Garrett & Petrus- The Complete Series

by C Marten-Zerf

  Nobody said anything for a while until Petrus spoke.

  ‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is one seriously intense dude.’

  Chapter 37

  Fumba sat in the leather wingback chair and stroked his cat. The side of the sergeant’s face had been badly burned. There was no skin and the gleam of white bone stood out on his cheek. He had also been shot in the stomach and his right thigh.

  The pain was beyond intense but Fumba ignored it.

  After the Casspir had been destroyed and Zuzani captured, Fumba was at a loss. Despite the fact that he was nominally second in charge of the colonel’s operation he was, in actuality, mere muscle. He needed to be led. Without a leader he was a rudderless ship.

  So he had taken the BMW with his cat inside and driven to Manhattan Dengana’s offices. Looking for someone who could tell him what to do. But when he got there the offices were empty. The lights were still on but the doors had been left unlocked. Abandoned.

  So the sergeant had sat down behind Manhattan’s desk. And stroked his cat.

  He heard the outside office door bang open and the sound of footsteps. Two people. The footsteps got closer. The office door was flung open. Two men walked in.

  ‘Hey,’ said Petrus. ‘It’s monkey boy. Where’s Dengana?’

  Fumba shrugged. ‘Gone.’

  ‘Where?’ Asked Garrett.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Petrus. ‘You’re not much use to us, are you?’

  Fumba shook his head. ‘No. Are you going to kill me now?’

  Petrus stared at the sergeant for a while. ‘Is that your cat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s its name?’

  ‘It depends,’ replied Fumba. ‘It changes all the time. It used to be Heckler. Then Mbejane.’

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘Cat.’

  ‘Big points for imagination, monkey boy. Who’ll take care of it if I kill you?’

  ‘No one,’ answered Fumba. ‘It will take care of itself.’

  Petrus shook his head. ‘No ways. It’s too young. Still a kitten really. I tell you what. When it’s older and can take care of itself, maybe then I’ll come and find you and kill you. Okay?’

  Fumba nodded. ‘Whatever, I don’t care.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Petrus to Garrett. ‘It’s over. Let’s blow this place and go home.’

  The two men left.

  Fumba sat for a while. He was thirsty but he couldn’t move. He no longer had the strength to raise himself out of the chair. He knew that he was bleeding internally. On the plus side, the pain had gone. Instead his whole body had gone numb. As if he was detached from it.

  He tried to close his eyes so that he could rest.

  But the lids would not work.

  He really ought to decide on a permanent name for the cat, he thought. It was unseemly for a pet not to have a name.

  His head flopped forward onto his chest, his breath hissed in and out. Shallow. Insufficient.

  Dingaan, he thought. I’ll call him Dingaan.

  His breathing stopped.

  The cat purred.

  After a while it jumped down from his lap and walked away.

  Chapter 38

  Sifiso had woken before dawn. He had crawled out of his blankets and gone outside to look at the cows in the central kraal. He did this every morning without fail. He loved the huge, doe-eyed bovines with their slow gentle ways and their cud chewing and their flatulence.

  He would normally watch them alone for half an hour or so until the rest of the village was up and about. Then he would go back to his hut and eat a huge bowl of well-salted maize meal porridge. As much as he wanted.

  This morning, however, he was not alone. A tall, well built man had already been standing at the fence when he got there.

  ‘Good morning, little big man,’ greeted Petrus.

  Sifiso laughed. ‘Hello, but how can I be little and big at the same time? That’s not right.’

  ‘Well,’ replied Petrus, ‘you see, I look on the Big Man as having been your father, so, when you grow up you too shall be known as The Big Man. But until then you are still little. So; Little Big Man.’

  Sifiso nodded, his expression serious. ‘Yes. That is good. I will be Little Big Man.’

  ‘So, Sifiso,’ continued Petrus. ‘You like the cows?’

  Sifiso nodded.

