The Devil’s Kingdom

Chapter 22

At a sharp command from Umutese, the soldiers brought in a young girl of about fourteen, so frightened that she seemed to shrivel at the sight of Xulu and so many men all staring at her. She was the first female of any age that Ben had seen in the city. Perhaps a captive from one of the villages Khosa had raided, kept here as a servant, or worse.

The soldiers shoved her into the middle of the courtyard and stepped quickly back. Xulu unholstered his pistol and thrust it into Mani’s hands. As the boy stood there uncertainly holding the weapon, Xulu bent down and bellowed close to his ear, pointing at the girl.

‘This cockroach bitch is your enemy! Why? Because I say she is. And what will you do? Spill her miserable blood! Obey your commander! You are a soldier now. Spill her blood for General Khosa!’

Mani had no real idea of what he was doing. His big round eyes were swimming and out of focus. As if in a trance, he raised the weapon in his small fist. Xulu steadied the gun barrel for him.

‘We can’t let this happen,’ Tuesday said in a desperate voice.

Ben said nothing. He could taste blood in his mouth again, because his teeth were clenched so hard. Just keep thinking of Jude. Don’t do anything stupid. You couldn’t save her, anyway. Gerber was standing with his head bowed and his trembling fists balled at his sides. ‘No, no, no,’ Jeff muttered, shaking his head.

With Xulu doing the aiming for him, Mani’s small finger squeezed the trigger and he shot the girl. She fell in a heap.

Jeff covered his face. ‘Oh, Christ.’ Tuesday looked ashen. Gerber had his eyes grimly shut.

Ben felt so ashamed of himself.

Xulu took the gun from Mani, who was standing staring with glazed eyes at the body on the ground as if trying to make sense of what had just happened. Next Xulu had all the boys line up near the body, and daubed each of their foreheads in turn with the dead girl’s blood, making a sign on their brow that looked like an inverted cross.

‘Now you are protected,’ he declared with a triumphant grin. ‘The power of your Lord Khosa is in your bodies. When your enemies see that they cannot kill you, they will drop their weapons and run!’

Lord Khosa.

‘Do you believe me? Say it! Yes, Captain Xulu!’

The boys chorused, ‘YES, CAPTAIN XULU!’

‘It is true,’ Xulu assured them. ‘I will show you. Lieutenant!’ The ever-ready Umutese now brought his captain the snubby revolver from the table. Xulu aimed it into the crowd of children and let off six loud shots.

At which point Ben almost did something stupid, before he understood what was happening. Some of the boys flinched at the gunfire, the rest just stood there in a state of apparent detachment. But none of them appeared to have been hurt. The trickery was obvious, at least to those who could see through it.

Xulu ejected the empty cases from the revolver, reloaded six more loose rounds and fired them off, straight into the faces of the entranced children. Still no blood, no screaming, nobody falling over or clutching at their ripped flesh.

Xulu tossed the smoking revolver back to Umutese. ‘You see?’ he said with a laugh to the children, spreading his arms wide like a prophet. ‘The bullets cannot harm you! You are invincible! Your Lord Khosa has protected you!’

Ben looked at the spent shells of the harmless blank cartridges rolling on the ground. Then stared at the crumpled body of the girl, her blood leaking in a trail over the uneven concrete. Was it possible to reach a point where you were completely unmoved by the sight of an innocent’s death? He knew with a certainty beyond anything that if he stayed in this place much longer, he would either go mad or die.

At that moment, none other than Lord Khosa himself made his sweeping entrance. The soldiers near the doorway stepped back in deference as he strode into the courtyard. A cry went up, as though the miracle the troops had just witnessed — evidently not in on the scam, Ben thought — had reinforced their belief in their commander’s divine powers. ‘KHOSA! KHOSA! KHOSA!’

The General was puffing on a fresh cigar and looked very pleased with himself. He didn’t so much as glance at the girl’s corpse as he walked past. Scanning the battered faces and torn, bloodied clothing of the fifty drugged children, he seemed delighted by what he saw. With a gracious wave of his hand he silenced the chants of the soldiers.

