Star Of Africa Part 20

'Yes, yes,' Khosa chuckled. 'Did I not tell you we would meet again soon, White Meat?'

'Go to h.e.l.l,' Jude said, staring Khosa straight back in the eye. 'I'm not a boy. And I'm not anybody's meat.'

Khosa boomed with laughter. 'I like you, White Meat. You have changarawe. In my country, this means "guts". I need men with guts.'

Khosa moved on. He stopped at Tuesday, scrutinised him long and hard and then pa.s.sed on without comment.

Next Jeff. Jeff stared back at him with calm fury in his eyes. 'This one is interesting too,' Khosa said. 'Look how he defies me. Many men would be very frightened of such a man. What is your name?' he asked Jeff.

'Dekker,' Jeff said. 'Remember it.'

Khosa narrowed his eyes and the terrible scars on his face crinkled like rubber. 'Do you think I am frightened of you, Dekker?'

Jeff said nothing.

'Are you frightened of me, Dekker?'

Jeff said nothing.

'You will be,' Khosa said. 'Soon, you will be.'

Condor had been standing unaided too long. His knees gave way under him and he collapsed to the earth floor. He gave a heave and then lay still, his arms folded under him and one leg splayed outward.

'What is the matter with this one?' Khosa demanded, pointing down at the unconscious man.

Ben spoke out again. 'He has a severe concussion. He was injured when our s.h.i.+p went down. He needs a doctor, and rest. He'll be fine in a few days. He's a good man.'

'He does not look fine to me,' Khosa said, peering down. 'Concussion. I know all about this. He does not need a doctor. I will test him myself.'

What happened next was a surreal parody of a medical examination. Khosa crouched down next to Condor, leaned close to his ear and asked, 'What is your name?'

Condor made no reply. Not a sound. His eyes were closed and he barely even appeared to be breathing.

Khosa looked up. 'He does not know his name,' he said with a look of consternation that Ben couldn't tell was real or put on. 'Who is the president of your country?' Khosa asked Condor.

No response.

Khosa looked up. 'He does not know who the president is?'

'He's unconscious,' Ben said. 'Give the man a chance.'

Khosa grunted. Then asked Condor, 'Now tell me. Look at me. Who am I?'

Once more, Condor gave no response. His eyelids opened a glimmer, then closed again.

'How can he not know who I am?' Khosa said, straightening up and shaking his head with what Ben now believed was genuine incredulity. 'It is very serious. The man has brain damage. You do not need to be a doctor to know this.'

'With respect, General,' Ben said, choosing his words cautiously. 'It's just a grade three concussion.'

Khosa shook his head once more, gravely. 'He is a cripple. No. How do you say? He is a vegetable. I have no use for a vegetable in my army. This,' he declared, pointing down at Condor, 'is not acceptable.'

Then Khosa signalled to his men. 'Kill him.'

'You can't do that,' Ben said. He took one step towards Khosa and half a dozen Kalashnikov rifles instantly snapped in his direction, and he froze before he could take a second step.

'Are you telling me what I can and cannot do, soldier?' Khosa asked in a voice silk-lined with menace.

'Please,' Gerber said. 'You want to kill someone, then kill me. I'm old. Just like you said. I'm no use to anyone.'

Khosa laughed. 'Maybe you are right, Goat Man. Perhaps afterwards we kill you too. What do you think?'

And then they dragged Condor into the middle of the floor and got started on him.

Ben had seen plenty of men meet a bad end before now. He'd witnessed ugly, brutal death up close and personal, more times than he cared to remember. But he'd never seen anything like this. And he never wanted to see anything like it again.

Chapter 41.

Condor didn't regain consciousness right away. Not when the four men grabbed him by the wrists and ankles and hauled him like a sack of rice across the floor. Not when they rolled him over on his back, and not when all four of them drew their machetes from their belts and stood around him in a circle, grinning down at him with glints of dental gold catching what little light was inside the building.

But when the first chopping blade cut into his flesh, the pain and shock jolted Condor out of his semi-coma and he started to scream.

The screaming went on for several minutes. It could have been much quicker, but Khosa's men were experts in prolonging things.

Lou Gerber sank to his knees and vomited. Jude had his eyes screwed shut and his fingers in his ears to block out the chopping sounds and the awful tortured wailing. Hercules had his head bowed with his chin on his chest and his big fists clenched and trembling at his sides. Even Jeff had to look away. Tuesday watched it all from beginning to end, unable to tear his gaze away, as if frozen into a trance of horror.

Ben's eyes stayed on General Jean-Pierre Khosa the whole time.

The blades kept rising and falling and hacking and chopping in the hands of the silent killers. Condor's screams reached a sickening pitch that didn't even sound human any more. Then, mercifully but much, much too long afterwards, they died to a gurgling whimper. Then finally to nothing.

By the time Khosa's four men stepped away, panting with exertion and mahogany-s.h.i.+ned with sweat and sheathing their b.l.o.o.d.y blades, Condor wasn't Condor any more. He was an unrecognisable heap of diced meat and exposed innards and separated body parts and tattered shreds of clothing at the centre of a huge dark stain that soaked deep into the earth.

