Garrett said nothing. The pack drew closer. Crowding in. Their breath steaming in the air. Their odor rancid with sweat and sour wine and marijuana.
‘You must be lost or what would you be doing in our street?’
Garrett moved to his right, putting his back against the wall. Only three sides to protect. He scanned the pack. No problem. Street fighters, head-butters and kickers. Not a pro amongst them.
‘Go away,’ he said, his voice low. Resigned. ‘Go now before there’s trouble.’
The pack leader giggled. High pitched. Nasal. At the same time Garrett heard the footsteps. Hurried and staccato. High heels. Voices. Breathless. Nervous. Two girls talking. American accents. Tourists. Lost in the dark side of the city. Not yet afraid but definitely anxious.
‘Oh-ho,’ said pack leader. ‘This just got interesting.’ He flicked his head. ‘Angus, Rab. Go get the lassies.’
Two of the hyenas split from the pack. They ran to the girls and dragged them, squealing and kicking, to the leader.
‘Don’t do this,’ warned Garrett. ‘Let the girls go.’ In side him he felt the Beast batter at it’s bars. Grunting as it tried to force it’s way free.
The leader pulled a knife from his jacket. He flicked it open with one hand. The blade gleamed in the moonlight. Four inches of serrated stainless steel pain. He held the blade high and pointed it at Garrett. ‘Time to learn some respect, boy.’
In the past ten years Garrett had fought in over seventeen different conflicts in both Africa and Europe. He had been shot four times. He had been cut over twenty times. He had killed more people than the last outbreak of bird flu. And he was still alive. The main reason that some combatants live while so many around them do not is ultimately down to one major factor. That factor is, reaction time. The slow die. Those who have no quantifiable time between thought and deed, live.
The Beast’s reaction was instantaneous. He grabbed the leaders wrist with his left hand. Then he swiveled and brought his right fist up in a savage uppercut, connecting the hyena’s elbow, shattering the joint and bending the arm back at an impossible right angle. He moved fluidly on to the next night crawler, grabbing him by his ears and dragging him into a vicious head butt. The man’s nose disintegrated with a sound like a heel on gravel. The soldier stepped over the now prostrate head butt victim and grasped the third assailant by the belt and collar. Garrett lifted him with ease. He held the man above his head for a moment and then used him as a bludgeon to strike down the forth pack member. Angus and Rab, who had been holding the girls, disappeared into the night. Running from the nightmare that they had conjured up.
The two American girls stood together, quivering. Holding hands. And before Garrett could stop him, The Beast howled.
The girls turned and ran.
Garrett glanced at the four broken bodies around him. Three were unconscious. He didn’t think that they were dead. The leader was curled into the fetal position, his shattered arm cradled to his chest. Garrett lent down, grabbed the knife from next to him and flicked it into the storm drain. Then he stood up and walked away.
As he turned the corner his cell phone rang, the strains of Henrik Wienlawskis violin concerto singing into the frigid night air. He looked at the screen but didn’t recognize the number.
‘Talk to me.’
‘It’s Petrus.’
‘My friend,’ answered Garrett, his voice full of genuine pleasure. ‘What gives?’
‘I’ve got a problem.’ Petrus explained the situation to Garrett. He told him of the kidnapping, the frustration, the family’s fear. And finally of the ransom demand.
‘No problem,’ responded Garrett. ‘Give them whatever’s left of the arms cache. Problem over.’
For a while white noise took over the conversation, vague echoes and static and a hint of breathing.
‘There is no arms cache,’ said Petrus. ‘There never was.’ And he told Garrett why. ‘It was back in nineteen eighty-four, our Self Protection Units had been formed and trained in an attempt to counter the threat of ANC violence. As you know, us Zulus in the IFP never seemed to be able to raise the vast amount of funds that the ANC could and we desperately needed weapons. We needed the ANC self defense units to know that we had access to a large quantity of arms, a sort of mutually assured destruction policy. So, in conjunction with some friends from the States, we imported forty tons of building sand packaged into 125kg weapons boxes. We kept the truth of the deal a tight secret known to less than six people but allowed the knowledge of the alleged forty tones of arms to leak. It worked perfectly, even our own top officers and politicians believed that we had managed to bring in a huge cache of small arms. We used it as leverage during the peace talks, threatened to unleash our Impis and the weapons unless at least some of our demands were met.’
