DRAFT

A vengeance for the protection of Mia took him to Waaihoek Island. He camped rough and watched a Kenyan runaway named Clay, to see that he did not get too close to her. Not only that there was living in the camp a meditating healer with a boozy home owner. They ate grass and cabbage and fish and stole their bread from the liquor laden man. Johnny was lying on the grass in the camp when a vice marshal arrived and handed him a report card.

 The details of it were a purple print with the stars of the states around in a circle. The letters ‘Report to Mogadishu’ printed above twenty-six initials of former presidents. As the days passed slow a ship moved across the furthest dip over the horizon. It paused long enough for helicopters and inflatable dinghies to come to shore. Before he departed there was a last task to complete for his country. He worked for the defence of the nation and its people.

 The government had been short sighted and mercenary in the way that they sold the country. The country was too good for other nations to ignore. Some could not resist the temptation of invading. Inching into the Haricot Gulf in the secrecy of the dark was a small number of submarines. The gulf map altered to afford them an exercise area. Japan and Germany were vying for possession of God’s own.

 Five hundred American paratroopers landed at Omaha Beach. It was like a repeat of their landing during world war two. The air force was lent a fleet of two hundred Apache helicopters. Equipped with armed wings, they were to go against a French ship. Rumours spoke of how other opportunist pirates may arrive. Flying high response choppers such as these was a challenge. Johnny remembers three of them crashing, rotor blades striking the turf. Blades dug through it at a high notch and ripped up dirt, throwing it all over people nearby. With almost systematic incompetence the fleet ruined during the exercise. Only one returned to the carrier intact.

 The ship in the harbour was a clear and present threat. Johnny climbed a rope to its foredeck. He fired three fast rounds at the figures standing aboard. Then leapt over the side rail and swam back to the wharf. They crew did not shift the ship. So Johnny flew one of the loaned helicopters from the highest airstrip on the island and aimed it at the vessel. The flying machine had wing equipment on which was a missile. He fired the missile at the bridge of the ship and it hit. It exploded in a fireball and disabled its occupation. On the exit he guided the chopper to a point where it was almost out of control. It flew beneath the arch span of the harbor bridge. He continued to land in his favourite Doyle park. A small group of onlookers cheered him when he got out of the seat and stepped onto the grass.

 Back at the island, it was his place to use a tripod mounted gun. From a hill above the pines, he struck down marauding invaders on the beach. They were coming in on landing vessels. All day and night he kept his hands on the levers and trigger. Steel screws inside the concrete plinth kept the machine gun secure in place. They shocked and rattled and tore loose from the fire. He dispensed five thousand rounds and kept the landers at shore level. The pines around became shot to pieces.

 The Kenyan runaway joined three others camping on the island. Johnny's mates slept in a panic after a meal at the top of the hill. Their go-to was a radio, which clicked and hummed all night.

 A Japanese commander had got out of line. He was at the wheel of a boat, situated although ready to launch a torpedo at the ports area. Its payload was big enough to blow away the entire city.

 Johnny had a job to destroy the kamikaze U-boat by using a piece of artillery. They did not understand the aim and trigger mechanism of the canon. They radioed for advice.  The weather was dark and wet.

 A naval seal swam ashore. Johnny waited quiet on the rocks for the swimmer to land. She dragged herself up onto the sand and looked a moment at him. She pulled her radio transmitter and spoke code to her crew. He told her that he was there to assist. She said that she appreciated but that it was probable he couldn't. She commented on patriotic intention. He helped her out of her wetsuit and stashed the tanks and rubber in the jungle. They walked up the steep step path to the cabin and dome house at the top of the hill. They rallied the four men into work for the night. The men broke their slumber by curse and question.

 Their battle dress disguised their faces behind goggles and crème. The lady diver demanded that he and the four men follow him back down to the beach that night. With reluctance the gang went with her down the garden path. They had evacuated there, and look what happened. The lady ordered a foxhole to be dug. Three feet wide, eight feet long, five feet deep. Shovels hauled.  

 The artillery had installed recently. It was shining polished steel with a base and long barrel secluded in the forest at the coast. As Johnny and Clay stepped into the woods to inspect it, they ripped off the ivy which covered the tube of the barrel. To John’s surprise and wonderment, a large green and brown live snake wrapped around the steel. He retrieved his knife. The knife had been a present from Clay for his twenty-first birthday. It was a handsome hunting knife with a six-inch blade and clipping latch handle. He found the underbelly of the reptile and stabbed it deep, emptying its meaty contents onto the sand.

 The canon firing mechanism needed preparation. Vertical and horizontal angles defined by notch. Aiming instructions for the trajectory and force to strike the boat with accuracy. Out at sea, the enemy captain at bay like a fox in a hole and could not move this way or that. 

