Decisive Measures Read online

  ‘Of course, some of the theft is institutional. The government has no foreign currency reserves, so Decisive Measures are paid in mineral rights. They now get sixty per cent of the diamonds. Once they’d done that deal, they lost whatever interest they had in fighting the rebels. All they want to do is protect their diamond concessions.’

  ‘And Medicaid International?’

  ‘Are willing to get involved in places where no one else will. We can’t change things but we can at least help to ease the misery of people who have nowhere else to turn.’ She frowned. ‘That’s me. What persuaded you to join the mercenaries?’

  ‘They don’t like to be called that, but.’

  ‘But that’s what they are, hired killers.’

  ‘So are all soldiers.’

  ‘And pilots.’

  ‘And pilots.’ I paused, seeing in my mind the burning woman with her arms outstretched. I hurried on, trying to banish the image from my mind. ‘Yes, sure. We’re all trained to fight and kill; it’s the last resort, but that’s our job and sometimes we have to do it. In peacetime we’re hated for it and in wartime people love us for it. But we’re doing our government’s bidding.’

  ‘Mercenaries aren’t.’

  ‘Some aren’t. Companies like Decisive Measures are. They’re here to defend the diamond mines, but by doing that they’re also keeping the rebels at bay. They’re like the armed forces, but at one remove, doing the jobs the UK doesn’t want to be seen doing for itself.’

  She looked across at Rudi, who was cleaning and oiling his rifle. ‘Like killing Africans.’

  ‘That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I don’t want to see…’ My voice trailed away. ‘Decisive Measures would say we’re here to protect Western interests.’ I changed tack. ‘Listen, I’m a trained military pilot. I’ve left the RAF; what else can I do?’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  I ducked the question. ‘It’s a job, it’s money, but please don’t call me a hired killer. I’m just flying people around, dropping guys on patrols, ferrying in supplies; it’s like driving a bus or a truck.’

  She pointed to the rocket pod under the body of the Huey. ‘And where you come from buses are fitted with those, are they?’

  ‘If you feel so strongly about this,’ I said, ‘why do you work with Decisive Measures yourself?’

  ‘We have no helicopters and very few vehicles. So I treat Decisive Measures’ mercenaries and the expats at the Bohara mine, because it also enables me to treat the African workers there and run clinics at some of the villages.’ She stared at me. ‘But that doesn’t mean I condone what Decisive Measures do.’

  Grizz wandered over, wiping the oil from his hands with a rag.

  ‘Don’t let Layla pile too much guilt on you, Jack. Mercenaries have been a part of Sierra Leone for centuries. Chiefs, merchants and traders all hired professional warriors; nothing’s changed.’ He paused. ‘Now if you and Comrade Layla have finished your dialectical discussion, I’ve got a helicopter I’d like you to fly.’

  Tom and I began the preflight checks. I scrambled into the cockpit. The dusty, scratched Perspex canopy was etched with the fine lines of stress patterns, casting a blurred halo around every object seen through it. I settled myself into the tiny, bone-hard seat and looked around. Tom and I had only a three-week familiarisation course on the Huey behind us, but already it felt as familiar to me as the driving seat of a family car.

  I connected the helmet and radio and we ran through the first round of cockpit checks. Then I gave the wind-up signal to Tom and pressed the starter. The turbines coughed like a man clearing his lungs with the first cigarette of the day, and puffs of blue-black smoke drifted away behind us. Then they fired, roaring into life.

  I shifted the lever into flight idle and the rotors began to turn, ponderously at first then accelerating to a blur. The noise increased to a thunder and a cloud of dust rose, obscuring the compound.

  We made the last round of preflight checks, a rapid-fire exchange of question and response – fuel, hydraulic pressures, oil temperature, turbine outlet temperature, torque gauge and oil pressure.

  Checks complete, I flicked the intercom switch. ‘All ready?’

  The answers came back at once. ‘I’m ready,’ Tom said.

  ‘Ready in the back,’ Grizz said.

