Land of Promise

by James Wesley, Rawles

“To be a soldier one needs that special gene, that extra something, that enables a person to jump into one on one combat, something, after all, that is unimaginable to most of us, as we are simply not brave enough.” -- Rupert Everett

  The Watha Peth Hills, Ilemi Republic -- Early May, Five Years After Declaration of the Caliphate

  The Snyman family had lived near Thabazimbi, in South Africa’s Limpopo province in the heart of the Bushveld region. When they moved to the Ilemi Republic, they bought 100 hectares on the verdant western slope of Kothokan Mountain in the Watha Peth Hills to establish what was thus far the farthest-northern Settler cattle ranch. Johan and Violet Snyman selected the land both because it had good grazing and because the properties north of Lokomarinyang were the most affordable. Buying that much land also qualified their family for Class H Ilemi Citizenship under the country’s Citizenship Through Investment program: Johan and Violet had three children -- Hans, Marlize, and Venica.

  They arrived at the end of the first rainy season and immediately paid to have a water well drilled and installed a PV-powered well pump. The road to their property was rough but drivable for at least nine months of each year. They lived out of a Britz pop-up camper on the back of a 2028 Toyota HydroTundra pickup and used a pair of electric dirt bikes for most of their running around the property and to run errands. The rest of their possessions were stored in a pair of 20 foot CONEXes

  They soon began solar electric fence construction. The perimeter of their property measured 40 kilometers. With fence poles for their electric fence spaced at five meter intervals, this required 5,000 fence posts of 12mm by two meter rebar, which they ordered in Kapoeta and had delivered by a hotshot trucker. The posts were driven with a weighted piece of Schedule 80 1” diameter steel pipe. Since the fence would have three strands of electric wire, it also meant buying 15,000 plastic insulators, and 120,000 meters of braided red nylon electric fence wire. Those were sourced in Juba. The smaller diameter wire was less expensive than the more popular braided white electric tape, but it was also less visible to wild game and cattle, so they had to laboriously tie on strips of optic orange warning flagging tape on the top and middle strands. Even their nine-year-old daughter was able to help with that task. This took countless rolls of flagging tape.

  With the fence complete and their first three-meter diameter stock watering tank in place, they spent most of their remaining savings on Nguni cattle, a hybrid breed originally developed in South Africa and Namibia that was gaining popularity in Kenya and Tanzania. A ranch near Marsabit, Kenya, was their source for four bulls, 27 cows with heifer calves at side, and 20 additional yearling heifers. The Nguni breed was tough, fertile, and well-suited to extreme climate conditions. The saying with the Nguni was, “Just add water, some sparse grass, and just a bit of shade, and you can’t kill them.” These horned cattle came in a wide variety of color patterns, but their nose tips were always black. Snyman’s cattle were all soon branded with his newly-registered SY brand.

  Once the cattle was delivered and branded, and after buying a small flock of chickens, the Snyman family got busy constructing corrals. Since they were now nearly out of cash, in the native style, they built everything for the corrals except the gates from Acacia wood and limbs. The rainy season was approaching, so they spent their last few NEuros on pasture grass seed from a seed warehouse in Juba. They broadcast the seed by hand, primarily in gullies and in low-lying areas.

  Johan Snyman knew that he was cutting things close, but he wanted to have a fully-fenced property and the largest herd possible to get a good start on the ranch. In accord with Proverbs 24:27, building a house and constructing cross-fencing would have to wait. They opted to live in their camper for the first year. What they needed was production from their cows, and they hoped to sell their first group of weaned bull calves in about a year. Living through their first rainy season cooped up in the Britz pop-up camper was soggy. They had to very carefully swat mosquitoes to avoid ripping their camper’s mosquito netting. Johan always called mosquitoes “Blood-sucking terrorists.” Despite their less than optimum living conditions, Mrs. Snyman made great progress homeschooling their two children.

