The Devil's Horn (31 page)

Chapter 38

The girl struggled up from under the table. The bullet hole bled one red wing down her back. Allyn lurched backward from her, horrified.

The gray room shivered from the pistol shot. Juma advanced, pistol up, shouting. The little poacher, Hard Life, ran through the maze of weapons and snagged the radio off the table, out of Promise’s reach. Allyn didn’t stop backpedaling until he’d gotten behind Juma.

The girl faced the table, leaning on her good arm. Crimson drizzled down her back, over her buttocks, to her heels. The boy, Hard Life, dashed with the radio past Juma and Allyn, out of the armory into the stairwell. Juma muttered, “Good child.”

Juma stopped closing in. He snarled.

“You want to die?”

Still turned to the table, Promise bowed her head to the missile.

Allyn wanted to fetch his shirt, but it sat on the concrete too close to the girl. He stayed behind Juma.

“What’s happened?”

Big Juma ignored him but lowered the gun. Anger worked on Juma’s lips and tongue, trying to contain itself in words. He addressed Promise’s bleeding back.

“Tell me, girl. Now, or I’ll kill you. Will the American come to blow up the missile?”

Allyn crossed his hands over his waist. He was shirtless, a reminder that he’d been caught down here with this naked girl.

“Is that what she was doing with the radio? Juma?”

“Yes, shamwari. With the radio.”

“She was going to kill me?”

“Both of us.”

“Shoot her.”

The words were out before Allyn thought them. They were the end of his journey from Johannesburg, from Eva and the mines. He’d arrived here, where he’d demanded a murder. He stood shirtless in a basement in Mozambique with a live missile, where his life had been one second from being snuffed. Allyn held his hands out from his sides, like a man dripping with something.

“I’m done, Juma. I want to go home.”

Before Juma could answer, the girl whirled on them, shrieking.

Her black eyes darted, eyes that Allyn had almost wandered into. Juma raised the pistol again. Allyn stepped back. Every muscle in the girl tensed, she coiled for some move. Her fingers worked for something to clutch.

Juma waved the pistol, barking her name. Promise paid no attention. She had one bullet in her. The girl was wounded and dreadful; how much could she fear one bullet more?

She lunged at a pile of rifles. Juma followed with the pistol but did not squeeze the trigger. The girl picked the gun up, not by the wooden stock but the barrel. She raised it high, two-handed, like a club.

Promise glared at Juma from under her brows, with her head dipped as if she might charge. Instead, she smashed the heavy gun down on the tip of the missile.

She was trying to set off the warhead.

Juma yelled for her to stop. Allyn rocked to his heels, bile in his throat, needing escape.

Promise hammered the rifle down on the warhead again.

Juma fired.

This round sent Promise sprawling over the table. The rifle dropped from her hands, clattering to the concrete. Remarkably, in the shreds of the pistol’s echo, the girl pushed herself erect, away from the rocket she’d only managed to dent.

Allyn staggered backward until he found himself in the doorway.

Juma advanced to stand an arm’s length from the girl, his family. He’d killed her, surely, with the two bullets. He lowered the gun, unafraid. Juma no longer shouted.

“Is the American coming back to blow up the missile? Are the Americans not going to pay?”

Promise wavered on her feet. A red trickle seeped from her nostrils, over her lips. She wrapped her arms around her small breasts as though cold.

Nothing moved in the armory but a purl of gun smoke against the ceiling. Juma and Promise had reached some understanding in the silence that coiled between them. She was going to die in the next seconds, and all that remained was the quality of that death.

Allyn had no urge to see it. He felt no more greed for the money and the plot. Juma had warned him that he wasn’t suited for this. Allyn should have listened while they sat on his veranda beside the lake. He intended to walk out of Macandezulo. He slunk backward into the stairwell. The boy, Hard Life, stood there, clutching the radio.

From above, a commotion rumbled. The steps clogged with a cascade of fair dresses and ebony skin, hurrying feet, and the dense smells of perspiration and oils. Juma’s women flooded down, pushing Allyn and the poacher boy back into the armory, crowding in behind them.

