Survive to Fight Read online

  Survive to Fight

  Billy Billingham

  Also by Billy Billingham

  Call to Kill

  Part One

  One

  Niassa Game Reserve, Mozambique

  Matt Mason waded through the dark grey mud, carrying a length of coiled rope over his head. One false step could be his last.

  The watering hole was thirty feet in diameter and five feet deep, and sharing it with him was a five-tonne bull elephant, who, despite being almost beyond the point of total exhaustion, was still more than capable of crushing Mason to death. The beast had got itself trapped in the mud and was now slumped to one side, two of its legs waving pointlessly up into the air. When he was only a couple of feet away, Mason cast the rope high into the air, biting his lip as he watched it loop and land squarely over the front foot of the elephant. Before it could move, Mason pulled his end of the rope, and immediately, all around him, the crowd roared their approval.

  During the time that Mason had been in Mozambique, he had changed more than at any point in his life since he’d joined the forces. Five years in the Parachute Regiment followed by twelve in the SAS had turned him into a lethal force with skills beyond those of any ordinary soldier and yet, three short months in the African bush had opened his mind to a whole new world.

  His life now couldn’t have been more different to how it was after his discharge from the army. He’d returned to Hereford from operations in Yemen and moved the last of his possessions from the family home to a one-bedroom flat near the centre of town. Although he and his wife Kerry had parted amicably, it had been hard to say goodbye to his son and to the house where they had all lived together since he’d joined the SAS at twenty-two. Almost as hard as it had been to say goodbye to his daughter Joanna when she left for naval college in Devon.

  Mason had thrown himself into his newfound bachelorhood with some enthusiasm, spending his evenings catching up with old squadron buddies in the Barrels, before hitting Rubik’s nightclub and, more than once, rounding the night off with a punch-up outside the Commercial Road kebab shop. It was after one such scuffle, which resulted in a local farmer going to hospital, that Mace had come to his senses; at thirty-five he simply couldn’t return to the life he’d had as a seventeen-year-old before he’d signed up. That would only end badly. He had to move on before he landed himself in serious trouble.

  Many lads struggled with civilian life after leaving the special forces. It was hard to settle into a new routine, expected to fend for yourself. Mason might have been able to take out a man at over a thousand yards with a sniper rifle, but the everyday things in life, from making an appointment to see the dentist to paying his phone bill, were completely new. In the army, things like that were done for you, someone was always on hand to help before you even knew you needed it. On the outside, you were on your own. Money in particular had become a concern. Not that the army had paid very well, but at least when you were in, you were getting paid, rain or shine. On the outside, you had to find your own work, which wasn’t as easy as it had been back when Iraq and Afghanistan offered lucrative security jobs to guys with Mason’s particular skills.

  Mace had turned to his old pal, Gordie, who’d served with him in Afghanistan before getting out to start his own security business. Gordie had thrown Mace a lifeline with a gig in Mozambique, drilling a new batch of rangers on the Niassa Game Reserve just across the Tanzanian border. Initially, the contract had been for six weeks, but when Florence Dubois, the posh old girl who ran the place, asked him to stay, he’d gladly extended his trip.

  To say that Matt Mason was undergoing a bit of a renaissance in Africa wouldn’t be an overstatement. Six months under the hot African sun had bronzed his skin, while his hair and beard had grown longer than ever before. A diet of red meat three times a day combined with heavy physical exercise had added twenty pounds to his muscular frame so that he no longer looked like the skinny kid from Walsall. Meanwhile, his mental outlook had changed even more than his physical appearance.

  For most of his adult life, Mason had experienced the world as a place to do battle. The planet’s flora and fauna had often been collateral damage in his never-ending scraps with the bad guys. He’d seen stretches of rainforest reduced to a hole in the ground by aerial bombardment, jungle village streets littered with dead cows and goats caught in the crossfire, shores of white-sand beaches piled high with the carcasses of dead fish blown out of the water. War’s ability to destroy everything in its path knew no bounds. Now though, he was connecting with the natural world in a way that he’d never imagined possible.

