Dead Center

by Andy McNab

Genres: War & Military; Mystery

Synopsis

The young son of a Russian oligarch is kidnapped, and his father will pay anything, do anything, stop at nothing to get him back. Up to now though, everything he has tried has failed. He needs the one man with the know-how, the means and the guts to complete the mission: ex-SAS trouble-shooter Nick Stone…
But for Nick, the mission will take him to the poorest and most violent country on the planet, Somalia – a lawless land, ripped apart by civil war and famine, fought over by drug-fuelled, gun-crazy clan fighters. They want to make the world to sit up and take notice – any way they can…

Release date: January 26, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 544

Sample

22



Dung fires spilt a sweet, almost herbal smell from the chimneys as we made our way into the town. The main drag was about twenty metres wide. People were already out and about. They’d want to get their business done before the sun was at its fiercest. After midday, they’d bin it until last light – which would just leave the mad dogs and Englishmen to go about their business uninterrupted, with any luck.

Like everybody else, we kept in the shade. All the women were covered up, in one way or another. Most of them carried large empty plastic containers. On the way home they’d be full of water for the day’s washing and cooking.

I caught a glimpse of some al-Shabab hard men in tribal dish-dashes and shemaghs down a side road. Long, wild beards on top; bare feet and sandals beneath. They carried AKs or RPGs. I stooped even further and kept on shuffling.

I thought about the old guy at the house. Fuck knew what he thought about Awaale coming to knock on his door to ask for a couple of burqas. I hoped they weren’t distinctive in any way. I didn’t want one of their mates to come rattling over for a chat.

This looked like the newer part of town. It would have been built at the same time as the Soviets were installing a missile facility at the port of Berbera in the 1970s and transforming Somalia’s 17,000 armed forces into some of the strongest on the continent.

The bottom metre or so of the palm trees had been given a lick of white paint a few years ago. They were all bent away from the sea. The monsoon winds would have done their best to flatten them each year. I could have done with a bit of a breeze today, although I didn’t want our burqas to do a Marilyn Monroe.

The same photocopied A4 flyer seemed to be pinned to every door and fence. I kept my speed down, but didn’t move so slowly that I drew attention to myself. I bent forward, concentrating on the AK. I gripped it hard against me to stop the steel mag slipping out of my hand. I was sweating so much under this thing the skull band must be soaked on the outside. The mesh slit was a nightmare to look through. Even so, I could see this place was totally different from Mog. There was no grime, no burning tyres. But in other ways, it was scarier. Everyone looked anxious and uneasy.

On the other side of the road, four more AS sat in old armchairs under an acacia. They were smoking, and had a kettle boiling away on a little fire. All of them had AKs resting across their thighs. Two had canvas chest harnesses stuffed with mags. The other two had belts of 7.62 short slung over their shoulders, Mexican-bandit style. I couldn’t see any machine-guns, just AKs.

All of them wore traditional cotton dish-dashes down to their knees and matching baggy trousers beneath them. They all had black and white checked shemaghs round their necks and multicoloured skull-caps. Their watches glinted in the sun.

They laughed and shouted to each other.

Awaale coughed just behind me. It was a flat cough, one I’d heard many times this morning as he tried to control his breathing. I knew the feeling. He had little or no control of the situation, and no weapon to react with if everything went to ratshit. I switched off in these situations. I was going to walk down the road; I wasn’t going to turn back. I was committed. There was nothing to worry about because there was nothing I could do about it.

We came level with the AS. They were just five metres away, on the other side of the road. My eyes flicked to the side; I wasn’t going to turn my head. A couple of them glanced across at us, then away. One, darker-skinned and taller than the rest, perhaps a Pakistani, looked over, took two or three seconds to register what we were, and got back to the banter.

Two technicals came down the road towards us. One had a heavy gun mounted on the back. The other was weapons-free. Dark brown- or grey-cottoned legs and sandals dangled over the sides. I looked straight ahead and kept on walking. The wagons drove past and dust and shit swirled through the mesh of my visor. Behind me, Awaale had a coughing fit.

I steered us left at the first available turning.



23



It was an alleyway a couple of metres wide. Awaale shuffled alongside me, clutching one of the flyers. His head was inches from mine.

‘Mr Nick, they’re not in the jail.’ He lifted the sheet of paper. ‘This is not good, Mr Nick. We must hurry.’

