Charles McCarry - The Miernik Dossier

There were five or six bullet holes in the Cadillac, and one of the windows was smashed. I don’t think the Land Rover was damaged at all. Both cars ran all right. When I went back to the tent to get my clothes I saw that there were several holes in the canvas. Ilona was right about that, and so it’s true that she saved my life, just as Nigel said to me later on.

We didn’t sleep anymore that night. The men went out into the desert a little way and waited with their guns-set up a perimeter, as Paul said. Ilona and I lay near them in our sleeping bags. The bandits didn’t come back.

The next morning, when we went away in the cars, we left the dead men where they were, lying in the sun. Kalash walked from one body to the other just before he got in the car. He spat on the face of each corpse. For just a moment, while he did that, one could see that his people had not always been gentlemen from Oxford.

I was still awake when I heard Kalash speaking to me through the wall of the tent. He said, in his ordinary penetrating tone of voice, that he had spotted a half-dozen men moving toward the camp from the hill that lay to the west of us. “Silly fellows are crawling along on their stomachs in the moonlight and dashing from shadow to shadow,” he said. “They have guns.”

I pulled on my boots and picked up the Sten gun and the extra magazines. The camp could not have been in a worse defensive position. The tents were pitched in a shallow canyon, with four low hills lying all around it and only a narrow track of firm ground leading out. There was no cover, except for the vehicles. It was obvious that somebody would have to get around behind the attackers, and I told Kalash that I’d try it. The moon was full, but fairly low on the horizon, so that there was a strip of shadow behind my tent. I cut the canvas and crawled out. Kalash stuck his head around the end of the tent and gave me what I believe is called a wolfish grin. He seemed to be looking forward to whatever was coming.

I heard him waking Miernik and Nigel as I crawled off to the right as fast as possible. The ground was flinty and I was sorry I hadn’t taken time to put on my clothes. I could feel the skin peeling off my knees and elbows and the blood oozing. It was about twenty yards to the shoulder of the hill, which was really just a hillock. Fair-sized boulders, the color of sand in daylight but now as white as eggshell in the moonlight, were scattered over the face of the hill. Each rock threw a puddle of shadow big enough to conceal a man. As soon as I got under cover of the hill I stood up and ran along its base until I thought I was due north of the attackers and a little behind them. Then, crawling again, I went up the hill.

When I got to the top I found a rock to hide behind and looked around. There was no sign of movement in the camp. Kalash lay on his back in full view in front of the tents. About ten yards below me, lying behind rocks, were the bandits, six of them abreast. The light was very good and I could see them plainly. They were wearing white robes with U.S. Army rifle ammunition belts around their waists. Five had M-l rifles and the other, probably the leader, had a submachine gun slung across his back. They were about fifty yards from the edge of the camp. I thought they’d try to get closer before attacking.

I decided to move off to the right and downhill a little, so as to be out of the line of fire from the camp, and also to get into an enfilading position. I backed away from my rock, stood up in a crouching position-and fell over a walkie-talkie radio. When I went down I smashed my nose with my own Sten gun. By some miracle, the fellows down below didn’t hear anything. I got around on their flank with no trouble, except that blood was running off my chin. I pinched my nostrils but I couldn’t get the blood to clot. My vision was slightly blurred, though it cleared in a minute or two.

The bandits were exactly where they had been before. The leader got up on his knees, unslung his machine pistol, and gave a hand signal. His troops unlocked their M-1’s: I heard the safety catches clicking. The bolt on a Sten gun is very noisy. I figured if I pulled mine to put a round in the chamber I’d have five M-1’s shooting at me from a range of ten yards in about four seconds. In less time than that, they opened fire on the camp. At the first shot, Kalash stood up in the moonlight in the middle of the open ground and began firing at the hillside with his Sten gun. He certainly was a lovely target. I lost a little time watching this scene. As Nigel and Miernik came rolling out of their tent, I began to fire.

No one but the leader, whom Kalash apparently inspired to stand upright and match testicles, was a very good target. He fell almost at once. It took the others several moments to realize that I was behind them.

When they did, they all turned around and started shooting in my direction. There was no way to move from behind my rock: rounds were slamming into it and throwing dirt all around it. There was a lot of fire coming from the camp, but it was doing the attackers no damage as they were all in the prone position behind boulders of their own. I fired a few bursts around the sides of my rock, but I’m sure I got no results. The bandits were firing whole clips at me. I could hear the M-1’s bang out eight shots as fast as the trigger could be pulled, and then the clang of the empty clips being ejected.

I thought I was a dead man. Then I heard another Sten gun and, looking up the hill, I saw Miernik. He was down in the kneeling position, firing just as he had done at the paper target a few days before-methodical bursts of two and three rounds. The bandits, screaming in panic, began shooting at him. I was able to start firing again. Almost as soon as I did, they began to run. The only way for them to go was straight into the rising moon. They were perfect silhouettes. I stood up and fired a burst. One of them fell. Miernik came down the hill, reaching me as I was putting another magazine in the Sten gun. He put his hand on my arm and said, “Let them go. We’ve done enough.”

Miernik walked over to the men we had shot and turned them over. Idiocy,” he said. “Idiocy.” He uttered a loud sob. He picked up their weapons by the barrels and flung them into the darkness. Then, without another word, he began to run down the hill toward the camp. I followed. The Land Rover, with Kalash at the wheel and Nigel standing up in the front seat with a Sten gun in his hands, went tearing out of the camp. Ilona and Zofia were unhurt, and very calm. For some reason neither of them had any clothes on. The sight of them filled me with joy. I was, after all, alive against all my expectations of a few minutes before. But I felt not even a fficker of sexual desire. Zofia tried to do something about my bloody nose. Both girls stood there, completely unselfconscious, making no effort to cover themselves, until Miernik went and got them a couple of blankets.

Kalash brought back the three men Miernik and I had killed, as well as one who was still alive. He sorted through the bodies and pulled the wounded man out of the Land Rover by the feet. Kalash tried to question him, but the man was too badly shot up to speak before he died. There was blood all over the place. Miernik moved away while Kalash worked on the wounded man, but the girls did not flinch.

Kalash and I searched the bodies. In a wallet carried by the leader we found a thick wad of Sudanese money and a photograph of Kalash. It was a perfect likeness. Kalash was wearing European clothes, and he was seated at a table in an outdoor café that I recognized as the one on the Ile Rousseau in Geneva. Kalash handed me his picture without a word, then took it back and tucked it away in his robe. The money he scattered over the ground. Kalash gazed thoughtfully at the hills for a few moments, then took my arm and walked me out of earshot of the others. “What do you make of all this?” he asked.