The distant snort of a diesel engine found Thomas hunched in his ditch, desperately sucking the last drag from his last joint of the day. He wasn’t nearly stoned enough to go back, but he pushed himself to his feet one-handed and dusted off his uniform. ‘Here’s the cavalry,’ he said.
‘I know, surfer boy. You think I’m blind?’ Skeletor had dragged the body over their footprints, leaving a smear in the sand, and was posed at the bottom of the dune with one foot on the terrorist’s bare torso.
Thomas flicked his stub of burning paper to the ground then slid down to watch the Buffel charge through the desert.
The heavily-armoured vehicle kicked up dust against the darkening sky until, with a sandy skid, it stopped and a side plate flew down. Whooping and cheering troopies poured out to congratulate Skeletor on his first kill. With a ‘One, two, three!’ the terrorist was hoisted up and strapped like fresh game to the front grill. Coils of sisal were wound tight around his neck, arms and legs, but that didn’t stop his head lolling forward as if he was drunk, exposing the gaping, sand-caked exit wound. Thomas winced as Skeletor gave a final twist to the knot around the terrorist’s neck.
Inside, Thomas found a space between two sunburnt, tired-eyed troopies and braced himself as the engine started and the game of human pinball began. He shook in his seat, smashed into his neighbours and rattled against the wall behind while the big transport galloped through humps, bumps and what felt like a herd of zebra. The Buffel troop carrier could withstand a landmine, shrug off a hand grenade and take a bullet without flinching, but it sure as hell wasn’t comfortable.
Skeletor didn’t seem to mind though. He spent the journey chattering to all who would listen about how he had killed the terrorist. ‘Should have seen him,’ he shouted above the engine noise. ‘Armed to the teeth.’
‘Jesus, Skeletor,’ a trooper muttered beside Thomas. ‘Jy’s a legend.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Skeletor snapped. ‘That’s the Lord’s name and I’ll not have you take it in vain.’
‘Sorry.’
Instead of going straight back to base, the driver took them on a detour through the nearby village, a one-goat town of tin shacks and mud huts huddled around a fickle waterhole. Thomas gazed through Plexiglas at the inhabitants, mostly women and children, who stared without expression, hands slack at their sides, at the macabre warning tied to the front of the Buffel.
‘Ja, take a good look,’ Skeletor said, even though the villagers couldn’t hear. ‘This is what happens when you support the bad guys.’
Thomas wanted to tear off his uniform and cover his face in shame.
Outside the village lay a rubbish dump strewn with plastic, bottles, bones and other waste that couldn’t be recycled as building material. This was where their driver chose to stop.
Skeletor and three others jumped out and untied the terrorist. Thomas stayed in the Buffel, watching from the window while they dragged the shirtless man to a patch of oily sand and doused him with fuel from an orange canister. A match was thrown. Prongs of brilliant yellow stabbed at the sky, followed by sooty smoke, a fire that could easily be seen from the village.
Even from inside the Buffel, the smell of charred meat was strong, reminding Thomas of the farewell braai his dad had thrown the night before he reported to Natal Command. He dropped his head between his legs and tried not to breathe.
‘You missed a beautiful bonfire,’ Skeletor said when he came back, troopies chuckling like naughty schoolboys around him.
Thomas didn’t look up until the side panel slammed shut and they started moving, their hearts-and-minds tour of the village complete.
When the Buffel stopped next, its complement of troopies shot from it like fizz escaping a shaken Coke bottle. Thomas stumbled out last and instead of following the tide of soldiers going back to barracks, took a moment to steady himself. Maybe he was more stoned than he had thought.
He was in the vehicle depot, surrounded by sleeping trucks, jeeps and armoured cars. Branching out from this dusty square were wide, well-lit streets that led to the hard-packed sand walls of the base. In every street he saw brown-uniformed soldiers rushing to inspections, the mess hall or the post office, or simply running because an officer had told them to.
Moon Base Alpha, aka Fort Retief, had been his home for the last few weeks, his reward for completing basics. It was an old whaling station tucked away in the top-left corner of South-West Africa. Nearby was a beach lapped by water so cold it made sopranos of the deepest baritones, and otherwise the place was surrounded for hundreds of kilometres by sand, sad little villages, picked-clean bone and more sand. There were no bars, no cinemas and no pretty girls interested in posing for a young artist – no reason at all to apply for a weekend pass. And the worst thing was that he was stuck here for another seventeen months and eight days. Even then, when his duty to his country was discharged, he would still be eligible for call-up to more camps like this one. It was enough to make Thomas wish he had studied for his final maths paper and made it to university, even for the engineering degree that his dad had insisted he apply for instead of fine art. At least that way he would have been drafted into officers’ training after graduation, or gone to the air force or navy instead.
He chose the widest street, the one that ran to the main gates and trudged down it, saluting all he passed. It was army custom to streek, stiffen up, and salute those with rank, and to Thomas, a lowly Rifleman, that meant just about anyone who wasn’t him.
After making it to bungalow 4E, he crossed the veranda and stopped at the doorway.