  ‘That is good. Cows are very important to us. They are our wealth. Are you happy here?’

  Again the little boy nodded. ‘Very happy. I get porridge every morning and meat every night and I am never scared when I sleep.’

  Petrus rubbed him on the head. ‘That is good. Now that you are more settled I am going to get someone to organize your schooling. I want you to work hard every day and keep out of trouble. Okay?’

  Sifiso nodded. ‘I want to go to school. Then when I grow up I want to be a doctor. Doctor Big Man. Then I can save people’s lives and no one will ever have to die again.’

  ‘That is a good ambition, Little Big man. Very good.’

  Petrus lit a cigarette and wondered. He wondered how many people he had killed in order to save lives. And he wondered if it had been worth it.

  Behind him he could hear the village awakening as the sun broke the horizon. The banging of pots and pans, the buzz of conversation, the crackle of the cooking fires. The mundane sounds of normal life.

  As opposed to the hammer of automatic gunfire and the screams of the wounded and the dying.

  And he knew that, yes, it had been worth it. Because someone had to do it. Someone had to be that guy.

  Because, in it’s purest form, the act of retribution provides symmetry, the rendering of payment for crimes against the innocent. But the danger lay in furthering the cycle of violence.

  Still, thought Petrus, it was a risk that had to be met because the greater offense would be to allow the guilty to go unpunished.

  And that he could not do.

  Epilogue

  Patrick Delanus, AKA Manhattan Dengana, took a reverential sip of the Lagavulan thirty-year-old Scotch, closing his eyes in pleasure.

  He stood on the balcony of the Royal suite in Edinburgh’s finest and oldest hotel. A world of marble and thick wool carpets and butlers and crystal. A world that was a million miles away from the stink of Africa.

  He raised his glass to take another sip, but before he could it was knocked from his hand. It fell to the floor and smashed.

  Something slipped over his neck. Pulled tight. Restricting his breathing.

  He tried to fight back but his legs were kicked out from under him, driving him to his knees. He scrabbled frantically at the cord around his neck. Fingernails clawing at his own flesh. Tearing and cutting.

  It takes a long time to throttle someone to death. Especially when you are using the cream and gold ribbon of the Baobab medal, Supreme Councilor class, for exceptional service in industry and economy.

  Eventually Manhattan Dengana’s lifeless body slipped sideways onto the floor.

  Garrett stood up. Threw the medal onto Manhattan’s chest and left the room.

  The guilty had been punished.

  Blood of Lions - Chapter 1

  There was a festival atmosphere about the procession. Five Toyota pick up trucks each towing a converted horse trailer. The first four trailers each contained approximately two and a half tons of Southern White Rhinoceros. Ceratotherium simum simum. The largest living land mammal after the African Elephant. Five thousand pounds of pissed-off-Pachyderm reduced to the state of a docile pet dog by the introduction of 2 milligrams of Acepromazine via a dart gun.

  The fifth trailer had two occupants. The game rangers had already dubbed them Dick and Dom. A pair of male rhino calves. Overlarge three toed feet, massive upright ears and tiny little nubs of horn. They too were sedated and lay snuggled together, snoring and whistling in their sleep, their juvenile lips turned up into permanent half-smiles as they gamboled and cape
red in their dreams.

  The rangers had round up the Rhinos that morning, tracking them through the night and darting them as soon as the sun had risen to provide enough light to shoot by.

  And now they were on their way to the Kharma Rhino reserve in Botswana. It had been deemed of vital importance to move as many rhino to Kharma as possible due to the fact that well over one thousand Rhino had been killed in South Africa the year before, whereas there had not been one death in the Kharma Rhino Reserve in the entire twenty four years since its inception.

  Unfortunately, due to the vast amounts of red tape, combined with the lack of both funds and manpower, the parks trust had only managed to relocate a mere six rhino during the last twelve months. A failure to perform that bordered on the ridiculous.

