by Wilbur Smith
‘Hendry, I want you to spread your men out at the top of the main street – there in the darkness on this side of the station. Ruffy and I are going to cross the edge of the swamp to the causeway and lay out on the far side. For God’s sake keep your boys quiet until Ruffy and I hit them – all we need is for your lot to start pooping off before we are ready and we won’t need those lorries, we’ll need coffins for the rest of our journey. Do you understand me?’
‘Okay, okay, I know what I’m doing,’ muttered Wally.
‘I hope so,’ said Bruce, and then went on. ‘We’ll hit them at four o’clock tomorrow morning, just before first light. Ruffy and I will go into the town and bomb the hotel – that’s where most of them will be sleeping. The grenades should force the survivors into the street and as soon as that happens you can open up – but not before. Wait until you get them in the open. Is that clear?’
‘Jesus,’ growled Hendry. ‘Do you think I’m a bloody fool, do you think I can’t understand English?’
‘The crossfire from the two groups should wipe most of them out.’ Bruce ignored Wally’s outburst. ‘But we mustn’t give the remainder a chance to organize. Hit them hard and as soon as they take cover again you must follow them in – close with them and finish them off. If we can’t get it over in five to ten minutes then we are going to be in trouble. They outnumber us three to one, so we have to exploit the element of surprise to the full.’
‘Exploit the element of surprise to the full!’ mimicked Wally. ‘What for all the fancy talk – why not just murder the bastards?’
Bruce grinned lightly in the dark. ‘All right, murder the bastards,’ he agreed. ‘But do it as quickly as bloody possible.’ He stood up and inclined the luminous dial of his wrist-watch to catch the light. ‘It’s half past ten now – we’ll move down on them. Come with me, Hendry, and we’ll sort them into two groups.’
Bruce and Wally moved back along the line and talked to each man in turn.
‘You will go with Lieutenant Hendry.’
‘You come with me.’
Making sure that the two English-speaking corporals were with Wally, they took ten minutes to divide them into two units and to redistribute the haversacks of grenades. Then they moved on down the slope, still in Indian file.
‘This is where we leave you, Hendry,’ whispered Bruce. ‘Don’t go jumping the gun – wait until you hear my grenades.’
‘Yeah, okay – I know all about it.’
‘Good luck,’ said Bruce.
‘Your bum in a barrel, Captain Curry,’ rejoined Wally and moved away.
‘Come on, Ruffy.’ Bruce led his men off the embankment down into the swamp. Almost immediately the mud and slime was knee-deep and as they worked their way out to the right it rose to their waists and then to their armpits, sucking and gurgling sullenly as they stirred it with their passage, belching little evil-smelling gusts of swamp gas.
The mosquitoes closed round Bruce’s face in a cloud so dense that he breathed them into his mouth and had to blink them out of his eyes. Sweat dribbled down from under his helmet and clung heavily in his eyebrows and the matted stems of the papyrus grass dragged at his feet. Their progress was tortuously slow and for fifteen minutes at a time Bruce lost sight of the lights of the village through the wall of papyrus; he steered by the glow of the fires and the occasional column of sparks.
It was an hour before they had half completed their circuit of Port Reprieve. Bruce stopped to rest, still waist-deep in swamp ooze and with his arms aching numb from holding his rifle above his head.
‘I could use a smoke now, boss,’ grunted Ruffy.
‘Me too,’ answered Bruce, and he wiped his face on the sleeve of his jacket. The mosquito bites on his forehead and round his eyes burnt like fire.
‘What a way to make a living,’ he whispered.
‘You go on living and you’ll be one of the lucky ones,’ answered Ruffy. ‘My guess is there’ll be some dying before tomorrow.’
But the fear of death was submerged by physical discomfort. Bruce had almost forgotten that they were going into battle; right now he was more worried that the leeches which had worked their way through the openings in his anklets and were busily boring into his lower legs might find their way up to his crotch. There was a lot to be said in favour of a zip fly, he decided.
