The Soldier who Said No

by Chris Marnewick

  It was an amazing weapon, a thing of exceptional beauty to a soldier like De Villiers.

  But that was then. In the oppressive tension of the here and the now, De Villiers and Verster continued to wait under their makeshift camouflage of branches and grass. They were one thousand four hundred and sixty-eight metres away from their target, the land sloping gently down towards the town square. The sun was behind the target and there was a light breeze coming at an angle across their left shoulders. At this distance the accuracy of the weapon would depend in equal measures on the correctness of Verster’s calculations and the steadiness of De Villiers’s trigger finger.

  De Villiers had that finger on the trigger now, the target’s breast pocket in the crosshairs of the telescopic sights. The bullet would enter the target’s uniform somewhere within that pocket, right over his heart.

  But the man on the podium was not a soldier, but a politician, onetime terrorist, now President of Zimbabwe. It was Verster who noticed it first. The spotter’s scope was far more powerful than the telescopic sights on the sniper’s rifle.

  ‘Hold it, Pierre. Hold it,’ he said. ‘Is that who I think it is?’

  De Villiers breathed out slowly and eased his finger out of the trigger guard. Equally slowly he raised the telescopic sights slightly to bring the target’s face into the centre of the scope.

  ‘I can’t see clearly through my scope,’ he said.

  ‘That’s Robert Mugabe, I think,’ Verster said.

  De Villiers lay still under the camouflage. ‘Here, come look through my scope,’ Verster offered. ‘See for yourself.’

  They changed positions slowly, with the minimum of movement, not wanting to give any hint of their presence.

  After a while, De Villiers had to agree. ‘Bloody hell! You’re right. It is Mugabe. What do we do now?’

  It was a rhetorical question. He was the leader of their two-man team. He would have to make the decision.

  ‘Let’s contact the major,’ Verster said without hesitation. He activated the small radio in his backpack and started to initiate the emergency call procedure. The conversation was in code and was brief.

  De Villiers could decipher the coded phrases as well as Verster. ‘It is Mugabe. He is the target. Shoot the fucker and get out of there.’

  It wasn’t General van den Bergh’s voice.

  The connection was cut. ‘We have to shoot him,’ Verster confirmed.

  De Villiers lined Mugabe up a second time.

  ‘Wait, the wind has shifted,’ Verster said.

  De Villiers exhaled slightly. He had to slow his breathing to lower his heart-rate to ensure the maximum duration between heartbeats. The shot had to go off between heartbeats when his body was internally as still and unmoving as externally.

  ‘Okay, it’s steady where it was.’ Verster’s voice was calm, the voice of a soldier who knows his onions and can perform in the field.

  De Villiers confirmed, ‘Steady as before.’

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Verster whispered. ‘Fire when you’re ready.’ He kept his eye on his spotter’s scope.

  For the third time De Villiers set Mugabe in the sights. Heatwaves danced up from the red earth of the landing strip.

  The crosshairs settled on the target’s chest, a ribbon of military honours in the sights just above the man’s pocket. De Villiers felt the urge to focus on the man’s face and resisted at first, keeping the sights on the breast pocket. He slowed his breathing and held it. He waited until he could feel his heartbeat in his trigger finger. He started counting the beats.

  One two three four … five … six … seven … twelve … I’ve done this before and can do it again.

  Behind Mugabe the sun reflected off the windscreen of a moving vehicle. In the haze Mugabe’s olive green tunic was transformed into red. De Villiers blinked and lowered the barrel of the rifle, a blond woman’s face in his mind’s eye, her red tunic in the sights.

  When he lined the target up again, Mugabe’s face reappeared in the sights.

  Verster knew better than to speak as De Villiers slowly centred the crosshairs on Mugabe’s breast pocket. De Villiers slowed his breathing and his heartbeat and gently took up the slack on the trigger.

