Choice of Weapon

by Craig Marten-Zerf

Craig Zerf/C. Marten-Zerf

  The Broken Men

  © 2013, Author

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  Chapter 1

  Garrett used the back of his glove to wipe the moisture from his face. It wasn’t raining but the morning mist was thick in the air. Everything that it touched was jeweled with thousands of tiny droplets of water. Clumps of snow lay in piles as if a giant gardener had swept it up, ready to dispose of later. The smell of winter heather lay heavy in the cold air. Male musk with a top note of honeysuckle. Over it all the sharp iron tang of snow. The smell of the Highlands.

  And Garrett breathed deep. Reveling in the crisp cleanness of the air. For years it had seemed that all he could smell was African dust, and cordite. Fear and flame. The rank odor of blood overlaid with the pungency of diesel fumes. The unmistakable perfume of war. But that was then.

  The far away sound of the red grouse punctured the morning silence. A distinctive guttural bark ending in a warning trill. Go-back-go-back-go-back.

  It was the end of November and the grouse-shooting season had been over for a few days now. Come April the birds would breed and their numbers would grow. And then come August, the glorious twelfth, the Laird would have his guests over and the cycle would start again. Rows of men in tweed, guns in hand. Ritual slaughter followed by Sloe gin and breakfast. The dead would be piled high, bright eyes turning dull. Feathers of burnished gold becoming leaves of unpolished copper. The polite pop of gentlemen’s shotguns as opposed to the insane hammering of a 7.62mm machine gun. The trill of the grouse instead of the screams of agony and mortal terror.

  As the estate gamekeeper, Garrett had been up since five twenty five that morning. A full two hours before sunrise. He traveled on foot, having nothing to do with the quad bikes that other gamekeepers in the area used. Sometimes he stayed out all night. Watching over the estate. Other estates in the area had been suffering from a massive increase in poaching that had arisen in the past couple of years. With red deer now fetching over fifteen Pounds sterling per pound weight, an average male could sell for as much as three thousand Pounds. Alladale estate next to his, had suffered the loss of over fifty deer so far this year. One hundred and fifty thousand Pounds Sterling. A staggering amount of money.

  Garrett had lost one. He had caught the poachers. Two Eastern Europeans armed with single shot, 20 gauge H & R shotguns loaded with deer slugs. He had given them a stern warning. This had included confiscating their weapons, breaking both of their trigger fingers and spray-painting their faces with purple Etro-Mark livestock branding paint – guaranteed not to wash off for six months. Word had spread. Garrett’s deer were safe. Had it been another time, another place, the ground would have been stained with the scarlet of retribution. But that was no longer Garrett’s way.

  The gamekeeper walked down to the Loch’s edge and looked into the clear water, catching his rough-shaven reflection as he did so and wondering, not for the first time of late, whether he was starting to get old. He stood at a little over six foot two and weighed in at two hundred and twenty pounds. No fat. His dark hair was devoid of gray and it tumbled in waves to his shoulders. This was not through any form of fashion consciousness or style. It was merely because he hadn’t had a haircut for a while. His hands, large with long fine fingers, like a surgeon or musician, were thickly calloused from manual labor and his muscles strained the seams of his thin cotton shirt that he wore despite the low temperature.

  It was immediately apparent when one looked at him that this was not a physique born in the sterile environment of the gymnasium or health club. It was a body forged through hard work and tempered by the outdoors. Muscles long and corded like plaited sisal, the skin of his face brown and windswept by countless sunrises and sunsets. Laughter lines etched deep into surprisingly smooth skin. And although his smile was ready and open, when you looked into his deep set dark green eyes you could plainly see a well of violence that stood ready to be drawn to the surface. He had learned, over time, to hood his eyes. To hide the violence deep within him. But sometimes, if he let his mind stray, it would crackle to the surface like sheet lightning.

  He decided to patrol the East border of the estate. Check the fences. See if there was any sign of poachers. He snapped his shotgun shut, a 12 bore sidelock side-by-side, hand made by Boss and Company in 1930. One of a pair.

