Solo

Bond could practically hear his mind working.
    ‘You can get us back in that village?’ Breed said. ‘You guarantee?’
    ‘You can’t guarantee anything in a war zone. But I think this will work.’
    Breed looked down at the ground and kicked at a stone. Bond could tell he was reluctant to ask for help, as if it signalled some lack of military expertise in himself, showed some fundamental weakness. He spat again.
    ‘If you get us back in that village Adeka will want to marry you.’
    ‘We don’t need to go that far,’ Bond said. ‘A meeting, face to face, will be fine.’
    ‘It won’t be a problem,’ Breed said. ‘I promise you. If you get us back across the causeway you’ll be a national hero. But if you fail . . .’ He didn’t finish.
    Bond concealed his pleasure at this concession. ‘We won’t fail if you do exactly what I say.’
    ‘Where do we start?’
    ‘We retreat,’ Bond said. ‘In panic. As they say in French:
reculer pour mieux sauter
. Take a step back to jump higher, you know.’
    Breed looked at him, darkly. ‘You’d better know what you’re doing, man.’
    ‘Maybe you have a better idea,’ Bond said, amiably.
    ‘No, no. Over to you, Bond. This is your party.’
    Bond managed not to smile and began to issue instructions to the non-commissioned officers. He sent teams of men to bury the bucket bombs in the irrigation ditch. He then positioned and precisely sighted the mortars, taking his time, calculating distances as best he could and adjusting the calibration on the sights minutely.
    ‘Don’t touch them,’ he said to the mortar teams. ‘Even after you’ve fired and you think the range is wrong. Just keep firing, understand?’
    Then he had the heavy machine gun taken up to the bluff and set it down where it had a field of fire over the whole causeway. He gave Breed precise instructions and checked on the village again through the binoculars. The troops were gathering. The Saracen had moved away from the protection of its gable-end and was now close to the entrance to the causeway – obviously they weren’t going to wait for any air strike.
    ‘We’ll let the Saracen through,’ Bond said. ‘It’ll be going hell for leather. Have some men waiting to engage it further up the track. Then, when we “retreat” we’ll re-form in the trees and be ready to race across the causeway when I give the word.’
    ‘You seem very confident,’ Breed said.
    ‘Well, it worked the last time I tried it,’ Bond said.
    ‘When was that?’
    ‘1945. The principle being that, in a battle, confusion can be as important as an extra regiment.’
    ‘Who said that? The Duke of fucking Wellington?’
    ‘I did, actually,’ Bond said with a modest smile. ‘Now, here’s exactly how I expect everything to happen.’
     
    At midday the sound of the Saracen’s revving and manoeuvring carried across the marsh to the Dahumian positions. It was hot and steamy. Bond was standing by the rudimentary barricade and ducked down as the first fusillade of bullets began to come their way. The Saracen roared on to the causeway, its .30 Browning machine gun firing wildly as the turret traversed left and right, a massed column of troops surging behind it.
    ‘Right,’ Bond shouted. ‘Everybody run!’
    The defending Dahumians took him at his word. With histrionic display they stood up, waved their arms and abandoned their positions with alacrity, pelting down the road away from the causeway, seeking the protection of the forest trees. Leaving the barricade unguarded and undefended.
    Bond sprinted back to the mortar crews. Breed was up at the bluff behind the machine gun. Through his binoculars Bond saw the Saracen accelerate, blasting through the log and oil-drum barrier, spraying the forest fringe with its machine gun. Behind it the Zanza Force troops raced forward over the causeway. It looked like a walkover.
    ‘They are comin’, sar,’ said the lance corporal who was manning the first of the mortars.
    ‘Wait,’ Bond said. He wanted most of the men across the causeway before there was any retaliation.
    ‘OK, fire!’ He waved up at Breed.
    There was a dull
whump
as the first mortar bomb took off into the air. A split second later the other followed. The bombs exploded some way behind the advancing Zanzaris.
    ‘Keep firing,’ Bond said to the baffled mortar crew. ‘Don’t stop.’ He ran off and scrambled up through the undergrowth to where Breed was blasting away with the machine