead and I was glad of the patches of dappled shade as the road weaved through fringes of rainforest. At intervals there were clusters of mud-and-thatch huts, and an occasional concrete building. Signs advertised bars, shops and cafes, but all appeared to be closed, and many were smoke-blackened and pockmarked by gunfire.

  We climbed a forested ridge and saw Freetown sprawling below us, a mosaic of bare earth, grey concrete, palm thatch and multicoloured tin roofing, all overlaid with a layer of red dust.

  Beyond the capital, palm-fringed, white-sand beaches, stretching south along the peninsula as far as I could see, looked deserted. This was clearly no place for tourists. Commanding the ridgeline were rows of colonial houses raised above the earth on stilts and shaded by breadfruit and cotton trees. Grizz followed my gaze. ‘It was named Hill Station by the British,’ he said.

  Like their former occupants, the houses had once been white, but they were now faded to a dull khaki brown, stained by rivulets of damp. All of them were surrounded by high brick walls or tin fences topped with shards of broken glass and coils of razor wire.

  Mango and breadfruit trees grew in the lush grounds of the Presidential Palace on Signal Hill, but the white walls, unrepaired from years of coups and countercoups, were pitted by shellfire. Lower on the steep hillside the slopes festered with an ugly, sprawling shanty town that ran down to the creek at the bottom of the hill. The shacks were built of packing cases and scrap wood, and roofed with rusting corrugated metal or palm fronds.

  Ahead of us, a few overloaded, battered pickups drove down the hill into the city, laden with firewood and farm goods to sell. As we rounded a bend on the steep descent, we came to a juddering halt. A pickup and a beaten-up old Mercedes taxi had collided. Both drivers were out of their vehicles, remonstrating with each other.

  As they argued, a human tide began pouring out of the shanty town on the hillside just below the road. Ignoring the drivers’ protests and tearful pleas, the mob began looting the vehicles, stripping them of everything they could carry. The Mercedes driver tried to save his car radio, but he was punched to the ground.

  Drivers coming up the hill stopped, sized up the situation and either reversed or pulled three-point turns and disappeared in clouds of dust. A moment later a police car appeared round the corner. It braked to a halt and sounded its siren. The looters barely glanced up from their work of stripping the cars. No policemen emerged from the car and after a moment it, too, reversed down the hill.

  Grizz glanced at me. ‘Welcome to Sierra Leone,’ he said. He reached for his rifle, stood up and fired a burst into the air. Then he lowered the barrel, pointing it at the looters. There was a moment’s silence, then they fled in panic and we drove on into the city.

  At the Kissy roundabout we turned west through the Lebanese district and drove down East Street past the mosque and the prison. The decaying façades of once-imposing colonial buildings lined the broad streets at the centre of Freetown, but City Hall was a crumbling wreck, surrounded by rows of shabby two-storey buildings. Tattered washing hung from lines suspended across the street, and most of the houses had a firepit in the yard in place of a kitchen.

  We pulled up in Garrison Street by a row of battered shops with buckled and scorched steel shutters. Most were run by Lebanese traders, but few had any goods to offer, only a handful of tins and flyblown packages on otherwise empty shelves.

  The general store at the end of the street was slightly better equipped, though the goods seemed more appropriate to a frontier town than a capital city. There were mosquito nets, candles, axes, bush knives and the shovels and sieves used by gold panners.

  Grizz busied himself collecting supplies, which Rudi took out and loaded onto the pickup, while the store owner ran around scribbling notes on a pad. We left the fixer to argue about the price, and Grizz led us round the corner to a hotel. It resembled a Soviet apartment block and had perversely been built back to front. The balconies faced inland and the bathrooms looked out over the sea.

  Grizz left us at the check-in desk.

  ‘When do we start work?’ I said.

  He smiled. ‘Decisive Measures are generous employers. You get one night’s acclimatisation and R ’n’ R. Then we go upcountry to the Bohara mine first thing in the morning. I’ll leave you guys to sort your kit. I’ll be back at six to give you a briefing and then show you what passes for a good time in these parts.’ He sauntered out.

