by Tony Park
The stick formed up on him and each reported he was OK, with no injuries. They jogged across the uneven ground towards the ominous smoking signal pyre of the Bryant farmhouse. Braedan yanked back on the cocking handle of the FN, chambering a round, and flipped up the rear sight. His weapon was ready for action.
‘Someone's moving,’ Al Platt, the forward scout, called. ‘From the trees, not the house.’
Braedan instinctively pulled the butt of the FN tighter into his shoulder and raised the barrel, but lowered it when he saw it was a woman.
The dawn light showed her silver-blonde hair. She was slight and short and the FN loose at her side looked longer than her. The woman wiped her eyes with the back of her free hand.
‘Over here!’ she waved. ‘Hurry.’
The stick broke into a run.
She planted the butt of the rifle in the grass at her feet and sniffled. ‘My granddaughter … my husband …’
‘It's all right, ma'am, we're here to help,’ Braedan said. ‘Take your time.’
She sniffed again, then glared at him. ‘There is no time.’ She took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘My husband is over there,’ she pointed to the line of plantation gums. ‘He's been hit. Bullet … through the left calf. I've patched him up. My granddaughter has been abducted. You have to hurry, she's only ten years old!’
‘Shit,’ said Al.
Her face was blackened with soot and streaked with dried tears, which started to well again as she said the words.
Braedan silenced Al with a look. ‘When, Mrs Bryant? Do you have any idea how many of them there were?’ Braedan remembered the house, and the wedding where a black kid had got in trouble for fondling the daughter. It was a short-lived scandal. Mrs Bryant's son was air force. Braedan's recollections were vague, though, as his family had moved to Salisbury when his dad gave up farming and took a job with the Rhodesian Railways. ‘Mug's game, farming,’ his old man had said.
Philippa closed her eyes for a second, squeezing out the tears. ‘An hour ago. We radioed the Agric Alert at three-thirty am. I don't know how many there were … four at least, I should think. RPG. Mortar somewhere out there.’ She waved in the distance, towards the trees. ‘So that'll be another two, I expect.’
Jesus, Braedan thought, they'd been in contact for an hour. The husband – Braedan couldn't remember his name, but recalled he was Australian – must have followed them.
‘Mr Bryant … we need to see to him, ma'am.’
She blinked as though trying to focus on his face. ‘I know you …’
Braedan nodded. ‘Ja. Yes, ma'am, a long time ago, but …’ They needed to get going. She was distraught, and in shock.
‘Sharon Quilter-Phipps's boy … Nate? Tate?’
‘Tate's my brother, ma'am. I'm Braedan,’ he said quickly. Braedan didn't have time to waste thinking about his useless bunny-hugging brother, waterskiing on Lake Kariba when he wasn't out picking wild flowers in his national parks and wildlife uniform. Joining the parks service had exempted Tate from military service, even though their country was fighting for its bloody survival.
‘My husband's over here,’ Mrs Bryant said, gathering her wits again and leading them on.
Al and Wally Collins, good men, moved ahead into the trees and took up firing positions behind stout trunks without being told, while Braedan and Andy Hunter, the stick's rifleman-medic, knelt beside the ashen-faced man lying on the ground. He was wearing pyjama bottoms and a cable-knit jersey. The left leg of his pants was ripped open and his leg was bleeding.
Andy introduced himself to Paul Bryant and began to unwrap the bandage his wife had applied. ‘Nice work,’ he said, looking up at Pip.
‘Get me up and get me some trousers, Pip,’ Paul said to his wife. ‘I'm ready to go after them. Get the Dodge.’
Braedan surveyed the terrain. There was no way they'd be able to follow the gooks in a vehicle. The bush beyond the ploughed lands was too thick.
‘Fresh spoor,’ Collins called from up ahead. ‘The girl's with them, barefoot, and at least one of the gooks is bleeding.’
Andy was re-tightening the bandage. ‘You're going to be fine, Mr Bryant. Ma'am,’ he said, looking up at Pip, who looked lost, ‘I'm going to leave you some painkillers and fresh bandages.’
‘I'm coming with you,’ Pip said.
