LB plummeted, arms and legs outstretched, cupped in the palm of rushing air. His cheeks rubberized; the stiff camo uniform flapped. The drop deafened and silenced him, took away his weight, and left LB nothing but velocity and the beauty of falling free.
Far below waited a carnival atmosphere, applause, kids—air shows were a taste of glory, a pat on the back, the best temporary duty a GA team could go on. Looking toward the fast-closing ground, LB saw a pillar of gray smoke billowing from the grassy plain just east of Waterkloof Air Base. By now, the downed pilot would have staggered out of the trees, drawing applause from ten thousand spectators in lawn chairs and on blankets at the edge of the big field. The air show crowd would have heard his Mayday call and Kingsman 1’s reply over loudspeakers. Every eye would be scanning the firmament for the plunging dots, the American Guardian Angels jumping to the rescue.
LB’s wrist altimeter checked off eight thousand, seven fifty, seven thousand, six fifty. The smoke rising from the fake crash site confirmed that he was coming in downwind. Five miles north of the air base, Pretoria sprawled with pubs and pretty Afrikaans girls for later.
At thirty-five hundred, LB gritted his teeth, crossed his legs to ease the brunt of deceleration, and yanked the pillow grip of his main chute. The canopy fluttered out behind him. The gray silk rectangle filled instantly; the lines went taut and squashed LB together at the midsection as the leg straps yanked his lower body into his upper half. He slowed and snapped back to his squat shape with a grunt, beginning the downward drift to the landing zone.
LB hailed over the team freq: “PJ One up.”
Doc, soaring in behind and above, answered, “PJ Two up.” Jamie and Quincy responded, then Wally, at the top of the stack, replied last, “Team Leader up.”
At eight hundred feet above the open grass, the cheers reached LB. Children pointed skyward, the thousands of folks below clapped and waved American and South African flags, the aromas of steaks and sausages on hundreds of braai grills winged up to him. LB worked the left and right toggles beside his head to circle around, coming in downwind to slow his approach.
LB spilled altitude fast. At one hundred feet he released the fifteen-foot tether that lowered his med ruck, doffing that weight before landing, jerking him when the line went taut. He leveled off when the ruck dragged the grass, pulling both toggles to his waist to flare the chute and bleed off the final bit of height. His boots touched down, and with smooth, practiced movements LB released the chest strap and bellyband, then flipped the ejectors on his leg straps, freeing him from the harness. The chute fainted at his back. LB unclipped the tether, dragged the ruck close, and took a knee, weapon up.
Stock to his cheek, eyes down the open sight, LB scanned the open field with his M4. He didn’t watch Doc, Jamie, or Quincy drop in a ring around him; his task was to be the first peg down of a protected perimeter. Wally landed fifteen seconds after LB. With the team on the ground, the PJs reeled in their med rucks and left all five chutes collapsed in the grass. Wally, the team’s combat-rescue officer, took tactical control.
All his commands, “Move,” “Stay tight,” “Go, go,” “Watch our six,” were broadcast over the loudspeakers. Everything was simplified, war-movie dialogue for the whooping and hollering masses. The crowd hit their loudest pitch when the South African pilot stumbled forth from the tree line and his orange marker smoke, waving to the arriving Guardian Angels, shouting, “Thank God you’re here.”
LB got to him first. He set the pilot on the grass to take a look at his pretend injuries. Jamie, Doc, Quincy, and Wally shielded LB inside a picket of raised rifles facing four directions. Wally got on the ground-to-air freq, again amplified to the thousands of onlookers, to call in the South African Air Force chopper for evac.
LB laid a hand across the pilot’s shoulder. To the clapping crowd, this surely looked reassuring.
“I got something for you here, buddy.”
LB dug into his ruck, past the ice packs. He handed the pilot a cold beer.
The pilot, a meaty Afrikaans named Marius, took off one of his boots. For no reason LB could guess, the man dumped a whole Castle Lager into it.
Marius held the boot out for LB to drink. Around the bistro table, Doc, Quincy, and Jamie leaned back in their chairs, away from the offered boot. At tables nearby on the restaurant patio, others paid attention. LB shook his head.