‘Let’s get out of this,’ he whispered. ‘Come on, Ruffy. Tell your boys to keep it quiet.’
He worked in closer to the shore and the level fell to their knees once more. Progress was more noisy now as their legs broke the surface with each step and the papyrus rustled and brushed against them.
It was almost two o’clock when they reached the causeway. Bruce left his men crouched in the papyrus while he made a stealthy reconnaissance along the side of the concrete bridge, keeping in its shadow, moving doubled up until he came to dry land on the edge of the village. There were no sentries posted and except for the crackle of the flames the town was quiet, sunk into a drunken stupor, satiated. Bruce went back to call his men up.
He spread them in pairs along the outskirts of the village. He had learned very early in this campaign not to let his men act singly; nothing drains an African of courage more than to be on his own, especially in the night when the ghosts are on the walk-about.
To each couple he gave minute instructions.
‘When you hear the grenades you shoot at anybody in the streets or at the windows. When the street is empty move in close beside that building there. Use your own grenades on every house and watch out for Lieutenant Hendry’s men coming through from the other side. Do you understand?’
‘It is understood.’
‘Shoot carefully. Aim each shot – not like you did at the road bridge, and in the name of God do not hit the gasoline tanker. We need that to get us home.’
Now it was three o’clock, Bruce saw by the luminous figures on his wristwatch. Eight hours since they had left the train, and twenty-two hours since Bruce had last slept. But he was not tired, although his body ached and there was that gritty feeling under his eyelids, yet his mind was clear and bright as a flame.
He lay beside Ruffy under a low bush on the outskirts of Port Reprieve and the night wind drifted the smoke from the burning town down upon them, and Bruce was not tired. For I am going to another rendezvous with fear.
Fear is a woman, he thought, with all the myriad faces and voices of a woman. Because she is a woman and because I am a man I must keep going back to her. Only this time the appointment is one that I cannot avoid, this time I am not deliberately seeking her out.
I know she is evil, I know that after I have possessed her I will feel sick and shaken. I will say, ‘That was the last time, never again.’
But just as certainly I know I will go back to her again, hating her, dreading her, but also needing her.
I have gone to find her on a mountain – on Dutoits Kloof Frontal, on Turret Towers, on the Wailing Wall, and the Devil’s Tooth.
And she was there, dressed in a flowing robe of rock, a robe that fell sheer two thousand feet to the scree slope below. And she shrieked with the voice of the wind along the exposed face. Then her voice was soft, tinkling like cooling glass in the Berg ice underfoot, whispering like nylon rope running free, grating as the rotten rock moved in my hand.
I have followed her into the Jessie bush on the banks of the Sabi and the Luangwa, and she was there, waiting, wounded, in a robe of buffalo hide with the blood dripping from her mouth. And her smell was the sour-acid smell of my own sweat, and her taste was like rotten tomatoes in the back of my throat.
I have looked for her beyond the reef in the deep water with the demand valve of a scuba repeating my breathing with metallic hoarseness. And she was there with rows of white teeth in the semicircle of her mouth, a tall fin on her back, dressed this time in shagreen, and her touch was cold as the ocean, and her taste was salt and the taint of dying things.
I have looked for her on the highway with my foot pre
ssed to the floorboards and she was there with her cold arm draped round my shoulders, her voice the whine of rubber on tarmac and the throaty hum of the motor.
With Colin Butler at the helm (a man who treated fear not as a lover, but with tolerant contempt as though she were his little sister) I went to find her in a small boat. She was dressed in green with plumes of spray and she wore a necklace of sharp black rock. And her voice was the roar of water breaking on water.
We met in darkness at the road bridge and her eyes glinted like bayonets. But that was an enforced meeting not of my choosing, as tonight will be.
I hate her, he thought, but she is a woman and I am a man.
Bruce lifted his arm and turned his wrist to catch the light of the fires.
‘Fifteen minutes to four, Ruffy. Let’s go and take a look.’
‘That’s a good idea, boss.’ Ruffy grinned with a show of white teeth in the darkness.
