NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) (14 page)

Ikaros is already climbing into the Jeep.

• • •

Over the following few days, once search parties had some success and word was passed around, to everyone's surprise, hundreds of young men and women emerged from the surrounding countryside and descended on the town, resulting in a force of nearly three hundred, which also included most of the older, able-bodied men that had remained in the town.

When they emerged from the countryside, they were greeted by a welcoming party that briefed them on the situation and the objectives of the proposed rebel force.  They were then placed into small 'platoons,' in which they commenced their basic training and the rudiments of socio-economic and political education; the former was guided by Nat and the Dutch Brothers, while the latter was facilitated by Ikaros, who provided the platoon leaders with a crash-course series of seminars, which quickly became openly interactive when matters invariably turned to national, African, and international affairs.

On Friday afternoon, four days after Ikaros came to town, a meeting was held in the town hall, which had almost every person in town attending with some spilling out onto the main street.  Having met all of the new recruits personally, Ikaros finally singled out one young man in particular, not just because of his surprising level of English but also because of his natural rapport with others and his incisive intellect.  After several discussions, Ikaros asked him to give a speech at the meeting.  The young man of twenty-six years, known to Ikaros only as Kopano, spoke clearly about their need for rebellion and how they could take this opportunity to mount a counter-insurgency against the corrupt General Kefentse — the illegitimate president — and his regime.  He went on to discuss the need for unshakable dedication, discipline and training, and how these qualities, in combination with luck and good tactics and strategies, were their only hope for ever taking back Botswana and creating a new nation with hope for the future.  Ikaros and Nat stood quietly at the back of the room watching on as all the people became excited and started cheering, singing and chanting once Kopano had warmed them up.

Nevertheless, regardless of all their enthusiasm and Kopano's obvious leadership abilities that were coming to the fore, Ikaros reflected that they needed more than just a bit of luck even just to last a few weeks.  This view was reinforced by the extent of the bloody conflict that was being waged against the junta by the many disorganised and often short-lived, mutually-antagonistic and self-serving guerrilla outfits scattered in pockets around the failed state.  Although the probability of death and group disintegration was high, the mounting pressure being placed on the junta looked ultimately promising.

After the speech, people sang and danced on the streets to tribal beats for several hours before slowly dispersing, returning to their homes or temporary quarters located in abandoned buildings and houses near the main street.  Ikaros, Kopano, Nat, the Dutch brothers and Motswane retired early to the hotel across the street to discuss the further preparations required for their impending ambush and to speculate on what they might do following its successful prosecution.

• • •

They had to wait nearly seven more days for the tusk-collection convoy to arrive, at which point they were effectively neutralised by the band of determined guerrillas; being taken by such surprise as they entered the town, the radio operator in the lead vehicle was thankfully unable even to start reporting the situation back to base before being promptly killed along with the rest of the junta soldiers.  Following this, the guerrillas engaged in a two-day trek across the countryside to the closest junta outpost, which they subsequently attacked in an early morning raid, taking it in less than twenty minutes, partly because of the depleted forces that were out on various patrols and seek and destroy missions.

Seven of the fifteen international mercenaries that were present at the base were killed during the assault; the remainder were later executed due to the fact that they were seen as being unscrupulous and contemptible, and may well rejoin the junta elsewhere and provide intelligence about the guerrillas.  More importantly, after observing these executions, the captured junta soldiers were more prepared to become turncoats with just a bit of coaxing and support once placed firmly within the ranks of the guerrillas.  They quickly found that life with this outfit, while dangerous, at least had more meaning and was quite unlike the draconian and demeaning regimentation that they had been existing under in the regime's military, a system that had become more exaggerated with the high rates of desertion that were in occurrence prior to the initiation of a broadly implemented containment strategy: in typical fashion, the junta officers selected a large proportion of the troops for interrogation, 10 percent of whom were then subjected to public humiliation and torture, and of those, a handful of alleged ring leaders were summarily executed.  Even though there was an immediate drop in desertions, this brutal procedure was then repeated at random intervals, and a set of stricter observation and disciplinary measures were put in place, which evidently resulted in a harsher experience for the soldiers yet achieved the aim of reducing the desertion rate to a tolerable and steady 5 percent.

Although 20 percent of the junta's force was made up of child soldiers, Ikaros and Nat still felt that it was necessary to keep those that they'd acquired in active service because, once free, they'd either head directly back to the junta for want of anything better to do or be picked up at some point by the junta and re-enlisted, anyway.

Taking all of the equipment and supplies that they could carry on foot and in the range of their newly commandeered vehicles, over the following forty-eight hours, they made their way to a safer and more remote location — an old, abandoned town that hadn't been occupied since the junta had swept through a couple of years ago, killing all of the residents in one of their early and infamous 'ethnic suppression' drives.

Curiously, on the third day after their arrival, a junta messenger approached the perimeter of the town with the surprising news that the regional junta commander had been observing their operation and was keen on setting up an alliance.  Hesitant at first but ultimately unable to refuse the offer to be provided details about junta outposts, patrols, and supply chain routes and timetables, etc., the guerrillas proceeded with circumspection and scepticism, allowing the regional commander a tentative benefit of the doubt until further evidence emerged, or they had a better hand to play. 

Nearly six months passed, with a handful of missions being carried out every week or so, providing the guerrillas with ample opportunity to develop their skills and gain a steady inflow of new recruits and hardware.  Consequently, when the regional commander provided them with the expected coordinates of the president in two days' time — one of his many bunkers scattered around the country — the small inner circle of guerrillas that were privy to this felt nervous yet confident that the operation was manageable and well worth the risk.