“Dude.”
Marius waggled the boot as if the thing itself insisted.
“Drink. It’s an honor.”
“It’s a shoe.”
“You’re in my country, man. This is for you.”
LB pivoted to ask a South African marine seated at his back.
“This a joke? Is he messing with me?”
“No, man. This is shit we do. Go ahead.”
LB reached for the boot. He sniffed for the smell of foot, but all he got was the sloshing fizz of beer. Doc, Jamie, and Quincy looked amazed as LB raised the laces and leather tongue to his face, one hand under the rubber heel. Marius seemed pleased, but his pleasure was more about getting his way than imparting a tribute.
LB guzzled the boot. The taste was just beer. The three PJs around him clapped; he’d done it for them, and they had no intention of doing the same. LB handed the wet shoe back to Marius, who wordlessly slipped it over his bare sock. The pilot made a fist bump with LB and a little exploding sound, then looked around for their waitress, impatient. Marius stood and nodded down over LB, bestowing some benediction; LB had passed a test of his. The big man left the table to fetch the third round from the bar. It wasn’t his turn to buy; he refused to take turns. He’d bought all the beers for LB, Doc, Quincy, and Jamie.
LB settled back in his plastic chair, unsure if he’d been initiated or duped. Either way, the patio at Eastwoods sparkled, the tony neighborhood of Pretoria shined. The South Africans on the sidewalks or drinking around LB were a handsome bunch, black and white. Lots of reflecting glass in the modern architecture, green spaces, clean streets, trendy shops, and fashion-conscious people strolling made the place look more like San Francisco than the old home of apartheid.
This trip was LB’s third African Aerospace Defense Expo (AADE) in seven years. Wally and Doc had been with him for each, but this was the first for Jamie and Quincy. The annual air show had become a sizeable event. All the big players wanted a piece of South Africa, the leading economy on the continent. China had a major presence at this year’s AADE, so did the Russians and French. The United States had brought six aircraft down from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti—four C-130s and a pair of F-16s—plus a hundred aerospace contractors and the GA team. A dozen nations’ militaries held sway at Eastwoods this glistening afternoon, an array of flight suits, camos, berets, and ranks painted the patio. Wally was somewhere in this kaleidoscope, schmoozing.
With Marius gone for a minute, LB swirled a finger around the table to invoke the team’s attention.
“Did Wally tell you?”
Quincy flattened his big mitts on the metal table, rattling the dozen empty bottles.
“Yeah. And I think it’s sweet.”
LB rocked in his seat. The plastic under him threatened to buckle.
“You’re kidding.”
Quincy made a ridiculous face.
“Fuck yes, I’m kidding.”
When Marius returned with beers dangling between his thick fingers, the team stopped sniggering. The pilot asked what the hilarity had been. LB tried to wave it off as nothing, but Jamie told him about Wally on one knee, proposing over the radio in the back of a cargo plane to a major all the way back in Djibouti.
Marius laughed hard, perhaps to be included.
“Jirre.” This was the Afrikaans way of saying “wow.”
For uncomfortable moments, the laughing Marius remained unaware that no one had joined him. Jamie, who’d told the story, licked his lips and hung his head, a sorry pose. Doc and Quincy drummed their fingers on the metal table. LB worked on his beer, waiting this out. The clueless M
arius didn’t quit fast enough. LB set down his beer and raised a palm.
“Okay, pal. Let it go.”
Marius sniffed away the last of his laughter.
“What?”
“I said just let it go. Wally’s getting married. So good for him.”
“Ja, good for him. But you laughed.”
Jamie tried to placate him, leaning across the table.
“I shouldn’t have said anything. My fault.”
When Marius glared at Jamie, Doc tugged the young PJ upright in his chair, keeping him out of it.
Marius spread his arms to survey the Americans at the table. He could have taken on any of them except Quincy, and he would have been a handful for the big PJ. Though the bar rippled with an international flavor today, Marius had an ample number of South African Army and Air Force members nearby, and as a rule they ran large.
For no reason LB could articulate, because in his way of thinking he’d done nothing to bring this on himself, Marius addressed him.
“I buy you drinks.”
