Read The Devil's Horn Online

Authors: David L. Robbins

The Devil's Horn (4 page)

BOOK: The Devil's Horn
7.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

For another moonless hour she slipped through the bush, naked but for her sandals, machete, rifle, and money. Though Promise hurried, every step was meant to leave either no trace or a misleading one. Her nakedness made her kin with the animals of the Kruger; she was raw like them, she had killed like them. But no creatures made themselves known to her, no birds chirped, no wild dogs barked along her way. Their absence felt like rejection. Promise nodded to the silence as if to say,
Fine
.
She tightened her fingers around Juma’s money. In the northern distance, a tumult erupted, a quick skirmish over the fresh rhino carcass, now discovered. The squabble ended with a wounded shriek, then a hush as the beasts settled down to tear the corpse apart.
Fine
. The money in Promise’s fist was the piece she had torn off.

With an hour of darkness left, she reached her bicycle and the backpack she’d hidden in a jade bush not far from the paved road and river at dusk. She put on her khaki uniform and boots.

With no traffic, Promise pedaled south in the center of the road, along the river. The breeze felt right again, not against her bare body but only on her face and arms. Her cap and high-laced boots, the bicycle, and the Kruger-ranger patch on her shoulder all signaled her return. Soon she’d be rid of the wad of cash in her backpack.

Promise rode under the rising curtain of night. The first violet stains of sunrise inked the eastern sky as she braked and carried the bike off the road. She stashed it in a hedge of thorns, left the rifle and backpack, too, and took only the panga.

She walked a hundred meters into the bush, into an open space lumpy with rounded mounds of clay, some as tall as she. Promise bent close to the ground, searching in the pallid light. Quickly she found the spoor. Promise knelt to the few sausage-shaped droppings. Breaking one open, she flicked at the insides to reveal the undigested heads of termites and ants. The dung was warm against her lips.

On the edge of the field, a copse of prickly pear cacti twisted out of the ground. Promise squatted near the needles to pluck a fruit. With the machete she carved away the spiny skin to slice the green flesh into quarters, then she swallowed the moisture and pulp. She did not keep watch on the field of termite mounds but shut her eyes and listened.

Sleep lurked close behind her eyelids. The adrenaline, the struggle and blood of the long night, Juma and his poachers had all left her drained. Promise wavered on her heels but caught herself with a hand to the ground. She opened her eyes.

The aardvark snuffled like a pig. Noiselessly, Promise moved from behind the cacti to watch the ungainly creature amble to one of the colonies. The beast stopped at the base, sniffed around it, and with its foreclaws began to dig, flinging dirt past its big hind legs. Promise took her panga in hand but held back to let the aardvark burrow deeper and fix its attention.

The aardvark was an odd-looking beast, with jackrabbit ears, a swinish snout, and the small, dim eyes of a nocturnal feeder; it was muscular but slow, a digging machine with powerful, clawed paws. It scratched in the earth the way a medicine man did for roots, so the tribesmen held the aardvark to be a symbol of healing, even magic, a sangoma.

With amazing speed the grunting creature dug a burrow, then drove in its long snout. It snuffled and inhaled termites by the thousands, chewing lustily. Pale ribbons streaked the eastern sky; the sun would be full up soon, and the aardvark would go to some underground lair. Beyond the schedule of the beast, Promise was in no rush. She could not return to the Shingwedzi ranger station until afternoon, to play out the lie that she’d spent her day in the township with her grandparents.

Promise crept up from behind, moving slowly to raise no alarm. One of the aardvark’s ears cocked backward, aware, but the creature kept its nose at the trough. Promise inched closer, crossing into the shower of red dirt the beast heaved behind itself as it raided deeper into the termites’ caverns.

Coming alongside, she raised the panga high; the bottom of the handle stuck out from her fist.

Like the dying rhino when Promise was beside him, the aardvark knew only one thing. The rhino ran, and this beast ate. Promise hammered the knob of the machete’s handle down on the skull between the long ears. The aardvark, stunned, buckled its back legs and tried to reel its face out of the hole, but Promise banged the panga down again. The beast dropped to its belly, nose still jammed in the earth. Promise clubbed it one more time. She stood erect while the termites, suddenly saved, crawled up and over the beast’s inert face.

