Read an extract from My Friend the Mercenary - Bookhugger

shake hands with the devil 9
‘Nick was a Recce, a Special Forces operator down here, in
5 Reconnaissance. He was about to be made a full colonel when
he quit. He knows the type of area you’re going to very well.’
Here Cobus paused for effect. ‘Nick was with me in Sierra Leone,
actually.’
I liked Cobus, but he was a consummate hustler. I was
beginning to wonder if he’d sold me a pup. Cobus was sure to
take a generous commission from whatever I paid Nick to hold
my hand in the jungle. Like a car salesman throwing in a full
tank of petrol to sweeten the deal, he added: ‘He’s an experienced
combat medic. Aren’t you?’
‘Ja,’ Nick agreed, ‘we were all trained to a certain standard,
but the medical side became a bit of a speciality of mine. We did
a lot of long-range stuff in Angola. I had to patch myself up
once. We trained in civilian hospitals, too. They had all sorts of
injuries, a bit more interesting than just the ones you got in the
army.’
Nick looked down at the table, almost self-conscious.
His voice was quiet, matter-of-fact. There was no hyperbole,
apparently no bullshit.
I knew almost nothing about the ‘Recces’, other than what I’d
learned hanging out with Cobus. South Africa’s equivalent of the
British SAS, they were highly trained killers and survivors who
fought both conventionally and controversially in the service of
the apartheid state during the bush wars and insurgencies that had
torn Southern Africa apart for a quarter of a century. They were
dedicated, arguably fanatical professionals – but unlike the SAS,
they had not, ultimately, been under the control of a democratic
government. In fact, the South African Army closely resembled
everything I had been taught to despise when I was growing up:
it was hard to shake the feeling that the Recces must have been
more Waffen-SS than Special Air Service.
‘A colonel? Have you worked with journalists before?’