  Every day, Mason’s routines took him on a new adventure. He missed many aspects of life in the Regiment, but he had found comfort in bringing its professionalism to his new work. Whether it was checking the new security measures he’d put in place around the reserve, or training the men in the deepest parts of the bush, the job brought him face to face with zebras, giraffes, and buffalo not to mention a myriad of mesmerising flowers and birds. Mason had begun to see a beauty that he’d not had time for when he’d been a soldier. He had discovered in himself a source of pleasure that he didn’t know existed. Every new encounter with the natural world around him brought him closer to a sense of peace that he had never known. And there was one animal in particular that had truly captured Mason’s heart—the elephants.

  Florence had called Gordie for help when the elephant situation on the reserve had reached crisis point. By the time Mace arrived in-country, the near two thousand elephants that had roamed the park five years ago had dwindled to fewer than five hundred. It was the same sad story across the whole East African region.

  The culprits, of course, were poachers engaged to take down elephants for their tusks. The demand for ivory from the Far East was insatiable and despite various international bans and embargoes, the price of elephant tusk was at an all-time high. The job of protecting elephants in the real world had fallen to the reserves themselves and as the bigger, wealthier game reserves in Kenya and Tanzania had spent big, militarising their rangers, taking on the poachers with ever-increasing force, the smaller reserves had become easier targets. The poachers had refocused their efforts to where they met with less resistance, which currently meant Mozambique. The country was riddled with poverty and corruption from the old days of the civil war, and the financial resources of its game reserves lagged far behind those further north. The result was that its elephants were vulnerable to the men who came at night with guns. It was Matt Mason’s job to change all that.

  The huge elephant let out another bellicose roar, lifting its trunk in the air before slapping it down again on the mud, spraying dirty water in a high arc, all over the crowd. People screamed and scurried for cover. Mason could see that the life was draining from the beast, in less than thirty minutes it would run out of energy altogether. If he was to save it from drowning in the mud, he had to coordinate his men fast. He whistled to Joseph, his newly appointed head ranger and the most competent man he had.

  ‘Leavers, Joseph!’ he shouted.

  Joseph, a slender but strong, bright-eyed young man, with a roguish smile that seemed permanently etched on his face, waved to a group of uniformed rangers who were standing along the bank. Each man bore a ten-foot length of thick bamboo and on Joseph’s signal, they inched forward in a line and plunged their poles deep into the mud. Still waist-deep in the muddy water below, Mason guided them forward, edging their poles gingerly into the space behind the thick spine of the elephant.

  Satisfied with the set-up, Mason held up a hand to instruct everyone to hold their positions. The men braced themselves, while Joseph ran along the bank, shouting at the onlookers to move back, pushing them away with a dismissive wave of his hand. It
seemed as though the whole village had come to the watering hole to watch the action. Over a hundred people were gathered, jostling, craning, climbing to get a view of the crazy white man in the water with the bull. Among them, the headman, Mwamba Kiba—Joseph’s father, tall, heavily built, greying a little above the ears – watched it all with a wry smile. He had to hand it to the Englishman; he was determined.

  Mason had become popular with the locals. The first thing he’d encouraged Florence to see was that they stood no chance against the poachers without the help of the community. The Regiment had taught him that. Winning hearts and minds mattered above all else, especially when you were in a combat situation on someone else’s turf. Shortly after arriving, he’d increased the park’s manpower, employing Joseph as his deputy and using old military contacts to source new uniforms, boots, and Bergens. He’d convinced Florence to spend money on a dozen AK-47s as well as five reconditioned G3s with night scopes. He’d built an assault course for physical training, a classroom, and several new sentry points and covert hides in the bush.

  But the main thing that Mason had built was camaraderie. The poachers were much better funded than the reserve, so if he had any chance of defeating them, he needed the community to take a stake. He had to make them see that the elephants were their own, and today was a prime opportunity. Mason had no doubt that getting the bull elephant out of the watering hole would help to get everyone behind the cause.

