The Fat Man handed the pistol to her. ‘You might need them, after all, the cops are trying to kill you as well.’
The behemoth stood up, put another 45 in his trouser pocket, grabbed the extra AK and then packed the spare magazines into his remaining pockets.
‘Sipho,’ he shouted. The door opened and one of the lost boys came in.
‘Fat Man?’
‘Call the rest of the lost boys in.’
Sipho went to the door and called. The young men trooped in. The lost boys. Hollywood wannabees. Rapper clones. But everyone a killer. Not for them the New York apartment and Versace suits. Instead, fake Rolex’s, gold plated jewelry, well-used firearms and an early death.
Fat Man walked amongst them. Physically pushing them into three groups of three and keeping Sipho to one side. Then he pointed.
‘Group one, group two, group three. Okay?’
They all nodded.
‘Group one; I want you to clear everyone from First and Third Avenue. Tell them to leave if they value their lives. We don’t want innocents to get harmed. Go, now.’ Group one left. ‘Okay, group two. Take five of the men and build a barricade across Second Avenue on the East side. I don’t want any surprises coming from there. Chuck a few tires onto the barricade and light them. That should keep anyone out. Move it.’ Group two ran off. ‘Group three; take twenty men, fully armed, heaviest weapons that you can organize. Build another barricade across Third Avenue, just as it turns. When they come around the corner hit them with everything that you have and then retreat back to the hostel. Got it?’
The three lost boys nodded and headed off.
‘What about putting a barricade across First Avenue?’ Asked Bart.
Fat Man shook his head. ‘No point. The Casspir would just drive straight through it. Waste of time.’ He opened the door. ‘Remember. Stay in this room.’
Bart stared at the AK in his hands. ‘I hate these things.’
‘What?’ Asked Misty. ‘Guns?’
‘No. AK47s. They’re evil. You know that the AK is responsible for more deaths than both of the atomic bombs put together? Hate them.’
He lit himself a cigarette and waited. Tense. Fearful.
Chapter 34
Petrus and Garrett slipped through the township. They were heading to a set of crossroads that they reckoned the Prophet would have to pass through in order to get to the hostel. They figured that, if he was after Petrus then that would be where he was heading.
As they moved Garrett’s mind was spinning in overdrive. It would be wrong to say that he was scared of the Prophet. But he had spent time in his company. He had looked into his eyes. They were less than human. But they contained belief. Loads of it. He was a man who fought for a purpose. Contrary to what Fat Man had said, Pete was not a psychopath. He was a rational, thinking man, who had somehow, during his life, been broken beyond repair. A broken man.
He was human so he could be killed. But Garrett didn’t want to kill him. For no other reason than he was sick of killing. He had come to South Africa to help his friend recover a kidnapped nephew and he had ended up killing over a dozen people. So far. On the whole these people were not his enemies. Most had done little or no harm to him.
And he had killed them. And, in doing so he had lost control of the Beast in him. Once again he was becoming Popobawa. The demon. A man who lived to kill as opposed to a man that kills to live. It sickened him.
They arrived at the crossroads and paused. Blending in with the shadows. They waited. Silent. Still.
They didn’t have to wait long until they saw something. A slight disturbance of the smoke. A subtle change in the quality of the darkness. Someone was coming.
Garrett waited until he saw the first man ghost into view. Then he stood up. Totally exposing himself to the enemy.
Petrus hissed in shock.
‘Don’t shoot,’ said Garrett. ‘We need to talk.’
The man froze, rifle at his shoulder, ready.
And behind him Garrett heard the faint metallic sound of an automatic rifle selector switch being flicked from safe to fire. The hair on the back of his neck rose up. He glanced sideways at Petrus who shook his head very slightly.
‘Don’t shoot,’ repeated Garrett, softly. ‘There are things that need to be said.’
‘Turn around slowly,’ said Pete. ‘Both of you.’
