Rogue's March

by W. T. Tyler

  Reddish left the wall and went back down the road toward the marché. Old women still sat in the rush-covered stalls whose counters were stacked with piles of two and three cigarettes, silver flakes of dried fish, and bright red peppers of pele-pele, all husbanded in small frugal heaps purchasable for a few francs. Next door a small open-air bar still served customers, although most had fled. A pair of young prostitutes remained, drinking beer. The soldiers checking documents behind the truck sometimes called to them, but they only giggled to themselves, covering their mouths as they turned away.

  A gasoline tank in one of the overturned vehicles exploded suddenly, and the crowd surged forward along the road, blown forward by the detonation. The Africans in their compounds were drawn to their gates to watch, even the prostitutes stood up to join the market women at the edge of the road. “Has the army finally finished with them?” called an old grandmother. “Sent them to the devil so we can walk in peace now?”

  A burst of automatic weapons fire followed from the paras. Through the heat of the burning car, Reddish followed the curling images of a few paras dodging through the gate and into the compound. The army truck at the marché began to crawl forward, followed by the squad of soldiers examining identity cards. Reddish moved quickly back toward his Fiat before they accosted him.

  “Monsieur! Oh, monsieur!” He heard a voice, as light and exhausted as the night wind, and stopped abruptly, searching the faces passing in the shadows. No one turned his way and he went back to the car. As he reached the door Alphonse Nyembo’s face lifted through the open window on the far side where he’d been waiting. An embassy consular clerk, he worked as a librarian at the workers party headquarters on evenings and weekends. At four-thirty he’d called Reddish to warn him there would be shooting in Malunga.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you. Get in.”

  “No, follow me. Quickly. Bring the car.”

  “Where? What for?”

  “There’s no time. Follow me. This way.”

  Nyembo dodged ahead and Reddish drove forward after him down the road toward the approaching truck, turned across a shallow ditch and into a narrow cart lane concealed behind the compound walls. The lane disappeared in a narrow footpath under the trees where a small white Volkswagen stood abandoned, engine hood up. Reddish left the car and followed Nyembo to a concrete-block wash house twenty meters beyond, hidden behind a screen of shrubbery. Reddish stopped outside warily, listening.

  “Here,” Nyembo called from inside. “Hurry, please.”

  The interior was dark. Reddish struck his lighter. Nyembo was kneeling next to a figure lying on the floor.

  “Who is it?”

  “They left him here, left him here for the soldiers.”

  “Left who here?” Reddish asked softly, kneeling. He supposed the wounded man was a tribal cousin. A bloody rag was tied across his forehead, partially masking his face. Blood soaked the front of his Mao tunic. His body was twisted awkwardly, as if he were protecting a shoulder wound.

  “Masakita.”

  Reddish immediately stood up, extinguishing the lighter. He moved back to the door and looked out, listening, the blood pounding in his ears. He turned back inside but couldn’t see Nyembo’s face. “You’ve got to get out of here,” he said harshly. “Get the hell out. There’re soldiers all over the place.”

  “We must move him, take him—”

  “Don’t be an idiot! Come on! Move!”

  “He’s wounded.”

  “God damn it, it doesn’t matter! Come on!” He moved forward, trying to find Nyembo’s arm, his shoulders, anything to pull him out of there, but stumbled over the wounded man’s ankles. “It’s not your fight. Leave him and let’s go!”

  “Someone slashed him with a machete, one of the jeunesse.”

  “That’s not your problem. Do you want them to find you too?”

  “Lule and another brought him here,” Nyembo said. “The car wouldn’t start and they left him here.”

  “That’s too bloody bad. Come on—”

  “The jeunesse were taking guns from the crates and he tried to stop them.”

  Reddish turned. “Crates? What kind of crates? Gun crates?”

  “Boxes with guns.”

  He kneeled down. “Are you sure?”

  “I saw them from the library window.”

  Again he struck his lighter. “How bad is it? Is he unconscious? Can he talk?”

  “He’ll wake again. We must take him away.”

