Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  ‘Good. I am going to go back online with them now, so take a seat and be silent.’

  Captain Biko did as he was told and sat down on a stool next to the desk, after which the General turned the video and mic back on. Staring at him from the computer screen was the fire-scarred, one-eyed face of Colonel Hubble. At thirty-two, he was one of the oldest soldiers in the Antidote’s army, and had been one of the very first children rescued from the ravages of the Congo War by the General.

  ‘Hubble, my boy,’ the General said, smiling with the warmth of a proud father.

  ‘General N’jalabenadou, sir!’ Colonel Hubble replied.

  ‘Is Mandela there with you?’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Get his face on the screen as well. I want to look upon the faces of my boys before I give you the orders I have deemed necessary to combat the threat of these invaders.’

  Colonel Mandela was just off screen, so Colonel Hubble shifted up so that his comrade could sit next to him. The General beamed out a smile both of their faces appeared on the screen. It was not, however, a smile of joy, but a smile of intense, soul-rending sadness.

  ‘My boys, my handsome, loyal boys,’ he murmured, and as he spoke the words, his voice began to crack, and tears started injecting hints of red into the corners of his eyes. ‘You have both been with me from the very beginning. You are like sons to me.’

  ‘And you are like a father to us … sir,’ replied Colonel Mandela, who was twenty-nine and sported a handsome visage replete with large, liquid brown eyes and a square jaw that would be the envy of any male model.

  The General’s hands were trembling slightly. Raw emotion was tightening the screw of the vice grip with which it clamped his throat.

  ‘Which is why this order is so very, very difficult for me to give,’ he half-croaked, half-whispered.

  ‘We will obey whatever command you give us,’ Colonel Hubble said, without the slightest sliver of hesitation or reluctance in his voice.

  ‘The invaders draw close to T’Kalagelellerani, my boys.’

  ‘And we are ready to meet them in battle!’ Colonel Mandela shouted, his boyish eyes alive with vigour and determination.

  ‘And meet them in battle you shall. But only one of you will do this at the mountain fortress of T’Kalagelellerani, with a tenth of your force. The other one will take the remaining nine tenths of the troops and retreat to the ruins of T’Kalandambanathi before the invaders arrive.’

  Next to the General, Captain Biko’s eyes widened with shock, and he only just managed to stifle a cry of surprise; it was clear that he desperately wished to object to this decision. His discipline, however, held him in check, and he did as he had promised to do and remained silent.

  ‘I will leave it to you two to decide who will go and who will stay. You may decide via discussion, or, if you both strongly wish to have the honour of holding T’Kalagelellerani against the invaders to the last man or woman, then perhaps something like a coin toss will have to do. Either way these are my orders, and they must be obeyed to the letter. Hold the city to the very end; there will be neither retreat nor surrender for those who remain behind. Do you understand?’

  ‘We understand!’ they both shouted in proud unison.

  A single tear edged its way out of the corner of the General’s left eye, and it trickled a slow passage down his ebony cheek. He smiled one more smile of biting, tragic sadness at his two boys, and his jaw started trembling with the overwhelmingness of the emotion he was only barely managing to keep at bay.

  ‘You are such good, good boys,’ he whispered, his voice hoarse and cracking despite his resolve. ‘You are prepared to die for me, for our cause. Such good, good, good boys…’

  ‘You have been more than a father to us, General,’ said Hubble, in whose eyes an intense swirling of emotion was also now evident. ‘And it would be the greatest honour I could possibly imagine to give our lives in battle for the ideals of the Antidote. We will choose who goes and who stays … and whoever stays, you can rest assured that we will fight the invaders with every last ounce of strength we possess, until the final breath of this earth’s air leaves our lungs … sir.’

  The General stood up and saluted his officers, his face tightly drawn, his eyes unabashedly teary and his jaw quivering.

  ‘Go then, and carry out these orders, soldiers,’ he whispered, unable to hold his streaming tears at bay. ‘For the very last time … goodbye!’

  ‘Goodbye, sir!’ they both shouted ebulliently.

  The General reached down and turned off the screen and microphone with shaking hands, and then held his face in his hands as tears ran down his cheeks.

  ‘Sir,’ Captain Biko gasped, his eyes wide with disbelief, ‘p-, permission to voice my opinion.’

  ‘Granted.’

