Place of Bones

by Larry Johns

  On the touchlines, watching the fevered activity, as the sun burst sublimely majestic over the distant horizon, a triumphant fiery orb, stood three men. Two were black men in uniform, the other a white man in a safari suit. One of the black men was a very tall man indeed. He seemed to dwarf the others. The topic under discussion was not the fevered activity - they had long since exhausted that subject - it was football.

  “Of course,” said Arnold Hewes, “our game of football is very different to yours, sir. It’s closer to Rugby in some ways.”

  Motanga raised his yardbrush eyebrows and glowered down at the man. “Rugby! A child’s game!”

  “Oh, yes,” agreed the other black man, “A child’s game.”

  “Quite so,” said Hewes, “quite so.” He wished he could think of something to add, but could not. His mind was on what was happening out on the pitch, where two hundredweight of MSB2Z was being transferred out of the canisters and into the pressurized spraying gear. It was a delicate procedure that should, by rights, have been performed in a sealed room of a sealed building. Of course, the liquid would only become potent on the addition of the second element - pure water. But it was unnerving just the same. Hewes glanced up at the yellow sky with its fiery orb and the only thing to take his breath away was the fact that there were no rain clouds up there! There were plenty on the northern horizon, but none up there!

  “Now, if you want to see a game, mister Hewes, I suggest you stay over until Sunday.” Motanga turned to the other black man, Nglabi Lutope, his Chief of Staff. “That will be a game of games, will it not, Nglabi?”

  The man nodded. “Oh, it will, mister president, it certainly will.” Lutope did not actually like football, whatever the shape of the ball, and he was as concerned about what was going on out on the pitch as was Hewes.

  “You see, mister Hewes,” said Motanga, turning, “Sunday is the day of the HQ versus the Houseboy’s team. An annual event. If you are still here, you will witness something you will not witness in your own country - the president receiving shin-kicks from a servant.” He laughed hugely. “Oh, yes, they do that, the little rascals. But it is good fun, and most worthwhile. Eh, Nglabi?”

  “They seem to enjoy it, mister president.”

  “Enjoy it? They thrive on it. Last year, mister Hewes, I came off the field with a bruised knee and an extremely painful collar bone. And do you know what? The damned referee never once blew a foul! Never once!”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Hewes, watching one of Clyde Lauter’s boffins painstakingly screwing a cap down onto the spraying gear of one of the helicopters.

  “It’s true,” enthused Motanga, turning to Nglabi. “Isn’t it true, Nglabi?”

  Nglabi opened his mouth to reply, but Hewes cut in, “Ah! I think they’re finished.”

  “What?” said Motanga.

  Hewes indicated the aircraft, from which the other boffin had detached himself and was loping over the field towards the three men. He pulled up short, breathless.

  “All secure, sir,” he puffed, addressing himself to Hewes.

  Motanga clapped Hewes on his back in friendly fashion. “Then I think it is time to break our fast, eh?”

  Hewes, as he allowed himself to be led to the waiting Land Rover, could not shake off a feeling of unreality. What had seemed a brilliant scheme back in the States had degenerated into something else entirely. God help the world, he thought, if this man ever gets his hands on the big one!

  *

  Craig Harding was 36 years old. He was married to a beautiful girl called Frances and the couple had been blessed with two lovely children; Mark, 7, and Wendy, 9. Frances worked part-time in a drugstore in Teacup, Tennessee, where Harding had bought a fine cottage on the banks of Martha Pond Lake. The reason Frances could find time to work was that Harding’s mother - his father had passed on some years before - lived with them in the cottage and was more than happy to take over the children for a spell. Contradictory to the usual run of such arrangements, the system worked. And happily. Frances and “Nan” Harding got on like houses afire. Which was as well, because pressure of his work kept Harding away from home for long periods at a stretch. The last three months, for example, had seen him in Alaska, working on MSB2Z with general Clyde Lauter’s staff.