“Thank you.”
“I let you pretend to rescue me. In front of fucking ten thousand people.”
“Like I said . . . Thank you.”
“So suddenly I’m an arsehole?”
Why do it? LB had never developed complex answers to simple questions. This was his strength, what he valued most about himself and believed others admired in him: he gave dogged and linear, reliable, repeatable responses to challenges. This was what LB tried to teach young pararescuemen as an instructor at Pararescue Indoctrination, what he tried to give to the wounded in combat when they’d lost almost all their own strength. Never quit. Focus, narrow it down, right here and now. Later will take care of itself. Why jump out of a copter into a raging sea or out of a plane into a boiling desert, into an icy crevasse, into a firefight, into this? Why? Because that was the job.
“Not suddenly.”
Marius shot up, the rim of the table in his hands. Bottles cascaded past LB, spilling on the bricks, one of the full ones doused him. With a heave, the big pilot tipped the table into LB’s lap; LB fended it off, and the table rolled away to rest upside down. Doc, Jamie, Quincy, and the beer-soaked LB sat in an empty ring where it had been. Marius, standing alone, moved his arms and fists like a flexing gorilla. The rest of the patio’s patrons swallowed their tongues; the music in the background was the only sound left, with Marius commanding everyone’s attention, awkward and wrong.
“Get up.”
Whether through surprise or lack of desire, Doc, Jamie, and Quincy stayed rooted to their seats. LB stayed in his plastic chair for a different reason. He’d been told to stand.
Marius grunted.
“You’ve got a snotklap coming, mate.”
The pilot took one stride across crunching glass. His next step was interrupted.
Wally slipped into the circle without making a sound, even without treading on the glass. Taller than Marius, rangy and erect, cropped, tucked, and certain, Wally hoisted both hands to ward off the advancing goonish pilot.
“I don’t know what he said or did, but I’m sure you deserve an apology.”
Marius pouted, mulling this shift. LB hadn’t kept count of the pilot’s beers, only his own, and maybe Marius had been further along than he’d known. The big Afrikaner’s features dulled the way a drunk’s would, sudden and unreasoned.
“Alright.”
Without turning his sunglasses away from Marius, Wally reached behind him to snap his fingers.
“First Sergeant.”
LB had no urge to fight, but also none to capitulate. He hovered between the two choices, impressed with himself in this moment that he had the presence of mind to wonder what sort of story this would make for later. But the only people to tell it to who might care or understand were the men around him right now.
“Sorry, pal. Didn’t mean anything by it.”
This defused Marius, but not enough for Wally to walk away. From behind his shades, Wally saw something that kept him rooted between LB and the big pilot. Doc and Jamie set to putting the table on its legs. A waitress with a broom and dustpan wended through the stunned and gawping military men and women from around the globe. Still, Wally faced Marius.
The pilot aimed an arm thick as a post past Wally, at LB.
“Hy’s vol kak.” This bit of Afrikaans was easy to interpret: “He’s full of shit.”
Wally nodded. “I agree.”
The pilot wavered on his feet and between languages. He growled in a jowly, accented English.
“Just be glad he’s one of yours.”
“Most days, I’m not.” Wally leaned in an inch, just enough. “But understand, friend. He is one of mine.”
Marius backed a step, not in retreat but to better look Wally up and down, a sort of public dressing-down.
“You’re the moffie who took the knee on the radio, eh?”
Wally cocked his head.
“I don’t know that one.”
A British airman at a nearby table provided the translation.
“Pansy.”
Wally rubbed the back of his neck with long fingers.
“He told you?”
LB answered before Jamie.
“I thought it was a laugh.”
“Was it?”
“Yep.”
At this, LB stood. Doc, Quincy, and Jamie, all taller than LB, rose, too. They stacked in a line, ready as ever to jump behind him.
LB closed the distance to Marius, stepping beside Wally to dig a finger into the Afrikaans pilot’s burly chest.
“But understand, friend. He’s our moffie.”
Marius’s lips parted, but he had no quick words, stymied just long enough for LB to walk on. Doc tugged Wally by the sleeve to get him moving, too, past the waitress working the broom. The bar, like a tree full of birds when a cat has gone away, began to chirp again.
