LITMIR.BIZ

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was the standard dismissive name they used for them.

      However, Col had grown to respect Alex as an intelligent and focused commander. He realised that he had some personal demons, whatever they were — and Col had never asked — but they never got in the way of his work. Rather they were controlled by his upper-class English reserve, so that they fulminated under his black brows only emerging through his vigour and intense looks.

      The Lebanese turned to Alex now. ‘You think helicopters would work?’

      The tall major nodded. ‘Hmm, we’ll probably need about a hundred men altogether. Insert them here, here and here.’ He pointed to landing sites around the complex.

      He looked at Col, who stood next to him with his arms folded, staring hard at the photo.

      ‘Aye, it’s double all right. Yeah, get some Mi-17s, twenty-two blokes in each, say …’ he cocked his head on one side, ‘… five? Bit of an air force but …’ he shrugged.

      Kalil turned to Alex. ‘Whatever you think is necessary to get the job done, Alex — the cartel will pay for it. We just want that mine.’

      ‘Hmm,’ Alex nodded thoughtfully. ‘We’ll need a gunship as well to suppress ground fire when the troops land.’

      ‘I’ve heard there’s a Shark going in Transdneister,’ said Col chirpily.

      ‘A what?’ Kalil frowned.

      ‘A Kamov Ka-50 Black Shark — NATO codename Hokum. Fooking beast of a thing: 30mm cannon, rocket pods, automatic grenade launcher, you name it — it’s got it. Evil-looking, an’ all. It’s got two contra-rotating main rotors on top of each other so it don’t need a tail rotor.’ Col made excited twisting actions with one hand over the other. ‘Russian Army uses ‘em. Heard about it from Arkady — a mate of ours what works for a Russian transport outfit. The Fourteenth Army Group in Transdneister …’

      Kalil had obviously lost him here so Col broke off, realising that the enclave was not well known outside the mercenary community. ‘It’s a little strip of land on the border between Ukraine and Moldova — the Russkies have been there since some dodgy deal that Yeltsin did, and sort of run the area as a criminal country, like. They don’t get paid much so the general keeps “losing!” kit.’ He wagged his fingers to indicate the irony.

      ‘Anyway, Arkady reckons he could get it for one and a half mil US, plus parts and ammo — fooking bargain. He ships stuff out of there the whole time to Africa in them big Ilyushins — no questions asked. They’d sell their granny for a pack a fags, they would.’

      ‘OK, sounds good.’ Kalil nodded uncertainly; he could only understand half of the words in the heavy Lancashire accent, and his American English meant he was confused by the expression ‘pack a fags’. However, at the same time he was impressed by the detail.

      ‘Yeah, you’ll have to come shopping with us there sometime. It’s sorta like a military Dubai really,’ said Col enthusiastically.

      Kalil laughed nervously.

      Alex chipped in, ‘Pretty much all the kit we’ll use is Russian.’

      ‘How so?’ Kalil asked.

      ‘Because it’s cheap, it’s robust and it kills people. It’s the standard equipment used in Africa, so we won’t need to train the soldiers to use it. But we’re going to need to do a CTR first,’ he continued, before they got too carried away; he knew it was not going to be that simple.

      ‘A what?’

      ‘A close target recce, mate,’ Col filled in for the Lebanese’s lack of British Army jargon. ‘That means me and ‘im doing the sneaky-beaky bit on foot round the mine.’ He made wiggly motions with one hand to indicate creeping about. ‘You know, like carrying our own shit and not farting for a week in case we make a noise. Fooking love that, me.’

      Kalil looked at him confused; he didn’t get the standard-issue British Army sarcasm either. ‘Erm …’

      ‘We’ll have to do it.’ Alex folded his arms authoritatively. ‘There’s no way we can stake this much on some maps and satellite shots.’

      ‘Well, they’re pretty good, aren’t they? It took a lotta trouble to get them for you guys, you know.’

      ‘I’m sure it did, but success in these operations is all in the detail. I mean, what’s this?’ He traced a blurry line around the edge of the complex with his finger.

      ‘Perimeter fence?’

      ‘Yes, but is that all? There’s a large cleared area either side of it that could contain a lot of nasties. There are also these checkpoints on the approach roads and these little covered huts dotted around the perimeter; we don’t know what’s under the cover. I’m not going to risk this many blokes on it; we’re going a hell of a long way from anywhere safe and if we mess up we’re all dead.’ He paused. ‘Plus you said you wanted to come on the op,’ he smiled.

      ‘OK, OK. You’re the experts; I’ve never been to Africa. You do the C-whatever,’ Kalil smiled and capitulated. ‘Just don’t get fucking caught! I don’t think they like visitors.’

      He picked up the projector remote control again. ‘Right, so that’s the target set up then. Let me just take you through some of the background on Central African Republic.’

      The other two sat down and resumed taking notes. Kalil clicked up a map of the country and its neighbours on the screen.

      ‘OK, so as you can see the country at the heart of Africa is roughly triangular, with the Democratic Republic of Congo running along its base here, the Ubangi River forms much of that border,’ he traced it with his finger, ‘Sudan up here to the northeast, and Chad over there to the northwest. We’re going to be here in the southeast bit in Mbomou Province.

      ‘Now, as I am sure you are aware, like a lot of failed states, CAR is not so much a country as a platform for criminal activity. It is completely wrong to apply the idea of a nation state to it because the central government has virtually no control outside the capital and a few of the main towns. The rest of the country is controlled by rebel groups, criminal gangs and tribal militias.’

      He looked down at his notepad to check his facts.

      ‘So, in the shitty country stakes CAR is right up there with the best of them: the IMF ranks it a hundred and sixty-eighth poorest in the world, out of a hundred and seventy-five. A lot of that is due to there being either civil war and no government, or peace and a government that steals everything.’ He shrugged at the irony. ‘Total population of about three million and a lot of them are around the capital, Bangui, giving the country a very low overall population density. To put that in context for you Brits; it’s five times the size of England but with fourteen times fewer people living in it.’

      ‘So basically, what yer saying is that it’s a whole lot of fook all,’ said Col, scratching his jaw thoughtfully.

      ‘I guess that’s right.’

      Col wrote something down on his pad.

      Alex kept his face straight but winced internally. He valued Col for his direct nature but he wished he wouldn’t let it rip during their client’s introductory briefing.

      Kalil got going again.

      ‘The terrain is mainly flat with semi-desert in the north, then savannah and finally dense rainforest in the Ubangi River basin in the south. That’s us,’ again he smiled at his audience, ‘nice and hot and humid.

      ‘Economy is nearly all subsistence farming although it does have a lotta diamonds, gold, uranium, and other minerals, but these are largely unexploited because transport links are so poor … apart from our friends here.’ He tapped the area of the map where the mine was.

      ‘And finally, some relevant recent history: French Equatorial Africa got its independence in 1958 and then there was the usual story of one crappy

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