‘I’m not sleepy any more.’ Claudia snuggled against him like a cat, and then much later she whispered, ‘I’m so glad Matatu woke us up . . .’

  It was still dark when Sean turned Job out of his blanket the next morning. ‘We’ve got work to do,’ he told him, and while Job laced on his boots, he described his meeting with General China.

  ‘You mean we are now instructors,’ Job laughed softly. ‘All we know about those Stingers is what we have read in the manuals.’

  ‘That will have to change,’ Sean told him. ‘The sooner we get the Shanganes into action, the sooner we are going to get the hell out of here.’

  ‘Is that what China told you?’ Job raised an eyebrow at Sean.

  ‘Let’s get Ferdinand and his boys cracking,’ Sean said brusquely to cover his own misgivings. ‘We’ll sort them into teams of two men, one to serve the launcher and the other to carry the extra missiles. Of course, the number two must be able to take over if the leader is put down.’

  Sean pulled out his notebook and drew the candle stump closer, writing in its guttering yellow light.

  ‘When do you expect Alphonso to get here?’ Job stuffed his shirt into the top of his tiger-striped pants.

  ‘Sometime today, if at all,’ Sean replied.

  ‘He’s the best of the bunch,’ Job grunted.

  ‘Ferdinand is not bad,’ Sean pointed out, and placed their names at the head of the page as his section leaders. ‘Okay, we need thirty names for our number ones, give me some.’

  It was like the old days, working together this way and Sean found he was beginning to enjoy himself.

  As soon as it was light enough, they paraded the men who had returned in the Hercules from the Grand Reef raid. With the two casualties missing there remained eighteen men under Ferdinand. Sean immediately gave Ferdinand a field promotion to full sergeant, and was rewarded with a huge grin and a flourishing salute that almost swept Ferdinand off his feet with his own vigour.

  Sean had to find something to occupy them and keep them out of the way while he and Job gave themselves a crash course on the Stinger missile system.

  ‘Sergeant.’ Sean addressed Ferdinand by his rank for the first time. ‘Do you see that hill over there?’ It was just visible through the trees, shaded blue with distance. ‘Take your men for a run around it and get them back here in two hours. Weapons and full field-packs.’

  As they watched the column of men doubling away, Sean said, ‘If Alphonso and his lads don’t arrive by this evening, we’ll have to recruit replacements. That’s no problem, however, China will be keen to let us have his very best men. At the moment, we are right at the top of his list of favourite flavours.’

  ‘In the meantime, let’s hit those manuals,’ Job suggested. ‘I haven’t swotted since varsity days. I’m not looking forward to it.’

  Claudia joined them in the dugout, helping them sort through the thick loose-leaf red plastic-covered manuals, picking out the information relevant to their situation and discarding the vast body of technical data that they had no need of, and the operational reports and instructions that did not apply to deployment in this altitude and terrain. After two hours’ work they had reduced the mass of information to one manageable slim volume.

  ‘All right.’ Sean stood up. ‘Let’s go find a training ground.’

  They picked out a spot a few hundred metres downriver from the dugout where the side of a low kopje formed a natural lecture theatre. The tall riverine mahogany trees spread their branches overhead to provide cover from a surprise raid by the Hind gunships. When Ferdinand and his men returned bathed in sweat from their little outing Sean put them to work clearing the amphitheatre of thorn and scrub and digging shell scrapes conveniently close at hand for use when air raids interrupted classes.

  ‘Right,’ Sean told Job and Claudia. ‘Now we can uncrate the trainer set and one of the launchers. From now on it’s “look and learn”, “show and tell” time.’

  When they opened the first crate, Sean discovered that the battery power pack was discharged. However, each crate contained a small charger set with appropriate connections and transformers.

  Ferdinand and his men under Job’s supervision carried the power packs up to the headquarters’ communications centre and at General China’s order, they were given priority use of the portable 220 volt 15 kilowatt generator. Sean connected up the power packs in batches of five, but it would take twenty-four hours before they had power available for all the missile launchers.

