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May 20th, Maputo, Rhodesia
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He blinked, a fully concerted effort, tears running down his cheeks, pain ripping his body apart like a thousand hot knives. The sky above him should have been the brightest blue he had ever seen, and yet it was marred by dirty black smoke that boiled across it. The ringing in his ears had died away enough for him to hear the sound of a fire crackling nearby. His left side was warm, far warmer than the right, and he knew that the flames were getting closer. Something big and black flashed across his vision and he felt rather than heard passage of a helicopter above him. Flashing spots of light descended from the helicopter as it roared over him and he was suddenly aware of being struck by hundreds of small metal objects. It took him a moment to realize what they were. Shell casings.
Pain lanced through his chest as he tried to turn over. He risked a glance down to see his shirt was torn and bloodied, from what he couldn't say. The last few seconds had been one huge explosion of pain. He moved his fingers and toes, that was encouraging. Smoke was stinging his eyes as he brushed at them, succeeding only in adding soot to the blood and tears. He was about to make another move when he remembered that someone had just tried to kill him. He blinked again, trying to refocus his mind on what had happened.
He was brooding. Eyebrows pinched together, eyes slightly out of focus, lips set in a firm line, the very image of a man who was worried about something. The room around him was silent, though well lit with sunlight that poured in through a pair of tall white colonialesque windows that looked out over well manicured lawn and neatly spaced trees. A man in desperate need of money had agreed to buy the house and register it in his name in exchange for a small yearly payment, and his life. Andrew Walls was always generous to those to helped him.
The sound of tires on gravel caused him to look up as a red Buick town car rolled past the window. Normally he might get up and hurry to greet the occupant but today it increased the worries that were already filling his head. He was a businessman, granted an illegal one, but he had done well for himself. The house he now enjoyed was a well built former estate home on the edge of Maputo. Most of the farmland that came with the estate had been sold off but he'd kept the outbuilding, they made for useful storage of merchandise.
"Andrew, she's here." The head of his personal security, simply called Jim, stuck his head around the white doorframe, his black face and hair a stark contrast to the white paint.
"She". The one. The only woman he had felt anything more than lust for and now he was afraid of her. Why? Because of the raids? Fifteen raids in five days as the Maputo Local Police, with the aide of the Rhodesian Security Bureau ("RSB"), kicked in door after door and his associates began to die or vanish with alarming regularity. But this woman, this white woman, who he had come to believe might love him, was she the one who was feeding the RSB inside information on his operation?
He could hear her high heels, imported by him from America, clicking on the tile as she entered the main foyer of the house. In a moment she would walk into the room and smile at him, a devastating flash of teeth beneath Opaline eyes and long brown hair. She was his weakness. But was she also the author of his doom?
The cigarette in his hand, an expensive Cornell Brand, had burnt low in his fingers and he dropped it without noticing onto the tile at his feet. Such carelessness and disregard for the cleanliness of the house was out of character, but then this was no ordinary day. Was she one of them? Had she lied as she lay in his bed, kissed him and fucked him, all the while feeding information to the RSB?
For an instant he was keenly aware of the sounds of the house. The sound of the wind as it blew through the staircase beyond, the barely audible laughter coming from the kitchen were the staff worked at making a lunch for his guest. Only Jim was nearby now, the rest of his cadre were out hunting gazelle with semi-automatic weapons and drinking up a storm. Normally he might join them, but not today. Maybe never again. She would tell him. She had to tell him.
The footsteps came closer. Was it his imagination or could he hear an airplane? He glanced out the window. The bright blue sky that had seemed so inviting that morning now seemed to be filled with unspoken dread. His pistol was heavy against his leg where he had concealed it with a jacket. Were they coming with her? For her? Where had everything gone so wrong.
Then she was in the doorway. Long white legs bare from her toe strap heels to just above her knees where a red dress began and continued up to very attractive and pronounced cleavage. Above that her eyes gleamed with the intense sexuality he had always found so irresistible. She flashed him a devastating smile and did a small twirl as she moved into the room, the dress riding high enough to show him that she wore no underwear beneath it. Was this the actions of a woman about to betray someone she loved?
Then there was that sound again, steady, persistent, like a large insect droning through the African morning.
"Andrew." She said, her voice low and seductive as it always had been. She was a front office staffer at the local Police Detachment and had been quite helpful to him, warning him of impending operations. At first she had been a tool, a means to an end, but she had soon wrapped him around her little finger and he had given her whatever she wanted. Perhaps it was the sex, she was hungry for it, or maybe it was the danger of her job, the rush of being so close to discovery. She was irresistible.
The sound was growing louder. Only a second has passed since she'd twirled and his gaze was drawn back to the window. That was when he saw the plane. You could not live in Rhodesia and not recognize the De Havilland Mosquito. Two powerful engines on either side of the aircraft drove the plane at speeds of over 300 kilometres an hour and with eight machine guns it was a formidable aircraft. Exactly zero of the planes were privately owned which meant only one thing. The Feds were coming.
He blinked, a small fraction of a second and in that fraction of time he saw the bomb bay doors drop open. So many things flashed through his mind in that moment as he turned back to her. The red dress, her white skin, cheeky smile, all of it imprinted on his mind forever as he reached towards her. In that moment he did not care if she had betrayed him. He was going to die and he wanted to be with her when it happened.
Above them, even as she reached towards him, a 250 pound bomb detached from the underside of the aircraft and it leapt skyward. The bomb fell, the small whistle that might have warned someone beneath it of a drop had long been removed. It separated cleanly and silently from the aircraft, wobbling slightly as a strong wind buffeted it, pushing it slightly off target, only by a foot or two, but would be enough to save his life.
But not hers. She was to close to the doorway as the bomb slammed through the roof of the house and buried itself in the floor. For a brief moment he saw surprise and fear on her face. Then the bomb exploded.
They had been so close, their finger tips an inch a part. The concussion of the blast had thrown her into the air before the fire incinerated her. He had been behind the wall, sturdy adobe brick, that did very little to redirect the blast but either through luck, or perhaps gods will, he had been blown through the big picture window he had been staring out of seconds before.
He had hit the ground, bounced, and then continued to bounce into the fields beyond the house. The last thing he could recall was the blue sky above his head before be blacked out.
He wanted to scream at the sky, shake his fists at god, anything to make himself feel better but his desire to survive held him in place as the helicopter swept overhead again. He had never actually "seen" one before and now he hated them. He could see a white man sitting on the edge of the open cargo doors, firing a machine gun that appeared to be mounted on a moveable arm that stuck out from the side of the aircraft. What the hell was he shooting at?
His head was pounding as he slowly raised it to look toward the house. It was fully engulfed in flames now, the white walls peeling and collapsing in on themselves. The trees that had been so beautiful an hour before were turning black and curling, recoiling from the heat. A number of vehicles were scattered around the driveway, most of them riddled with bullet holes. He recognized them his own, the bodies of his men thick on the ground. A few of them moved, screaming sounds he could not hear as they tried to crawl for whatever cover they could find.
Another explosion caused him to duck involuntarily. He looked up again to see two armoured cars advancing up his driveway, their machine guns slaughtering the wounded even as their main guns targeted the out buildings. He felt more tears. It was gone. All of it.
The smoke was thickening, blowing across his hiding spot, and he took the opportunity to begin crawling away beneath the black cloud. It hurt to move but his desire to live was strong. He had survived Detroit, Chicago, a new country, built a financial empire, and though he had lost all of it, he would live on. He would live for her.