I followed him across the road. He passed the four fighters and carried on down another alleyway. Two small boys were coming the other way, each leading an old man with a big grey beard and skull-cap, bent over much more than we were, their faces creased with age. As they got nearer, I realized the boys weren’t looking after the men, it was the other way round. The kids’ eyes were milky, clouded by what looked like cataracts. They could have been sorted out for a couple of dollars elsewhere – or for nothing if Somalia hadn’t been too dangerous for the NGOs and MONGOs to pour into. As for the happy-clappy hospital ships, I’d have liked to see what happened if they’d parked up and offered Jesus along with a couple of plasters.

We stepped into the burning sun so they could pass us in the shade. The boys were well into the Wahhabi way of things. They didn’t even acknowledge us. I kept looking down into the dust, where we belonged.

When they’d gone, I moved nearer to Awaale again. ‘What the fuck is happening? What does that bit of paper say?’

‘I’ll translate it for you, but not now. They could be moved any minute. You need to see them while you still can.’

He shuffled on and I followed. Babies cried in the buildings either side of us. We reached the end of the alley and emerged into what was clearly the older part of town. Plaster over stone or brick, the buildings looked like the colonial, Italian area of Mogadishu, but on a smaller scale. They had seen better days, but looked habitable. Most had first-floor balconies. Many boasted parapets; they looked like small medieval forts.

We were in a square, in the middle of which stood an octagonal obelisk that resembled a small lighthouse. Each face was painted alternately black and white.

A gaggle of kids dressed like miniature al-Shabab, but so far without weapons, ran into a building to our left. Facing us, the other side of the obelisk, was the largest of the buildings. It might once have been the town hall, years ago, when the Italians ran the place and there was law and order. The sun bounced off the ocean a couple of hundred metres down the avenue to its right. I could see what looked like old harbour walls.

Awaale paused for a moment. ‘You see the red gates, Mr Nick?’

I followed his gaze to the left of the town hall. Solid metal at the bottom, vertical bars at the top, they were set into a low, once-whitewashed wall, topped with a security fence. Behind it was a single-storey colonial building that might have been a coach-house.

‘They’re in there, Mr Nick.’

‘That’s what the paper says?’

‘They’re being put on display. AS – the fighters, the mullahs – they live in the big building. It is now the Islamic Sharia Court. Not a good place.’

A gang of kids had stopped just to the right of the gates. Some were so deformed they were almost unable to function; some were being dragged about by the others. They were peering through the bars as I approached. I didn’t know if Awaale was behind me or not. It didn’t matter.

A couple of bodies moved around inside the compound: AS, armed and smoking. They picked up their wooden chairs and shifted them to a new vantage-point now the sun had moved. The kids shouted angrily, pointing down into the dead ground the other side of the wall. Locals lined up on both sides to get a better view.

To the right of the kids, close to the wall, a row of holes had been dug. The spoil was piled up alongside them. Arc lights had been mounted on the court-house walls. The wiring hung loosely from windows at the top of the building.

Five Somalis, three men and two women, were in the compound. But all eyes were on the three white prisoners.



24

Tracy, BB and Stefan were huddled in the shade of the wall to our left. They looked exactly as they had in the video. Tracy was wearing the same hijab. It was grimy and covered with dust. She lay on her side, Stefan in her arms. She stroked his hair, trying to comfort him. His eyes were closed. His legs were raw and red with the insect bites.

The three Somali men were in rags. Two lay down; one sat back against the wall. Their faces were blank; the abuse from the kids no longer registered.

BB sat on the far side of them. He also had his arse in the sand, his back to the wall. Elbows on his knees, his head rested on his hands.

The two Somali women were stuck in the corner, on their own, squatting on their haunches. One of them was crying. Her head jerked with every sob. The other, sobbed-out, simply looked down at the ground.

I moved along the wall to get closer to them. I was soon only a couple of metres away from Tracy. I could hear her singing gently to Stefan. ‘Three Blind Mice’. He still had his eyes closed. She sensed somebody above her. Maybe she’d become aware of my shadow on the sand. She looked up at me, tears in her eyes.

‘Help us … please … help us …’

Her tears carved tracks through the layers of sand and dust on her face. Her lips were cracked and baked, but she was still beautiful. ‘Please … help my son …’ She reached up towards me.