‘Are you afraid, Ruffy?’ he asked suddenly, wanting to know, for his own heart beat like a war drum and there was no saliva in his mouth.
‘Boss, some questions you don’t ask a man.’ Ruffy rose slowly into a crouch. ‘Let’s go take a look around.’
So they moved quickly together into the town, along the street, hugging the hedges and the buildings, trying to keep in shadow, their eyes moving everywhere, breathing quick and shallow, nerves screwed up tight until they reached the hotel.
There were no lights in the windows and it seemed deserted until Bruce made out the untidy mass of humanity strewn in sleep upon the front verandah.
‘How many there, Ruffy?’
‘Dunno – perhaps ten, fifteen.’ Ruffy breathed an answer. ‘Rest of them will be inside.’
‘Where are the women – be careful of them.’
‘They’re dead long ago, you can believe me.’
‘All right then, let’s get round the back.’ Bruce took a deep breath and then moved quickly across the twenty yards of open firelit street to the corner of the hotel. He stopped in the shadow and felt Ruffy close beside him. ‘I want to take a look into the main lounge, my guess is that most of them will be in there,’ he whispered.
‘There’s only four bedrooms,’ agreed Ruffy. ‘Say the officers upstairs and the rest in the lounge.’
Now Bruce moved quickly round the corner and stumbled over something soft. He felt it move against his foot.
‘Ruffy!’ he whispered urgently as he teetered off balance. He had trodden on a man, a man sleeping in the dust beside the wall. He could see the firelight on his bare torso and the glint of the bottle clutched in one outflung hand. The man sat up, muttering, and then began to cough, hacking painfully, swearing as he wiped his mouth with his free hand. Bruce regained his balance and swung his rifle up to use the bayonet, but Ruffy was quicker. He put one foot on the man’s chest and trod him flat on to his back once more, then standing over him he used his bayoneted rifle the way a gardener uses a spade to lift potatoes, leaning his weight on it suddenly and the blade vanished into the man’s throat.
The body stiffened convulsively, legs thrust out straight and arms rigid, there was a puffing of breath from the severed windpipe and then the slow melting relaxation of death. Still with his foot on the chest, Ruffy withdrew the bayonet and stepped over the corpse.
That was very close, thought Bruce, stifling the qualm of horror he felt at the execution. The man’s eyes were fixed open in almost comic surprise, the bottle still in his hand, his chest bare, the front of his trousers unbuttoned and stiff with dried blood – not his blood, guessed Bruce angrily.
They moved on past the kitchens. Bruce looked in and saw that they were empty with the white enamel tiles reflecting the vague light and piles of used plates and pots cluttering the tables and the sink. Then they reached the bar-room and there was a hurricane lamp on the counter diffusing a yellow glow; the stench of liquor poured out through the half-open window, the shelves were bare of bottles and men were asleep upon the counter, men lay curled together upon the floor like a pack of dogs, broken glass and rifles and shattered furniture littered about them. Someone had vomited out of the window leaving a yellow streak down the whitewashed wall.
‘Stand here,’ breathed Bruce into Ruffy’s ear. ‘I will go round to the front where I can throw on to the verandah and also into the lounge. Wait until you hear my first grenade blow.’
Ruffy nodded and leaned his rifle against the wall; he took a grenade in each fist and pulled the pins.
Bruce slipped quickly round the corner and along the side wall. He reached the windows of the lounge. They were tightly closed and he peered in over the sill. A little of the light from the lamp in the bar-room came through the open doors and showed up the interior. Here again there were men covering the floor and piled upon the sofas along the far wall. Twenty of them at least, he estimated by the volume of their snoring, and he grinned without humour. My God, what a shambles it is going to be.
Then something at the foot of the stairs caught his eye and the grin on his face became fixed, baring his teeth and narrowing his eyes to slits. It was the mound of nude flesh formed by the bodies of the four women; they had been discarded once they had served their purpose, dragged to one side to clear the floor for sleeping space, lying upon each other in a jumble of naked arms and legs and cascading hair.