Promise and Juma had not moved. They stood on blood in a field of weapons.

One of Juma’s women, the drunkard Allyn had lain with last night, shouldered forward as if she were the leader. She looked Allyn up and down for a fool. She bore him no ardor now, only contempt. The others gabbled to know what was happening: Why was there shooting? Was this naked girl the ranger? Was that a rocket? Where did all these guns come from?

“Quiet!”

Juma’s voice came as loud as another gunshot. The women snapped into silence.

At the front, Hard Life stood beside Allyn. With black eyes too large for his face, the boy gazed up, wanting Allyn to do something, to make this stop. Allyn’s only reply was to slide one foot behind the other, to fade into the skirts and skin behind him.

Promise saw him sliding away. She tried to lift an arm to him but failed. Why? To say good-bye? To stop him?

Promise called out, not to Allyn but to the boy beside him. Her voice quavered with the effort of staying alive.

“Hard Life. You will not get your fortune.”

The little poacher shook his head, disagreeing.

“I will.”

“No. Juma will keep it. Allyn will keep it. You’ll die in the Kruger. A thousand more like you will die. Ten thousand animals. Hard Life. Save them.”

Juma shoved the pistol between Promise’s breasts, point-blank. She didn’t look down.

“You women. How many of you will die?”

The one who had lain with Allyn answered.

“A great many.”

“Press the button. Zero.”

Juma fired.

Promise catapulted backward onto an iron mound of guns. Her head lolled, and both arms fell motionless down the heap. Her legs worked against the concrete floor, kicking at spilled weapons. The soles of her feet were stained red. Arched, on her back, Promise seemed to run, only a few steps in some unseen country, until she stopped, knees bent. A pale wisp curled from her chest.

Allyn pressed into the women at his rear, making them part.

In the center of the room, Juma swung the pistol. He spoke to Allyn down the length of his arm, over his great fist, across the small, dark tunnel of the gun.

“We are partners, shamwari. Stay.”

“I want to go.”

“And you will. After midnight.”

Juma shifted his aim to the little poacher.

“Give me the radio, boy.”

Hard Life recoiled into the skirt of the woman behind him, the leader. She crossed her arms over his chest, protecting him. Juma, massive and towering, jabbed the gun at her face. He took one stride closer.

She snatched the radio from Hard Life.

Ignoring the pistol, she asked the boy in her arms, “Is this for the missile?”

Hard Life bobbed his head against her white dress.

Juma inched the gun closer.

The woman glanced at the stolen women around her. The boy, Hard Life, pressed against her skirt. Promise lay dead across a pile of guns. Allyn saw everything she saw and wanted to run from it. He begged the whore.

“Please. Let me go.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t intend any of this.”

She smiled with a tribal face, merry and toothy, and Allyn hoped he might yet get away. But her laugh was as dark as Juma’s.

The jest was short-lived, throttled by the tang of smoke and blood. The woman moved her thumb across the radio’s pad, over the digit zero.

Juma strode closer. She extended the radio like a talisman, her muti, to stop him. His leather shoes creaked. Three of the women laid hands on Allyn to hold him in place. Perhaps he could have fought them off, but Juma would have shot him if he’d tried to escape, or the woman would have pressed the button. Someone would kill him. His best chance was to let Juma handle this. The man was huge, ruthless. They were whores.

Allyn thought of Eva, that he wanted to see her again, then recalled she was dead.

Juma lowered the pistol. He begged, too, which Allyn would not have believed he could do.

“Please. Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll kill us all.”

The woman hugged the boy close. He looked like a child against her. This seemed a wish of hers. Hard Life embraced her hips.

Allyn pushed at the dark hands holding him, trying to break free.

A tear flowed down the woman’s cheek. It hung on her chin.

“And if I don’t”—she pointed with the radio, first at Juma, then Allyn—“you will.”

Chapter 39

Neels did not stand when the boom and a dust plume arose in the east. He stayed huddled against a low bush, in a small patch of shade.

He checked his watch. The girl had done it in thirty-five minutes, well inside the deadline. This saved Neels from forcing the second radio from the Americans.

