The Serene Invasion Read online

  She said, “I have a bad feeling…”

  The Arab kicked out, the heel of his boot gouging Sally’s shin. “Be silent!” She pursed her lips rather than cry out at the pain.

  They raced through the lifeless desert landscape, hitting potholes at speed. Sally rocked against Ben, his solidity reassuring. The metal ridge of the truck’s side panel scored her shoulder blades.

  They passed a village — Mullambi. They had travelled over ten kilometres already. It struck her that she was in greater danger the further they travelled away from familiar territory. She felt the sun fry her head. She thought of her tiny room back at the compound and wanted to weep.

  Across from them, the Arab closed his eyes, his head lolling. He appeared to be sleeping, his rifle propped across his lap.

  “We will be fine,” Ben said in a whisper. “We must do as they say, and do not question them. Whatever you do, Sally, do not argue with them.”

  “That,” she said bitterly, “might not be easy.”

  “Just do not question what they are doing, okay?”

  “Why? Because I’m a woman, and they don’t like –”

  He said impatiently, “Whatever the reasons! We should not antagonise these men.”

  She was silent for a time, then said, “They’re going to kill us. I know it.”

  Ben turned to look at her. “That is not how these people work,” he said patiently. “They will ransom us, makes demands for cash so that they can buy weapons.”

  The Arab opened his eyes and stared across at his captives.

  Sally licked her rapidly drying lips and said, “Who are you?”

  She felt Ben stiffen beside her.

  The Arab stared at her, a potent distillation of contempt in his narrowed eyes. “My name is Ali,” he said.

  “I meant,” she said, “which organisation do you represent?”

  The man smiled. “Boko Haram,” he said.

  She wished she had never asked. Northern Uganda was plagued by competing bands of Islamic fundamentalists — each one a little more fundamental, it seemed, than the other. Originally from Nigeria, Boko Haram was the most hard-line of them all: bloodthirsty, uncompromising, and intolerant of everything Western.

  “What do you want with us?”

  Ben hissed, “Sally!”

  The Arab said, “To… make example.” He spat at her feet. “You come here, you fill my people with your ways –”

  “Your people? Are you Ugandan?”

  He said, “My people, my Muslim brothers.”

  “We’re here,” she said, “to help your brothers, to help your men, women and children. There is a drought, or haven’t you noticed? Your people are dying.”

  “A drought? The drought is God’s punishment. We do not need your help. You should go, all of you. Americans, Chinese, all of you infidels.”

  Anger rose within her. She wanted to argue with him, attempt to point out the absurdity of his argument, but knew that it would serve no purpose.

  “Sally,” Ben said again, almost inaudibly.

  “Okay, okay,” she said.

  Smiling, evidently satisfied that his little speech had silenced the Western whore, the Arab closed his eyes and dozed.

  They drove on, to the north. The sun was going down behind her head, affording her face a modicum of shade even as the back of her head burned.

  They left the crude track an hour later, slogging through sand and along a dried-up river bed before coming to a sun-warped timber hut leaning so much that it resembled a parallelogram.

  Ali dragged Sally from the flat-bed, and then Ben. She stood on the sand, her left leg paralysed with pins and needles. The driver climbed from the cab and moved into the hut. Ali gestured with his rifle. “Inside.”

  She limped away from the truck and stepped through the doorway, into the shade of the hut. The machine-gunner remained where he was on the back of the truck.

  The instant shade was welcome — but the sight of what greeted them, when her eyes adjusted to the half-light, was not.

  The room was empty but for three things.

  A tiny camera mounted on a tripod, what looked like a butcher’s chopping block positioned in the centre of the room and, propped up against the far wall, point down, a long, curved sword.

  ALI PRODDED HER into a corner and ordered them to sit down. Sally squatted, her back against the wall. Just above her head a broken window allowed blistering heat to fall across her cheek. Glass crunched beneath her canvas pumps.

  She glanced at Ben. He bowed his head and closed his eyes.

  Ali and the other Arab stood behind the mounted camera, speaking in hushed tones.

