by Tony Park
He ran, dived and crawled to where his officer lay screaming. ‘Fire your rifle, boy!’ he yelled at the private, who was cowering behind the body of the wounded terrorist. Ndlovu rolled twice, leopard-crawled through the mud and took aim at the muzzle flashes again. He heard a yelp of pain from somewhere in the bush and one of the AKs stopped firing. The rest of the corporal's section had lagged behind when he, the officer and the private had moved forward to check the bodies in the river and on the bank. They were now exposed. Bullets from the living gunman's rifle phutted into the mud around him.
The corporal used his elbows and toes to inch backwards until he was within reach of the private. He grabbed the boy by the shoulder and shook him. ‘Fire your rifle, I need covering fire!’
The boy looked up, but then his head snapped backwards as a 7.62mm copper-jacketed round drilled a hole through his forehead. The corporal let go of him, slung his own rifle around his neck and rose to his knees. Bullets whizzed by him as he hefted the bleeding, screaming white man over his shoulder. Corporal Ndlovu grunted and pushed himself to his feet and started running along the edge of the Zambezi.
The AK-47 fire followed him, although by now the rest of the section were zeroing in on the lone terrorist. The Bren gun chattered and the FNs slammed away at the jessie bush. Ndlovu's bush hat fell off as he ran. He could see the flashes of his comrades' weapons and heard one of them cheering him on. He would make it.
The hit was like a steel poker being driven through the muscles of his right thigh. He dropped to the ground and the screaming officer's weight drove him hard into the dirt. He looked down at his leg and saw the blood, but he felt no pain. Bullets landed around him. It seemed the gunman was on a mission to kill him, and him alone. Ndlovu grabbed the yoke of the white man's canvas webbing strap and started dragging him through the blood-soaked dirt.
Ndlovu started to feel dizzy as the shock took hold of his body, and he pitched face-forward into the ground. He raised himself on one arm and reached for the officer, but there were other hands around him now, and the gunfire had stopped.
*
The Zambezi reminded Air Lieutenant George Bryant of the dully shining grey-green skin of a mamba. His Alouette helicopter tracked down the course of the river that divided Rhodesia from Zambia.
‘Cyclone seven, cyclone seven, I can hear your approach, over,’ an African voice said over the radio, addressing George by the generic call sign for a 7 Squadron helicopter.
George acknowledged the call. He knew the RAR stick's white officer had been wounded so he presumed the man calling the shots was an NCO.
‘You are close, I am going to fire a flare, over,’ the African soldier said.
George closed one eye as the red firework shot up into the sky and burst open. The incendiary floated slowly towards earth under its parachute as the valley was lit in eerie hues of boiling blood.
George saw the clearing by the river's edge and the flickering forms of men kneeling around others lying in the dirt. George slowed the Alouette and started to bring her in.
‘Tracer! Incoming fire,’ yelled Goulds, his technician, from the back.
George looked hard right and saw the glowing green blobs arcing at what seemed a ridiculously slow pace straight for him. George heaved on the controls and pulled the helicopter away from the landing zone. The deadly fireflies chased him.
‘FAF two, alpha one, we're taking small arms fire, over,’ George said into his radio mouthpiece, using his squadron call sign. He kept his voice as calm as he could, despite his racing heart.
‘Roger, alpha one,’ said the lieutenant back at Kariba Airport, whose military call sign was Forward Air Field – FAF – two. ‘Road uplift is en route to the patrol, return to base, over.’
‘Roger, FAF two,’ George said. He was relieved that someone else was making the decision. Since the Rhodesian Prime Minister, Ian Smith, had unilaterally declared independence from Britain four years earlier, international sanctions had begun to bite. The Rhodesian Air Force's few helicopters were too valuable to put at unnecessary risk. Night flying was tricky enough, but when people were shooting at you it was downright terrifying. ‘How far away is the road party, over?’
‘Wait one, alpha one.’ George circled while he waited for the reply. The lieutenant eventually came back and said the convoy was about an hour away from the patrol. George relayed the message to the man on the ground and asked him if he could hang on that long.
