Zuba turned and walked away. ‘Come, I have something to show you, Ranger Lucky,’ he called.
Seeing Lucky hesitate, one of the rebel soldiers jabbed him in the middle of the back with the butt of his AK-47, propelling him forward. Lucky stumbled after Zuba, and the two soldiers followed close behind. They came to a clear area in the middle of the village of thirty huts. Most of the huts were like the one where Lucky and the other prisoners were being kept – round, with mud walls and roofs of thatch. One or two of the administrative buildings, such as the village school, were rectangular and roofed with rusty corrugated iron. Beyond the huts were a number of compounds with walls made from tree branches. They reached the height of the shoulders of an average local. Some of these compounds housed the villagers’ goats. Bony cattle, the night-time inmates of other compounds, were currently grazing contentedly on the outskirts of the village.
A number of fearful villagers hung back, watching from a distance as more of Zuba’s armed soldiers assembled. Lucky estimated there were about twenty of these soldiers. Most were only boys in their teens – short and malnourished, with empty eyes. Some wore boots, including those taken from the rangers. Lucky, who was tall and rangy, had such big feet that no African could fit into his boots, so he’d been permitted to keep his footwear. The other boy soldiers were barefoot, yet most of them carried AK-47s. In this part of the world it was easier to lay your hands on an assault rifle than it was to get a pair of shoes.
Lucky also noted that one soldier was armed with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher – an RPG – and another had a large Russian machinegun slung across his chest. These poachers were more heavily armed than a typical Tanzanian Army patrol and certainly more heavily armed than rangers of the Tanzanian Wildlife Service.
The boy soldiers were being supervised by a lithe man with a grey beard. He wore blue shorts and, like Zuba, he had on a pair of military-style boots, a red beret and a camouflage jacket. He carried a pump-action shotgun, had a large radio strapped on his back, and there was a large sheathed machete hanging from his belt. Zuba’s soldiers were busy mustering a group of frightened-looking boys. Lucky guessed that they were from the local district and had been rounded up by Zuba’s so-called soldiers.
‘See here, Ranger Lucky,’ said Zuba, beckoning to him with a sly smile.
Receiving another jab from behind, Lucky moved toward the rebel leader.
‘These are my new recruits,’ Zuba told Lucky. ‘Captain Chawinga, give me your machete.’
‘Yes, Colonel.’ The grey-bearded man in the red beret slid his machete from its scabbard and handed it to his commander.
The two soldiers who had taken Lucky from the hut each clamped a hand on his shoulders, holding him firmly in place. Smiling all the while, Zuba strolled along the ragged line of boys, some of whom Lucky estimated were only eight or nine years of age. Zuba stopped in front of the shortest boy, whose only clothing was a pair of grubby white shorts, and lay the flat of the machete blade on the youth’s bare right shoulder. ‘You, boy. Do you know who I am?’
The boy began to shake with fear. Too frightened to speak, he could only nod in reply. His eyes strayed to the sharp blade perilously close to his neck.
‘Of course you know who I am,’ Zuba said with a laugh. ‘Who in this country does not know of Colonel Zuba and the mighty Revolutionary Army of Tanzania? Would you like to be a member of my brave army, boy, and liberate your country from injustice and corruption? Hmm?’
The boy said nothing. He couldn’t lift his eyes from the machete.
Zuba scowled. ‘You do wish to serve in my army, don’t you, boy?’
The boy’s gaze flashed to Zuba, then to the machete. He nodded vigorously.
The smile returned to Zuba’s face. ‘Good. Very good. Wise boy, clever boy. What do they call you?’ When the boy failed to answer, he added menacingly, ‘Speak up!’
‘S-s-sironka,’ the boy stammered softly.
‘Sironka? You know what that means, don’t you? You are “the pure one”. I have another Sironka in my ranks. He is not pure. Are you pure, boy?’
Sironka didn’t reply.
‘Very well, pure one, let us see if you meet the basic qualification for membership of my army.’ Zuba took a step back. ‘Come forward,’ he commanded, pointing to the ground with the machete.
Warily, the boy did as he’d been bidden.