Gerber was curled up on his knees with his arms wrapped around himself, racked with sobbing. 'Tell the goat man to stand,' Khosa ordered, pointing at him. Slowly, very slowly, Ben and Jeff took Gerber's arms and gently pulled him upright. Gerber stood bent and bowed, suddenly a very old man.

'I want you to look,' Khosa said, swivelling his pointing finger away from Gerber and towards the remains of Condor. 'Look, and remember. This is what happens to men who do not make the grade in my army.'

None of them did look, but they would always remember.

It's nothing next to what will happen to you, Ben was thinking. The stench of death and vomit in the building was sharp and acrid and he had to control his own desire to throw up. He put a hand on Jude's shoulder. Jude's muscles were as tight as rope and his skin felt cold through the damp material of his T-s.h.i.+rt.

'And now,' Khosa said brightly, spreading his arms wide like a TV conjuror who'd just wowed his audience with a spectacular trick, 'the show is over. I am sure that my new recruits are hungry and thirsty. We have a long journey ahead of us and I want all my soldiers to have their strength.'

Seven prisoners had gone into the building. Six came out. Now it was Gerber who needed to be held by the arm to steady him as he walked, like a survivor pulled unscathed but badly shaken from the rubble of an earthquake. His eyes were glazed and he was still trembling violently. Ben was trembling too, not with shock but with rage. He couldn't look at Jeff. He knew that if he did, that if they exchanged even the slightest glance, the two of them would do something reckless. n.o.body spoke. n.o.body could find words to say what they were feeling.

Khosa strode out ahead of them and went off in the direction of the fuel truck to attend to whatever business he needed there. A V-formation of his soldiers trailed closely in his wake, including the four who had just finished hacking a sick, defenceless man to death. Now they were back to their regular duty, until the next time. The General's personal guard, rifles held in the low-ready position as if expecting a horde of a.s.sa.s.sins to attack the perimeter at any moment.

A larger group of soldiers led by the nose picker escorted the prisoners across a stretch of open ground to another long, low, windowless building on the same side of the avenue. The p.r.o.ne body of the fat soldier that Hercules had laid flat was no longer there. He'd either managed to crawl away, or he'd been dragged away. The only remaining sign of him was a patch of blood on the dusty ground. Ben gave it a brief glance and then looked away. He'd seen enough blood-soaked earth today.

But however sickened he might have felt by what they'd all just witnessed, the smell of cooking wafting out of the open doorway as they approached the building made Ben feel dizzy. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten anything.

This building wasn't in much better condition than the first, but at least there were no dismembered bodies inside. Ben was beginning to realise that Khosa's unit had adopted the derelict compound as a forward operating base away from home, wherever home was. Ben's army unit had set up camp in a hundred similar locations in a dozen countries. The avenue between the buildings most likely served as a rough kind of drill or a.s.sembly ground. One of the buildings either side of it was probably being used as a barracks hut for the men. The best of them was presumably the CO's personal quarters, while the worst of them would be the camp latrines.

This one was being used as a makes.h.i.+ft cookhouse and mess, Africa-style. The building's dank, dark interior was dimly lit by oil lamps hanging from nails in the walls. Some wooden tables and benches had been knocked up out of whatever bits of timber had been lying around. A large battered cauldron of some kind of h.o.m.ogenous brown stew was bubbling and simmering on a portable stove. The smell of the food was mingled with the petroleum fumes of whatever fuel the stove was burning up, and the unmistakable oily stink of paraffin lamps being run on diesel. A fog of smoke drifted and swirled overhead.

They were made to sit at a table. Guns surrounded them. Not the most comfortable mess facilities Ben had ever seen, but marginally better than the slaughterhouse they'd just come from. The nose picker marched over to their table carrying an aluminium water canteen, which he slammed down on the tabletop in front of them. 'You drink.'

Ben picked it up, unscrewed the nozzle and tasted the water first, to ensure it was fit for consumption. It was, just about. 'Go easy,' he told Jude as he pa.s.sed the canteen to him. 'Take it in small sips or you'll be sick.' Standard SAS survival advice to any trooper who had been deprived of water for too long.

Jude refused the water, even though his lips were parched and cracked from dehydration. He took the canteen from Ben and pa.s.sed it across to Gerber. Gerber ignored the offer and kept doing what he was doing, which was staring emptily at the tabletop like a man who'd just been told he had inoperable cancer.

'Drink it, Lou, for G.o.d's sake,' Jude said strongly. 'You want to end up like Condor?'

Gerber flinched at the words. He shot Jude a hesitant glance. Then slowly reached out with a hand that was still shaking from traumatic shock, took the canteen and raised it to his mouth for a few choking sips. He wiped the nozzle with his hand and then pa.s.sed it to Hercules.

'I won't take water from these motherf.u.c.kers,' Hercules said, crossing his huge arms and leaning back on the bench. 'Not one solitary drop. I'll die first.'