‘Come,’ Braedan said to Andy. ‘Mrs Bryant, you need to stay here with your husband, hey. We can move faster on foot by ourselves. You've already radioed for an ambulance, yes?’
She nodded.
‘Lekker. We'll move Mr Bryant over there, to the farm shed. You can wait for the ambulance there. Are you OK for ammo?’
Pip looked at him vacantly. Braedan unbuttoned one of the pouches on his chest webbing and pulled out an FN magazine. He handed it to her, and she took it, staring at the camouflage painted tin box of bullets.
Braedan and Andy picked up Paul and carried him to the tin-roofed shed and workshop where the Bryants garaged their tractors. They laid him on a pile of empty mealie bags.
Braedan put his left hand on Mrs Bryant's shoulder. She was a short woman and she seemed almost childlike as she looked up into his eyes. ‘Your husband will be fine, Mrs Bryant. Stay here with him.’
She reached for him and gripped his arm, hard. ‘Promise me you'll find her.’
‘Yes, Mrs Bryant. We will.’ Seriously, however, he doubted their chances.
‘And if you do find them, Braedan, and she's … if they've hurt her … kill them for me.’
He nodded. That he most certainly could do, if they caught up with the gang. ‘I promise.’
Andy, who carried a radio in addition to his medical supplies, radioed a sitrep to the Dakota that had dropped them and was still orbiting overhead. The Dakota pilot relayed the message and confirmed a civilian ambulance was on its way to the farm, and that two helicopters, including a K-Car, had been scrambled from Wankie.
Braedan and Andy left the Bryants and picked up Platt and Collins as they swept through the plantation. Wankie was more than three hundred kilometres away, so the choppers would be some time arriving. The local police were probably organising a PATU stick, but the Police Anti-Terrorist Unit volunteers would have to be roused from their farms and jobs. For now, Braedan and his men were the only hope the little girl had.
*
Comrade Beria grabbed a handful of the girl's blonde hair and dragged her to her feet. The little bitch kept falling over deliberately, he was sure, to try to slow them.
She screamed into the gag, a bandana Beria had tied tightly around her mouth. He'd fill it with something else as soon as they were safe. She struggled against him and he slapped her across the right side of her face hard enough to nearly knock her down again. He saw the raw terror in her eyes and he grinned. Until he had the settlers' land he would make do with one of their women. They would have to kill her, eventually, which was a pity.
For now, though, they needed to keep moving, and to make matters worse, Comrade Jesus Christ was dying.
Beria had laughed when the youngster had joined them. What a Chimurenga name to pick! The boy, who fancied himself an intellectual, said his choice of nom de guerre was ironic, as he did not believe in religion, but he was prepared to die for his cause. Beria had never been religious. When others his age were wasting time in missionary school, Beria was beating ZANU cadres bloody in street brawls and fucking any woman he could find. There was no time for schooling or religion in a time of war. Beria had been fighting all his life. They'd tried to teach him in the juvenile gaol he'd spent time in, but the real lessons to be learned there were breaking and entering and new ways of inflicting pain.
After six months in the boys' training centre, he'd been released to the care of his mother, but with her blessing had spent most of his time on the streets, acting as a lookout for the ZIPRA men, watching for the security forces when they dared enter the township, and fighting the ongoing war against their ZANU enemies.
He'd nearly beaten
a ZANU man to death in a brawl in Gwelo. A few of them had caught the bus from Bulawayo, and the fight had been worth the price of the ticket. Gwelo, in the midlands, was neither fully Ndebele nor fully Shona, which made it territory worth fighting for by both the main parties in the struggle. He'd had to be pulled off the hapless Shona youth, and Comrade Beria hadn't even smelled the tear gas as he'd kicked and kicked at the boy's head. Rather than earning him a reprimand, his tenacity and commitment had propelled him to the front of the line of young men waiting to be sent out of Rhodesia for revolutionary training.
He'd felt the rage several times since then, in shebeen brawls, and even in the camp in Russia, where he'd earned his nickname, Beria, which he'd subsequently kept as his Chimurenga name. They all had ‘war names’ to protect their real identities from the kanka and from each other. If a man were captured and tortured by the settlers he couldn't reveal the true identity of his comrades if he didn't know it.