  He skirted the loch at a run. Stride long and loping. A soldier’s run that came without effort. Light footed. Mile-eating. He could run like that all day. Indeed he remembered many days that he had. Days when he and his men had ran in hot pursuit of an enemy that seemed to appear and disappear at will. Carrying only water and ammunition, nerves strung as tight as piano wire. Running towards death, towards victory. And sometimes defeat. But now he ran mainly for the simple joy of running, stopping every now and then over the next two hours to see that the fence was intact, or check for tracks, both animal and human.

  As he crested a small brae his mobile phone rang. The strains of Debussy’s Syrinx flowed from it, the haunting notes of the flute rising into the frigid air. It was unusual to get any signal in an area as remote as he was but the height of the hill must have brought him on line.

  He stared at the unfamiliar number on the screen before flicking it open and answered.

  ‘Talk to me.’ White noise hissed in his ear. ‘Hello, is anyone there?’

  A female voice asked. ‘Is that you?’

  Garrett paused before he answered. ‘Manon?’

  The hiss of static.

  ‘Garrett. I need you. Please, help me.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘South Africa. Outside Johannesburg. I’m running an orphanage called “The Sunlight Childrens’ Home.”’

  ‘I’m coming for you. I’ll be there tomorrow.’

  And behind him a deer broke cover, its hooves drumming on the earth. Like distant machine gun fire. And for a tiny moment the air smelt of dust, and something else. Something feral.

  It took Garrett a little over forty-five minutes to run back to his croft. Legs pumping. Shotgun held at high port. He pulled his bed away from the wall and lifted one of the flagstones to expose a metal strongbox. He picked it up and opened the combination lock. Throwing back the lid to reveal shrink-wrapped bricks of USA Dollars. Hundred Dollar bills. Wrapped in blocks of one hundred. Ten thousand Dollars per brick. He grabbed four bricks. Shut the lid. Spun the lock. Replaced the box, the stone, the bed. He packed a small carry case. Two shirts, one pair of pants, socks, underwear, iPod. He wrote a quick note to the laird. Two lines. Fixed it to the front door with his hunting knife. Then he ran to Old Man Fergal’s lodge. The old man lived on a grace and favor cottage on the lairds land. Had done since time began. He was closer than the main house and he had a car. Garrett knew that he could rely on the old man to give him a lift to the village. From there he would get a taxi to the airport.

  He arrived at Aberdeen airport at four forty that afternoon. The only flights still available to Johannesburg at such short notice were first class with South African airways. Garrett paid and went through to the first class lounge. The price of the ticket didn’t bother him. He wouldn’t have been comfortable in a coach seat at any rate and money was merely a thing to exchange for commodities or services. He had long since learnt that cash had little to do with wealth. He used the facilities to have a long hot shower and, aft
er he had dressed, he went back to the lounge and grabbed himself a complimentary platter of sandwiches and a bowl of cashew nuts. While he ate he used one of the computers to look up the address for the Sunlight Childrens’ Home. He did not avail himself of the free bar facilities. He hadn’t had any alcohol for almost five years and he wasn’t going to start now. Not just before he was strapped into a seat, in a steel box with four hundred strangers for over nine hours. He did, however, sit in the smoking room for a while where he puffed his way through a couple of free cigars. He didn’t talk to anyone and, as is often the way in first class travel, no one attempted to strike up a conversation with him. False bonhomie and newfound companionship are traits usually limited to the close confines of cattle class. First class passengers pay for anonymity and privacy, something that Garrett was very comfortable with. He experienced the usual thrill of excitement as the massive liner powered free of the runway, its four Pratt & Whitney engines producing over a quarter of a million pounds of thrust in order to enable the nine hundred thousand pounds of steel to soar free of earths gravitational constraints.

  He accepted a glass of fresh orange juice from the hostess and then took his iPod out of his top pocket, plugged the earphones into his ears and lay back to the sounds of Joachim Raff's Symphony No. 3. At the beginning of the second movement the hostess interrupted to offer him dinner. Garrett asked for one of everything. Three starters; venison ravioli in a red wine sauce, Parma ham with fresh figs and foie gras with an onion compote. Two fish courses consisting of poached salmon with stir fried vegetables and seared tuna with a green salad. He eschewed the vegetarian main course option and plumped for the grilled beef tenderloin with shrimp and the rack of lamb. Both came with generous helpings of potatoes and vegetables. Instead of pudding he went with the cheese board and finally coffee.

