The Devil’s Kingdom

Chapter 20

Nearest to Ben was the old gardener, lying twisted on the ground a few feet away. He was on his belly but his eyes were staring up at the sky. It took Ben a couple of seconds to realise that was because the old man’s head was almost completely separated from his body, attached only by a few gruesome strings of tissue where his neck had been chopped.

Closer to the rickety wooden steps that led up to the orphanage’s veranda, a group of soldiers was herding terrified nuns out of the building at gunpoint. A large crowd of children had already been corralled into a tight group on the lawn. They were all boys, the youngest ones maybe eight, the oldest approaching their teens, all watching in stunned silence and with a mixture of fear and blank curiosity as the dozen or so nuns were marched roughly down the steps. One tripped and fell. Two soldiers began kicking her in the head and body and she put up her hands to protect her face. They dragged her to her feet and shoved her together with the others. She tried to struggle, so they knocked her back down to the ground and went on kicking her.

Last to be brought out was a reedy white man. He must have been eighty or more, dressed like a priest. The missionary, Ben guessed. When he saw what the soldiers were doing to the fallen nun, the priest gave a yell of rage and shook free of the two soldiers clutching his arms to go running to her aid. He hadn’t made it four steps before they unslung their rifles and shot him in the back. He collapsed on his face, arms outflung. Some of the nuns were screaming, others bowed their heads and prayed. Many of the children were crying and howling. Nobody tried to go to him.

Ben was still seeing double from the blow to the head, and his face felt numb and hot where Xulu had kicked him. He felt his jaw to check it wasn’t broken, and ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth to feel for loose teeth. He couldn’t feel any, but he could taste blood. He spat red. Then three soldiers walked up to him, one put his weapon to Ben’s head and the other two yanked him to his feet.

Captain Xulu grinned and pointed and said, ‘I want him to watch.’

Ben wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t close his ears. It was ninety men against one. He’d done all he could to stop them. Now he was powerless to do anything but stand there as the horror unfolded in front of him.

The children were made to watch, too.

First the soldiers held the nuns at gunpoint until the whole building had been swept from top to bottom for anyone hiding. Then Xulu ordered for the nuns to be stripped. The soldiers set enthusiastically about their task, beating and stamping and punching the twelve women into coercion.

While they worked, Xulu turned to the children and began lecturing them about the ills of religious indoctrination. ‘We are here to liberate you in the name of General Jean-Pierre Khosa of the Congo Freedom Army!’ he yelled. ‘You are the lucky ones! You have a new father now, in our saviour General Khosa. Millions of boys would envy you, for you have been chosen to fight for our leader and share in the great victories to come. He will protect you and give you great powers, and in return you will protect him from his enemies. This is how you will repay his kindness to you.’

Xulu waved an arm behind him at the dead priest and the nuns, now being dumped naked on the ground like sacks of flour. ‘Forget these wicked people,’ he commanded the children. ‘All they have done is fill your heads with ignorance and lies. For this, we have been sent to punish them. They are no longer your family. The army is your family now. It will teach you many important lessons. Do you understand? Say “Yes, Captain Xulu!”’

A rippling mutter of ‘Yes, Captain Xulu,’ came from the crowd of children. Some were still crying.

Xulu folded his arms and tossed his head proudly. ‘The army is good, but you will learn that you can die at any moment. How many of you have seen a person die? Show your hands!’

A few shaky hands went up. Ben wasn’t surprised. Many of these kids had probably witnessed their entire families being gunned or hacked to death, right in front of them.

‘How many of you have killed a person?’ Xulu was improvising on the same script he’d used back at the training ground, the previous day. Except this time, there was nothing Ben could do to prevent it from playing out. This time, Xulu would have his way.

‘How many? Put up your hands! Do not be afraid!’

There was no show of hands. Xulu scanned the crowd, nodded with satisfaction and said, ‘Then, children, today is the beginning of your re-education!’

Xulu held out an open hand. His best gofer, Lieutenant Umutese, immediately ran up to him clutching a shiny black automatic weapon. Ben’s fuzzy vision had focused enough by now for him to recognise it as one of the Chinese QBZ assault rifles that he had personally unpacked from their crates just the previous morning. It seemed like weeks ago.

Xulu snatched the gun from Umutese without looking at him. He held it up in the air for all the children to get a good look at. ‘This will be your weapon! It is very expensive and very precious. You will learn to treat it with love and learn to use it well. This gun can do many things. First, let me show you how it can be used in close combat, face to face with your enemy. Lieutenant!’

Umutese didn’t need to be told what to do. Ben was beginning to realise that the whole sickening routine had been planned out from the start. Umutese barked an order at the soldiers standing over the naked bodies of the nuns. They instantly grabbed three of the women, hauled them to their feet and shoved them up against the railing of the veranda. The women made no attempt to struggle. All three stood quietly, eyes to the ground, muttering prayers under their breath.

Ben’s heart went out to them for their courage and dignity. He was so sorry for what he knew was about to happen.