  I raised the collective and we lifted clear of the ground. The Huey was an old model, the workhorse of the US forces in Vietnam, but it was solid, well-engineered and reliable.

  I glanced across at Tom. ‘Happy?’

  ‘As happy as I can be seven hours’ flying time from the King’s Head.’

  We made the short hop to Freetown airport and loaded the heli with supplies from Decisive Measures’ storage bunkers. Then we took off again, tracking the road we had taken that morning. We passed the base and flew east over a plain of red earth and elephant grass studded with brown huts as round and fat as mushrooms.

  Clumps of tall trees cast dark pools of shadow on to the baking earth and a broad river wound its way down from the distant mountains. Its banks were lined with trees, but beyond their shade the surface of the water sparkled like silver in the glare of the sun.

  Layla leaned through from the cab, resting an arm on the back of my seat. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Looks great, doesn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘From here, maybe,’ Tom said. ‘Get down there with just the tsetse flies, mosquitoes and rebels for company and see how great it is.’

  Layla stared at him. ‘Perhaps you should reserve judgement until you’ve actually seen the place and met the people.’

  ‘I don’t need to. I already know what it’s going to be like.’

  ‘It must be nice to be so certain about everything.’

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ I said. ‘He’s got a mind like a steel trap – it’s permanently closed.’

  She stayed where she was, standing silent, watching me flying the Huey. ‘It looks unbelievably complicated,’ she said.

  I glanced over my shoulder and smiled at her. ‘It’s not really. When we’re airborne there are only four controls that matter – the rudders, the throttle, the collective and the cyclic.’ I pointed towards the floor of the cockpit. ‘The rudders are controlled by those foot pedals.

  ‘On my left’ – I waggled the control slightly – ‘is the collective. It increases and decreases the pitch angle of the rotors – pull it up and the heli rises, lower it and the heli goes down. The throttle grips are on the end of the collective – you twist power on and off.

  ‘The cyclic is this long, thin stick that comes out of the cockpit floor between my legs. Whichever way you tilt the cyclic – forward, backward, left or right – the disc of the rotors, and therefore the heli itself, will tilt in the same direction.

  ‘That’s really all there is to it, except that none of the controls can be operated in isolation – not if you want to stay airborne. Movements of the cyclic and the collective have to be synchronised.’

  We flew east for another hour, as the terrain grew steadily higher and rougher below us. Finally we climbed towards the last steep ridge separating us from the Bohara Valley. As we cleared the ridgeline, I gasped at the desolation below us.

  Whole forests had been felled, the ground cleared and levelled and then stripped to the bedrock. A river had been diverted and a huge dam built, flooding a vast area with water that was a sickly shade of orange. Man-made mountains of crushed rock, the tailings from the mine workings, rose hundreds of feet, bare of any vegetation. As far as my eyes could see, nothing grew in the entire lower valley.

  A few antlike figures scurried around the monstrous machines gouging at the ground. Enormous draglines ripped at the diamond-bearing gravels, biting out tens of tons of rock at a time. Massive dumper trucks moved in an unending procession down to a smoke-belching mill, where they dumped gravel on to conveyor belts as wide as roads that disappeared into the gaping maw of the plant.

  More conveyor b
elts moved the debris away, building fresh spoil heaps that seemed to grow as I watched them, and a torrent of discoloured water flowed constantly from an opening at the base of the mill. In the far distance beyond the mine I could see an ugly sprawling town, an island of a few concrete buildings rising from an ocean of mud huts and tarpaper shacks.

  A much smaller shanty town surrounded the perimeter fences of the mining compound. The outer fence was a surreal combination of US cavalry fort and Belfast army base – a wooden palisade of sharpened stakes topped by a tangle of barbed wire. Inside the palisade was an altogether more modern fortification: a chain-link perimeter fence topped with coils of razor wire.

  Right at the heart of the compound inside the fences was a helipad of beaten red earth.

