Reconciliation for the Dead

by Paul E. Hardisty

  ‘And that was why we were called in to help.’

  ‘Yes. I am sorry.’

  ‘Tell it to Kruger and Coetzee.’

  ‘Who?’

  Clay was about to answer when something shifted in the periphery of his vision, off to the right, at the close end of the clearing. He touched Zulaika’s hand, signalled quiet, pointed towards the wire cage and the shelter. He grabbed the binoculars, scanned the chana, the shelter’s near-white frond roof, its moon-shadow trembling long across the zinc-metal clearing.

  ‘What did you see?’ whispered Zulaika.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. Forever, perhaps. What would still be here after all of this they were doing and they themselves were gone?

  ‘It could have been a cat,’ she whispered. ‘There are caracal here. They hunt at night.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He kept scanning, ran his hand over the back of his neck, felt the sand gritty in the film of sweat on his skin. He was about to put the binoculars down and try the starlight scope when something moved in the trees beyond the wire enclosure.

  ‘There,’ he whispered. ‘If it’s a cat, it’s a big one.’

  He focused on the place he’d registered the movement, a faint but perceptible straight line change against the random shimmering of the wind-blown forest.

  ‘Do you see anything?’ She was close to him now, pressed up against his side, and he could feel the warmth coming from her body, the softness of her full hips.

  He scanned the tree line both sides of the place he’d seen the brief change in shadow pattern. ‘Nothing,’ he said, passing her the field glasses. ‘Have a look.’

  Zulaika took the glasses and scanned the near end of the clearing and back along the length of it to where the moon was now low over the trees. She handed him back the binoculars. ‘There is no guarantee,’ she said.

  He was about to ask her exactly what in life was guaranteed and then thought that surely she knew this much better and more sadly that he ever could. And then the movement came again, clear and definitive. He watched as two men emerged from the trees, lit up against the darkness of the forest. They halted a moment before moving towards the thatched shelter. They were carrying G3 rifles, the South African-made version of the Belgian FN.

  ‘UNITA,’ whispered Zulaika. Her voice was deep, constricted. ‘I will tell the others.’

  9

  Men and Boys

  The men moved carefully, deliberately, weapons at the ready. They stopped a moment at the shelter, then crossed to Clay’s side of the clearing and disappeared into the trees. If they were working their way along the tree line, it would only be a matter of minutes until they stumbled into his position. Surely, he had nothing to fear; these men were supposed to be their allies. But dread moved through him, hard and cold. He reached for his R4.

  A few moments later Brigade, Eben and Zulaika joined him. Clay signalled quiet, pointed in the direction he’d last seen the men and raised two fingers. As he did, more men emerged from the trees. A ragged column was moving into the clearing, some of the men armed, others not.

  Zulaika gasped, loud, involuntary. Clay, Eben and Brigade all turned to face her. She shook her head, hand over her mouth, pointed.

  Clay grabbed the binoculars. The unarmed men walked with heads bowed, their hands roped behind their backs, tied one to the other in single file, their naked bodies shimmering in the pale monochrome.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Clay, passing the glasses to Zulaika.

  The prisoners were being herded into the wire cage, a dozen of them, maybe more; black men. One of the armed men closed the gate. The prisoners huddled together in the far corner like Takoradi slaves.

  ‘What are they doing?’ asked Eben.

  ‘That is what we are here to learn,’ said Brigade.

  ‘They are our allies,’ said Eben.

  ‘Our allies don’t always tell us what they do,’ said Brigade.

  ‘So why not just go and ask them?’ said Eben.

  Brigade shifted his AK in his lap. ‘We have our orders.’

  ‘I count fifteen fighters,’ said Clay, ‘including the two scouts, who could be moving our way right now.’

  ‘The bushman will warn us,’ said Brigade. ‘If we need to, we can move back into the forest.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Eben glancing over at Clay. ‘We’re too exposed.’

  ‘We stay here and observe,’ said Brigade.

