‘It would make sense. Can you imagine if this got out? We’re already an international pariah.’
‘Well deserved,’ said Eben.
‘And what about Cobra?’ said Clay.
Eben threw a questioning look.
Clay pointed to his bicep. ‘On the Flossie.’
Eben nodded. ‘You think he recognised you?’
‘Ja, definitely.’
‘Then we’re in deep shit.’
‘First thing tomorrow we talk to Wade. Tell him the whole story.’ Clay grabbed the paper back, folded it back in the notebook. ‘Show him this.’
‘Everything?’
‘Everything. The way I see it, we don’t have a choice.’
Eben frowned. ‘Admit to killing one of our own? We could be shot, bru. You know that don’t you?’
‘What do you mean, we, Eben? I was the one who shot him.’
‘Don’t even say it. We’re in this together.’
Clay shook his head. ‘Wade isn’t telling us the whole story. He said so himself. He’s trying to protect us, but he doesn’t know how far we’re already into this thing. Cobra knows who I am. And if he does, Doctor Death does, too. It won’t be hard to track us down.’
They walked on in silence as darkness came.
An hour later and they were being waved through the main gates of the airbase. They walked the mile and half to their bivouac area feeling not so much like returning heroes as suspects in a crime. They slung their R4s and marched in step, noticing the glances of the airmen and the other parabats, knowing that the word would have gone around that they were missing, believed killed.
When they reached Valk 5’s bivouac, Bluey and the others were there to meet them with cold cokes and pats on the back, wanting to know all about it. Clay and Eben told them the story they’d rehearsed and agreed with Wade. Long-range recon patrol with 32-Bat into Angola to report on FAPLA movements near Rito. They had become separated after a firefight and had walked back out on their own. No worries.
Later that night, Clay lay on his bunk and opened the box that Crowbar had thrown there almost three days before. Inside, pinned to a black-felt background, was an MMM – Military Merit Medal – the blue, sky-blue and orange striped ribbon rumpled against its brass bar and twelve-pointed brass star. Clay looked at it for a long time in the half-light, wondering what his mother and father would have felt if they were still alive. Proud, he said to himself. They would have been proud. His mother would have told all her friends and neighbours, had everyone round to tea, showed them photographs. My son won the MMM, she would have said. We are so proud. But now they can’t be, because of a stupid, fucking pointless car crash.
He picked up the medal and held it to his chest a moment. There had been no ceremony. The Colonel hadn’t pinned it to his chest in front of the Battalion on parade. It was just tossed onto his bunk like a tin of beer or a spare mag. Here you go, troop. Three kills. Three men dead because of you. And one boy saved. Would one saved cancel out one killed, he wondered, when the final accounting came? Was there to be such a thing? Or was it all, as Eben claimed, just a one-way trip to nothing.
Clay put the medal back in its box and dropped it into his footlocker. He was alone in the tent. He checked the entrance and then got to his knees, reached under his bunk and levered up the floorboard, exposing the Ovamboland sand beneath. Quickly he dug away the earth. The heavy polypropylene bag he’d stashed the diamonds in was still there. He pulled it free and opened it up. The pouch was inside. He took it out and tipped the stones into his palm. Such small things, dull and clear against his skin, the bigger one about the size of a 7.62 mm round, with its pinkish tinge and uncharacteristic sharp edges.
After a while he funnelled the diamonds back into the pouch and dropped it into the bag along with the bloodstained notebook, and then covered it over again with handfuls of sand before replacing the floorboard.
Clay lay back on his bunk, crossed his arms under the back of his head and stared at the canvas above him. Somewhere in the distance: the clatter of gunfire, the fading sound of an outbound chopper. Did these objects change things, he wondered? Could some stones, a few sheaves of paper, change lives, directions? Were they a means to a future, or the end of one? For the first time in a long time he thought about Sara, his fiancée. He hadn’t written to her in weeks, now, not since the hospital. He’d tried a couple of times, but the words he needed were too hard to find, and those he didn’t were too banal. And the more he didn’t tell her, the harder it became to write anything at all, until it seemed simply an irrelevancy, and he knew that he didn’t love her and never had and that he’d only asked her to marry him because it was what she’d wanted, even though they’d only spent two days together and didn’t know anything about each other and never would.
