OP Center 09
Mission of Honor
by Tom Clancy
ONE
Maun, Botswana Monday, 4:53 A.M.
The sun rose swiftly over the flat, seemingly endless plain.
The landmarks had changed in the decades since 'Prince' Leon Seronga had first come here. Behind them, the Khwai River was not as deep as it had been. The grasses of the plain were shorter but more plentiful, covering familiar boulders and ravines. But the former army officer had no trouble recognizing the place or reconnecting with the transformations that had started here.
One was his personal growth.
The second was a result of that growth, the birth of a new nation.
And the third? He hoped that his visit today would begin the greatest change yet.
Walking into the new dawn, the six-foot-three Seronga watched as the deep black sky seemed to catch fire. It started at a point and spilled all along the horizon, like liquid flame. Stars that had been so bright just moments before quickly dimmed and faded like the last of fireworks. Within seconds, the sharp, crescent moon dimmed from sickle-edged brilliance to cloudlike. All around him, the sleeping earth became active. The wind began to move. High-flying hawks and tiny kinglets took flight. Fleas started to creep along Leon's army boots. Field mice dashed through the grasses to the north.
That is power, thought the lean, dreadlocked man.
Simply by waking, by opening a blind eye, the sun caused heaven's other lights to flee and the earth itself to stir. The retired Democratic Army soldier wondered if Dhamjjalla felt a hint of that same prepotency when he woke each morning.
It was still too early in his ministry. Yet if a leader is a leader born, he must feel something of that flame, that heat, that strength.
The temperature climbed rapidly as daybreak spread along the plain and into the sky. The red softened to orange, then yellow, and the deep blue of dawn became the soft blue of day. Perspiration began to run down Leon's sides, down the small of his back, and along his lower legs. It collected on his high cheekbones, under his nose, and along his hairline. Leon welcomed the slick moisture. It kept his flesh from burning under the sun's merciless glare. It also prevented his jeans and high boots from chafing his thighs and ankles. It was amazing. The body knew how to take care of itself.
While nature unfolded as it always did, with both grandeur and detail, there was also something special about this morning. It was more than what Leon was about to do, though that was extraordinary enough. Without realizing it, he had been waiting over forty years for this moment. There were fifty-two men marching behind the former Botswana army colonel in two tight columns. He had trained them himself in secret, and he was confident of their abilities. They had parked their trucks by the river, over a quarter mile from the distribution compound, so they would not be seen or heard.
But for a brief time, the sights and sensations took the fiftysix-year-old Botswana native back to when he had first witnessed dawn on the majestic floodplain.
It was on a savagely muggy August morning in 1958. Leon was eleven years old, the age of passage for men of the small Batawana tribe. But while Leon was told he was a man, he did not yet feel like one.
He clearly remembered walking between his father and his uncle, both of whom were big and powerful. They were followed by two other village men who were equally strong of back and stamina. In Leon's mind, they were what a man was supposed to be: tall and upright. He did not yet understand the concepts of confidence and pride, loyalty and love, bravery and patriotism. Those qualities came later, the qualities that made the inner man.
Back then, he found that he had the will and ability to slaughter animals for food, but he did not yet understand that it was a man's prerogative-and often his responsibility-to kill other men for honor or country.
Leon's father and his uncle were both seasoned hunters and trackers. Until that morning, Leon had never caught anything more ferocious than hares and field mice. While Leon walked alongside the men, he knew that he did not truly walk among them.
Not yet.
On that morning nearly a half century before, the five men had gathered outside the Serongas' thatched hut. It was well before sunrise, when only the newborns and chickens were awake. Before leaving, the men ate a breakfast of sliced apples and mint leaves in warm honey, unleavened bread, and fresh goat's milk. Even though her son was going on his first hunt, Leon's mother did not see them off. This was a man's day. A day, as his father had said, for men who were among the oldest hunters in the human race.
That morning, the men were not armed with anything like the Fusil Automatique assault rifle Leon Seronga carried now. They were armed with nine-inch knives tucked in giraffe-skin sheaths, iron-tipped spears, and a coil of rope carried around the left shoulder. That left the right arm unencumbered. Barechested, dressed only in sandals and loincloths, the men made their way unhurriedly along the eastern edge of the flat Khwai River floodplain. Eleven miles to the north and thirteen miles to the south were the villages of Calasara and Tamindar. Straight ahead, to the east, was game.
The men walked slowly to conserve their energy. Leon had never been so far from the village. The farthest he had ever gone was the Khwai River, and they had crossed that after an hour. They stayed wide of the grass, which stood nearly as tall as his lanky shoulders. It hid burrowing adders and brush vipers. Both snakes were poisonous and active in the early morning hours. But to this day, Leon still vividly remembered the sound of the grass bending gently in the early morning breeze. It reminded him of the way rain sounded when it slashed through the trees on its way to the village. It was not a sound that came from a single place. It seemed to come from everywhere.
Leon also vividly remembered the faint musky scent that rode the early morning breeze from the southeast. His father Maurice told him that was the smell of sleeping zebras. The men would not be hunting zebras because they had very sensitive ears. They would hear the men coming, and they would panic. Their hoofbeats and braying brought lions.
