Read Solo for Free Online

invaded Dahum and were repulsed. The Zanzarim civil war had begun.
    Bond put the briefing document down. It was like that old Chinese curse: ‘May you live in interesting times’ – reconfigured as ‘May vast reserves of oil be discovered in your country.’ He shuffled through the newspaper clippings and selected one written by a defence expert whose name he recognised. In the two years since the war had begun the overwhelmingly superior Zanzarim forces had managed to drive the Dahumians back from their ostensible frontiers to a small hinterland in the river delta concentrated around the town of Port Dunbar. The Democratic Republic of Dahum now consisted of Port Dunbar, an airstrip near a place called Janjaville and a few hundred square miles of dense forest, river creeks and mangrove swamps. Dahum was surrounded and a blockade commenced. The desperate population of Fakassa began to starve and die.
    Her Majesty’s Government supported Zanzarim (as well as providing military materiel for the Zanzarim army) and urged Dahum to sue for peace and return to the ‘status quo ante’. To all observers it seemed that unless this occurred there would be a human catastrophe. It had seemed inconceivable that Dahum could hold out for more than a week or two.
    Bond recalled what M had recounted.
    ‘However, it simply hasn’t happened,’ he had said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It seems heroic – this small, makeshift Dahum army holding out against hugely superior and well-equipped forces. To be sure, there’s a clandestine air-bridge flying in supplies at night to this airstrip at Janjaville. But somehow they’ve completely stopped the Zanzari advance. Every time there’s a push from the Zanzarim army it ends in humiliating disaster. It seems the Dahumian army is being brilliantly led by some kind of tactical genius producing victory after victory. The war could drag on forever at this rate.’
    Bond picked up a clipping from
Time
magazine that showed an African soldier, a brigadier, with a black beret and a scarlet cockade standing on top of a burnt-out Zanzari armoured car. The caption beneath read: ‘Brigadier Solomon “The Scorpion” Adeka – the African Napoleon’. So, this was the soldier who was the architect of Dahum’s astonishing resilience – a military prodigy who was somehow contriving to inflict defeat upon defeat on an army ten times the size of his.
    ‘Brigadier Adeka is the key,’ M had said, simply. ‘He’s the man who’s single-handedly keeping this war going, by all accounts. He’s the target – the object of your mission. I want you to go to Zanzarim, infiltrate yourself into Dahum and get close to this man.’
    ‘And what am I meant to do then, sir?’ Bond had asked, knowing the answer but keeping his face impassive, giving nothing away.
    ‘I’d like you to find a way of making him a less efficient soldier,’ M had said with a vague smile.
     
    There was a knock on his door and Bond looked up, irritated, and Araminta Beauchamp stepped in. She was a pretty girl with a fringe of dark hair that almost covered her eyes. She kept flicking it away with a toss of her head.
    Bond sighed. ‘Minty, I said absolutely no interruptions. Don’t you understand plain English?’
    ‘Sorry, sir. Q Branch has just called to say that they can see you any time that’s convenient to you.’
    ‘I know that. I’ve just been speaking to M.’
    ‘I thought it was important . . .’ Her chin quivered and she dragged her fringe away with a finger to reveal eyes about to weep tears of penitence.
    ‘Thank you,’ Bond said, gently. ‘You’re right. It probably is. And please don’t cry, Minty.’
    Bond rode the lift down to Q Branch’s domain in the basement and announced himself. He was met by a young bespectacled man who introduced himself as Quentin Dale. He looked about twenty-five years old and had the eager proselytising manner of a doorstep missionary.
    ‘I don’t think we’ve met before,