EQMM, July 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Ahead, I spotted the twin-engine prop job they'd brought the payroll on. There was a truck up there. Looked like a mercenary contingent was trying to simultaneously secure the area and load up a heavy cargo. The UNITA bigwig who'd come with the cash stood on the small plane's wing, urging them on with his hands.

  I headed for that plane. Its engines were already turning over; the time saved might mean our lives. I hit the brakes just short of the plane and we piled out. Our fellow mercenaries smiled, glad to see us. Glad to see Jai, their commander.

  * * * *

  Rick and I carried our duffel bags into the Hotel Mozambique. The desk clerk looked up for a second, nodded from behind the glass; I'd checked in two days before. He didn't offer to carry our duffel bags, didn't ask what we had in them.

  Past the desk, we circumnavigated the foot of the stairwell where it came down onto the bottom floor. It was a giant wooden monstrosity, poorly lit, with moldy wood darkened Tahitian pearl green-black by the oils of a thousand hands, thousands of dirty shoes and bare feet, maybe blood. It looked like a haunted staircase from some old black-and-white spook-house film with Vincent Price. We walked around winos sitting on the bottom step sharing a bottle with others whom we stepped over in the hallway, as we made our way to my ground-floor room. Inside the room, we slid our weapons from the duffel bags. I pulled out the det cord—all set and primed to blow the hole.

  "You sure the car's okay out there?” Rick worked the action on his Remington as he asked this.

  I strapped on my .45, pulled my combat vest over my shoulders and snapped it in place. “I watched this place for two days. No cops went near that rear parking lot. Besides, you swapped the plates. Right?"

  Rick nodded, snapped up his own vest, tightened the strap around a loose-hanging grenade. “Yeah. I did. It's not the cops I'm worried about."

  "Relax. We'll be done in fifteen minutes—one way or the other.” I smacked a magazine into my CAR-15, gave it a double up-tap to be sure it was firmly seated, then pulled back the charging handle and released the bolt to lock and load. The fake beard made my face itch. The wig kept sliding around on top of my head. I was sweating. It hadn't been so bad when I was here before, running my recon. But I hadn't been about to hit Jai then.

  "How much you think he's got in there, Claw? You really think it might be more than a million?"

  I nodded. “Told you: They were going to pay off all the UNITA supporters. All the back wages. Gotta be a couple million, easy."

  "I can go back home. I can go see Stacy Miller, walk up and knock on her door. When her dad opens it, I'll say, ‘Hi, Mr. Miller! It's me, Rick Hanley, the guy you told your daughter would never amount to anything. Well, that's my limo out there by the curb, and I've come to take Stacy for a ride. A long ride.’ “ He laughed.

  "Keep it down, Rick. We're not out of this thing yet. Don't jinx it by counting chickens."

  He nodded, his eyes looking down. “Sorry."

  "Don't be sorry. Just stay frosty. Keep your eyes peeled.” I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway—scanned left to right, the CAR-15 stock tight to my shoulder and cheek, sweeping the barrel along with my eyes.

  The hallway was empty.

  I knew then that we should cut our losses, run. But I also knew it didn't make much difference; once we'd started this thing with Jai, we had to finish it. Or he would finish it some time later, when we weren't expecting it.

  Five minutes before, a dozen winos had lined the hallway sharing a bottle. Now they were gone. Someone among them had been his eyes and ears, G2 gathered for the price of a bottle.

  Jai knew we were coming.

  I motioned for Rick and he stepped into the hallway, hugging the opposite wall. “He knows we're here, Rick.” I started moving, hustled for the ancient wooden staircase. Rick's eyes wore a wild, hunted look. I'd seen that look before—the day Jai screwed us. The day Jai was a little too tricky, outsmarted himself.

  * * * *

  I braked the Land Rover to a halt between the plane and the cargo truck. Jai hopped out and climbed onto the Cessna's low wing, stood beside the UNITA bigwig. Jai looked huge standing on top of that wing, yet he looked tiny standing beside the giant UNITA guy. That guy was a four-hundred-pounder, easy—at least six feet tall, fat and round as some giant jet-black medicine ball. Rick and I had followed Jai. We stood on the ground, just behind the wing. I wondered if the wing could take that guy's weight, it looked like the plane was tilting to that side.

