Star of Africa

Chapter 57

In war, as in life, nothing is guaranteed. Few combat strategies, however carefully planned, ever survive first contact with the enemy. Military tacticians had been saying it for centuries, and Ben was acutely aware of it at this moment as he, Jeff and Tuesday made their way back towards the village.

His scheme wasn’t perfect, by any means. It was a desperate, last-resort, seat-of-the-pants kind of deal that he didn’t want to over-analyse for fear that all the potential holes in it might put him off. But it was all they had. Another chance like this might never come. There was only one thing he knew for sure: if he did nothing, if he didn’t grasp this one tiny fragile opportunity and give it all he had, sooner or later Jude and all the rest of them would be dead men.

Ben, Jeff and Tuesday walked into the village square to find Khosa sitting on an upturned bucket as though it were a golden throne, still luxuriating in the cigar he’d promised himself, and surrounded by twenty of his men. Jude was kneeling on the ground at the General’s side, looking ashen and sick to the stomach. A few yards away, Gerber and Hercules had been made to kneel with guns to their heads. All around them lay the pitiful body parts and hacked corpses of the villagers, red slowly turning to russet brown.

‘You have returned victorious, soldier,’ Khosa said with a smile. ‘I knew it would be so. Though it took you longer than I thought. I was beginning to wonder what tricks you were playing, hmm?’

Ben dropped the soggy, heavy sackcloth bag on the ground between Khosa’s feet. ‘There’s what you asked for. We passed your stinking test. Now let us go.’

Khosa flicked ash from his Cohiba, then reached casually inside the bag. He rummaged around as though it were a lucky dip, then came up with a bloody fistful of the dog tags. Counted one, two, three, four, five, six. He nodded. Tossed them away.

Next he reached back inside the bag and pulled the head out by a handful of its owner’s short, wiry, Afro-textured hair. He raised it up in front of him at arm’s length, like holding a lantern to light the way. Blood dripped from the ragged stump of the severed neck, not yet congealed and pattering into a small pool between his feet. He peered closely into the ruined features of the disembodied face, then rotated the head a few degrees clockwise to examine the earring hooked through the left earlobe, with its beads and coiled wire pendant. He nodded once more. Then, much to his soldiers’ amusement, he plucked the half-smoked cigar from his mouth and stuck it between what was left of the head’s open lips.

‘This cockroach Sizwe looks much better now,’ he proclaimed to the laughing soldiers, raising the head higher to display it to them. ‘Do you not think?’

Khosa plucked out the cigar and replaced it in his own mouth, puffing clouds of smoke. He dropped the head back into the bag and kicked it away like a football. It rolled a few yards and came to a rest in the dirt.

‘You have indeed passed the test, soldier,’ Khosa said to Ben. ‘But I cannot let you go. That was not the agreement.’

Ben was counting down the seconds in his mind. He’d told Sizwe to hang back for four minutes. That left one minute and forty-five seconds to go before Sizwe and his companions kicked off the diversion. Ben could feel the weight of the Browning Hi-Power in his pocket. He was mentally running through the motions, visualising every detail. Khosa would be the first to die. To shoot him now would be suicide for Ben himself, and certain death for the others. But to shoot him when all hell started breaking loose: at least then there was a good chance that all six of them would survive it.

Khosa frowned, gazing left and right. He blinked as if he’d suddenly remembered something, and raised a hand. ‘Wait. Someone is missing. Where are the guards I sent with you?’

‘The lion got one of them,’ Ben said. ‘Isn’t that right, Jeff?’

‘Happened right in front of me,’ Jeff said. ‘Most horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life.’

Khosa blinked again. ‘The lion took one of my men?’

Ben shrugged, as if such things were a daily occurrence for British army soldiers. ‘What did you think would happen, sending men in there with a man-eater? You want to send a team to find the remains, that’s up to you. Personally, I’d let it go. That’s not a happy cat in there.’

‘One man,’ Khosa said. ‘Where are the others?’

One minute, twenty-eight seconds to go.

Ben shook his head. ‘Sorry to be the one to tell you, General, but your men have deserted you. I heard them talking. It’s a coup. They’re probably still out there right at this moment, conspiring how to kill you.’

It might have been a flimsy psychological thread to hang a whole strategy on, but it was every bit as effective as Ben could have wished. Khosa leapt to his feet, propelled into an all-consuming hurricane of outrage, a raptus of seething, foaming psychotic fury. He jumped up and down. He ripped the cigar from his lips and dashed it to sparking pieces in the dirt with the heel of his boot as though it had personally offended him. He tore his Colt Anaconda out of his holster, cocked its hammer and waved it like a man possessed at his terrified soldiers.

He screamed so loudly that his voice was distorted. ‘YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU, AND YOU FOUR. GO AND FIND ME THESE DESERTERS AND BRING THEM BACK TO ME ALIVE! GO! RUN! GO!’

Eight of the soldiers jumped to it, clutching their rifles, probably glad to have been ordered off the scene of what could be an imminent massacre.

Ben kept counting. Sixty seconds to go.

‘WHO ELSE WANTS TO BETRAY ME?’ Khosa bellowed, waving his revolver at the rest of the soldiers. ‘YOU?’

Not me, General.

‘YOU?’

Never, General. We swear.

Forty seconds. Ben watched and listened to the raging fury that was the General storming up and down and pointing accusing fingers at his men. His enraged bellowing diminished in volume as his rage passed its apoplectic peak and began to hit the downslope. He was now merely screaming very, very loudly. ‘Am I not a fair and generous leader? Do you not enjoy many privileges thanks to my kindness?’

Of course, General.

Twenty seconds.

‘You! Do you want to lead this army in my place? What about you?’

We follow only you, General.

Amid all the noise, Ben counted down the last remaining seconds. So far, the plan seemed to be going all right. But Sizwe was taking his precious time. The four minutes were up.

Then they were more than up.

Nothing was happening, except that Khosa was beginning to calm down. Which was more frightening than the peak of his rage. There was no telling what he would do next. And there was a limit to how long Ben could keep this lunatic distracted with mind games.

Come on, Sizwe, Ben thought. Where the hell are you?

Nothing happened.

Not until twenty seconds later, when Ben knew that his plan had started to go badly wrong. From one instant to the next, it was suddenly unravelling worse than he could have possibly anticipated.

Half a dozen of the soldiers Khosa had sent out to hunt for the deserters were marching back into the heart of the village. They weren’t alone.

Walking in front of them, heads bowed in defeat and arms raised in submission, were Uwase, Ntwali, Gasimba, Mugabo and Rusanganwa.