Skeletor was already inside, strutting back and forth beside his bunk at the far end of the long room, his rifle and trophy T-shirt held aloft, the platoon gathered round like flies attracted to the scent of death. ‘I ordered the terr to stop,’ he told his audience, ‘but he kept coming. Crazed look in his eyes. Armed with rocket launchers, grenades, you name it.’
Still at the doorway, Thomas folded his arms. ‘I was there, Skeletor. I saw what happened.’
The platoon fell silent. Skeletor turned slowly, lowered his rifle to body level and emitted a death ray of a look.
Thomas swallowed, all the moisture gone from his mouth. ‘Ja, like I said, guys, I was there. Skeletor was a real legend today. Really brave.’ He made himself smile.
The buzz around Skeletor resumed. The crowd’s orbit grew tighter. Back slaps, high-fives and handshakes were exchanged as Skeletor recounted how he had blown the heavily-armed terrorist’s brains clean out of his head.
Thomas turned away. He walked down the road, saluting as he went, and crossed over to the prefab building that housed the post office. It wasn’t as if he ever got mail but he didn’t want to be around Skeletor at the moment, at least not until his drug-induced sensitivity wore off, and this was as good a time waster as any.
‘Number?’ asked the potato-faced Lieutenant behind the counter.
‘8800421567. I was on patrol, so I missed the call.’
The Lieutenant rose slowly from his plastic chair and dug through the hessian sacks dumped on the floor. ‘Thomas Green?’
‘That’s me, sir.’
‘What’s it worth to you?’
‘Five?’ His immediate thought was that it was a letter from his parents. He had received nothing from them, not even a postcard, since he had come here, and it was beginning to feel as if they had forgotten about him.
The Lieutenant tossed an envelope to the counter and said, ‘Worth at least ten that letter.’
The envelope was bright pink, the first pink thing Thomas had seen in all these months of brown, grey and green. And everyone knew what a pink letter meant. ‘Fine,’ he said, too quickly, ‘I’ll give you ten.’
‘I said, at least ten.’ The fat Lieutenant licked his thin lips. ‘I was thinking more like one hundred.’
Thomas aimed for nonchalance, but his voice came out high-pitched and desperate: ‘It’s just a letter from my mom. I swear.’
‘Your mother sprays her correspondence with cheap perfume?’ The lips curled into a sneer. ‘What kind of sick family are you from?’
Thomas looked down at the letter. It was postmarked 25-03-1988, a good three months ago, but from it he could still detect a promising floral scent. ‘Did you say one hundred, sir?’
‘I distinctly remember saying two hundred.’
There was nothing left for Thomas to do but pay the price. He rested his rifle against the table and lay face-down on the cool linoleum floor.
‘In your own time, troopie.’ The Lieutenant’s voice was ripe with the expectation of pleasure.
Thomas counted, ‘One.’ The first push-up was agony. ‘Two.’ So was the next. ‘Three.’ But as his joints loosened up and the pain subsided, he began to wonder who the letter was from. ‘Four.’ It wasn’t as if he had a girlfriend or even any girls he could call friends. ‘Five.’ His last two schools had been boys-only affairs. ‘Six.’ Then he had gone straight into the army. ‘Seven.’ But there was someone. ‘Eight!’ A girl he had met in the short holiday between. ‘Nine!’ It was from her. ‘Ten!’ It had to be.
‘Stand up,’ a voice said.
‘Eleven!’ Thomas kept counting, blocking out everything but the push-ups and the promise that waited at the end. ‘Twelve!’ Only one hundred and eighty-eight to go. ‘Thirteen!’ Pain splintered through his body and he crumpled to his side, clutching his ribs.
‘Get off the floor.’ Skeletor’s boot was poised to deliver another blow. ‘Major De Kock wants to see us.’
Back on his feet, Thomas felt dizzy and disorientated. He rubbed his rib cage, doing his best to massage the pain away.
‘Hurry up.’ Skeletor scurried out of the office, no doubt expecting to be followed at once.
But Thomas hesitated. He looked down at the envelope glowing pink with possibility on the counter. Then he glanced at the Lieutenant, who was scowling from his chair, his entertainment so rudely interrupted.
Without a thought for the consequences, Thomas snatched the letter from the counter and ran after Skeletor.
‘You the killers?’ Major De Kock got up from his desk and fixed his good eye on Thomas and Skeletor.
Thomas had only ever seen him waddling around the parade ground, but here, up close in his office, he was a formidable beast: big, bald-headed and sleek, with a hungry look in one of his eyes. The other eye was red and weepy, bisected by a pink scar that had been earned, according to base legend, in one of the brutal skirmishes fought to stop Southern Rhodesia from becoming Zimbabwe.
Thomas and Skeletor saluted in tandem.
This was all the confirmation the Major needed. ‘On behalf of State President PW Botha I would like to thank you men for your actions today.’
He was being sarcastic, Thomas thought. News travelled fast in Moon Base Alpha and the story of the unarmed corpse must have shot quickly to the map-covered walls of this office. He gritted his teeth and prepared for the worst, his mind racing through the potential punishments for shooting and looting an unarmed man.
