Hyena Dawn

by Christopher Sherlock

  Hyena Dawn

  By Christopher Sherlock

  Rayne

  Mozambique 1978

  The man walked out of the clearing. His face was black and his chin was covered by an enormous curling beard. He stank of four weeks’ sweat. Hanging from his neck was an AK-47 assault rifle, and round his waist were pockets of ammunition. A torn French army parachute jacket covered his upper body and a filthy pair of jeans hid his legs. On his feet were thin black hockey boots caked with mud and dust.

  Suddenly, amongst the sweet-smelling denseness of the bush the man sensed a different smell. The smell of other men. His hand moved easily across the breech of the rifle to make sure that the safety-catch had been released. His eyes scanned the trees, looking through them to the bush beyond. His finger rested close to the trigger and he moved silently towards denser cover.

  Captain Rayne Gallagher had been operating this way for the last two months. His superiors had realised that he was better by himself, prepared to take more risks and able to move faster; but the loneliness of the work was itself a hazard. Now he felt very alone.

  There was a shrill, high-pitched whistle. Rayne dropped to the ground and rolled over three times, coming to rest against the side of a tree. The whistle made his blood run cold. It was a call­-sign, and it sounded familiar. For one crazy instant he was tempted to reply in English. He did not know if he was supposed to give a password. One word, one sound wrong, and he could be dead. Death moved one step closer, too, in every second he hesitated.

  The silence threatened. He had to reply. He shouted out in a language not his own - and shivered as he heard the metallic sound of a gun.

  Who the hell was it? The sweat poured off his forehead. Every sensory organ in his body was strained to the limit of alertness. He had to try and keep the advantage.

  Then he saw them, indistinct among the distant trees. Three of them. He raised himself upwards, his eyes surveying the bush around him, and in the middle distance he caught the glint he had been looking for. Four of them.

  The voice of the man he could not see asked him where he had come from, speaking in the black language Rayne himself had used. He almost thought he recognised that voice. Momentarily his finger strayed from the trigger as his eyes strained to locate him. Where was the bastard? He couldn’t be more than five metres away. He had to see him.

  Something told Rayne to speak. He lied that he had been over the border and killed a headman who had been in the employ of the government forces.

  There was a chuckle in the distance. He began to relax. He told the man he had laid mines which had killed a farmer and his wife on their way home. There was more laughter, then an unnerving silence. The man asked him the name of the farm.

  Rayne gave it, and tensed for the reply. This time there was a new hostility in the man’s voice. He said that the farm had been abandoned two years before.

  Mistake. Now he knew he had to risk it - it was the only course left to him. Licking his dry lips Rayne said, ‘Don’t I know you?’

  After he’d spoken, the words hung in the air and he sensed the moment of indecision. Is this the moment when you die, Captain Gallagher?

  The movement of a gun barrel telegraphed the man’s intention. Rayne moved forwards and sideways in a crouch, and heard the gunshot as the first bullet ripped across the folds of his jacket. He rolled over and brought his rifle round in a clear arc to where the man had been, the trigger flat as the rounds spat out on full automatic.

  A man staggered out of the bush screaming, blood pouring from his head and stomach. Rayne fired again as bullets sliced all around him, and the man’s head exploded and he dropped to the ground noiselessly.

  A second man revealed himself. Rayne put two bullets in the right shoulder-blade and his target pirouetted on his left foot and fell flat on his face. A third man came into view, ducked below Rayne’s rake of fire, aimed and hit him in the leg as he ran out of ammunition.

  Rayne screamed out as the pain shot up his thigh and he tried desperately to ram in another magazine. He saw the man rise, obviously realising Rayne was out of ammunition. Rayne slid his left hand to the pistol behind his back, rolled over and shot the man full in the mouth. The next instant he pulled a grenade from his pocket and lobbed it in the direction of the rest of the fire. There was a muffled explosion, then a scream. Mechanically he pulled out a second grenade and threw it after the first. He prayed he wouldn’t pass out from the pain of the bullet wound in his leg.

  The second man with the bullet in his shoulder staggered up from the ground. Rayne fired another shot, this time into the man’s throat. The .45 calibre bullet mushroomed on contact and the man collapsed forwards, clutching at the sickening mess above his shoulders.

  Suddenly, there was silence.

  The tears were running out of Rayne’s eyes. He was shaking with fear, and now he began helplessly to retch. The air stank of death.

  He knew he must hide, crawl deep into the bush. If they came for him now, he was dead.

  By the time night came, Rayne’s right leg was numb and his lips were splitting for lack of water. He had crawled as far as a small thicket, but had not moved since. Four dead, but there might be more of them. They were hardened fighters; they could be waiting for him to fall asleep before they moved in for the kill. His only safety was in silence. His rifle lay next to him, reloaded, the selector switch on semi-automatic fire.

  The night was well advanced when he heard the first sound of movement. It came from only one direction, and he guessed at once that the man who had been hit by the grenade had not been killed. He lay perfectly still in the moonless dark, sweating.