‘Negative, cyclone seven,’ the man replied, ‘one of these men will die before then, over.’
George passed the sergeant's concerns back to Kariba tower.
‘What's the situation on the ground, alpha one, over?’
‘I still see plenty of muzzle flashes,’ said Goulds over the intercom.
George saw the gunfire on the ground. He knew the lieutenant was right and that he should return to base. Instead, he called FAF two and told them the situation was critical and he was going in to complete the hot extraction of the wounded men.
‘Jesus,’ said Goulds, but George ignored him.
He brought the Alouette around, and the clatter of the rotors attracted the menacing green comets again. He could see muzzle flashes winking on either side as the RAR soldiers and the terrs slugged it out.
George flared the nose of the Alouette and Goulds yelled out ‘Taking hits!’ as something clanged on the metal skin of the tail boom.
As the wheels of the Alouette touched down, RAR troopers appeared on either side of the cockpit. Goulds was dragging on one end of a poncho and helping the soldiers slide an ashen-faced man across the floor of the cargo area. Goulds took an IV bottle and hooked it to a webbing strap at the rear bulkhead. A burly African sergeant with a radio on his back opened the co-pilot's door and helped a young African man with a blood-soaked bandaged leg up into the vacant seat. The man's uniform sleeve bore the two stripes of a corporal. George looked over his shoulder and saw a third man, shrouded in a green waterproof poncho, being slid into the rear compartment.
‘All aboard, skip,’ Goulds said into the intercom.
The sergeant raised his hand in a salute as George started lifting off, then the big man was gone, lost in the dust of the Zambezi valley. George heard gunfire and looked around. Goulds had his personal weapon, an Israeli Uzi submachine gun, pointed out the door and was firing back at the tracer that followed them up into the sky and back towards Kariba.
George turned to the soldier beside him, whose face was illuminated by the ghostly green of the instrument panel. ‘Not long now, Corporal,’ he yelled over the engine noise. ‘We'll have you in hospital in …’
The man's eyes must have reflected George's. They stared at each other for long seconds before George had to turn back to the gauges in front of him. When he looked over again, the man was smiling, despite his obvious pain and weakness from blood loss. George held the stick between his knees for a moment and reached across to clasp the hand of his boyhood friend, Winston Ngwenya.
*
The next morning, after George had been carpeted by the squadron commander for endangering a valuable aircraft, he signed out an open-topped Land Rover and drove from the airport to Kariba Hospital.
On the drive he slowed to let a herd of buffalo cross the road. On the shores of the lake below, a trio of bull elephant were slaking their thirst in the middle of the hot, sticky day. George thought of the time he and Winston had spent on the lake as boys. He still rated it as one of the best times of his life.
This part of the Zambezi Valley might be under water, but Kariba was still a wild, fun place. The lake had filled many years earlier, but much of the wildlife that had walked to high ground or been rescued during Operation Noah still lived around the shores. The town of Kariba had grown from a construction workers' camp to a small but bustling holiday resort. The Rhodesian Riviera boasted hotels and a casino, and a harbour crammed with houseboats. There was even a yacht club. The Zambezi Valley downriver from the dam was a hot spot for te
rrorist incursions, but for many people, especially those crewing the catamarans out racing on the glittering water below, the war was something that happened to other people.
George parked the Land Rover outside the entrance to the hospital and took off his beret as he walked in and found the right ward. A transistor radio at the nurse's station played a soft, tinny version of a Glen Campbell song about a lonely soldier in Vietnam.
George coughed. ‘I'm here to see the men who were admitted early this morning,’ he said to a nursing sister in a starched pinafore.
She looked up from the chart she was filling in and raised her eyebrows. ‘All right, but not for long, please, the corporal needs some rest.’
George's rubber-soled boots squeaked on the polished linoleum as he walked past the gatekeeper.
The wounded officer was sedated, having been operated on for four hours, but Winston was sitting up in bed, with a white captain and warrant officer dressed in camouflage fatigues standing by his bedside.
The captain turned and nodded a greeting to George. ‘Jonty's still unconscious from the operation. Are you a friend?’
