Frederick Forsyth: The Dogs Of War

It was half past five when enough natural daylight filtered over the horizon for the men at the palace to be able to switch off their flashlights. Not that the daylight made the scene in the courtyard look any better. But the job was done.

They had brought Vlaminck’s body inside and laid it out straight in one of the side rooms off the ground-floor hallway. Beside him lay Janni Dupree, brought up from the seashore road by three of the Africans. Johnny was also dead, evidently surprised and shot by the white bodyguard who had seconds later stopped Vlaminck’s last bazooka rocket. The three of them were side by side.

Semmler had summoned Shannon to the mam bedroom on the second floor and showed him by flashlight the figure he had gunned down as it tried to clamber out of the window.

“That’s him,” said Shannon.

There were six survivors from among the dead President’s domestic staff. They had been found cowering in one of the cellars, which they had found, more by instinct than by logic, to be the best security from the rain of fire from the skies. These were being used as forced labor to tidy up. Every room in the main part of the palace was examined, and the bodies of all the other friends of Kimba and palace servants that had been lying around the rooms were carried down and dumped in the courtyard at the back. The remnants of the door could not be replaced, so a large carpet taken from one of the state rooms was hung over the entrance to mask the view inside.

At five o’clock Semmler had gone back to the Toscana in one of the speedboats, towing the other two behind him. Before leaving, he had contacted the Toscana on his walkie-talkie to give the code word meaning all was in order.

He was back by six-thirty with the African doctor and the same three boats, this time loaded with stores, the remaining mortar bombs, the eighty bundles containing the remaining Schmeissers, and nearly a ton of 9mm. ammunition.

At six, according to a letter of instruction Shannon had sent to Captain Waldenberg, the Toscana had begun to broadcast three words on the frequency to which Endean was listening. The words, paw-paw, cas save, and mango, meant respectively: The operation went ahead as planned, it was completely successful, and Kimba is dead.

When the African doctor had viewed the scene of carnage at the palace, he sighed and said, “I suppose it was necessary.”

“It was necessary,” affirmed Shannon and asked the older man to set about the task he had been brought to do.

By nine, nothing had stirred in the town and the clearing-up process was almost complete. The burial of the Vindu would have to be done later, when there was more manpower available. Two of the speedboats were back at the Toscana, slung aboard and stowed below, while the third was hidden in a creek not far from the harbor. All traces of the mortars on the point had been removed, the tubes and baseplates brought inside, the rocket-launchers and packing crates dropped out at sea. Everything and everyone else had been brought inside the palace, which, although battered to hell from the inside, bore only two areas of shattered tiles, three broken windows in the front, and the destroyed door to indicate from the outside that it had taken a beating.

At ten, Semmler and Langarotti joined Shannon in the main dining room, where the mercenary leader was finishing off some jam and bread that he had found in the presidential kitchen. Both men reported on the results of their searches. Semmler told Shannon the radio room was intact, apart from several bullet holes in the wall, and the transmitter would still send. Kimba’s private cellar in the basement had yielded at last to the persuasion of several magazines of ammunition. The national treasury was apparently in a safe at the rear of the cellar, and the national armory was stacked around the walls—enough guns and ammunition to keep an army of two or three hundred men going for several months in action.

“So what now?” asked Semmler when Shannon had heard him out.

“So now we wait,” said Shannon.

“Wait for what?”

Shannon picked his teeth with a spent match. He thought of Janni Dupree and Tiny Marc lying below on the floor, and of Johnny, who would not liberate another farmer’s goat for his evening supper. Langarotti was slowly stropping his knife on the leather band around his left fist.

“We wait for the new government,” said Shannon.

The American-built 1-ton truck carrying Simon Endean arrived just after one in the afternoon. There was another European at the wheel, and Endean sat beside him, clutching a large-bore hunting rifle. Shannon heard the growl of the engine as the truck left the shore road and came slowly up to the front entrance of the palace, where the carpet hung lifeless in the humid air, covering the gaping hole where the main gate had been.

He watched from an upper window as Endean climbed suspiciously down, looked at the carpet and the other pockmarks on the front of the building, and examined the eight black guards at attention before the gate.

Endean’s trip had not been completely without incident. After the Toscana’s radio call that morning, it had taken him two hours to persuade Colonel Bobi that he was actually going back into his own country within hours of the coup. The man had evidently not won his colonelcy by personal courage.

They had set off from the neighboring capital by road at nine-thirty on the hundred-mile drive to Clarence. In Europe that distance may take two hours; in Africa it takes more. They arrived at the border in midmorning and began the haggle to bribe their way past the Vindu guards, who had still not heard of the night’s coup in the capital. Colonel Bobi, hiding behind a pair of large and very dark glasses and dressed in a white flowing robe like a nightshirt, posed as their car-boy, a personal servant who, in Africa, never requires papers to cross a border. Endean’s papers were in order, like those of the man he brought with him, a hulking strong-arm from London’s East End, who had been recommended to Endean as one of the most feared protectors in Whitechapel and a former enforcer for the Kray Gang. Ernie Locke was being paid a very handsome fee to keep Endean alive and well and was carrying a gun under his shut, acquired locally through the offices of ManCon’s mining enterprise in the republic. Tempted by the money offered, he had already made the mistake of thinking, like En-dean, that a good hatchet man in the East End will automatically make a good hatchet man in Africa.

After crossing the frontier, the truck had made good time until it blew a tire ten miles short of Clarence. With Endean mounting guard with his rifle, Locke had changed the tire while Bobi cowered under the canvas in the back. That was when the trouble started. A handful of Vindu troops, fleeing from Clarence, had spotted them and loosed off half a dozen shots. They all went wide except one, which hit the tire Locke had just replaced. The journey was finished in first gear on a flat tire.

Shannon leaned out the window and called down to Endean.

The latter looked up. “Everything okay?” he called.

“Sure,” said Shannon. “But get out of sight. No one seems to have moved yet, but someone is bound to start snooping soon.”

Endean led Colonel Bobi and Locke through the curtain, and they mounted to the second floor, where Shannon was waiting. When they were seated in the presidential dining room, Endean asked for a full report on the previous night’s battle. Shannon gave it to him.

“Kimba’s palace guard?” asked Endean.

For answer Shannon led him to the rear window, whose shutters were closed, pushed one open, and pointed down into the courtyard, from which a ferocious buzzing of flies mounted.

Endean looked out and drew back. “The lot?” he asked.