Solo Read online

  ‘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?’

  14

  THE BATTLE OF THE KOLOLO CAUSEWAY

  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 ins
tructions 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.

  ‘They are comin’, sar,’ said the lance corporal who was manning the first of the mortars.

  ‘Wait,’ Bond said. He wanted most of the men across the causeway before there was any retaliation.

  ‘OK, fire!’ He waved up at Breed.

  There was a dull whump as the first mortar bomb took off into the air. A split second later the other followed. The bombs exploded some way behind the advancing Zanzaris.

  ‘Keep firing,’ Bond said to the baffled mortar crew. ‘Don’t stop.’ He ran off and scrambled up through the undergrowth to where Breed was blasting away with the machine gun.

  Bond could see that his ally ‘confusion’ was already contributing to this firefight. The advancing troops had already slowed, disoriented by this barrage of harmless explosions to their rear. Breed, on Bond’s instructions, was also firing at the rear of the troops’ advance, raking the causeway with his heavy-calibre bullets, chewing up great gouts of earth and dust. More bombs exploded as the mortars kept up their rate of fire.

  ‘OK. Turn the gun on the rear ranks.’

  Breed swivelled the gun and worked the bullet impacts closer to the shifting static mass of Zanzari soldiers. One or two of them were cut down. Others flung themselves in the swamp. There was a collective race to get off the causeway as the troops desperately began to search for cover from this baffling assault from behind.

  The irrigation ditch lay there invitingly. The perfect place to keep your head down. Men began to pour and slither into the security its depth provided.

  Further up the track Bond could hear firing and explosions as the Saracen was engaged. The irrigation ditch was packed with cowering men as Breed kept up his fire, hosing bullets along the ditch’s edge. Now, Bond thought, all we need is ‘Adeka’s Answer’.

  The first of the bucket bombs exploded and Bond felt the shockwave even up on the bluff. That detonation set off a chain reaction and the others exploded in a Chinese firecracker of eruptions along the irrigation ditch.

  ‘Breed – get your boys across the causeway and into the village.’

  Bond didn’t want to think about what had happened in the ditch. He could hear the screams of wounded men and a great billowing pall of smoke and dust obscured the view.

  On Breed’s signal – a green flare – the Dahumians in the forest began to stream across the causeway towards Kololo village. There was some sporadic firing as they advanced but the debacle on the far side of the causeway must have been very visible to whatever troops had remained behind.

  Breed was on his feet with the binoculars.

  ‘Yes, they’re running away,’ he said. ‘True to form. Big bunch of girls.’

  Bond looked down at the irrigation ditch as the smoke cleared. Stunned and wounded soldiers were staggering and crawling out of it, being rounded up by Breed’s men.

  ‘Don’t kill them,’ Bond said. ‘A nice large group of prisoners might be a useful bargaining chip, one day.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Mr Bond,’ Breed chuckled, wiping his eye on his cuff, and then looking at him with something that might just have been respect, Bond thought. Score one for the Agence Presse Libre.

  ‘Remember my condition,’ Bond said. ‘Remember your promise. I got you back into Kololo – so get me to Adeka.’

  15

  GOLD STAR

  Bond sat in the bar of the Press Centre, drinking his second whisky and soda, his mind full of the battle that he’d directed and won. One hundred and eighty-two prisoners had been captured and the Dahum army was back in Kololo, dug in and secure in its fortified bunkers. Breed had been exultant and had promised him a face-to-face meeting with Adeka within twenty-four hours. If that were the outcome then a momentary reverse in the Zanza Force advance would have been well worth it. There was every chance that the larger objective might be achieved. Reculer pour mieux sauter, indeed.

  To be honest, Bond had to admit that he hadn’t thought much about what he was doing once the urgency of the situation was apparent and the beautiful clarity of his plan had seized him. All that had concerned him was how best to execute it. And it had been incredibly exciting: the gratification of seeing mental concepts vindicated so completely in a small but classic wartime encounter between infantry units – one so skilfully turning defence into attack and eventual victory. The Battle of the Kololo Causeway could be usefully taught at military academies, he thought, with a little justified pride.

  Digby Breadalbane came diffidently into the bar, saw Bond and strode over and sat down – looking for a free drink.

  ‘How was your day, James?’ he asked.

  ‘More intriguing than I expected, Digby,’ Bond said, circumspectly, and offered to buy him a beer.

  Breadalbane seemed chirpier than usual as he sipped his beer, foregoing his usual litany of moans and complaints.

  ‘How long do you think this war will last?’ he asked.

  ‘Who knows?’ Bond shrugged.

  ‘I mean, it’s not going to end next week.’

  ‘You never can tell.’

  ‘No, it’s just that I’ve decided to stay on, no matter what, and see things out to the bitter end. I expect you and the others will fly out on a Constellation when the end is nigh. I can’t afford the fare, so I thought if I witness the fall of Port Dunbar then that’ll be my scoop. You know – the sole eyewitness.’

  ‘It would make your reputation, Digby,’ Bond said, his face straight. ‘You’d be famous.’

  ‘I suppose I would, wouldn’t I?’ Breadalbane said, liking the idea.

  ‘And if you could get slightly wounded, even better.’

  Bond saw Sunday poke his head around the door and beckon to him.

  Bond stood and dropped a few notes on the table.

  ‘I bet you’d get a salaried job out of it as well,’ he said. ‘Have another on me.’

  He crossed the room to Sunday leaving Breadalbane to his dreams of journalistic glory.

  ‘Please to come with me, sir,’ Sunday said. ‘We have to leave
now.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I’m not permitted to say.’

  Sunday drove Bond out of Port Dunbar, heading south towards the harbour. Then they turned off into a high-walled compound containing three private houses all linked by covered walkways. As they parked, Bond noticed that Sunday seemed cowed and oddly apprehensive.

  ‘I wait here for you, Mr Bond.’

  Bond stepped out of the car and, at the door to the main building, was met by a young bespectacled man in a white coat.

  ‘Mr Bond? I am Dr Masind. Please follow me.’

  He sounded Indian or Pakistani to Bond, who obediently followed him through the house – that had clearly been converted into some kind of clinic: clean, brightly lit, nurses hurrying to and fro – and out on to a walkway, leading to a separate house, guarded by two armed soldiers and with, Bond noticed, a tall thin radio mast towering above it.

  They went upstairs and Bond was asked to wait in a corridor. After about five minutes, a young officer, a colonel, emerged and introduced himself. He was smart, slim and dapper, his dark green fatigues neatly pressed. He had a small pencil moustache, like a matinee idol.

  ‘I’m Colonel Denga,’ he said, speaking with the slightest accent. ‘I want to thank you for what you did for us today.’

  ‘It was very spur-of-the-moment. As you know I’m just an APL journalist – but the situation did call for fairly drastic action,’ Bond said. He was aware that his self-effacingness could be counterproductive and he was conscious of Denga looking at him shrewdly.

  ‘Not every journalist can dictate and control a battle on the spur of the moment . . .’

  Bond smiled. ‘I didn’t say I was inexperienced. I’m older than you, Colonel. I served with British commandos in World War Two. You learn a lot, and fast.’

  ‘Well, wherever your expertise originates – we’re very grateful. Please – go in.’

  He opened a door and Bond stepped through into a dark room, with only one light burning. A man was lying on a hospital bed with a saline drip attached to his neck. He was terribly gaunt and thin, his hair patchy and grey. He gestured to Bond to come closer and spoke in a weak, semi-whispering voice.