Teardrops of the waning moon

by Steve Reeder

  Three hour’s drive to the west Reece nursed the old car as it shook and rattled towards the Angolan border. The dry bush-veld rolled past in a seemingly never-ending series of thorn bushes and sandy-coloured rocks. Several antelope and two giraffe stood in the heat and watched his progress without interest. It was noon when Sean Reece finally stopped the old car on the wrong side of the road in the meagre shade of an anthill that must have been over twenty feet high. The temperature was in the high thirties, perhaps even in the low forties. He left all the doors open and walked to the edge of the badly maintained road. Nothing moved in the heat other than the flies which buzzed around his head in a never-ending cloud. He waved them away and looked again at the map. The point at which he would need to leave the road was close, he knew that, but recognizing landmarks was proving more difficult that he had thought it would be. He crossed the road to the car again and unhooked the canvas bag of water that hung on the front bumper. The water was cool and tasted better than he’d ever imagined water could taste. Leaning against the car, he closed his eyes and tried to picture the roadway as he’d first seen it over three years ago. He’d been carrying Bomber over his shoulder – at the time he’d been convinced that his friend was already dead – when he had topped a rise and seen the road in the distance. He turned and studied the terrain again, looking for the ridge before the road. From his vantage point there seemed to be two possibilities. His eyes followed the line of the high-ground and traced a path to the road. “No,” he said finally, “it must be further on.” With a sigh he hooked the water-bag back on the bumper and climbed back behind the wheel, swearing softly when the seat burnt his arse.

  He drove slowly, constantly looking at the terrain as it seemed to drift past the window of the car. Twenty minutes later and suddenly he stopped and jumped out. The area looked familiar to him. There was the rock that he’d tried to hide behind when the Zambian police car had come down the road. And this must be the bush where one of them had stopped to have a piss against and spotted the two dirty and dishevelled white men lying in the dust. Grinning with joy and relief, he turned the car off the road and drove as carefully as he could down the slope, bouncing over small rocks and bushes when couldn’t go around them, heading for the point at which the distant ridge had been cut by a river that had long since vanished. The sun was a lot higher and brighter now which made some things look different, but there was no mistaking the signs. He was on the right track.

  An hour later he stopped the vehicle out of sight behind a large rock – he could drive no further in it - and collecting the water bag and the nearly empty backpack he strode off heading west towards the Angolan border which could not be more than two hour’s walk now.

  Night was falling when Bomber reached the farm gate for the third time. Every muscle in his body seemed to ache and he was more tired than he ever remembered being, but the sense of accomplishment made it worth-while. He turned and looked back at the hut. It was only five hundred metres but looked a lot further. He decided to rest a while longer. Close by a skinny cow was chomping contentedly at the sparse dry grass.

  “How’s Sean getting on?” he asked the cow. “Haven’t heard anything, then?” The cow twitched its tail but said nothing. “OK then, let me know if you do hear something, will you?” The cow ignored him. With a sigh he started back again followed by a cloud of mosquitoes. The night was going to be a torture.

  Reece had crossed the Zambian/Angolan border. He knew that to be true although he could not when or even where it had been because there was no clearly marked line. What he did know was that any authorities that he met now would be a lot more unfriendly than the Zambians had been.

  The sun was almost gone now, settling down on the horizon in front of him. It would be dark soon and he was about to give up on finding the oddly shaped rock before the light faded all together when suddenly there it was right in front of him, not two hundred metres away. Reece stopped and stared, afraid to continue in case the diamonds were not there anymore. What if they had been found? What if someone was waiting for him to return? He knew that was a silly thought, but the butterflies in his stomach were swiftly growing into vultures, tearing at his reason.

  Many hundreds of kilometres to the south-east, in Durban, Tanya’s mother kissed her grandson goodbye and handed the child back to the toddler’s father. The evening had been pleasant and Tanya had surprised her mother with the welcome news of a second baby, due in five months’ time, also a boy. Nothing was said about the abundant wealth of her young husband or where the money came from.

  Five hundred kilometres to the north, Avril decided that she had let her date have enough fun for one night. She crossed her legs and pulled down her top. Her date objected, moaning about cock-teasers but didn’t try to stop her getting out of his car.

  “Call me tomorrow,” she commanded of him with a toss of her luxuriant red hair as she closed the door firmly.

  “Shit!” he said venomously and drove off in a huff and a squeal of smoking rubber, his hand scrabbling at his crotch in frustration.

  Avril stood at the small gate to her parent’s house and looked wishfully at the house next door.

  “Where are you, Sean?” she cried softly. “You promised me that you’d be my first.”

  Fifteen kilometres west of Zambia’s border with Angola, Sean Reece settled down to sleep. He was a hundred metres from the place where he had hidden the diamonds. Tomorrow would be a telling day. Twenty-five kilometres further west laid the rusting wreck of a Toyota Landcruiser; the skeletal remain of a South African solider still inside its twisted metal.