  From this moment events would unfold slowly. The explosion would be deafening to the sniper and the spotter, but nearly a kilometre and a half away on the podium where Mugabe stood, there would only be a distant crack, the sound arriving after the bullet had struck. The bullet would cleave a path through the air and take its time to reach Mugabe a full second and a half after leaving the barrel. In the keen eye of Verster’s spotter’s scope a hole would appear in Mugabe’s top pocket before he would fall backwards as if pushed by an invisible hand. The assembled troops and dignitaries would watch in silence for a few seconds, and when they connected the distant thunderclap to the blood and the gaping red hole in the back of their hero’s uniform, they would scatter for the sparse cover provided by the few buildings of Vila Nova Armada.

  De Villiers lowered the rifle. ‘This isn’t right.’

  Verster kept his eye on the target through his spotter’s scope. ‘Go when you’re ready,’ he said as if De Villiers hadn’t spoken. When he sensed that there was no movement next to him, he turned to face De Villiers. ‘What’s wrong, Pierre?’

  ‘This isn’t right.’

  ‘Our orders have been confirmed, you heard that. Now shoot him so that we can get out of here!’ There was an urgency in Verster’s voice. ‘If the parade breaks up, they will load their weapons and come after us.’ It was well known that Mugabe was paranoid and always insisted that the soldiers on inspection should be unarmed.

  ‘It’s not right,’ De Villiers said a third time. ‘I’m calling this off.’

  ‘We have orders, Pierre. Shoot him and let’s get out of here.’

  ‘No, the operation is over.’

  ‘Pierre, we’ve done this before.’

  ‘That was different, Jacques. That was a soldier. This man is a civilian.’

  ‘He’s wearing a uniform, Pierre.’ Verster tapped on the lens of his scope. ‘See for yourself,’ he insisted.

  ‘That doesn’t change anything. This man is not a soldier. He’s a politician. We don’t shoot civilians,’ De Villiers said a second time.

  ‘Pierre, we don’t have much time. Our orders are clear. We have to shoot him now and get out of here. This is not a regular operation. We have to follow orders.’

  When there was no answer, Verster added, ‘Pierre, we shot that Russian and we can shoot this man. He’s a terrorist.’

  The image of the Russian in a red tunic reappeared in De Villiers’s mind. ‘She was a soldier,’ he said defensively, his words sounding like a lame excuse, a plea for understanding, even to his own ears.

  ‘No more than this man.’ Verster pointed at the parade ground in the distance. He turned and put his hand on De Villiers’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Pierre, we’re going to get into trouble.’

  De Villiers ignored the exhortation. He sat up and started disassembling the weapon. ‘Radio them. I’ve terminated the mission,’ he said to Verster. ‘We may be doing this operation for Military Intelligence, but we are still soldiers, Recces. We don’t shoot civilians. We don’t assassinate presidents. We fight the soldiers fighting on the other side. That’s what we do. Now get on the radio and tell them I’ve called off the operation and that we’re coming home.’

  Verster turned to his radio transmitter. Pretoria insisted on speaking directly to De Villiers. This time it was the general’s voice. He was terse and angry. ‘You have your orders. Execute them or face me when you return.’

  ‘General, in the Recces the final decisions are made in the field. I’m the commander in the field and I have decided to terminate this operation.’

  ‘Captain, in this operation you’re not in the Recces. You work for me. You will do as I say.’

  ‘This is an illegal operation, General. I’m calling it off.’

  ‘You
will be held responsible for the weapon and for anything that happens to Lieutenant Verster. Is that understood?’

  De Villiers motioned to Verster to turn off the radio, but the general’s voice came across once more. ‘It’s not too late to complete the mission, Captain.’ It sounded like a plea.

  ‘Let’s go,’ De Villiers said to Verster. ‘You heard what he said. Let’s go.’

  The general had the last word. ‘And rest assured that I’ll follow you to the ends of the world to make sure that you pay for this, do you hear me?’

  De Villiers reached to cut the power on the radio transmitter.

  ‘You will be responsible for all the consequences of your refusal to carry out your orders,’ he heard the general say before he flicked the switch to silence the radio.