‘Captain Xulu,’ he boomed. ‘May I congratulate you on an outstanding mission. You are now promoted to major, and Lieutenant Umutese will fill the rank of captain in your place. I trust that everything is going well with the training?’

‘Very well, Excellency,’ Xulu replied, actually squirming with smugness for a moment before his expression darkened. ‘But there is something—’

Not to be outdone by a subordinate, not even a freshly promoted major, Colonel Dizolele stepped up to his leader and interrupted, pointing at Ben. ‘General, there has been another problem with this man.’

The beaming smile left Khosa’s face. ‘What is it this time?’

Dizolele said, ‘Major Xulu reports that he attempted to prevent the recruitment mission.’

Khosa turned slowly to set his implacable gaze on the offender. Xulu and Dizolele followed his eye to scowl in unison at Ben as they stood shoulder to shoulder with their general.

All close together. All lined up in a row.

Perfect positioning.

But what happened next took Ben as much by surprise as anyone.

Nobody had been paying much attention to Lou Gerber. He seemed to have shrunk into the background and was staring into space with the empty eyes of a zombie, as though the scenes they’d all just witnessed had tipped him quietly back into the semi-catatonic state that he’d only just recovered from.

But now Gerber exploded with the unbearable weight of pressure that had been building inside him all this time. His body went taut. A strange light filled his eyes and he bared his teeth. Then, with a roar of uncontained fury, all of his decades-old Marine Corps training flooding back in a single rushing crazy impulse, he drove an elbow backwards into the stomach of the soldier standing next to him, then smashed a chopping downward blow into the nape of the man’s neck as he doubled up.

Not even Ben could have moved fast enough to stop him. Gerber ripped the QBZ assault weapon from the soldier’s grasp. He raised the rifle and pointed it straight at Khosa and squeezed the trigger.

But not before multiple bullet strikes caught him from several angles at once. Ben saw Gerber’s jacket flutter as the soldiers’ gunfire punched into his chest and ribs. At the same instant as Gerber let off a burst of rounds from the QBZ, his weapon jerked with the impact, skewing his aim. Then the old Marine was tumbling backwards with his face contorted in pain. The soldiers went on pumping rounds into him as he hit the concrete.

Gerber’s aim had been skewed, but only by a matter of inches. To Khosa’s right, Xulu collapsed to the ground with a strangled shriek that came out as a gurgle as blood sprayed from his ripped throat. To Khosa’s left, Dizolele tottered and fell, clutching his shattered thigh. Khosa stood perfectly still, apparently quite calm and still puffing on his cigar. If he’d been so much as grazed by a single bullet, the General didn’t appear to have noticed.

Amid the chaos, the panic-stricken soldiers rushed towards Gerber, emptying their magazines and hammering dozens of rounds into his fallen body. Gerber was already dead, but he hadn’t gone down alone. Xulu thrashed on the ground for a second or two, clawing at his throat, then went limp. Dizolele was screaming in agony as he tried to stem the bleeding from his leg. A piece of red meat the size of a steak was hanging out of his torn trousers.

Khosa’s unruffled gaze swivelled back towards Ben. His wide-set eyes seemed to bore deep inside Ben’s mind, as if to say, This is your doing, soldier.

There was blood everywhere. The crowd of children had scattered all over the courtyard. The boy called Mani was standing very still, his face a blank of total sensory overload. Soldiers rushed back and forth. Umutese ran to Khosa, daring to check him all over for bullet wounds, then issuing orders to the men to hurry their leader away to safety. A team of four gathered up the writhing, agonised Colonel Dizolele and carried him away, leaving a blood trail over the concrete. Ben, Jeff, and Tuesday were encircled by two dozen rifles.

With Dizolele gone, a hushed silence fell over the courtyard. Ben and the others were too stunned to speak. Unsure what to do with them, the soldiers jabbed and prodded them inside the building to a kitchen, and shut them inside an empty steel walk-in meat locker that, thankfully, was not switched on.

Nothing more would happen for several hours.

Not until after nightfall, when the retribution began.