Tomorrow, he’d go to Wade. He’d tell him everything. He’d tell him about the diamonds and about killing Doctor Death’s assistant in the dunes. He’d show him the documents, the notebook. He was now convinced that the 1-Mil lady doctor’s cryptic note was somehow linked to the events he’d witnessed in Angola, the SAMS experiments on unarmed black prisoners, and that UNITA – or at least the element of UNITA that Colonel Mbdele ran – was part of it. What had Zulaika said? Drug war. What he’d seen certainly qualified. She was telling the truth. MPLA or not, Wade trusted her. He trusted Wade. And Operation COAST? He’d mention the word to Wade, see how he reacted.
Clay thought again of the diamonds; Mbdele’s diamonds. He remembered the night in the bunker, Mbdele’s offered handful of pills, and the way the UNITA fighters’ eyes flared and danced – that drugged-up, euphoric, sex-crazed, primal look in each tortured face. He’d heard of people taking pills to get high, but never seen it or experienced it. Not with his background. Not from a proper, white middle-class Johannesburg suburb. Not a boy from a respectable white private school with its own pool, and rugby and cricket pitches, and the compulsory military training after school. Not him.
All of that – home, school, friends, his parents, even Sara – seemed a long way away now. Gone. Obliterated, and never coming back. He was someone different now; or maybe it was just that he had finally become the person he was always supposed to be.
Sleep came. That deep blank born of physical and mental exhaustion, of the exquisite relief of just being alive.
When he awoke it was dark. He walked to the enlisted man’s mess building with Eben to get some dinner. Above them, the sky was clear. Stars covered the night so that there was no black, only shades of starlight, distant and unimaginable. The diesel generator hummed in the distance, barely audible over the insect din. The mess hut was set in a small earth revetment just off the main base track. It was the last sitting of the day and they could hear men’s voices, the clink of cutlery on metal trays. The windows glowed yellow. The officer’s mess was not far – less than a hundred metres down the road, past a small thicket of Mopane trees. They had just turned onto the staked pathway that led to the enlisted men’s mess when Eben stopped dead, grabbed Clay’s shoulder.
‘Look,’ he whispered.
Wade was standing alone on the road near the mopane thicket with his hands on his hips. The light from the officer’s mess shone through the trees and struck Wade in dappled, moving patches.
‘What’s he doing?’ whispered Eben.
Clay was about to answer when Wade took a step forward. Another man emerged from the edge of darkness and stood facing him. Wade took a step back. The sound of raised voices came clear now in the African night – the two men were arguing about something.
‘Do you recognise him?’ asked Eben. People came and went from the big front line airbase on a regular basis, so it was not unusual to see strangers.
‘No,’ said Clay. The man’s back was turned to them, and he was still partially obscured by the fractured mopane shade. But there was something about the way the man stood, about the size of him, that was vaguely familiar.
The man was questioning Wade now, his to
ne increasingly insistent.
‘Come on,’ said Eben, starting towards the two men.
‘Wait.’ Clay grabbed his friend’s elbow.
Just then, Wade turned away from the man and started walking back along the road, towards the officers’ bivouac area. The other man stood in the road, watching him go, silent now. After a while he stepped out into the floodlit part of the road and started towards the mess. As he did, Clay caught a glimpse of his face.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Clay.
‘What?’ said Eben. ‘Who is it?’
It was him: the same fleshy dark jowls, the ravaged skin, that same lumbering gait. ‘It’s the poes from the chana, the one I told you about – tallying all those UNITA tusks,’ whispered Clay, the man’s final words that day echoing in his head: You’re all dead men.
Botha.
‘Shit,’ said Eben. ‘Do you think he’s come to report us?’
More like kill us, thought Clay. ‘Didn’t take him long. Let’s get out of here.’
They started back to their tent.
‘We better tell Crowbar,’ said Clay. ‘The bastard threatened him, too.’
‘Who’s he with, anyway? He can’t have any jurisdiction here, can he?’