  De Villiers was first to move. He slipped out from under the camouflage materials and rose to a stooped position, keeping his eyes on the parade ground where, in normal sight, the troops appeared no larger than soldier ants. Verster was forced to follow his lead. They expertly packed their gear. Verster muttered under his breath.

  ‘What did you say?’ De Villiers demanded.

  ‘I said you could have asked me first before you made your decision.’

  ‘It’s my responsibility and mine alone. Nothing can happen to you.’

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ Verster hissed between his teeth. ‘My record is going to reflect a failed mission, a mutinous one, in fact. We’re going to be court-martialled. They will hold it against me every time I come up for promotion. This thing is going to live with us forever.’

  ‘I’ll take the blame, all of it,’ De Villiers responded. ‘The consequences will be on my head, not yours.’

  ‘No,’ Verster said. ‘I’ll pay the price too.’

  The several components of the rifle were secure in their backpacks as they slunk away towards the river to wait for the helicopter that was to take them home to an uncertain welcome.

  In due course Verster would pay a heavy price for their mutiny, but not in the manner he had anticipated.

  Auckland

  Sunday 23 December 2007 6

  Pierre de Villiers had a private room at Brightside Hospital. The blood test had shown a PSA count of 4.45 and the biopsy had come back positive for cancer in several pods. Surgery was the only option the surgeon explained – his rooms were around the corner in Gillies Avenue – and he had performed the operation before the weekend.

  ‘He has good hands, the best in the business,’ the theatre sister had said when De Villiers was wheeled into the theatre.

  De Villiers had sighed. ‘Don’t worry,’ the theatre sister had said. ‘He’s done more than five hundred of these operations and they say he’s the best in the country. He has good hands.’

  That reassurance now felt like a long time ago. Since then De Villiers had been tied to his hospital bed by a tangle of tubes and instruments, a captive to his pain and his thoughts.

  A nurse came in and removed the lunch tray. He had left half the meal untouched.

  The events of the previous two days were blurred in De Villiers’s mind. He could remember visits by his wife and daughter and seeing the anaesthetist, but the rest was unclear. He remembered very well being extremely hungry and thirsty, but now didn’t know whether that had been real or a dream. It felt as if two or three days had been compressed into one.

  He was wide awake and studied the equipment around his bed. There was a saline drip being fed into the vein in the crook of his left elbow. Another needle had been stuck into a vein on the back of his left hand. It was held down with surgical tape and there was a timer and a button connected to it. The device allowed De Villiers to give himself a dose of a morphine-based analgesic when the pain became too severe. He had used it sparingly, expecting worse. The needle hurt, continuously, an irritating sting in the back of his hand under the tape. On the right side of the bed two containers stood on the floor. The one was attached to a catheter and the other drained blood from below the operation scar.

  He remembered the surgeon talking to him during his morning rounds. ‘It was a difficult operation. You are quite a stringy bird down there, all muscle and sinew. Are you a jogger?’ he had asked.

  De Villiers had been too weak to answer. I am a runner, not a jogger.

  After the surgeon had completed his examination, he had said, ‘I’ll arrange for the catheter to be taken out. The technician will come over later in the day to see if you’re ready for that.’

  He had given no explanation. After he had left, De Villiers lay there wondering what else they were going to heap on him. He drifted off in a morphine-enhanced dream.

  When you dream the truth, it is bound to be a nightmare.

  The soldier carefully circled the tree, the sole rain tree in an amber forest of mopane. He looked carefully for human footprints and leopard spoor before he sat down with his back against the tree trunk. The spitting bugs in the rain tree left spots on his uniform. In early autumn, the veld was a palette of greens, browns and yellows against a clear blue sky, a light blue which matched the soldier’s eyes. The land was flat and the bushy shrub and undergrowth limited visibility to less than forty or fifty paces in any direction. Here and there a tall tree towered proudly above all beneath it, its shade creating a haven of protection for smaller species of plants and hiding places for the wildlife of the bush. Swarms of insects buzzed in the shade, and soon the mosquitoes would be out in force.