  With the batteries on charge they laid out the trainer set and one of the launchers on the makeshift table that Ferdinand had built on the floor of the open-air theatre under the trees. While Claudia read aloud from the instruction manual, Sean and Job stripped and reassembled the equipment until they were thoroughly familiar with all of it.

  Sean was relieved and pleased to discover that with the exception of the IFF, the operation of the equipment was not a great deal more complicated than the conventional RPG 7 rocket-launchers. The RPG 7 was so much a part of the guerrilla arsenal that, as Job remarked, every single man in China’s division could load and lock on a pitch-dark night in a thunderstorm.

  ‘Anyway, we don’t need the IFF,’ Sean pointed out. ‘Everything that flies in these skies, apart from the dicky birds, is a foe.’ The IFF, ‘Identification Friend or Foe’, was a system that interrogated the target, determining from the aircraft’s on-board transponder whether it was hostile or friendly, and preventing launch of missile against friendly aircraft.

  Claudia found the section on the manual dealing with the IFF and under her tutelage, they disarmed the system, converting the Stinger into a free-fire weapon which would attack any aircraft at which it was aimed.

  Without IFF fitted, the attack sequence for the missile is straightforward. The target is picked up in the small screen of the aiming sight, and the safety device above the pistol grip is disengaged with the right thumb. The actuator is engaged by depressing the button built into the reverse of the pistol grip. This starts the run up of the navigational gyro and releases a flow of freon gas to cool the infra-red seekers as they become active. With the sights held on the target, all incoming infra-red radiation is magnified and focused on the detector cell of the missile head. As soon as this radiation is of sufficient concentration to allow the missile to track to its source, the gyro stabilizer uncages, and the missile emits a high-pitched tone.

  To fire the missile the operator depresses the trigger in the pistol grip with his forefinger which starts the electric ejector motor. The missile discharges from the launch tube through the frangible front seal and ejects to a safe distance, approximately eight metres from the operator, to protect him from rocket back-blast. At this point the solid fuel rocket motor fires and the blast of exhaust gas flares out the retractable tail-fins and the missile accelerates to four times the speed of sound. When an inertial force of twenty-eight times gravity is attained, the fuse shut-out is thrown open and the missile is armed. It tracks towards the target on a fire-and-forget trajectory, guided not by the operator but by its own proportional navigational system.

  With the specialized ‘Hind’ attack cassette inserted in the launcher’s RMP – reprogrammable micro processor – the system switches automatically into ‘Two Colour’ mode when it is a hundred metres from the infra-red source. At this point it abandons the infra-red radiations emitted by the engine exhaust suppressors and instead focuses on the much weaker ultra-violet emanations from the engine intakes. On this target the high-explosive warhead hits to kill.

  ‘Even a Shangane could learn how to fire one of these,’ Job said, and Sean grinned.

  ‘Tut tut, your Matabele tribal racism is showing again.’

  ‘It’s like this, when you are genetically superior, there is simply no point in trying to conceal the fact.’

  They both glanced expectantly at Claudia, but she did not even look up from the manual as she drawled, ‘You are wasting your time, you two bigots. You aren’t going to get a rise out of me this time.’

  ‘Bigot,’ Job savoured the word. ‘It’s the first time anybody has ever called me that. I love it.’

  ‘That’s enough fooling around.’ Sean broke it up. ‘Let’s take a look at the trainer.’

  After they had connected one of the freshly charged battery packs and assembled the trainer equipment, Sean gave his opinion.

  ‘With this stuff, we can have the lads ready to go into action within days, not weeks.’

  Once a micro cassette was inserted in the training monitor, the launcher screen simulated the image of a ‘Hind’ which the instructor was able to manipulate in various flight patterns, climbing, descending, side-slipping or hovering. While he did so he was able to watch the trainee’s reactions as he attempted to acquire the ghost ship on his own screen and attack it with a phantom missile.

  Sean and Job played with the trainer like a pair of teenagers, flying the image in complicated manoeuvres. ‘It’s just like a Pacman game,’ Job enthused. ‘But what we need is a dum-dum, a pseudo-Shangane to act as a trainee for us.’

  Once more both the men looked at Claudia who was still sitting cross-legged on the table studying the manual.