‘Chawinga, put him to the test,’ Zuba instructed.
‘Yes, Colonel.’ Chawinga in turn pointed to one of their soldiers. ‘Do it!’ he growled. The boy soldier in question scuttled to the terrified child then knelt beside him.
‘Zuba, what are you doing?’ Lucky called.
Zuba turned to Lucky and his smile widened. ‘You will see.’
The boy soldier took up his AK-47, stood the butt on the ground and then put his fingers on the end of the barrel. The gun stood upright beside Sironka.
‘What do you think, Chawinga?’ Zuba asked. ‘Is he tall enough?’
Chawinga came and took a closer look, then shook his head. ‘No, Colonel. This fish is too small. Throw it back.’
Zuba chuckled at the youth. ‘Unfortunately, boy, you have not passed the test. To be one of my soldiers, you must be longer than a Kalashnikov rifle. This is my rule. So, Sironka, you may return to your home. Next year you will be longer than a Kalashnikov, that I guarantee. And then we shall meet again. Go, pure one. Run home to your mother!’ He waved the machete in the direction of the surrounding farmland.
Sironka looked at the rifle beside him, then at Zuba, then at Chawinga.
‘Run, the colonel say!’ Chawinga growled. ‘Go!’
With that, the boy took off, running from the village as fast as his legs would carry him. The sight brought laughter from Zuba, with his boy soldiers following his cue and doing the same.
Lucky could do nothing but watch as potential recruits were put to the Kalashnikov test, and the remainder all passed. Zuba now had seven fresh recruits. As he handed the machete back to Chawinga, an elderly man in the crowd of villagers came forward and spoke anxiously to Zuba in the local dialect. The rebel commander looked him up and down, then waved him away. When the old man protested, Chawinga and another soldier grabbed his arms and frogmarched him away.
‘Ranger Lucky,’ said Zuba, pointing at him. ‘You will come with me. We shall walk and talk.’
Lucky joined the colonel, and together, prisoner and captor walked from the village and out onto the flat, dry earth surrounding it. They followed a dusty track with bananas growing on either side of it. ‘What did the old villager say to you?’ Lucky asked, glancing over his shoulder to see two armed guards shadowing them.
‘His grandson is one of today’s new recruits,’ Zuba replied. ‘This grandfather, he offered to take the boy’s place in the ranks of my army. But children obey orders, old men do not.’ He smiled. ‘Old men have consciences. Children are too young and inexperienced to even know what a conscience is. Children can be moulded like dough. Old men cannot, they have already been in the oven of life. They are like old bread – hard and stale.’
‘It’s cynical and cruel to make soldiers of children.’
Zuba shrugged. ‘Life is cruel. This way, a boy becomes a man very quickly. I am doing them all a favour.’
Deciding that he would get nowhere arguing with the rebel leader, Lucky changed the subject. ‘What do you plan to do with me and my men, Colonel?’
‘Your men I do not care about, but you are a valuable commodity, Ranger Lucky,’ Zuba replied. ‘Perhaps we shall trade you to the government.’
‘Trade me for what?’
‘Perhaps for a promise from the government not to bother us anymore.’
‘That won’t happen,’ said Lucky. ‘The Tanzanian Government is committed to stamping out poaching. More and more foreign aid to Tanzania from countries like the US, Britain and Australia is being linked to that commitment. If they want the aid to continue, they can’t afford to let you continue poa
ching elephants.’
‘You underestimate your value, Ranger Lucky.’ Coming to a halt under the shade of a flame tree, Zuba put one boot on a boulder and looked out over the plain. ‘Your capture tells the government that it is useless to oppose my men and myself. Look at you, a foreign mercenary, a Special Forces soldier sent to train their rangers to fight us. Within a month of your arrival in my country, I capture you! What does that say? It says that I am much too clever for those fools in the government. And they know it!’
‘I won’t be the last foreigner who comes to this country to oppose you.’
Zuba glared at Lucky. ‘You mzungu think you know everything!’ he snapped. ‘But you do not know this country, you do not know its people. The British colonised this country, yet they never understood it. They did not want to understand it.’