  For their first year in the Ilemi, the family mainly ate beef from culled heifers. One of these had gone lame from an unusually bad case of hoof rot, and the other two had been mauled by an adolescent lioness. These attacks took place at two-week intervals, and only ended when the lioness was shot. Part of the beef was consumed as fresh meat, but most of it was sun-dried as biltong, an Afrikaner staple jerky. Their other staples were milk and eggs, and they prepared every recipe they could find that included beef, milk, eggs, and combinations thereof. Out of cash, they bartered some 7.62mm NATO ammunition for a few other staple foods in the village of Kibish, 30 kilometers east of their ranch.

  One night just before their expected calving season, Violet Snyman was awakened by the sound of bawling cows. This was unusual, so she woke Johan. He snatched up his scoped bolt-action 7mm Mauser impala rifle and a flashlight and went out to investigate. Thinking that the disturbance had been created by the arrival of their first calf, he was expectantly happy and whistled to himself as he walked, with his flashlight turned on. But then he heard the distinctive snorts of a horse in the distance. He switched off the light, stuffed it into his belt, and slowed his advance to a very quiet walk, picking his steps carefully.

  There was just a quarter moon low in a clear sky, so Johan could only make out the areas between the scattered acacia trees. Each tree created a murky blotch of shade from the moonlight. He heard another horse short and the clatter of horse hooves -- definitely more than just one horse -- so ducked under the shade of a tree and got down prone. He spotted a man on horseback approaching. Soon, he could make out at least three more riders. This put a chill down Johan Snyman’s spine. He had heard that local cattle thieves almost always came on foot. These were obviously not locals just out for a moonlight ride: These were raiders who had broken through his perimeter fence, and most likely were part of the dreaded Janjaweed terror group.

  Johan whispered the word “dwass”, chiding his own foolishness for only bringing his bolt-action rifle with 11 rounds of soft-nose ammunition: one in the chamber, four in the rifle’s non-detachable magazine, and six more in an elastic nylon cuff on the butt of the rifle. His semi-automatic R1 FAL rifle was a kilometer away in the camper. He had also neglected to bring a hand-held radio, so he was out of contact with his family. Then he remembered that one of their electric motorcycles and his pickup were not running. For the latter, he was waiting for a replacement starter that had been ordered from Juba.

  Even if he got back to his family ahead of the mounted raiders, they’d have no vehicular means of escape.

  The riders continued advancing to the south. In the moonlight, he could see that they were armed with rifles, but he couldn’t make out what type. He could now count eight men on horses. The lead horseman reined his horse to a stop when he was just 50 yards away from Johan. He raised his hand, signaling a halt to the other riders. Johan was surprised to see the man’s face bathed in an odd green glow. After a moment, Johan realized that the light was coming from a night vision monocular, as the rider was scanning ahead of him. The rider was nearly alongside him, so Johan was out of his field of view. The man was looking south, toward the corrals and the pickup camper.

  Johan realized that if he lay still, the riders would probably pass him by without detecting him. But they were obviously headed for his camper. He heard two of the riders talking softly to each other in Arabic. Johan rotated his riflescope’s magnification ring down to 3X because he wanted a wider field of view to be able to acquire targets quickly. He decided to engage any raiders that were carrying night vision gear first. Then he wondered if they might all have NVDs. He said a brief silent prayer and then slid his rifle’s safety lever forward. His heart was pounding as he settled the scope crosshairs on the lead horseman’s left ear.

  The first shot dumped the ride
r out of his saddle. Johan felt confident that unless he had been wearing body armor, the shot had been fatal to the rider. He quickly cycled the rifle’s bolt without removing it from his shoulder, and took aim at the chest of the next closest rider, perhaps 65 yards away. There were shouts from the riders, and one of them let loose an unaimed burst of fire from an AK into the air.

  The short-barreled 7×57mm Mauser barked again, and the shot unhorsed the second man. Johan’s rifle had a huge muzzle flash, so each time that he fired he was temporarily blinded. The flash also gave away his position, so after his second shot he rolled several times to get away from expected return rifle fire. He found himself wishing that he had been carrying his R1, which had an effective flash hider.