No mercy now, thought Bruce with hatred replacing his fear as he looked at the women and saw by the attitudes in which they lay that there was no life left in them. No mercy now!
He slung his rifle over his left shoulder and filled his hand with grenades, pulled the pins and moved quickly to the corner so that he could look down the length of the covered verandah. He rolled both grenades down among the sleeping figures, hearing clearly the click of the priming and the metallic rattle against the concrete floor. Quickly he ducked back to the lounge window, snatching two more grenades from his haversack and pulling the pins, he hurled them through the closed windows. The crash of breaking glass blended with the double thunder of the explosions on the verandah.
Someone shouted in the room, a cry of surprise and alarm, then the windows above Bruce blew outwards, showering him with broken glass and the noise half deafening him as he tossed two more grenades through the gaping hole of the window. They were screaming and groaning in the lounge. Ruffy’s grenades roared in the bar-room bursting through the double doors, then Bruce’s grenades snuffed out the sounds of life in the lounge with violent white flame and thunder. Bruce tossed in two more grenades and ran back to the corner of the verandah unslinging his rifle.
A man with his hands over his eyes and blood streaming through his fingers fell over the low verandah wall and crawled to his knees. Bruce shot him from so close that the shaft of gun flame joined the muzzle of his rifle and the man’s chest, punching him over backwards, throwing him spreadeagled on to the earth.
He looked beyond and saw two more in the road, but before he could raise his rifle the fire from his own gendarmes found them, knocking them down amid spurts of dust.
Bruce hurdled the verandah wall. He shouted, a sound without form or meaning. Exulting, unafraid, eager to get into the building, to get amongst them. He stumbled over the dead men on the verandah. A burst of gunfire from down the street rushed past him, so close he could feel the wind on his face. Fire from his own men.
‘You stupid bastards!’ Shouting without anger, without fear, with only the need to shout, he burst into the lounge through the main doors. It was half dark but he could see through the darkness and the haze of plaster dust.
A man on the stairs, the bloom of gunfire and the sting of the bullet across Bruce’s thigh, fire in return, without aiming from the hip, miss and the man gone up and round the head of the stairs, yelling as he ran.
A grenade in Bruce’s right hand, throw it high, watch it hit the wall and bounce sideways round the angle of the stairs. The explosion shocking in the confined space and the flash of it lighting the building and outlining the body of the man as it blew
him back into the lounge, lifting him clear of the banisters, shredded and broken by the blast, falling heavily into the room below.
Up the stairs three at a time and into the bedroom passage, another man naked and bewildered staggering through a doorway still drunk or half asleep, chop him down with a single shot in the stomach, jump over him and throw a grenade through the glass skylight of the second bedroom, another through the third and kick open the door of the last room in the bellow and flash of the explosions.
A man was waiting for Bruce across the room with a pistol in his hand, and both of them fired simultaneously, the clang of the bullet glancing off the steel of Bruce’s helmet, jerking his head back savagely, throwing him sideways against the wall, but he fired again, rapid fire, hitting with every bullet, so that the man seemed to dance, a jerky grotesque twitching jig, pinned against the far wall by the bullets.
On his knees now Bruce was stunned, ears singing like a million mad mosquitoes, hands clumsy and slow on the reload, back on his feet, legs rubbery but the loaded rifle in his hands making a man of him.
Out into the passage, another one right on top of him, a vast dark shape in the darkness – kill him! kill him!
‘Don’t shoot, boss!’
Ruffy, thank God, Ruffy.
‘Are there any more?’
‘All finished, boss – you cleaned them out good.’
‘How many?’ Bruce shouted above the singing in his ears.
‘Forty or so. Jesus, what a mess! There’s blood all over the place. Those grenades—’
‘There must be more.’
‘Yes, but not in here, boss. Let’s go and give the boys outside a hand.’
They ran back down the passage, down the stairs, and the floor of the lounge was sodden and sticky, dead men everywhere; it smelt like an abattoir – blood and ripped bowels. One still on his hands and knees, creepy-crawling towards the door. Ruffy shot him twice, flattening him.