Place of Bones (14 page)

“Who said I was quitting?”

“You did.” 

I looked at him and he widened his eyes and looked at me. Maybe I had. I said, “I’ll probably join you, then.”

“You mean that?”

I had a feeling we were talking pie-in-the-sky. “I’ll have to join something. There aren’t going to be many people who’ll employ me after this little bundle.”

“As you remark, old son,” he nodded. Then he closed his eyes again. “Come to S.A. Take your commission. That’ll probably be my direction. Can’t be all that bad. Four square ones a day. Clean sheets. Free this, that and the other thing. And I’m not sure regular officers don’t get batmen. That’s better’n a smack in the mouth. Think about it.”

“Maybe,” I said, trying to spit another fly off the door jamb. “I could do that once.”

“Do what?”

“Spit a fly into oblivion.”

“You’re overdue a rest, man

“Oh,” I said, “is
that
what I’m overdue!”

“Out to pasture...” Piet sounded on the verge of sleep.

I sniffed. God, I smelt to high heaven. A shower, then. “I’m going for a shower.”

Piet glanced at me. “Too much bathing robs your body of its natural protection. Me, I’ll just lay here and stink.”

I stepped out into the night. Someone scored a goal and the men danced around hugging each other and cheering.

“Like kids. eh. sir?” It was Augarde. He sat on the ground, his back against the food store; an obvious spectator. I stayed there for a while and we chatted about this and that. Inconsequential stuff. Then I had my shower. It was a gerry-built affair consisting of a tin with holes in punched in it and a string you pulled. I did not look too closely to see how the water got into the can. I just used it. The dirt washed off me in rivers. I suppose I felt better for it, but I guess I was too tired to notice. I dried myself with my shirt and walked back in just my under shorts. The game was still in progress. And Augarde had not moved. I thought he was asleep but he wasn’t. “Hell of a game,” he offered unenthusiastically as I passed.

“What’s the score?”

“Three-nil to the Kikuyu...I think.”

I glanced out there. I saw Kimba amongst the players and wondered what he was doing there. “Why did Kimba come in?”

“Stores, sir. He just sort of got caught up in the game. I’ll put a rocket under him when it’s over. I didn’t think a few minutes would hurt.”

Which was true enough. “Remind him that I want the landing area pushed back further.”

“Will do, sir.”

Then I saw that Kimba seemed to be refereeing. I cupped my hand to my mouth. “Come on, corporal! Cheat, for Pete’s sake!”

Kimba, in the act of sorting out a penalty, glanced out at us. He saw who was doing the shouting - my fault - and he dived into the fray like a man possessed, yelling for order.

“What a poser,” said Augarde. “Sorry about that.”

“If he fights as well as he licks arse you’ll have done us a good turn. Who’ve we got on the ammo store?”

“Bjoran sorted that out, sir. I think he put a couple of Simbas onto it. Someone’s there, anyway. I saw them, marching up and down like bloody grenadiers. Shall I go check?”

“No, I will.”

Augarde had been right. Not only about them being Simbas, but also about the marching. I even received a “Halt! Who goes there?” which I thought was bloody hilarious. I did not bother to look inside, mainly because it was too dark to see in any case; the ammo store was on its own, in back of the cookhouse, and in deep shadow. I told the Simbas to stay awake then I walked - limped would be more factual - back to the cabin. Piet was sound asleep. I lit up a cigarette, sat at the radio table and pulled out the maps. There might still be a problem with fuel...

“FIRE!”

The crackle of gunfire died, to be repeated as diminishing echoes speeding away up- and down-river in search of their antecedents.

“Rest!”  Corporal Ran Chardi, a lanky Simba who looked as at home in a uniform as he would have done in skirt and blouse, tried and failed to sound as authoritatively guttural as had Bjoran in his single command to open fire.

