Tom Cain - Dictator

Morrison walked into a lobby whose mint-green paint was mottled with black stains of mould. He had a brisk, argumentative shout at the man behind the reception desk then led Carver to his room.

‘Sling your gear in there, then we will cut into town,’ he said, standing by the open door as Carver went into the room and slung his bag on an ancient, sagging bed beneath a grimy grey mosquito net. ‘You need a good meal inside you. I must have more smokes. We will go through tonight’s entertainment. Then I suggest you get a couple of hours’ rest. We take off at fifteen hundred hours, on the bloody dot.’

As Carver was on his way back out, Morrison stepped into his path and stuck a hand into his chest to stop him.

‘I want you to make me a promise, hey,’ Morrison said, and there was no trace of humour now. ‘Promise me, swear on your mother’s life-’

‘I don’t have a mother.’

‘On her fucking grave then, I don’t care. Just swear that you will get that girl out alive. This is Africa and there is no negotiation here, just taking and killing, the way it has always been. These kidnappers will never give that girl back, never. They intend to take the money and then kill her anyway. So you get her out, Mr Carver. You get her out, or believe me, she will die.’

The chopper was flying northeast out of Tete, following the Zambezi upstream towards the Cahora Bassa dam. At first the river flowed calm and wide, a mile from bank to bank at some points. But then the gradient steepened, the river narrowed, and the force of water within it increased. The valley became deeper and the hills on either side of the river closed in, becoming first bluffs then cliffs that plunged hundreds of feet down to boiling, frothing rapids whose surface disappeared from time to time beneath a fine mist of spray. The helicopter had been flying high above the river, but now it swooped down, plunging between the precipitous rockfaces of the gorge: a metallic dragonfly skimming the surface of the river, swooping right and left as it followed the twists and turns of its course.

Carver wanted his approach to be as fast and discreet as possible and the unpopulated, inaccessible ravine provided a route that led directly to his target out of sight of prying eyes. It also threatened a far greater danger of death en route. One flick of a rotor-blade against the valley walls, one touch of the landing gear against an outcrop of rock and he, Morrison and the pilot would all be sent spinning to their graves. But he had ridden plenty of helicopters at absurdly low levels en route to missions whose odds were near suicidal. It was not so much that he felt no fear, simply that he had learned to park it in a distant, sealed-off area of his mind, while his conscious thought was directed to the job in hand.

Beside him, Flattie Morrison’s cigarette was clamped at one end of a crocodile smile that was even wider and toothier than usual.

‘This is the life, hey?’ Morrison shouted over the clatter of the rotors, made even louder by the echoes resounding off the rock walls on either side. ‘Feels like old times! Fuck, man, the closer I get to the Reaper, the more I feel alive. You know what I’m talking about?’

Carver said nothing, but he couldn’t argue. There was nothing on earth so charged with pure adrenalin as the excitement that came with the risk of oblivion. But that too had to be kept in check, every ounce of nervous energy reserved for the moment when it was most needed.

‘Yeah, you know all right,’ said Morrison. He looked at his watch. ‘Not long now till we get there. You want to check anything, go through the plan again, this is the time to do it.’

They went over the timeline of the next nine hours one more time. The success of the mission depended on perfect coordination: the simultaneous arrival of two elements at a given point, timed to the last second.

‘OK,’ said Morrison, once the details had been confirmed. ‘One last thing: if anything goes wrong and you need an emergency evac, just get on the comms and say “Flattie”. Whisper it, shout it, fucking yodel it, doesn’t matter, we’ll be on our way. But one thing you should consider. We will be parked at an LZ just across the river. It will take us eight minutes to reach the extraction point, and I don’t have to tell you, eight minutes is a fuck of a long time if you’re getting your arse shot off in a firefight. So think about that before you call, hey? Right, now we must get out of here before we hit the dam like a bug on a windscreen.’

No sooner had Morrison spoken than the helicopter lurched upwards and hurtled up the cliff-face, past the bare rock towards the luscious carpet of greenery at its summit. Then they were escaping the grasp of the gorge, and for a second Carver caught a glimpse up ahead of the mighty Cahora Bassa dam, whose five-hundred-and-sixty-feet-high concrete walls held back the Zambezi, confining the river within a man-made lake more than a hundred and eighty miles long. Then the pilot swung left over a range of hills, skimming the trees as closely as he had the water, before dropping again and bringing the chopper in to land at the centre of a minuscule clearing with the precision of an experienced big-city driver squeezing into a tiny parking space.

‘Out you get!’ shouted Morrison as the helicopter’s skids kissed the ground.

Carver jumped down, holding the Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun he had specified, and a kitbag was thrown after him.

Morrison gave him a thumbs-up and then the helicopter rose and sped away over the trees.

‘Mr Carver!’

Carver turned at the sound of the voice and saw a tall African man in faded blue trousers and a loose, short-sleeved white shirt gesturing at him to follow.

‘My name is Justus Iluko, but everyone just calls me Justus,’ said the man when Carver had caught up. ‘Come with me, please. I work for Captain Morrison. I fought with him in the war of liberation,’ he added, by way of explanation.

‘On the same side?’ Carver asked.

Justus laughed. ‘Oh yes! All the soldiers were black in our company. Just the officers and NCOs were white. Some of them… pah!’ He shook his head dismissively. ‘But Captain Morrison, he was square with us. He never made any man do anything he would not do himself. We trusted him and we followed him, you know?’

Carver nodded.

‘Mr Klerk, too,’ said Justus. ‘He was a mighty warrior. When he fought, no one could defeat him!’

Carver followed Justus through the trees to a dirt track on which an ancient VW van was parked. He climbed up into the passenger seat. Justus got in the driver’s side and set off.

‘I knew Miss Zalika too, when she was just a little baby girl. When the war ended, before he started his own businesses, Mr Klerk got me a job as a game warden on the Stratten Reserve. I was only there for three years, but I remember Miss Zalika being born. We were all given the day off and plenty of beer to drink!’ Justus laughed at the memory. ‘Sometimes Mrs Stratten took her children for picnics and one of us drove them out on to the reserve and watched over them in case any lions or other dangerous animals came, but they never did. Those were good days. No more war, everyone with so much hope for the future

…’

His voice trailed away, and for a while the only noise came from the VW as it lurched and rattled along the potholed track. Justus looked around, then nodded as he spotted a familiar landmark. ‘Just thirty minutes and we will be in Chitongo.’

‘Has Morrison briefed you on the plan of action for tonight?’ Carver asked.

‘Of course. The captain is a very thorough man. He always told us about the importance of proper preparations. He does not like to leave anything to chance.’