  Chapter Three

  I circled the compound, determining the best approach to the landing site, clear of the worst obstacles and heading into the wind.

  I came in and pushed the nose of the heli upwards, flaring towards the landing. The downwash threw up such a dense cloud of red dust that I had to use the artificial horizon indicator to hold the craft level. Turbulence from the ground threw the helicopter around as we descended the last few feet. I levelled the nose but still made a heavy landing, thumping down on to the springs.

  I shut down the engines, stripped off my flying helmet and wiped the sweat from my forehead as the wind from the slowing rotors blew away the last traces of the dust cloud. Then I climbed stiffly down from the cockpit to join the others.

  A tall, dark-haired man was waiting to greet us. He was in civilian clothes, but he wore them like a uniform; everything from his immaculately parted and combed hair to his unrolled sleeves and sharp-creased trousers marked him out as an ex-army officer.

  ‘Welcome to Bohara,’ he said. ‘I’m Colonel Henry Pleydell, CEO of Decisive Measures, but don’t worry’ – he did his best to put a twinkle in his eye – ‘this is just a flying visit. We’re here to protect the integrity of this site and ensure the smooth running of one of the world’s largest diamond mines.’ He gestured to the town just visible in the distance. ‘That was a cluster of half a dozen huts when diamonds were discovered here. It’s now a town of seventy-five thousand people, the biggest in the country after Freetown.

  ‘Most of the processes are automated. There are few hand operations because of the opportunities for pilfering they would allow. There are thousands of illegal miners.’ His lips pursed in distaste. ‘They work at night in the hope of avoiding our security and they make a bloody nuisance of themselves. Areas levelled for mechanical mining one day are often scarred with hand-dug pits by the next morning.’ He studied them for a moment. ‘Well, I hope you enjoy your stay here.’

  As he turned to consult one of the mining engineers, I took a look at his kingdom. All round the inside of the outer palisade were palm-roofed sheds that looked like Second World War Japanese prison huts.

  Layla followed my gaze. ‘The native workers live in them,’ she said. ‘The mine operates twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and the miners work twelve hours on, twelve hours off. The day shift sleep in the beds the night shift have just vacated. Some of their wives and dependants live in the shanties just outside the wire.’

  She broke off as Pleydell began shaking hands all round, then he climbed into a heavily armoured Land Rover. Six mercenaries took up gun positions on it before it was driven out of the gates.

  ‘So it’s back to the golf course for the colonel then,’ Grizz said.

  I continued my scrutiny of the compound. Eight shipping containers had been stacked together in a double-tiered block in the centre. Door and window openings had been cut into them and steel grilles had been welded over the windows. The whole construction was surrounded by an earth mound, capped with a sandbag wall. It was obviously the last redoubt.

  A row of single-storey breeze-block houses surrounded it, the accommodation for the expatriate workers. Awnings round the sides gave the houses a little shade. There were sun loungers, swing seats and barbecues on the stoops, and inside each house, no doubt, were televisions, freezers and fridges full of cold beer.

  Layla peeled off to begin her clinic, a row of Africans waiting patiently next to the firepit where the cooking was done. The rest of us walked over to the stacked containers and filed through a gap in the sandbag walls. Grizz showed us around. The mining company used the upper tier for offices. The front half of the lower tier served as a combined Mess hall, satellite TV lounge, briefing room and relaxation area for the mercenaries, and an end section was used as a dormitory. Rudi had already bagged a spare bunk and made himself comfortable. Tom and I chose a couple as far from him as possible.

  Most of the other soldiers were watching videos, an arsenal of weapons propped against the walls. We were introduced to them: white officers and NCOs, commanding black troops. Few of the latter were in evidence and I wondered if their quarters were with the black workers beyond the wire. From their accents, the majority of the white soldiers were Rudi’s fellow countrymen, but there were five Englishmen, two of whom claimed to be ex-SAS.

