Andrew Dawson - MiG-23 Broke my Heart

The buzz around Skeletor resumed. The crowd’s orbit grew tighter. Back slaps, high-fives and handshakes were exchanged as Skeletor recounted how he had blown the heavily-armed terrorist’s brains clean out of his head.

Thomas turned away. He walked down the road, saluting as he went, and crossed over to the prefab building that housed the post office. It wasn’t as if he ever got mail but he didn’t want to be around Skeletor at the moment, at least not until his drug-induced sensitivity wore off, and this was as good a time waster as any.

‘Number?’ asked the potato-faced Lieutenant behind the counter.

‘8800421567. I was on patrol, so I missed the call.’

The Lieutenant rose slowly from his plastic chair and dug through the hessian sacks dumped on the floor. ‘Thomas Green?’

‘That’s me, sir.’

‘What’s it worth to you?’

‘Five?’ His immediate thought was that it was a letter from his parents. He had received nothing from them, not even a postcard, since he had come here, and it was beginning to feel as if they had forgotten about him.

The Lieutenant tossed an envelope to the counter and said, ‘Worth at least ten that letter.’

The envelope was bright pink, the first pink thing Thomas had seen in all these months of brown, grey and green. And everyone knew what a pink letter meant. ‘Fine,’ he said, too quickly, ‘I’ll give you ten.’

‘I said, at least ten.’ The fat Lieutenant licked his thin lips. ‘I was thinking more like one hundred.’

Thomas aimed for nonchalance, but his voice came out high-pitched and desperate: ‘It’s just a letter from my mom. I swear.’

‘Your mother sprays her correspondence with cheap perfume?’ The lips curled into a sneer. ‘What kind of sick family are you from?’

Thomas looked down at the letter. It was postmarked 25-03-1988, a good three months ago, but from it he could still detect a promising floral scent. ‘Did you say one hundred, sir?’

‘I distinctly remember saying two hundred.’

There was nothing left for Thomas to do but pay the price. He rested his rifle against the table and lay face-down on the cool linoleum floor.

‘In your own time, troopie.’ The Lieutenant’s voice was ripe with the expectation of pleasure.

Thomas counted, ‘One.’ The first push-up was agony. ‘Two.’ So was the next. ‘Three.’ But as his joints loosened up and the pain subsided, he began to wonder who the letter was from. ‘Four.’ It wasn’t as if he had a girlfriend or even any girls he could call friends. ‘Five.’ His last two schools had been boys-only affairs. ‘Six.’ Then he had gone straight into the army. ‘Seven.’ But there was someone . ‘Eight!’ A girl he had met in the short holiday between. ‘Nine!’ It was from her. ‘Ten!’ It had to be.

‘Stand up,’ a voice said.

‘Eleven!’ Thomas kept counting, blocking out everything but the push-ups and the promise that waited at the end. ‘Twelve!’ Only one hundred and eighty-eight to go. ‘Thirteen!’ Pain splintered through his body and he crumpled to his side, clutching his ribs.

‘Get off the floor.’ Skeletor’s boot was poised to deliver another blow. ‘Major De Kock wants to see us.’

Back on his feet, Thomas felt dizzy and disorientated. He rubbed his rib cage, doing his best to massage the pain away.

‘Hurry up.’ Skeletor scurried out of the office, no doubt expecting to be followed at once.

But Thomas hesitated. He looked down at the envelope glowing pink with possibility on the counter. Then he glanced at the Lieutenant, who was scowling from his chair, his entertainment so rudely interrupted.

Without a thought for the consequences, Thomas snatched the letter from the counter and ran after Skeletor.

‘You the killers?’ Major De Kock got up from his desk and fixed his good eye on Thomas and Skeletor.

Thomas had only ever seen him waddling around the parade ground, but here, up close in his office, he was a formidable beast: big, bald-headed and sleek, with a hungry look in one of his eyes. The other eye was red and weepy, bisected by a pink scar that had been earned, according to base legend, in one of the brutal skirmishes fought to stop Southern Rhodesia from becoming Zimbabwe.

Thomas and Skeletor saluted in tandem.

This was all the confirmation the Major needed. ‘On behalf of State President PW Botha I would like to thank you men for your actions today.’

He was being sarcastic, Thomas thought. News travelled fast in Moon Base Alpha and the story of the unarmed corpse must have shot quickly to the map-covered walls of this office. He gritted his teeth and prepared for the worst, his mind racing through the potential punishments for shooting and looting an unarmed man.

A smile, incongruous with the scar, formed on the Major’s face. ‘Keep this up, boys, and you’ll return to South Africa with medals.’

Medals? He was definitely treating them to some good, old-fashioned army sarcasm.

The Major stiffened and his fingers touched his polished head.

This was such an unfamiliar sight that it took a moment for Thomas to realise what was happening: he was being saluted. It was the first time he had ever been personally saluted by an officer. In response, he and Skeletor snapped out salutes of their own. Maybe they weren’t in trouble after all.

Turning to the maps on his wall, the Major said, ‘Just out of interest, was the terrorist armed?’

‘No,’ Thomas replied at the same time that Skeletor said, ‘Yes.’

The Major spun around, his good eye closed to a slant. ‘Well, which was it?’

Thomas wanted to tell the truth. He really did. But he didn’t want to make his remaining year and a half any more difficult than it had to be. And besides, he could feel the frown directed at him from the troopie at his side, a non-verbal warning not to divulge what happened – unless he wanted a kicking.

Skeletor answered for both of them: ‘He was unarmed when I shot him, sir. But I suspect he dropped his weapon before he reached us.’

‘You suspect ?’ The Major’s bad eye twitched.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Were there any explosives on his body? Grenades, limpet mines, mortar rounds, anything to link this man with terrorist activity?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Not even a firecracker?’

‘No, sir.’

‘So am I to understand that you just saw black skin and fired?’

It took a few moments for Skeletor to answer. ‘Yes, sir.’

Thomas, who had been silent throughout this exchange, shifted a little to the side, to dissociate himself from the killer.

But the Major smiled. He opened his arms and bear-hugged Skeletor as if he had found a long-lost child. When he was finished he stepped back and said, ‘You did the right thing, son. You trusted your heart.’

Skeletor gave Thomas a self-satisfied glance.

‘This particular terrorist was a dangerous customer,’ the Major explained. ‘Our Bushmen trackers have been on to him since he slipped over the border. We believe – as you do – that he dropped his weapons to lighten the load. But these communist infiltrators, they’re trained to kill with their bare hands. Give him half a chance and he’ll snap off your neck and use your spine for a toothpick.’ The Major held his chunky fists together and made a snapping movement. ‘Not the kind of person we want arriving unannounced in Pretoria, now is he?’

‘No, sir!’ Skeletor shouted back.

Thomas stood mute. It was hard to believe that the young man in the Bob Marley T-shirt had been a highly-trained terrorist. But it had to be true. There was no other explanation.

‘Boys of your calibre don’t deserve to be stuck here in the middle of nowhere.’ The Major moved back to his giant wall map of Southern Africa. ‘That’s why I’m sending you on a little trip.’