Chapter 2

The loadmaster shouted, “Door!” He extended his arms together and opened them like an alligator’s mouth. When he was sure the pararescuemen saw him, he punched the red button, and the ramp of the HC-130 began to lower.

The ramp’s action vibrated in the steel deck under LB’s boots. White daylight and humid air flooded around the gate’s edges, and the noise in the cargo bay spiked. Blue sky, softened by ten thousand feet of altitude, filled the opening.

Seated by himself in one of the mesh seats across from LB, Wally shouted something into the satellite phone at his lips, a call he’d been on for five minutes. Wally nodded to something he heard, shouted into the mic again, then came out of the seat to drop one knee to the floor.

The big plane shuddered over a rough patch of air. Wally, in full jump gear like the rest of the team, braced against the fuselage. LB glanced away, then back, for lack of anything else to watch in the empty cargo bay except for the loadmaster and the three dozing PJs.

Wally got to his feet. He curled a finger for LB to come over to him. LB mimicked the gesture in return:
No, you come over here
. Wally upped the game, twirling his whole hand to insist LB cross to him.

LB nudged Doc in the seat beside him, making Doc lift his head. LB shrugged, as if to say to Doc,
Why can’t he walk over here
? Doc, one of the oldest hands in the unit, along with LB, raised his eyes before closing them again, not amused by yet another match of wills between LB and Wally.

LB barely heard himself say, “Okay.”

Standing to give himself room, he rotated his arm in circles as though waving to someone from a great distance.

Tall, slender Wally slid on his sunglasses. He aimed a finger at LB across the cargo bay, then stabbed the digit straight down in front of him.
Come here
.

Covering the short distance across the deck, LB made a show of each shuffling stride. He didn’t like standing with the hundred-pound burden of his chute, med ruck, body armor, and weapons; he had a tweaky back, the result of weighing two hundred pounds and standing five nine. He’d never done yoga, never stretched, and hated running. Instead, LB lifted weights and ate as much meat as the air force could provide. He collapsed weightily in a mesh seat. Wally followed every petulant move with the ovals of his reflecting shades.

LB knocked the back of his helmet against the fuselage. He mouthed the word. “What?”

Wally shouted, “I thought you’d like to know.” “What?”

“I’m getting married.”

LB gagged as much as laughed. He would have doubled over, but the ruck in his lap stopped him.

“Is that what you were doing just now?”

“Yes.”

“You asked Torres to marry you on the radio?”

Torres was the director of the PRCC, the Personnel Recovery Coordination Center, at Camp Lemonnier up in Djibouti. She was Latin pretty and air force smart. Torres sent the camp’s Guardian Angels—pararescue jumpers, called PJs, including LB—and their combat-rescue officers, or CROs, like Wally, on missions. She and Wally had been doing touch-and-goes for a year now.

“I’ll do it again when we get back. But yes.”

“On your knee?”

“Alright.”

“And she said yes? Not ‘Screw you, you’re in a plane’?”

Wally tried to wave him off. “Okay.”

LB pushed out of the mesh seat, struggling to his feet. He considered motioning to the loadmaster, a tall, lean boy in a green flight suit and headphones, but LB didn’t know the airman’s name and couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t be sympathetic to Wally. LB could wake young Jamie, but the kid would only clap Wally on the back because he was nice. Quincy, the giant, didn’t care about much except cars, cattle, guns, and rescues; he wouldn’t see the humor. Doc had a wife and four daughters back in Vegas. And a female dog. He could go either way depending on what kind of phone call he’d last gotten from home. LB grew almost frantic for an ally.

Before he could decide what play to make, the loadmaster dragged his hand across the lined-up knees of three napping PJs, rousing them. Above the open cargo bay door, the scarlet ready light blazed, the five-minute call. Wally, tall and effortlessly balanced, brushed past LB.

The team formed up, facing the open sky. LB, the jumpmaster, shouldered his way to the front. Digging under Wally’s skin would have to wait. LB stashed the urge and concentrated on the job at hand.

