Freetown is one of the favorite ports along the West African coast for taking aboard these brawny laborers who, trained in the use of tackle and winches, are used by the tramp steamers frequenting the smaller timber ports along the coast. They board at Freetown on the outward voyage and are discharged with their pay on the way back. In a hundred coves and creeks along the coast, where cranes and jetties are at a premium, ships have to use their own jumbo derricks to load cargo. It is grindingly hard work, as one sweats in the tropical fever heat, and white seamen are paid to be seamen, not stevedores. Locally recruited labor might not be available and probably would not know how to handle cargo, so Sierra Leonians are brought along. They sleep in the open on the ship’s deck for the voyage, brewing up their own food and performing their ablutions over the stern. It caused no surprise in Freetown when the Toscana gave this as her reason for calling.
When the anchor cable rattled down, Shannon scanned the shoreline right around the bay, almost all of it taken up by the outer shantytown of the country’s capital.
The sky was overcast, no rain fell, but beneath the clouds that heat was like a greenhouse, and he felt the sweat clamping his shirt to his torso. It would be like this from here on. His eyes riveted on the central area of the city’s waterfront, where a large hotel stood looking out over the bay. If anywhere, this was where Langarotti would be waiting, staring out to sea. Perhaps he had not arrived yet. But they could not wait forever. If he was not there by sundown, they would have to invent a reason for staying on—like a broken refrigerator. It would be unthinkable to sail without the cold store working. He took his eyes away from the hotel and watched the tenders plying around the big Elder Dempster ship tied up at the quay.
On shore, the Corsican had already seen the Toscana before she dropped anchor, and was heading back into the town. He had been there for a week and had all the men Shannon wanted. They were not the same tribal group as the Leonians, but no one minded. A mixture of tribes was available as stevedores and deck cargo.
Just after two, a small pinnace came out from the customs house with a uniformed man standing in the back. He was the assistant chief customs officer, white socks agleam, khaki shorts and tunic pressed, epaulettes sparkling, and stiff peaked cap set dead straight. Among the regalia a pair of ebony knees and a beaming face could be distinguised. When he came aboard, Shannon met him, introduced himself as the owner’s representative, shook hands profusely, and led the customs man to the captain’s cabin.
The three bottles of whisky and two cartons of cigarettes were waiting. The officer fanned himself, sighed gustily with pleasure at the cool of the air-conditioning, and sipped his beer. He cast an incurious eye over the new manifest, which said the Toscana had picked up machine parts at Brindisi and was taking them to the AGIP oil company’s offshore concessions near the Cameroon coast. There was no mention of Yugoslavia or Spain. Other cargo was listed as power boats (inflatable), engines (outboard), and tropical clothing (assorted), also for the oil drillers. On the way back she would wish to load cocoa and some coffee at San Pedro, Ivory Coast, and return to Europe. He exhaled on his official stamp to moisten it, and placed his approval on the manifest. An hour later he was gone, his presents in his tucker bag.
Just after six, as the evening cooled, Shannon made out the longshore boat moving away from the beach. Amidships the two local men who ran passengers out to the waiting vessels in the bay heaved at their oars. Aft sat seven other Africans, clutching bundles on their knees. In the prow sat a lone European. As the craft swung expertly in to the side of the Toscana, Jean-Baptiste Langarotti came nimbly up the ladder that hung to the water.
One by one the bundles were heaved from the bobbing rowboat up to the rail of the freighter; then the seven Africans followed. Although it was indiscreet to do so in sight of land, Vlaminck, Dupree, and Semmler started to clap them on the back and shake hands. The Africans, grinning from ear to ear, seemed as happy as the mercenaries. Waldenberg and his mate looked on in surprise. Shannon signed to the captain to take the Toscana back to sea.
After dark, sitting in groups on the main deck, taking with gratitude the cooling breeze off the sea as the Toscana rolled on to the south, Shannon introduced his recruits to Waldenberg. The mercenaries knew them all, as they did the mercenaries. Six of the Africans were young men, called Johnny, Patrick, Jinja (nicknamed Ginger), Sunday, Bartholomew, and Timothy.
Each of them had fought with the mercenaries before; each of them had been personally trained by one of the European soldiers; each of them had been tried and tested in battle many times and would stick it out however hard the firefight. And each of them was loyal to his leader. The seventh was an older man, who smiled less, bore himself with a confident dignity, and was addressed by Shannon as “Doctor.” He too was loyal to his leader and his people.
“How are things at home?” Shannon asked him.
Dr. Okoye shook his head sadly. “Not well,” he said.
“Tomorrow we start work,” Shannon told him. “We start preparing tomorrow.”
PART THREE
THE BIG KILLING
twenty-one
For the remainder of the sea voyage, Cat Shannon worked his men without pause. Only the middle-aged African whom he called “Doctor” was exempt. The rest were divided into parties, each with a separate job to do.
Marc Vlaminck and Kurt Semmler broke open the five green Castrol oil drums by hammering off the false bottoms, and from each plucked the bulky package of twenty Schmeissers and a hundred magazines that was inside. The superfluous lubricating oil was poured into smaller containers and saved for the ship’s use.