  Just then Zulaika shifted, turned the focus wheel on the binoculars, glassed the edge of the trees. ‘More are coming,’ she whispered over her shoulder. ‘More prisoners.’ She returned to her surveillance, adjusting the focus with tiny movements of her fingers. She gasped. ‘Some of the prisoners, they are from my village.’ Her voice was hoarse. ‘There are boys. Young boys.’ And then: ‘Mãe de Deus.’

  All Clay could hear now was her breathing, tripped and shallow like a wounded animal’s.

  He touched her elbow. ‘What is it?’

  She moved the binoculars away from her face, stared at him, eyes wide, desperation there. ‘My son,’ she said, almost choking on the words.

  Clay counted a dozen more fighters, another string of ten prisoners, boys and men, bound, naked. The pen was filling up.

  ‘You have seen what they do to the women,’ said Zulaika. ‘Meu Deus, what will they do to these boys?’ She hid her face in her hands and sobbed quietly.

  No one spoke.

  Clay picked up the binoculars, scanned the pen, the soldiers. And then Clay saw him. He straightened, refocused. ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Eben.

  Clay passed him the glasses. ‘There, to the right of the hut.’

  Eben raised the binoculars. ‘Fok me. The poes from the bunker. Colonel what’s his name.’

  ‘Mbdele.’

  At the sound of his name Zulaika spun round. Her face was hidden in the darkness, but Clay could feel the hate flow from her.

  ‘Quiet,’ said Eben. ‘Everyone down.’

  Clay lay silent, scanned the clearing. Two soldiers had left the hut and were now moving along either side of the chana. They each carried a large sack. Halfway towards where Clay and the others were hiding, both men came to a halt, aligned themselves at right angles to the long axis of the clearing, stooped, and started hammering something into the ground. The sound of the twin hammer blows reverberated across the open ground, one very close, no more than fifty metres away, the other at the far tree line.

  ‘What are they doing?’ whispered Zulaika.

  No one answered her. The men had finished hammering and were moving along the length of the chana towards them. Clay hugged the ground.

  The man on the near side of the clearing was only a few metres away now. They could hear his footfall in the grass, his breathing as he laboured under his load. They heard him stop, drop the sack. He was right there. Clay could see him through the light screen of brush that separated them, the FN strapped across his back, the South African webbing across his midriff. The man reached into the sack, withdrew a stake and hammered it into the ground. From the other side of the clearing, the same noise, steel on steel, like a downwind echo.

  Then the man moved on, down the edge of the long, narrow clearing. Clay looked out at the stake. It was within touching distance. Something was taped to its side, just below the crown, long and cylindrical.

  Clay looked at Zulaika, at Brigade. ‘And what are we supposed to do here, exactly?’

  ‘Just see,’ said Brigade. ‘Observe.’

  ‘That’s it?’ said Eben.

  ‘And report back,’ said Brigade, frowning.

  ‘And it’s Blakely and Captain Wade who ordered this?’ said Clay.

  ‘Yes,’ said Brigade.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Eben. ‘Not for a goddamned minute.’

  ‘A little late now, bru,’ said Clay. ‘We’re here. So what do we do?’

  Zulaika sat as if in some kind of trance.

  Clay ground his teeth. ‘You h
eard Zulaika. Her son is in there.’

  ‘We’re outnumbered at least five to one,’ said Brigade, ‘probably more. We are here to observe. We will stay hidden, then exfil before they detect us.’

  The sound of hammering from both sides of the chana as another pair of stakes went into the ground.

  ‘What the hell are they doing?’ said Eben.

  Just then, the faraway drone of aircraft engines came shifting on the breeze.

  Zulaika raised her eyes to the sky. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We must stay.’

  ‘Orders,’ said Brigade.

  Whose orders exactly? Clay could not help wondering. ‘She’s MPLA,’ he said to Brigade. ‘Did you know that?’

  The sound of aircraft engines was louder now. More hammering, down towards the far end of the clearing. Brigade looked towards the sound a moment, back at Clay. ‘My orders are to come here, with her, and to observe. Not to engage.’

  And then from the far end of the clearing two cracks and a steady hiss, like water spraying on concrete. A red glow burst over the chana.