  After brushing his teeth he settled back into his bed, plugged his iPod back in, turned off his lights, relaxed and let his mind drift.

  It had been over five years since had left Africa. Five years since he had been a soldier for other people’s wars. He had sworn never to return. For it was there that the beast had first been unleashed. It was there that he had first smelt its fetid breath. Hot and damp on his cheek. Reveled in its power. Until, as it always does, the beast had overcome him. He and it became one. Eventually he had become known as such and the local tribes had called him Popobawa or The Beast. He had become the ultimate warrior. Unbeatable, implacable. Forged in the fires of mortal combat. Annealed in the heat of battle.

  And later, as he realized what he had done, the unbelievable savagery and death he had dealt out, he came face to face with what he had become. And he could not live with it. So he had fled. He had left the continent of Africa and come to Scotland. A country of savage beauty without a savage soul. People who were tough without being hard. He had fled from the horror. From the death. The destruction.

  Mainly he had fled from the beast.

  But you cannot escape from yourself.

  So, over time, he had learnt to control it. To cage it. But still, in the dead of night, if he turned around really quickly. He would catch a glimpse of it. Huge. And dark. All-powerful.

  Now she had called.

  So he was traveling back to Africa. And the beast was coming with him.

  He felt its breath on his cheek again. Hot and wet. Like blood.

  It was five twenty eight ante-meridiem and Sister Manon Dubois sat silently in her room. Although she had drawn the drapes the African sun treated them with scorn, blazing through and filling the room as if the thin cotton was not even there. Thus she woke every morning with the sun. Her body clock a visceral thing, connected to the land like a peasant.

  She was on edge. Worried. Even though she was sure that she had done the right thing. She had exhausted every other avenue. There was no other way to turn. She had prayed for guidance and was sure that she had done the correct thing when she had phoned Garrett and asked for his help. She, more than anyone, knew what his acceptance was going to cost him. But she needed him. The children needed him. For did not the Psalms say, ‘The right hand of the Lord is exalted, and with it shall he give joy and salvation, and with his left hand He shall give damnation and eternal fire to the devil and his angels.’

  So she had called him. And he was coming. The left hand of the Lord.

  But now was the time for more mundane things. Getting the children up and making sure that they made their beds and washed. Preparing breakfast. Getting them to the local school. Sister Manon dressed in her usual attire; severe khaki pants, a loose cotton shirt that she buttoned to the neck and a pair of ankle-high leather boots. And hanging outside the shirt, a silver crucifix. Her choice of clothing was a deliberate but unsuccessful attempt to de-feminize her body. The fullness of her breasts and hips made mockery of her attempts.

  She did not wear a habit. In fact very few sisters of the Benedictine order had worn the habit since the nineteen sixties. Although, when she had first met Garrett she had been wearing one. She had been working in a Benedictine mission in Sierra Leone during the Revolutionary United Fronts last gasp. The ruling government had just begun running the slogan, ‘The future is in your hands,’ and, as a result, the RUF soldiers had taken to catching government sympathizers, particularly children, and cutting off their hands. The scale of the atrocities was horrendous and at times the small clinic in the mission had upwards of ten youths, some as young as seven, stoically waiting for treatment. Both hands brutally hacked off with machetes.

  Garrett had been a captain in President Kabbah’s army with a squad of twelve men under him. They were an elite force that called themselves ‘The Warriors’ and, initially, the president used them as a rapid response unit, however, as the war had continued, they had become more of a roving response unit. They were transported in a Jeep and a Land Rover series three 109. The troops were issued with the standard FNLA Belgian assault rifles and there was a two-man machine gun team that sported the FN Mag. They worked autonomously of the chain of command. Re-supplying off enemy kills and living off the land and the people. He had arrived late that night with his detachment. They had heard the rumors of the RUF’s retribution and had come to ascertain the truth. They also brought with them a small amount of medical supplies. Bandages and antibiotics. A pitiful amount compared to the physical abuse and damage that had taken place. He had taken the cache of supplies through to the clinic where he had met sister Manon. But when he had seen the extent of the savagery that had been inflicted he gathered all his troops together and made them hand in all of their personal supplies of medicine, bandages, antibiotics and, most importantly, morphine.