All I could do was look. I turned my head towards BB. Was he in any condition to fight his way out?

He looked at Tracy as he heard her begging, then stared straight at my blue mesh.

The kids found something new to howl about.

He stayed completely focused. ‘Why don’t you shut the fuck up?’ he said to them. ‘And what are you looking at, you fucking bitch?’

Tracy struggled to her feet. Her hands gripped the bars less than a foot away from my face.

‘Please help us … my baby … my son …’

I didn’t want to look at her directly. We were too close. She might see my white skin through the mesh. As I looked away I could see why the kids had gone noisy again. Ant and Dec were being dragged out of the building to be put on display with the rest of them.

Both had just a day or so of stubble, and were in much better condition than the others. That said, they’d still had a good kicking. Ant had cut and swollen lips. Dec had a black eye.

Their AS escorts pushed them hard into the dust. The kids laughed, then screamed like banshees. The older locals were silent. I had the feeling they’d seen it all before.

Tracy’s hands reached through the bars to try and grab me. I jerked back. She missed me by a couple of inches, then turned her attention to Awaale.

‘Please help my son … please …’

She collapsed sobbing as the truth dawned. We weren’t going to help. Nobody was. Her hands slid back through the bars.

The two AS hard men had had enough. They got to their feet and shouted at the kids to fuck off. Then they headed our way. They grabbed Tracy and flung her back onto the ground. Stefan was curled up in his own little world. It was like he’d pulled the duvet over his head and was praying the monsters would go away.

BB couldn’t seem to decide whether he hated the AS or the audience more, so he turned on both of us. ‘Yeah, go on, fuck off! Cunts …’

One of the AS lads picked up a handful of sand and stones and hurled it at us.

We got the message. We moved away. The kids ran off to join the others going into the madrasah, dragging their deformed mates with them. Hundreds of years before the Christian West switched on to the possibility, Muslims had figured out the world was round. They also knew the distance to the moon, and that the earth moved around the sun. Islamic schools were set up to teach mathematics, astronomy and philosophy as well as the Koran. I somehow doubted that this particular school was keeping up the good work. Judging by their performance a few minutes ago, they’d had the Koran drummed into them word for word, and been taught the hard-line AS interpretation of the text. Their generation of Somalis would know nothing else.

Awaale followed me past the court-house and down towards the harbour. Once I got there I’d turn left, back to the skiff. I needed to gather my thoughts.

It had all the makings of a weapons-grade gang-fuck, but at least BB sounded up for a fight.



25



The skiff was still where we’d hidden it. There were no new footprints coming towards it or going away. The surf had washed away the drag marks.

I’d moved out of the bunker and far enough into the scrub so we wouldn’t be connected with the boat if it was found. Awaale and I were sixty or seventy metres away from the cache, but still close enough to the shore to see anybody coming up the beach towards us.

I took off my burqa and draped it between two spiky bushes to create some shade. I wasn’t talking. My throat was dry. My body needed food and sleep. But all that still had to wait.

Awaale followed my lead. He whipped his burqa off and made a shelter next to mine. I stretched out in the sand. Within seconds my clothes were riddled with thorns and bits of brush. Awaale joined me. His shirt was soon covered in shit as well. He panted for breath as he reached for his cigarettes. The packet was soaked through. He stared at it in disgust and tossed it to one side.

I dug the Solar Monkey out of my day sack, opened the clamlike device to expose the photovoltaic cells and pushed it out into the sunlight. Awaale watched. He was attempting to reconcile himself with having to go without nicotine as well as water. I wiped my eyes, trying to avoid filling them with sand. It was fucking miserable.

‘Check my adaptors. See if you can charge your phone up as well.’

I lobbed him the bag of jacks that had come with the thing. Mottled with sand, my hand looked like I had some kind of skin condition.

‘Awaale, why are so many kids here malformed? They’re everywhere – the lads near yesterday’s dust-up, and now the ones outside the madrasah today. What’s wrong with them?’

‘I will tell you what’s wrong with them, Mr Nick. They are diseased – they have a disease that comes from your world.’ His face clouded. ‘We have no government. Our coastline is unprotected. Most importantly for your people, it is unmonitored.’ He waved towards the beach, to where the surf came crashing onto the sand. ‘It looks like a holiday brochure. But the water is polluted. It has become the dumping ground for your toxic waste. Of course there will be no successful prosecutions of your big companies for this. So our children are born … the way you see them. You, the West, have done that.’