‘Actually, I've come to see how Corporal Ngwenya's doing,’ George said.
The warrant officer, a nuggety man with steel-grey hair, shook his head. ‘Ngwenya? Don't you mean Ndlovu, sir?’
George glanced at Winston and saw the moment of panic flash in his eyes. ‘Of course, of course. You know these bloody African names, eh? Ngwenya, Ndlovu, they all sound the same to me.’
The captain looked at George like he was a fool, which was probably how he regarded all blue jobs in air force uniform. His eyes dropped to the pilot's wings on his fatigue shirt. ‘You're the helicopter pilot?’
George nodded.
To George's surprise the captain extended a hand. ‘Thank you. You've changed my opinion of the air force. I always thought you okes were more interested in your bloody machines than in human lives. Ndlovu here pulled Jonty out of the fire, but he probably would have died if they'd waited for the road party to get to them. Come back to the camp with us – the beers are on us.’
The captain and his sergeant major said their goodbyes to Ngwenya and stood by the bed waiting for George to follow.
‘I might come along later, if that's all right. Still got some paperwork to do back at the airfield. You know how it is …’
There was an awkward moment's silence as the captain registered that George wanted to stay awhile and talk to the black corporal. He eventually shrugged and said, ‘Suit yourself. Bar'll be open from lunchtime.’
When the army guys left, George sat on the side of Winston's bed and shook his friend's hand again. ‘I hope I haven't caused trouble for you.’
Winston shook his head. ‘I don't think so, sir.’
George laughed. ‘I see you got your wish and ended up in the army.’
‘You too,’ Winston smiled, ‘but I thought you wanted to fly Vampires?’
George shrugged. ‘Someone's got to do the dirty work, you know … picking up you grubby soldiers. I enjoy it, though.’
‘I don't enjoy getting shot.’ Winston tried to sit up straighter and winced in pain.
‘Let me help.’ George put his hands under Winston's arms and lifted him a little. ‘Better?’
Winston nodded.
‘You've changed your name?’
‘If I used my real name I'd be dead within a week. If the other men in the battalion knew I was the son of the gaoled terrorist leader Kenneth Ngwenya I'd get a bayonet in the belly, and if the comrades from ZIPRA knew I was working for the kanka they'd try even harder to kill me when I was next on leave.’
George knew that the terrorists regarded black Rhodesians who worked for the security forces as jackals – kanka – and off-duty policemen and soldiers were in danger of being killed in uniform and out of it.
They swapped stories of what they'd been doing these past ten years. George found that after the first few minutes of chatting it seemed as though they'd last been together only yesterday. Winston had left Bulawayo for the capital, Salisbury, and sought out his father's older brother, an old rogue called Joseph. Winston's uncle lived on the edge of the law, running girls and two shebeens in one of the townships on the outskirts of the city. Winston had known that Joseph and Kenneth never spoke, so he had been sure his uncle would take him under his wing until he was old enough to join the army. His uncle had put him to work mopping out blood, beer, vomit and God knew what else from his bars and had rewarded him with a buxom working girl on his sixteenth birthday. Joseph had taken great delight shielding Winston from his hard-working, God-fearing schoolteacher father, and had even invited him to stay on with him in Salisbury instead of joining the army. Despite the good times, however, Winston hadn't been able to see himself spending the rest of his life as a pimp or a pickpocket. He had stayed true to his plan and enlisted in the Rhodesian African Rifles.
‘Training at Methuen was hard, but I liked it. The instructors treated us like rubbish, but by the end of it we were men,’ he told George, who nodded. Recruit training seemed to be based on the same principles no matter what colour you were or what branch of the services you joined.
They swapped a few tales of good and bad times in the services before Winston finally got around to asking the questions George had expected. ‘How is my family … How is little Emmerson?’
George could have predicted Winston's main concern would have been his brother. His mother had always been harsh on him, and his father was an imprisoned political enemy of the country Winston served. Thandi was just a girl. George decided not to lie or be evasive. ‘He's headed for trouble, Winston. He's ZAPU to the core, and he's been involved in a few street fights with ZANU thugs.’