The two of them complied. The Prophet stood about three yards from them. Half his face invisible in shadow, the other lit faintly by the ambient light. Like half a head floating in the air. A nightmare.
‘How did you get there?’ Asked Petrus.
Pete didn’t answer. He simply stared at them. A slightly puzzled expression on his face. Like they were some obscure species of animal that he was seeing for the first time. Eventually he spoke.
‘What needs to be said?’ He asked.
‘The truth,’ answered Garrett. ‘The simple truth.’
‘There is no truth anymore,’ said Pete. ‘Only varying degrees of lies.’
‘Perhaps,’ agreed Garrett. ‘But what I am about to say is as close to the truth as I can get. Firstly, you need to know, there is no arms cache. It doesn’t exist. Never did. It was a propaganda exercise dreamed up by the Inkatha party to big themselves up before the elections. No cache. No secret weapons. Nothing. That is the truth.’
The Prophet’s eyes bored into Garrett. The void in the darkness.
Then he nodded.
‘You speak the truth.’
Pete let his rifle drop, the barrel facing the ground. He signaled to his men who appeared out of the darkness. Quizzical but silent.
‘There’s more,’ said Garrett. ‘You aren’t the only one looking for Petrus. The cops dropped off leaflets this morning offering a reward for anyone who could bring him in alive. I’m surprised that you haven’t come across one. They’re all over the place. That’s why the cops have bottled up the area. They don’t want Petrus or me to get out.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ said Pete.
Garrett chuckled and shook his head. ‘Why does everyone keep saying that? Of course it makes sense. It simply doesn’t make sense to us. What we need to do is figure out who it makes sense to and then ask them what the fuck is going on.’
As Garrett was talking the sun began to rise. All around him came the sounds of the township coming alive for the day. People started to drift out of their shacks. Fires were restocked and the acrid smoke pall started, once again, to thicken.
‘Look,’ said Petrus. He pointed in the direction of the hostel where one could see two massive pillars of black smoke boiling into the sky. ‘It’s tires,’ he continued. ‘Someone is burning a shit-house worth of tires. That can only mean one thing. Fat Man has set up barricades in the roads.’
‘I think that we should go and check out what’s happening,’ said Garrett.
Pete stood still. His mind was in turmoil. Emotions boiled close to the surface but he did not show any. To do so would be weakness. But he needed to know what was going on. Why were the police looking for Petrus? Who else was involved? Was this the end of his dream of a white homeland?
He gestured to his men. ‘Come. We go as well.’
Garrett nodded his acceptance but Petrus looked less than happy. His hatred of the Prophet ran deep, the result of many years of apartheid atrocities compounded by his recent aggression against Petrus’ own family.
However, Garrett reckoned that it was better to have The Prophet where you could see him. As opposed to wondering where he was. What he was doing.
The six of them set off at a trot. All around them the township dwellers continued their lives. Some glanced at the group of armed men as they jogged by, others ignored them. Some children pointed. Some mothers hid in their huts. Simply another day in one of the most violent places in the world.
Chapter 35
Manhattan rose early, as was his custom. He had slept in the room attached to his office and managed to grab two or three hours of restless slumber.
By now he had resigned himself to the fact that his plan had not worked. The margin call that he had gambled on would come due in the next couple of hours when the stock exchange opened in Johannesburg. He would lose, not only his entire life but also the life’s savings of all of his partners. They were small men but they were spiteful. They would gang together and seek retribution. They would want him dead. But they would have to catch him first.
He had a number of passports under a variety of names and nationalities. They were not fake in that they were all the genuine article, save the personal information on each one.
He had not chosen the clichéd destinations either, preferring the more European countries as opposed to South America, Mexico or any African states. Instead he had a French passport, a Canadian, a Spanish and a British one. He had some contingency funds. Not enough to last more than a couple of months, but he was a resilient man. Bright, well educated and ruthless. Like a phoenix from the ashes he would rise again.
