Hyena Dawn

by Christopher Sherlock

  Bruce Gallagher stared across at his son’s hardened face. Not a boy any longer, but a man he was proud of. The keen blue eyes missed nothing. How would he take this?

  ‘I’ve started clearing out my flat, Dad. I’ll bring the furniture back in the morning. I have to get away from here.’

  ‘Go away? Where? You’ve still got another six months to go before you get your LLB!’

  ‘I’ve had enough. That was a good, clean tackle. I didn’t come down on him that hard, any fool could see that. No. Enough of the charade. I’ve decided I want to join the Rhodesian SAS. I’ve studied enough. I want to be with some real people, men not wimps.’

  ‘You’re crazy, Rayne, you’re over-reacting. How can you talk about joining the Rhodesian army? Think what you’ll be fighting for, the supremacy of the white man and the entrenchment of his rights. Everything I’ve struggled against in my legal career!’

  ‘Come off it, Father. Show me a black state with better justice than ours.’

  ‘If you join the Rhodesian army, you can consider yourself a stranger in this house.’

  Without realising it, Bruce had put Rayne in a corner. He regretted the words as soon as he said them, but it was too late.

  ‘So be it. I’m going. I’ll say goodbye to Mother.’

  ‘Rayne, you bloody fool!’

  ‘Goodbye, Father.’

  Two weeks later he had been on the train, headed towards Bulawayo, the capital of Matabeleland. When they crossed the South African border, Rayne had felt as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  He remembered his first sight of this new land, Rhodesia, less inhabited and developed than the South African landscape he had been travelling across earlier in the day. He had no idea that the area of Matabeleland he was passing through would soon be known to him by the operational name of Repulse. Already he could feel the increase in temperature and see the landscape changing subtly. More green trees, and increasingly lush vegeta­tion that clung to the sides of the rolling hills and rock outcrops.

  The area was no stranger to violence, or to the changing procession of peoples who chose to live amongst its massive granite domes and rocky outcrops. First the peaceful bushmen were displaced by the Rozvi people, who developed a sophisti­cated civilisation mining iron and gold. Then in the nineteenth century the Zulu chiefs, Mzilikazi and Shaka, teamed up and seized the Rozvi people’s land. Mzilikazi and his followers became known as the Matabele. But they in their turn, impres­sive warriors though they were, fell prey to the firepower of Rhodes’ Pioneer Column in the quest to colonise. Thus Rhodesia had been born, and the seeds were sown of decades of future conflict between black and white . . .

  ‘Sir, please be seated. Major Long will see you at eleven hundred hours. He would like you to fill out your curriculum vitae.’

  Rayne vividly remembered the immaculately dressed junior officer who had handed him an anonymous-looking buff form and a black ballpoint pen. He had sat down on one of the cheap metal and plastic chairs that filled the tiny office. The place was hot and oppressive. He had thought that joining the army would be simple. He was beginning to find out that there was a lot of red tape to be gone through. Most of the questions on the form were similar to those on an application form for an ordinary job, but there were others that were more unusual. There was a section asking about his knowledge of black languages and tribal customs. Another section dealt with previous injuries and disa­bilities, and a third section had questions relating to the types of activity the applicant might be interested in. Rayne favoured joining the airborne regiment, the legendary SAS.

  By the time he had answered all the questions it was nearly eleven o’clock. One of the phones on the reception desk rang and the immaculate-looking officer answered it. Then he put the phone down delicately and stared across at Rayne. ‘Major Long will see you now, sir. Please take the form with you.’

  Major Long had been standing up and staring at something through the window of his office. At first Rayne wondered if he had noticed him come in.

  ‘Sit down.’

  The accent had a Scottish flavour and was very precise. Major Long turned and faced him. The expression on his face was severe, the dark eyes running over Rayne carefully.

  ‘So you want to fight in our stupid bloody war, laddie?’