 "We’re not ready yet," said the diver.

 Another snake crawled along the beach and wrapped itself around Johnny's right leg. It pulled him off balance and he dropped the knife. The green serpent took a hold of his left leg and began squeezing and tugging at him, tightening higher on his body. Clay handed John the knife. He opened it again and cut the head off the python while he was staring down into its jaws.

 "Always help a man in need," Clay said.

 The Seal watched and Clay bent upwards and laughed. "Ha caught you.”

 The firing pins inserted into the canon by the three extra men. An order for delay for sakes of caution while dawn lit the scene. In the thirty seconds before the sun broke over the horizon, the gun fired. For forty seconds the shell flew right true faster than the eye can see. Through the hatch of the destroyer it exploded.

 While the shell was falling, Johnny ordered everyone into the deep foxhole. They toppled into it on top of all the boxes of grenades and bullets. The explosion was powerful as a tiny star and happened under ocean surface. Atoms blasted through them and so did the sand. They stayed there huddled up in their overcoats and hoodies. They struggled for body space and breathed from small air pockets in their hoods. A rescue team soon dug them out of there. Skin and fabric etched by remains of the blast. 

 Johnny's draft report card remained open for execution. He attempted an escape from this ominous call. From a city ferry he boarded a bus away. A man intercepted him. The man wore a short black uniform and carried a pistol. Johnny's escape attempt was futile. He went under duress with him back to the island. 

 The next meeting was with two staff of the American army. A fit man wearing guerrilla stripes stood at an outdoor table. With him was the same executive from the plane three years previous, Starling. Johnny could not help fear the similarity in his appearance. He resembled a retired commander in chief. He supposed that the guy was still itching to watch John going to his execution. Sitting at the table with them was a leftist one-time prime minister of Johnny's country. They asked John to sit while they discussed his ratings.

 Starling quiet passed the blood money for the new recruit to the man in stripes. A twenty-thousand-dollar check. The retired minister stated he would place it in a sundry account. General Abraham Georgia talked about how desperate conditions were in Darfur. How he needed extra staff.  Replacements for the twenty percent losses. He examined the check from Starling. The prime minister apologized and smiled at Johnny and took the check from the man from Alabama. Starling's witness by standing gave approval for the deal. Johnny bought and sold by merchants of human capital.

 Uniformed staff took the new soldier back to the beach where the canon lay spent. They clambered into an inflatable dingy. Their skipper drove out to the troop transporter. It floated like an island castle at sea. Up the ten ladder steps as any boarding. His mates introduced him to the captain. The same man as Johnny had met during his teenage mariner days on the gulf.

 Captain Sylvester gave him one job. He was to swab the decks clean of salt every morning and afternoon. Every sixth day was his leave during which he was to vacuum clean dust from his cabin level corridor. The cabin levels stacked six deep. Capacity of persons for one thousand on each level. He set about his duty.  

 A slight faint of sea sickness came over him south of Australia. The medicine chest had the meds from this. Fair weather fell ahead. Across the Indian Ocean the ship met the accompaniment of submarine support. Invisible companions under the waves followed them side by side.  

 The transfer halted offshore at Hoban. Delta marines rafted inshore. The gears of rank and file prepared already when they landed. At a tent and a table two lookalike ginger men sat on fabric chairs. The first shaved haircuts on each man with clippers. The second read and approved their medical status report forms. From there the soldiers received rifle and sortied to up behind the shoreline. Sand and spinifex grass shifted to clay and tin shed.

 The first job he had was almost the worst. It involved ethnic cleansing. They targetted destitute citizens. Made to lie flat on dirt within sharp tin wire perimeters, they were victims of the blind power of the gun. The platoon ran to a helicopter evacuation to a smaller ship in the inlet. The transport moved north into the night.

 He met his CMO having stepped onto land with others in his platoon. The CMO was a man named Evans. He said that he owed America this duty because of the botch up three years previous. The tent they shifted out to was twelve kilometres into the desert past the sandy coast. Wasted sand covered the trail. The men scraped their feet along the way as they walked. Shuffling in this way so as not to attract snakes by causing the shudder of footfall. When they got to the tent they met Georgia at the desk. 

 He was in pain because Bedouin had nailed his boots down to the floorboards. The first job Johnny had with the troops was to save the general from blood infection and get him walking again. They ripped up a floorboard and tilted him on a side then loosened his boots and removed the nails. Johnny treated the wounds with an application of antiseptic salve and soft bandages.  