‘Okay,’ said Garrett. ‘I’ll leave tomorrow night, I need to get out of this place for a while, anyway, there have been…complications. I’ll get to Joburg the next morning. Text me your address, I’ll hire a car and come straight to you.’
‘I’ll hire a car,’ said Petrus. ‘Pick you up at the airport.’
‘No, my friend. No worries, I’ll pick up transport at the airport. And one more thing, Petrus, whatever you do don’t tell anyone that the cache doesn’t exist. It’s the only thing keeping Freedom alive. When they contact Sipho again he must tell them that the arms cache has been split up into multiple small packages spread over the whole country for security reasons. Tell them that you need at least two weeks to get them all together.’
‘They’ll never agree to that.’
‘They have to. We need time. Convince them, Petrus. For Freedom’s sake, convince them.’
Garrett cut the call. He cursed himself under his breath once again. Once again he had lost control. The fact that he was protecting himself, protecting other innocents was no excuse. But that was his way, and he found solace in his belief that the only true evil is committed by the man who will not take sides. The man without the courage to decide right from wrong. The man who mire himself in the morass of compromise. Giving and taking until there was nothing left.
Garrett had long before taken sides.
He would fight against iniquity in all of its guises and, right or wrong, he would stay the course.
Chapter 4
Rough hands dragged Freedom to a chair and sat him down. He had been blindfolded, hands strapped behind his back with zip ties and gagged with a short length of duct tape. They had driven for a long time. It was hard for him to guess at how long. Four or five hours at least. The last hour or so over coarse dirt roads.
A brief flash of pain as they tore the duct tape off. Another flood of agony when they cut the zip ties, allowing blood to pump back into his dead hands.
Then they removed the blindfold.
He was sitting in a small, stark room. White walls, badly plastered, a boarded up window. Steel frame single bed, gray wool blanket, no pillow. A small rug on the polished red-painted floor. Wooden chair. In the corner, a steel bucket and a roll of toilet paper.
In front of Freedom stood a man. Tall. Close cropped black hair. A long but well maintained beard and moustache. Khaki shirt and trousers. Military boots. His eyes were deep set, hidden in shadow. A human Rorschach test. A purple scar traveled down the right side of his face, pulling his right eye and the right corner of his lips together. A constant sardonic grin. There was no one else in the room.
‘Greetings, Freedom. My name is Pete Vermulen. You may call me mister Vermulen or Sir.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘That’s not very polite, boy. Please, do not mistake my civility for weakness. Would you like some water?’
‘Would you like to go and fuck yourself?’
Pete took a step forward and struck Freedom with a casual backhand. The blow lifted the young man out of his chair and smashed him against the wall. Then the big man picked Freedom up and deposited him back on the chair. ‘Next time I will use a closed fist. Do you und
erstand?’
Freedom nodded.
‘Good. You will stay in this room, you will obey all instructions. Follow these simple rules and you will not be punished. I will send someone with food and water.’
Pete left the room, locking the door as he did. He strode down a corridor, through another door and into another small, simply furnished room. This one had a desk, four basic wooden chairs in front of it and a worn leather office chair behind. A ceiling mounted fan ticked away as it fought an ineffectual fight against the savage heat. A single window was latched wide open. There were no drapes.
The big man sat behind the desk, opened a draw, pulled out a box of cigarettes. Lit. Inhaled. The fan chased the smoke around the room, dissipating it but not getting rid of it. Pete drew again. Hard. The burning tobacco crackled and a red tip formed on the end of the cigarette. A tiny nicotine driven volcano.