  The General’s voice was guttural and croaky, and lacked its characteristic weight of authority and power.

  ‘With all due respect, please, please reconsider what you’ve just done. You’re sending one of your most loyal and capable commanders to his death, along with a number of your finest troops! It’s, it’s a suicide mission, sir! They cannot hope to hold the city against the attackers with such small numbers! They will be killed, every soldier who remains in T’Kalagelellerani to fight the invaders will surely be killed! Sir, if we follow my plan we will certainly be able to crush them, and—’

  ‘You are not in charge here, boy!’ the General bellowed, jumping suddenly to his feet, his eyes aglow with a furious new madness. ‘Do not presume that you know better than me! Do not!’

  His tone then became a bit more subdued, and the fury that had reared so suddenly up, like a startled horse, seemed to shrink back and then leave him. Age settled like tomb-dust over his face; a close crushing of the centuries, compacted like the ancient symmetry of Egyptian pyramid blocks, or the monoliths of Stonehenge. He turned away from the youth and stared out of the window, losing himself in a torrent of thoughts. While his eyes were focused on some unseen point in the far distance, his mind was already drifting away from the present, drawn once again into the tumultuous rapids of too many memories, an endless river that was ever churning and surging and swirling.

  ‘Sir, if I could—’

  ‘Get out,’ the General hissed, the sound blasting like compressed air from between his tightly clenched teeth. ‘Get out of this room, and do not come back here. Send someone else to bring me updates of the battle.’

  ‘Please—’

  ‘GET OUT!’

  The roar seemed to emanate from the very depths of the General’s core; it shook the walls and the door with its booming resonance, reminiscent of the subsonic cry of some great leviathan from the depths of the ocean. Captain Biko needed no further persuasion; with a mumbled apology he hurried out of the room, almost falling over his own feet in his haste to escape.

  After the young man had closed the door, the General lay down on his reed mat and wept.

  ***

  ‘How many a’ them motherfuckers are left up on the rooftop a’ the left tower?!’

  Another burst of machine gun fire forced Colonel Rudd to scramble for cover behind a car-sized statue of a hippopotamus before he could get an answer to the question he had just barked.

  ‘Shit, at least one too many!’ he yelled hoarsely from behind the rock. ‘Take that sum’bitch out!’

  The whirring drumroll of one of the miniguns opening up cannonaded through the forest, followed by the split-second eagle scream of a mortar coming down. The mortar dropped inside the walls of the ruins, and Colonel Rudd was close enough to feel the shock wave that rippled through the ground the moment it exploded.

  ‘Yee-haw! Right on target boys, right on fuckin’ target!’ he whooped into his radio. ‘Now double up them mortars! We’ve almost broken ‘em!’

  The minigun was peppering the tower with such ferocity that the machine gunner on top of it was unable to shoot back. Colonel Rudd took this opportunity to dart out from behind his cover and
rush through the thick brush to the outer wall, just below the tower.

  ‘You’re about t’ get one helluva nasty surprise, motherfucker,’ he whispered, pulling the pin out of a grenade.

  He counted down under his breath then stepped back, took aim and tossed the grenade up onto the roof. His aim was perfect, and the height, while being a stretch, was just within the range of his strong throwing arm. Whoever was up there had no time to react; Rudd had timed the grenade with flawless precision, and it bounced once on the floor and then detonated. Colonel Rudd cackled with savage glee as he saw a body catapulted off of the roof from the force of the blast.

  The body – that of a squat, thick-limbed teenage girl – spun and twisted in the air for a few seconds before crashing onto the sloped ground in the undergrowth a few metres away. Rudd drew his gold-plated Magnum .44, taking aim at the spot where the body had landed. A few wisps of smoke were snaking up from the crushed shrubs and jungle plants; the girl had probably been dead before she had hit the ground. Still, Rudd kept his finger pressed against the trigger; he had learned, over many years of warfare, that often what seemed like certain death was actually not so certain, and to make assumptions about an enemy’s death was to zip yourself up in your own body-bag.

  ‘Come on lil’ chicken, come on … we done cut your head off, I think, but you might still run around some.’

  Then he heard it; a low, agonised moan emanating from the smoking depression in the foliage. He saw the leaves shift slightly – against all odds, there was movement. Life.