Xulu walked up to within less than ten yards of the women and flipped the fire selector on his weapon to fully automatic. At that range, he didn’t need to aim. He fired from the hip, in a raking left-to-right arc that blasted splinters from the railing and cut the women down in a crumpled heap. They died without a sound.

At least it was over for them. Some of the children covered their eyes, some just went on quietly crying, others just stared in shocked amazement.

‘You see how easy it is,’ Xulu told them. ‘And how lucky you are to belong to such a well-equipped army. Now, next I will show you how this rifle can also be used for precision marksmanship at long range.’

On cue, Umutese had the men drag another of the poor nuns to her feet and frogmarched forty yards along the side of the building, to where a gnarly, spreading tree stood alone in the grounds. The soldiers slammed her against the trunk and backed hurriedly away, pointing at her to stay still. The woman looked unsteady on her feet, but didn’t move or try to run.

Ben closed his eyes and said his own prayer that Xulu would do this quickly and properly.

Xulu strutted to where he had a clear line of fire. He took his time bracing his feet, then brought the butt of the gun into the crook of his shoulder and lowered his eye to the sights and took aim at the target. The woman still didn’t move. The muzzle of the rifle wavered in a sloppy circle and then spat white flame as Xulu pressed the trigger. The woman’s right hip burst apart in a spray of blood. She screamed and fell.

‘There is something wrong with this gun,’ Xulu said angrily. ‘It does not shoot straight. Bring me another one!’

The victim was shoved back into position against the tree while Umutese quickly fetched a replacement weapon for his captain. This time, Xulu stepped forward another fifteen yards to shorten the range before he fired again. Ben was thankful that the second bullet hit the woman square in the chest and killed her instantly. Her body slumped to the foot of the tree.

‘Sometimes you will not have a gun,’ Xulu lectured the children. ‘This is when you must use a blade.’ He drew out his own machete from its sheath and held it up for them to see. ‘This was not made for cutting crops! It is a fine weapon. Look what we did to that old man. I will give you another demonstration of what you can do with it.’

One of the remaining eight nuns was dragged across the grass for the demonstration. She was a young black woman, perhaps twenty-five. Her eyes remained firmly closed but her lips never stopped moving until her last breath. Xulu grasped a fistful of her tight, short hair, raised the blade and brought it down with a thwack. It took several clumsy blows before he finally severed her head from her shoulders, and her body slumped at his feet, her arms and legs twitching.

Xulu held the head up in his bloody hand. ‘Here is another important lesson you must learn,’ he shouted at the children. ‘It is that you must also learn discipline. You will take beatings, as this is the only way you can become strong soldiers. Lieutenant, bring me the whip.’ As Umutese scurried off to obey the command, Xulu lobbed the head into the crowd of children as if it were a football.

‘Whoever brings me this head will not be whipped! Everyone else will be beaten!’

There was a brief scrum, after which a stocky ten-year-old in red shorts and a frayed blue T-shirt stepped forward with the head in his hands. Xulu by now had the whip in his, a flexible sjambok made of rhino leather, an instrument that in the colonial Congo had been called a chicote. Ben had heard of men being flogged to death with such things.

The whipping of the rest of the children took a long time. Xulu waded in among them, thrashing left and right with cruel ferocity until he was glowing with sweat and many of the boys were bleeding and howling in pain. The soldiers leaned on their rifles and seemed highly entertained by the spectacle.

Ben didn’t want to see any more, but there was still more to come. Once Xulu had sated himself with the children, he ordered for the seven remaining nuns to be put to death. The soldiers used their bayonets. The bodies were left where they lay in the bloody, trampled grass.

‘Now we will load these recruits on the trucks and return to base,’ Xulu ordered with a wave. ‘General Khosa will be pleased with what we have brought him.’

‘What about the building?’ Umutese wanted to know. ‘Should we loot it? There may be some valuables.’

‘We do not need their junk,’ Xulu said. ‘Burn it.’

Of the four men Ben had injured, one was walking wounded and the other three had to be carried out. Xulu shook his head at the casualties and then turned to Ben with a twisted smile, showing the new gap in his teeth. ‘As for you, soldier, you will soon answer for your actions. If simple punishment is not enough to teach you good behaviour, the General will know what to do with you.’

‘Keep on smiling,’ Ben said to him. ‘For as long as you can. Make the most of it, Xulu, because I guarantee you won’t be smiling for very long. That’s a promise.’

‘A promise from a dead man,’ Xulu laughed, and the soldiers laughed with him.

The children were marched to the two empty trucks at the rear of the convoy and crammed aboard the cargo flatbeds, fifty or more to a truck, with guards to watch over them. The rest of the troops took their places in the three lead trucks, Ben among them, with never fewer than half a dozen guns pointing at him. Doors slammed, engines grumbled into life and the convoy set off for its three-hour journey home.

The last thing Ben saw of the once-peaceful haven of the Orphelinat Saint-Bakanja was the leaping flames and column of black smoke rising into the sky above the trees.