‘Who the hell knows,’ said Clay. ‘Just stay alert. We’ll take turns keeping watch. Anything moves outside the tent, shoot it. If he’s stupid enough to try to come after us here, we’ll plug him and tell everyone we thought he was a terr.’
Eben nodded, muttering to himself.
Crowbar wasn’t in his tent. Someone said he was up at command for a briefing – something big apparently. Clay and Eben waited around for a while, but he didn’t come back. They went to bed hungry, Eben taking the first watch.
Deep in the night Clay was awoken by a loud explosion, how far off he couldn’t tell, followed by the usual moment of silence before the scurrying reaction of shouting men and grinding vehicles. But to these ragings he was now so inured that he was soon asleep again.
At 0430 he was shocked awake by the screaming of NCOs: Parade in five minutes. Full kit. Draw extra ammo, food and water. We’ll be away a while this time. Get moving.
They stumbled out into the cool half-darkness of morning, formed up by section and platoon. Crowbar stood before them, stern faced, waiting as the NCOs dressed the ranks and called the men to attention.
‘Valk 5 is going back into Angola, men,’ said Crowbar. ‘This time as part of a divisional-scale effort against FAPLA. Operation Protea they’re calling it. We will be putting over four thousand men into Cunene Province. Our orders are to destroy a major concentration of FAPLA and Cuban troops massing around Rito. We will be supported on the ground by elements of 32-Bat, SAAF gunships and Vlammies.’
Crowbar paused for a moment, looked down at his boots, then back up at the men. ‘Last night, we suffered what is believed to have been a mortar attack by SWAPO terrorists. A single mortar round fell inside the compound, destroying one hut. A patrol was sent out in pursuit of the attackers, but no contact was made. I regret to inform you that Captain Wade was killed. There were no other casualties. Liutenant de Vries will be acting CO of the company until further notice.’
Commissioner Ksole: Operation Protea. The SADF’s Provost General’s records show that this is the operation that resulted in the massacre near Rito, in Angola, on 23rd August, 1981. Is that correct?
Witness: (Coughs)
Commissioner Ksole: Mister Straker?
Witness: Yes. Yes, sir.
Commissioner Lacy: The records also show that this was the day that you and your colleague – Lance Corporal Eben Barstow – were seriously wounded. Is that also correct, Mister Straker?
Witness does not answer.
Commissioner Lacy: Mister Straker?
Witness: I, ah. May I have a moment, please, ma’am, I’ve … I need … Ah. Sorry.
Commissioner Barbour: Take your time, son.
Commissioner Ksole: Mister Straker, the question was put to you previously about your wounds. Please can you confirm that this was the date – 23rd August, 1981 – on which you were seriously wounded?
Witness: That is correct. Eben was hit before we reached the village. I was hit not long after.
Commissioner Barbour: Tell us what happened, son.
Witness: It started right after we airlifted into the chana. We started taking fire as soon as we hit the ground. I was leading the section that day. I was on point. We were in pursuit of the enemy. There was contact on our right. I could hear AK47 fire close by. I emerged into a clearing. At the far side of the clearing I saw a flash of movement just inside the tree line. I fired. We crossed the clearing. We found a boy, lying in the long grass. Shot through the stomach.
Commissioner Ksole: You shot a civilian, a boy?
Witness does not answer.
Commissioner Ksole: Mister Straker?
Witness: Yes. I shot him. It was an accident. I thought it was an enemy soldier. I panicked. I didn’t take time to verify the target, I … Oh, Jesus.
Commissioner Barbour: Was he dead?
Witness: He was still alive. I put Eben in charge of the section and carried the boy back to the LZ. I tried to put him on a casevac, but by the time I got there, he was dead.
Commissioner Lacy: And your friend, Lance Corporal Barstow?
Witness: He was hit a few minutes later, before I re-joined the section. A bullet to the head. I helped carry him to the casevac.
Commissioner Lacy: And he survived.
Witness: You could call it that, I guess.
Commissioner Ksole: And all this happened just outside the village?
Witness: Yes, sir. About half a kilometre from the church and the edge of the village. I re-joined the platoon just as we started advancing towards the church. That’s when we started taking heavy fire from a twenty-three.
Commissioner Barbour: A twenty-three? Please can you explain to us what that is, son?