Aided by the six African soldiers, the pair stripped the masking tape from each of the hundred submachine guns, which were then individually wiped clean of oil and grease. By the time they had finished, the six Africans had already learned the operating mechanisms of the Schmeisser in a way that was as good if not better than any weapons-familiarization course that they could have undergone.
After breaking open the first ten boxes of 9mm. ammunition, the eight of them sat around the decks slotting the shells into the magazines, thirty to each, until the first fifteen thousand rounds from their store had gone into the five hundred magazines at their disposal. Eighty of the Schmeissers were then set aside while Jean-Baptiste Langarotti prepared sets of uniforms from the b
ales stored in the hold. These sets consisted of two T-shirts, two pairs of shorts, two pairs of socks, one pair of boots, one set of trousers, one beret, one combat blouse, and one sleeping bag. When these were ready, the bundle was wrapped up, one Schmeisser and five full magazines were wrapped in an oily cloth and slipped into a polyethylene bag, and the whole lot was stuffed into the sleeping bag. Tied at the top and ready for handling like a sack, each sleeping bag contained the necessary clothing and weaponry for one future soldier.
Twenty sets of uniforms and twenty Schmeissers with five magazines per carbine were set aside. These were for the attack force itself, although the force numbered only eleven, with spares for the crew if necessary. Langarotti, who had learned while in the army and in prison to handle a needle and thread, altered and sewed eleven sets of uniforms for the members of the attack party until each man was fitted out.
Dupree and Cipriani, the deckhand, who turned out to be a useful carpenter, stripped down several of the packing crates that had once contained ammunition, and turned their attention to the outboard engines. All three were Johnson 60-horsepower units. The two men built a wooden box to fit neatly over the top of each engine, and lined the boxes with foam rubber from the mattresses that had been brought along. With the exhaust noise of the engines muffled by the underwater exhausts, the mechanical noise emanating from the engine casings could also be reduced to a low murmur by the muffling boxes.
When Vlaminck and Dupree had finished these tasks, each turned his attention to the weapon he would be using on the night of the strike. Dupree uncrated his two mortar tubes and familiarized himself with the aiming mechanism. He had not used the Yugoslav model of mortar before, but was relieved to see it was simple. He prepared seventy mortar bombs, checking and arming the primers in the nose cone of each bomb.
Having repacked the prepared bombs into their boxes, he clipped two boxes, one above the other, to the webbing harness that had already been prepared from the army-style knapsacks he had bought in London two months earlier.
Vlaminck concentrated on his two bazookas, of which only one would be used on the night of the attack. Again, the main limitation to what he could take with him was the weight factor. Everything had to be carried on a human back. Standing on the forepeak, using the tip of the flagpole sticking above the stern as a fixed point, his aiming disk slotted to the end of the bazooka, he carefully adjusted the sights to the weapon until he was certain he could take a barrel at two hundred yards with no more than two shots. He had already picked Patrick as his backup man, for they had been together before and knew each other well enough to make a good team. With his backpack, the African would be carrying ten bazooka rockets as well as his own Schmeisser. Vlaminck added another two rockets as his personal load, and Cipriani sewed him two pouches to hang from his belt, which could contain the extra rockets.
Shannon concentrated on the ancillary gear, examining the magnesium-flare rockets and explaining to Dupree how they worked. He distributed one compass to each mercenary, tested the gas-powered foghorn, and checked the portable radio sets.
Having time, Shannon had the Toscana heave to for two days well out at sea in an area where the ship’s radar told them there was no other shipping within twenty miles. As the ship lay almost stationary, heaving slightly on the swell, each man tested his personal Schmeisser. The whites had no problems; they had each in their time used half a dozen different submachine guns, and these weapons vary but slightly. The Africans took longer to get used to them, for most of their experience had been with bolt-action 7.92mm. Mausers or the standard 7.62 NATO self-loading rifle. One of the German carbines jammed repeatedly, so Shannon threw it overboard and gave the man another. Each African fired off nine hundred rounds, until he was accustomed to the feel of the Schmeisser in his hands, and each man had been cured of the annoying habit African soldiers tend to adopt of closing their eyes while they fire. There was no point in testing the mortars, since they have no moving parts—the bombs do the work—and they cannot be fired with accuracy anyway from the deck of a ship at sea.
The five empty and open-topped oil barrels had been stored for later use, and these were now streamed astern of the Toscana for bazooka practice. At a hundred yards all of the men, black and white, could riddle a barrel before they had ceased their practice. Four barrels were destroyed and sunk in this manner, and the fifth was used by Marc Vlaminck. He let it stream to two hundred yards, then planted himself in the stern of the Toscana, feet apart and braced, the bazooka across his right shoulder, right eye applied to the sight. Judging the gentle heave of the deck, he waited until he was sure and fired off his first rocket. It screamed over the top of the barrel and exploded with a spout of spray into the ocean. His second rocket took the barrel in the center. There was a crash, and the boom of the explosion echoed back over the water to the watching mercenaries and crew. Fragments of tinplate spattered the water close to where the barrel had been, and a cheer came from the watchers. Grinning widely, Vlaminck turned to Shannon, ripped off the glasses he had used to protect his eyes, and wiped the specks of smut from his face.
“You said you wanted a door taken off, Cat?”