There was a deep sadness in his eyes. But also, for the first time since I’d met him, I saw the rage in his heart.

‘Your factory ships sucked all the fish out of our sea. Your toxic waste killed everything else. So our fishermen became pirates to feed their children. To feed their children who are born like sick goats and die before their time.’

He busied himself finding the jack he was after, allowing his anger to subside.

‘Mr Nick, my job is done now. I’ll wait here for you. I’ll get you back to the airport. But what can you do? You have so little time before your friends are killed …’

I sat up, like he’d just given me the good news with a cattle prod.

He pulled a shoe from his belt and extracted the folded sheet of paper. ‘Tonight, it says, the criminals will be punished. After Maghrib. The Wahhabis – the advocates of Sharia law – they’re very strict.’

He started reading. ‘The Islamic Sharia Court of Merca District confirms that one man will lose his hand for stealing from another man’s house. Two men and two women have committed zina.’

‘Adultery?’

‘Yes. But it’s not like you think. Having sex with someone and not being married to them, that’s adultery to the Wahhabis. All of them will get ramj.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you know what that means, Mr Nick?’

The sweat on my chest and back went cold. I suddenly knew what those spot-lit holes in the ground were all about.

‘I can give it a fucking good guess.’

‘They’ll be stoned to death. They’ll be buried up to the neck, and then stoned.’

‘Tracy and Justin too?’

‘The same. They too have committed zina.’

The film on the memory chip replayed itself on the screen inside my head. ‘They think they have committed adultery …?’

‘She has another man’s child, Mr Nick. The Wahhabis. They’re crazy people.’

‘What happens to the boy? There are only six holes …’

‘He will live at the madrasah. He will become al-Shabab.’

‘What does it say about the other two white guys?’

‘Nothing. Do you know them?’

‘They came to do what I came to do – get the three of them out. But you were right. There’s no negotiating with these fuckers.’

Ant and Dec must have been linked into the same int as Jules had.

‘It gives me no pleasure to be right about that, Mr Nick. What is to be done? The ramj is tonight, after prayers.’

I took a breath; gathered my thoughts. ‘OK. Here’s the deal. You call Erasto. Tell him I need help to free my friends. Tell him I need as many men as he can send.’

He shook his head. ‘No, Mr Nick, it won’t happen. These people, they are not just crazy. They are very bad people. Erasto pays to keep them away. He will not—’

I pointed a finger at him. ‘Tell him I’ll pay him to fight them.’

He still shook his head. ‘No amount of money will persuade him.’

‘Tell him he can have the yacht as well. Fuck it, he can have every yacht out there, if he wants.’

‘Mr Nick, it wouldn’t be worth it to him. It would be war.’

‘So what have you got now? Peace?’

Awaale turned onto his side. ‘I am truly sorry. You’re going to have to do this thing yourself. I will wait here. I will make sure the skiff is ready to take you back, to collect my money. But Erasto will not help. He wouldn’t even listen to me. I am not my father.’

I glanced at the little red light on the Solar Monkey. ‘Well, get him on the phone then. Call your dad.’

‘My father?’

‘He’s got the pull around here, hasn’t he? Get your phone out, for fuck’s sake. Call him.’

I left him to it as I scrambled out of the shade. I didn’t want Awaale to listen in on my next conversation.



26



Frank, as always, answered in two rings.

‘I’ve found them. They’re alive. But there’s no way I can negotiate. If we don’t act now, they’re going to be dead by this evening.’

If Frank’s heart missed a beat, he wasn’t giving any sign of it. Part of me was starting to admire this guy. ‘How much?’

‘Three million, one hundred thousand dollars. In hundreds. I want the one hundred thousand separate from the rest, so when the three million’s handed over, it won’t be spotted.’

‘OK.’

‘I want it at the airport, soon as. Keep that aircraft on standby. It needs to be fuelled up, ready to go.

‘I’m trying to get the clan to help us. If you don’t hear from me by first light tomorrow morning, then I’ve fucked up.’

‘OK.’ He said it like he was agreeing to a pizza delivery.

There was a silence. I’d said all I needed to.

Frank filled it. ‘You’ve seen Stefan, yes?’

