Star of Africa

Chapter 56

Captain Terminator was becoming agitated. After the initial burst of gunfire that rocked the thicket had quickly dwindled into silence with nothing since, his expectations of a good, bloody human cockfight had shrivelled up into disappointment, boredom, and now into restless indecision as he paced up and down beyond the thicket’s edge, trying to peer here and there through the impenetrable screen of leaves and thorns. He was wondering whether he should venture in there himself to make sure everything was okay, or whether it would be better to skirt around the edge of the thicket to find the others, for strength in numbers, in which case they’d be leaving most of the thicket’s perimeter unguarded and an easy escape route for the prisoners, which could be a mistake; or again whether he should run back to his general and fetch more men.

The latter idea wouldn’t be a wise decision either. He had already been informed of the consequences of failure to perform his allotted task. While by contrast, courage and leadership initiative would surely be rewarded.

So on balance, Captain Terminator felt that his best option was to venture in there alone, like the brave warrior he indisputably was, see for himself what was what and kick the necessary ass to get it all sorted out. The General would be proud of him; might even offer him a cigar. What a feather in his cap that would be, to stand shoulder to shoulder with his commander and light up a Havana in front of all his jealous comrades! Better still, the General might let him have first cut at that squirming little cockroach of a kid, later, when they finished the job they’d started.

With a smile at the promise of these future rewards, Captain Terminator racked the bolt of his AK, drew his machete and went striding into the crackling undergrowth, hacking and chopping his way through.

He was twenty yards into the thicket when a soft rustle among the bushes up ahead froze him mid-step and turned his blood suddenly cold.

The lion. He’d forgotten all about the damn lion. It was in there. Stalking him. Getting ready to charge him. He could almost feel its hungry eyes on him, measuring him up from head to toe.

He levelled his rifle and swallowed hard. Backed away a step, then another, then turned in panic and started rushing and crashing back the way he’d come.

But he hadn’t taken three steps before a force as solid and hard as a brick wall hit him with a savage violence that exploded like white lightning inside his head and slammed him to the ground, driving the air from his lungs. He tried to scream, convinced as he was that the lion’s teeth were about to close in on him and rip his throat out.

But it wasn’t the lion. The lion would have been better.

Ben stood over the nose picker and kicked him once more in the left temple, not hard enough to kill him, just enough to render him all the way unconscious.

‘So much for Captain Percolator,’ Jeff said with a fierce grin. ‘Not so cocky now, are we?’

‘What are we going to do with the bastard?’ Tuesday asked, gathering around the prone soldier with the six Africans and looking down.

‘Sizwe, please give me your earring,’ Ben said, holding out his hand for it. Sizwe hesitated, then unhooked the ornamental pendant from his left earlobe and passed it over without question. Ben took it from him and laid it out flat on his palm to examine. The business end of the earring was an S-shaped wire fishhook with a blunt point, much like any of the earrings Ben had had cause to see up close in his time, during those few periods in his life when he’d been sufficiently domesticated to cohabit with someone more inclined to wear the things than he was.

An equally quick examination of the left earlobe of the unconscious nose picker, a.k.a. Captain Terminator, unsurprisingly revealed no kind of pre-pierced hole through which to insert the wire hook. But Ben was good with that. Crouching in the dirt beside the prone body, Ben stretched the guy’s earlobe as far as it would go, like a flange of dark rubber, and stabbed the hook through the flesh. There was a little blood, but that wouldn’t be a problem, under the circumstances.

Jeff was staring at him. ‘Ben, what the fuck?’

It was a detail of the plan that had only just come to Ben. He was making it up as he went along. ‘Trust me,’ he said.

‘Okay, then what next?’

‘The Hi-Power,’ Ben said, and held out his hand.

Hi-Power was the name given in the trade to the Browning nine-millimetre GP35 pistol, or Grande Puissance model of 1935, made by Fabrique Nationale in Herstal, Belgium, that had long been a staple weapon of armies worldwide. Jeff handed the nine over to Ben.

‘Now, everyone, please stand back a little,’ Ben said. ‘This could get a little messy.’

And he pointed the pistol muzzle right up close to Captain Terminator’s face, averted his own to avoid the worst of the spatter, and pulled the trigger. Just as Khosa had done to his own soldier earlier that day, except with slightly less spectacular results. Only slightly. The remains of the man’s face wouldn’t have been instantly recognisable to his own mother.

‘Christ, Ben,’ Tuesday breathed when the ringing in their ears had subsided.