  “Use your head. We wouldn’t get past the road out front.”

  “Your car has diplomatic plates.”

  “CD plates won’t make any difference, not with this goddamned shooting going on. How much did you see?”

  “Just when they were taking guns from the crates and he went to stop them. The soldiers will find him and shoot him. You could take him to the embassy, to your villa.”

  “And do what, for God’s sake?”

  The lighter flickered out and they crouched in silence next to the wounded man, Reddish’s mind already racing ahead. He couldn’t see Nyembo’s small, bony face. His wife had been Reddish’s Lingala teacher and he’d visited their village near Benongo on the lake. Like Banda, he had no faith in his own status, just in those of more exalted rank. Reddish got to his feet and went outside, listening. The gunfire had died away and he could hear the sound of the wind high in the trees.

  “Can he talk yet?” he asked Nyembo as he returned. “Has he said anything?”

  “No.”

  “We can’t wait like this, there’s no time.” He crouched down. “Go outside and watch. Call me if you hear someone.” Nyembo scrambled to his feet and Reddish leaned forward. “I’m going to lift you,” he said. “Just take it easy.” This is crazy, he thought, his face and shirt drenched. This is just goddamned crazy. He moved his position, got a grip under the knees and behind the shoulders, but Masakita cried out, and Reddish eased him back, still thinking about the gun crates. “It’s going to hurt but I can’t help that.” Ignoring the cries of pain he lifted Masakita from the floor, got his balance, and reeled out the door. “Take out the back seat,” he told Nyembo at the car. “Just jerk it out. How many crates were there?” Nyembo pulled out the rear seat and Reddish lowered the wounded man into the back. He took a raffia mat and two vegetable baskets from the Fiat’s trunk, covered Masakita with the rear seat, and piled the mat and baskets on top. “How many crates did you see?” he asked, still breathing hard as he climbed behind the wheel.

  Nyembo had moved away. “I’ll go on foot,” he said. “If they see me in the car, they’ll stop you.” His courage was leaving him. Reddish heard it ebbing away in his voice.

  “We’ll risk it. I need to talk to you. Come on, there’s no time.” He started the engine.

  “I’ve told you all that I saw. I’ll go another way.”

  “Come on, get in,” Reddish called, but he knew it was no use arguing. His burden transferred, Nyembo was just another helpless African, like those out on the road. “Go the back way then,” Reddish said, “but for God’s sake stay out of sight. Not a word.”

  “Just my wife,” Nyembo said.

  Reddish drove back down the cart lane to the road. The army truck hadn’t moved far enough to clear the road to the north. In the other direction, he was still blocked by the armored cars in front of the besieged compound. He left the car in front of the shallow ditch and walked along the road with the crowd, searching for another exit between the approaching truck and the burning compound.

  “Monsieur, oh monsieur, s’il vous plaît.” The voice came again, stronger now. In the storm ditch at the far side of the road, a small Renault was mired to the axles where the driver had stupidly tried to cross. A woman leaned against the rear fender, her white face streaked with ash, her dark hair wet against her forehead. “Can you help me, please. I’m at my wit’s end.”

  He saw the muck burying the wheels and splashed against her skirt and ankles. “Leave it,” he ca
lled impatiently. “You can’t get it out. Leave it.” The vehicles in the compound behind him were still burning, lifting bolls of dense black smoke into the cordite-filled African night. She shook her head, as if unable to hear him, the brightness brimming in her eyes. He slid down the side of the storm ditch. “Leave it. You can’t get it out. Come on. I’ve got a car up the road.”

  She seemed to recognize him then, looking up through her wet lashes, afraid she might be wrong. “Reddish?” He nodded, puzzled. “Last night,” she reminded him, frightened that he might have forgotten. “At the Belgian reception.”

  He remembered then. She was the Frenchwoman who’d been standing with Armand in the corner of the terrace. “Not the same, is it? Let’s go.”

  “I have these.” She opened the rear door of the car. Two burlap bags lay on the rear seat. “Will they be too much trouble?”

