Bob Marley held his silence.
‘Go wait in your foxhole.’ Skeletor got down on his knees and started yanking the T-shirt off the terrorist. ‘I don’t need you any more.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘What do you think? His sandals look too small for me.’ Skeletor kept pulling at his souvenir.
‘But he was
Skeletor looked up, leaving Bob Marley creased over the terrorist’s head. ‘I’m going to count to ten, surfer boy. If you’re not back in your foxhole by the time I get there, I’m going to shoot you. Is that clear?’
Thomas couldn’t stop staring at the T-shirt.
‘One, two…’
He watched as flies darted in and out of the neck opening.
‘…three, four…’ Skeletor raised his rifle and took aim.
It was the smell not the threat that made Thomas want to leave. Noticing it, he covered his nose and drew away. He retraced the footprints he had made for Skeletor to use as a track through the potential minefield.
‘…five, six, seven…’
He curled up in his foxhole, away from the stench of a young body with all the life squeezed out of it.
‘…eight, nine, ten. You’re lucky, surfer boy!’
But Thomas didn’t feel very lucky. He felt hot, itchy and unsettled. Why him? Why did he have to defend the border against this mysterious red menace, a threat he hadn’t even heard of until a few months ago? He wouldn’t have cared less if the terrorist had trotted past their position, made it all the way to Pretoria and pissed on the stairs of the Union Buildings. He really, really didn’t want to be here. Anywhere, even back home with his overprotective mom and overbearing dad, would be better than this.
Shifting to his side, he reached for his Bible.
Chapter 2
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
‘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