Lucky had learned that mzungu was a Tanzanian word that meant white people. ‘And you do understand Tanzania and its people?’ he asked scornfully.
Zuba’s smile returned. ‘Precisely. To the people of Tanzania, I am a hero. The people love me.’
‘And what happens when you have butchered every elephant in Tanzania? Will you be a hero then?’
‘Pah!’ Zuba waved the machete in the air. ‘There will always be elephants in this country.’
‘Not at the rate you’re killing them. If you are a hero, you should have no need to kill elephants for their ivory to finance your “army”.’
‘Farmers kill elephants that trample their crops,’ Zuba countered, still looking out at the landscape as the sun rose higher in the early morning sky. ‘The government takes money from game hunters to let them shoot elephants.’ He turned to Lucky. ‘Do you know how much they charge those white hunters for a twenty-eight-day elephant hunting licence, Ranger Lucky? I will tell you – twenty-five thousand dollars. These big brave game hunters are only interested in having their photographs taken with the animals they shoot. And yet they say my men and I are criminals if we kill just one elephant for its tusks and a noble cause!’
‘I’m not in favour of killing a single elephant. But the game hunters only shoot a hundred elephants per year. You are killing tens of thousands!’
‘My army needs much money to wage war against oppression,’ Zuba said matter-of-factly.
Lucky shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t need an army. If the people love you, as you say, they would elect you their leader.’
‘Elect me?’ Zuba threw his head back and laughed uproariously. When he looked at Lucky again, the expression on his face was serious once more. ‘They would not permit me to stand for election. Look at me, mzungu!’ He pulled off his sunglasses to reveal eyes pink-purple in colour. ‘I am an albino! Do you know what that means?’
‘It means your skin pigmentation is lighter than usual and you are affected by bright light –’
‘Not the clinical definition!’ Zuba snapped, returning the glasses to his eyes. ‘It means that I am an outcast in my own land! When I was a child, the government would not permit me to attend school. They said I would scare the other children and put them off their learning. After my mother died, my father tried to give me to an orphanage, but the white church people threw me out after I was laughed at, spat on and beaten by the other children for being different. The whites said I caused friction among the other orphans. So, I have been an outcast ever since. Even the dogs bark at an albino child. They, too, knew I was different.’
Lucky felt a genuine pity for the man. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘I do not seek your pity,’ Zuba said coldly. ‘I do not need pity. As a boy, no one wanted me or gave me a chance. I had to fend for myself. Did you know, in Tanzania, witchcraft is still practised to this day? And there is a myth here that the bones of albino children make powerful potions. Sometimes, the bones of albino children have been sold to witches, who grind them up to make their potions. It still occurs to this very day.’
‘People here don’t still believe in witches, do they?’ Lucky asked, incredulous. ‘Not in this modern age.’
Zuba smiled wistfully. ‘There is nothing modern about life in the African bush, my friend. Here, life is as primitive as it has been for thousands of years. And they still believe in witches. When I was a child, three men kidnapped me. I overheard them talking about selling my body to a witch for many thousands of dollars. But I broke free and was able to grab one of their rifles. I shot and wounded all three of my captors.’
‘And you escaped?’
Zuba nodded. ‘That episode taught me a valuable lesson.’ Reaching to the holster on his hip, he withdrew a Glock semi-automatic pistol. ‘I learned that the man with the gun is the one who receives respect in this world. And any man who laughs at me – any dog that barks at me – I shoot him! No one argues with Abraham Zuba now, I can tell you. Now they respect me and do as I tell them.’
‘Is it respect that makes people do as you tell them, or fear?’ said Lucky.
Zuba’s smile returned. ‘Yes, they respect me. But first they must fear me. Do you fear me, Ranger Lucky?’
Lucky shook his head. ‘No.’
Zuba could see that Lucky was telling the truth. ‘Do you know, I think you are either a very brave man or a very great fool.’
They were interrupted by Chawinga jogging toward them. ‘Colonel, Mboko has been on the radio,’ he called. ‘He says we must move! Military vehicles are approaching.’