  ‘Not for much longer, sweetheart,’ he whispered as a dark thrill rippled through him.

  He squeezed the trigger of the .44, and it kicked with all the fury of a hog-tied mountain lion in his hands. The impact of the huge round punched the body of the girl forward in a tumbling roll, but she hadn’t even stopped moving before Colonel Rudd had blasted two more .44 slugs into her. The heavy lead did its job; no trace of life now remained in that broken, shrapnel-riddled little body.

  Inside the city, Colonel Hubble spoke with frantic urgency into his walkie-talkie.

  ‘Southeast tower gunner has been taken out, I repeat, southeast tower gunner has been taken out! Blue Unit, move up to take over the position!’

  A burst of thunderous fire shook the walls of the room he was in, raining down dust and stone fragments all over him, and he dropped to the floor and covered his head as a high-pitched howl announced an incoming mortar. AK-47 fire began chattering with sustained fury out to his left, but the ground-shaking explosion of the mortar put a swift end to that, leaving only an eerie silence in its wake.

  On the dusty, debris-crunchy floor, he scrambled for his walkie-talkie.

  ‘Blue Unit, come in! Blue Unit! Come in Blue Unit, I repeat, come in Blue Unit!’

  Silence.

  The final unit has fallen. This is it then; this is the end. We have fought hard, for two hours now, but in the end, we could not resist them, and the city has fallen. Well, no, not just yet. It is about to fall, that much is certain. But I’m not about to let it go without taking as many of the invaders down with me as I can.

  Hubble stripped off his helmet, flak jacket and other body armour, and then took off his camouflage fatigues. When he was fully unclothed, he transformed into his animal form – that of a chimpanzee. Now he put everything except the fatigues back on, adjusting the battle equipment to the dimensions of his chimpanzee body so that everything fit snugly and securely. Finally, he slung his AK-47 over his shoulder, and then in his right hand he picked up his wickedly sharp machete. With the Evening Star gleam of vengeance shining with naked fury in his eyes, he set off, moving on swift and silent feet.

  ***

  ‘Is that there C4 ready, Jimbo?’ barked Colonel Rudd from behind the cover of the fallen statue.

  ‘IT’S READY TO BLOW, SIR!’

  ‘Take those fuckin’ doors out then!’

  ‘DETONATION IN THREE, TWO—’

  Jimbo hit the remote button, setting off the C4 charges that had been planted around all the reinforced doors of the city. With an earth-shaking blast the explosives detonated in unison, tearing the hardwood doors out of the stone walls as if they were made of nothing but flimsy cardboard.

  ‘MacKenzie, send in a lil’ box a’ welcome cookies!’ Colonel Rudd bellowed before the debris and smoke had even settled.

  With a malevolent grin MacKenzie laid down a heavy, scything fire with his minigun, sending hundreds of rounds spitting through the blasted-open doors into the city, and he kept going until his entire ammunition belt had been spent. As the minigun whirred with a slowing drone to a halt, Colonel Rudd’s troops waited in silence for a few moments, their guns all aimed at the open doorway, from which clouds of smoke and masonry dust were still belching.

  After MacKenzie had clipped a new belt of ammunition into his minigun, Colonel Rudd prepared to order the advance into the city.

  ‘Err’body ready t’ head inside an’ liven up the party in there?’

  ‘SIR YES SIR!’ was the unified, roared-out reply.

  ‘Jimbo, MacKenzie, you two are armoured up like a pair a’ lil ol’ turtles. You got point, so get your asses through them doors. Find cover right away; Jimbo you sweep right, MacKenzie sweeps left. After that we’ll send in Ellis, Kowalcyk, Chan and Cortez! Y’all ready?’

  ‘SIR YES SIR!’

  ‘Move the fuck out!’

  With the rest of the troops covering their advance, MacKenzie and Jimbo rushed in, crouched low with their fingers on the triggers of their miniguns. As soon as they got inside the walls of the city, each immediately sought out cover behind the piles of rubble they found in the inner courtyard. They gave the area a visual sweep, and then Jimbo called out to Colonel Rudd.

  ‘All clear in here, sir!’

  ‘Y’hear that, boys? Seems like the party’s a bit of a dead one! Just like a couple a’ lil’ ol’ ladies havin’ tea an’ cookies an playin’ bingo or some shit. Well, we’ll have to liven it up a bit then, won’t we?! Ellis, Kowalcyk, Chan and Cortez, get your asses in there!’

