I dropped into it and looked back the way I had come. The channel I had come along was clearly defined right up to the road edge, where it was screened by the lightest of cover, easy to see through from the shady side. Captain Sadiq was clearly on the ball, a real professional. This was a concealed machine gun pit with a prepared field of fire which commanded a half mile length of road. Out of curiosity I drummed up what I had been taught when Uncle Sam tried to make me into a soldier, and figured out where Sadiq would have put his mortars. After a few minutes of plunging about in the scrub I came across the emplacement and stared at it thoughtfully. I didn’t know if it was such a good idea because it made out Sadiq to be a textbook soldier, working to the rules. That’s all right providing the guys on the other side haven’t read the same book.
When I got back to the rig Kemp hailed me with some impatience, shading into curiosity. I was dusty and scratched, and already sweating.
‘We’re ready to move,’ he said. ‘Ride along with anyone you like.’ Except me, his tone added, and I could hardly blame him. He’d have enough to do without answering questions from visiting firemen.
‘Just a minute,’ I said. ‘Captain Sadiq appears to be cemented to his radio. How long has that been going on?’
Kemp shrugged. ‘I don’t know – all morning. He does his job and I do mine.’
‘Don’t you sense that he’s uneasy?’ I asked with concern. I’d seldom met a man so oblivious to outside events as Kemp. ‘By the way, what did you make of those planes?’
‘They say there’s an airfield somewhere about. Maybe they were just curious about the convoy. Look, Neil, I have to get on. I’ll talk to you later.’ He waved to Hammond, who drove up in the Land Rover, and they were off in a small cloud of dust. During my absence the rig and most of the rest of the convoy including my car had moved off, so I swung myself on to the chuck wagon and hitched a lift down to where the others were grouped around the approach to the bridge.
The scene was fascinating. Kemp was using only one tractor to take the rig across the bridge and it was already in place. Another tractor had crossed and waited on the far side. The rig was fitted with its airlift skirts and looked rather funny; they seemed to take away the brute masculinity of the thing and gave it the incongruous air of one of those beskirted Greek soldiers you see on guard in Athens. Though no doubt Kemp, who had been outraged by the bunting in Port Luard, saw nothing odd about it. Behind it was the airlift truck to which it was connected by a flexible umbilicus. Through this the air was rammed by four big engines.
If Kemp was nervous he didn’t show it. He was telling the crew what they were to do and how they were to do it. He was sparing of words but most of this team had worked with him before and needed little instruction. He put the Irishman, McGrath, in the tractor and Ben Hammond and himself on the rig.
‘No-one else on the bridge until we’re clear across,’ he said. ‘And keep that air moving. We don’t want to fall down on our bums halfway across.’ It brought a slight ripple of amusement.
McGrath revved the tractor engine and there came a roar from the airlift truck as one after another the engines started up. A cloud of dust erupted from beneath the rig as the loose debris was blown aside by the air blast. I knew enough not to expect the rig to become airborne, but it did seem to rise very slightly on its springs as the weight was taken up from the axles and spread evenly.
The noise was tremendous and I saw Kemp with a microphone close to his lips. The tractor moved, at first infinitesimally, so that one wasn’t sure that it had moved at all, then a very little faster. McGrath was a superb driver: I doubt that many people could have judged so nicely the exact pressure to put on an accelerator in order to shift a four hundred and thirty-ton load so smoothly.
The front wheels of the tractor crossed the bitumen expansion joint which marked the beginning of the bridge proper. Kemp moved quickly from one side of the control cab to the other, looking forwards and backwards to check that the rig and the tractor were in perfect alignment. Behind the rig the air umbilicus lengthened as it was paid out.
I estimated that the rig was moving at most a quarter of a mile an hour; it took about six minutes before the whole length of the combine was entirely supported by the bridge. If you were nervous now was the time to hold your breath. I held mine.
Then above the uproar of the airlift engines and the rush of air I heard a faint yell, and someone tugged at my arm. I turned and saw Sadiq’s sergeant, his face distorted as he shouted something at me. At my lack of comprehension he pulled my arm again and pointed back along the road leading up to the bridge. I turned and saw a column of vehicles coming up: jeeps and motorcycles at the front and the looming, ugly snouted silhouettes of tanks behind them.
I ran towards them with the sergeant alongside me. As soon as the volume of noise dropped enough to speak and be heard I pulled up and snapped, ‘Where’s Captain Sadiq?’
The sergeant threw out his hand towards the river. ‘On the other side.’
‘Christ! Go and get him – fast!’
The sergeant looked dismayed. ‘How do I do that?’
‘On your feet. Run! There’s room for you to pass. Wait. If Mister Kemp, if the road boss sees you he may stop. You signal him to carry on. Like this.’ I windmilled my arm, pointing forwards, and saw that the sergeant understood what to do. ‘Now go!’
He turned and ran back towards the bridge and I carried on towards the armoured column, my heartbeat noticeably quicker. It’s not given to many men to stop an army single-handed, but I’d been given so little time to think out the implications that I acted without much reflection. A leading command car braked to a stop, enveloping me in a cloud of dust, and an angry voice shouted something in Kinguru, or so I supposed. I waved the dust away and shouted, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Do you speak English, please?’
An officer stood up in the passenger seat of the open command car, leaning over the windscreen and looking down at the bridge with unbelieving eyes. When he turned his gaze on me his eyes were like flint and his voice gravelly. ‘Yes, I speak English. What is going on there?’
‘We’re taking that load across the bridge. It’s going up to the new power plant at Bir Oassa.’
‘Get it off there!’ he shouted.
‘That’s what we’re doing,’ I said equably.
‘I mean move it faster,’ he shouted again, convulsed with anger. ‘We have no time to waste.’
‘It’s moving as fast as is safe.’
‘Safe!’ He looked back at his column, then again at me. ‘You don’t know what that word means, Mister Englishman.’ He shouted a string of orders to a motorcyclist who wheeled his bike around and went roaring back up the road. I watched it stop at the leading tank and saw the tank commander lean down from the turret to listen. The tank cut out of the column and ground to a rattling halt alongside the command car. The officer shouted a command and I saw the turret swivel and the barrel of the gun drop slightly.
I was sweating harder now, and drier in the mouth, and I wished to God Sadiq would show up. I looked round hopefully, but of Sadiq or any of his military crowd there was no sign.
‘Hey, Captain,’ I shouted, giving him as flattering a rank as possible without knowing for sure. ‘What are you doing? There are four hundred and thirty tons on that bridge.’
His face cracked into a sarcastic