  Reece sat with his back to a large rock and slowly ate three energy bars. The sun was minutes from breaking cover behind him. Already the light was bright enough for him to see across the wide and shallow valley. Nothing moved but an early bird looking for that worm. He knew that should be getting the case now, reaching into the crevasse and finding the briefcase. He knew that he was being stupid, cowardly even, but as long as he sat there watching the sun come up then the case could not be missing. He crossed the valley and came to a halt, fear of failure churning in his gut. He sat on a small bolder, breathed deeply and wiped his hands on his jeans. There were still a couple of bars of chocolate that would do for breakfast.

  Finally the energy bars were finished and the sun was about to shine over the low ridge behind him. He took a deep breath and stood up. The hiding place was no more than twenty feet from where he stood. He started towards it, his heart pounding. If anyone was watching him now then it was all over; three years wasted and a long spell of hell in front of him. If the case was gone then it was almost as bad. He squatted down besides the crack and reached into the dark hole.

  Thirty

  May. Zambia.

  “Bomber, what’s wrong?” Reece asked.

  “I phoned Tanya’s parent’s place but they weren’t home. A maid answered and she gave me a new number for Tanya.”

  “So? Did you call her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And, what’s wrong?”

  “When she answered the phone she said, ‘Mrs Cole Speaking’.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Bomber slumped into the over-padded chair and put his head in his hands. “I just put the phone down . . . I didn’t know what to say.”

  Reece had arrived back at the rented single-roomed house just after noon to find that Bomber had hitched a lift with the local farmer into the near-by village, only returning as night crept across the fields of maize. It was immediately obvious to Reece that his friend was not in the best of moods. He made Bomber a mug of weak coffee and waited for him to tell him what was wrong.

  “What about your folks?” Reece asked when Bomber told him the news about Tanya and Charlie.

  “There was no answer, in fact the phone was dead, so I called the woman living next door and she told me that mom and dad moved to Australia last year in July.”

  “Fuck, I’m sorry Bomber. Did she have a contact number
for them?”

  Bomber shook his head. “They didn’t leave any forwarding address at all. Apparently the army convinced mum that we were all dead.”

  “Did she say what the army was saying about us? Or the whole diamond thing?”

  “It was all over the news for nearly a year, so she said. It seems that the Angolan government made a formal complaint to the UN, of all people, about South African troops stealing from the Angolan government.”

  “So we’re famous,” Reece said with a grin, “Or would be if we weren’t dead.”

  “Yeah. I wonder how Charlie gets away with it?”

  “Simple, he wasn’t part of the army, was he? He had demobbed already and they probably don’t even know that he was with us.”

  “Sean, I had the envelope with the US treasury bonds with me, under my shirt in fact, while we were driving, did you find it?”

  “No. When I stashed the briefcase on the far side of the border I checked inside it, I just assumed that the bonds must have been still in the bakkie.” He thought for a second. “So what happened to them?”

  “I don’t know. I had written Tanya’s address on them . . . so?”

  “So you think the hospital guys found it and posted it?”

  “Well, the police obviously didn’t find it or you’d have seen them in your court-case, don’t you think? What did they charge you with anyway?”

  “Oh, just illegally entering the country, carrying an illegal weapon – AK47 which I really should have tossed away as soon as we crossed the border – and, according to them, threatening a police officer, which I did not, but there you go, three years in the slammer.”

  Bomber swallowed the remained of the nearly-cold coffee and tossed the mug to Reece, who placed it on the battered table. “What about your mom?” he asked.

  “Oh, mom married some dude that she met – I phoned her as soon as I got out of prison. She has pretty much disowned me,” Reece replied with a wry smile. “She told me that she and her new man were about to move into his house down in Cape Town. She did give me a new phone number, so I’ll call her a few months when she got over the whole thing.”

  Bomber sat in the darkness and thought before finally broaching the subject that had been so far ignored by the both of them. “So what now, Sean? It seems that neither of us has a home anymore.”

  “No, but we do have a briefcase full of diamonds!”

  “Which we could probably sell to someone, but they’d need to deal with rough diamonds and want a large cut of the money, and I don’t think we’re going to find anyone in Zambia, at least not in large numbers.”

  “True, so we’ll go to London; Centre of the world diamond trade, and go see someone in De Beers. I think that we’ll be able to get ourselves a few million Pounds Sterling even after taking a cut.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, my unhappy buddy, we begin to live! Maybe we can go wonder around Australia and look for your folks between bouts of drunken disorderly orgies with the Shelia’s!”

  Bomber smiled briefly but it was obvious that his mind was still elsewhere. Reece sat patiently waiting until his friend was ready to ask that question.

  And finally he did ask. “Sean, tell me about what happened after the mine explosion. I mean . . . I remember nothing. My life just stopped and started again three years later in a hospital. And while I was gone you did three years in a prison, Cole got away, became rich, married my girlfriend and now has kid with her.” He rubbed his hand across his head as he was prone to do when worried or thoughtful. “How did you get us across the border and how did I end up in a hospital?”

