The Dogs of War
Frederick Forsyth
 1970: The prologue shows "Cat" Shannon and his fellow mercenaries leaving a West African war they have lost, saying 'good-bye' to the General, who employed them for six months. Subsequently, a prospector named Mulrooney, employed by British-based company Manson Consolidated, sends mineral samples from the "Crystal Mountain" in the remote hinterland of the African republic of Zangaro. When they are analysed, ruthless British mining tycoon Sir James Manson realises that there is a huge platinum deposit in Zangaro. As the president of Zangaro, Jean Kimba, is Marxist, homicidal and insane, and under Soviet influence, any public announcement of the findings would benefit only the Russians. Confiding only in his top assistants, security chief Simon Endean and financial expert Martin Thorpe, Manson plans to replace Kimba with a puppet leader who, for a pittance, will sign over Zangaro's mining rights to a "shell company" secretly owned by Manson. When Manson Consolidated later acquires the shell company for a fair market price, Sir James Manson and his aides will pocket £60 million. On recommendation from a freelance writer, Endean hires Anglo-Irish mercenary soldier "Cat" Shannon to reconnoitre Zangaro, and to investigate how Kimba might be deposed. After visiting the country posing as a tourist, Shannon reports that the army has little fighting value and that Kimba has concentrated the national armoury, treasury and radio station within the presidential palace in Clarence, the Zangaran capital city and principal port. If the palace is stormed and Kimba is killed, there will be no opposition to any new regime. Because there is no organised dissident faction in Zangaro, the attacking force will have to be organised outside the country and land near Clarence to launch the attack. Shannon prices the mission at £100,000, with £10,000 for himself. Although Shannon has dealt only with Endean who is using a false name, he has had Endean tailed by a private investigator and has discovered his true identity and his involvement with Sir James Manson. Although Manson has taken steps to silence the few people aware of the Crystal Mountain platinum deposit, the left-wing chemist who analysed the samples has inadvertently revealed his findings to the Soviets, who assign a KGB bodyguard to Kimba while they prepare to send in their own geological survey team. Manson learns from a Foreign Office bureaucrat that the Soviets have got wind of the deposit. He commissions Shannon to organise and mount the coup, to take place on the eve of Zangaro's independence day, one hundred days hence, although he does not tell Shannon of the Soviet involvement. Shannon assembles the team who will execute the attack on Kimba's palace: German ex-smuggler Kurt Semmler, South African mortar expert Jan Dupree, Belgian bazooka specialist "Tiny" Marc Vlaminck, and Corsican knife man Jean-Baptiste Langarotti. Semmler travels Europe looking for a suitable cargo ship to transport them and their equipment to Zangaro. Dupree stays in London and buys all their uniforms, boots and camping equipment. Langarotti travels to Marseilles to buy inflatable boats for the amphibious assault. Vlaminck accompanies Shannon to Belgium to buy one hundred MP 40 "Schmeisser" machine pistols from a former member of the SS. Shannon then travels to Luxembourg to establish a holding company to handle the purchase of the ship, to Spain to buy 400,000 rounds of 9mm ammunition for the Schmeissers with a forged end user certificate, and walkie talkies and flares, and to Yugoslavia to buy bazookas, mortars, and ammunition for them. He also finds time for a brief sexual liaison with Julie Manson, Sir James's daughter, from whom he learns the bare essentials of Manson's true plan. Martin Thorpe has meanwhile secretly bought the controlling share in Bormac Trading, a mining and plantation-owning company which has long ceased trading, from Lady MacAllister, the ailing widow of the company's founder. His and Manson's involvement is concealed behind the names of several fictitious shareholders. Endean has obtained the agreement of Colonel Bobi, a former commander of the Zangaran Army who fell out with Kimba and is now in exile, to participate in Manson's scheme. Once installed as president, the venal and illiterate Bobi will sign over the mineral rights to the Crystal Mountain to Bormac Trading for a nominal price but a large bribe for himself. Semmler has acquired a nondescript tramp cargo ship, the Toscana, for the operation. Hidden in oil drums, the Schmeisser sub-machine guns are smuggled across the Belgian border into France and loaded aboard the Toscana at Marseilles, along with the uniforms and Zodiac speedboats, which are supposedly for watersports in Morocco. They then sail to Ploče in Yugoslavia to load the mortars and rocket launchers bought legitimately from an arms dealer, without telling the Yugoslav authorities that they already have arms aboard. These weapons are then hidden below deck and the ship sails to Spain to collect the ammunition (supposedly sold to the Iraqi police force). The ship then sails to Sierra Leone to pick up six African mercenaries, disguised as casual stevedores, who will also participate in the attack, and Dr Okoye, an African academic. The assault on President Kimba's palace takes place as planned. In the early hours of the morning, foghorns and flares disorient the defenders while Dupree bombards the interior of the palace compound and a nearby army camp with mortars, eliminating the palace guard. Vlaminck destroys the compound gates with anti-tank rockets. As the attackers burst in, Kimba's KGB bodyguard escapes and shoots Vlaminck in the chest. Vlaminck kills him with his last rocket before he dies. Semmler shoots Kimba as he tries to escape through his bedroom window. Dupree and two African mercenaries attack the nearby army camp. A Zangaran solder throws a grenade at them as he flees and Johnny, one of the African mercenaries, throws it back but accidentally mortally wounds Dupree with it. Around midday, Endean arrives in Clarence to install Colonel Bobi as the new Zangaran president. He has his own bodyguard, a former enforcer and London East End gangster. Shannon casually kills both Bobi and Endean's bodyguard, and introduces Dr Okoye as the new head of government. Dr Okoye permanently refuses the Soviet geology survey team's request to land in Zangaro. As Shannon drives Endean to the border, he explains that Endean's otherwise comprehensive research failed to note the 20,000 immigrant workers who did most of the work in Zangaro, but were politically disenfranchised by the Kimba government. A hundred of them, in new uniforms and armed with Schmeissers, have already been recruited as the nucleus of the new Zangaran Army. When Shannon tells Endean that the coup was really conducted in behalf of the General, Endean is furious, but Shannon points out that this government will be at least be fair, and if Manson wants the platinum, he will have to pay the proper market price. Endean threatens revenge if he ever sees Shannon in London but Shannon is not fazed by this. In the novel's epilogue, it is revealed that Dupree, Vlaminck and Johnny, one of the African soldiers who also died in storming Kimba's palace, were buried in simple graves near the shore. Semmler, having sold the Toscana to its captain, died while on another mercenary operation in Africa and Langarotti's fate is ambiguous; the novel only tells that after he took his pay and share of the sale of the Toscana, he is last heard of going to train a new group of Hutu partisans in Burundi against Michel Micombero, telling Shannon "It's not about the money&nbsp;— it was never about the money." The final scene of The Dogs of War reveals that before embarking on the Zangaro operation, Shannon was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer (skin cancer in some American editions). He posts most of his earnings to the surviving family members of his fallen teammates, and also sends a manuscript (presumably outlining the entire plan) to a journalist in London. Later, Cat Shannon walks into the African bush, humming a favourite tune ("Spanish Harlem"), to end his life on his own terms with "a bullet in his chest and blood in his mouth".