Zuba slid the pistol back into its holster. ‘Then move, we shall,’ he declared. ‘Get everything ready, Chawinga. We pull out of Leboo at once. We will head north, to the lake. But to put off villagers with big eyes and even bigger tongues, we will begin by heading west.’
‘Yes, Colonel.’ Chawinga turned and headed off to order preparations for their departure.
By the time Lucky had walked back to the village with Zuba and his two guards, it was enveloped in yellow dust stirred by the urgent activity. Two old green Land Rovers and a score of dusty trail bikes had been brought out of their camouflaged hiding places. As they approached, the village headman came toward Zuba with his hand outstretched. Zuba and the headman argued briefly in the local dialect before Zuba roughly pushed him away, leaving the man to glare at him with hate in his eyes.
‘What did he want?’ Lucky asked.
‘This headman invited my soldiers and myself to his village in the expectation that I would give him American dollars, as I usually do,’ Zuba explained. ‘But until I receive the cash from the last shipment of ivory, my army and myself have no American dollars for this man or for anyone else. Now, rejoin your men, Ranger Lucky.’ He pointed to the nearest Land Rover. ‘We will speak again later.’
With that, Lucky was hustled away by the two guards. He and his rangers were pushed into the back of one Land Rover, the new boy recruits into the other, as Zuba’s soldiers mounted the trail bikes, some with a pair of riders. One of Zuba’s older recruits came running with a bleating goat draped around his neck. With a grin, the thief took a seat on the back of one of the trail bikes and clasped the goat’s hoofs together on his chest. He would ride by holding on with his knees. Zuba climbed into the front Land Rover. Chawinga mounted the running board of the other. Standing there and holding on with one hand, he pointed west with his shotgun, and the vehicles moved off.
Crammed together in the back of the Land Rover, the five captive rangers looked at Lucky.
‘What are they going to do with us, boss?’ asked Koinet.
‘They’re taking us to a new location,’ Lucky advised. ‘The Tanzanian Army is close by.’
‘Ah,’ said old Julius, sounding hopeful. ‘The army will save us.’
‘No, they will not,’ Koinet moaned. ‘The army fears Colonel Pink Eye. They have never caught him. We are doomed!’
‘No, we’re not doomed,’ Lucky assured him, lowering his voice and beckoning the others to lean in closer. ‘One of two things is going to happen to us – either the authorities will pay for our release, or Special Forces troops will free us
.’
This lit up the faces of all but Koinet. ‘What Special Forces troops?’ he demanded. ‘The Tanzanian Army has no Special Forces.’
‘No, but the United Nations does,’ Lucky countered.
‘Why would the UN send Special Forces to free us, of all people?’ Koinet demanded.
Lucky, a former GRRR operative, had sworn an oath of secrecy about the GRRR and its operations. But he had a sneaking suspicion that Secretary-General Park might send his former comrades to rescue him. Not that he thought himself special. Lucky just knew the UN looked after its own, and he suspected that his plight had not gone unnoticed at UN headquarters. ‘Trust me and don’t lose hope,’ he said. ‘One way or another, we’re all going to get out of this just fine.’
‘Yes, Ranger Lucky,’ said Julius, smiling. ‘Just fine.’
But Koinet did not smile.
In a cloud of dust, the convoy departed Leboo. With Land Rover motors straining and bike engines buzzing like angry wasps, the convoy bumped away toward the west. The villagers watched them go and spoke urgently among themselves. Zuba was right not to trust these locals. The greedy headman and several of his villagers who had lost sons to Zuba’s army would be keen to tell government troops the direction which the RAT vehicles had taken. Anticipating this, Zuba would order a sharp change of direction once the convoy was well out of sight and sound of the villagers.
As he was bounced around the rear of the Land Rover, Lucky considered that, if the authorities didn’t pay a ransom for them or the GRRR didn’t launch a rescue, he would have to turn to a third option. He might have to employ his own Special Forces skills to save his rangers and himself. But that was a risky option which could result in the endangerment of his men. It was an option he would only consider as a last resort.
Operation Pink Elephant Page 6