  “I was in the back of the bakkie when we hit the mine and I still don’t understand how I got away without any injuries. You were driving, of course and Franz was up front with you.” Reece hesitated, thinking back, “I don’t know how long I was unconscious for – it must have been a while because the first thing I recall was the voices of those Angolan soldiers, and one of them was kicking the side of the wreck and laughing.” He thought about how it had been back then. “It was totally dark and I did wonder if I had gone blind at first, but after a while I began to see some light. Basically, I was under the Toyota and it was up-side-down on top of me. If I hadn’t fallen into the hole created by the mine blast I’d have been in shit for sure. Anyway, after a while the Angolans left and I dug myself out - ”

  “With what?”

  “Actually, it wasn’t hard. I had my hunting knife, which worked well and the sand was pretty soft anyway. It still took a while, but I made it. The moon was up too by then, and you’ll remember that it was almost full moon around that time of the month, so things were quite bright.”

  “What about me and Franz?”

  “I’m getting there. The mine had exploded under the left front wheel and the whole left side of the front cab was totally messed up. Franz never stood a chance, mate, not a chance. How the hell you are still alive is a mystery too. At first I couldn’t see you, which was probably why the Angolans just left – I guess they thought everyone was dead. I thought you were both dead at first, but I wanted the case with the diamonds and I knew that they had been in the front with Franz. At the time I did wonder what became of Charlie, but I remember that he had been up the road a bit and of course he had one of the briefcases with him. I tell you, Bomber, I was crapping myself about what I would find.”

  Reece was crying and didn’t feel ashamed about it either. He had hammered the door, or what was left of it, with a rock until he could wrench it open. The top half along with the window was already squashed flat and he had to go down on hands and knees to see inside the shattered bakkie. The first sight that greeted him was the bloodied head of Bomber Harris. The body was lying face up along the under-side of what had been the roof of the cab. His legs appeared to be caught under the dashboard and the right leg was clearly broken. The steering wheel had come adrift and Reece pulled it out and tossed it behind him. The briefcase with the stolen diamonds could be seen lodged against Franz Coetzer body. Reece scrambled backwards and threw up on the road. The explosion had done terrible things to the corpse. For a long five minutes Reece sat staring at the still smouldering vehicle, wondering if he had the courage to go back and pull the case free. Finally his mind was made up for him when Bomber made a small noise. Reece crawled back quickly. “Bomber?” There was no answer, and no further sounds. Reece reached in and placed his fingers on Bomber’s neck, searching for a pulse. Gradually he began to feel a fluttering under his finger-tips. Bomber was alive!

  It took three hours to free Bomber from the vehicle but finally Reece dragged him out onto the sandy track. He checked the pulse again and found the same shallow fluttering.

  Bomber’s head was covered in blood from a gash along his left temple which had now scabbed over and was no longer bleeding. Reece wiped it clean as best he could before he checked for other injuries; trying all the time to remember his first-aid training. The right leg was broken twice below the knee and his left arm was a mess of burns and scrapes but did not seem broken. Both limbs were badly swollen and his chest and most of his abdomen was heavily bruised.

  “You seem to have gotten away without too much wrong with you, Old Boy,” he told the unresponsive Bomber with a smile that he didn’t feel. “If you could see Franz you’d be feeling a lot better about yourself.” A rush of tears formed and brushed them away with a curse.

  Having done what he could, he left Bomber and crawled back to retrieve the briefcase. Once out of the wreck, he shoved and hammered the door back into place to keep scavengers from getting to Franz; the sickening stench of blood and death was already heavy in the air. He placed the case behind a near-by tree and cut several small branches, searching for four or five that he would fashion into a splint for Bomber’s leg. Once that had been done his satisfaction he stripped the laces out of Bomber’s boots. Before he could apply the splint he gently pulled the broken leg straight. The unconscious man let out a small moan of agony and th
en lapsed into silence again. Reece bound the splints in place and check Bomber’s pulse once more. It still fluttered weakly. Reece worried about internal bleeding and then banished the thought: There was nothing that he could other than try to get Bomber Harris to a hospital in time, and that seemed unlikely.

  Daylight was not far off as Reece slung one of the AK47s around his neck, gently lifted his friend over the other shoulder in a fireman’s lift and, with great difficulty, picked up the briefcase that had cost so much. He turned to face east and despairingly thought of the fifteen to twenty kilometres that would have to carry Bomber just to get to the border. Somehow London and the rich life seemed an awful long way.

  For five hours he staggered eastward along the road, afraid to stop and lower his burden for fear that he’d never be able to pick it all up again. It was the sun that finally halted him. For twenty minutes he had been aware that the sun was burning his right cheek when he realised that the road must have turned southwards. Not far from where he had stopped there was a junction in the road. He looked to his left and almost immediately spotted the low, rusty sign post indicating that the border with Zambia was only two kilometres to the east. He eyed the over-grown road and realised that any border post that had once existed at the end of this road would have been abandoned years ago and the chances of anyone border personnel manning it was probably just as slim. As the sun began to dip below the low hills to the west, Reece stepped onto the road and staggered forward with the dying sun at his back.