A smile, incongruous with the scar, formed on the Major’s face. ‘Keep this up, boys, and you’ll return to South Africa with medals.’
Medals? He was definitely treating them to some good, old-fashioned army sarcasm.
The Major stiffened and his fingers touched his polished head.
This was such an unfamiliar sight that it took a moment for Thomas to realise what was happening: he was being saluted. It was the first time he had ever been personally saluted by an officer. In response, he and Skeletor snapped out salutes of their own. Maybe they weren’t in trouble after all.
Turning to the maps on his wall, the Major said, ‘Just out of interest, was the terrorist armed?’
‘No,’ Thomas replied at the same time that Skeletor said, ‘Yes.’
The Major spun around, his good eye closed to a slant. ‘Well, which was it?’
Thomas wanted to tell the truth. He really did. But he didn’t want to make his remaining year and a half any more difficult than it had to be. And besides, he could feel the frown directed at him from the troopie at his side, a non-verbal warning not to divulge what happened – unless he wanted a kicking.
Skeletor answered for both of them: ‘He was unarmed when I shot him, sir. But I suspect he dropped his weapon before he reached us.’
‘You suspect?’ The Major’s bad eye twitched.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Were there any explosives on his body? Grenades, limpet mines, mortar rounds, anything to link this man with terrorist activity?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Not even a firecracker?’
‘No, sir.’
‘So am I to understand that you just saw black skin and fired?’
It took a few moments for Skeletor to answer. ‘Yes, sir.’
Thomas, who had been silent throughout this exchange, shifted a little to the side, to dissociate himself from the killer.
But the Major smiled. He opened his arms and bear-hugged Skeletor as if he had found a long-lost child. When he was finished he stepped back and said, ‘You did the right thing, son. You trusted your heart.’
Skeletor gave Thomas a self-satisfied glance.
‘This particular terrorist was a dangerous customer,’ the Major explained. ‘Our Bushmen trackers have been on to him since he slipped over the border. We believe – as you do – that he dropped his weapons to lighten the load. But these communist infiltrators, they’re trained to kill with their bare hands. Give him half a chance and he’ll snap off your neck and use your spine for a toothpick.’ The Major held his chunky fists together and made a snapping movement. ‘Not the kind of person we want arriving unannounced in Pretoria, now is he?’
‘No, sir!’ Skeletor shouted back.
Thomas stood mute. It was hard to believe that the young man in the Bob Marley T-shirt had been a highly-trained terrorist. But it had to be true. There was no other explanation.
‘Boys of your calibre don’t deserve to be stuck here in the middle of nowhere.’ The Major moved back to his giant wall map of Southern Africa. ‘That’s why I’m sending you on a little trip.’
‘Where to?’ Thomas asked, pushing the dead terrorist from his mind and jogging his eyes along the bottom of the map, visiting peaceful seaside towns like Scarborough, East London and Port Elizabeth, trying to guess which one they would be sent to as their reward.
The Major stubbed a finger on a great swath of land above the green pin marking their base. ‘Angola.’
That didn’t sound like a reward to Thomas. Angola was the place the terrorists came from and where the base’s old hands, the ou manne in the faded uniforms, had done their fighting. But a truce had been declared, South Africa leaving the country to wage its civil war in peace. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘we’re not allowed into Angola.’
‘Not officially, no. But all those convoys that stop here to refuel, where do you think they’re going, boy? Disneyland?’ Major De Kock ran a finger in a north-easterly direction along the blue vein of a river just over the border. ‘I want you to find an old friend of mine.’ The finger stopped at a small mark, a pen-made scratch across the river. ‘He’s camped here, at this bridge.’
‘You can rely on us, sir,’ Skeletor said.
‘Good. His name is Colonel Stebbing.’ The Major strode over to sit behind his desk, the chair creaking from the strain. A drawer was opened, and a folded piece of paper withdrawn and slid across the desk. ‘Give this to him. It’s a message too sensitive to pass over radio.’
Skeletor lunged forward and claimed the paper.
‘You are to travel in civvies.’ The Major went back to rooting around in the desk drawer. ‘Take nothing that will incriminate you as South African soldiers. The UN is already whining about our nuclear weapons programme. The last thing we need is for them to find out we’ve sent more troops into Angola. So if you’re captured, I don’t know you.’ He found what he was looking for, a set of car keys that he tossed over the table.
With a metallic jingle, the keys landed on the floor.
‘I can’t drive, sir.’ Skeletor scooped up the keys and held them out to Thomas.
‘Me neither.’ Thomas kept his hands away, refusing the responsibility. ‘I’ve only just turned eighteen.’
The Major sighed deeply. He got up and reached over, snatching back the keys, his belly pressing down on the desk as he did so. ‘I’ll arrange for a driver to pick you up first thing in the morning, someone who knows the territory. Good luck, may God be with you, and whatever you do, don’t get caught.’ He stamped down hard, sending tears flying from his weepy eye, and treated them to another salute. Then he settled back into his chair. ‘Now get out. I’ve got work to do.’
Outside, Thomas muttered, ‘I don’t like this.’
‘You don’t like anything, surfer boy.’