NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) (13 page)

Ikaros nods, then looks down at the body of the man they were interrogating.  "Is he dead?"

"Yeah, of course," Nat answers dismissively.  "I don't know how good the information was that he gave us, but we'll just have to see, okay?  He seemed pretty adamant about it, I can tell you," he recalls with an inappropriate chuckle.

"Oh … um, that's good, then."

Nat turns and looks at the others as he gets into the front passenger seat.  "Let's go!" he yells out.

The Dutch brothers and Motswane stop their gathering and jog cumbersomely towards the Jeep clasping their cache of weapons; after dropping their loads noisily into the tray, the twins jump on while Motswane gets in the back seat of the cabin after being directed to do so by Nat.  Ikaros starts to drive away quickly with Nat and Motswane competing to give him directions.  The Dutch brothers make themselves comfortable on the tray and light well-deserved cigarettes as they look back at the scene with a certain quiet satisfaction.

Chapter 11

Driving at dangerously high speeds down a dirt road towards the next town, Ikaros becomes nervous that they're vulnerable to attack if the junta's troops happen to be in the area.  "Ah, we've gotta get off this road!"  Responding to his own suggestion, he accelerates.

"Just relax!" instructs Nat.  "I told you already there aren't any regime troops out here because of the early population purges, and they haven't got the man power.  You don't have to worry."

"There's gonna be some soldiers at the ivory compound, though, wouldn't you say?"

"Well, yeah, of course."

"Well, what're we gonna do, then?  Just shoot our way in?"

"Don't worry, we're not suicidal … not just yet," he replies with dubious reassurance.

Ikaros just glances at him with a furrowed brow, then refocuses on driving, continuing to swerve from side to side in an attempt to avoid most of the clusters of potholes where he can.

Five minutes later

They turn down a side road and within two hundred meters enter a rather large town, which at its height would have had around two thousand inhabitants — now it's almost deserted.  They see an old man on the street who starts walking much faster when seeing them approaching.  Before he can get away, though, they roll up next to him.  Ikaros and Nat indicate clumsily to Motswane to ask him for directions, but on seeing all the foreigners and thinking the worst, the man starts to run back the other way down the street.

Ikaros shifts gears into reverse and easily catches up with him.  The old man tires quickly and comes to a stop, obviously on the verge of giving up completely, anyway.  Motswane reassures him before pressuring him for an answer to his question.  Realising they're no danger, the old man points eastward with a few short sentences.  Watching the interaction closely, Ikaros waits until he guesses that Motswane has thanked him, then turns away and places the Jeep into first gear.  Motswane pulls his head back into the truck and tries to translate, "Go, go.  I tell left, okay?!"

"Yeah, no worries," replies Ikaros, already racing through the gears and finding Motswane's delivery surprisingly fluent.

Two minutes later

Nat starts yelling through the back window at the Dutch brothers to get ready, then organises his own weapon.

"This, this, this!" says Motswane emphatically followed redundantly by a stream of his own language while pointing vigorously at the left hand turn they're bearing down on.

Ikaros slows abruptly and puts it in third gear, then pulls down on the steering wheel and accelerates around the corner.  After rounding a bend a bit further down the road, they all see a large shed in the distance with two four-wheel-drive trucks and several figures out front.

The Dutch brothers lean on top of the roof and take aim with their long-distance sights, identifying several targets hanging around outside the shed; they open fire.

Being only two hundred meters down what is in fact a driveway, Ikaros is able to see some of the men fall to the ground after being hit or diving for cover — the difference being difficult to discern from that distance. 

Fire is returned: several bullets pierce through the radiator and one goes straight through near the centre of the windscreen and out the back, just missing everyone.  Ikaros glances at the hole with curiosity and relief rather than fear.  The first twin continues to fire deliberately while the second one fires their recently appropriated, high-powered RPG, the rocket from which races towards its target and, in a huge explosion typical of these over the last thirty years, bursts through one of the trucks, ripping it to pieces, and throws the neighbouring truck high into the air.

Ikaros slides the Jeep to a stop near the destruction, and everyone alights, firing sporadically into the residual smoke surrounding the scene and at the shed and its entrance just in case a few more cautious soldiers are waiting it out inside.  Ikaros grabs his rifle and jumps out of his seat and onto the ground, crouching up against the front wheel before exaggeratedly spraying a full magazine into the target zone just meters away.  He begins to replace the magazine and hears Nat's voice above the gunfire.  "Cease fire!  STOP FIRING!" he orders impatiently, obviously at the Dutch brothers, who are the last to stop.  All five men, including Motswane, aim their weapons carefully at the entrance to the shed and wait.

The bloody, strewn bodies of ten men can be seen lying just in front of them.  Nat grabs two tear gas canisters from the front seat and throws them through the entrance.  They wait patiently for a minute until two young soldiers call out in desperation from within, then come nervously out, palms exposed and more than half expecting to be shot on the spot.

Noticing that they're just boys, the Dutch brothers quickly aim their weapons over their heads and shoot a few rounds through the thin shed wall.  The boys, no older than seventeen, freeze immediately, evidently deeply shaken by the surprise attack in what they thought was a safe location, and are now visibly disturbed to be looking at the scene of all their dead comrades before them.

Appreciating this, Nat and the Dutch brothers direct them to sit down by the wall and be quiet, noticeably more restrained with them than all the others they've met with so far.  Once seated, Motswane tells them not to move and not to worry.  Watching intently, Ikaros wonders whether they'll be killed once they've been grilled for information like the last one; he doubts it.