  My room was everything I expected: the lights didn’t work, nor did the rusting fan at the centre of the bedroom ceiling. There was a rustle of cockroaches from the bathroom and a stench that made me reluctant to investigate further.

  A kerosene lamp stood by the bed, which was draped with a mosquito net. I turned back the covers, lay down and closed my eyes.

  I woke soaked with sweat, my heart pounding, the thunder of gunfire still resounding in my ears. Only the noise of the cicadas broke the silence of my room. As I lowered my head back to the pillow, cursing the nightmare that had frightened me awake, I heard the banging of fists on the door and Grizz’s voice shouting, ‘Come on, you lazy bastard. I’ve nearly worn my knuckles off on this door.’

  I croaked a reply.

  ‘Twenty minutes, in the lobby,’ he said.

  When I heard his footsteps recede down the corridor, I dragged myself out of bed and walked into the bathroom.

  I turned on the shower and stood under the dribble of brackish water for a few minutes, then towelled myself dry. I pulled on jeans and a clean long-sleeved shirt, then headed down the stairs, not wishing to try my luck with the lift.

  I found Grizz, Rudi and Tom in the lobby, staring out through the plate-glass window at the skyline. There had been a slow build-up of cloud throughout the afternoon, climbing the wall of the mountains and piling higher and higher into the sky, building the thunderheads that would bring the evening rain. The sun had almost set and lightning was sparking over the mountains.

  As the sky darkened, the lights all over Freetown went out. Tom started and looked round in alarm. ‘Just another power failure,’ Grizz said. For a moment the city was in darkness, then scores of generators fired up in a metallic chorus, counterpointing the croaking of the frogs in the swamps.

  We walked to a small meeting room off the lobby. Marks of smoke damage and the crudely repaired outline of an impact from a heavy round or rocket were clearly visible where the wall met the ceiling.

  We settled into chairs as Grizz closed the door. He strode to the
front of the room. ‘Rudi, you can sleep through the first bit if you want, unless helicopter spotting is one of your hobbies.’

  He turned to Tom and me. ‘Have you guys flown together before?’

  ‘You mean apart from the training course on the Huey?’ I said. ‘Not for a while. Tom trained me though, nearly ten years ago.’

  ‘It won’t be a problem,’ Tom said. ‘We both know our own jobs.’

  Grizz nodded. ‘OK, as I’m sure you’ve been told, you’ll be flying a Huey XI. The helicopter is vital to the resupply and support of the garrison at the Bohara mine. You’ll be based here in Freetown, but your job is to keep Bohara supplied with everything from mining equipment and ammunition to food and medical supplies. The Huey is twenty years old, but it’s been upgraded many times and I can vouch for its condition. It has a door-mounted mini-gun, a nose gun and forward-firing rockets and chaff and flare dispensers. It’s also been fitted out for flight with night-vision goggles.’

  ‘What about the rebels?’ Tom said. ‘What have they got?’

  Rudi stirred and began to show some interest.

  ‘They’re backed by Liberia,’ Grizz said, ‘and a lot of their weapons come through that regime. They have plenty of AK rifles, a few rocket-propelled grenades and a couple of heavy machine guns. They also captured a ZFU anti-aircraft gun from the government some years ago, but we’re uncertain whether they have the know-how to fire it effectively. The Liberians do have Hind helicopters, however, and there are rumours that one has been allocated to the rebels. You’ll have read about Sierra Leone in the papers, but in some ways the reality here surpasses anything you’ve heard. The government is theoretically in control of the country, but in practice its writ barely runs as far as the outskirts of Freetown.’

  He gave a bleak smile. ‘Lives have no value here. Only one thing counts: diamonds. The government owns the mines but is powerless to protect them without the help of private military companies like Decisive Measures, and, like everybody else, the companies take their reward in gemstones. Don’t get the idea that we operate on a lavish budget though, we operate on a shoestring.’