He'd hated Russia, but the communists had taught him how to kill properly. The instructors joked about the black students behind their backs, and when they went into the city, on leave from the camps, the Russian people stared at them as though they were exhibits in a zoo. Beria had learned the Russian word for ‘monkey’ early on in the year he'd spent in that freezing, grey, dead place. The only warmth in Russia came from between the legs of their women. The men might mock them, but their women soon learned that no pathetic, limp-membered, vodka-swilling Russian could match an African warrior's spear.
There had been a fifteen-year-old girl in Leningrad who had begged for his manhood, but Beria had been disciplined by his instructors when the girl's family found out what she was up to and made a formal complaint. Few citizens had the temerity to complain about anything the military did, but the instructors had seized on the opportunity to beat him, and told him to stay away from Russian children. Beria had taken his punishment, but when next on leave had followed the senior instructor, a sergeant, the man who had called him ‘monkey’ while beating him, and stuck a knife up under the man's ribs and into his heart when he'd staggered out from a bar. Beria had dragged the huge bear of a sergeant into a darkened alley and held his gloved hand over the man's mouth while he watched the blood flood from him. Beria had pulled off his ski mask so the man could know, in his last minutes, how well his student had learned the art of killing.
The local police had begun an investigation and questioned Beria and the other Rhodesians about the sergeant's death, but the Africans had completed their course and were heading back to the liberation struggle. Nothing came of it.
One of the other instructors, a friendlier, older Russian, had given him the name Beria on the rifle range. ‘You are best shot and best student in unarmed combat. You could be great – a killer of the same order as the great Comrade Leventy Beria,’ he'd told him.
Beria had cared little for the history of the Russian Revolution that he and the other recruits had been spoon-fed. ‘Who is Leventy Beria?’ he'd asked the instructor.
The man had grinned. ‘Beria was Stalin's right-hand man – head of the secret police. Beria was responsible for elimination of many thousands of enemies of the state. You could be this man.’
Comrade Beria smiled. He liked the name. It was certainly a better name than Jesus Christ, who was now busy dying for his people. They were moving too slowly. ‘Hold her,’ Beria said to Nighttime Moto. Moto meant ‘fire’, but there was none of this in this man's body. The man had a squint, and he took the bound girl's arm as if he thought he might break it. ‘Hold her!’ Beria grabbed the child's neck and she uttered a muffled squeal as Moto grabbed her harder.
Beria was surrounded by incompetents. He would be better, he thought, acting alone. He slung his AK-47 and moved back to where another of his band was struggling along with Jesus Christ hanging off his shoulder.
Jesus Christ's intestines had begun pushing out of the hole in his gut. The man had stuffed his own floppy bush hat in his mouth to muffle the sound of his crying. Christ was brave, but he was doomed. He looked at Beria with wide, pain-filled eyes. ‘Leave him … set him down,’ Beria said to the man who had been carrying Jesus.
The bearer did as he was told and Jesus winced in renewed pain as he was laid at the foot of a big marula tree. He shook his head and spat the hat from his mouth, his eyes suddenly wide as he saw Beria unsling the AK-47. Beria smiled and shook his head. ‘No, comrade,’ he said. ‘I would not do that to one who is so brave.’ He rested the AK against the trunk of the tree. ‘Leave us,’ he said to the other man. ‘Go join the others, keep moving. I am afraid we have to leave the saviour here to the mercy of the enemy. They will take you to hospital.’
Jesus moaned. ‘They will hang me.’
Beria grabbed the other man under the shoulders and lifted him a little, so that his back was against a tree. ‘Shush,’ Beria said as the man cried out in pain. ‘Perhaps we can come free you from prison. I will personally recommend it to the leaders.’
The boy looked at Beria as if he wanted to believe him.
‘Now, close your eyes. Rest.’
Jesus did as he was told, and Beria unsheathed the bone-handled knife at his belt. He put one hand over the wounded man's mouth and with the other, slid the blade up under his rib cage and into his heart. He held Jesus Christ as his body shuddered, until he was still.