  He took the buff form from Rayne’s hand and walked behind his desk. He sat down and scrutinised the paper carefully. ‘Very interesting, Mr Gallagher. It doesn’t tell me what I want to know. Why the hell are you in this office volunteering to fight in someone else’s war?’

  In as few words as possible, Rayne gave the story of his decision to join the Rhodesian army. The more he spoke, the more uneasy he felt. He began to realise how trivial his own problems must sound to a man who had seen soldiers die in action. He finished his explanation and there was a lengthy silence as Major Long continued to stare at him. Eventually he spoke.

  ‘Mr Gallagher, you are not a Rhodesian. My father emigrated here from Scotland, he fought in the Second World War for Rhodesia - and that’s why I’m here, fighting for something I believe in. I think you’ve made a rash decision. You must realise how much it costs to train and equip a fighting man. Having heard what you have told me, I cannot accept you for the Rhodesian Light Infantry.’

  Rayne felt his face going purple with anger.

  ‘Don’t lose your temper with me, laddie. Now please leave. I have more important matters to attend to.’

  Rayne had walked out of the office, slamming the door behind him. As he came into the waiting room he noted that the immaculate officer was grinning from ear to ear. He walked out of the building and sat on a bench outside.

  A few moments later he heard someone behind him and the same officer sat down beside him. He offered Rayne a cigarette. Rayne took it and the man offered him a light.

  ‘Major Long has a reputation,’ the officer said, ‘and he always lives up to it.’

  ‘I thought you needed volunteers!’

  ‘We do. But you came in expecting to be given the red carpet treatment.’

  ‘How the hell do I join your bloody army?’

  ‘The recruiting office is in Meikles Street. The Rhodesian Regiment is always looking for recruits. Any able-bodied man is welcome to join up.’

  ‘Thanks. I will!’

  It all felt like a hundred years ago, not just four and a half. Rayne looked round cautiously to see that there were no nurses in the vicinity, then eased himself out of the wheelchair and put his weight on his right leg. The pain was bad, but he was determined to walk.

  He hobbled along for some hundred metres before he began to feel uneasy. The drugs had still not worn off. He felt as if he were going to pass out. Then he felt a hand clamp on his shoulder and steady him.

  ‘You should be taking it easy, sir.’

  The voice was a deep bellow. Rayne knew who it was in an instant. He turned to face the man who had stopped him from falling over. A big man, nearly six and a half feet tall, dressed in the uniform of a helicopter pilot.

  ‘Thanks, Lois. I think I’d better be getting back to my wheelchair.’

  The hand was released from his shoulder. Lois Kruger knew better than to try and help him walk back.

  Lois was a good friend, and Rayne appreciated the fact that he’d come to visit him in hospital. A strange man, he had always thought, but an incredible soldier. Behind the haunted face with the fascinating green eyes lay a very complex human being. He’d known Lois at school. He’d been there when Lois had been expelled after being found in bed with one of the masters. None of them had known before that. For Rayne it didn’t make any difference, Lois was still the tough Afrikaner to him, the one who excelled at karate and rugby.

  After that, Rayne had lost track of him, only to meet him again in the harrowing selection process for the Rhodesian Special Air Services regiment. By that time Lois had changed a lot. He was even harder. And he never talked about his past.

  Lois stood
back as Captain Gallagher staggered to his wheelchair. Already the man was walking normally. Lois knew that Rayne would be on his feet again the next day.

  He was glad he’d come to the hospital to see how Rayne was, even though the place brought back so many unpleasant memor­ies. He owed Gallagher a lot. He’d been flying choppers as part of a fire force when his machine had been shot down, and the terrs had got him. They were busy carving tattoos on his stomach when Gallagher came out of the bush with a machine-gun and mowed them down. How Captain Rayne Gallagher of the Selous Scouts had ever tracked him down, he never knew. Why he’d done it also eluded him; after all, Gallagher knew he was a homosexual . . . What he did know, was that he owed him his life.

  Lois had always told himself that Gallagher might be the one man he could talk to about his past - the guilt that lay deep inside him. The hospital reminded him of that time, five years ago . . .