Standing before the team, LB bent at the waist, right hand in front, palm up, and rotated his shoulders, the signal that he was giving the team their final report on the wind. He stood to shout over the noise in the bay. “Winds seven!” He held up seven fingers. LB slashed his arm across his body, left to right, the sign for gusts. Again he shouted. “Gusting ten!” He held up all ten fingers.

He fingered the radio tucked in his web vest, made sure it was set to the team freq, depressed the “Push to Talk” button clipped to his chest, then pointed at Wally.

“Juggler, you copy?”

Wally’s voice crackled in LB’s earpiece.

“Five by five. How me?”

“Five by five.”

Each PJ made the same radio check. LB inched forward to peer down past the lowered gate. From this height, the rounded horizon made a gentle world, a green and manicured place.

A new voice sizzled in LB’s ear, right on time.

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.”

The voice stayed under control despite the apparent urgency of the message, a pilot’s trained tone.

“F-16 flameout. Ejecting at five thousand feet, bravo one-two sector. Minor injuries. Hostiles on ground. Require immediate evac.”

LB revolved to his gathered team. Wally scowled behind his sunglasses. Jamie, Doc, and Quincy all pointed at LB, the unbroken sky at his backside. Showtime.

From the cockpit, the pilot answered the F-16 pilot’s distress call.

“F-16, this is Air Rescue HC-130
Kingsman 1
. We are airborne. Guardian Angels are en route to your location. We are in your sector. Keep your head down.”

LB turned to face the whipping air, the plane’s huge tail fins overhead, and the roar of four propellers. He lowered his goggles, did one deep squat to shrug all his gear into place, then the green light flicked on. He ran three steps, because there was no fourth.

LB plummeted, arms and legs outstretched, cupped in the palm of rushing air. His cheeks rubberized; the stiff camo uniform flapped. The drop deafened and silenced him, took away his weight, and left LB nothing but velocity and the beauty of falling free.

Far below waited a carnival atmosphere, applause, kids—air shows were a taste of glory, a pat on the back, the best temporary duty a GA team could go on. Looking toward the fast-closing ground, LB saw a pillar of gray smoke billowing from the grassy plain just east of Waterkloof Air Base. By now, the downed pilot would have staggered out of the trees, drawing applause from ten thousand spectators in lawn chairs and on blankets at the edge of the big field. The air show crowd would have heard his Mayday call and
Kingsman 1
’s reply over loudspeakers. Every eye would be scanning the firmament for the plunging dots, the American Guardian Angels jumping to the rescue.

LB’s wrist altimeter checked off eight thousand, seven fifty, seven thousand, six fifty. The smoke rising from the fake crash site confirmed that he was coming in downwind. Five miles north of the air base, Pretoria sprawled with pubs and pretty Afrikaans girls for later.

At thirty-five hundred, LB gritted his teeth, crossed his legs to ease the brunt of deceleration, and yanked the pillow grip of his main chute. The canopy fluttered out behind him. The gray silk rectangle filled instantly; the lines went taut and squashed LB together at the midsection as the leg straps yanked his lower body into his upper half. He slowed and snapped back to his squat shape with a grunt, beginning the downward drift to the landing zone.

LB hailed over the team freq: “PJ One up.”

Doc, soaring in behind and above, answered, “PJ Two up.” Jamie and Quincy responded, then Wally, at the top of the stack, replied last, “Team Leader up.”

At eight hundred feet above the open grass, the cheers reached LB. Children pointed skyward, the thousands of folks below clapped and waved American and South African flags, the aromas of steaks and sausages on hundreds of
braai
grills winged up to him. LB worked the left and right toggles beside his head to circle around, coming in downwind to slow his approach.

LB spilled altitude fast. At one hundred feet he released the fifteen-foot tether that lowered his med ruck, doffing that weight before landing, jerking him when the line went taut. He leveled off when the ruck dragged the grass, pulling both toggles to his waist to flare the chute and bleed off the final bit of height. His boots touched down, and with smooth, practiced movements LB released the chest strap and bellyband, then flipped the ejectors on his leg straps, freeing him from the harness. The chute fainted at his back. LB unclipped the tether, dragged the ruck close, and took a knee, weapon up.