He decided to take a long shower. Shaved and dressed in one of his tailored English suits. Turnbull and Asser shirt, Izingara tie.
Then he phoned a local restaurant and ordered a breakfast to be delivered. Steak, eggs, hash browns, freshly squeezed orange. He did not order coffee as he had a superb bean-to-cup espresso machine in his office and fancied himself as a bit of a barista.
While he waited he turned on CNN. It was the usual crap. Natural disaster in India. Some or other African shithole declaring war on some other unknown African shithole. Muslims blowing up stuff. Americans telling them not to.
And then the video of colonel Zuzani making a fool of himself. Christ, thought Manhattan, apparently the same video had gone viral on You Tube overnight. Three hours after it had been shown on TV some bright spark had put it to music and it already had twenty million views.
Someone knocked on the door and Manhattan went to open it. It was the deliveryman with the breakfast. He carried it in and laid it on the table in the corner of the office. Manhattan signed the bill and added a tip. He had an account so there was no need for cash to change hands.
In the background the newsreader said something that tapped at Manhattan’s consciousness but he ignored it. He pulled the cling film off the breakfast plates and the mouth-watering smell of steak wafted up.
Then it hit him. He frantically grabbed his remote control and activated his cable hard drive, rewound the news and listened again.
And the video footage that the world is now referring to as “Zuzani’s Farce” has shown the South African government up in a less than favorable light. So much so that when the markets opened this morning the Rand was trading over twenty percent down on yesterdays price.
Manhattan rewound again…
…when the markets opened this morning the Rand was trading over twenty percent down on yesterdays price.
Again…
…when the markets opened this morning the Rand was trading over twenty percent down on yesterday’s price.
Twenty percent.
Manhattan Dengana had just made a paper profit of over Five Hundred Million Dollars.
His hands shook as he switched off the television.
Five hundred million dollars. Not as much as he had hoped to realize with his original plan but it was still a very large sum of money. Particularly if he didn’t share it.
And why should he? He was the one who had made the plan. He had taken the risks, used his influence to change the market. It was him. All him. Fuck them all, he said to himself. It’s mine.
He opened his briefcase to take another look at his passports and decide which one to use.
***
Zuzani rode in the passenger seat in the Casspir. Surrounded by two inch steel plate and bullet proof windows. In the cupola behind him rode sergeant Fumba, in control of the 7.62mm FN Machine gun.
Thirty of his men trotted behind and next to the armored vehicle. He had sent the other twenty men to attack via Third Avenue in order to hit the hostel on two fronts at once. As they moved forward he saw two massive pillars of black smoke rise into the air. One seemed to be coming from opposite the hostel and the other from the corner of Third Avenue.
The radio in the cab crackled into life. At the same time the rip and pop of automatic gunfire could be heard coming from Third Avenue.
On the radio was Corporal Twesi. ‘Colonel, we are under attack. There are roadblocks and barricades of burning tires. Please advise. Over.’
Zuzani thumbed the return button. ‘No advice needed, Twesi. Just fight your way through. Out.’
A sound like hail striking tin rang out and Zuzani saw two of his men drop to the floor. Flowers of red blooming on their body armor as the assault rounds punched through it.
Behind him the 7.62 mm hammered back. Spraying ten rounds a second back at the attackers. The policemen also opened up with their R1s. But Zuzani couldn’t see whom they were shooting at as the attackers had already vanished into the maze of shacks.
The Casspir ground forward. Another brace of men dropped as the snipers on the top of the hostel started picking them off. Fumba swept the machine gun back and forth along the roofline, hosing the area with full metal jacket slugs.
The detachment in Third Avenue was not doing as well. They had no armored support and no squad support weapon. Corporal Twesi had ordered them to go to ground and return fire. But they were horribly exposed to the men behind the barricade. A Molotov cocktail flickered over the barricade and exploded amongst the police. One of them caught alight and rolled around on the ground screaming as he burned to death.
