by L I Owugah
I crashed into the edge of the balcony and dragged myself to the side of Rambo's door. Stunned but still lucid. Instinctively, I ran my fingers across my chest area. There was A bullet hole in my shirt and a forty-four-millimetre dent in the ballistic plate of the vest. The pain in my back from colliding into the balcony wall was excruciating. I felt as though I'd been bludgeoned by a sledgehammer. But this was no time for self-pity. Like a hundred metre sprinter, I propped myself up on one knee, and lay in wait. The music from across the building shut off dramatically. Yells and screams. Confusion and panic. People taking flight on the ground below. And then the lights went out.
Literally.
A total blackout courtesy of the terminally unreliable National Electric Power Authority. Waiting in silence, the darkness was an immediate asset, a trusted friend, helping to render me practically invisible. I heard footsteps approaching. Quiet footsteps. The sound of Rambo breathing deeply. The shallow and laboured breathing of a man consumed by the fear of what he was about to confront on the other side of the door.
Then the electric company notorious for its bad timing snapped the power back on, and the corridor lit up. Turning to my right, I gazed up and saw a portly looking man in his fifties. The man whose breathing I had been listening to. Dressed in a vest, pyjama bottoms, and a pair of flip-flops, it was clear he was another resident, probably the neighbour next door.
As I looked at him, he stared back at me in disbelief. Silently, but furiously, I batted my hand sideways, motioning for him to return to his flat. It was a gesture he either misunderstood or simply didn't care for.
He opened his mouth, a look of terror on his face.
Then he screamed.
"THIEF!"
A number of things happened in quick succession. Rambo whipped around the door and levelled the gun at me for a second time. I was ready and sprung at him like a cheetah to an antelope. Catching him from beneath the waist, we both went sailing through the air and crashed into the custom built mirror. Another bullet exploded from the pistol. The feel of a warm wet liquid hit the nape of my neck.
The mirror shattered into a million pieces and we hit the deck. The gun flew from Rambo's grip and skated across the floor of the walkway. Something massive slumped to the ground, the ominous sound echoing behind me. Rambo grabbed me in a front headlock, crushing my neck with twenty-five-inch arms which seemed to possess the power of a gorilla. The immediate disruption of blood circulation to my brain meant I had just three minutes to break free before losing consciousness. With zero experience in this form of combat, I was swimming upstream. And then I felt Rambo dragging me across the floor. Dragging and turning me in a clockwise direction. Digging my knees into the floor in an attempt to resist, I found no traction on its surface. The floor appeared to be covered in the same warm, sticky liquid I had felt thirty seconds earlier.
Rambo turned me full circle, and I was confronted with the source and nature of the substance. It was blood. A massive pool if it. A giant pool of blood that had spread across the floor, and was seeping from a gaping bullet hole in the forehead of Rambo's middle-aged neighbour. He had been struck by the second shot.
Gazing at me with a pair of lifeless eyes, he was laid out on the floor. Looking past his dead body, I spotted Rambo's service revolver. The gun was inches from the officer's reach, which explained why he was so determined to get me across the floor. "I will kill you!" he screamed, breathing heavily. He dragged on my neck, edging closer to the discarded weapon. "I will kill you!"
As my eyes dimmed and consciousness began to fade, I committed to the first of two decisions that would bring the dramatic encounter to an explosive finish. Gripping Rambo firmly by the belt of his trousers with my left hand, I hooked my right arm around his right leg and decided it was all or nothing. Rise to my feet or risk dying on my knees. Using every muscle fibre in my anatomy, I pushed off the ball of my foot and heaved myself upwards.
Rambo's response was instantaneous. Upping the ante, he doubled the pressure around my neck and pushed downward, determined to thwart my efforts. He was, without question, a strong, powerful man.
But so was I.
Slowly, but surely, I lifted him off the floor.
"I will kill you!" he screamed again. This time, more a statement of panic rather than genuine conviction, his unrelenting grip still crushing my neck like the lock jaws of a pit bull. And then came the next decision.
A split second decision. I glanced at the old chair over which Rambo had spread his tunic, and caught a glimpse of his police vehicle, parked on the ground below. With Rambo still clinging to my neck I dashed towards the chair.