Against the one wall of the room stood a gun rack. On it was an array of various weapons. Mainly hunting rifles of different caliber, also two Vektor H5s and a few pump action shotguns. In a cupboard next to the rack there were a selection of semi-auto handguns. Predominantly 9mm but also a smattering of 45s and a few exotics. Some would consider this to be a veritable arsenal. Pete knew, however, that anyone who tried to go to war with bolt-action rifles and handguns invariably got their asses kicked.
And Pete was determined to go to war. Over the last few years he had come to the conclusion that the only way that the white man could survive and flourish in Africa was to have his own homeland. An area of South Africa that would remain forever white. He had gathered around him a small group of like-minded individuals. Mainly young Afrikaners who longed for the old days. The days when the white man had been king in Africa. The days when the South Africa Defense Force had ruled the continent with an iron fist. The days before Mandela had been released and the white Afrikaner tribe had lost the war.
But to fight a war one needed weapons. Modern assault rifles, hand grenades, RPG’s and landmines. Pete had a backer. A gray man who worked in the shadowy world of high finance. He had never met him; he didn’t even know his name as he dealt only through an intermediary. But the man was sympathetic to Pete’s cause and, as a result, finance was no problem. However, since 9/11 the American CIA had tightened up on all forms of gun running and it was now close to impossible to get one’s hands on any quantity of decent weapons, no matter how much disposable income one had.
So he had come up with this plan. The Inkatha arms cache was general knowledge to anyone who had worked in the South African secret service as Pete had done and, although he did not expect the whole forty tons to be left, he knew that a large amount of it still would be.
He had a force of thirty nine men with him. They all lived on his farm in the Karoo. Many miles from civilization. The farm, or camp as they referred to it, was run on military grounds. Ranks were issued and discipline was strict. Apart from his second in command all of the other men were too young to have fought in the South African bush war. Pete had done this on purpose. Although he would have welcomed the experience and expertise of these older battle-hardened soldiers he also knew that they were all damaged goods. Men who had fought a war for generations only to lose and be cast out with no form of therapy or counseling. As a result your average ex-South African defense force soldier suffered from various degrees of posttraumatic stress disorder including anger issues, overwhelming guilt and self-destructive tendencies. In short – broken men.[*] They could fight but they were totally unpredictable, paranoid and dangerous to all around them.
The younger men that had joined Pete also had problems, these mainly being the rashness of youth. Pete stood up, walked over to the open window, lent out and shouted.
‘Kobus, Bakkies, kom hier, Come here.’
Then he went back to his chair and lit another cigarette while he waited. Within a minute someone knocked on the door.
‘Binne, come in.’
Two young men marched in, leaving the door open behind them. They were both dressed in olive drab trousers, t-shirts and military boots. They stamped to attention and saluted in tandem.
‘Kommandant.’
‘At ease boys.’ Pete studied the two men. Over six foot, blonde hair, blue eyes. Wide shoulders and narrow hips. Proper Afrikaans boys. Strong, respectful and willing.
‘Kobus.’
‘Kommandant.’
‘What happened to your nose?’
‘The kaffir hit me, sir.’
Pete walked over to Kobus. Stood close, studying his crushed nose. ‘Looks like he did a good job.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Pete’s hand whipped up as he grabbed Kobus’ ruined nose and squeezed hard. Kobus squealed in agony and he dropped to one knee. But Pete did not let go.
‘You are a trained combat soldier and you let an amateur get the drop on you. You disgust me. Bread and water for three days and extra duties. Perhaps that will teach you to be more vigilant.’
Pete turned to Bakkies. ‘I am told that you discharged your weapon during the abduction.’
‘Ja, Kommandant. The situation was getting out of control. The kaffir wouldn’t get into the car so I had to insist.’
‘Three fully grown trained men couldn’t control a teenager without using a weapon? What weapon did you use?’
‘The Desert Eagle, sir. The 50 caliber.’
‘Did you pick up the cartridge?’
‘No, sir.’
‘So, you unnecessarily discharged an exotic weapon in a built up area and then neglected to retrieve the evidence. You are worse than this piece of shit. Put your hands behind your back.’