  The sound came closer, then stopped. Rayne could hear someone breathing deeply. Then the sounds started again, moving away from him in the direction of the men he had shot earlier. Rayne turned his head, but in the pitch dark he could see nothing. The noise stopped, and he could hear his own heart beating like a drum. The pain in his leg returned, agonising, unbearable.

  He slowly began to lose consciousness, and in a few moments he had rolled over on his side, completely defenceless.

  The hyena was cautious, even though he had not eaten for many days. Something bothered him, and he waited in the darkness before moving forwards. When he walked, it was still with a limp from the barbed wire trap that had nearly caught him in the last winter. Then he had been hungry too, but less cautious.

  The smell of blood was strong and the saliva from his mouth ran into the short black hairs of his muzzle. He knew he was getting old; one day his leg would prevent him from scavenging altogether, and then he would starve and perhaps the men would get him. The sound of the gun was familiar to him, the sound that killed. All the men carried guns now, and they no longer kept to the paths. He had had to become more cunning to avoid them, and so he had left his group, preferring to scavenge alone. Once before he had tasted the flesh of man. Now he was about to taste that sweet meat again.

  The body was under his front paw, waiting for him, and he knew he could not hold out any longer. He dropped his head and his teeth sank into the soft flesh and for a few minutes he ate ravenously. Then caution overcame him again and he pulled the meat away from the clearing and into the bushes.

  He ate till he was bloated, then slunk away in the darkness. He would return the next evening, hopefully to find more human flesh. This was enough for now. This place made him nervous.

  Rayne woke just before dawn.

  The light came slowly, gradually revealing the outlines of the trees. It was beautiful to him, even though he was still on edge. He was alive, and that was what mattered; nobody was going to kill him now, and he was going to get up and get out of this hell­hole as soon as possible.

  Rolling over onto all fours, he
slowly raised himself to a crouching position. His leg hurt badly, but to his relief he could still walk on it. He remembered his training: pain can be an advantage, it heightens your senses, keeps you awake.

  He checked the pistol in his belt and then held the rifle firmly in both hands - his AK-47, the world’s finest assault rifle. He doubled back quickly and skirted the edge of a clearing, making for a cluster of enormous boulders above it. The pain in his right leg dominated all other feelings. But no one fired at him. Nothing moved. Soon he was on the top of the boulders and able to survey the surrounding country as the light improved. He eased a grenade from his pocket and removed the pin. The explosion would give him the cover he needed if anyone tried anything now.

  There was more light on the clearing now, and he realised that one of the bodies had moved. As he saw the marks in the sand, the cold edge of fear ran through him. That was the man he had shot in the face. It was just not possible that the man could have survived. It looked as though the body had been dragged . . .

  Others must have come stealthily in the night. But why had they only moved one body and not the other three?

  Then he saw it lying beneath him in the bush. The face was gone, and most of the stomach and the intestines. The smell reached his nostrils and he retched, almost dropping the grenade. Hyena, bloody hyena, that was what he had heard. He eased the pin back into the grenade and pushed the grenade back into his pocket. Lying flat, he looked into the bush for any signs of movement. Nothing. He was alone.

  Rayne dropped down from the rock and moved quickly towards the place where he had thrown the grenade the day before. Clinically he examined its victim. It had been a very lucky hit; the grenade had actually hit the man in the chest, exploding on impact; the body was mutilated beyond recognition. He circled the clearing once more and then walked to its centre. This was the place where all the shooting had taken place the day before. The bodies were lying to one side of him, all face down on the ground. One body had blood across the centre of the back where the fire from his rifle had entered the stomach. The other had a misshapen shoulder and the head was disfigured from the final shot he’d put into it.

  He studied the corpses, mentally working out if he’d responded in the right way. God, he’d taken a risk shooting the one in the head. If he’d missed, he would have been finished. They’d always taught him to aim for the torso but instinct always took over when he was under fire.

  He found a water flask in one of the men’s packs and quenched his thirst. There was some food in the pack too, which he ate ravenously. What a place for breakfast! A clearing in Mozam­bique and four dead ZANLA terrorists for company! Rayne laughed so hard he thought his stomach would tear apart - a sick, mad laugh in the silence.

  He pulled himself together. He must check the four bodies for identification, see if they carried any vital documents. Then he must move out of the area very quickly. This was what he had been taught.

  The body of the man he had killed with the shot to the head was very heavy, and he had to struggle to turn it over. The face was unrecognisable because the bullet had imploded into the side of the skull, but he could see that beneath the dirt that was smeared over it, the skin was white. Perhaps the man was a Russian agent operating in the Mozambique theatre - unusual, but by no means impossible. Unfortunately he could find no identification on the man.

  He rolled the second body over. The face seemed curiously familiar. His hand touched the closed eyelids and pulled them back.

  He knew this man. Not as an enemy but as a close friend.

  The cry rang out through the stark, silent beauty of the early morning landscape. It rose and fell, sometimes fading away almost to nothing, then rising again with renewed force. Not a woman’s cry. The cry of a man crouched over the body of his comrade.