The zigzagged double rank of marksmen swung their AKs upwards, butts on the right hip, fingers of the left hand rested lightly on the fire-select lever in anticipation of the next instruction. Several of these men allowed their eyes to flicker towards the fast-running water. But only for an instant. Bjoran, up by the makeshift targets, glared threateningly at them as he stepped into the line of fire to inspect the hit rate. Only one member of the previous group of shooters had been foolish enough to allow the barrel of his weapon to remain directed at the targets as Bjoran had stepped in front of them. This man was now, and still, walking the “measured mile”, as Augarde had nicknamed Bjoran’s method of punishment for such offenses against his person. The man was walking - or trying to - upstream, some twenty feet out in the river and neck-deep in the swirling water, his AK and ammo pouches held high above his head. The distance he had to negotiate was not a mile, nor was it close to that. It was a mere hundred yards. But it could easily seem like a mile, and might even turn into one if Bjoran, upon its completion, found so much as a single drop of water anywhere on the weapon or pouches. And woe betide any man who failed to stay in a depth sufficiently deep. The water had to always stroke his chin.

“Bloody bad!” yelled Bjoran as he checked the holes in the plywood sheets, onto which had been daubed reasonable facsimiles of human figures. He stepped backwards in the direction of the trees. “Auto!”

The metallic rattling, as 30 men flicked the select levers on their weapons, sounded like a handful of ball-bearings dropped on a tin roof.

“Okay, corporal.”

Chardi waited until Bjoran was well out of the way then he filled his lungs. “Detail...Preeeee - sent!” The AKs curved and the butts thumped into shoulder. “Hauto - matic...ten rounds...”  Chardi would have liked to give the fire order, but he knew that was the Swede’s job.

Bjoran’s voice pierced the leaves. “Rapid...FIRE!”

For several seconds the air was torn apart as 30 AKs loosed three hundred rounds into the targets, and the spent cordite fumes billowed around the firing line. And another set of echoes sped away. Then there was silence, except for an occasional grunt from the mile-walker and the buzzing of the flying insects.  The mile-walker’s boot slid off an unseen rock and only by an extreme effort of will did he remain as near vertical as the racing current would allow. Though for a moment only his wrists and burden were visible above the surface of the water. No-one noticed.

“Rest!” called Chardi, and the weapons came to order as the “walker’s” head came spluttering above the mud-saturated water.

Again Bjoran inspected the results, and again, though the targets were now absolutely riddled, he yelled, “Bloody bad!”  Then he stepped back into the trees and picked up one of the few remaining jerry cans, which he carried to the water’s edge. At that moment the “walker” lost his lone battle and disappeared completely. Interestedly, Bjoran studied the spot where the man had gone under. Some ten seconds later he reappeared, fifty yards downstream and well beyond the firing line, minus his AK, spluttering and foundering like a drowning man in his efforts to regain foothold on the river bed. Expressionless, Bjoran returned his attention to the men.

“Right, you bloody lot of coon-skin maybes. On the run.”

He swung the jerry can twice over his head then released it. It splashed down some fifty feet out. “Go! Go! Go!”

The thirty men, yelling and screaming at the tops of their voices, charged up the bank, loosing indiscriminate fire at the bobbing can. Luckily for them, it was holed, sinking quickly. The “walker” made it to the bank at last, but well down in swampland. He would have to negotiate a greater peril than water to regain the solid clay tract.

The proceedings were interrupted by the arrival of a jeep with Augarde at the wheel. “Get them in, Bjoran! Conference in an hour.”

Bjoran nodded and called to Chardi. “Move it, corporal!” Then he trotted down the bank as Chardi began to yell his orders. “What now?” he demanded of Augarde, tossing his own AK onto the back seat and vaulting into the front passenger’s side.

“Last battle orders,” said Augarde, “We pull out seventeen-hundred tomorrow.”

Bjoran nodded. “Some bloody battle this gonna be...” He pulled a battered packet of Marlboro from his shirt pocket and lit one up, puffing a fan of smoke into the air. He added, “Well, I for one wanna see my extra loot up front!”

Augarde shrugged. “You’re entitled to ask.”

“Yeah,” Bjoran nodded. Then he changed direction completely. “My pris’ners still tucked up nice?”

“They are.”