Witness: A 23-millimetre gun. It was designed as an antiaircraft weapon, but the commies learned that it was hugely effective against men on the ground. There was one in the village.
Commissioner Ksole: And then what happened?
Witness: There is something else, sir. Something I need to say.
Commissioner Barbour: Proceed.
Witness: The little boy. The one I … the one I shot. He. He. It was…
Commissioner Barbour: Take your time, son.
Witness: It was Adriano, sir. The boy we saved from the plane. Zulaika’s son.
Commissioner Barbour: Good God.
19
And Quiet Came
The piece of Kingfisher’s skull that had opened up Clay’s cheek was safely in his pocket.
He could hear de Kock’s MAG pumping out rounds somewhere up ahead and to the right of the little white church, and now the slower concussion of the 23 mm anti-aircraft gun that had taken Kingfisher’s head off. Rounds whipped over his head, little frissons of death. He crouched low and ran towards the village, Crowbar just visible up ahead through the shifting ground-smoke. Clay’s heart was pounding as if it would blow its valves. The dull ache in his cheek had now spread to his whole head, and he could feel his left eye starting to swell shut. He kept running.
He had just passed the church when he heard a mine go up, that distinctive, muffled whump, and then the inevitable screams of men. By the time he joined the rest of the platoon, Bluey was dead. The mine had taken off his right leg and most of his left, and he lay, grey and gone, in the short, burned grass.
In Clay’s memory, what happened next would always remain shrouded in that thick, grey battle smoke that seemed to rise from the earth like vapour from a mass grave, as if the pounding of battle had opened crevices and wormings in the soil, allowing all that lay dead and rotting within to rise again. It was through this hell of swirling mists that he stumbled, half blind from the hole that had been ripped in his face, the sounds of the fight drumming inside his head, his soul by now tortured to the fines
t point of regret.
He was in the village. He could see the mud huts, the small vegetable plots, the animal pens fashioned from mopane branches. Some of the huts were on fire. He could hear the sound of the enemy’s weapons: AKs and the big 23 mm. Bodies littered the ground, uniformed FAPLA soldiers, villagers, too. An old bushman, slack-skinned and naked with a long grey beard, lay sprawled in the middle of the main square, a big red hole in his chest. His eyes were open. Nearby, a woman lay face down in the dust, bundled in her dirt-covered cloth. The back of her head was missing. Clay stumbled, ploughed into the ground as a mortar round exploded close by. Gunfire raged all around, an insane, crackling laughter. Screams thickened the air, the cries of women, the hoarse barks of men and dogs. The gun that killed Kingfisher roared to life again. It was close. Its detonations banged in his chest like a second heartbeat.
Clay staggered to his feet, fired his rifle into the smoke, towards the sound of the 23 mm gun. For a moment the smoke shifted and he could see the big anti-aircraft gun on its wheeled mount, flame erupting from its elongated muzzle as it banged out deadly projectiles. Just as quickly, it was gone, shrouded in smoke. Clay emptied a magazine on full auto in the direction of the gun. Then another. The gun fell silent. He stumbled towards the gun. When he got there, the crew were dead, three of them, sprawled in the dust. He stood looking at them for a long time, the battle raging all around him.
And then it was over.
Quiet came.
That’s when he was hit.
20
Easier Than Living
He’d known right away that it wasn’t good.
He’d seen enough to know when a guy was bad. Something about the tone in everyone’s voice, the look on their faces as you waited for the casevac, glanced at where you were hit and then turned away, fear in their eyes.
He remembers being lifted onto the Puma, Crowbar telling him he’d be alright, everything light and hazy as the morphine started to hit. And then just glimpses, like looking out through his mosquito net as a child in summertime, the morning sun coming through, flat and diffuse and shot through with promise. And then an operating theatre, the surgeon’s masked face, his mouth moving beneath the white, blood-spattered mask. Bright lights. The interior of a Hercules, the drone of engines, the rows of stretchers laid out on the cargo bay floor and him thinking even then of Adriano and Eben and Zulaika and Otto and Bluey and Kingfisher and of the old busman’s dark, cloud-strewn eyes staring up at the sky.
Reconciliation for the Dead Page 17