  Lois knocked against the door covered with paint once white, now yellow with age. A faint voice told him to enter, and there was Dr Forsyth seated at a giant desk strewn with papers and reports. He looked over seventy, though in attitude he seemed as alert as a much younger man. He gestured for Lois to sit down.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr . . . ?’ He squinted at the card. ‘Kruger?’

  ‘I had a fight in a bar. Really stupid . . . My groin, it’s hurting badly.’

  ‘All right, if you will take your clothes off, please. Behind the screen over there.’

  Lois got undressed behind the screen and sat painfully on the high white table. Dr Forsyth came in and asked him to lie flat, then examined him carefully. Lois shouted out as the doctor gently raised each of his testicles. Having completed his examin­ation, the doctor asked Lois to sit up on the edge of the bed. He checked his reflexes and his blood pressure. Then he asked Lois to get dressed.

  Lois had the feeling that all was not well. Dr Forsyth smiled at him good-naturedly.

  ‘I would like to book you into the hospital immediately. Fortunately we have a first-rate surgeon who can do the opera­tion. Unfortunately, however, you will have to lose both testicles. They are severely damaged. It must have been a very direct blow to the scrotum. I’m sorry, Mr Kruger.’

  Lois felt that the world was spinning about him. The doctor carried on speaking but Lois hardly heard him.

  . . this does not, necessarily, mean the end of your sex life. You could still have children . . .’ That was a joke. . . there are numerous documented case-histories of men who have been able to carry on an almost normal sex life with both testes removed . . .’

  The sympathetic voice receded into the background as Lois thought deeper into his past. . .

  He had been an only child, and his father had died of lung cancer before Lois was two years old. He had become very attached to his mother, while hating his father for having abandoned them. He had been a bright child and had attended one of South Africa’s most exclusive schools on a scholarship. In his final year it looked certain that he would win the engineering scholarship he wanted. Then he had been found in bed with his maths master, a young man in his thirties. They had both been expelled.

  So Lois became an air steward with South African Airways. The personnel manager had been perceptive enough to see that he was very bright and had suggested a course as an aircraft mechanic. By the time Lois completed his apprenticeship he had learnt to fly, and had also regained some of his lost confidence. All this time he lived with his mother.

  He got a job at Lanseria airport outside Johannesburg, a small air terminal that handled light planes and private business jets. Then, in the autumn of 1973, the pictures started arriving. Explicit pictures of him and one of his lovers which the sender threatened to show to Lois’ mother.

  Lois met the blackmailer, a Lebanese runt who smelt of stale sweat and cheap cigars. The Lebanese told him that if he would sabotage a plane, they would destroy the pictures. Lois capitu­lated. There was another meeting, with a different man.

  The night after he’d fixed the plane, he drank himself sick in a bar and staggered home. That was when they tried to finish him off. They’d sent in a hit-man who attacked Lois as he was drunkenly wending his way up a side street. They obviously hadn’t done any research, or they’d have known he had a 2nd Dan black belt in JKA-style karate. At six five in his stockinged feet he weighed in at a lean 200 pounds. The paid assassin had badly underestimated his strength. But Lois had received a savage kick in the balls - a very bad blow - before he’d killed the hitman.

  Lois had packed his bags, given his mother his considerable life-savings, and then driven for the Rhodesian border. He’d seen the news of the plane accident on a television at the Beitbridge Motel on the border. The plane had crashed in the Transkei, killing the pilot but not the two passengers - the son of prominent Johannesburg advocate Bruce Gallagher, and the daughter of multi-millionaire mining magnate Sir George O’Keefe.

  Lois had made it to Livingstone Hospital the next day . . .

  ‘Mr Kruger, are you listening to me?’

  Lois had stared at Dr Forsyth.

  ‘And if I don’t have them removed?’

  ‘Quite simply, the pain that you are experiencing now will get worse. You will have difficulty in moving at all. Then the same operation will have to be performed or you will be a cripple. Believe me, Mr Kruger, your wisest course is to have the operation as soon as possible.’