“Good.”

“What does that mean?”

“It mean good...Hey!” he yelled to Chardi, “Where’s Bolo, or whatever the fuick ‘is name is?”

Chardi turned from his safety-catch check. He waved an arm downstream. “He comin’, suh.”

“He got ‘is AK?”

Chardi detached himself from the crowd of men and stepped out to the water’s edge, peering downstream against the glare of the sun. He shook his head. “No,suh.”

Bjoran grinned at Augarde and stepped out of the jeep. He walked to the pile of ammunition boxes, tested one for weight, then banged it down on the bonnet of the truck, which was the mens’ transport. “Again!” he called to Chardi. “Wit’ this!”

Chardi nodded. “Yah, suh!” He glanced briefly down to where he could just see the hapless Bolo pulling himself back upstream, then he returned to his task. Bjoran, smiling wickedly, rejoined Augarde in the jeep. “Bastard!”

“Who or what is a bastard this time?” Augarde asked dully.

Bjoran told him.

“For Christ’s sake, Bjoran” said Augarde, “We don’t have time for all that now!”

Bjoran pulled a face. “You always got make time for dis’plin.”

Augarde shook his head. He had found the Swede something of an enigma. His earlier impressions of the man had not changed, but now they had a certain perspective. Bjoran was utterly unable to comprehend suffering, yet in most circumstances - the incident at Brazzaville excepted - he was almost totally without conscious malice. It was as if he had been raised on a diet of cruelty, of iron-hard discipline, as if he truly knew no other way of life. Either for himself or those around him. Certainly, Augarde knew, he took pleasure from cruelty, but the cruelty itself came from somewhere deep inside him, somewhere well beyond his reach and control. Also, everything he did seemed to have a perverse kind of reason, and that reason had to do with his own version of what constituted the mercenary soldier; both words being equally as important to him - mercenary, and soldier. Bjoran, Augarde had to admit, was good at both, dependent upon point of view.

The Swede’s approach to money, however, was an enigma within an enigma. He lusted after it, he confessed to dream about it, and he grumbled that he never had enough of it, always crowing about wanting more and more. Yet he appeared to have no set ideas about what he wanted to do with it. It was greed for greed’s sake; a simple extension of his concept of the mercenary soldier. Except that the latter word - soldier - had for him, Augarde was convinced, its own kind of intrinsic value. Money did not appear to.

There was no doubt in Augarde’s mind that Bjoran drove his men no harder than he drove himself, at least in terms of physical exertion. The difference was mental. He had never displayed signs of mental exhaustion, probably, Augarde thought, because he could not recognize the symptoms. He could make do on an hour’s sleep a day and could not understand why everyone else, as a rule, seemed to need more.

The man, Bolo, stumbled out of the bank side undergrowth and under Bjoran’s eagle glare, was handed the ammunition box and directed back into the river. “The full distance, Chardi. Got it!”

Corporal Ran Chardi nodded that he understood and Bjoran flapped his hand at Augarde. “Let’s go.”

Augarde shrugged. It was less than useless to get angry with the man.
At
him, yes.
With
him, no. He said, “Where ignorance is bliss,” and fired up the engine. He knew also that the Swede could not be baited by phrases he could neither complete, nor understand even if he did.

When they were underway Bjoran leant closer to Augarde’s head to make himself heard above the noise of their passage through the tunnel-like track. “Wha’cha t’ink ‘bout the Chink deal?”

“What part of it?”

Bjoran shrugged. “All of it.”

“I don’t think anything. Things happen in this business.”

Bjoran leant even closer, as if not to be overheard. “You agree wit’ the C.O.?”

Augarde sighed to himself. “About what?”

“The Chinks!” said Bjoran indignantly, recognizing the evasiveness in Augarde’s tone.

Ever since McCann had dropped his bombshell the Swede had been pumping both Augarde and Brook about their reactions to the new situation. It was barrack-room-lawyer talk and neither paid it much attention. Augarde said, “I told you before. The Chinese are out of it now. Pick up your money, do your job, then forget about it.”