Stock to his cheek, eyes down the open sight, LB scanned the open field with his M4. He didn’t watch Doc, Jamie, or Quincy drop in a ring around him; his task was to be the first peg down of a protected perimeter. Wally landed fifteen seconds after LB. With the team on the ground, the PJs reeled in their med rucks and left all five chutes collapsed in the grass. Wally, the team’s combat-rescue officer, took tactical control.

All his commands, “Move,” “Stay tight,” “Go, go,” “Watch our six,” were broadcast over the loudspeakers. Everything was simplified, war-movie dialogue for the whooping and hollering masses. The crowd hit their loudest pitch when the South African pilot stumbled forth from the tree line and his orange marker smoke, waving to the arriving Guardian Angels, shouting, “Thank God you’re here.”

LB got to him first. He set the pilot on the grass to take a look at his pretend injuries. Jamie, Doc, Quincy, and Wally shielded LB inside a picket of raised rifles facing four directions. Wally got on the ground-to-air freq, again amplified to the thousands of onlookers, to call in the South African Air Force chopper for evac.

LB laid a hand across the pilot’s shoulder. To the clapping crowd, this surely looked reassuring.

“I got something for you here, buddy.”

LB dug into his ruck, past the ice packs. He handed the pilot a cold beer.

The pilot, a meaty Afrikaans named Marius, took off one of his boots. For no reason LB could guess, the man dumped a whole Castle Lager into it.

Marius held the boot out for LB to drink. Around the bistro table, Doc, Quincy, and Jamie leaned back in their chairs, away from the offered boot. At tables nearby on the restaurant patio, others paid attention. LB shook his head.

“Dude.”

Marius waggled the boot as if the thing itself insisted.

“Drink. It’s an honor.”

“It’s a shoe.”

“You’re in my country, man. This is for you.”

LB pivoted to ask a South African marine seated at his back.

“This a joke? Is he messing with me?”

“No, man. This is shit we do. Go ahead.”

LB reached for the boot. He sniffed for the smell of foot, but all he got was the sloshing fizz of beer. Doc, Jamie, and Quincy looked amazed as LB raised the laces and leather tongue to his face, one hand under the rubber heel. Marius seemed pleased, but his pleasure was more about getting his way than imparting a tribute.

LB guzzled the boot. The taste was just beer. The three PJs around him clapped; he’d done it for them, and they had no intention of doing the same. LB handed the wet shoe back to Marius, who wordlessly slipped it over his bare sock. The pilot made a fist bump with LB and a little exploding sound, then looked around for their waitress, impatient. Marius stood and nodded down over LB, bestowing some benediction; LB had passed a test of his. The big man left the table to fetch the third round from the bar. It wasn’t his turn to buy; he refused to take turns. He’d bought all the beers for LB, Doc, Quincy, and Jamie.

LB settled back in his plastic chair, unsure if he’d been initiated or duped. Either way, the patio at Eastwoods sparkled, the tony neighborhood of Pretoria shined. The South Africans on the sidewalks or drinking around LB were a handsome bunch, black and white. Lots of reflecting glass in the modern architecture, green spaces, clean streets, trendy shops, and fashion-conscious people strolling made the place look more like San Francisco than the old home of apartheid.

This trip was LB’s third African Aerospace Defense Expo (AADE) in seven years. Wally and Doc had been with him for each, but this was the first for Jamie and Quincy. The annual air show had become a sizeable event. All the big players wanted a piece of South Africa, the leading economy on the continent. China had a major presence at this year’s AADE, so did the Russians and French. The United States had brought six aircraft down from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti—four C-130s and a pair of F-16s—plus a hundred aerospace contractors and the GA team. A dozen nations’ militaries held sway at Eastwoods this glistening afternoon, an array of flight suits, camos, berets, and ranks painted the patio. Wally was somewhere in this kaleidoscope, schmoozing.

BOOK: The Devil's Horn
7.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Music to Die For by Radine Trees Nehring
Aftermath by Rachel Trautmiller
Far In The Wilds by Raybourn, Deanna
The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Reunited in Danger by Joya Fields