The Dogs of War

“To Ghana, yes.”

“What is it like?”

“Full of jungle, swamps, mosquitoes, snakes, and people who don’t understand a damn thing you say.”

“But they understand English,” said the assistant. “We both speak English.”

“Not in Zangaro, they don’t.”

“Oh.” The junior technician had read all he could find, which was not much, in the encyclopedia borrowed from the vast library at the institute, about Zangaro.

“The captain told me if we make good time we should arrive at Clarence in twenty-two days. That will be their Independence Day.”

“Bully for them,” said Ivanov and walked away.

Past Cape Spartel, nosing her way from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, the MV Toscana radioed a ship-to-shore telegram to Gibraltar for on-passing to London. It was to Mr. Walter Harris at a London address. It said simply: “Pleased announce your brother completely recovered.” It was the sign meaning the Toscana was on her way and on schedule. Slight variations of the message about Mr. Harris’s brother’s health could have meant she was on course but late, or in some kind of trouble. No telegram of any kind meant she had not been cleared from Spanish territorial waters.

That afternoon there was a conference in Sir James Manson’s office.

“Good,” said the tycoon when Endean broke the news. “How much time has she got to reach target?”

“Twenty-two days, Sir James. It is now Day Seventy-eight of the hundred estimated for the project. Shannon had allowed Day Eighty for his departure from Europe, and that would have left him twenty days. He estimated the time at sea between sixteen and eighteen days, allowing for adverse weather or a two-day breakdown. He had four days in hand, even on his own estimate.”

“Will he strike early?”

“No, sir. Strike Day is still Day One Hundred. He’ll kill time hove to at sea if he has to.”

Sir James Manson paced up and down his office. “How about the rented villa?” he asked.

“It has been arranged, Sir James.”

“Then I don’t see any point in your waiting around London any longer. Get over to Paris again, get a visa for Cotonou, fly down there, and get our new employee, Colonel Bobi, to accompany you to this place next to Zangaro. If he seems shifty, offer him more money.

“Get settled in, get the truck and the hunting guns ready, and when you receive Shannon’s signal that he is going in for the attack that evening, break the news to Bobi. Get him to sign that mining concession as President Bobi, date it one month later, and send all three copies by registered post in three different envelopes to me here.

> “Keep Bobi virtually under lock and key until Shannon’s second signal to say he has succeeded. Then in you go. By the way, that bodyguard you are taking with you—is he ready?”

“Yes, Sir James. For the kind of money he’s getting, he’s good and ready.”

“What’s he like?”

“As nasty as they come. Which is what I was looking for.”

“You could still have problems, you know. Shannon will have all his men round him, at least those who survive the battle. He could prove troublesome.”

Endean grinned. “Shannon’s men will follow Shannon,” he said. “And I can handle him. Like all mercenaries, he’s got his price. I’ll just offer it to him—but in Switzerland and out of Zangaro.”

When he had gone, Sir James Manson stared down at the City below him and wondered if any man did not have his price. “They can all be bought, and if they can’t, they can be broken,” one of his mentors had once said to him. And after years as a tycoon, watching politicians, generals, journalists, editors, businessmen, ministers, entrepreneurs and aristocrats, workers and union leaders, blacks and whites, at work and play, he was still of that view.

Many years ago a Spanish seafarer, looking from the sea toward the land, had seen a mountain which, with the sun behind it in the east, appeared to him to have the shape of a lion’s head. He called the land Lion Mountain and passed on. The name stuck, and the country became known as Sierra Leone. Later another man, seeing the same mountain in a different light, or through different eyes, called it Mount Aureole. That name also stuck. Even later, and in a more whimsical bout of fantasy, a white man named the town founded in its shadow Freetown, and it still bears the name today. It was just after noon on July 2, Day Eighty-eight in Shannon’s private calendar, that the motor vessel Toscana dropped anchor a third of a mile out from the shore, off Freetown, Sierra Leone.

On the voyage from Spain, Shannon had insisted that the cargo remain just where it was, untouched and unopened. This was just in case there was a search at Freetown, although since they had nothing to discharge and no cargo to take on board, that would have been most unusual. The ammunition crates had been scrubbed clean of their Spanish markings and sanded down with a disk sander to the bright white wood. Stenciled markings showing that the crates contained drilling bits for the oil rigs off the Cameroon coast had been painted on.

Only one job had he allowed to be done on the way south. The bundles of mixed clothing had been sorted, and the one containing the haversacks and webbing had been opened. With canvas needle and palm, Cipriani, Vlaminck, and Dupree had passed the days cutting the haversacks to pieces and transforming them into backpacks fitted with a score of long, narrow pouches, each capable of taking one bazooka rocket. These now shapeless and inexplicable bundles were stored in the paint locker among the cleaning rags.

The smaller knapsacks had also been altered. The packs had been cut away so that only the shoulder straps remained, with braces across the chest and around the waist. Dog-clips had been fastened atop each shoulder strap, and others at the belt, and later these frames would accommodate an entire crate of mortar bombs, enabling up to twenty to be carried at one time.

The Toscana had announced her presence while six miles offshore to the harbormaster’s office of Freetown, and had been given permission to enter port and anchor out in the bay. As she had no cargo to load or unload, there was no need for her to take up room at the port’s precious Queen Elizabeth II Quay. She had come only to take on deck crew.