  The man got up and moved to another body. For a moment the horrified scream penetrated the silence again. The man rose and ran up the side of the incline. He pulled up another body from amongst the rocks. He turned the bloody face to his own and screamed again.

  ‘No! No! No!’

  He collapsed to the ground sobbing, and his tears ran into the dry earth.

  Rayne dug with his bare hands, like an animal. As the day progressed he buried each of the four bodies and above each mound of soft earth he mounted a simple cross of two sticks bound together with cord.

  When at last they were all buried, he staggered up the heap of boulders and hoisted himself on top of the rock that commanded the whole area. He sat on the rock, watching the setting sun, and sat there still as the darkness closed in around him. The first light of the new moon came up, as if to offer him a sign of hope.

  In a single day his joy in the excitement of war had been replaced by a sense of its absolute futility. Africa, the continent he loved so much, had spoken to him in the most savage way possible. As he dug the graves, he had thought of turning his pistol on himself. But he would not take the easy way out. That was against his nature.

  A faint wind blew up and pulled against the folds of his combat jacket. It seemed to clean the air around him, recharge his lungs, give him renewed energy, before it died as mysteriously as it had come, to be replaced by the familiar sounds of the African night.

  After a while Rayne heard the sound which had so disturbed him the night before. Now he could recognise the pattern of breathing and put the hideous face to it; he could understand the strange shuffling noises and the long, pregnant silences. Grimly he waited on the top of the rock for his moment of revenge.

  It was not a long wait. After the blackness of the previous night, the bright moonlight made the hyena bolder, and he came early, moving quickly across the clearing to the mound of earth.

  Without looking round, he unearthed the body, already becom­ing high with the stench of putrefaction.

  He stopped and looked up to the new moon for a moment, as if to say a silent prayer before the feast that lay in store for him. He would live well for the next few weeks. There would be no need for travelling or taking risks; he would get stronger, perhaps his damaged leg would get a little better. His mouth tingled in anticipation of eating that flesh again; his dark red tongue ran across his lips.

  Then he heard the noise that spelt death, and turned to spring away. The flash followed instantaneously from the rock above the clearing.

  He let out a desperate yelp as the bullet tore through the soft fur of his chest and buried itself deep within. He fell on his side, his head flopping in the dust. The struggle for survival was over. . .

  Rayne felt the noise of the shot ring through his skull. He had killed again - this time to prevent the savage desecration of the body of his best friend.

  He had known all four of these men, Selous Scouts like himself, members of one of the crack units of the Rhodesian Army - men to whom daring exploits were everyday events. At twenty-five, and though he was a South African volunteer, not a Rhodesian, Rayne had been made a captain. He had given these men orders, had fought and laughed alongside them. These men would have died to save his life.

  They all knew the risks of the Pseudo Groups, of course. That was the risk you took when you became a Selous Scout. You disguised yourself as the enemy; you blackened your face and your hands, you grew a beard; you became a ZANLA freedom fighter. You moved into the bush, made contact with the men from ZANLA who accepted you as fellow warriors. And then you killed them.

  Of course, if they saw through your disguise, you were dead. But apparently no one in high command had thought about what happened when Pseudo Groups confronted each other - when the disguise was so good that you each thought the other was the enemy, and then you shot at each other to kill and you killed your own men. That was when the logic of the thing fell away.

  Rayne wished they’d thought of a password, or some other subtle means of communication. But as in all wars, at the moment of crisis it was every man for himself. You only thought about what you should have done after things had gone horribly wrong.

&nb
sp; At least they would never know who had really killed them.

  They were better off than he was. He had to live with the fact that he’d killed four of his friends, his own men.

  He had shot Ron in the mouth. Ron with the pretty, smiling wife and the two children. He had sawn through Mac’s guts with an avalanche of bullets. Mac was the one who always made them laugh when things were bad. Mike had just got engaged. He’d blown away Mike’s shoulder and then shot him in the throat. And he’d blown out Alan’s guts with a grenade. Alan, with two brothers already dead in the bush war and his father a bitter old man.

  How could he go back into Rhodesia? Tell Ron’s wife that he’d killed her husband, and his three-year-old son that his dad wasn’t coming home to the farm? They’d bloody understand. He knew they’d accept it and that would be the hardest part of all, living with their understanding. In the last forty-eight hours he’d leapt an abyss and landed a different man on the other side.

  For some bizarre reason he remembered a piece of poetry he’d learnt at boarding school in Natal. He recited it aloud, hoping to regain some sanity.

  He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

  Close to the sun in lonely lands,

  Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

  The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

  He watches from his mountain walls,

  And like a thunderbolt he falls.

  After that he fell silent, listening to the sounds that came from the darkness of Africa. Eventually he fell asleep, a solitary body on a piece of stone in the hell-hole that was Mozambique.

  He woke up sweating, the sun burning down on him. The rifle lay under his right hand, so hot it almost scorched his skin. He climbed down from the rock and back into the clearing below. His leg was murderously painful.