  ‘Flares’ said Clay. ‘That’s what’s on the stakes.’

  Another pair of cracks, the hissing louder now. The men were running back along the length of the clearing towards the hut and the wire enclosure, setting off the flares as they went. A red glow bathed the grass of the clearing and the tree line.

  ‘They’ll fire up this one next,’ said Clay. ‘We have to move. Now.’

  ‘Back into the trees,’ said Brigade, up already, moving.

  Clay scrambled to his feet, grabbed his gear and followed Zulaika into the denser bush. They’d just reached an ancient ironwood surrounded by a thick clump of thornbush when the flare ignited. Red light shot though the bush.

  Clay grabbed Eben’s arm. ‘Jesus, doesn’t any of this strike you as strange: working with our enemy, doing surveillance on our allies?’

  ‘If that’s who they are,’ said Eben.

  Just then a loud crack from the clearing, a climbing hiss. High above them, a red starshell flare exploded in the night sky.

  ‘They’re calling in air,’ said Brigade.

  ‘Come on,’ said Zulaika. ‘We must go back.’ She started running towards the chana. Brigade followed her.

  Clay and Eben watched them go.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Eben.

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘What do you think they’re doing?’

  ‘Maybe it’s the same thing as before. Wood, ivory, diamonds.’

  ‘Maybe. You see any?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Could be just inside the tree line.’

  ‘Could be.’

  The sound of an aircraft slowing, engines pitching in the night.

  ‘C-130,’ said Clay.

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘What do you want to do, broer?’

  ‘We could walk out.’

  ‘It’s a long way.’

  ‘Four days, I reckon. Nothing we haven’t done before.’

  ‘Desertion, broer. They’d shoot us.’

  ‘Not a chance. We got separated. Fought our way home.’

  ‘We could call in an evac.’

  ‘Brigade has the radio.’

  ‘Do you trust him?’

  ‘I thought I did.’

  ‘And the woman.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clay. ‘I trust her. Not sure why, but I do.’

  ‘Just like that lady doctor. You sure can pick ’em, Clay.’

  ‘We stay.’

  ‘What the hell, then,’ said Eben.

  ‘What the hell,’ said Clay.

  10

  The Way He’d Remember It

  By the time they got back to the edge of the chana, the men – the armed and the unarmed – were looking up into the sky. The eastern sky hinted at dawn. The stars died. Strung out along the length of the clearing, twin rows of red flares marked a landing strip over fifteen hundred metres long. And on the breeze, the drone of an approaching aircraft grew louder.

  Clay and Eben lay with the others in the thick bush at the edge of the clearing and listened to the aircraft’s engines throttling into a final-approach trim, the surge and wane as the pilots gauged the distance from touchdown. A bright light flooded the chana, like a premature dawn. Just above the tops of the far trees, some new close planet shone big and clear in the night sky. The thing seemed to hover a moment, strobing time with the engines. And then it was streaking groundward, a meteor. The plane thumped hard onto the grass, bounced and settled again. The engines roared as the pilots reversed pitch, the props throwing up a storm of dust that careened towards the place where Clay and Eben and their companions lay obscured in the bush.

  The plane flashed past them. The cloud of dust – fine sand and the dry clay of the chana – engulfed them, and for a moment they were blinded, as within a whirlwind, dead grass and the white Ovamboland powder settling over them. And then it had cleared and they could see the big hulking thing bathed red and grey in the dull predawn light, rolling towards the waiting men, the big, square-cut propeller blades of the outer engines feathered already.

  It all went quickly after that. When he was finally able to excavate those things so long buried and consider them, his recollection was of speed. Perhaps, he’d think, looking back, it had been speed born of fear, of impending guilt. For, without evidence, is there crime? Or was it some eclipsing of the senses, some adrenaline-fuelled rush, a speedball of wilful ignorance obliterated with a single touch, palm on wrist?

  The Hercules taxied towards the men waiting by the enclosure, swung its big fin tail so that it was facing along the length of the runway, and lowered its rear ramp. The turbines wound down and quiet descended.