  Malusi was riding shotgun in the second pick up, his Remington pump action laid across his knees. Since his recent qualification from the South African Wildlife College and his being hired as a conservation officer by the Kruger National Game Park, this was the most exciting day that he had ever experienced.

  He was convinced that the future of the country that he loved would come to rely more and more on the tourist industry and, as far as he could see, the tourist industry in Africa would be dominated by tourists seeking the wild game experience.

  That, combined with his genuine love of animals is what had driven him to study and to pursue his current career.

  The convoy drove slowly and carefully down the rutted dirt roads that lead from the reserve. The morning sun blasted the land with a white-hot heat that robbed the scenery of all shadow, rendering the vista as a flat, two-dimensional photograph printed in shades of browns and olive-greens and khakis.

  The dust from the lead pick up hung in the dead air like a massive ochre storm cloud, coating all the followers in its fine, red talc.

  Malusi placed the butt of the Remington on the floor between his legs and pointed the barrel out of the window. Each pick up had a driver and a passenger that had been issued with a weapon. Malusi had his shotgun, and the remaining rangers carried the venerable R1 assault rifle. A weapon that had last seen service during the 1980's in the South African bush war.

  They all handled their weapons with a certain amount of familiarity but it was patently obvious that they were not professional soldiers. A few hours on the range does not a military man make. These were Game Rangers. People trained in conservation and animal husbandry. Weapons were there for defense against wild animals and, even then, only as a very final resort.

  But, as rhino poaching had become so endemic, the rangers had been forced to swap their 375 bolt action hunting rifles and shotguns for weapons more suited to warfare than to animal control.

  Malusi glanced upwards, squinting through the dust-covered windscreen. High above them wheeled a White Backed Vulture, a magnificent bird with a wingspan of over seven feet. It had been following them since they had set off that morning.

  The young Zulu shivered with superstitious dread. The vulture was never a good omen. Particularly one showing such persistence.

  The land mine was a Chinese version of the type 72. Twelve pounds of high explosive jammed into a steel container. It was capable of damaging a main battle tank to the point of putting it out of service.

  Its effect on the thin-skinned Toyota commercial vehicle was nothing short of catastrophic.

  The blast severed the cab from the load area, tossing it up into the air in a storm of steel and flame. Both the driver and passenger were killed instantly as the shock wave smashed their brains, shattered their bones and crushed their internal organs. The trailer and rhino that they were pulling crashed into the back half of the vehicle and flipped over, landing on its side. Even though the rhino was sedated it screamed and bellowed in terror, thrashing its massive head from side to side, slashing its flesh open on the jagged exposed blades of metal sticking out of the sides of the damaged trailer.

  The gigantic shock wave punched Malusi's driver in the chest, causing him to spasm at the wheel, jerking the pickup into a hard right hand skid. The trailer jackknifed behind them, tearing itself off the hitch and rolling into their vehicle.

  Malusi kicked the door open, stepped outside and stood, swaying, next to the ruined cab. His mouth hung open as his brain tried desperately to catch up with the surrounding reality.

  The other pick-ups came to a halt and men started to jump out and run towards him. He saw their mouths working and he knew that they were talking to him. Shouting even. But his ears were ringing and the huge amounts of sensory overload had caused auditory exclusion and tunnel vision.

  He shook his head and, all of a sudden, sound and vision returned.

  And then the air around them came alive with the spiteful crack and buzz of high velocity metal. Bright scars appeared in the door of the pick up and one of the other game rangers flew backwards as his body was riddled with shot, blood spraying from him in a viscous mist of bright red.

  Someone shouted. 'Machine gun.'

  Malusi grabbed his shotgun from the cab and looked for someone to shoot at but, before he could, his breath was driven from his body as three copper-jacketed steel rounds slammed into him, picking him up and throwing him over the hood of the vehicle.

  Some of the rangers began to return fire but they were soon cut down by the overwhelming quantity of ordinance arrayed against them.

