Kwei Quartey - Gold of Our Fathers

Dawson joined the two leaders in discussion.

“We’re moving on to the next mining site,” the sergeant said. “It’s over that hill.”

Dawson followed his pointing finger across the ravaged landscape.

The men fell into formation and the procession went at a steady trot up the rough incline. The drone of the excavators, now an all too familiar sound to Dawson, became louder. Just over the hill, he saw a site below them that was severalfold larger than the Lius’. It sprawled within a valley up to the Ofin River, which they could see now. Four excavators were at work scooping up enormous heaps of earth from the edges of the pits and swinging around to drop the payloads into the washing trommel, which processed a thousand times what manual washing with a sluice box could handle.

Ghanaians were working the excavators, while seven Chinese men supervised. One of them spotted the invading troops above them as the ambush commenced. He shouted out and began running in the opposite direction. The other six Chinese men scattered, and the Ghanaians leapt out of the excavator cabs. One of them lost his footing and slid down the side of a pit, clawing at the wet mud as he tried to stop himself plunging into the milky water below. He stopped barely a foot before the water’s edge.

With Kobby next to him, Dawson followed the military and police part of the way as they swarmed in and chaos erupted. Two Chinese men slipped and fell and were set upon by the men of Bravo. One tried to run to the forest but was intercepted by a soldier who clubbed him on the side of the head. He went down like an axed odum tree.

Breaking up into smaller groups, the men of the 4th attacked the four shacks dotted around the property, pulling out bewildered Chinese men and one woman, all of whom were made to lie prostrate. But some of them didn’t understand the shouted orders, causing more confusion and resulting in their being shoved to the ground.

Dawson never saw anyone setting the shacks alight, but they were ablaze in short order, and Dawson felt the heat from the closest one. DSP Frimpong appeared from the other side of the blaze.

“You and Kobby should retreat a bit,” he warned. “You are too close.”

“Yes, sir.” Dawson beckoned to Kobby to pull back with him.

As he turned, his blood turned to ice as he saw a Chinese man appear from the forest with a pump shotgun held at waist level. He brought it up, and Dawson heard the crisp metal click of the fore-end as the man pulled it back and forward again.

“Gun!” Dawson screamed, and dived.

He heard the initial crack of the shot, brief and sharp, followed by the reverberation swelling and ricocheting as light as air throughout the valley. Two meters away, Kobby went to the ground, and at first Dawson thought that he was scrambling for cover. But the way he collapsed and flipped over said everything: he had been hit.

Dawson scuttled across the ground toward the constable like a crab. Kobby.

He heard the shotgun fore-end slide harshly back and forward again and thought, He’s going to kill me , but perhaps the Chinese man jammed his weapon or had an unexpectedly empty chamber. No report came. Instead, automatic fire from a Battalion soldier’s weapon rang out like a tongue rolling its R s, and the Chinese gunman crumpled dead as dry twigs.

Dawson was at the constable’s side. “Kobby, Kobby, look at me.”

His eyes were open, staring unfocused. Dawson’s heart leapt as they shifted and looked at him. Blood was expanding on the right side of Kobby’s chest. Dawson lifted the constable’s shirt and singlet underneath. “Kobby, breathe. You’re hit, but you’re going to live. Believe me, okay?”

Dawson was trying to see where the wound was and realized Kobby had several. He had been peppered with shots. Dawson shouted for a medic. Is there a medic? He didn’t even know.

“Massa, I’m sorry,” Kobby whispered.

“Sorry for what?” Dawson said sharply. “Stop it. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Kobby was staring vacantly at the sky but Dawson forced the constable to redirect his gaze. “Look at me. You tell yourself you’re going to live and not die, you hear me? You don’t ever give up. You keep your eyes open, and you keep breathing, okay?”

Kobby seemed to be hanging on Dawson’s every word. “Yes, sir. I will do that, sir.”

A soldier was running up the incline to them. “What happened?”

“Shotgun blast. Are you a medic?”

His ID plate read essien . “No, sir,” he said. “There is no medic here.”

Dawson removed his shirt and bunched it up, giving it to Essien. “Press on his bleeding areas hard as possible,” he said, and then got on his phone to call their driver. Kobby would need to be transported out as soon as possible. Members of the 4th and Bravo were coming over as they began to realize that one of their own had been hit. On the floor of the mining valley, a dozen or so Chinese men were kneeling or lying on the ground handcuffed and subdued. The Ghanaians had fled, but then they had never been targets in the first place.

Dawson was shocked when he saw the men of Bravo setting the excavators alight under orders from the sergeant. Why not simply confiscate them for use elsewhere? Then, as word spread from one man to the next about what had happened to Kobby, what Dawson feared was going to happen did indeed begin. The men of Bravo and the 4th began to take it out on the Chinese, slapping, clubbing, and punching them. It wasn’t right, but then Dawson was in no mood to be a hero for the Chinese. He just wished they would go away and leave his country alone.

At KATH, Dawson sat in the packed waiting area quietly praying for good news. Kobby had been taken into surgery almost immediately. If he died, Dawson would never live it down. Yes, he took the blame. A chief inspector looks after his men. He and Kobby had been standing too close to the mayhem. He should have pulled back to behind the cover of trees and taken the constable with him. That way, they would not have been in the Chinese madman’s line of fire.

Over and over, Dawson kept hearing the click-clack of the shotgun’s fore-end, the snap of the report, and its echo through the valley. Nor could he forget the way Kobby had dropped to the ground like a sack of bricks.

His phone rang. It was Commander Longdon.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“I heard about the incident. What happened?”

“Kobby and I were standing at the perimeter of the property as the raid was being conducted,” Dawson explained. “From behind us and a little to the side, a Chinese guy came out with a shotgun and began shooting.”

“No, you and Constable Kobby were not standing at the perimeter of the property,” Longdon said, raising his voice angrily. “You were standing right in the middle of the action, which you had been specifically instructed not to do. You were sent as an observer, but as usual, you overstepped your bounds. You see, this is the reason I do not send detectives on such raids. Did I not say so at the meeting?”

He’s enjoying this. “Yes, sir. You did, sir.”

“Yet you chose to disregard me, and as a result, a man may lose his life. Do you realize that?”

“I do, sir.”

Longdon heaved a sigh. “You will write a full and complete account of the event and have it for me Monday morning, eight o’clock sharp. Thereafter, I will decide if you will be disciplined or not. Consider yourself lucky if I don’t take you off the case.”

“Yes, sir.”

Empty threats , Dawson thought with a grim smile . Longdon couldn’t take him off the case and he knew it. He would get into more trouble than it was worth when DCOP Manu summoned him to account for his actions. Nonetheless, Dawson felt no better about the way the day had turned out. After the call ended, he sat dejected and brooded until he heard his name called and looked up to see Christine coming toward him. He had texted her briefly about the affair, and she had replied she would come down to the hospital to sit with him.