  She looked up as she felt their eyes on her. ‘A dum-dum?’ she demanded. ‘I’ll show you dum-dum. Give me the launcher.’

  She stood in the centre of the floor of the amphitheatre with the launcher balanced on her shoulder, and stared into the sighting screen. The bulky equipment seemed to dwarf her. She had reversed her camouflage cap so the peak stuck out behind her head, and it gave her the gamine air of a little league baseballer.

  ‘Ready?’ Sean asked.

  ‘Pull!’ she said, concentrating ferociously on the screen, and Sean and Job exchanged smug supercilious grins.

  ‘Incoming!’ Sean called sharply. ‘Twelve o’clock high. Lock and load.’

  He brought the ghost Hind in on a head-on attack at 150 knots.

  ‘Locked and loaded,’ Claudia affirmed, and in their screen, they watched the duplicate sight ring of her missile launcher swing up smoothly and centre on the approaching Hind.

  ‘Actuator on,’ she said calmly, and a second later, they heard the launcher sob and growl in her grip, and then settle into a steady insect whine, like an infuriated mosquito.

  ‘Target acquired,’ Claudia murmured. The Hind was six hundred metres out but coming in fast, swelling dramatically in the sights.

  ‘Fire!’ she said, and they saw the red light blink, and then change to green signalling that the rocket motor of the fictitious missile was running, and almost instantaneously the image of the Hind disappeared from the screen to be replaced by the flashing legend.

  ‘Target destroyed! Target destroyed!’

  There followed a profound silence. Job cleared his throat nervously.

  ‘Flukes happen,’ said Sean. ‘Shall we try it again?’

  ‘Pull!’ said Claudia, and concentrated on her aiming screen.

  ‘Incoming,’ Sean called. ‘Six o’clock high. Lock and load.’

  He brought the next Hind in from behind her at tree-top level, attack speed. She had three seconds to react.

  ‘Locked and loaded.’ Claudia pirouetted like a ballerina and picked the Hind up in the sight ring. ‘Actuator on.’ As she said it, Sean flung the Hind into a climbing side-slip, giving her deflection in three planes. It would be like trying to hit a high bird in a gale of crosswind.

  In their screen, they watched with disbelief as Claudia swung smoothly, keeping the image in the exact centre of her aiming ring and the missile sobbed and then settled into its high-pitched tone.

  ‘Target acquired. Fire!’

  ‘Target destroyed! Target destroyed!’ The screen blinked at them, and they fidgeted uncomfortably.

  Job murmured, ‘Twice on the trot. That ain’t no fluke, man.’

  Claudia laid the launcher on the table, readjusted the peak of her cap over her eyes, and then placed her fists on her hips and smiled at them sweetly.

  ‘I thought you said you didn’t know how to shoot,’ Sean accused her with righteous indignation.

  ‘Would a daughter of Riccardo Enrico Monterro not know how to shoot?’

  ‘But you are stridently opposed to blood sports.’

  ‘Sure,’ she agreed. ‘I’ve never shot at a living creature. But I’m death to clay pigeons. Papa taught me.’

  ‘I should have guessed when you said “Pull”,’ Sean groaned softly.

  ‘As a matter of interest,’ Claudia examined the fingernails of her right hand modestly, ‘I was Alaska State women’s skeet champion three years running, and runner-up at the national championships in ’86.’

  The two men exchanged embarrassed glances. ‘She got you with a sucker punch.’ Job shook his head. ‘And you walked straight into it with both eyes closed.’

  ‘All right, Miss Alaska,’ Sean told her sternly. ‘You are so damned clever, you’ve just landed yourself the job of instructor. From here on you are in charge of this equipment. Job and I will split the Shanganes into two classes and give them the basics. Then we’ll pass them on to you for simulation. It’ll speed up the whole works.’

  General China interrupted them as he strode into the amphitheatre, beret cocked jauntily, slapping his swagger-stick against his thigh and taking in their preparations with quick inquisitive eyes.

  ‘How soon can you begin training? I expected to be further along than this.’

  Sean recognized the futility of trying to explain to him. ‘We’ll get along better without interference.’