Bakkies did so.
Pete punched him in the nose, dropping him to the floor. ‘There,’ said the big Afrikaner. ‘Now you look like twins. Fuck off and think about how to improve yourselves.’
The men stood to their feet, shaky but still adhering to discipline. They saluted and left the room.
Pete smiled. They were good boys. He had to be harsh on them. Hard but fair. In that way he could at least offer them a small chance of surviving the coming war.
Chapter 5
Garrett landed at Oliver Tambo airport in Johannesburg, South Africa at seven in the morning. He checked through, rented a cell phone from MTN, a Nissan X-trail 4 x 4 King cab pick-up from Budget and cashed ten thousand dollars into high denomination Rand notes.
Once he had found his RV he typed in Petrus’ address to the satnav, connected his iPod to the in car stereo and pulled out, the sounds of Johann Hummel pumping through the eight speakers.
The traffic was thick and slow, many of the traffic lights not working. Scores of motor vehicles looked like they shouldn’t be allowed on the roads; smoke pouring from their exhausts, mirrors missing and tires visibly bald. It hadn’t surprised Garrett when he had read that over forty people a day died on the South African roads. That figure added up to around fifteen thousand per year. If one extrapolated those figures to the USA it would mean over a quarter of a million deaths a year in America. As opposed to the fourteen thousand that it actually was.
It took a little over an hour and a half to get to the place that Petrus was staying. It was a large house in an access-controlled area called Kelvin. Garrett buzzed the intercom at the gate. They opened and he crunched up the gravel driveway and parked in front of the huge dwelling.
The house had been built in a clumsy blend of Mediterranean, Mexican, African, Roman and fuck-you style of architecture. As if the owner had placed a huge pile of cash on the builder’s desk and said, build me as much house as that can get me, and make sure that everybody can see that I spent a shithouse full of money on it.
Garrett grabbed his small suitcase from the loading area of the RV, walked up to the front door and knocked. As he did so the door opened to reveal his friend.
‘Petrus, good to see you.’
‘Isosha,’ greeted Petrus, using his Zulu nickname, Soldier. ‘Still alive, I see.’
‘Apparently so,
’ countered Garrett.
The two men nodded at each other, the depth of their friendship plain to see but their characters unable to express it. They hugged each other briefly and then Petrus led the way into the house.
It was completely empty. No furniture. No drapes or carpets or wall hangings. In the corner of the vast entrance hall were two fold-up camp beds, a small wooden table, a battery powered lamp and a gas camping stove.
‘The right bed’s yours,’ said the Zulu.
‘What the hell is this place?’
‘It’s the house of a friend. I’m looking after it for him.’
‘Where’s all the furniture? Why the gas stove?’
‘He hasn’t moved in yet and the electricity hasn’t been switched on.’
‘Really,’ said Garrett, his one eyebrow rose quizzically. ‘Surely a friend would turn on the power for you?’
Petrus looked sheepish. ‘Okay, maybe not so good a friend.’
‘Maybe more like a stranger?’
Petrus laughed. ‘Maybe.’
‘As in, he doesn’t know that we’re staying here?’
‘Look, Isosha, he’s a relative of mine; I didn’t see any reason to bother him so I just moved in for a while. It’s cheap and I make sure that no one squats here. Anyway, he’s got too many properties.’
‘So you stole his house?’
Petrus laughed again. ‘Ja. Come sit. I’ve got some beer in the cooler box. We drink, smoke, talk shit for a while.’
‘Before we do,’ said Garrett. ‘I’d like to see Manon.’
Garrett was talking about a friend of his. A sister that he had met during the war in Sierra Leone. A few months before Petrus and he had stopped a kidnapping ring that had been abducting children from sister Manon’s orphanage, the Sunlight Children’s Home. He was also totally and inappropriately in love with her.
Petrus shook his head. ‘I am sorry, my friend. She is no longer here. The orphanages were closed down and she went back to Belgium to the monastery.’
Garrett & Petrus- The Complete Series Page 26