"You can drop me off at my hotel," Remo said. "They should have the floor mopped up by now." Bubu apparently knew his way around town. When Remo gave him the address, the Luzu native didn't need to ask directions.
"Looks like most of the delinquents are sleeping it off," Remo commented as they drove past empty sidewalks.
"Soldiers began clearing the streets last night. I have heard that this is an important day for Mandobar," Bubu said seriously. "According to Luzu who have fled their ancestral land to live in this place, today is the day that the wicked chiefs descend on this city for some great meeting."
Remo raised a surprised eyebrow. "No kidding?"
Bubu nodded. "May I tell you something for your ears alone?" he asked.
Remo was struck by the native's innocence. He barely knew his passenger yet he was already willing to trust him.
Remo nodded. "What's on your mind?"
"Our chief feels that the problems Luzuland now faces were created by Mandobar here in Bachsburg. But the danger this city poses existed long before Mandobar. It has been such since the whites came here centuries ago. Even with Mandobar gone, I fear that the threat from Bachsburg to our way of life will live on."
Remo knew he was right. The world had long ago moved away from the simple life the Luzu once lived. Times had changed. And the tribe hadn't kept up with that change.
Bubu's face was deadly serious. "There are times I wish the Luzu gods of old would reach down from on high and crush this wicked city in their hands," the native intoned.
Remo's jaw clenched. "That wouldn't be such a bad idea right around now," he admitted.
"You agree with me?" Bubu asked, surprised. His eyes darted from the road. "But you are from the West."
"I don't mean we should stomp out the whole Western world," Remo explained. "Your problem is with the modern age-mine's with the rats who are ruining the world for decent people. The guys responsible for a lot of the misery going on out there are here in Bachsburg. If this one city was wiped out today, we'd be a long way to curing the troubles of the whole world."
Bubu studied Remo's troubled profile. "No matter the reason, we both wish for the same thing," the native said with quiet sadness. "That which is impossible."
The silence remained between them for the rest of the ride to Remo's hotel.
Stopped at a traffic light one block from the hotel, Bubu made a sudden surprised exclamation.
"It is one of them!" he barked. Eyes wide, the native was looking down a side street.
Remo glanced down the narrow lane.
A city truck was parked near the curb. Yellow hazard posts slung with matching tape were positioned around a hole in the roadway next to the truck. The heavy flat disk of a manhole cover sat nearby.
Bubu was looking at neither truck nor hole, but at the three men loitering nearby. Each wore matching powder-blue coveralls and hard hats. Tool belts were slung around their waists. On their backs, an oval patch identified them as Bachsburg city workers.
When the streetlight changed, Bubu didn't even see it.
"One of who?" Remo asked, peering at the workers.
"The men Chief Batubizee spoke of," Bubu whispered excitedly. "Those who we followed into the sewers, only to have half of our party slain."
"We?" Remo asked. "You were there?"
Bubu wasn't listening. He threw the truck into park, fumbling over the seat. When he spun for the door, spear and machete were in hand.
"Whoa," Remo said, grabbing the native's wrist before he could spring the driver's-side door.
"Release me!" Bubu cried. "I must avenge my tribesmen!"
"Think you could avenge a little louder?" Remo griped. "I don't think they can hear you in Liberia." Over Bubu's protestations, Remo slipped the truck back into drive. As he flicked Bubu's foot off the brake, the big truck rolled forward. Once they'd passed through the intersection and were out of sight of the city workers, Remo took his toe off the gas. "You sure it's the same guy?" he asked, slipping the truck back into park.
Bubu nodded. "He was there that day. He once worked for the defense ministry."
"Defense ministry to sewer workers?" Remo asked. "Remind me not to look for temp work through his agency."
When Remo popped his door, Bubu jumped out the other side. Luzu weapons in hand, he hurried after Remo.
The truck was still there, but the sewer workers were gone. Hurrying to the roped-off manhole, Remo cocked an ear.
The distant echoing sounds of the men carried back through the stone tunnels.
"I don't suppose I can convince you to stay topside?" Remo asked.
Bubu's jaw was firmly set. "I owe my brothers vengeance," he insisted. His hands clenched weapons.
"Didn't think so." Remo sighed. "Okay, but stay out of the way and keep the dying to a minimum. Chief Jabba the Hut doesn't like me enough already without having his favorite guard buy it on my watch."
At this, Bubu seemed about to say something more, but Remo didn't give him a chance. Snapping his ankles together, Remo slipped like a silent shadow down into the inky well.
Grabbing his spear and machete close, Bubu scurried down the ladder after him,
THE REAL East Africa was dead.
For F. U. Gudgel, the country of his birth had fallen victim to internal meddlers and international do-gooders.
East Africa was now a zombie. It stumbled around wrapped in its familiar geography and name, but inside it was rotten to the core. A dead country with a mooka president.
Mooka. The mookas wouldn't even let you use that word anymore. Because the mookas ran the country. Because the gutless whites had caved to mooka pressure and turned it over to them. F. U. Gudgel fervently wished all the mookas would join old East Africa in its grave.
Before the collapse of the old structure, Gudgel had been a member of the defense ministry. But sometime around the point when the last white president, O. C. Stiggs, handed the reins of power over to Willie Mandobar, someone in the new government had gotten it into his fool head to make East Africa nuclear free. The nukes were ordered dismantled. And almost the entire defense ministry was summarily tossed out in the streets. Replaced by mookas.
When the transfer of power was complete in the early 1990s, F. U. Gudgel became a former government official with no experience in the job market. Gudgel had been forced to find work-not an easy task for a man who had risen from enlistee in the East African army to a position with the Advanced Projects Agency of the Ministry of Defense.
When he was faced with chronic unemployment, Gudgel's savior had come in the unlikely form of Minister L. Vas Deferens.
Deferens had been the ultimate boss of Gudgel and the others at the A.P.A. He was thought by most to be a slippery bureaucrat who had betrayed his race by cozying up to Willie Mandobar when the former political prisoner became president of East Africa. When Mandobar retired and Kmpali had assumed the presidency, Deferens had remained in place. The defense minister had the cold outward appearance of a typical mooka-lover. But as F. U. Gudgel learned, the pale man in the perfect white suit was more complex than he seemed.
Deferens had to have had this planned right from the start. As the old East Africa was in its death throes, the man charged with the defense of the nation was working diligently to endanger it like none other before him.
In the months following its dissolution, Deferens had reassembled many of the old Advanced Projects Agency personnel. Some were experts in the field of nuclear technology, while others, like Gudgel, were men with strong backs and strong opinions. All of these men were of the same mind when it came to Mandobar and the rest of the mookas.
A.P.A. was not dismantled after all. It merely went underground. Literally.