Blood Memory (Mongol Moon), page 19
He heard footsteps behind him, coming out of the bush, and thought at least he could take one more Russian with him.
A hand reached out through the dark and pulled the pistol away. He couldn’t resist; he had spent the last of his energy. Hands grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him into the bush as his eyes closed and the darkness came.
Three boys sat on the bank of the river watching the dance of nature swirling around them. Their eyes took the show in with the eagerness and wonderment exclusive to youth, fascinated by the scene before them. Birds flew across the wide river, occasionally ducking into the water to snatch a meal from the watery depths.
Across the water, a herd of elephants rested under giant baobab trees. The massive, wide trunks jutted up from the ground into the African sky before being topped by a wide canopy of branches and leaves. To two of the boys, the Americans, the trees always looked so alien, nothing like the palm trees of their native California.
Behind them a Walkman attached to a speaker played a cassette they had brought from the US. They were forced to listen to it out here and only out here because if their uncle or grandfather heard the rap music, there would be hell to pay. They lay shirtless in the grass, letting the African sun brown their already tanned bodies.
The tallest of the three boys, James, sang along with the newest Coolio song as the other two watched the water. Even at this age, you could see the beginnings of the athletic build he would grow into, and his wavy blond hair had already started to catch the eye of the girls who always swarmed around the farm.
Next to him, his brother Alex shook his head. “You know, the blacks are going to take all of this soon, and we won’t have anything to come here to.”
The boys spoke in English, which was more for Pieter’s sake than theirs. Their fiercely nationalistic grandfather and uncle had banned English in the house unless absolutely necessary, and while Alex and James could speak Afrikaans, away from the house was the only time Pieter could practice his English.
“No way, man, it won’t be that bad,” James spoke up, looking to his cousin Pieter for back up.
“Ja, man, it will,” the boy, a year older than James, answered. “It was the same in Rhodesia, it was the same in Namibia, in Mozambique and the Congo. The blacks will take everything.”
“You think?” James asked, throwing a stick he had broken into the water. The term “black” held no pejorative connotations here, but it still took some getting used to for the Americans. Back home they were called “African Americans,” a term which held no meaning in a place where everyone was African and only tourists were Americans. To call them “African” also had no meaning. The boys’ ancestors had come to Africa over three-hundred years before. They were as African as anyone. People were either Black, or White, or occasionally Coloured. The descriptors were merely that: descriptions.
“Maybe not now-now, but yeah, it’s coming,” Pieter offered. “What is the word? Onvermydelik.”
“Inevitable,” Alex suggested.
The two American boys had never quite mastered the nuances between a South African now, right now, and now-now, but they were working on it.
“It has been less than a year, but it is coming, and then South Africa will just be kak like everywhere else.”
“No, it won’t,” James answered, fired up by the courage and intensity of youth. “Because you aren’t leaving, ever, and as long as people like you are here, there is hope.”
“Easy there, Coolio,” Alex, always the voice of reason, told him.
All the boys laughed and gazed out across the water again. They watched a swallow swing low over the water and then circle back for another pass. The bird had obviously not felt good about the first attempt, but hunger was hunger, and as the bird leveled its wings over the water, the glass surface broke and a giant tigerfish leapt from the murky depths and pulled the bird under.
“Holy shit, did you see that?” James exclaimed. He had been warned the waters of Africa were rife with dangers, but to see a fish leap from them and snatch a bird out of the air was something he never expected to see in real life.
“Ja, bru, tigerfish are mean, man.” Pieter laughed at his cousin’s shock. He always loved it when his cousins came every year. It gave him a chance to show off the bush, and his aunt brought VHS copies of all the current American movies they had recorded on HBO.
A rustle shook the bush off to their right, and all three boys turned towards the sound. The rustle was large, bigger than a bird, but not overtly aggressive yet.
“Let’s go back to the bakkie, I’m hungry, dude,” Alex told the pair, standing up. Of the three, he loved the bush the least. It was beautiful, but even at his young age he sensed the beauty was bestial. Only beautiful because of one’s limited exposure to the reality of nature.
“Yeah, let’s head back,” Pieter said, joining Alex on his feet and pulling the key to the tiny Isuzu pickup truck out of his pocket. All three boys were shirtless, which was another no-no, but they felt safe, protected by the immortality of youth. James joined them reluctantly, giving the water one last glance, and together they started the quick trek to where they had parked. None of them were even remotely old enough to drive on a road in civilization, but those rules were for another place. Here, the rules were different.
They broke through a copse of reeds and shrubs, finding the narrow path away from the water and back to where they had parked, when a loud roar echoed through the warm air. The boys froze, and turned to face it, only to see the reeds and shrubs explode as a massive gray monster blasted through, snarling at them as it charged directly at Alex.
“Tree!” Pieter screamed, knowing running was futile and they needed to scale a tree to get away from the deadly jaws of the hippopotamus.
“Fuck!” James yelled, pushing Alex out of the way of the barreling monster, but no sooner had Alex been pushed to safety, James found the beast upon him. The lower tusk, a massive piece of foot-long ivory, punched into James’s midsection with a crunch.
