Juggernaut

'Fair enough,' I said. Just having Wingstead there was a boost.

'And Derek's also out of it. He can't walk, ankle's swollen like a balloon,' Wingstead said. 'He's pretty mad.'

'Tell him I'll trade places,' offered Thorpe.

I said, 'Not a chance, Ritchie – you're stuck with this. You should never have been around in Port Luard when I needed a co-driver.'

'Wouldn't have missed it for the world,' he said bravely.

I turned to the next lame duck.

'Dan,' I said gently, 'it's not on, you know.'

He glanced down at his still splinted arm and heaved a sigh. 'I know. But you take bloody good care of Antoine here, you hear me?' He and the Frenchman exchanged smiles.

'Bert, how's your leg?'

Proctor said, 'Good as new, Mister Mannix. No problem, I promise you,' for which I was grateful. He was one of the stalwarts and we needed him. Kemp's shoulder would not hamper him, and there were no other injuries among us.

I said, 'Sadiq has got twenty-one men. There's one down with dysentery. With twelve of us that makes thirty-four to their seventeen: two to one. With those odds, I don't see how we can fail.'

A figure slid into the circle and I made room for him to sit beside me. It was Captain Sadiq.

I said, 'Basically what we have to do is this. We're going downriver on the 'B'-gon. We get there before first light. We try to overpower them without much fighting. We've got a few weapons and we'll be able to get theirs if our surprise is complete. Ideally we don't want any shooting at all.'

'Squeamish, Mannix?' asked McGrath.

'Not at all,' I said coldly. 'But we don't know how near any reinforcements might be. We keep this as quiet as possible.'

There was a slight stir around the circle at our exchange.

'We have to get their radio under control, don't we?' Bing asked.

I had refrained, against my first instincts, from forbidding him to join the expedition. He was nineteen and by medieval standards a grown man ripe for blooding, and this was as near to medieval warfare as you could get. He was fit, intelligent and fully aware of the danger.

'Yes, that's going to be your baby,' I said. 'Your group's first priority will be to keep it undamaged and prevent their using it. The one in the car looks out of action but you'll make sure of that too. Brad, you run the interference for Sandy, OK?' He may not know American football terms, but the inference was obvious and he nodded fervently. Bing was his responsibility.

'Captain?' I turned to Sadiq.

'My men will make the first sortie,' he said. 'We have weapons and training which you do not have. We should be able to take the whole detachment without much trouble.'

Zimmerman whispered hasty translations to Kirilenko.

'Bert, you and Ben and Antoine immobilize all the transport you can find,' I said. 'Something temporary, a little more refined than a crowbar through the transmission.'

'Not a problem,' Bert said, his usual phlegmatic response.

'Mick, you cover Bing in the radio room and then check their weapon store; pile up everything you can. Use…' I was about to assign Bob Pitman to him, but remembered that Pitman had no reason to trust McGrath. 'Use Harry and Kirilenko.' They would make a good team.

I waited to see if McGrath was going to make any suggestions of his own but he remained silent. He didn't make me feel easy but then nothing about McGrath ever did.

I turned to Pitman.

'Bob, you stick with me and help me secure the raft. Then we cover the ramp where they load the ferry, you, me and Kemp. We'll want you to look at it from a transportation point of view, Basil.' If he thought for one second that he could get his rig on board the ferry he'd be crazy but he needed to be given at least some faint reason for hope in that direction. I looked round.

'Ritchie, I need a gofer and you're the lucky man. You liaise between me, Captain Sadiq and the other teams. I hope you're good at broken field running.'

'Me? Run? I used to come last at everything, Mister Mannix,' he said earnestly. 'But I'll run away any time you tell me to!'

Again laughter eased the tension a little. I was dead tired and my mind had gone a total blank. Anything we hadn't covered would have to wait for the next day. The conference broke up leaving me and Sadiq facing one another in the firelight.

'Do you think we can do it, Captain?' I asked.

'I think it is not very likely, sir,' he said politely. 'But on the other hand I do not know what else we can do. Feeding women and pushing oil drums and caring for the sick – that is not a soldier's work. It will be good to have a chance to fight again.'

He rose, excused himself and vanished into the darkness, leaving me to stare into the firelight and wonder at the way different minds worked. What I was dreading he anticipated with some pleasure. I remembered wryly a saying from one of the world's lesser literary figures, Bugs Bunny: Humans are the craziest people.

CHAPTER 26