Neels nodded to the east, a simple testament that Promise had kept her word. But what had she done? Who was dead? At what cost?

The stocky sergeant jumped to his feet. He peered at the cloud. Since Neels had come back from the ravine, he and the Americans had sat separately, silently. Neels had shot one, been threatened by the other. What was there to talk about?

The sergeant stomped toward him.

Before the American could speak, Neels readied one of the rifles.

“How’s your captain?”

“He needs a doctor soon. Like you give a shit.”

“I would have done exactly the same if I did give a shit.”

The sergeant thrust his hands to his hips, unarmed but puffed up and bellicose. Animals did this, swelled themselves, screeched and pawed the earth to look fierce in the face of a stronger beast. Neels tapped the stock of the rifle across his knees.

“Yes?”

“What happens now?”

“Your mission’s accomplished. Go home, Sergeant.”

“Just like that. Go home.”

Neels hooked a thumb over his shoulder, west along the creek bed.

“It’s that way.”

The sergeant looked away as if for guidance from some invisible counsel. His boots shuffled. Neels did not stop tattooing the rifle in his lap.

“Yes?” Neels asked.

“You have no idea how much it pains me to ask this.”

“Alright.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Wait here a bit.”

“And do what?”

“See.”

“See what?”

“What happens.”

Neels’s clipped answers had the desired effect, making the sergeant go back to his captain, who sat in the slanting sunlight. The officer was a tough man, but he’d lost some color with the blood. The sergeant knelt beside him to confer. Both glowered at Neels, who sensed his own strength returning with the rest and the shade and the explosion.

He was impressed with the two American rescuers. They didn’t rise and walk off, cursing Neels with something suitably unoriginal as they passed. They didn’t rescue themselves immediately after their job was over but chose to stay in place, near Neels, to make sure he got off the field, too. And Promise, and Karskie. Neels thought to tell the Americans they had guts, but that would do nothing to change the dynamics and the facts, so he kept his counsel.

From his canteen, Neels swished water in his mouth. He wet his kerchief, then tied it around his neck. In the distance, the detonation had scared away the buzzards, so the settling pillar above Macandezulo was the only mark on the horizon. Neels blinked into the sky, gladdened at its barrenness, sensing nothing of his wife or his own heart in it, just untroubled blue and the cloud of dust.

He drew in his legs, testing them as he stood. They held. The dizziness had gone.

Neels raised one rifle. Both Americans jumped when he fired into the air so Karskie, several hundred meters off, would come this way. The boy, tiny in the distance, moving alone against the stillness of the Limpopo bush, waved excitedly and began to jog for the ravine.

Neels approached the Americans. The sergeant stood. Neels handed him one of the rifles. The American seemed surprised, confused about what to do with it.

“Karskie’s coming.”

The captain reached up a hand to his sergeant to be helped to his feet. The pain of rising wracked his features. He did need a doctor.

“The girl?” asked the captain.

“I didn’t see her.”

Neels put his canteen in the captain’s good hand. Gently, he patted the officer on his wounded, wrapped shoulder.

“Sorry, lad.”

To the sergeant, Neels extended a hand. Blank faced, the sergeant shook it.

“Karskie will see you back to the Kruger. You’ll get there by sundown.”

The sergeant looked at the ghost of the explosion wafting away. Neels let go of his hand.

“No, Sergeant. Do not consider coming with me. Get your captain home safe.”

Neels turned to head toward Karskie. Behind him, the sergeant called.

“Hey.”

Neels walked on, waving away the invitation for one more comment, some parting bon mot, a bad trait out of American movies.

In the open, Karskie slowed to a tired slog; the big boy had run as far as he could. Winded and hot, Karskie halted with his hands on his knees. Neels met him with arms out and straightened him.

“Catch your breath. Then tell me what happened.”

Karskie heaved in and out, head tipped back. He took longer than Neels thought was needed.

“Alright. Come on then.”

“Promise. She killed the guard. What’s his name? She knifed him in the bloody back.”

The one she swore she would kill. Good for her.

“And you got away.”

“Yeah.”

“Then?”