 There was an internet connection in the office section of the tent. A rack of bunks and a kitchen in the side section. This was in the days before the web was available to the public on the market. The console screen was green lit and they had a keyboard and a microphone. Messages relayed from government to adjudicator to the military. The UN was telling them to go home and calling them boys.

 Then they began sorting out the problem of where the rifles had gone. Bedouin had stolen fifty small calibre automatics the night previous. The general was then in the tent with a wounded and slumbering private and no security. The arrival of the replacement platoon meant that he could reclaim the missing stock.  

 When the next day dawned, three British army staff arrived to knock out the marauders. A thirty-yard-tall dune loomed high beside the tent covers. Between the tent and the dune were three sixty pound guns. A low impact shot would clear a shell over the dune. A scout had confirmed that the thieves gathered on the far side. They held the rifles. 

 The artillery shelling began and did not let up for twenty minutes. When Johnny got to the far side of the dune afterward, he saw the ruins and remains of the crowd. He collected thirteen useful rifles which were still functional. Falling metal had broken all the rest of them. After the retrieval he left the bloodied wreckage behind. This was his first day at war. Over the sand dune was that same type of scene that he had seen in Soweto disaster area eight years previous. Bloody rips and wounds. Identities and names, living connections, obscured by power of injury. Fast wind eddies hinted at recently departed spirits.

 He got to talking with the general. It turned out that he had survived the war at Vietnam when he was a teenager. For three years from his ages sixteen to nineteen he volunteered. Stationed along lines at the top of the south. When he returned to the States it was near the end of the summer of love. That by trade and at heart he was a cattle rancher. So he returned to Texas and earned a living. This current position he took on as a second service to his country. His prior experience had nominated him for his rank. 

 The Kevlar covers of the tent stopped bullets from picking them off. The artillery drilled away at long range above their heads for days and weeks. All the while the platoons exchanged men and scouted around for signs of life and survivors. He fired the canons and sharpened his bayonets and knives. He fried bacon and eggs and wrote poems to send home and shot the machine guns. He told the Bedouin roamers that he had done the hajj two years previous. They told him to leave the army. Snakes kept at bay and casualties occurred too frequent.

 In the sad and sorry absence of a lieutenant who bought it, John received promotion to that rank for three days. The platoon he was ordering had to advance under shell shot for ten kilometres. The challenge was to not let them get killed by the bombardment. John got it right and they all stayed alive and took the point. After that the shells destroyed his tent and it was rebuilt. The marine corps expanded their range of manual surveillance. They now looked into the red sandy dune space to the west of the resurrected tent. 

 There is a sight which he remembered after all these years. A man walked into the tent and fried for himself some bacon and eggs. Blood drenched him and his uniform from head to foot. He said that he did not care less anymore. It seemed that everyone was getting picked off. Strangers were arriving and leaving after a meal while this left Johnny to mind the tent. He wrote songs and cooked. Bedouin would come in from time to time. They wore black turbans and had bright expressive eyes. 

 Potential refugees were being gathered and tested by the dozens. Johnny remembers a woman, who lay in her iron shed on her back, waiting for rescue. She was too weak to speak. He gave her mints. The famine victims they fed with bread and gave sips of water. There was another, a boy of twelve years, whom Johnny carried on his back and shoulders. He side stepped for him through a minefield and let him down in a safe trench with a legal exit.

 The impossible point was in the end ruined. Georgia got a plastic explosive against his left arm and it blew it clean off at the elbow. The grenade had come hidden behind a flap of the fabric and no one had seen it coming. After that the French legion marched into a flat rocky wasteland beyond the red dunes. They got a quarter of their rank shot down by a line of female Muslim assassins. There was no fire until well late between the opposing troops in that exchange. Hidden by shimmering light, the ladies fired brass darts from their guns. The legion's left hander line style failed by the fifty-degree drought and the mirages it caused.

 The initial first three weeks of the project were for collecting designable refugees. The second three weeks’ intent was for the captain’s first mates and drivers to take them out. On passages to other lands where sectarian violence did not constant hound them. The army always must contend with problems of strategy and defence. Crossfire and cover every day. There was rumour of higher potential explosive power also. Interviews taken from all the local natives who could speak. Every information tested. Pins on a map narrowed locations.   

 Their rest and recreation time came. It involved an escorted tour of the Egyptian temple ruin Amonhotep. An eighteen-hour lorry ride north west. The team saw the tall entrance hall where stand since ancient times two statues of Pharaohs. God kings of an early civilization oversaw insignificant bodies pass its stone feet. Five dozen pillars thrust regular lines at an unmoving lintel. Beyond the hall are other statues of the figures from Egypt’s' eighteenth dynasty. Hawks, priests and jackals lay broken and scattered as the cats. Profound silence had surrounded this area for three thousand, four hundred years.