'Then the rest of us know who we can rely on,' Ben said. 'Or not. If you want to live, you're one of us. If you don't, you're on your own. That's how things are going to work between us from now on. Because we need to be able to depend on each other one hundred and ten percent if any one of us has a chance of getting out of this alive. We need to be strong for each other. We need to be a team. And team members all drink from the canteen, or they get left behind. I want you on my team, Hercules. What do you say, Jeff?'

'd.a.m.n right,' Jeff growled. 'Every inch of the way.'

'And me,' Tuesday said.

'Your choice,' Ben said. 'Live or die. Starting now.'

Hercules stared at him. He nodded. Took the canteen and drank from it, spluttered and sighed and smacked his lips and pa.s.sed it on. The canteen went all around the table. Jude was the last to drink.

When the canteen was empty, the nose picker came back over to the table carrying a mess tray. He banged it down in the middle. On it were six bowls of the steaming concoction from the cauldron. A tin spoon had been stabbed into the centre of each bowl and stood upright in the thick stew.

'I hope this guy's not expecting a tip for service like this,' Jeff said. 'He could get a job at the greasy spoon caff I used to go to in Islington.'

'You eat,' the nose picker said, jabbing a finger at the bowls.

Ben peered at the food. It was a thick, glutinous, lumpy mora.s.s of boiled-down beans and some kind of shredded dark meat.

'It is goat,' the nose picker said. He smiled and pointed at Gerber. 'Like him.'

The rest of the soldiers thought this was hysterically funny. Laughter filled the mess hut.

'I'm not hungry,' Jude said.

'Nor me,' Hercules growled. 'And if I was, I wouldn't touch this s.h.i.+t nohow.'

Normally, Gerber would have waded right in there with a crack about Hercules's cooking. He said nothing.

Ben grabbed a bowl off the tray and slid it across the table towards himself. s.n.a.t.c.hed up the spoon and took a mouthful. The trick was not to think too much about how it tasted, or what it might contain apart from goat and beans. He chewed and swallowed and shovelled up another steaming spoonful. Jeff grabbed a bowl and dived in, eating hungrily. Tuesday hesitated, then followed their example.

Jude watched the three of them in horror. 'How can you eat? After we just saw Con- after what just happened?'

'I'd advise you to get it down you,' Ben said between spoonfuls. 'Number one rule is, eat when you can, drink when you can, sleep when you can. Your future trainers in Special Forces will tell you the same thing.'

Jude made no reply.

'I went to Sweden once,' Jeff said through a mouthful of stew. 'If you can swallow their surstrmming, you can swallow this stuff. It's really not all that bad.'

'Everyone eat,' Ben urged them. 'Khosa's right when he says we're going to need our strength. Like he said, this isn't the end of the line. We have a trip ahead of us.'

'Where is he taking us?' Jude asked.

'Beats me,' Jeff said.

'We'll find out soon enough,' Tuesday said.

Jude reluctantly took a small spoonful of stew and ate it, pulling a face. 'I'm not waiting. I want to know.' He stabbed the spoon back into the bowl and turned to face the nose picker, who was standing over them like a kennel-hand at feeding time. 'Hey, you. What's this journey we're being taken on?' Jude asked him.

'The General is bringing you home,' the nose picker replied with a grin that was more like a sneer. 'Long, long way. Very far from here.'

'Well, there's your answer,' Jeff said.

But it wasn't good enough to satisfy Jude. 'Home? What's home?' he said to the nose picker. 'Hey. Oi. Didn't you hear me? I asked you where your so-called general is taking us.'

'Watch it, Jude,' Ben said softly. There was a ripple of annoyance pa.s.sing through the crowd of soldiers, and too many Kalashnikovs pointing at Jude for him to start getting arsy.

'Ask him yourself, White Meat,' the nose picker said.

The soldiers filtered aside as their commander appeared in the doorway and walked into the mess hut. Khosa strode up to the table. 'I am pleased to see you eating. The food is to your liking?' He laughed, then waved a hand at Ben as if to order him to stand. Ben ignored him, sc.r.a.ped up the last spoonful of stew from his bowl and took his time eating it. Only when he'd swallowed it did he lay down his spoon and slowly rise to his feet.

'Come with me, soldier,' Khosa said. 'I wish to speak to you. Alone.'

Chapter 42.

Jude, Jeff, Tuesday, Gerber and Hercules all watched in silence as Ben followed Khosa towards the doorway. The General paused to snap a command at the soldiers in Swahili. 'Guard them closely. Especially the boy.'

Outside, the sun was sinking and cooling a little as evening set in. Ben's T-s.h.i.+rt didn't immediately stick to his skin, and he didn't have to shade his eyes with his hand. The four men acting as Khosa's personal guard formed a tight semicircle behind him, their weapons pointing at his back. Khosa led the way from the mess hut, across the beaten-earth avenue and past the parked choppers and the fuel truck to the smallest of the buildings on the far side. It was the one in the best state of repair, the one Ben had guessed a unit using this place as a forward operating base would designate as the CO's temporary quarters.