  ‘All right. I take your word for it.’

  Lois had decided then and there that he would make sure whoever had done this to him paid for it. First he would need money and time to get better after the operation. He would have to lie low for a few years; the South African police would be after him for sabotaging the plane, and there might be more hit­-men waiting to have a go at him. But whatever happened, he would get his revenge.

  The operation had taken place some four hours later.

  ‘What’s on your mind, Lois?’ Gallagher’s voice brought him back to reality. ‘Listen to what I’m saying. I might need you for something soon. Something big.’

  ‘You’re not going back into the bush again?’

  ‘No. This is different, Lois. I can’t tell you any more now, but you’ll hear from me soon.’

  ‘Whatever it is, sir, I owe you.’

  Rayne was discharged from Livingstone Hospital after another week. He moved into Sam’s studio cottage in Salisbury and waited for Major Long to contact him. He told Sam nothing about this. He knew she wouldn’t want him to go into action again, especially not into something that promised to be so dangerous.

  The cottage Sam lived in was a single huge room with a kitchen in the far corner and a bathroom to one side. The whole of one wall consisted of giant panes of glass set in wooden frames. In a corner of the room an enormous table held scattered papers and a portable typewriter.

  All across the wall at the back of the room were photographs, some black and white, some in colour. Most of them were of a war that Rayne had heard about but never known - Vietnam. Many of the pictures were horrifying - men lying mutilated, close-ups of faces in agony - pictures that captured the very essence of war. They sent a shiver up Rayne’s spine. There was no doubt that Sam had a unique gift. No other photographer in the world had achieved the same understanding of violence and exceptional danger. Rayne thought that that understanding was probably what drew him and Sam together.

  Sam was on an assignment in Matabeleland for a week, so Rayne was alone in the cottage. It was late on the Wednesday evening when he received the phone call. He picked up the receiver and glanced at his watch. Past midnight.

  ‘Major Long here.’ The voice sounded strangely detached. ‘Meet me on foot at the corner of Jameson and Victoria Roads in five minutes. Tell no one.’

  Rayne put the phone down and found he was sweating. The car picked him up as he arrived at the street corner. Major Long was sitting in the back, a driver in civvies at the front. Once the car had pulled off, the Major began to talk.

  ‘You’l
l be leaving here very soon. You will effectively disappear.’

  ‘You’ll tell Sam?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m sorry. That is one of the conditions of the operation - complete secrecy. Even I’m not fully in the picture. We’re going to the rendezvous point now, where you’ll get an initial briefing.’

  ‘Dammit, you could have given me some warning.’

  ‘We waited till Sam was away. It’s your decision. We could call it off now. You must understand that this operation means making sacrifices. Mine was giving up the opportunity of leading it in favour of yourself.’

  Rayne saw the grim look on Long’s face. He realised what that decision must have cost. ‘You’re better suited for this operation than I am,’ Long continued. ‘You’re younger. You’re a natural fighter. You know the territory and your Shona is fluent. You also speak Portuguese.’

  Rayne was taken aback. He had told no one that he spoke Portuguese, which he’d picked up on long fishing holidays in Mozambique with his father. He preferred to keep his knowl­edge, and his past, to himself.

  The Major correctly interpreted the look on Rayne’s face. ‘We know because you interrogated a FRELIMO soldier in Portu­guese. You’re a dark horse, Gallagher, and that’s another reason why you’ve been chosen.’

  That was it, then. The operation, or Sam. As he figured it, he might have a chance of making it up to Sam - but he’d never have another chance to do something like this again.

  ‘OK. I’m in.’

  ‘Och, I guessed you would be.’

  They continued the journey in silence till they arrived at an old farmhouse some distance outside Salisbury. The car pulled up outside the drive, and they got out.

  ‘Good luck, Gallagher.’

  They shook hands, and Rayne walked down the dirt drive without looking back. Moments later he heard the car drive off.