Confused about where I was headed, Rambo's head snapped around. A look of horror on his face when he realized what I was about to do. Using the seat of the chair as a springboard, I stamped on it and vaulted off the edge of the balcony.
A giant leap into space.
The chairs legs splintered beneath the combined weight of at least four hundred and fifty pounds. But we were already airborne, a couple of feet over the edge of the balcony. The only direction to travel, straight down. Rambo screamed and facing what he knew to be imminent death, released my neck in a desperate attempt to break free. It was a smart decision. One he should have considered earlier. With his leg still locked into the hook of my arm, and the belt of his trousers tight in the grip of my fist, there was nowhere to go.
We plummeted to earth like a defective rocket. Releasing his leg, I shoved my forearm up under his chin and shoved back his head to ensure I had him lined up for impact.
Descending the five floors at warp speed, I used his body as a protective cushion. We crashed on the windscreen of his parked truck. The airbag exploded as the back of Rambo's head caved through the glass. Then the vehicle came alive. Like a rebellious, malfunctioning computer, its siren responded with a loud, persistent wail, the hazard lights flashing furiously in the dark. It was clear from the river of blood leaking from every available orifice, and the twisted look of terror on Rambo's face, that Elvis had left the building. I pushed myself off his damaged, lifeless body and onto the bonnet, but my problems were far from over. My body was screaming in pain. Pain, unlike anything I had ever experienced before. As though every bone in my body had been shattered into a million pieces. There was a ringing in my ears from what had to have been a perforated eardrum. A splitting headache, which was aggravated by the deafening sounds of the car's siren.
I found myself beginning to lose consciousness. Like a patient experiencing the early sensations of an anesthetic before surgery. That's when I heard her voice and felt her arms around me.
"Jonah!"
I looked up.
In the dark, a hazy picture of Funmi.
"Jonah, help me," she pleaded.
I stared at her, confused for a moment as she struggled to pull me up. And then it clicked. She needed my help to get my two hundred and fifty pounds off the ground. Pushing myself off the ground with the flat of my palm, I gritted my teeth in agony as a tremendous surge of pain shot up my right arm. I was suddenly on my feet, leaning against Funmi like an injured soldier in the heat of battle.
She walked me away from the car and hobbling into the distance, I heard voices in my wake.
Several different voices.
"Rambo is dead!"
"Dem don kill Rambo!"
"Everyday for the thief!"
"Serves him right!"
"Bastard!"
A crowd was beginning to gather around the truck and the man they had all despised.
It was game over.
37
JONAH
DEAMS OF ENGLAND
"Have you been in an accident?" I was back at Murtala Muhummad airport for a flight back to the United Kingdom. The uniformed check-in desk employee stared at me in horror. Considering I had a bandaged eye, stitched bottom lip, and an arm stuck in a sling, his reaction came as no surprise.
"Something like that," I responded.
He nodded, snapped a label o
n my travel bag, pushed it through a conveyer belt shuttle and handed me back my passport and a boarding pass.
"You need to be careful,"he said."This is Lagos."
Wise words, I thought. Following the death of Rambo, I had been on the phone to Michael who was still in Abuja, with Sade. I was speaking from a hospital bed, when he advised I get fixed up and hop on the next plane out. We didn't talk about Rambo. Didn't have to. The man was dead, and my silence was evidence of that. The moment I'd left Abuja city, the only person who didn't know he was living on borrowed time was Rambo himself.
After the momentous crash to earth from over fifty feet, Funmi had taken me to a local medical facility to get patched up. I didn't remember the drive but woke up several hours later with an intravenous morphine drip stuck in my arm and Funmi seated by my bedside.
"You passed out in the taxi," she said after I opened my eyes. "But the Doctor said you are going to be okay."
I nodded.
"Thanks."
The door swung open, and a doctor walked in. He smiled when he saw me.
"Awake at last."
He pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed.
"How are you feeling, my friend?"
"Could be worse."
"You know you are lucky to be alive."
He motioned to Funmi." If it were not for this young lady, you would have probably been left to die." He gave me a gentle pat on the arm."You have to be very careful when you are working on high roofs in this country. You know, we don't have the same safety equipment you people use abroad."
I glanced at Funmi. She responded with a tiny smile. Do it yourself handyman, I thought. Far better than admitting to killing a police officer in a calculated leap of faith.
