Andrew Dawson - MiG-23 Broke my Heart

Thomas was bored. He was down on his stomach and elbows in a shallow ditch scooped from the side of a dune, his R4 rifle aimed at the border. He was supposed to be watching for terrorists but his eyes were on the only cloud in the sky, a little cotton swab high over the heat and sand of South-West Africa.

‘Hey, bru?’ he said, without looking away from his cloud. ‘Want to smoke a joint?’

‘Shut up, surfer boy. You’re not on Miami Beach.’

Thomas turned and squinted up to the lip of the dune. There, silhouetted against the sun like the periscope of some buried U-Boat, was the head, shoulders and rifle of one Pieter ‘Skeletor’ Venter. He was in the same nutria-brown uniform as Thomas and topped with the same standard-issue bush hat, but his uniform was free of creases and all the floppiness had been starched from his hat.

‘You sure?’ Thomas had been brought up to be polite. ‘It’s Durban Poison.’

Skeletor said nothing. He was obviously too busy looking for something to kill.

Rolling onto his right side, Thomas reached into his webbing. He produced a soft-cover NG Kerk Bible that he thumbed open to a random page, bent back against the spine to keep from closing and wedged under his thigh so that half of it stuck out. He dug in the pouch on his waist, the one that should have held spare ammo, and pulled out a bundle of newspaper that he unfolded and shook as though it were a spice bottle. A line of Durban’s finest poison settled in the spine of the Bible. Gently, Thomas coaxed the heads to form an orderly queue on the far side of the left-hand page. The stalks he brushed away. He rolled the page into a tight cone and tore it from the book. With a lick of the translucent paper, his work was done and he popped the joint into his mouth. The whole time, his right hand never strayed from his rifle.

‘You’re going to rot in hell,’ Skeletor declared from on high.

‘Hell?’ Thomas asked through pursed lips. ‘Be like Miami Beach compared to this place.’ He sparked a match with his left hand, held it to the joint and sucked.

‘You may as well light a signal flare.’

‘Can you smoke those?’ Thomas shook the match dead.

‘You should try,’ Skeletor said. ‘Put one in your mouth and let it off.’

Thomas went back to staring at his cloud. He inhaled and exhaled, blowing smoke to join it.

Then he saw movement, a flicker in the top right corner of the rolling sandscape. He blinked, hoping it was a hallucination, then swatted, praying it might be a fly.

‘Chips,’ Skeletor said in warning. He saw it too.

Thomas stubbed out the joint, grabbed his rifle with both hands and watched the speck grow from the direction of Angola – communist-controlled Angola. As it tracked through the desert towards him, it became bigger, more defined and definitely human. It had to be a terrorist. Who else could slip through the tangle of barbed wire and minefields just over the horizon? Who else would want to ?

Wishing he’d taken more time to dig his foxhole, Thomas shrank down and tried to make himself small. His trigger finger trembled as he stared along the barrel of his rifle. The only thing he had ever shot at was a target in training, and he usually missed.

The terrorist was running, leaving tracks in the sand, a zigzag pattern as though he was frantic and delirious and had lost his way. He disappeared behind the closest sand dune.

‘I’m going to take him out,’ Skeletor said.

Lurching over the crest of the dune, the terrorist became visible again. His hands were in the air, waving. He must have spotted them.

‘Hang on, bru.’ To get Skeletor’s attention, Thomas raised his own hand like he was back in class, about to ask a question. ‘He’s signalling to us.’

The terrorist was close enough to make out the words on his T-shirt: ‘Bob Marley’. He was close enough to see the details of his face. That wide-mouthed expression reminded Thomas of a painting he’d studied at school only six months before. It was of a stretched-out figure on a bridge with his mouth contorted and his hands up in distress. As the terrorist hurtled towards him, Thomas tried to think what the painting was called. The artist was a guy by the name of Monk or Milk. No, that wasn’t it. It was Mink. That didn’t sound right either. If he hadn’t sparked up that joint he’d be able to remember.

The terrorist ran on, drawing a jagged line in the sand towards their position.

Thomas noticed something else about him and said, ‘Hey, Skeletor, I don’t think he’s armed.’

A rifle cracked. The terrorist snapped back like a cartoon dog reaching the end of his chain, and he fell, tumbling to the base of the dune.

‘Got him,’ Skeletor said, his shot still ringing across the lifeless landscape.

Scream , Thomas suddenly remembered. That’s what the painting was called. The guy who painted it, his name was Munch. He was afraid of women, thought they were sinister creatures out to rob him of vital fluids, suck him dry and leave him for dead.

‘You go first,’ Skeletor said.

‘Why me?’

‘I shot him.’

‘What if I step on a landmine?’

‘We can only hope, surfer boy.’

Thomas spun around and opened his mouth to tell Skeletor to get stuffed. But instead of speaking, he started shifting from his foxhole. Staring down at him was the unblinking, 5.56mm eye of an R4 barrel. You couldn’t argue with that.

Keeping his own rifle trained on the terrorist, or whatever he was, Thomas slid down the dune. He tiptoed, listening for the click of a landmine and waiting for the terrorist to rise up and attack.

‘Hurry up!’ Skeletor shouted. ‘Or you’ll join him.’

As if barefoot in the hot sand, Thomas sprinted the rest of the way. When he stopped, before the next dune began, he drew a deep breath and wiped the sweat from his eyes.

The terrorist lay on his back on the flat ground, his legs splayed open. His sandals were cut from car tyres, the straps carefully-threaded strips of leather. He wore suit trousers, rolled high at the ankles. Bob Marley, all wrapped up in dreadlocks, gazed serenely from his chest.

Thomas swallowed, took another long breath and made himself look at the terrorist’s face, to see if he was still alive.

It was a young face, unmarked by wrinkles, but on the smooth black skin of the terrorist’s forehead lay a neat bull’s-eye. His neck was twisted to one side and at the back of his head a bolognaise sauce of blood, brain and skull was seeping into the sand.

‘Hey, nice T-shirt,’ Skeletor said. He walked up and gave the terrorist a nudge with his boot. ‘Clean shot too.’

Flies were already starting to swarm.

‘I think he was unarmed.’ Thomas looked around at the sand and rocks for a weapon.

‘He must have dropped his AK when he saw us.’ Skeletor gave the terrorist another nudge for good luck.

‘He was unarmed. I’m sure of it.’

‘So what?’ Skeletor’s sneer pressed his cauliflower ears up against his bush hat.

‘He was unarmed,’ Thomas repeated. This was a big deal, wasn’t it? Was he the only one who saw that? He looked to Bob Marley for support.

Bob Marley held his silence.

‘Go wait in your foxhole.’ Skeletor got down on his knees and started yanking the T-shirt off the terrorist. ‘I don’t need you any more.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘What do you think? His sandals look too small for me.’ Skeletor kept pulling at his souvenir.

‘But he was unarmed , bru.’

Skeletor looked up, leaving Bob Marley creased over the terrorist’s head. ‘I’m going to count to ten, surfer boy. If you’re not back in your foxhole by the time I get there, I’m going to shoot you. Is that clear?’