  He sat now in the body of the FZA helicopter studying a large-scale map of Zaire, whose central point was the town of Mbandaka. He noted that the equator near as dammit cut right through the town’s centre, and it did not surprise him. The air down south in Kinshasa had been quite breathable, almost pleasant. But now, as the two aircraft, formated in a loose line abreast, approached the confluence of the Zaire and the Ubangui, he could feel the hot dampness beginning to clog the recirculated atmosphere of the interior of the aircraft, which was - Harding had taken great pains to check - cut off from the outside world. He shuddered to think what it would be like to live down there.

  He glanced out the window.

  Trees...trees...trees, and more trees. The helicopters were flying at something over a thousand feet and yet all that could be seen in any direction, was trees. To himself, Harding said, “Well, it’s gotta be perfect terrain for it.” He pressed his nose against the vibrating perspex and squinted down. There was the river, laying in the green like a silver serpent. And there, up ahead, was it? Yes! The fork. Like a giant “Y”, the right hand channel stretching away north and disappearing finally in the haze. He returned to the map.

  He had calculated, taking the prevailing weather conditions into his accounting, that two sweeps would be necessary, and that the aircraft, set four miles apart from each other, would have to make these sweeps at a height of no less than 450 feet, and no more than 500, and that the two runs would have to join edge to edge, giving preference to the central corridor. This, Harding was certain, and provided a wind did not develop in the meantime, would amply cover the relatively small area Aaron Motanga had marked on the map.

  Harding glanced down at the oxygen cylinder with its attached mask, that lay on the floor beside him; one of ten sets they had brought with them from the States. It all looked so damned clinical! And Harding felt so damned clinical. He shook off the thought that had been with him ever since Lauter had told him what was expected of him.

  Harding knew that MSB2Z, in its gaseous form, was twelve times heavier than even the coldest air. This had been proved in Alaska. And it would in any case be forced earthward by the downdraft of the rotors. All the same, the masks were mandatory, and would have to be worn for at least three hours after the...the what? The attack? The operation? The exercise? What do you call it, Craig? He sighed. Let’s stick with The Trials, as Lauter had called them. They were conducting another trial on another uninhabited area, except that, this time, it was not cold outside, it was hotter than Hades and wetter than a Turkish baths.

  The Congo Rain Forest Trials.

  Nothing wrong with that. There was no-one down there, was there? A few monkeys, maybe. One or two gorillas. Plus the odd ‘gator. But these animals would not be in the slightest inconvenienced. MSB2Z attacked only human cellular structures. Nothing else. And there were no humans down there. Harding had to make himself believe that.

  The trouble was he knew differently.

  So why did you help invent the damned stuff, Harding? To keep it in a cylinder?

  He might have been gratified, relieved - purged? - to learn that the two FZA aircraft with their deadly cargoes had passed within twelve miles of over forty of his intended victims, not an hour before.

  *

  The two dull-grey and unmarked helicopters arrowed southwards, hugging the earth, under a blue but hazy sky. The clouds were behind them now, merely an extension of the northern horizon. Now the vast tracts of scrubland stretched out before and to the sides of them. But the feeling of desolation was not the same, for over the horizon to the west lay relative civilization. Lukolela. Mossaka. Gamboma. Bolobo and Bouanga. Whilst to the east lay the townships of Inonga, with its small commercial ai
rport, Kutu and Bali-lboma. Ahead, somewhere, was Mushie. And it was Mushie that the pilot of the lead helicopter was hoping to miss.

  *

  A track appeared ahead of us. On it, several miles east, a truck trailed a cloud of dust behind it. The copilot had his field glasses pressed to the windscreen. “Headed away from us. Open job. No markings.”

  “He can join the club,” said Mahindru. “They still on the screen, colonel?”

  I had taken over radar watch since the copilot had become involved with the truck. The range had been set at sixty miles and I had been tracking the progress of two blips that had appeared some time ago, headed north, some twelve miles out. They had disappeared and now there were no positive blips at all, just a lot of snow from the ground echoes. “Nope. Disappeared north”

  “Right. River ahead.” said Mahindru.

  I looked up. “That’s the Kwa.”

  “Thought so.”