  Jai spoke from on high. “How far has the loading progressed?"

  A mercenary shouted from inside the truck, “Cargo's all on the plane. We were getting ready to draw straws, see who's going along."

  "Sounds good.” Jai pulled out his 9mm, shot the UNITA guy in the head. Blood and brains exploded everywhere and the guy dropped like a chopped ox. As the giant fell, Jai gave his body a flip with his arm and wrist. The UNITA guy's body bounced straight off the wing to land on top of me, where it floored me, knocked me into the dust and gravel on the tarmac so that I cracked my head, chipped a couple of teeth, ate dirt. I couldn't move, but I heard an Uzi open up on full auto—Jai's Uzi—men screaming, feet scrambling, bullets striking bodies, ricocheting off the metal truck. I felt the thump of increased weight on top of me; someone else had fallen there.

  Then, in the silence that followed, I heard the sound of gunfire from the airfield perimeter, the tin-can pop of someone walking across the wing, the closing of the Cessna's door, the revving of both engines as they blew sand and gravel over us, the Cessna taxiing away.

  I was still stuck beneath the giant UNITA guy and whoever had fallen on top of us. A second later, I felt the weight shift. Someone had gotten up. I scrabbled with arms and legs, but made little progress. Then the heavy body above was lifted a little, the crushing weight reduced, and I crawled out from underneath him.

  Rick stood there, still trying to heft the UNITA guy by one arm, that wild, hunted look in his eyes, blood all over his tunic. Someone else's blood; it had saved his life.

  There were only a few mercenaries left alive, and most of them were wounded, some very badly. Looking up, I saw government troops running on foot, almost on us now. They switched from AKs to machetes as they came, planning to hack us up, a blood bath of ancient tribal fury.

  I pushed Rick into the Land Rover, clambered behind the wheel, and hit the starter. The engine roared to life and I pulled out, floored the gas pedal, speed-shifting as the Rover raced across the tarmac. Behind us, the mercenaries’ cargo truck pulled out, but it was facing the wrong direction. They lost time turning it around in a wide arc that took them too close to the enemy. In the rearview mirror, I saw them jumping up on the running board, hacking at the driver, dragging him out. The truck rolled to a stop, was overwhelmed, hundreds of arms lifting high their machetes, whipping them down with brutal force—again and again—decimating the men in the truck. Machetes coming up red, showering drops of blood through the air when they hit the tops of their arcs, whacking down and coming up more wet with blood, until blood seemed to overwhelm the entire scene.

  A rapid-fire line of 20mm rounds exploding just to my left shifted my attention back onto the BRDM armored scout cars. They had driven around the scene of the massacre, were giving chase, firing at us. I began to turn the wheel back and forth in my hands, sending the Rover into a dangerous, tilting, serpentine movement to dodge the cannon fire. A moment later, we hit the fence at the far end of the airfield.

  The Land Rover flew for a moment, clearing the drop between the tarmac and the bush land. Then we hit the ground and I floored it again, running as fast as I could, the slower, heavier scout cars disappearing into the distance, with the airfield.

  We kept the Land Rover as long as we could, running flat-out cross-country in daylight, still running but moving slower so that we didn't use our lights at night. We stole fuel in the early-morning hours, in small villages that couldn't afford to lose it. But we had no choice; we were white men trying to hid
e out and escape in a black man's country. I knew that was why Jai had left me alive; he didn't think I'd make it out. But he wasn't merciful enough to put a bullet between my eyes, wanted me to check out the hard way. A tricky way to kill, without pulling the trigger.

  The Land Rover died when I estimated we were still a good twenty miles shy of the border. Between the constant strain and sucking up all that dust, the engine seized up. We ditched it, hid it as well as we could to cover our trail, then moved at night, holed up in the daytime. The only water we had was in a steel five-gallon can. I pulled the fan belt from the Rover, used it to strap the water to my back. We kept our weapons with us, and what little food we had—stolen from villages over the past few days. Rick carried the food in a duffel bag. In the other, he carried explosives, some extra ammo.

