Read Online The House of Lost Souls by F. G. Cottam - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: F. G. Cottam
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Seaton?’
‘We’ll be up all night,’ Seaton said.
‘There’ll be plenty of time for sleep when you’re dead,’ Mason said.
And Seaton thought that he would have liked very much to be able to say amen to that. ‘Talk, captain,’ he said. ‘I’m all ears.’
Seven
It was a covert job, helping the French sort out some tribal trouble on the Ivory Coast. A team of three had been seconded from the regiment and attached to a company of Gurkhas. The terrain was dense jungle, the Gurkhas chosen because they were tough and silent and uncomplaining about the country they would have to live and fight in. The two blokes with Mason were NCOs, good soldiers, veterans of special ops in the Falklands and Northern Ireland and the Gulf War, men coming to the end of their lives on active service still fitter than most fit teenagers. There was no hierarchy among the trio, despite Mason’s rank. It just wasn’t the regiment’s way. They were equals in the field, all reliant on each other, the same hardware and the same intel – French on this particular occasion, piss poor as always and suffering in translation, as if things weren’t already bad enough.
The way it went in these conflicts was always pretty much the same. The tribes squared off over disputed land, or cattle or a waterhole or whatever. The skirmishes and ambushes escalated into attritional war. Wells were poisoned. Villages were burned. Cows and goats were stolen until things peaked with the rape of women and the hacking off of limbs. There came a point where cost started to outweigh potential advantage and the elders of the opposing tribes got together and reached a settlement involving as little loss of face on both sides as possible. Then they went home to mourn their dead and bandage their wounds until the next time.
‘Why couldn’t the French sort it out themselves?’ Seaton said.
Mason smiled. ‘The French are very attached to their bits of Africa.’
‘You don’t mean they’re still empire-building?’
‘You have to remember how long they’ve been there. Anyway, they’ve no plans to leave that I’ve ever been aware of. But they have learned some things. One of the things they’ve learned is not to be seen as one-sided in tribal debates. It’s much easier to let foreign troops take the blame for partiality. It’s why Paris will pay for Gurkhas. To the tribes-people, Gurkhas don’t look French. French intervention in the Ivory Coast means French troops leaving their garrisons in convoys of troop lorries. We arrive at night aboard Chinooks. We could be anyone.’
‘It can’t be a cheap way of doing things.’
‘I don’t suppose it is. But sometimes it’s the only way.’
‘Because this tribal conflict wasn’t petering out,’ Seaton said.
‘No,’ said Mason. ‘It wasn’t. This one was rather different.’
They were in the north of the country, in the hilly region west of Touba, maybe a hundred kilometres from the border with Guinea to the east. The border was far too remote there to be anything more significant than a dark squiggle on a map. Certainly it meant nothing to the warring tribes-people. At first, all Mason and his company of Gurkhas could find was the aftermath of fighting. They found scorched villages and corpses, and dead beasts bloating and alive with maggots and blow flies. So far, so predictable. But the really odd thing, the bizarre thing, was that all the fatal casualties they came across were from the same side. The two tribes were ethnically distinct. The corpses were all from the taller, paler-skinned Kesabi tribe. The Tengwai, their opponents, were either uncharacteristically fastidious about collecting their fallen comrades, or they were close to invincible. The shadow-chasing went on for six days and seven nights. Never once did Mason or any of the force he commanded see a single protagonist in the fighting alive. They would always arrive in the silence and death of the aftermath. And it began to
‘We’ll be up all night,’ Seaton said.
‘There’ll be plenty of time for sleep when you’re dead,’ Mason said.
And Seaton thought that he would have liked very much to be able to say amen to that. ‘Talk, captain,’ he said. ‘I’m all ears.’
Seven
It was a covert job, helping the French sort out some tribal trouble on the Ivory Coast. A team of three had been seconded from the regiment and attached to a company of Gurkhas. The terrain was dense jungle, the Gurkhas chosen because they were tough and silent and uncomplaining about the country they would have to live and fight in. The two blokes with Mason were NCOs, good soldiers, veterans of special ops in the Falklands and Northern Ireland and the Gulf War, men coming to the end of their lives on active service still fitter than most fit teenagers. There was no hierarchy among the trio, despite Mason’s rank. It just wasn’t the regiment’s way. They were equals in the field, all reliant on each other, the same hardware and the same intel – French on this particular occasion, piss poor as always and suffering in translation, as if things weren’t already bad enough.
The way it went in these conflicts was always pretty much the same. The tribes squared off over disputed land, or cattle or a waterhole or whatever. The skirmishes and ambushes escalated into attritional war. Wells were poisoned. Villages were burned. Cows and goats were stolen until things peaked with the rape of women and the hacking off of limbs. There came a point where cost started to outweigh potential advantage and the elders of the opposing tribes got together and reached a settlement involving as little loss of face on both sides as possible. Then they went home to mourn their dead and bandage their wounds until the next time.
‘Why couldn’t the French sort it out themselves?’ Seaton said.
Mason smiled. ‘The French are very attached to their bits of Africa.’
‘You don’t mean they’re still empire-building?’
‘You have to remember how long they’ve been there. Anyway, they’ve no plans to leave that I’ve ever been aware of. But they have learned some things. One of the things they’ve learned is not to be seen as one-sided in tribal debates. It’s much easier to let foreign troops take the blame for partiality. It’s why Paris will pay for Gurkhas. To the tribes-people, Gurkhas don’t look French. French intervention in the Ivory Coast means French troops leaving their garrisons in convoys of troop lorries. We arrive at night aboard Chinooks. We could be anyone.’
‘It can’t be a cheap way of doing things.’
‘I don’t suppose it is. But sometimes it’s the only way.’
‘Because this tribal conflict wasn’t petering out,’ Seaton said.
‘No,’ said Mason. ‘It wasn’t. This one was rather different.’
They were in the north of the country, in the hilly region west of Touba, maybe a hundred kilometres from the border with Guinea to the east. The border was far too remote there to be anything more significant than a dark squiggle on a map. Certainly it meant nothing to the warring tribes-people. At first, all Mason and his company of Gurkhas could find was the aftermath of fighting. They found scorched villages and corpses, and dead beasts bloating and alive with maggots and blow flies. So far, so predictable. But the really odd thing, the bizarre thing, was that all the fatal casualties they came across were from the same side. The two tribes were ethnically distinct. The corpses were all from the taller, paler-skinned Kesabi tribe. The Tengwai, their opponents, were either uncharacteristically fastidious about collecting their fallen comrades, or they were close to invincible. The shadow-chasing went on for six days and seven nights. Never once did Mason or any of the force he commanded see a single protagonist in the fighting alive. They would always arrive in the silence and death of the aftermath. And it began to
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