Chapter 12

The day of 'Operation Assassination'

Predictably from an outside observer's point of view, the assassination squad, headed by the Dutch brothers, was ambushed at its destination, resulting in the shooting down of one of the two helicopters provided by the regional commander, and the killing of seven guerrillas and one of the Dutch brothers.  On fleeing the scene, the pilot of the remaining helicopter raced directly back to the guerrilla base only to be followed at a distance by an automated surveillance drone, which subsequently was able to determine the precise coordinates of the guerrillas and transmit the information back to the junta's main command centre.  Although a small number of these expensive drones regularly conducted sweeps of the entire country, the guerrillas had up to that point evaded detection by keeping themselves and their vehicles well covered within the town and limiting their outdoor activities: this, though, was a game that had to have an end at some point…

• • •

Inside the communications room, the town's former post office, Ikaros and several others sit around the radio discussing what to do next, realising that they're probably on borrowed time.  Pointing at the phone linked directly to the regional commander's office through an encrypted signal, Kopano interrupts in anger, "No one's answered it for the past thirty-five minutes.  We should've had a request for an update by now.  The silence can only mean a couple of things, none of which are good."

Ikaros nods in agreement and rapidly thinks through the situation out loud, "Well, yeah, you're right…  Even five minutes is a long time in a situation like this.  Either the regional commander's planning something against us to protect himself, or he's already been taken out; probably the latter.  I mean, you think about it: although he's been putting us in the firing line all this time, the president can't be that stupid, and someone should have been able to identify a pattern by now, right?"

"It's likely that the president wasn't even at the bunker and that it was all just staged to draw us out.  He probably already knew about the regional commander's involvement and has been setting him up for some time now … perhaps by enlisting the support of subordinate officers and factions within the commander's ranks one way or another.  My God!  We need to abandon the base immediately."

This summarises some of their fears that they'd been hoping in vain wouldn't come true.  Everyone stands silently for a brief moment letting it sink in.

The sole remaining Dutch brother, having seen and heard enough, stands up abruptly, his chair sliding back harshly across the bare wooden floor.  "That's it.  I'm done!  If they tracked the chopper back here, we only have a few more minutes or so till we get raided; the phone's been dead thirty-five minutes, I've been back five minutes, and it took twenty minutes to get here.  There's your answer.  I'm getting the hell out of here!  I'll be back with the Jeep; you can come if you want…  I don't care."  Without waiting for a response, he races out the door and heads to his quarters to collect some essential belongings. 

Almost stating the obvious by now, Ikaros offers a sketch of what to do.  "We should split up, run to the hills, get holed up somewhere and, you know … irregular warfare.  And we've gotta be a bit more careful about how we operate in future; we've been way too naïve.  We can't be paranoid enough, apparently."

Both Nat and Ikaros stand up to leave as Kopano, not needing to have heard Ikaros's thoughts on the matter, nor any longer being in a position to be told what to do, gives short and sharp orders to two lower-ranked cadres present, who, understanding the seriousness of the impending threat, immediately race out the door to notify all the platoons of the order to evacuate post-haste.

Three minutes later

Outside on the veranda, Ikaros and Nat watch as hundreds of men scramble to abandon the town.  Nat leans onto the railing.  "I'm not sure if I'm interested in continuing on either, Ikaros.  You know, I only signed up for a couple of months, and we passed that long ago, and now with this turn of events … I don't much like the idea of hiding myself away in the mountains for months on end being hunted down and picked off one by one or taken out all at once and so forth."

"I know," replies Ikaros flatly while continuing to look at the bustling activity going on all around them.

"It might be worth you thinking about it too.  I mean, this isn't your war.  And it's certainly not your country.  And, for good or bad, whatever happens to these people is anyone's guess, but at least now they have a chance, and they're organised … to a degree.  Maybe that's enough."

Ikaros remains quiet for a moment, considering Nat's words.  "A chance?  Perhaps we've just given them a chance to be slaughtered."

"Maybe," agrees Nat, "but that's the thing in a place like this: no matter which way you play it, the overwhelming likelihood is often that you just get killed and suffer horribly for a while beforehand.  There's no life in that.  I just don't think there's much we can do about it, and you certainly shouldn't blame yourself.  We haven't been in charge since we got here, really, and it's not our place to be.  We facilitated; we handed over.  It's their baby now.  We should be done here … more or less.  Perhaps they would have organised themselves eventually like most or all of the other outfits that have sprung up around the country, but the time and the place were right for what we did.  It may have just happened a bit earlier than it otherwise would have, but you have to remember, they were in disarray and quite disturbed by what had happened to them, but who could blame them for that?"

"Mm … I
do
think we've played the best hands we could have pretty well from the start … well, most of the time, anyway.  I mean, obviously we were ignorant and quite naïve, but that's all part of it.  I still just wanna kill the ones responsible.  I just keep thinking that, if I search hard enough, wait long enough, and think hard enough about it, I'm gonna find some way to perform a
coup de grace
on some player that'll just change everything."

"Maybe you will, Ikaros, but for that to happen here, you'll probably have to hang around for twenty years or more and be really lucky and deadly shrewd until you get yourself into the position to do it.  You're right: we were naïve to entertain that today's inherently flawed operation could have been it, really.  But, if you still stick it out here, apart from the nightmare existence you'll lead, you'll be more likely to meet your own death long before you get the chance."  Nat puts his hand on Ikaros's shoulder for a moment and says calmly, "Look, you're the kind of guy who likes to think on a large scale.  So, what I'm saying is … why don't you?"