And certainly not the foreign mercenaries.
He was standing on the edge of the road, looking down the highway waiting for the first sign of the approaching convoy. Nick was at his side, the HPES discreetly tucked away into his rucksack. Across the street, Ian was standing close to the empty garage where he’d rigged up his bombs. In his hand, he was holding the transmitter for an electric toy car: the shortwave radio signal would trigger the detonator, kick off the explosions and start the fight.
‘Where the hell are they?’ said Nick. You could hear the tension in his voice.
‘They’ll be here soon enough,’ Steve replied.
As he spoke, he could hear the convoy approach. A van led the way, a loudspeaker turned up high, blaring out propaganda to the crowds along the way. ‘The imperialist plotters have been foiled!’ it shouted. ‘The freedom of the Batotean people has once again been secured from the colonialist oppressors!’
Steve glanced across the street, and caught Ian’s eye. He nodded just once, and Ian nodded back. The message they exchanged was: Wait, hold yourself steady, but get ready to kick off the attack.
Nick was starting to reach into his kitbag. ‘Hold it,’ muttered Steve.
The loudspeaker van was right alongside them now, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. Fists were being punched into the air, and a chant was rippling through the crowd. ‘Death to the imperialists!’ they shouted, a thousand voices strong. Steve did his best to block out the noise, willing himself to remain 100 per cent focused on the task at hand.
Policemen were walking down the street, pushing the crowd back with their batons, using force where they had to, to keep people off the main road. An occasional scuffle broke out, but was invariably settled by a brisk swipe of a truncheon.
Next, three armoured SUVs filled with troops of soldiers rolled past, the metal of their guns glistening in the early-morning sunshine. Behind that approached the Presidential limousine, its windows blackened out, edging slowly down the wide avenue.
And then came the truck.
Steve looked straight into it. You could see the five men standing in the back, their heads bowed, with their five guards standing directly opposite them. The truck was doing twenty miles an hour, making for the stadium, another pair of vehicles directly behind it. The crowd roared as they saw the men, chanting wildly and lobbing rotten fruit in their direction.
‘Hold it,’ Steve hissed again to Nick.
He waited. The truck was still twenty yards away.
Steve looked over at Ian. He held up five fingers, then slowly counted down the time. Five, four, three, two . . .
‘One,’ he mouthed.
Ian pulled the trigger on the toy car, then melted silently into the crowd.
It was classic IRA, he reflected to himself. Pull the trigger, then vanish into thin air. It had worked against the British, and it would work again today.
There was a split second before the plastic explosives detonated. At first, all Steve heard was a distant thump that could easily have been a truck backfiring. Then there was a sudden, violent eruption as the first of the oil drums burst into a wall of flames. The noise rocked out across the street, like a gale blowing away everything in its path. The flames spat into the air - twenty, thirty, then forty feet - kicking up into the sky like a golden fountain. Then the heat started to vaporise the air. The oxygen was sucked out of the avenue, making it hard to breathe, and creating a counter-gale. Wind seemed to be hurling from every direction. Finally, the smoke rolled out. Thick black clouds of solid tar, blasting out across the ground, it choked and suffocated everything it touched.
For a moment, the avenue was eerily still, the crowd stunned by the sudden violence of the explosion, immobilised by the shock.
That split second is our crucial advantage, Steve reminded himself. We’re the only people who expected it, the only people primed to react. ‘Go - sodding go!’ he told Nick.
Nick had already pulled the HPES from his rucksack, jamming his finger into the device.
Steve looked straight at the truck. Clouds of smoke were swirling around it, and the machine had lost power. It was juddering to a halt.
‘Time for a scrap,’ he muttered under his breath.
And then he started to run.
Ollie felt the explosion before he even heard it: there was a flickering tremor in the air and he was primed and ready for it. Next, came the murderous roar as the diesel ignited, then the thick black cloud of smoke, descending on them like fog rolling out of the waves at sea.
‘Go!’ he bellowed, his lungs stretched, ignoring the fumes clogging his throat as soon as he opened his mouth.
The soldiers opposite them had been briefly disorientated by the suddenness and vigour of the attack and were now expecting a full-blown assault: the explosion sounded like the first blast of artillery, to be followed by a second wave of combat troops on the ground. But in reality, the enemy was right with them inside the truck.