‘Yes, Frank. I told you. He’s alive. Get the money to Mog so I can keep him that way.’

‘Is he hurt? Is he ill?’

‘As far as I can see, he’s all right. He was with his mother. She’s looking after him. She’s comforting him. She’s thinking only of him.’

I let the message sink in for a moment.

‘There’s one more thing, Frank. If all goes to plan, I’ll find out what our problem was in the UK – who the guys were, the ones following me.’

I might have heard him sigh. ‘That would be good, Nick. Thank you.’

‘It’s not only for your benefit. I don’t want Tracy and Stefan lifted again, do I? I don’t want to go through this shit again.’

I closed down the phone. I still had to manage Frank’s expectations. And I still didn’t know which way the arch poker player was going to jump. For all I knew, he might choose to fuck over Tracy and BB and lift Stefan from the madrasah later. That wouldn’t be good enough for me. I had a promise to keep.

I dialled Anna. Things were about to get busy.

It didn’t even go to voicemail. A female voice waffled at me in Arabic. I knew I didn’t have a wrong number, so she must have been telling me that Anna’s mobile either didn’t have a signal or was switched off. I closed down. It had to be out of signal. Anna’s mobile was linked into her bloodstream.

Back in the bunker, Awaale was talking to his father. ‘He’s come back.’

I crawled under the burqa and got the sweat-covered mobile to my ear.

‘Mr Awaale?’

‘Mr Nick, you are—’

He sounded half asleep. There was no time to fuck about.

‘Your son has told you that I need some help?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Mr Awaale, with respect, please listen. Hear me out. See if what I say makes sense. If it does, I need you to talk to Erasto. Persuade him that helping me helps him. And for your time, I will pay you twenty-five thousand dollars, the same as I will pay your son. He can send it to you. You have my word.’

I heard him rustling about. Now that I had his attention, he was probably sitting himself up against his pillows.

‘Mr Awaale, I can offer Erasto two million US if he sends all of his guys to Merca today to help me rescue the three people I’ve come for. Erasto knows who I’m talking about. Whatever commission you need to share with him is up to you.’

There was silence as some serious thinking went on in Minneapolis.

‘Mr Nick, it will cost you more than that. This is very, very dangerous.’

‘There will be more. Erasto can take back the yacht that al-Shabab stole from him. Tell him there are also three pleasure boats here, as well as several cargo ships. He can take as many as he wants. Tell him that if he keeps paying al-Shabab, he’s only delaying the inevitable. He’s going to be fighting them at some stage. They will not want to stay out of his part of the city for long.

‘So why not carry the fight to al-Shabab? Why not show what great fighters and strategists he and his men are, with a pre-emptive strike? Hit them where they feel safe. Show them that he won’t stand for them coming in and taking over the part of the city that belongs to Erasto.

‘I can make that happen, Mr Awaale. I can help your son here plan the attack, like we did yesterday. He will be a hero, just like you. Maybe one day he’ll become head of the clan, because he knows how to carry the fight to the enemy. He can show the clan, again, today, what a great fighter he is. And Erasto’s part of the city could be his, one day.’

I waited for him to mull this over. Or maybe he was playing with me. I didn’t really care which: I just needed an answer.

In the end, I filled the silence for him, as he probably wanted me to. ‘All I need is help to get me and the prisoners back to the airport. We will exchange cash for them there and then. It will be very, very easy. And I have one more thing, one more very big thing, to offer Erasto.’

‘What is that?’

‘I can give him the two men who killed Nadif. I can do that at the airport.’

‘Nadif? Nadif is dead?’

‘Yes. In England. I found him. He had been tortured first. I’ll hand over the two men who did this, as part of the deal. They are here in Merca. But I’m going to need five minutes with them myself. I will not kill them. If there is no deal, I will kill them here in Merca, before I leave. Erasto will have no satisfaction, no revenge.

‘Erasto needs to make a stand against al-Shabab. He’s going to have to do it one day. Now is the perfect time. And he’ll make a lot of money. So will you. I need Erasto’s help, Mr Awaale. I need it now. Not later tonight, not tomorrow. Now. I need to know how many people he’s going to send, so we can prepare. I need to know, one way or another.’