ZANU, the Zimbabwe African National Union, was the other main black nationalist party in Rhodesia. Its membership was drawn from the Shona, the larger of the two main tribes in the country. Fights between the Ndebele-backed ZAPU and the ZANU cadres were regular and bloody as the two factions battled for supremacy in disputed black areas, while their military wings took on the security forces.
‘Your mother doesn't know whether to keep Emmerson locked up at home or to get him a bigger stick. She fills him full of hate for ZANU and Ian Smith and then fusses over him when he comes home with a split head or broken ribs.’
Winston closed his eyes. George knew what he was thinking. If his brother had fallen in with the nationalists – it didn't matter which party – there was a good chance he would end up in one of the military wings. ZAPU's armed force was ZIPRA – who were mostly Ndebeles like Winston and his family – but ZANU had set up its own army, ZANLA – the Zimbabwean African National Liberation Army. The two tribes, the Ndebele and the Shona, and their political and military wings, hated each other almost as much as they hated the whites.
‘Good for Emmerson,’ Winston said, opening his eyes again and grinning. ‘At least he's sticking with ZAPU and isn't an mtengisi.’
George laughed at the self-deprecating joke – Winston had just used the Shona word for ‘sell-out’, the name given to Africans like him who sided with the government. George didn't tell Winston, but he was scared of Emmerson. Physically, George was still more than a match for the fifteen-year-old, but Emmerson was growing up fast. Thandi had shuddered when she'd told him how she'd seen her little brother almost kick a ZANU cadre to death in a street brawl in Mzilikazi. The way Emmerson looked at George when he visited reminded him of a cobra, its head swaying and its dark eyes entranced with the thought of the coming kill.
‘How do you know all this, George?’
‘When I'm home on leave my mom gives me mealie meal, milk, eggs, nyama and other things to take to your family. Your mom still hates all white people, especially since your father's been in prison so long, but she tolerates me. Sometimes we talk.’ The lie, like all good ones, was based on truth. ‘My dad put a new roof on Patricia's house last year.’
Winston's eye's narrowed. ‘And Thandi?’
> ‘She's in Mozambique, studying.’
The sister walked over, clipboard in hand, and told Winston to open his mouth. The conversation stopped while they waited for Winston's temperature to be read. George gazed out the window. Thandi.
*
The last time he'd seen her was six months ago, when he was on leave. The time before that had been going on for a year, but every time he saw her it was the same.
George and a few guys from his squadron had piled into two cars and driven nonstop from Salisbury, through the border crossing at Umtali, and then down to the coast at Vilanculos. The first night they'd got drunk in the bar at the Dona Ana and slept on the beach. The next day the rest of the boys hit the bullfights. George had begged off, saying he had to go visit a friend of his parents. He'd hailed a chapa and told the driver of the minibus taxi the address. As he rode he mused about how different things were in Mozambique, how much freer and easier than in Rhodesia. He wouldn't have been caught dead in a kaffir taxi in his homeland.
He'd written to her, but he had no idea if she would be there. Vilanculos was a long way north of Lorenzo Marques, where Thandi was teaching English. She was already fluent in Portuguese.
The beachside bungalows were down-market enough to be affordable and up-market enough, hopefully, to be free of bedbugs. George walked along a crushed coral footpath flanked by manicured grass. A light breeze stirred the fronds of the tall palm trees that gave the complex its name, Palmeiros. A bell tinkled when he opened the screen door to the reception bungalow.
‘Bom dia,’ he said to the coloured woman behind the counter.
She smiled at him, ‘Ola.’
He'd exhausted his Portuguese, but managed to ask her if a Miss Ngwenya was staying in one of the bungalows. No, the woman told him.
George was disappointed, although a part of him also felt relieved. It was odd, he thought, to want something so badly and at the same time to pray it didn't happen. He stood there a moment, weighing his options. He could get a taxi back to the bullfight and quite possibly end up spending the night in gaol, along with some or all of his squadron mates, or he could still check into a bungalow and get a good night's sleep.