‘Whatever works,’ Ben said grimly.

‘This is the man who wanted to kill Gatete,’ Sizwe said through bared teeth. ‘You should have let me shoot him.’

Ben applied the pistol’s safety catch and stuffed it into the baggy side pocket of his combat jacket. ‘I’m not leaving you out, Sizwe. If you’re up to it, that is.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Six sets of tags and a head in a bag,’ Ben said. ‘That’s what the man asked for. That’s what we’ll give him. Do you want to do the honours, or shall I?’

Sizwe was only too happy to perform the service, clutching his machete with a look of animal ferocity while Ben stepped away to give him room. Sizwe was a very strong man. It took only two strokes of the blade to sever Captain Terminator’s head from his shoulders.

After what they’d all witnessed that day, the horror of the moment barely even seemed to register.

Ben held the bag out, and Sizwe dropped the head into it.

‘Tags,’ Ben said. The six Africans unlooped the strings of military dog tags from around their necks and dropped them into the bag, now heavy and dripping in Ben’s hands. Ben knelt back down beside the headless body, set the bag down for a moment and unclipped the bunch of grenades from the dead man’s belt. Five of them would do fine for what he had in mind. He stuffed them in his jacket pockets with the pistol.

‘Now what?’ Tuesday said, staring aghast at the bag.

‘So far, so good,’ Ben said. ‘Now we move to the next phase.’

As it turned out, none of the remaining sentries scattered around the edge of the thicket had shown the same initiative as their comrade Captain Terminator. Not that it did them any good.

Ben and the others found each of the five in turn either lounging smoking or half-asleep against a tree trunk with his rifle between his knees, or standing in a daze with his back to the thicket and a mouthful of khat cud. The sounds of gunshots evidently hadn’t bothered them. All part of the game.

But now they were sitting ducks. One after the other.

Ben and Jeff killed two each. Sizwe killed the last. It was quick, it was quiet, and it was bloody. No mercy deserved and none given. They dragged the bodies into the heart of the thicket, laid them out in a row and collected their weapons into a pile.

‘We’ve been out here long enough,’ Ben said. ‘Khosa will be wondering what’s going on. It’s time for us three to return to the village, before he sends more soldiers out here.’

This was the part of the plan that Sizwe and his friends still weren’t convinced about. ‘If you tell him you have won, he will kill our families.’

‘No more innocent blood,’ Ben said. ‘Not today.’ He dug the grenades out of his pocket and handed one each to the village men. ‘You remember what I said about how these things work? Pull the pin and throw, and keep your head down. And for the love of God, don’t fumble and drop them at your feet.’

‘We remember.’

‘What about those?’ Ben asked, pointing at the Kalashnikovs on the ground.

Sizwe nodded. ‘Even a child can shoot a gun.’ It went beyond a figure of speech. Sizwe was more than old enough to have seen at least some of the mass genocide that had rocked Rwanda only a few years earlier, in the wanton bloodbath of the so-called civil war. He had probably seen plenty of child soldiers just as proficient with automatic weapons as adults.

Ben pointed at his Omega, now on Sizwe’s wrist. ‘Give us four minutes. Count them exactly on the second hand. During that time, the six of you split up into pairs, with the rifles and the grenades. Work your way around the edges of the village. When the four minutes are up, Sizwe throws the first grenade. That’s the signal. When you others hear the explosion, you let loose as fast as you can, one after another.’

‘We will destroy our huts,’ Uwase protested. ‘The village will burn.’

‘A few outer huts you can rebuild,’ Ben said. ‘And it’s the rainy season. The thatch is still damp. It won’t burn easily. Now, once that last grenade has gone off, I want you to start firing your guns. Point them up in the air, and keep firing until they’re empty.’

‘I do not see what good is firing in the air,’ Rusanganwa said with a doubtful frown.

‘I’m not asking you to get into a fight with these people,’ Ben reminded him. ‘And we can’t afford for a stray bullet to go anywhere near the hut where your families are, or near any of our people. I just want you to make as much noise as you can. Make it sound as if the village is under attack by many fighters. Do you understand?’

Sizwe nodded. ‘We can do all of this.’

‘Then, when your guns are empty, I want you to stay hidden. All hell will break loose in there. Most of Khosa’s troops will panic and run. Only a few will stay near their general. We’ll take care of those.’

‘And Khosa?’

‘You leave him to me,’ Ben said.

‘You are going to kill him?’

Ben nodded. ‘Most definitely. And then I’ll get started on him.’