  It took us five days to cover that short twenty miles, dodging patrols, working around villages so the dogs wouldn't give us away, the sun beating down on us in the day, the freezing nights making us shiver. Rick started going down just shy of the halfway mark.

  He began begging me to leave him behind, let him just lie there to die in the heat, freeze to death in the night. I couldn't do that. “I'm gonna need you when I run into Jai again,” I told him.

  Sometimes I slapped his face; other times I simply talked to him, cajoled him into forging on. “He left us to die, Rick. Left us to get hacked to pieces by dull, rusty machetes—like those guys in the truck. He killed them, murdered them as surely as the guys who cut them down. We gotta keep it together, gotta make it through this, make Jai pay for those guys we heard screaming as they got chopped up alive. You gonna let him get away with that? You gonna lay down and die here, out here, after we've come so far, lay down and let him win! You gonna quit? Hell no, you're not gonna quit. Now get up and walk.” Sometimes he walked on his own. Sometimes I dragged him, or pushed him along in front of me. I couldn't leave him out there; I needed him too much.

  Nor did I point out that if our go-to-hell plan had panned out, he and I would have flown off in the plane with Jai—and those guys would have been left behind to meet the same fate anyway. If they lived that long. Since they were already drawing straws, it's a good bet they wouldn't have just stood aside and watched us fly away; we'd have had to fight them. In fact, if Jai hadn't tossed the giant UNITA guy on top of me, I'd probably have turned around and added my lead to the fight, helped him cut down the opposition so we could un-ass the A.O. Jai had different ideas, however, and that was what pissed me off, drove me on, to hunt him down. To make him pay.

  Screwing over a bunch of mercenaries you don't really know is one thing. But it's something completely different when you leave your buddy to die out in the bush after you've picked his brain to create your escape plan. When that friendship stretches back over years, like mine and Jai's, over battles and blood that raged and boiled for so long, it really ups the ante.

  I wasn't about to say any of this to Rick, of course. It wouldn't have served my purpose.

  I knew, though.

  That was enough.

  Finally, we made it over the border into South Africa, hitched a series of rides that took us to Cape Town. There, on the docks, we heard about a thin white man with a sly smile who'd lugged three heavy duffel bags up the gangplank when he shipped out on a freighter the week before. Another week and we shipped out on a freighter, too, following behind him. As hot on his trail as we could get.

  Now, on the ground floor of the Hotel Mozambique, I kept my CAR-15 covering the bottom flight of that spook-house staircase. We couldn't really see the second-floor landing; the staircase made an L-turn at a small landing about halfway up, so that the rest of the steps ran parallel to the hallway. The steps and banister ran up to disappear where my field of vision was cut off by the second floor, effectively concealing anyone waiting at the top of the steps until we made the turn at that small landing.

  The section of stairs I could see was clear, so I adjusted my aim point to where the banister railing began to appear as it came down from the second floor. From there, I scanned through the CAR-15 sights for any sign of shoes or pants, feet or legs. When I saw none, I motioned for Rick to join me.

  "We're clear down here,” I whispered. “You go across to the other side of the stairs. Try to look up the stairs to the second-floor landing. Let me know if it's clear."

  He nodded.

  "And Rick. Watch out. He knows this is a blind spot. He's probably up on that landing waiting for us. Keep your eyes peeled as you go across, and keep your weapon trained on the top of the stairs. If you see him, don't forget that he's also able to see you. Shoot first. Don't stop to ask questions. Believe me, he won't. He'll gun you down the instant he sees you."

  My idea was that Rick wasn't as experienced in urban warfare. If he got hit going across, I could fire through the floorboards at the spot where I thought Jai might be. My hope, however, was that Rick would make it across unharmed. That would put him in a good position to support me, while I mounted the stairs and climbed to that first small landing. From there, I'd be in a better position to assess the threat at the top of the stairs.

  I heard Rick scurry across the open area. I didn't see him, because my eyes were focused on the highest part of the stairs in my field of vision. A moment later, I heard Rick tap the wall on the far side. I dropped my eyes and turned to nod at him, confirming that I knew he'd made it across. I tapped my head then, to tell him to cover me, quietly stepped out to make my way to the base of the stairs.