The Dutch brothers roll the large shed doors completely open allowing the tear gas to disperse more quickly.  They approach the entrance and see a large pile of tusks that they agree must contain around two hundred pairs — just a sample of recent hunts.  They all stand in silence contemplating the scene and the series of events leading up to it.  Ikaros looks at the rising sun and the shadows cast by the nearby trees. 
There won't be too many more piles like this one … not anymore.
  He directs his gaze to the clear blue sky.  "It's gonna be hot again today," he predicts without there being any need to do so.

• • •

The killing of elephants by the junta's forces had severely diminished the number of herds in the country, which earlier in the century had peaked and supported the largest population in the world; the slaughter had consequently brought the elephant to the brink of extinction in the wild.  The tusks were transported to a secure location further to the north, which was where they were made into kitsch ivory products and exported covertly yet brazenly around the world and purchased on the black market by consumers who recalcitrantly continued to have no scruples about the industry they were supporting, nor care about the consequences of doing so.

• • •

Ikaros stands by watching on as the others proceed to interrogate the two captured soldiers for a specific tusk-collection date.  Being quite sure that it will be soon, due to the already large pile of tusks, they press them for information with more than just a bit of torture.  The soldiers, being mere conscripts, are unwilling to hold out on them for long; within ten minutes, they inform the group that a convoy of about six vehicles, two being freight trucks to carry all the tusks, are scheduled to come in twelve days, which thankfully allows a fair bit of time to make adequate preparations.

Five minutes later

They race into town and take twenty minutes or so to gather as many of the locals together as they can, which at this point mainly consists of people over the age of forty.  Motswane, who is rapidly gaining confidence in Ikaros and his men, presents the townspeople with an elaborate description of their intentions and skilfully beseeches them to take up arms against the junta and help the nation to restore its dignity, which partly depends on the cause of the besieged elephant.  Feeling slightly emboldened by his speech, which included a confidence-building recounting of his experiences with Ikaros and his men, the townspeople allow their hopes to be restored just enough to reveal that there are many younger people holed up in the countryside surrounding the nearby towns.

• • •

When the junta commenced a conscription effort early the previous year, the town was 'lucky' to get word from its closest neighbour that the conscription troops were taking able-bodied males and females in the area; this resulted in many hastily fleeing the scene.  Once in town, however, the troops quickly realised that the population had been forewarned of their impeding arrival; they consequently began to punish many of the remaining people by way of torture and a long series of graphic, public killings in the main street.

Although the soldiers quickly extracted the information about the general whereabouts of the 'draft dodgers,' they continued to conduct the torturing and killing while emissaries were sent out to lure those in hiding back to the town under the threat that everyone in town would be killed if they failed promptly to return.  After giving the dispersed group of emissaries time to complete their mission, and viciously torturing some of the more naïve people that took the bait, search squads were sent out, which, over a three-day period, rounded up around three hundred young men and women and boys and girls, and immediately began interrogating and torturing them regardless of age or gender, wearing them down until most turned against each other, fabricating ringleaders in order to satisfy their captors' thinly veiled need to 'identify' them.

Those that weren't forthcoming with such claims were selected along with those who were named explicitly until a preset quota of approximately one third of the group was reached, all 105 of whom were publicly tortured and brutally executed in the main street in typically bloody ways immediately after trumped up charges were read out to the horrified townspeople and the spared soon-to-be conscripts, who were all rounded up for the gruesome display and forced to watch and cheer on demand at gunpoint.  Long before the end of the proceedings, the street was muddy and slushy, having been soaked with so much young blood.

Shortly after the massacre, having killed around 240 people in total, the army moved out with its 210 new recruits, some of whom were so traumatised that they were blatantly unfit for service and were either soon executed by their superiors or killed in battle; in contrast, about 70 percent exactly did what they were told, quickly becoming hardened killers and sacrificing their lives when required, unwilling to hope for anything different in their futures.

Nevertheless, despite the junta's efforts in this town and neighbouring towns that suffered a similar fate, nearly 450 people from the age of ten to forty years of age evaded detection by hiding deep within the forested areas or the inhospitable and relatively inaccessible mountainous regions, or by just lying low in the grass as the junta search parties raced by in their four-wheel drives and scoured areas on foot.

It was some of this group, the actual size of which could only be speculated on at the time, that the townspeople suggested could be drawn out to assist Ikaros and his men in their cause.

• • •

Motswane attempts to communicate his news to his four companions in extremely simple terms.  He feels a growing compassion for these people, knowing that this story is many times worse than that of his own town, which had no prior warning of the junta's conscription effort as it was situated at a great distance from other towns and was the first in the region to be hit, resulting in only a moderate amount of bloodshed during the conscription process, yet trauma nevertheless through unexpected and forced separation and fear of a diabolical future for those taken.

Ikaros watches Motswane intently for any hints as to his meaning; the most apparent thing is that the townspeople are willing to help, which allows Ikaros to hope that what he was observing among them was a desire for insurgence and vengeance that would be useful in spearheading a counter-movement, which could ultimately lead to change. 

While Ikaros and Nat do their best to confirm their suspicions with Motswane and the locals for a few minutes, Nat also begins to feel confident that they might be able to round up a sizeable force.  "I understand," he declares with satisfaction.  "Let's get out there, then."