  We drew closer and closer. The river glinted emptily under the sun. A huge cloud of white and pink flamingos rose into the air from the opposite bank. Mahindru twisted his left hand on the vertical flight control and the flamingos fell away beneath us and were gone. Mahindru was constantly checking the rear view mirror and talking to the other pilot. We sank back to earth and the scrub flashed beneath us in a blur. “Come on,” said Mahindru tightly, “You’re still too high!”

  The other pilot’s voice came over the headset. “Prem, you mad bastard! Your wheels are almost on the ground.”

  Mahindru nodded. “And so they should be. Come on, man, get down here!”

  “Holy Mother!”

  I snuck a look out of the side window. Baker-Two came swooping down behind us, wobbled, then steadied. I could see the white blobs of the three faces behind the screen; the pilot, the copilot, and Brook.

  “Another track!” This was our copilot.

  I looked and took a guess. “That’ll be the road to Kwamouth.” It was empty as far as I could see.

  Mahindru said, “Then that first one must have been the Mushie road. Well navigated, colonel.”

  I nodded. It had been pure luck and guesswork. The copilot resumed watch on the radar and I turned my attention to the landscape. Another river came up, headed obliquely across our course. It was not marked on Mahindru’s map and I couldn’t remember it. We sped over the grasslands at a rate that made my head spin. I did not have a clue as to what weird and wonderful method Mahindru employed in staying so close to the ground for mile after mile, without diving into it. It was almost mesmerizing.

  Mahindru again told the second aircraft to get lower, and again the pilot said, “Holy Mother!”

  To me, Mahindru said, “So you think the river is our best way in, Colonel.”

  I dragged my eyes from the hypnotic effect of the blurred ground, flashing beneath us. “It’s the only way in. East of Kinshasa the countryside is just what you see in front of you, which is nothing, and they’ve got radar at Luana and Bankana. We’ve been lucky so far. Let’s not push it.”

  He nodded. “You’re in charge, colonel. I may as well swing west now then, eh?”

  “Any time you like. Keep west until you hit the Zaire, then follow it south. All you can do is stay low.” Quickly, I added a fervent, “As you are is fine. There’ll be plenty of river traffic at Malebo, I’m afraid. ‘Specially at Makula, which is the entrance to the Pool. Also, Makula has a customs post that I guess will be wide awake.”

  Mahindru grunted and pressed the air-to-air transmit button. “Ranjid?”

  “Yes?” The other pilot’s voice was noticeably strained.

  “Coming to port. Two-eight-oh. Now!”

  My stomach heaved as the world outside the cabin tilted, swung to the right, then steadied. I did not bother to check that the trailing chopper was still with us. This was their environment. And when we were finished I was going to be delighted to let them keep it. Mahindru said, “A problem, d’you think? The customs post?”

  “Probably not. The fact that we’re unmarked will be too subtle a point for them. In this part of the world ninety-nine percent of air traffic is FZA. They might decide to make a token protest to FZA HQ, but by then we’ll be over the target.”

  “Comforting,” said Mahindru.

  I said, “Well, that’s the theory anyway.”

  The copilot cut in. “Something moving to port, sir. On the scope. About fifteen miles out. Looks like a fixed wing job.” This to me, indicating the blip on the screen. “Shot onto the scope like a rocket. Now it’s circling.”

  Mahindra said, “What do you think, colonel?”

  I looked at the map. There was only one thing it could be. “That’s the Masia-Mbio flying club. Small fry.”

  Mahindru nodded. “Keep your eyes on it, copilot.”

  I swung round in the seat and took a look back into the cargo space. The sea of black faces reminded me of the river trip up from Lukolela. A couple of the men raised their hands to me. I waved back. Totally inconsequentially, I wondered how they were making out on the calls-of-nature front. I had managed to take a leak back at the river, and I had seen several others doing the same. Beyond that, anything else they couldn’t sort out themselves, in their own way, would have to be baked.

  Mahindru announced, “The Zaire.”