  The soldier pulled his legs up to his chest and stretched them out again before he arched his back. He was tired and thirsty, having been on the run for half the night in an effort to put as great a distance between him and those he knew would come for him. There was no moon and the low cloud cover produced an impenetrable darkness which could not be imagined in the city.

  He was unarmed, except for a small multitool knife strapped to his ankle.

  The soldier pulled a small, purpose-made mosquito net from his back pocket and fashioned it over his head and hands, using his floppy bush hat as a stay.

  Then the soldier under the tree dreamed, a dream within a dream.

  It took him to Pretoria, the city of his birth. He was in a car, with a smiling woman next to him, his wife, and a son and daughter in the seats behind them. He turned in his seat to remonstrate with the children because they had unclipped their seatbelts.

  A white Hi-Ace minibus was parked at the side of the road.

  The dream ended in a sequence of flashing images, like a black and white motion picture fading from the screen when the reel breaks.

  A suburban gate.

  Three men with AK47s.

  Gunshots.

  De Villiers woke with a start, confused by the smell of the bush in his nostrils and the sound of gunshots in his ears.

  He looked around to see what had woken him. There was a man in the room. He had a black bag on the floor at his feet.

  ‘Good day,’ he said. ‘I’m the technician. I have a few little tests to do and then we’ll decide what to do with the catheter.’

  De Villiers was too weak to speak. His throat was parched and the pain when he tried to sit up was unbearable. He clicked the morphine dispenser twice, the maximum dose he could give himself. Exhausted, he lay back against the pillows and watched the technician with his machine.

  ‘You’ll be mobile after this, I should think,’ the technician said.

  Yeah right, De Villiers thought as the morphine eased him into another dream.

  The technician woke him up before the dream had settled in his memory. ‘I need to speak to the surgeon. We won’t be taking the catheter out today. The join hasn’t healed sufficiently yet.’

  De Villiers groaned. He wanted to get out of bed. ‘Okay,’ he conceded, ‘but could you call the nurse for me please?’

  ‘I’ll call her on the way out. I’ll see you again tomorrow and we’ll try again.’

  The technician waved from the door and was gone.

  De Villiers turned his hea
d to the window and closed his eyes. When he woke again, he saw that it was a clear, sunny day.

  ‘You called?’ The nurse spoke behind him. She came and stood next to the bed. She pretended to hold his hand, but was looking at her watch. She was surreptitiously taking his pulse. Why can’t the medical profession be straight? De Villiers wondered to himself. Why can’t they tell it like it is?

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I would like to go for a walk,’ he told the nurse, ‘like that woman who walks up and down the corridor.’ De Villiers had seen an Indian woman, a patient in a garish pink nightgown, pacing to and fro past his door, carrying a plastic bag and pulling the stand with her drip behind her.

  ‘Oh, no problem. How many days since your operation?’

  He closed his eyes and counted. The nights and days tend to fade into each other in hospital and he had to guess. ‘Four or five,’ he said.

  The nurse looked at the chart at the foot of the bed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Today is day three.’

  He winced. It had felt much longer.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll talk to the sister and we’ll see what we can do.’

  Ten minutes later the nurse was back. She held a plastic bag in her hand.

  ‘Do you want to go now?’ she asked.

  ‘Please.’

  The nurse came to the side of the bed and picked up the containers from the floor. She put the two bottles in the plastic bag and lifted the tubes clear of the bedding. ‘Okay, if you take the bag, I’ll help you to your feet and then I’ll bring the drip around.’

  De Villiers nodded and took the bag from her.

  The nurse took his legs by the ankles and slowly swung them off the bed. She found his hospital slippers under the bed and slipped them onto his feet.

  ‘Let’s see if we can stand up, but let’s go slowly, okay?’

  De Villiers pushed with his legs and felt his weight shifting from his buttocks to his legs. The wound where the surgeon had cut him open from navel to pubic bone was held together by stitches under surgical gauze but the pain in his lower abdomen was under control. He held on to the side of the bed.