He had certainly woken up now. Money. Revenge. Fame for his son. Joe was right. My brother and me against my father. My father’s household against my uncle’s household. Our two households against the rest of my kin. Even Nadif had taken the side deal with me, against his brother. It was The Sopranos, with shemaghs and AKs.

‘Please, Mr Nick, hand me back to my son. We will try to get your loved ones home safe. I will talk with Erasto. I will earn twenty-five thousand US for talking to him. Is that correct?’

‘Correct.’

I handed Awaale the phone. As I did, I gripped his sand-covered hand. ‘Make sure you tell your father that it must be now. Remember the stoning. We must take action now. I need to know.’

He nodded, and started mumbling into the phone. I lay back, marshalling my thoughts. If this didn’t work, I had a ton of shit to do before last light.

Ten minutes later, I rolled onto my elbow and flattened out a patch of sand between us, so I could at least show Awaale what I had in mind. For now, it didn’t matter how many men Erasto might send, so long as Awaale had the basics of the attack in his head. With all this talk of heroism, he was coming with me whether he liked it or not.

Once we found out whether or not Erasto was up for it, we could start fine-tuning. And, with luck, we’d find that out extremely soon.



1



Both of us were sweltering inside our pepper-pots once more. We were hidden behind a couple of upturned skiffs on the beach next to the harbour. The stone pier was a continuation of the road that came down from the court-house square. It jutted out to sea for about a hundred metres, and then did a dog-leg to our left and continued for another fifty. The stonework was crumbling badly. Maybe that was why no boats were moored anywhere near it.

From where we were, the court-house was at the top of the road on the right. The compound was to the right of that. A small alleyway divided them. The long shadows cast by the buildings behind us were fading fast. Awaale still had his mobile stuck to the blue material covering his ear.

He looked at me and shook his head. ‘Still nothing.’

The fucker. I knew Erasto’s skiffs were out there, in the dead ground behind the cargo ships. We’d watched them come along the coast and take cover about two hours ago. They also had a mobile-phone signal. Awaale had been chatting to them regularly, giving his orders for the attack like the true leader he was.

Now they were silent, just like Anna. I’d tried her twice since the first beach call. All I’d got was the Arabic pre-record. The message was so fast and loud it sounded like she was giving me a bollocking.

I checked my iPhone as adhan kicked off from the mosque’s speaker system. It was four minutes past six. It wouldn’t be long before igama, the second call to line up for Maghrib. We needed to be on target by then.

This wasn’t good. The skiff crews should be answering their mobiles. Awaale needed to give them the order to move into the harbour. They should be on their way in by now. Erasto was getting enough fucking cash. Or maybe he thought there was more where that came from, and all he had to do was bide his time.

There were five skiffs, but I had no idea how many crew between them. Awaale said it was going to be no problem, he’d got it sorted. They were supposed to come from the other side of the cargo ships and hold position beyond the stretch harbour wall that ran parallel to the beach, covered from view and from fire. Those boats were our way out.

We’d RV with them down there. We’d get on board, have one final brief, and arrange the fire support group. Awaale liked the phrase ‘fire support group’. He’d been saying it all day, shoving it in between the Somali waffle as he spoke to the crews on his mobile.

The fire support group would stay with the skiffs, to protect them and cover our move back down the road from the square. Awaale would take the rest of the crew with him. This assault group would split into two. One would pound the court-house with RPGs, machine-guns, everything they had, killing anyone running out of it and any AS who decided to leg it from the mosques and back up their mates. As that kicked off, Awaale would take me and the rest of his guys around the back of the court-house, along the dividing alleyway and into the compound. The locals would be at prayers. The one rule was: no zapping civilians. Apart from anything else, we’d be in enough shit if we were captured without having that hanging round our necks.

There had to be AS in the court-house, even at prayer time. And the prisoners next door had to be guarded. I’d seen six hard men in the compound an hour ago, sitting in the shade while the prisoners found shelter where they could. The new lot were the group of four we’d passed in the street earlier this morning, headed up by the tall Pakistani.

All I was going to do was scream into the compound and tell everybody to take cover before Awaale’s team got busy with the RPGs. The crew’s orders were then to kill any AS they saw, while I went and dragged the five of them out. Simple as that.

I’d steer them behind the court-house while Awaale kept giving us fire support – and then we’d get our heads down and leg it along the road to the skiffs. Awaale and his crew would then withdraw, and we were off. In and out in ten minutes.

That was i