James screamed in pain and shock. Pieter and Alex both stared at him as he half twisted his young body to hit the beast. Pieter and Alex froze, just helpless observers, as powerless to help James as they were to help the swallow the tigerfish had eaten.
The hippopotamus pulled its lower jaw back, flinging James like a doll, before driving its tusk into the boy one more time.
“Fuck!” Alex screamed, watching his brother in the monster’s clutches. James was nearly limp now, his blood drained over the animal’s jaws.
Alex knew he had to do something. He reached down and felt the knife on his waist. It was useless against an animal like this, but the small blade was his only hope. It had been a gift from his father, and his father before him. He wrapped his hand around the handle, pulled the blade from the sheath, and charged.
He ran right through Pieter’s grasp. His cousin, perhaps wisely, tried to pull the young, shirtless American boy armed with nothing but a knife and a winner’s attitude from charging a three-ton killer.
But Pieter’s attempt was futile. Alex covered the dozen feet to the animal, and screamed with fear and rage as he plunged the knife into the hippo’s eye. The beast screamed, and flung James’s body away, trying to free his tusk in time to meet the new threat.
Alex pulled the knife from the wounded animal and started to run. Pieter had grabbed James’s limp body and was dragging him away from the animal. The hippo turned towards the three boys and roared, then stumbled back away into the water.
“Holy fuck, bru, I can’t believe you aren’t dead,” Pieter said breathlessly, his eyes as wide as saucers at the improbability of the scene he had just witnessed.
James’s chest rose and fell unevenly. Bright red blood frothed at his mouth and poured from his wounded side. His eyes fluttered open and closed, and Alex clutched his brother.
“Go get the truck and get back here—you are faster alone,” Alex ordered his cousin.
“Right,” Pieter responded and tore off through the bush towards the waiting pickup truck.
Alex looked into his older brother’s normally playful and relaxed eyes and found them filled with an intense resolve, and a burning anger. Alex could see something else though, behind the young boy’s iron will, the slightest hint of fear had crept in.
“Get up, James. You are going to make it. I can carry you,” Alex told his brother, before lifting the older and heavier boy into his arms with a grunt and carrying him off towards help.
***
The cold water rushing around his head woke the wounded man from his memory. He could smell the water’s putrid stench, and the tentacles of cold gripped his skin. He popped back above the water again with a gasp, to see he was being dragged through the river by another man.
It was Patrick, and behind them a yellow glow illuminated the bank they were escaping as the ferry burned against the shore.
Patrick was turned sideways underneath John, who floated above him. Patrick struggled to keep both afloat, and John’s big frame kept weighing them down.
“Welcome back,” the sergeant said as the man came to.
“You… you can swim?” John asked him.
“Dick,” the black sergeant said with a chuckle, dragged the wounded man across the river.
“I told you to get back to the vehicle,” John said, but was interrupted as the pair slipped under the water before bobbing back to the surface.
“Yeah,” Patrick replied, spitting out the foul-tasting water.
They were about halfway across the river, with a few hundred feet remaining to swim. John’s chest screamed in pain, but he was no longer wearing the vest. Patrick must have pulled it off while he dragged him the half mile to the ferry.
They dipped under the water again, which was once too much for John.
“Let me go, Jesus, I’ll swim.”
Patrick hesitated, unsure of the wisdom of John’s plan, but let him go anyway. John reached out to swim, but he heard a rib crack as his arm extended. He took the pain, but resolved to kick his way across.
He heard voices from the burning ferry. Russian voices. They were too far to make out what was being said, but they were there. Two flashlights searched the dark river, their white beams passing back and forth across the night.
John and Patrick sat still in the water, barely keeping their noses above the murky water, trying to be as small as possible. If they had any luck at all, John thought, the Russians would give up and go back to searching the forest for him.
But from slightly up river, by the muddy bank where the river flowed from Lake Mweru and the Luvua River began, a deep snort and growl echoed through the night. John recognized it instantly, and his heart froze. He popped up in the water and started to kick. “We have to go,” he warned Patrick. Ignoring the pain in his chest, he dogpaddled towards the far shore and safety. It was only a few hundred feet away: they had to make it.
It wasn’t just the river monster that heard them. The searching Russians, who had been on the verge of giving up, heard the splashing, and shined their lights towards the sound, but the two Americans were just outside the range of their Chinese made flashlights.
But not outside the range of their rifles. The first Russian opened fire, followed by the second. Both automatic rifles tore into the water, popping little geysers into the air. John closed his eyes and swam faster. Patrick was a full length ahead of him.
“Let’s go, white boy,” he said over his shoulder, knowing the barb would push John’s wounded stroke harder. The Russians fired short bursts, moving their aim towards the sound.
Beset on one side by the killer animal and the killer Russians on the other, a dark sense of fatalism began to take hold. They needed a miracle, but Africa wasn’t the place where miracles occurred with any type of regularity.
But tonight, through the dark abyss of the African river, a miracle came. A burst of flame and sound came from the far bank to which they had been swimming. John and Patrick both watched as the streaks of light from the machine gun’s tracers screamed over their heads across the river towards the Russians.