  He scrambled out of the hole, drenched head to toe in mud, beard dripping lumps of brown goo onto the ground as he ran around to the front of the elephant. He reached down and grabbed the rope that he had thrown over the enormous front leg, shouting to the crowd to move back. Joseph reversed the digger down the hill and Mason hooked the ends of the rope around its mechanical bucket, securing it with two strong knots.

  Everything was set. Mason crouched onto his haunches and looked the elephant in the eye. The poor wretch looked forlornly back at him and he could hear its laboured breath above the noise of the crowd. He knew it was terrified, confused about what was happening to it.

  ‘I need you to help us,’ Mason said to the elephant, his voice calm and reassuring. ‘You can do this.’

  The elephant let out another low, sorry sigh as Mason lifted his hand so that Joseph and the rangers could see him. When he dropped his hand again, it was the signal to act.

  At once, the men heaved, throwing their whole weight behind the poles, levering the back of the elephant up above the surface of the mud, tilting it back towards the vertical. Mason waved to the villagers to help and the crowd responded, crushing in behind the rangers, adding their collective weight to the big push. Meanwhile, Joseph worked the digger, lifting its mechanical arm, straining the ropes tight against the mass of the beast, using its full power to drag the elephant, legs first, towards the bank.

  The crowd roared, drowning out the sound of the digger’s diesel engine and the elephant bellowing its disapproval at the discomfort of being dragged through thick mud. Mason took hold of the ropes and added his own weight. Every kilogram counted.

  ‘Come on!’ he roared at the beast. They were at full capacity, everyone giving it everything, doing all they could do to help, but Mason knew ultimately the animal’s survival depended on it helping itself.

  Again, the elephant trumpeted at the top of its lungs. Several children in the crowd screamed, others began to cry. Mothers pulled the small ones close to them, while their husbands pushed in tight behind the rangers, adding more weight to the collective effort to push the elephant back to its feet.

  By now the bull was reaching out one of its front feet for the solid edge of the bank. It strained hard against the ropes, pulling the digger backwards. Mason realised that it was in danger of taking it down into the mud with it. He ran around the edge and snatched a pole from the nearest ranger, manoeuvring it a few feet to the left, changing the angle a little.

  ‘On me!’ he screamed, calling the men around him to help.

  The change of direction did the trick, giving the elephant just enough forward thrust to lift its other front leg out of the mud and scramble up onto the hard ground. With two feet in and two feet out, it balanced precariously, gasping for another breath before, with one enormous heave, it hoisted itself out and stood on the bank dazed, like a boxer who’d taken an upper-cut and lost all sense of where he was.

  The sight of an adult bull elephant standing on its feet was enough to send most of the villagers running for cover. Only Mason ran the other way, realising that he had limited time before the elephant regained its composure. Drawing his machete, he sprinted towards the digger, slicing through the ropes. Moments later, the five-tonne brute raised its trunk again and, with an ear-splitting cry, lolloped off into the bush, away from the humans, to return to its own family.

  Mason slumped down against the digger, using the last of his energy to raise a hand in triumph as the crowd began to dissipate. The show was over, but Mason hoped they would appreciate the significance of what they’d achieved today. He looked up to see the village headman walking towards him.

  ‘Impressive work, Mason,’ Mwamba Kiba said, offering him an outstretched hand.

  Mason shook it as Joseph appeared from around the other side of the digger. ‘Couldn’t have done it without this man,’ Mason said, patting the young ranger on the back. ‘He’s a credit to you, Mwamba.’

  ‘He’s a good boy,’ Mwamba smiled. ‘You have a son?’

  ‘Yes, Sam. Back in England with his mum,’ Mason nodded. ‘And a daughter, Joanna who’s away at sea. Joseph reminds me of her. Strong. Determined.’

  Mwamba smiled although no part of him enjoyed hearing his eldest son compared to a woman. ‘You’re a proud father,’ he said, diplomatically.

  ‘Very,’ Mason replied. ‘My kids mean everything to me. Even more than the elephants.’

  ‘Good!’ Mwamba laughed. ‘Now, come. Tonight you will eat with my family.’