  ‘SIR YES SIR!’

  The four marines charged in through the smoking, twisted wreck of the doorway, each aiming his M-16 from one of the four corners of the rough square formation they were in.

  ‘Scout out the first few buildings there boys!’ shouted Colonel Rudd. ‘Sweep ‘em clear, then when you’re satisfied that all’s well, give the rest a’ us the green light t’—’

  A barrage of automatic AK-47 fire suddenly erupted from the shadows, dropping both Ellis and Chan with headshots that blew the men’s heads apart as if they were ripe pumpkins. MacKenzie was hit too, but while his body armour took most of the damage, one of the rounds shattered his wrist and prevented him from firing his minigun, and he fell to the ground, howling with pain. Kowalcyk and Cortez dived for cover, only just avoiding the flying bullets, while Jimbo sprang brazenly out into the open, howling with murderous fury as he opened up with his minigun, spraying everything around him with a hailstorm of supersonic lead.

  ‘What the fuck is going on in there?!’ Colonel Rudd shouted. ‘Get the fuckin’ situation under control, fir Christ’s sake!’

  Jimbo stopped firing and retreated to a section of cover, while Kowalcyk and Cortez crawled through the rubble, searching for suitable cover themselves. Then, from out the ruins of a half-crumbled house to the left, Colonel Hubble bounded out in chimpanzee form, hooting and howling and whirling his machete around his head. Jimbo saw him and dashed out from his section of cover to unleash the wrath of his minigun, but Hubble was too fast; he leaped through the air ahead of the blazing arc of bullets, and as he landed he took Kowalcyk’s head off of his shoulders with one savage stroke of his machete. Cortez blasted out a burst of M-16 fire at point blank range at the chimpanzee, but the rounds thudded into Hubble’s body armour and did no lethal damage. In a spinning counterattack, Hubble hacked off Cortez’s right arm, putting all of his immense ape strength behind the machete blow
, and then, by flipping the weapon about in his hand and whipping it up, he split Cortez’s skull in half … vertically.

  With a howl of bloodlust-charged madness he burst out of the front gates, charging straight for Colonel Rudd, who, utterly unintimidated, jumped up and calmly aimed his Magnum at the sprinting chimp – but at that moment a booming crack resounded across the jungle; a shot from Yamamoto’s massive .458 rifle.

  The force of the shot not only stopped Hubble dead in his tracks, it pitched him off his feet and sent him tumbling over backwards, head over heels. Everyone fell silent, staring at the chimpanzee lying in a broken heap in the dust and rubble from the blown-apart door. With slow, agonised movements, Hubble struggled to his feet and picked up his machete with a trembling hand. An enormous hole had been ripped into his flak jacket and blood was streaming out of it, but he still managed to bellow out a weak roar, and with the last of his strength he tried again to charge Colonel Rudd. Once more, however, Yamamoto’s sniper rifle boomed its thunder across the length and breadth of the jungle valley, and this time when the shot hurled Hubble off of his feet he stayed down. His chest rose and fell in rapid, fluttery movements as shock started to kick in, and the machete slipped from his fingers as his strength began to drain as rapidly from his body as air from a punctured balloon.

  Colonel Rudd stood and held his left hand up, signalling to everyone to hold their fire. He walked over to the chimpanzee, keeping his .44 trained on the creature’s head the whole time.

  ‘Well, well, well, look at this shit, just look at this shit,’ he said softly, half to himself and half to the animal as he approached it. ‘Never thought the day’d come where I’d be fighting battles ‘gainst a couple a’ zoo critters.’

  He put his boot on the chimp’s chest and pressed down hard on the bullet wound, feeling a thrilling rush of sadistic pleasure as he saw the creature’s face twist with pain. The chimp growled at him, but was obviously too weak to do anything else; he tried to lift up one of his arms, but the appendage simply flopped weakly in the dirt.

  ‘You sumbitches put up a good fight,’ Rudd grudgingly admitted, staring with a blood-red mixture of fascination and hatred into the chimpanzee’s eyes, ‘but it’s over now. We done taken your city; we won. Every last one a’ you motherfuckers is dead. You’re the last one, ain’t ya? Ain’t ya, monkey boy?’