A second burst followed the first, and then a third. The sharp rat-a-tat from the gun a siren of their salvation. John and Patrick swam faster, as Jackon’s voice called out between bursts from the gun.
“Hurry up, fuckers! Swim, damn it.”
The young Marine had ignored his instructions to stay hidden. As soon as he heard the shots from the hotel, he had moved the gun truck all on his own and gotten the machine gun up to cover the retreat he prayed was coming.
The Russians had been brave enough to chase down a wounded man in the river, but standing in the open against a machine gun was, by their math, not an equation that led to a long and promising life. Both men turned and fled back into the tiny village at the ferry crossing without looking back.
The Americans were only a few feet from the river’s edge, but John knew it might not be enough. His feet hit the ground, but he was still chest deep in water. Behind them they could hear the titanic beast approaching.
But Jackson could see it too. Wearing one of the pairs of night vision goggles John had brought along, he rotated his turret towards the oncoming monster. He cursed John and fate for not giving him the massive fifty caliber the other trucks had, and wondered if the bullets would penetrate the thick skin of the hippopotamus. There was only one way to find out.
He pulled the trigger back, and the machine gun poured rounds at the four-ton beast. One found its mark, and the beast, now only fifty yards behind the struggling men, roared in pain and anger. Jackson pressed his cheek against the machine gun’s buttstock, ready to fire again, but the beast, perhaps sensing the danger, turned and swam back upstream into the darkness.
Jackson hopped into the driver’s seat of the HMMWV, letting the soaked John and Patrick climb in the near side. He had Patrick’s uniform and a fresh pair of clothes for John ready to go. He had spent the past two days in the bush waiting. Ready to roll.
“Thanks, buddy,” John gasped as he climbed into the front seat, holding his arm against his chest.
“Yeah, I’m not telling anyone a Marine saved me though,” Patrick added as Jackson began to drive off into the night.
“We are keeping everything about the last two days secret,” John said. “No exceptions, not a word.”
The men were silent as the truck rumbled through the night, before John spoke up again.
“I mean it, gents. Thanks.”
Day 5
National Highway N5, Kiondo, Congo
735 Miles to Rwanda
Took command of the party,
Twenty rifles in all,
Marched them down to the river
As the day was beginning to fall
“Hey, wake up,” Amanda’s voice came through the darkness, pulling Alex out of his slumber. The vehicles were circled for the night, the fourth since they had run into the Russians in Zambia.
They had made it out of Zambia and, much to the increased nerves of everyone, across the border into the Congo. Their forced detour had cost them an extra day, but other than the delay and the inconvenience, they had yet to run into any serious issues.
The African summer sun was beginning to set on the horizon, and the rain, which had started again shortly after they had snuck away from the Luapula River, was finally showing signs of waning. Frey quietly cursed the rain and the early sunsets for slowing their already slow progress, but he was also acutely aware that the drivers needed regular breaks and rotations. Most of them were young, inexperienced, and the task Frey was demanding of them would strain even the most seasoned soldier.
They had passed through the regional capital of Lubumbashi in the early hours that morning, slipping through the quiet streets before the bustle of the day clogged the roads. It was not merely a question of speed. To say African drivers were less than safety conscious would be putting it mildly. To make matters worse, the narrow, uneven streets were clogged with every type of vehicle imaginable. Tuk-tuk drivers darted in between lanes and were known to make erratic left turns in their tiny half pickup truck, half mopeds. Frey knew that almost three million people lived around Lubumbashi, which meant almost three million potential obstacles in the road. Hitting one was sure to incur attention, and the wrath of a vengeful mob. Something the convoy did not need.
As remote and dangerous as Lubumbashi was, it was still a city with a functioning economy. This meant that once they were clear of the denser urban section, they were able to stop at a highway truck stop. They bartered for fuel and water with a combination of US dollars and UN debt certificates. Filling every vehicle and fuel can they carried drained the entire gas station of every drop of diesel it possessed. That no one was sure when or if more diesel would be coming to this station was not the concern of the convoy. They paid for what they needed, and left.
Specialist Pass stood by, watching every transfer, writing furiously with his little pencil. The sight of the short, bespectacled American haggling with the fuel vendor with Gunny Harmon steaming behind him made everyone laugh.
This part of the Congo maintained the open brushlands of Zambia with the regular copses of trees dotting the open brushlands. The denser rainforests whose shadows gave Congo much of their dark mystique and lore lay further to the north, inland from the large Lake Mweru.
Now their evening camp bustled with activity. Men and women, in and out of uniform, were carrying weapons full time. Sergeant Major Sweeney had given out every weapon they had. They weren’t doing any good in their crates.
Even the ambassador’s teenage son Thomas, over the loud protests of his mother, walked around with an M4 rifle slung on his back. Gunnery Sergeant Harmon had made sure to give the young man an extra block of instruction on the safety lever, but at fifteen, he was older than some of the Congolese rebels they might run into. He openly performed guard duty with the Marines, and Frey had noticed the boy utilizing some of their more colorful language when his mother wasn’t around.