Beria wiped the knife, and then his hands, on the dead man's khaki shirt. He took two magazines and a grenade from Jesus's pouches, then tucked the fallen fighter's AK under the crook of his arm. His work done, Beria stuffed the extra magazines in his own webbing, retrieved his rifle and trotted off after the rest of his men. He wasn't sure how many settlers he and his men had killed, but the Bryants' farmhouse, built with the blood and sweat of the povo, whose land they had stolen, was burning. Beria had lost a man, but his death would be avenged with the girl's, once he and his men had finished with her.
The girl looked so much like her aunt had at the same age that it made him hard. He'd thought about her often over the years, especially while he did his time in the juvenile prison, of how he would take his revenge on her. He smiled to himself as he ran through the bush.
9
Natalie was beyond terrified. She screamed into the stinking piece of cloth tied into her mouth as another thorn pierced the soles of her feet. They were on fire, and it felt as though the man who dragged her along was going to rip her arm off each time she stumbled.
The longer they ran through the bush the more time she had to think about what was going to happen to her.
The leader, she didn't know his name, had her again now. He'd snatched her back from the man called Comrade Moto, who had been gentler with her. The two men had talked to each other in Ndebele and Natalie only understood a few words. She'd got the impression Comrade Moto wanted to let her go, but the leader had yelled at him, then snatched Natalie back, hurting her in the process. When she'd tried to mouth something through the gag, to beg him to let her go, he had slapped her on the side of her head and knocked her to the ground again.
It had all been so confusing. She kept hoping it was a nightmare and that any second she'd wake up, but when she looked down at the brightening gold of the grass, when the men stopped to briefly confer about something, she saw the red of her blood on the stalks. This was real. She started to cry again.
Grandma Pip had led her from the bedroom to the farmhouse's safe room. She'd told Natalie to lie on a mattress and had laid another on top of her. Natalie had been too scared to be left alone, smothered like that, but when the next explosion landed close enough to shake the plaster from the ceiling, she did as she was told. The walls of the room were lined with sandbags. Grandma Pip had gone back out into the hall and Natalie could hear her talking on a radio while a gun started firing.
‘Pip, get more ammo!’ she'd heard Grandpa Paul call out. The gunfire had been scary, but the explosions were worse.
The fourth one landed right on the house. Natalie felt like someone ha
d klapped her on both ears at the same time. Something fell on the mattress on top of her. Smoke and dust filled the room. She couldn't hear. She knew she needed to move.
Natalie pushed and wriggled and struggled until she could get out from under the mattress. A layer of plaster dust covered everything and part of the roof was missing. She heard the crackle and felt the heat of a fire taking hold. A rafter beam had fallen across the mattress. Half of the wall between the safe room and her dad's old bedroom had been blown away and the stack of sandbags had fallen over. The ripped hessian of the bags was spilling red dirt like blood on the floor. The air stank of chemicals.
Flames whooshed out in a jet from the kitchen down the corridor.
‘Gas!’ Grandpa Paul seemed to whisper from beyond the kitchen. As much as she wanted to, Natalie couldn't run down the hallway to the sound of her grandfather because the fire blocked her way.
‘Natalie,’ she thought she heard her Grandma saying softly.
‘Here!’ Natalie thought she was yelling as loud as she could, but she could hardly hear her own voice. The flames licked at the carpet that ran down the polished concrete floor of the hallway.
Natalie had no choice but to turn and run down the corridor, towards the back door of the farmhouse. She slipped on a mixture of dust and water running from the bathroom. The back door was locked and she had to reach up to slide the bolt. Her back was starting to sting as the fire leapt from room to room, chasing her through the house. She screamed and this time she heard herself a little better.
Natalie turned the door handle and heaved, but still it wouldn't open. She looked over her shoulder and saw the fire had taken hold of the splintered rafters in the roof. It was moving closer and closer. She rattled and turned and pulled on the doorknob, but it was locked. Behind her, there was more gunfire. She screamed again. She was going to die because she didn't know where the key to the back door was. Natalie banged on the door with her fists.