  Most of the riders had not seen the flash of Snyman’s first shot, but they did see the origin of his second shot. A deafening cacophony of return fire erupted. Most of it was poorly aimed. Three horses reared in fright at the tremendous noise, and two riders were pitched out of their saddles. Two other horses were wheeling in circles, and one broke away in a headlong gallop with its rider trying to regain control.

  Johan realized that what he was witnessing was the qualitative difference between marginally-trained dragoons and well-trained cavalry. Obviously, these men had not trained much for shooting while mounted, and the horses too were unaccustomed to battle. Their lack of training was the only thing that was keeping Snyman alive -- at least for a few more moments.

  After hearing the first volleys of automatic fire, Violet immediately got on their VHF radio to call for help over the IRDF Alert channel. Her call was answered moments later by a light-sleeping missionary in Lokomarinyang. He was able to relay her message to the IRDF command post in Solus Christus by cell phone.

  The watch commander immediately lifted a field phone and called an alert to the nearby barracks. He also consulted his map and then made a satellite phone call to the nearest ranch, 15 kilometers south of the Snyman’s; that family owned a surveillance quadrocopter UAV. Their UAV was in the air within four minutes.

  Johan fought to keep his breathing under control. Most of the horses were moving quickly, but one man had reined his horse to a halt to change magazines, so he presented a clear target. Johan took quick aim and fired at the man’s upper chest. His target slumped and then slowly pitched forward out of his saddle.

  Both the horses and horsemen were in a panic. There was more shouting in Arabic and another ripple of gunfire. Johan could hear bullets whizzing overhead. It was high time for Johan to move farther away -- much farther. He stood and sprinted westward into a thicker stand of acacias. He did his best to stay in the shadows. The moon looked as if it wouldn’t set for at least another half hour. Gradually, the bursts of gunfire became less frequent and there were more controlled shouts, sounding more distinctly like orders. After running in wide zigzags for more than a hundred yards, Johan took cover behind the trunk of a large acacia tree.

  His throat felt dry and his hands were shaking as he carefully pulled back his rifle’s bolt, withdrawing the live cartridge from the chamber. He snapped that cartridge back into the magazine and then added three more. Then he gingerly loaded the chamber while holding the other cartridges down, bringing the rifle “back up to full snuff,” as his father had been fond of saying. That left him with just three spare cartridges in the buttstock cuff. Eight rounds was not a lot to fight a war. Johan had 35 years of experience as a big game hunter, but this was the first time he’d ever been up against a target that shot back.

  There were more shouts, and then a few more shots were fired. Then there were even angrier shouts. Even without knowing any Arabic, Johan could tell that that someone was being cursed for having used poor fire discipline. He concluded that these raiders were not entirely untrained.

  Johan scanned intently through his scope to get glimpses of the raiders through the trees. Most of the horsemen were riding in fits and starts. There were more shouts as most of the men dismounted and handed their horse reins to one man who stood his ground. The group of horses was about 250 yards away from Johan’s position.

  Two of the raiders advanced on foot and approached the spot where Johan had first taken cover. One of them pulled out a night vision monocular and started to scan the woods in a half circle. Johan cupped his hand across the front lens of his scope, fearing that it might cause a reflection if the monocular had an active IR emitter.

  There was more shouting. Johan pondered the situation and decided that he might have the chance to take a couple more shots, but the first one had to be at the man with the NV monocular. He waited until the man was facing northwest, and then uncapped the scope, shouldered the gun, and took aim. The crosshair was jinking all over the man’s silhouette. Johan struggled to control his breathing, and finally got the crosshair to settle on the man’s chest. The smell of the kikuyu grass was strong in his nostrils, and sweat was stinging his eyes.

  He let out half a breath and squeezed the trigger. Without waiting to see if his shot was effective, he scooted back and rolled behind the old acacia. Dozens of rounds whistled past, and he heard several thudding into the tree. When he took another peek through his scope from the other side of the tree, he couldn’t see either of the men who had approached his previous position He hoped that he’d hit the man with the NVG, but he couldn’t be sure.