  Quickly he pulled the bags from the car, guessing by their weight and smell what they contained: African masks bought from a Senegalese trader who lived nearby. “Come on. This way.”

  “It’s frightful,” she said as they reached the road, “terrifying.” The army truck had begun to move forward again.

  “My car’s this way, toward the truck.”

  She hurried after him, running to catch up as they were separated by the Africans moving past. “You came here alone?” he asked.

  “It was terribly stupid of me.”

  “Whose car is it?”

  “Houlet’s secretary unfortunately. Do you know what’s happening? Why they’re fighting—” She was moved aside by a quartet of African women carrying baskets and then swept up in the throng in the center of the roadbed. When she joined him again, her face was as distraught as before, her breath dry and hot. “I’m afraid I’ll get lost. I don’t know the way. I’m completely turned around.”

  “Over there, toward the side road.”

  She saw the car. “Thank God. I didn’t know what to do.” He’d turned to look back, toward the burning compound. “Can you drive out? Are you so sure?”

  Searching the road ahead for the paras examining identity documents, he seemed hardly conscious of her voice, her wet face, her muddy sandals. In a few days she’d be just another Frenchwoman at another diplomatic reception, like dozens of others, trading anecdotes about where they’d been shopping or sunning themselves when a few ugly Africans blew out the lights of the capital.

  He put the burlap bags in the rear seat on top of the raffia mat. They waited in the car, concealed in the shadows until the army truck finally passed, and then Reddish drove across the shallow ditch, and turned north through the thinning crowd. A few meters ahead, they were stopped by a group of men carrying a wounded woman across the road. As they waited for the litter to pass, a piercing glottal scream lifted from an old woman ahead of them, and the crowd scattered in terror for the safety of the ditches. Reddish immediately swung the Fiat over to the side of the road. “Get out,” he told her. “Now! Move!” She stared at him in shock, unable to move, and he reached across her, opened the door, and pushed her out, scrambling after her to drag her down into the roadside ditch with him.

  Twenty meters ahead of them three figures had leaped from the high wall enclosing an old Portuguese warehouse to the center of the road, each carrying an automatic rifle. One of the youths had lost control of his and it clattered to the clay of the roadbed, rupturing the magazine. One of the youths had a bloody handkerchief wrapped around his ankle and he half crouched, half squatted in the road, trying to reload his weapon. The third man also carried a pistol, and had difficulty managing both the pistol and the automatic rifle. He waved the pistol aloft with one hand while with the other he struggled unsuccessfully to steady the heavy muzzle in the direction of the paras far down the road behind Reddish, the Frenchwoman, and the Africans in the ditches. The three wore green twill uniforms and the red armbands of the Jeunesse Nationale de la Révolution.

  Head down, Reddish watched from the shallow ditch, his arm forcing the woman down even lower. “You’re hurting me,” she cried weakly. He released the pressure.

  “Shut up and keep your head down.”

  A young woman bolted suddenly from the deeper storm ditch across the road back toward the safety of the paras, a baby swaddled high on her shoulders. The taller rebel, his attention drawn from Reddish’s Fiat with diplomatic plates, let the rifle muzzle drop and fired his pistol in the air. The woman collapsed in terror, the baby tumbling into the road ahead of her. A dozen black arms reached for mother and child, pulling them back into the safety of the storm ditch. The youth fired the pistol again, the muzzle flame a weak, dirty orange against the darkness of the trees, as if the cartridges hadn’t been fully primed.

  “Lukulu,” whispered an old man from the ditch near Reddish. “Lukulu.”

  “Eh,” Reddish grunted, the old man’s explanation suddenly his own. Lukulu was a locally brewed intoxicant made from boiled hemp leaves and alcohol, drunk by the Simbas during the rebellions to get their courage up when sent against automatic rifles with bows and arrows in their hands. He studied the automatic rifle which had fallen to the road. It was a Kalashnikov, caked with dust, as if the stock and barrel were still thick with cosmoline, just removed from the shipping crate. The second rebel couldn’t fit his magazine into the breech. It was a mismatch, he hadn’t been trained properly, or he was too terrified to know what he was doing. The tall rebel was exhorting those in the nearby ditches to join him. “Makasi!” he cried, brandishing the pistol aloft. “Makasi! We have strength!”