Chapter 3
When the chopper touched down, a hundred buzzards burst skyward in a dark spiral, a swirling, squealing pillar. On broad, black wings they rode the hard stench into the air, leaving feathers and white droppings over the carcass. The buzzards fluttered into a high, lazy circle to wait for the living to go away.
Neels stepped out of the chopper first, rifle in hand should there be big cats about. He tucked his sunglasses into a pocket, then held up a palm to keep Opu and the photographer in the helicopter until he’d cleared the area.
He did not approach the dead rhino but walked a wide circle around it, to leave the crime scene untouched for Opu. Nothing leaped out of the brush, though tracks were everywhere—of lions, leopards, spotted hyenas, jackals, wild dogs, and men. Neels signaled that it was safe.
Opu approached with his metal detector and knives, the police photographer with his camera and notepad. The pilot finished his shutdown, then emerged in his white bush hat and blue flight suit. The midday heat flooded down, unbroken by wind or shade. Insects kept a constant chatter in the brush, and flies clotted on the carcass.
With no breeze to push the smell of rot away, Neels could find no place to stand out of it. He backed away to lessen it. Opu noticed his grimace and shook his old, black head at Neels, who, even after so many years and carcasses, could stand the sight of fresh death better than its stink.
The rhino lay in a round patch of bare dirt. All the grass had been scrabbled away by the host of animals that had come to eat the carcass, evidence of the great commotion in the bush whenever something big died. The beast’s belly had been clawed open, likely by lions. The guts would have been devoured first, then the meat around the ribs, leaving the bones picked clean to bleach in the light. The smaller scavengers would have kept their distance while the big cats and hyenas gorged. Once the body had been stripped of its softer meats and organs, the buzzards swarmed in. They were patient and numerous enough to peck through the tough hide on the back and shoulders. Finally, the sun, rain, and flies would dissolve the flesh and skin into the bush, and the wind and elephant
s would scatter the skeleton.
Opu stepped onto the orb of raw earth, moving into the choking odor without a flinch. The man was a former poacher. Now an investigator for the Kruger, he rode this chopper to three, four, five murdered rhinos every day of the week.
Neels stood back with the photographer. The cameraman was Zulu, a talkative people, but this one had not spoken in the chopper and did not speak now, only stared. The pilot came alongside Neels. In the heat and reek, all three winced while Opu worked close to the corpse. The young South African National Parks pilot, an Englishman in his first week on the job, pinched his nose. Neels glared at him, and the pilot dropped his hand. Pinching the nose was disrespectful; the dead beast’s condition should be witnessed, breathed, recorded, and despised.
Opu waved the head of the metal detector over the rhino’s body, guiding it across the white picket of ribs into the emptied torso. Next he scanned the dirt around the body, seeking a casing or a bullet that might have been eaten by a scavenger and spit out or regurgitated. The detector beeped steadily, finding nothing.
The old ex-poacher tugged down the bill of his baseball cap against the sun. He swept the metal detector across the rhino’s gray skull. The beeps lengthened into a tinny wail.
Opu set the detector aside and knelt for his kit. He popped open the plastic case he’d brought, removing latex gloves and a long knife. The rhino lay awkwardly on his chest, on his own thick legs without composure. Opu flattened a gloved hand to the top of the beast’s great skull to mutter the Xhosa prayer that was his custom, his apology for his past.
The old man waved the photographer forward. Neels walked with him; the young pilot held his ground on the perimeter.
The smell grew grimmer with every step. Neels leaned into the stench to honor the beast and accept his failure to protect it, for it had been killed in his sector, Shingwedzi. Dead men stank but never this badly; they drew buzzards but not in the hundreds. They did not drip with other animals’ shit. Forty years ago in the Border War, mates and Angolans alike died in the hot bush, but back then Neels could lift a kerchief over his nose and mouth to pass them without regret. He’d killed many an Angolan and Cuban himself. But those bodies had been soldiers and enemies, they’d died as they saw fit, in uniform and battle, for a cause good or bad. The rhinos of the Kruger were dying to the brink of extinction for no cause but greed.
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