"Favour for a friend," I said.
"Well, maybe that friend should consider coming to visit you before you are discharged." He rose to his feet. "Anyway get some rest. We will discuss your condition later."
He exited the room and I looked at Funmi.
"Thank you," I said.
We stared at each other for a moment. She had an expectant look on her face. Maybe she wanted a hug, a kiss. Maybe more. But I had never been the sentimental sort, and at age thirty six there was little chance of that changing.
Today she had accompanied me to the airport. I joined her as soon as I had checked in.
"All done," I said.
"Good," she replied.
Then I heard a familiar sounding voice.
"Is that so?"
I whipped around. Mr Taffi was standing behind me.
"So you were just going to leave without informing me?"
"How did you find me?" I said.
Mr Taffi smiled.
"This is Lagos," he replied in a humorous tone.
He paused for a spell.
"I spoke to Michael. He told me everything."
"Then I won't bore you with the details."
He nodded.
"You did the right thing." He offered his hand. "Your father would have been proud."
I shook his hand and smiled.
"I got a flight to catch."
"Go well."
I headed over to the departure gate with Funmi. "Guess this is where we part ways," I said. She flung her arms around me and kissed me on the mouth, her eyes turning moist.
"I love you, Jonah." I gazed at her for a spell. She was young and probably didn't even know what love meant. Then again, I wasn't exactly an expert myself.
A couple of hours later I was seated at a window seat of a British Airways 747. As the aircraft lifted off the runway, I quietly watched as the streets, homes, and traffic, below, shrunk to the size of miniature models on a monopoly board. Seated across the aisle, a Caucasian gentleman gazed in my direction. He smiled nervously.
"You alright?" he said.
I smiled back at him.
"Brilliant," I said.
Gazing back down at the disappearing city of Lagos one last time, I shut my eyes and dreamt of England.
EPILOGUE
THE MAN IN THE WHITE HAT
The man in the white hat stood with his eyes fixed on the corpse of the six foot nine, three hundred and fifty-pound giant. It lay before him like a lifeless, conquered ogre. All in white, save for a pair of black gloves, his white hat was matched with a white safari suit and a pair of white moccasins. To complete his outfit the man carried a white walking stick in his right hand.
Staring at what was now another wasted investment, he allowed his gaze to drift across the smashed coffee table. He observed the scattered heap of fifty pound notes that he had paid Juku for the giant's services.
"Any sign of Mr Juku?" he asked his driver who had come to join him. Dressed in a grey tunic and wearing a Chauffeurs cap, the Irishman, known as Mr Stanley cleared his throat.
"Yes, sir. Unfortunately, he is dead. It appears someone pushed him down a flight of stairs." The man in the white head acknowledged this news with an indifferent nod. Noticing a black wallet lying beneath a scattering of broken glass he pointed with his stick. Mr Stanley stepped across and picked up the wallet. He folded it open, extracted a photo ID, and extended it to his employer. The man in the white hat looked at the I.D but did not touch it.
It was a driver's license. The man in the photograph was the same person he had seen the previous evening. A big man who appeared to be confident in his stride, and satisfied with his own company. The same man he believed to be responsible for destroying one of the most destructive fighters he had ever known. Until now.
"Jonah Badmus," he said reading the name on the card aloud.
He looked at Mr Stanley.
"Make sure he is found and his name is added to the top of the list."
Mr Stanley nodded.
"And the money, sir?"
The man in the white hat did not reply and walked away. But his silence told Stanley precisely what he wanted to hear. The money was his. Or at least as much as he could gather before his employer reached the four-decade-old German machine parked outside. Grabbing and stuffing as much cash into his pockets as possible, Mr Stanley estimated that he had about two minutes before his employer reached the vehicle. Meaning he had to be there in one.
He made it in 50 seconds.
Opening the rear door, Mr Stanley waited patiently as the man in the white hat climbed into the car, and settled into the comfort of the back seat.
Closing the door behind his employer, Mr Stanley, slipped behind the wheel, fired up the engine, and took a final look at the face of Jonah Badmus. The man chosen as the new addition to the Squared Circle.
JONAH WILL RETURN
IN
SQUARED CIRCLE