  Reddish thought the pistol was an old Belgian sidearm, not Soviet-made.

  “Lukulu,” the old man’s voice came again.

  “Makasi!” The rebel lowered the pistol and aimed it down the road toward the paras hugging the shadows of the armored car that was now moving toward them. The gun jerked as he pulled the trigger, but no shot came, only the sharp click-click of the hammer. A single shot whined in response from a para sharpshooter lying atop the armored car. The rebel turned angrily, still urging the Africans out of the ditches. A few began to rise. The other rebels remained crouched in the road, fumbling with their AK-47 magazines.

  A second shot came twanging up the road from the armored car and ripped through the impacted roadbed near the rebels. The Frenchwoman’s shoulders jerked under Reddish’s restraining hands, and a few Africans lifted themselves to wave back toward the paras, pleading to them to hold their fire. One of the rebels leaped for the ditch, but a dozen Africans rose to thrust him away, grappling with his flailing arms first, ripping his weapon away, and flinging him back into the roadbed. The two remaining rebels crouched on their haunches, their green uniforms dark with sweat, aware for the first time of the hostile circling faces. One rose suddenly, dragging his AK-47 as he tried to vault the storm ditch on the far side of the road to scale the concrete block wall, but four men seized him, twisted the rifle from his hands, tore the revolver from his belt, and sent him toppling backwards. He lay on his side, breathing heavily, his wet black face chalk-white across his cheek where he’d fallen in the dust. From the shadows of the trees, a few glottal screams came again from the older women. Looking over his shoulder, Reddish saw what they had seen, a dozen paras moving out ahead of the armored car, automatic rifles lowered.

  The crowd moved ahead of them out of the ditches and culverts and over the walls, just a few at first, the younger men leading the way, the older following, joined by mothers, old women, and children, until the road was full of dark angry faces circling the three figures sprawled in the dust. The three rebels were hidden then, the night suddenly still. The violence came swiftly and savagely, the way it came to thieves trapped in the grand marché, but Reddish couldn’t see from the shallow ditch—just the angry heaving shoulders and bobbing heads in the road, churning like the dark surface of a sea whose depths trawlers had chummed, voracious with hidden appetites blood had suddenly released. He lifted the woman from the ditch and pushed her into the Fiat. The mob surged behin
d them toward the advancing paras, encumbered by what they still dragged and were pounding mercilessly, with feet, fists, clubs, stones, and useless weapons; and as they moved away, Reddish saw from the car window only a single rubber tennis shoe left in the road where the three rebels had crouched.

  “Don’t turn, just look straight ahead,” he told her. A single shot followed from behind them as the para captain stepped forward into the circle of faces. A second shot followed, then a third, and all seemed to reverberate together along the road and out over the rooftops.

  She stared out through the windshield as the cry of the crowd reached her, head and shoulders unmoving, her lips slightly parted. They passed a few squads of soldiers advancing toward the party compound, some herding rebel prisoners forward, hands behind their heads. They were stopped twice, once by a pair of corporals without prisoners to whom Reddish gave five hundred francs, and a second time by a para captain standing behind an army truck. He probed their faces with his torch, looked at the CD plates, and returned to the window, demanding that Reddish get out. The Frenchwoman put her head back against the seat, her eyes closed, her hands clenched in agony on her lap.

  Reddish refused. “She’s sick,” he told the captain. He examined her face in his flashlight beam, reconsidered, and waved them on angrily. Six dead jeunesse lay along the road beyond the truck, lying in a row, their green tunics pulled over their faces, revealing their naked rib cages. A kerosene lantern blazed at the foot of a compound wall behind them, where a small crowd of Africans had gathered, watching them silently. A few small boys darted along the ditches, some still wearing the paper hats passed out by a local beer company at the stadium during the soccer games. More lay scattered along the road.