  And at that same time, knowing full well the futility of it, Garrett had fallen in love. From the moment that he had seen her, her heart shaped face drawn by exhaustion, framed by the black and white of her wimple and veil. Her eyes so deep blue as to be almost black. Her lips full, pale pink. An unblemished jewel in a cesspit of violence and corruption. And he knew, even then, that he was falling in love with a concept, a vision and a respite from the horror. As opposed to a flesh and blood woman.

  He silently offered the medicines and she smiled. He laid them on the floor next to where she was seated and then looked around the room. Perhaps ten or so children lay on rush mats on the floor. Their foreshortened arms wrapped in bandages. Their faces gray with pain, as there were no painkillers. But no one cried or complained. And when his gaze swept over them, those with enough strength nodded a greeting. One young child, a girl of perhaps eight, even managed to smile. Teeth as white as innocence. And more than anything that he had ever wanted in his life, Garrett wanted to find the men that had done this. He wanted to track them down and exact retribution upon them. When he looked back at the nun she actually flinched from his expression and he was immediately contrite.

  ‘I am sorry to barge in like this, Sister. These supplies are for you. I will send some of my men for more, whatever they can find they will bring back for you.
Meanwhile, I must find the people that did this and prevent it from happening again.’

  She nodded, hesitantly. ‘I know how you feel. I used to cry. Every day I used to cry. But I no longer have any tears left. Now I pray instead.’

  ‘Does prayer work, sister?’

  She nodded. ‘You are here.’

  She took his hand and stared deeply into his eyes. And to him that small contact felt as though he had been branded by Aphrodite. In a world of harshness and misery her unblemished soul stood out like a beacon of light. A light to which Garrett felt irresistibly drawn.

  ‘My name is Garrett.’

  ‘Manon. Sister Manon Dubois.’

  They sat together for a while. Not speaking, their hands clasped firmly together like shipwreck victims holding onto a lifeline.

  Abruptly Garrett stood up. ‘I swear to you, sister. I will find these men that did this to the children and I will punish them.’

  She watched him walk away, his green eyes ablaze with purpose, beckoning to his troops as he did so. And she slowly let her breath out and wondered at the strength of her feeling. Her heart was racing, her legs felt weak and when she closed her eyes she could still see him looking at her with his gaze of green fire.

  Garrett left corporal Ron Taylor, an older ex-Rhodesian fireforce soldier, in charge of guarding the mission with four riflemen. He took with him two South African ex-parabats, huge solid men, both with well-balanced personalities in that they had an equally large chip on each shoulder. As well as them there was his sergeant, a solid noncom and a good friend who went by the name of ‘The Dentist’ due to the horrendous state of his teeth, courtesy of a lifetime of neglect and self-professed dental-cowardice. Three more riflemen made up the rest of the team.

  It took Garrett just over two weeks to track down the perpetrators and exact what he considered to be appropriate retribution. And when Garrett and his men arrived back at the mission their infamy had spread before them. People averted their eyes when the warriors walked past and fear hung around them like a miasma. Garrett was puzzled. Where he had expected thanks he received apprehension. Instead of releasing the innocents from the dread of mutilation his actions had replaced it with something else entirely. He had replaced fear with dread. For now, instead of mere revolutionaries the villagers had Popobawa. The devil himself walked amongst them. The stealer of souls. The eater of dreams.

  Only Manon seemed to understand why he had done it. Although she did not condone what he had done. He had spent an evening trying to justify himself to her. He had stopped the atrocities, he told her. But at what price, she had countered. It was worth it at any price, he said. Then she had asked him the one question that he had been avoiding. The one question that he refused to ask himself. She had asked him if he had enjoyed it.

  And because he would not lie to her he told her the truth. When he answered she recoiled as if he had struck her.

  He left the next morning. He took the Jeep to Freetown and resigned his commission. He had not worked out his contract so he received no bonus pay. Simply a one way ticket to a country of his choice. He chose to return to Scotland, having lived there once before. He flew to Heathrow via Jan Smuts airport in Johannesburg, South Africa.