  I looked. He was right. There it sat in front of us like a dirt highway covered with silver confetti. Somewhere in my mind a voice said, The Road to Ruin. I had been wondering when the “stage fright” would make its appearance this time, and here it came now, as I looked down at that damned river, stretching south to Kinshasa and our appointment with Aaron Motanga. The slight tightening of the stomach muscles and an even slighter feeling of nausea. It was a feeling that would come whether I was thinking dangerous thoughts or not. It was as if something inside knew better than I when to start feeling scared. It would mount now, as the minutes passed by and the target drew closer, culminating, I knew only too well, in that split second of absolute terror and self-doubt, as the first bullet was fired in anger. Then, especially on full-scale actions, as this one promised to be, it would go away, leaving room for something else; something where fright and terror had no part. The Zulu calls it The Divine Madness.

  The Divine Madness.

  It was a feeling, a compulsion, that gave you the certainty of invincibility. I had never been able to come to grips with it, to fathom it out. Except to say that it only came with the knowledge, the certainty, that you were about to die.

  The Divine Madness turned battles into bloodbaths, men into animals, lusting for blood and death. And it would not go away until sated.

  “Cat” would say that it was a self-induced hatred. “If you can kill a man you don’t hate,” he would philosophize, “then you’re nothing but a bloody sadist! You’ve got to hate him, and with a passion, a burning desire. And The Divine Madness is nature’s remedy in war.” This kind of soul-baring would normally be the result of too many beers. And afterwards he would shrug it off. He did not like to be considered a deep thinker. “Anyway,” he would add, smiling apologetically, “that’s the way we French get away with murder. The Crime de Passione. The ultimate defense mechanism - for the soul...and for the jury!” Then he would deliberately belch. “And who’s a pompous bastard, eh?”

  I looked down at my hands. They were steady. I rubbed them together. They were dry. I swallowed, and still could. This was only the beginning.

  “Boat ahead.” said Mahindru.”

  *

  Piet Vryburg sat on the chair in front of the radio, waiting. The carrier wave hissed gently. He had his crossed feet on the table and the chair was tilted onto its back legs, balanced precariously. His head rested forward, chin on chest. His hands were clasped loosely in his lap and the cigarette in the fingers of his right hand smoldered away with an occasional sizzle of burning saltpeter. The smoke, blue tinted, rose like a thin, straight cord to the ceiling. He was not sleeping but he was close to it, negative reaction having unwound his system as effectively
as a drug.

  Outside, another football game had developed. Those members of Camp-One not actually playing or watching, and there were some one hundred and fifty spectators, were sitting around in groups haggling over dice.

  Augarde lay on McCann’s bunk, staring up at the contour-lines of mould on the ceiling. A burst of cheering woke him from his reverie. He shifted his head and saw Vryburg’s back. To himself, he thought, “You’re going to collapse, chum. Sure as eggs are eggs, that chair is - “

  The radio clicked. “Base...Base...Base.”

  Vryburg lifted his feet from the table and the chair righted itself with a clatter. He flicked the cigarette out the door and touched the transmit button, leaning in to the microphone. “Go ahead.”

  “We are here, Base.” It was Zwekki’s voice - the albino corporal.

  “Okay,” said Vryburg, “Well, make yourselves comfortable. It’ll be hours yet.” He had sent Zwekki and a detail of men out to the landing area to relieve Kimba.

  He rose up and walked to the door, fumbling in his pocket for another cigarette. He lit up and leant there watching the game rushing about amid the arrows of light piercing the foliage. It occurred to him that the seal may have been set for the future of Camp-One - that it could be used as an advance base in yet another prolonged mercenary war. He was not sure he relished the notion. Also, he was not certain that he really resented not having gone with McCann. Perhaps it was better this way...a gentle slide out of the mercenary business. He stretched. Surely to God there was more to life.

  The game continued.

  Someone called half-time.

  Then Vryburg heard it. The steady whine of an aircraft...a helicopter. There was no mistaking that distinctive sound. But it was some way off and, from the sound of it, flying north to south. Vryburg hoped that Zwekki had obeyed his instructions and moved the vehicles under cover. He nodded. He would have done, and Kimba had already camouflaged the Chinese helicopter. He twisted his head and looked at the radio. Should he call? Just to make sure? The aircraft noise was fading. Then gone.