The film version of this was remarkably faithful to the book - of course changes were made, notably in term of tone, but the guts of it are in Smith's novel: Bruce Curry, mercenary, on a mission to retrieve some hostages and diamond in the war torn Congo; they head out on a train with a crew including the black Ruffo, the cowardly Belgian Andre, the drunken doctor and a brutish soldier; the airplane attack; the shooting of two kids by the brutish soldier; arriving at the town; staying overnight; the doctor going to help a pregnant mother; General Moses and his troops arriving; the train almost getting away but one carriage rolling back, including the diamonds; Andre being tortured; rescuing the diamonds and some trucks; a final escape; the brutish soldier taking off and being killed.
There are lots of differences but nothing huge - this is set during the Baluba Rebellion not the Simba ones; the brutish soldier is a cockney here, not a German; Andre is gay here, sent in Belgium after his affair with a married man was revealed; they pick up the girl at the destination, not along the way; Ruffy isn't killed, the final pursuit is prompted by raping the girl; there's no subplot about the savagery of Curry and him going nuts; the final fight is a more cat and mouse stalk than a rampaging orgy of violence.
I think the film made decent changes - turning the villain into a German, making it the Simba period, making Andrea a "local", adding the time lock (so it isn't Curry making a mistake). In the book we never find out what happened to the doctor and there's a few action scenes after the retrieval of the diamonds including a truck crashing into the water and a few more attacks from the locals. Ruffo being killed packs more of a wallop than Claire being raped.
The novel surprised me in some ways - even the most horrible villain (the cockney, General Moses) are given at least a page to explain why they are why they are (horrible parents, brutal treatment from the Belgians). It also has Curry reflecting on his busted marriage and why it went wrong - saying mean and cruel things when he should have been kinder; this is written with a sensitivity from Smith that wasn't present in his later novels - I assume he was thinking of his early marriages, and was still raw and sensitive from them having ended.
Very exciting action - some terrifying stuff like Andre meeting General Moses (Smith always had some sympathy for gay characters in his novels but they generally died horribly).
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