  Men jumped from the plane, running towards the UNITA fighters waiting by the shelter. Clay grabbed the binoculars and focused on them: half a dozen, armed; irregulars by the look of them – caps and jeans, bandanas pulled up over their mouths and noses so that only their eyes were visible.

  ‘Whites,’ Clay said.

  No one said anything. They’d all seen the ghostly forearms, pale in the moonlight.

  There was a brief conference. Some of the UNITA soldiers walked over to the wire cage. One of them opened the door and a group of prisoners was led from the cage and lined up next to the palm-roofed shelter. Five of them, naked, shackled. The white men stood before the prisoners, weapons at the ready.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Eben.

  ‘Look,’ said Clay.

  A pair of men had emerged from the back of the C-130 and were walking towards the shelter. One of the men was small, soft-looking, as if unused to the rigours of the outdoors. He wore dark trousers and a white lab coat. The other was taller, athletic. He wore old-style khaki shorts and a camouflage-pattern jacket, and carried a scoped R4 in one hand and a military issue satchel in the other. Both men had headlamps strapped across their foreheads, beams of light jerking across the grass before them as they walked.

  The pair stopped and stood before the line of prisoners. From this angle, Clay could now see the faces of the two men. Both wore surgical masks.

  Eben muttered something Clay could not make out.

  One of the armed white men barked out something in Afrikaans. A pair of UNITA soldiers grabbed one of the prisoners from the line, guided him to where the man in the lab coat and his companion stood. He was silent, walked with his head bowed, his hands still tied behind his back. One of the UNITA soldiers placed himself behind the prisoner and withdrew a sidearm. Then he pointed his pistol at the prisoner’s head.

  Zulaika gasped. Clay went cold.

  The UNITA soldier jammed the pistol hard into the base of the prisoner’s skull so that it pushed his head forward. Then he kicked the prisoner in the back of the legs. The prisoner crashed to his knees.

  The man in the lab coat stood looking down at the prisoner. He was bearded, wore a dark bush hat with the strap cinched up tight under his chin so that the loose, pale flesh bulged out in parallel ridges
. A stethoscope hung around his neck. His face mask jumped as he spoke. He bent at the waist, reached his hand under the prisoner’s bowed head, lifted his chin and looked into the prisoner’s face a moment. Then he held his hand out. His companion reached into his satchel and withdrew what looked like a syringe, and handed it to him.

  And then the needle raised to the night, a finger’s flick to the side of the syringe, the glint of moonlight on surgical steel. That was how Clay would remember it, anyway, years later when the involuntary slipstream of his mind threw him back to these places that he’d tried for so long to obliterate. He would remember, too, how quiet it was, as if the insect kingdom, too, were watching, waiting.

  The needle was pushed into the man’s deltoid. The plunger was depressed. It was like that – passive, the man’s body taking the chemicals, the other prisoners and their minders all watching this occur, the night so quiet, as if in some sort of stasis, a halfway place between understanding and not, Clay and the others hidden on the edge of the chana, watching as if this were a demonstration, an entertainment of some sort.

  The man convulsed, his body shaking uncontrollably. The spasms seemed to go on and on, the man’s limbs flailing at his sides, his head twisting and lolling. Then he voided his bowels and collapsed. One of the white soldiers laughed. A pair of UNITA fighters grabbed the incapacitated man by the wrists and ankles and dragged him away. Another prisoner was brought forward, pushed to his knees. Another injection. Same result.

  ‘Holy Mother of God,’ Eben whispered.

  Soon, all five prisoners were lying on the ground in a neat row, naked, unmoving. The man in the lab coat walked slowly along the row, head bowed, shadowed by his assistant. The prisoners looked like patients now, ranked out like Clay had been a few days before in 1-Mil. Clay followed with the glasses as the man in the lab coat stopped and crouched next to one of the patients. After a moment, he flicked the ear pieces of his stethoscope into place and placed the detector onto the patient’s chest. He turned to his assistant and said something. The assistant scribbled in his notebook, the headlamp beam juddering across the naked bodies of the black men as he wrote.