I was listening to Peter Gabriel’s “Rhythm of the Heat” last Sunday evening, and this story just popped into my head.  It’s a one-off Top Secret SSI-type adventure scene.

“Payin’ the Bills”

I did this job for E.O. back in ’93.  At least, that’s who I’m told they were.  I was never quite sure, it didn’t seem like their typical work.  Not that I cared.  Payments were reliable and discrete, that’s all that mattered.

I was itching for some sort of work, running out of money and going crazy, staying in some crummy Kenyan hotel that probably looked quite ritzy about 50 years ago. The job I came here for fell through, that happened on occasion.  When the diplomats do their job, I lose mine.  But luckily, there’s always some work that needs doing.  You just have to be patient.  Within a month, my patience paid off.

There were five of us; myself, a New Zealander, a tawny-haired white Rhodesian and two Congolese free agents. I’ve worked with the first two before, so I knew they were kosher. The last two came highly recommended, they were said to be quite skilled and reliable with a workable knowledge of the area. Always a plus.  Our objective was to liquidate some local tribal warlord.  They called him a warlord, but he seemed little more then a glorified African gang-banger to me.

Whatever he was, he was known to have about 25 hired guns and was making quite a bit of trouble for a particular organization that wanted him out of the picture, but who were afraid to go through any official channels, as this organization is supposed to be peaceful.  Funny thing was, this sad, sorry little group of blue beetles was about as official as any group on the planet could be.  But that’s how it works, and because of it, I can pay my bills without having to worry about things like annoying legal entanglements.

We had tracked the ‘warlord’ down to the savanna plains of central Chad on the fringes of the Sahara where they were engaging in some sort of tribal-like ritual, standing around a large bonfire, dancing, chanting, drinking and fraternizing.  One of the Congolese men claimed it was a male warrior ‘coming-of-age’ ritual, though it looked like a typical block party. Well, a heavily armed block party.

We had to sneak in the last few klicks crawling through the high savanna grasses as the sun set, my brain roasting from the heat.  By the time we reached the bonfire, it was dusk, and the ‘ceremony’ was in full swing. We snuck around the perimeter, still crawling through the grasses and using those twisted acacia trees as cover when we could.

Given there were almost 40 armed enemy combatants, far more then our intel reports had indicated, we decided to use knives and garrotes alone.  Gunfire, even silenced, would alert everyone to our presence.  We liquidated targets of opportunity from the shadows, waiting for a shot at the warlord and his lieutenants.

Everyone was either drunk or high, so no one seemed to notice that all the partygoers were steadily disappearing over the course of the night.  Thank God khat isn’t popular this far west in Africa.  I hate dealing with khat-heads, they squirm too much.  Dopers make life so very easy.  By the time we were ready to acquire the main target, the five of us had already neutralized about 70 or so individuals, counting the camp followers who were unlucky enough to be an inconvenience.

What can I say?  This man was supposed to be some sort of Hadjarai Robin-Hood meets John Dillinger.  He had Islamisist ties, though at that time, few people cared about such things, even my employers who should have known better.  He was said to have eluded Libyan, Sudanese and even French legionnaire units specifically tasked with capturing him.  I’d mention the Chadian army as well, but I’m not sure kickbacks qualify as ‘eluding.’  He ran guns, drugs, ivory, diamonds, prostitute-slaves, gold ore, you name it.  Trained by militaries who claim they never trained him, his dossier looked like some Col. Kurtz wannabe.

But there he was, sitting on an old, frayed lawn chair a few feet from the bonfire, stupid-drunk with some underage Ouaddaian whore squirming on his lap, a rusty Kalashnikov lying unattended in the dirt beside him.  At this point, his few remaining men were dispatched easily enough.  Should I say for a good story that there was some sort of epic battle?  No, just three well placed 9mm rounds, all squeezed off before the girl on his lap even knew enough to run.  The warlord was already roasting in hell by the time he realized he was in trouble.

The whore was close enough to me that I didn’t really have to aim to place a fourth round between her shoulder blades.  She was probably just an innocent.  Probably.  But relying on ‘probably’ can get you killed.  Something I’ve long since given up trying to explain to civilians and authorities.  They really don’t want to hear it.  The average, middle-classed, college-educated Starbucks-slurping schmuck is happy enough believing peace is only maintained by dead-writ laws and conniving, self-serving diplomats.  Whatever.  I don’t need commendations, I just want payment.

Maybe I should change the last bit, if I ever plan on selling this story to a book company or a movie director.  They like big action scenes with lots of shooting and explosions.  They say the audience needs to see the bad guy do bad things, not just take for granted he’s a scumbag because he’s sitting around getting stoned with friends who are carrying assault rifles, banging enslaved and underage girls forcibly taken from their homes and enjoying the fruits of their blood-loot.

But those who live such lives as mine don’t like ‘big action scenes.’  I don’t have to like them.  I don’t sell popcorn.  I sell souls.  I sold his, and squared off the last six payments on my Ranger 4×4.  Good deal.  There was even a bonus.  He had six Heinekens in a cooler nearby.  That’s not my preferred brew, but in the heat of the sub-Saharan African summer, it’ll do the job.  I kept one of the bottles for awhile, it had a bit of his blood on the label.  Or maybe it was the whore’s.  Who knows.  I had it until some college bimbo I was nailing from Boston cleaned my apartment as a surprise.

S.E.F.A.