More Molotovs followed.
‘Get back,’ shouted Twesi. ‘Back, back. Move.’ He wanted his men out of range of the petrol bombs. They retreated in good order, laying down as much covering fire as they could. They pulled back to the corner and regrouped.
‘We need to flank them,’ he said to his men. He pointed out four of them. ‘You four stay here and keep returning fire. The rest of us will split into two groups and go around the barricade. We go straight through the shacks into the back alleyway, get behind them and hit them from there.’
The remaining four started to return fire while the two groups made their way into the back alleys.
Corporal Twesi had done well. He had retreated in good order. He had rallied his men and he had come up with a good plan. Strictly speaking it wasn’t his fault that the plan was blindingly obvious. As both teams broke through into the parallel alleyways they found themselves ambushed by a groups of heavily armed Zulus with shotguns and AKs.
They didn’t even have time to fire back before they were all dead.
Then the ambushers came pouring out of the surrounding shacks and obliterated the team of four that had stayed behind.
Sipho called for order and gathered everyone together. As a group they started to run back to the hostel to support Fat Man.
***
Garrett, Petrus and Pete had watched the skirmish with interest.
‘They did well,’ said Petrus.
Garrett shrugged. ‘Not much of a contest.’
‘The real problem is the other attack,’ added Pete. ‘Armor, machine gun. Proper leadership. That’s where this will be decided.’
‘Come on,’ said Garrett. ‘Let’s go take a look. See what we can do.’
***
Bart and Misty sat crouched against the wall under the small windows. The room was covered in shards of glass from the windowpanes that had been blown out in the first few seconds of gunfire.
Misty was shaking with a surfeit of adrenaline and fear.
Bart looked bored.
‘How can you be so calm?’ She asked.
‘I’m not.’
‘But you look…I don’t know…bored.’
‘I am. I hate sitting and doing nothing.’
‘But aren’t you scared?’
Bart chuckled. ‘Absolutely, totally fucking terrified. Who wouldn’t be?’ He lit a cigarette. Misty could see a slight
tremor in his hands as he did. But it was well controlled.
Another burst of machine gun fire strafed the building. Two rounds found their way through the windows and ricocheted around the room, shattering a lava lamp in a shower of blue and red dye.
Bart stood up and fired back, not aiming. Simply random return fire.
‘Why did you do that?’ Shouted Misty.
‘Makes me feel better.’
Misty popped up, stuck her 45 out of the window and pulled off a few shots. Then she dropped back down, a huge grin on her face. ‘Hey, you’re right. I do feel better.’ She sprang up again and fired until the magazine was empty. ‘Take that, you mother fuckers,’ she yelled before she went to ground again.
Bart laughed out loud. ‘Fuck me, Rambo.’
She took the cigarette from his hand, took a drag and then started giggling like a schoolgirl. Within seconds the two of them were lying on the floor, such was the strength of their tension relieving laughter.
Bart sat up. ‘Take that, mother fuckers, ‘he laughed.
Misty was attacked by a further fit of giggles.
Another long burst of machine gun fire raked the building. One of the copper jacketed rounds buzzed through the window, ricocheted off the back wall and hit Bart in his left eye, tearing through his brain and exiting through the back of his skull.
Misty screamed.
And screamed.
***
Fat Man’s troops were being beaten. There was no other word for it. Superior training and firepower was getting the best of them.
Garrett, Petrus and Pete watched from two streets away, on the top of a run down wooden house.
‘They need to stop the armored vehicle,’ said Garrett.
‘They can’t, replied Pete. ‘It’s impervious to small arms fire and grenades. As long as the cops just keep inching forward, fire and movement, they’ll take the hostel.’
‘What about Molotovs?’
‘Ja,’ said Pete. ‘That would work, but you won’t get close enough. The 7.62 will cut you down.’
Garrett & Petrus- The Complete Series Page 41