  In the five years since Garrett had last been there, the airport had changed completely. Not only had it experienced a name change from Jan Smuts to Oliver Tambo it had also tripled in size. As he only had carry on luggage he was quickly through customs and he followed the signs to the Hertz counter. He waited in a short queue and then chose a Jeep Cherokee, figuring that it had enough grunt and could perform off road if it had to. Also, it was fitted with a satnav which he would need as it had been a very long time since he had last been in Johannesburg or Joburg, as the locals called it. There was a slight problem when it transpired that he didn’t have a credit card and wanted to do the deal in cash. However this minor issue went away after he pushed an extra handful of one hundred Rand notes across the counter. The extra Rands disappeared as if by magic to be replaced with a key and a smile. He got lost once on the way to the car pick up area because he had stopped at an MTM kiosk to rent a cell phone. After retracing his steps he got back on track and found the Jeep soon after. He bleeped it open, threw his bag onto the back seat and slid in. The interior smelt overpoweringly of bubblegum and hot leather, so the first thing he did was turn on the power and roll the windows down. Secondly he switched on the satnav and typed in the address that he had looked up at Heathrow, waited for the system to initialize and pulled out into the traffic.

  As he drove from the airport, through Johannesburg he was amazed at how the city had fallen into ruin. Particularly Hillbrow, an inner city area that was the place to be seen back in the late seventies. There used to be nightclubs, restaurants and five star hotels. He cruised past the former five star Chelsea Hotel. There were old mattresses on the pavement outside and long streaks of filth ran down each window opening.

  Garrett wondered how the same government that could create something as amazing as the Oliver Tambo airport with its world-class subway system could also allow a ghetto like this to exist. And then he thought of cities like Detroit and New York and the devastation that still remained after hurricane Katrina and he wondered no more. He drove through the leafy suburbs of Houghton and marveled at the massive mansions there. He remembered ‘The Dentist’, his sergeant in Sierra Leone, had once told him that Joburg was the most treed city in the world and, driving through it, he could believe it. When you looked down from the highway across the burbs the trees were so thick as to mask the houses amongst them. Eventually the satnav guided him to his destination. The Sunlight Childrens’ Home in the Honeydew area.

  It wasn’t at all what he expected. The home was in the middle of an industrial area and was converted from an old factory, as was evident by the square aluminum windows and sheet metal roofing. He pulled into one of the designated parking bays and climbed out, locking the Jeep behind him.

  There was an armed guard lounging in a plastic chair outside the double door entrance to what was probably the lobby or reception area. He wore a faded green uniform and carried a Norinco Hawk, a badly made Chinese copy of the Remington 870 12 gauge pump action shotgun. The bluing was already worn and the barrel had a light patina of rust. Garrett would have bet all that he owned that the weapon had never been cleaned. But the guard himself was a pleasure. He jumped out of his seat and snapped to attention, giving Garrett a whippy, over the top salute accompanied with a wide grin. ‘Welcome to the Sunlight Childrens’ Home, sir. How may I help you?’

  Garrett smiled back but abstained from saluting. ‘Hello. I’ve come to see sister Manon.’

  ‘Straight through both doors and up the stairs to your left, sir.’

  Garrett nodded his thanks and followed the guard’s instructions. The small entrance hall was furnished with a couple of cheap office chairs, one each side of a low fake-wood table. There was a small pile of old magazines on the table as well as a stack of brochures with the home’s logo on them. The floor was bare polished concrete. He went through the area and up the stairs, pausing at the top to glance out of a window that looked down on what used to be the factory’s main production space. It had been divided into a central corridor and two large dormitories. Because the factory roof was so high the dormitory walls served only as partitions and were not floor to ceiling structures. There was a fully covered area at the end of the corridor that he took to be the bathrooms. He glanced up at the un-insulated roof. It was obvious that the place would be freezing in winter and an oven in summer. But better an un-insulated roof than none at all, mused Garrett as he turned and entered the passage that led off the landing. He was faced with a long corridor with seven or so doors running down the one side and one at the end. Not knowing what else to do he decided to simply call.

  ‘Manon!’

  The door at the end of the corridor opened. She walked towards him, hesitantly at first and then, over the last few meter
s, at a sprint. She threw her arms around his neck and pulled herself hard up against him. Garrett had forgotten how tiny she was, at five foot two she was fully a foot shorter than him and she must have weighed in at much less than half his two hundred and twenty pounds. She smelled of soap and flowers and something else. And he breathed in as deeply as he dared, savoring her fragrance. Reveling in the feel of her.

  ‘You came.’ She whispered up at him.

  He nodded. ‘I am here for you.’