  ‘I came to warn you that Frelimo have launched their offensive. They are coming at us in force from the south and the west, a two-pronged drive, obviously trying to push us out of these hills, away from the river into more open terrain where they can deploy their armour and their helicopters to better advantage.’

  ‘So they are whipping the hell out of you,’ Sean needled him with a thinly concealed sneer.

  ‘We are falling back,’ China acknowledged the jibe with just a glitter in his eyes. ‘As soon as my men attempt to hold up their advance at a natural strong point, Frelimo simply calls in the Hinds. The Russian pilots are showing us the close-support skills they learned in the mountains of Afghanistan. They simply obliterate our defences. It is not a pleasant experience to listen helplessly on the radio while my field commanders plead for help. How soon can I send them the Stingers?’

  ‘Two days,’ Sean said.

  ‘So long? Is there no way you can hurry it up?’ Impatiently, China slapped the swagger-stick into the palm of his hand. ‘I want you to let me have at least one trained team immediately. Anything to be able to hit back at them.’

  ‘That, General China, would be crass stupidity,’ Sean told him. ‘With all due respect,’ Sean showed none in the tone of his voice, ‘if you deploy the Stingers piecemeal, you’ll be tipping your hand to the Hind crews.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ China’s voice cracked like breaking floe-ice.

  ‘Those Ruskie pilots have met the Stingers before, in Afghanistan, you can be pretty damn sure of that. They’ll know every counter-measure in the book and then a few more. Right now they are blissfully convinced that they are the only things in the sky. Their guard is wide open, but you let one Stinger fly and all that will change. Okay, you might put one down, but the rest of the squadron will be ready for you.’ China’s frozen expression thawed and he looked thoughtful.

  ‘So what do you suggest, Colonel?’

  ‘Hit them all at once with everything you’ve got.’

  ‘When? Where?’

  ‘When they are least expecting it, a full-scale surprise attack on their laager – at dawn.’

  ‘On their laager?’ China shook his head irritably. ‘We don’t know where they laager at night.’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ Sean contradicted. ‘I have already pinpointed the laager. I’ll train Alphonso and Ferdinand and set up the raid for them. Give me two days, and they’ll be ready to go.’

  China thought for a moment, hands clasped behind his back, staring up at the blue African sky as though he expected at any moment to see those dread humpbacked shapes appear.

  ‘Two days,’ he agreed at last.

  ‘Two days, and when I have your missile crews trained and ready to leave on the raid, you let me and my party go. That is my condition.’

  ‘There is a Frelimo column between here and the Zimbabwe border,’ China reminded him.

  ‘We’ll take our chances,’ Sean snapped. ‘That is the bargain, do I have your word on it?’

  ‘Very well, Colonel. I agree.’

  ‘That’s fine. Now when do you expect Alphonso and his detachment to arrive?’

  ‘They have already reached our lines. I expect Alphonso and his men will be here in another hour or so, but they will be exhausted, they have been in action almost continuously for twenty-four hours.’

  ‘They aren’t on a Sunday school picnic.’ Sean was callous. ‘Send them to me as soon as they arrive.’

  They came in at last, moving with the slack stumbling gait of a heavyweight boxer at the end of ten hard rounds. Their tiger-striped camouflage was encrusted with the filth of the battlefield, and their faces were grey with exhaustion.

  While his men collapsed on the floor of the amphitheatre and slept where they fell, Alphonso described to Sean in flat prosaic terms the retreat from Grand Reef base and the flight to the mission station in the gut of the Honde Valley where they had abandoned the Unimog truck and crossed into Mozambique on foot.

  ‘The bush is full of Frelimo, and the air is full of henshaw.’ He paused and wiped his face wearily on a grubby tattered bandanna. ‘It is witchcraft, but the henshaw can speak from the sky. They taunt us in the Shangane language. They tell us that they have magic that turns our bullets and rockets to water.’

  Sean nodded grimly. The Russians must be using sky-shout amplifiers to demoralize the Renamo defenders. That was another trick they had learned in Afghanistan.

  ‘All along the line our men are being shot to pieces, or are running away. We cannot fight against the henshaw.’