The truck charged towards the compound, engine shrieking, gears howling, tires spitting grit and dirt, powering towards the fortified gates at ramming speed. The barriers were built to keep out anyone who did not belong to the Awon Woli.
It had begun as a dust cloud heading in his direction, but something about it wasn’t right, so Daudi M’Beki raised the alarm. He’d been joined on the ramparts by three other men. Each of them clutched an automatic rifle, muzzle trained on the truck. All four of them were killers. They wouldn’t hesitate to squeeze the trigger and end the lives of everyone in that runaway truck if it tried to breach the compound. No questions.
The truck came closer and closer, showing no sign of stopping. The distance and the dust made it impossible to tell if it was one of their own. If it was, their man was returning with the hounds of hell on his tail.
The Awon Woli had been driven out of their own country by civil war—and unlike the ‘legitimate’ businessmen who exploited genocide for gain, they’d seen their own opportunities reduced to the point where their survival was seriously in jeopardy.
They weren’t far from the border.
They’d worked hard to keep supply lines open, but at a cost.
The Awon Woli remained vigilant. On edge. Prepared for the inevitable escalation when it came. There were plenty who wanted them out and would go to any length to see them in the ground rather than let them live in peace.
Looking at the dust storm behind the truck it was hard not to think that the time to die had come, finally.
Daudi was the youngest of the four on the ramparts, but he was ready. Death held no fear. The butt of his rifle dug into his shoulder. His finger rested over the trigger. His hands were slick with sweat. Heat haze shimmered between him and the truck.
He didn’t blink.
“We wait,” he said.
They had an understanding; whoever had been on watch decided when it was time to fire. It made it easier than arguing about authority and power.
“Until we see the whites of the dead man’s eyes,” one of the others laughed.
It was Razi, one of the young guys who were obsessed with old films. They’d found rusted cans filled with reels of them and watched them at night on a rusty old projector. There was an irony to the original line that he didn’t get; it had been used to decide when the white soldiers pull the trigger to execute the oncoming black men.
“On my mark,” Daudi said, ignoring his companion.
He knew that he would have to make the call soon or it would be too late to stop the vehicle from crashing into the gates. And without knowing if it was friend or foe he was executing.
He breathed deeply, keeping his heart rate steady. The slightest rush of blood could have the bullet veering wide of the mark, the markings from this distance were very slight.
He was ready.
His lips parted, ready to give the word, but the truck suddenly braked and slewed sideways spitting even more dust as the driver executed a handbrake turn. He saw a broken taillight.
Something was thrown from the back of the truck and then it was thundering away again.
Daudi lowered his weapon. The threat was gone. The dust slowly settled around a dark shape on the makeshift road.
“What the fuck is that?” Razi asked, slowly lowering his own weapon.
Daudi knew what it was.
What he didn’t know was who it was.
“Keep watch, he said, then gestured for one of the others to follow him down from their vantage point.
There were other people moving around the compound. There were questions, but most of them just carried on with what they were doing.
Daudi called, “Open the gate.”
He moved quickly towards it. The rusted iron hinges protested. The bottom edge dragged across the ground in a wail of metal. He wore the black armband that marked him as watch leader. That was enough to give him the authority to bark orders and expect them to be carried out without question.
“What the fuck is going on out here?” a voice behind him demanded.
Daudi turned, knowing who the voice belonged to.
The hulk of a man had emerged from the central building in the compound. He was known to all of them as Boss. No more, no less. Boss. It wasn’t that there weren’t those amongst them who knew his real name, it had just lost any sort of meaning, and Boss liked it that way.
“There’s someone out there,” Daudi said.
“One of ours?”
“Maybe.”
Boss waved him away. “Go,” he said, motioning for one of the men who’d emerged from the building with him to follow Daudi out of the compound. It was another big man, this one mysteriously named Gentle when he was anything but.
Daudi would rather have done this without Boss standing over him, especially as he’d let the truck get so close to the compound, and then let it race away without firing a single shot.
It made them look weak, and in this life, perception was everything.
Outside, there was no mistaking the shape on the ground, or the fact that it was already dead.
There was nothing to be gained by rushing, but that didn’t stop him from running to it.
Boss wouldn’t want him wasting time.
The body was face down in the dirt, his hands bound behind his back with cable ties. There was a plastic bag over his head.
Daudi paused for a moment and took another breath to steady himself. It was long enough for the other man to come up alongside him.
“What are you waiting for?” Gentle said, then crouched down and turned the body over. It didn’t help. The plastic was smeared with red, making it impossible to make out the features of the face inside.
Daudi tried to rip the plastic open, but couldn’t get a decent purchase, so he fumbled in his pocket for a knife.
“Leave it, we need to get him inside,” Gentle told him, ignoring the armband that should have meant Daudi was the one giving the orders. “I don’t like the idea of us being exposed like this when those fuckers can do something like this to one of our own. Watch my back.”
The big man lifted the body in his arms as if it was no weight at all and set off at an easy run back towards the open gates.
Daudi unslung his weapon and held it the ready, walking backwards toward the compound, scanning the open ground in an arc.
There was no sign of movement out there.
That didn’t matter.
He wasn’t about to drop his guard when a bullet could drop him before he blinked.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Gentle and his burden had already slipped through the gate. With them inside, he turned and ran.