“Then I don’t fucking know, Neels. She said she was going to blow the missile. You heard the blast.”

“Yes.”

“She said you’d explain what she was doing.”

“I will. Not right now.”

“Why not?”

Neels pointed into the bush, toward the sun.

“The Americans are that way. Can you get them back to the Kruger?”

Too many questions garbled Karskie’s reply. He began several at once.

“Why? What? Where?”

“Stop that. Can you?”

The boy centered himself enough to nod.

“Good. One more thing. You got money, yeah?”

Karskie continued bobbing his head. Neels poked him in the chest to pin home the point.

“Promise wants a house for her grandparents. See to it.”

Before Karskie locked up in another gush of questions, Neels patted him on the arm, then pushed the boy onward to the creek bed. The Americans would explain as much as they could. If he came back from Macandezulo, Neels would tell the rest.

With Karskie making for the ravine, Neels stopped to pluck a smooth, sun-warmed pebble off the ground. He slid it under his tongue.

Neels moved down the center of the dirt road. The village smelled of human waste. Trash gathered between the abandoned hovels, weeds grew in windows, painted walls of shanties rotted, yielding to the bush. The air smelled fusty with the last floating dust from the blast. The deeper Neels entered Macandezulo, the stronger the murky odors of soot and fire became.

Halfway down the street, every structure bore marks of the explosion, a powdery coating of concrete, gray fragments on the roofs. Closer to the blast site, several shanties were crushed, caved in by the concussion and debris. A pickup truck lay flipped on its back.

A sturdy building had stood at the end of the street, made of block and cement, now rubble. Approaching the crater, Neels picked through the debris, everything loose and sliding under his boots. He peered into a great scorched hole. The missile had razed the building to its foundation, busted it sky-high into bits that had rained into a jumbled, jagged ring. Metal rods and construction mesh sharpened the wreckage. Black iron peppered the ruins, the remains of hundreds of twisted, melted, or intact guns. Neels bent for a barely scratched pistol. He spun it back into the crater.

The gun skidded down into the hollow, past a tatter of white cloth. This might have been a curtain. Or a dress.

A long time ago, in a different war, these were the things Neels had done. He brought demolition and death to the enemies he was sent against. He’d borne no intention for those enemies to survive. Innocents and comrades died, too. Neels made no apologies then and saw little reason to do so now.

He shouted into the crater.

“Juma!”

Neels cupped his hands and turned to call out into the village.

“Juma!”

Three men, rifles up, walked up the dirt road toward him. All were thin, wearing loose, mismatched clothes and plastic sandals. These were dark and hesitant men, poachers with guns trained on Neels.

He did not lift his own rifle, only an empty hand.

“Stop there.”

Two did stop, and the third, seeing he’d gone past his pals, scurried back in line.

“I’m not here for you, boys. Only for Juma.”

The three didn’t lower their guns. Neels imagined them firing but not the tingle of being hit. He pointed behind him into the crater.

“See this? I’ll kill the three of you. Then I’ll kill your villages. I’m a Kruger ranger.”

One by one, the poachers eased their rifle barrels to the ground. They kept their distance.

“Where’s Juma? Have you seen him?”

The trio was slow to consult each other. One called back.

“No.”

Neels turned his back to the poachers. He surveyed the debris and scattered guns, another shred of cloth, a flame gnawing at a chunk of wood, a dusky severed arm.

“Juma!”

The destruction was too complete to make an echo.

“Promise!”

Neels called once more for Juma and a last time for Promise. Nothing came from the canyon but the throb of lingering flame and the old reek of war. Neels was not satisfied or the victor, only alone and tired and aware that he was not among the dead. The rewards of war, any war, were scant.

He strode straight at the poachers. Neels didn’t angle away but made them step aside to avoid him. The poachers stank, too.

Neels wheeled on one, it didn’t matter which, and shoved him to the ground. The poacher dropped his rifle. The other two backed away.

“You.”

Neels included all three with a sweep of his arm.

“You stay the fok out of my park.”

He walked on. The sun in his face forced Neels’s eyes down while the road and village faded into the bush.