  ‘I’m from Hereford – enough said,’ one growled as he crushed my hand in an iron handshake. ‘Call me Raz, everybody else does.’ He was at least a couple of years younger than me, with keen blue eyes and a square, pugnacious chin.

  ‘That’s my mate Reuben,’ he said, pointing out another young mercenary with a round, moon face and a facial tic that made him blink his eyes in a constant rapid motion. It gave him an air of permanent surprise. He raised an arm in greeting, blinked, smiled, blinked again and turned his attention back to the television.

  ‘The thick-looking one is Hendrik,’ Raz said, gesturing towards a bull of a man picking his teeth with the point of a knife, who gave us a curt nod at the mention of his name. ‘Don’t let his table manners put you off. He’s not a bad guy – for a South African.’ The three of them were the only ones who bothered to shift their eyes away from the television screen. So we left them to their videos and moved back to the dining area. Grizz reached into a battered old fridge and passed Tom and me a beer.

  I dropped my voice. ‘Are those two real Hereford or bullshitters?’

  ‘Bullshitters. One of the guys is an ex-Para. The rest are infantrymen or South African veterans of the bush wars against the ANC.’

  There was a sudden burst of firing outside. It provoked a flurry of activity. Soldiers grabbed their helmets and weapons and sprinted for the door. Grizz strode across the room and ran outside.

  There was no further shooting and Grizz and the others soon returned. ‘No big deal,’ he said. ‘A couple of rebels taking a few pot shots. A patrol’s gone out, but they’ll have legged it by now.’

  Remembering that Layla had been outside right through the shooting, I hurried out into the bright sunlight. The queue waiting for treatment had dwindled to a handful of people. I stepped back into the shade by the door and watched Layla as she worked.

  Some of the African workers had brought their wives and children into the compound to be treated, and even the smallest child, a little boy, showed no fear as Layla examined him. With one hand she stroked his forehead as she tested his distended stomach wall with the other. She gave the parents a reassuring smile, but I saw her bleak look as they turned away with the medicine she had given them.

  She started as I stepped out of the shadows next to her. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you. Was that a placebo?’

  She nodded. ‘But it won’t do any good in that case.’

  ‘Is there anything you can do for him?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘We could fly him to Freetown.’

  She looked up in surprise. ‘You obviously haven’t read the Decisive Measures manual – no inessential passengers allowed.’

  ‘Sod the manual. If it’s a matter of life and death, let’s do it and worry about it afterwards.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I felt the cool touch of her fingers on my arm. ‘But it’s not
that simple. Even in Freetown there are neither the drugs nor the expertise to cure him, and he’ll be far from his parents and his village if – when – the worst happens. It’s better that he stays here.’

  By the time she had seen her last patient, night was falling.

  ‘I’ve never got used to how quickly the sun sets in the tropics,’ I said. ‘I really miss those long summer evenings back home.’

  ‘Me too.’ She fell silent, staring up at the darkening sky.

  ‘Where is home for you?’

  ‘Don’t laugh, I’m an Essex girl; not the best place to grow up for someone of my −’ She hesitated. ‘Of my background.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do you think I mean?’ She shot me a suspicious look. ‘My mother was a nurse. She met my dad when he was in hospital after an accident. He’d been an engineer in Guyana; the only job he could get in England was on the assembly line at Dagenham. Maybe things are different there now, but it seemed to me that I was always too black for some and too white for others.’ She fell silent and gave a slow shake of her head. ‘I don’t know why I’m even telling you this. You’re no different – just another white mercenary that fancies his chances with me.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  I looked around. It was now full dark. A solitary soldier was patrolling the perimeter wire, his boots scuffing in the dust. There seemed to be no one else around. The normal noise of the African bush – the chatter of monkeys, the croaking of frogs and the whine and buzz of a billion insects – was absent. In this valley of desolation, almost nothing moved except men and machines.

  The night had a strange beauty of its own, however. The stars dusting the sky overhead were mirrored by a myriad pinpricks of light, moving slowly through the mine workings like glow-worms in the darkness of some vast cave.