  Malusi slid down off the hood and lay on the dry African earth. An ant crawled over his open eye. He tried to blink but he couldn't. He wondered if he was breathing. And if so, how? He could hear his heart beating. A drawn out rushing sound. Like water being drawn from a hand-pump. Slow and laborious.

  He could hear men talking. Laughing. He smelled cigarettes.

  Then the sound of a petrol driven chain saw starting up. The ragged growl of machinery.

  The horrific sound of the saw hacking through flesh and bone. The bellowing of the rhinos. A volley of shots.

  'The horns,' whispered Malusi to himself. 'They're cutting out the horns.'

  He tried to move.

  He had to do something.

  He had to stop this.

  A shadow fell over him. Someone was standing there.

  'Hey, check this out,' they said.

  A strange accent. Russian? Polish?

  'This fucker's still alive.'

  'Well kill him.'

  'No,' whispered Malusi. 'Please.'

  He felt a boot against his face. A push. Rolling him over onto his back. The barrel of a rifle. Held close to his eye. So close as to be out of focus.

  You never hear the sound of the shot that kills you.

  ***

  The vulture was patient.

  It sat in the thorn tree and waited.

  Eventually the men left and quiet settled once more over the African veld. It flapped its large wings as it dropped to the ground.

  Spoiled for choice it simply waddled over to the nearest body and started to feed.

  Malusi had been right - the bird had been a bad omen.

  The worst.

  Chapter 2

  Tai Zeng stood still and waited for his attackers to come to him. There were three of them. Large men. Every one topping his mere five foot five by more than six inches.

  The first one struck out. A straight punch to Tai's head. A powerful blow that would knock the smaller man to ground. Once down it would be easy to dispatch him with either a stamping kick or a simple snap kick to his head.

  But the punch never landed.

  Tai moved inside it and, using the tips of his fingers, he delivered a Fut Sao blow to his opponents underarm. Striking where the lymph nodes, arteries and veins conglomerated. The man stiffened and fell to the floor as his entire nervous system simply shut down. Tai casually kicked him in the side of the head as he stepped over him, making sure that he was completely out of the fight.

  Again, Tai stood still, the only part of him moving were his eyes as they flicked between his two remaining opponents.

 
They both attacked at once, driving in from opposite sides, hoping to confuse the master.

  But it was to no avail. Tai launched a counter attack, smashing his open hand into the one man's Brachial Plexus on the side of his neck. Cutting off his blood supply and incapacitating him with a single blow.

  Then he swivelled and, using the Ving Tsun Kung Fu method of rolling punches, he drove the final opponent backwards, throwing five punches in under a second. It was like being hit by a machine gun and the man was unconscious before his limp body even reached the floor.

  Tai Zeng stared down at the three unconscious victims, his face a mask of scorn. The three men had been personally recommended by the local dojo as sparring partners worthy of respect. They were far from it. Rank amateurs.

  Tai had studied Ving Tsun under the auspices of the late master Ip Man. It was an explosive fighting style that combined close quarter combat with solid defensive techniques and rapid counter strikes. It had been popularised during the late seventies by the film star Bruce Lee and many westerners referred to it as Wing Chun Kung Fu or often simply, Kung Fu.

  Typically the western mind had, once again, misunderstood the entire concept. Kung Fu referred to any skill that takes time to master. Only westerners thought of Kung Fu as unique to the martial arts.

  Tai grabbed a small hand towel and left the dojo, wiping the sweat from his face as he did so. He closed the door behind him and walked to his desk, throwing the towel onto the floor.

  Pressing the button to his intercom he buzzed his secretary.

  'Mingyu. Come through.'

  While he waited he stood at the floor to ceiling window and gazed at the view. One hundred stories below Victoria Harbor stretched from left to right. Crowded with all manner of boats from ancient Junks to modern Sunseekers it was a vibrant mélange of both color and culture.