  Mason picked himself up and followed the two men back along the track from the watering hole. A wave of exhaustion crashed over him, but the sound of people up ahead, laughing and singing, raised his spirits. When they reached the village, he took a seat near to the fire and Joseph passed him a cold beer. His thoughts drifted homewards again. He missed Sam and Joanna. He couldn’t wait to see them again and tell them all about this place, about Joseph and the elephants. But most of all he couldn’t wait to tell them both how proud he was of them.

  Two

  Dahlak Islands, Red Sea

  The Golden Falcon was close reaching under its staysail while the mainsail, with one reef in it, was almost full to bursting. Captain Ben Warmington, a tall, curly-haired Irishman who’d learned his craft sailing off the rocky Antrim coast, manned the bridge, working the colossal one-hundred-and-three-metre-long superyacht to windward as the seas beat hard into the bow. He was relieved at how easily they were achieving eighteen knots without heeling over much at all. The owner, resting in his private cabin on the upper deck, should at least be happy that they were remaining level at speed. He and his guests could enjoy their champagne without worrying about their glasses sliding off surfaces or even tumbling overboard themselves when they’d had one too many.

  Although Ben was the skipper of the Falcon, the boat belonged to Wei Lun Chow, a Hong Kong-Chinese businessman, who’d engaged him and his crew to pilot the boat from Cairo to the Dahlak Islands off the coast of Eritrea. Chow and his entourage, two Russian security guys and four Chinese ‘models’ were set on enjoying a spot of scuba diving in one of the most remote and inaccessible spots in the Red Sea. The problem was that, as is often a billionaire’s wont, the destination had changed at the last minute.

  Ben sighed as he replayed the rather frank exchange he’d had with Chow minutes earlier. The problem was that when you were making a year’s salary in a fortnight and getting to sail the third-largest sailboat in the world, there wasn’t a lot of leverage to say ‘no’. Chow had suddenly wanted to dive the reefs ar
ound the Zubair Group, a collection of volcanic islands two hundred miles further south, less accessible and, in Ben’s opinion, considerably less safe than the Dahlak Islands. But despite the skipper’s protestations, the billionaire had been very insistent and Ben had reluctantly swallowed his tongue. Now, as he tried to recover his calm, he resolved to focus on the positives—he was sailing the Golden Falcon in near perfect conditions.

  The Falcon was pure genius. Its steel hull supported a lightweight aluminium superstructure, designed by the world’s best marine architects, Nuvolari Lenard. It combined outstanding sailing performance and state-of-the-art technology with exceptional space, comfort, and luxury. With a beam of more than five metres, it could accommodate sixteen VIP guests in eight luxury cabins. Along with the master suite on the upper deck, there were two queensized berths on the lower deck and four guest staterooms below, with separate dressing rooms, his and hers bathrooms, and a private gymnasium. Finally, tucked into the bow, were the six bunk rooms that housed the Falcon’s eighteen crew.

  As well as the Filipino chef and a dozen of her catering staff, Ben’s crew entailed his first officer, Paul Woods, a potty-mouthed Ozzie with an unnatural ability to read the wind, and two deckhands: Jim, a massive Kiwi, who looked like he’d been weaned on steak; and Ben’s treasured protege, Joanna Mason, or Jason as she was known on board. She was a brilliant young sailor from Hereford, who’d crewed for Ben many times before, including last year at Cowes where they’d won the Triple Crown. She’d proved herself to be a gifted tactician and it was Ben who had convinced her to come on this trip, even though it meant moonlighting during her shore leave from the navy. She probably shouldn’t be there, but he was glad she was.

  ‘Jason,’ he called her from behind the huge chrome wheel. ‘Trim that fucking line, will you.’

  ‘Skip,’ replied the young woman on deck, ducking in and out of the lines, her blonde ponytail peeking out from the back of a black baseball cap. She knew the skipper was in a bad mood and that the best thing to do in those circumstances was keep your head down while you waited for him to calm down. She skipped lightly between the yards, pulling the lines tight, forcing the boat even closer to the wind. She tilted her head upwards to the sky, taking delight in how the gust instantly filled the sail, lifting the near-one-hundred-tonne vessel effortlessly over the crashing waves.