  That's when the pineapple came flying down from upstairs—fast and hard. Jai must have been in the dead zone, hidden by the intersection of stairs and second floor; he couldn't throw it directly at us, so he used a bank shot. The grenade rebounded off the wall at the small landing and bounced down the steps of that spook-house staircase. I'd seen him do it before, the tricky SOB.

  Rick and I dove right and left, hugged the hallway walls—about as effective as hiding behind a sheet of paper. The grenade bounced off the bottom step, rolled up to Rick's feet, but didn't go off.

  Rick looked down wide-eyed, shouted, “Dud!” He scrambled up the stairs, hoping to catch Jai off-balance, feet pounding on the hollow, rotted wood as he ran. I spotted the pin, still in the grenade—the double-trick. The setup.

  I tried to shout a warning. It died stillborn in my lungs, executed by a heavy-caliber double-tap fired overhead. The slugs kicked Rick's body backwards, so that he wound up in a heap spilling blood from his mouth at the foot of the stairs. In the end, Rick didn't look like a man at all, just a pile of blood-soaked laundry.

  A haze of blue smoke curled down from the top of the stairs, began to slither lower along the staircase. A step groaned somewhere above my head.

  I leaned out around the wall, saw a jeans-covered leg with a boot beneath it between rail and ceiling. The other leg and foot came down, settled on the next step. The feet stopped moving. The jeans began to rise; Jai was bending over, getting ready to aim through the gap between the steps and the ceiling. I fired.

  My first shot took out his leg just above the ankle. I saw it snap sideways from the impact of the round, saw his leg get kicked out from under him by the force. As his upper body dropped into view, I fired twice more—but they were snap shots made while he was dropping out of my sights. Jai hit the steps and bounced, his body tumbling forward, his weapon bumping down the steps. I vaulted Rick's body, jumped onto the stairs, raced up. When I rounded the small landing, I saw Jai lying there on his back. He still wore that tricky smile; he was trying to pull his backup piece. My two snap-shots had missed. The only blood came from his ankle wound, and a cut on his forehead. That blow to the head must have slowed him down, probably saved my life.

  Barely bothering to aim, at point-blank range, I pumped two rounds into Jai's torso—center mass—as he tried to bring his backup pistol to bear. The double impact of my high-powered 5.56 rounds knocked it out of his hands, sent it flying. My third shot drilled his head. Poetic justice I thought.
r />   I heard sirens closing in on the streets outside. At the top of the steps, I spotted a green duffel bag. I ran up and grabbed it, could feel and hear the crisp rustle of bills inside. I threw it over my back and ran downstairs, double-checked to see if Rick might somehow still be alive, but he was already starting to cool off.

  The sirens were getting louder. I turned and walked away, leaving the two bodies behind me in the stairwell. Jai and Rick; both friends. One had trained me, the other I had trained. I walked away, recalling that long-ago cadence, a training mantra learned in Africa, when I first met Jai, the one he taught us about shooting to kill:

  Twice in the body, once in the head;

  That's the way you know he's dead—

  When you dance in Mozambique!

  The refrain kept running through my mind; the sirens seemed to take up the chant. Upstairs, I knew, at least one other duffel bag bulged with money. I didn't need it; whatever I had, I'd make do.

  I ran into the abandoned parking lot, climbed into the car, started the engine, pulled out and made a left out of the alley, cops pulling up out front, behind me. I smiled.

  I drove for miles, pulled over near a park. My heartbeat began to slow, coming down from combat mode. I took a deep breath, leaned over to open the duffel bag. He'd packed it tight; the catch was hard to loosen. All at once it popped open.

  A grenade flew out, spring-loaded from inside, pin already pulled, spoon flying off as it whizzed past my head, pop of the three-second fuse igniting.

  Three seconds: I stiff-armed it—automatic reaction—up and out the window.

  Two seconds: I turned to drive, saw the group of children playing in the park beside the car, saw them catch a glimpse of it—must have looked like a ball bouncing out.

  One second: They ran toward it, the car rolling as I reached out, willing it back into my grasp, screaming, “NOOOOOO!"

  Copyright © 2010 Dixon Hill