  A ten-man squad of IRDF troops (called a “Stick” in IRDF airborne unit parlance), two helicopter pilots, and a door gunner all had to be awakened. They ran from their barracks to the nearby helipad section of the airfield. Their UH-60 helicopter lifted off 21 minutes after Violet’s first call.

  There were still lots of rounds heading Johan’s way, but he had to take at least one more shot -- an important shot. It would be the shot that might give him the chance to get back to the camper without the Janjaweed running him down from on horseback. He cranked the scope up to 9X and got into a more steady prone two-elbow rest.

  Johan took aim at the man holding the reins on a cluster of nine or ten horses. Since he was considerably farther way, it was even harder to get the crosshairs on this man. By his posture, Johan could tell that the man was holding some of the reins in each hand, and that he was bearing down on them to keep control of the frightened horses. To get his crosshairs on target, Johan scooted to the left and let the rifle’s stock contact the tree trunk. Suddenly, the crosshairs became steady. It took two more attempts at repositioning, but finally he was able to maintain contact with the tree and still have the man in his scope’s field of view. Johan whispered to himself, “Totsiens!” He let out another breath and then squeezed the trigger.

  The horse handler was pole-axed to the ground, and there was a horrible shriek from amidst the horses. The bullet had apparently passed through the man and then hit one of the horses behind him. The horses ran off in all directions. There were more shouts of dismay and more shooting, but Johan didn’t wait to see the details. He fired off three more rounds in quick succession, hoping to get the Janjaweed men to duck behind cover. Then he was up and running.

  By the time Johan got back to the camper, his family was up, dressed in camouflage clothes, and armed. Violet and his teenaged son were both armed with R4 rifles, and his teenaged daughter Marlize was armed with her Kommando LDP submachinegun. It had been a gift from her great-grandfather, just before they emigrated from South Africa. His youngest daughter Venica, age nine, was clutching her Ruger 10/22 takedown rifle, and she had a spare 25-round magazine stuffed into the front pocket of her camo jeans. Seeing this, Johan exclaimed, “Good girl.”

  Johan said breathlessly in Afrikaans, “There are at least five armed men -- possibly many more -- who will be here in just a few minutes. They may come on foot, or they may be on horseback. They have NVGs, so they’ll track us down if we try to hide, and we can’t outrun horses, so let’s play this one with the ‘Camper Bait’ scenario that we practiced. You all know your positions. God bless you.”

  He gave each of them a quick hug and then hiss
ed, “Remember: Radios on, but use your earphones only. Now, go!”

  His wife and youngest daughter ran side-by-side to the south, while his teenaged son and daughter headed out at a trot to the southwest and northwest respectively.

  Johan ducked into the trailer, lay down his now nearly-empty bolt action rifle, and picked up his R1 FAL rifle and its set of web gear, which included four FAL magazine pouches, a radio pouch, a first aid pouch, and a canteen. He looped the harness over his shoulders. After stepping back down from the camper, he reached back inside and switched on the camper’s interior lights. Somewhere in his encounter with the Janjaweed, he had dropped his flashlight. The brightness of the lights dazzled him as he turned to stumble up a low rise to the east. It would be a few minutes before he got his natural night vision back.

  As he was running, he was thinking how foolish he had been to overlook buying a night vision scope. He could have bought a used Gen 2 or Gen 3 monocular for about the same price as just one bred Nguni cow.

  He heard the distinctive whine of a quadrocopter UAV. Johan breathed a sigh of relief. He was now hopeful that help was coming. He looked up but could not see the drone. After a minute the whining sound grew more faint. He surmised that the drone was by now orbiting the ranch property.

  He waited a few minutes, straining to hear -- hoping that he wouldn’t hear hoof beats. Then he heard the distinctive sound of an approaching helicopter.

  “Praise God.”

  Per their SOP, the pilot made just one orbit to assess the situation with his NVGs before inserting the Stick. He then deposited them about 400 meters south of the Snyman Corral. As he made his insertion approach, he warned on the intercom, “Be advised that the moon is nearly down and there is still a lot of gunfire in various directions by unidentified individuals. It could get dicey.”