  Sally looked from the sword, to the butcher’s block, and finally at the camera. It came to her that the most barbaric item of the three was the camera, because of what it denoted. The sword and the butcher’s block she could almost understand, but the fact that their deaths were to be recorded, and ultimately broadcast, added a twist of voyeuristic sadism.

  Ali and his colleague appeared to be arguing about the camera. Ali knelt and tinkered with it, speaking in rapid Arabic to the other. He flicked it with the back of his hand and stood, striding to the door and staring out.

  He lit a cigarette and calmly smoked. He appeared bored, and Sally wondered how many other innocent Westerners he had casually slaughtered. There had been an aid worker kidnapped and shot a year ago, she recalled, and three Catholic nuns abducted from a mission in the west of the country earlier this year. Nothing had been heard of them since.

  She had been well aware of the trouble in the area when she accepted the job, but assurances from her employers that the compound would be well guarded, and that not one medical worker had lost their life in the ten years that the Red Cross had been working in northern Uganda, had convinced her that any danger was negligible.

  The second Arab was fiddling with the camera in mounting frustration.

  She found herself saying, “What’s wrong with it? Maybe I can fix it?”

  Ben hissed, “Sally!”

  Ali turned from the door, removed the cigarette from his lips, and said, “You are a woman. How can you know about cameras?”

  “I am a woman, Ali, and I know many things.”

  He sneered. “You know nothing. You put Western drugs into our people, and also Christian evil.”

  She stared at him, restraining the urge to laugh. Soon she would be dead at the hands of this uneducated bigot, and her anger was overcome by despair.

  She stared at the scar on his cheek. “I know, Ali,” she said quietly, “that your scar is infected. If you don’t get it treated, that there will be a possibility that the infection will poison your blood, and you will die. When… when you have finished what you are doing here, take my advice and see a doctor. You need antibiotics and antiseptic cream.”

  He stared at her. “Why are you bothered?” he asked.

  She held his gaze. “When I trained to become a doctor, back in England, I swore something called the Hippocratic Oath. I swore to do all within my medical capabilities to save life…” She paused, then went on, “That’s the difference between us, Ali.”

  He thought about this, then said, “No. The difference is that you are wrong and I am right. You are a Western infidel and I am…” he said a word in Arabic that she didn’t catch.

  She said, “And your god sanctions this taking of life?”

  “God is great. What I do I do for God.”

  She closed her eyes and wondered what her Muslim friends back at Kallani would have to say about his corrupted, twisted form of faith.

  She gestured to the camera with a nod of her head. “Untie me, Ali, and I will try to mend the camera.”

  Even if he consented and untied her, which she doubted, then what were the chances of her reaching the sword, or Ali’s gun which he had lodged beside the sword, and using one of them before they retaliated?

  The idea of being forced to act sent a wave of fear through her.

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sp; Ali appeared to be considering her suggestion, but a second later the Arab gestured to the camera and stood up. He spoke to Ali, who smiled at Sally. “It is working now,” he said.

  Beside her, under his breath, Ben was murmuring a prayer.

  She said, “Why are you doing this, Ali?”

  He said matter-of-factly, “We will kill both of you, and the film we will put on the internet to warn others like you, to say: Westerners, you are not welcome here. If you come, you can expect this, to be killed like pigs.”

  “And do you think this will stop people like me coming to help your people? It didn’t stop me, Ali. Others will come, like me, and our governments, the Chinese, will search for you and eradicate you and others like you.”

  He said, “Chinese,” and spat on the floor.

  Ben whispered to her, “You’re wasting your breath, Sally. They don’t hear what you are saying.”

  “That’s no reason not to say it,” she said.

  She closed her eyes. She thought of Geoff, probably in the air above northern Africa now and blissfully unaware of what was happening to her. She felt sorry for him, and almost sobbed as she thought of him hearing the news.

  She hoped he would be spared ever seeing the film of her death.

  She heard a sound from outside. The Somali appeared at the window and spoke to the Arabs. Sally looked up. The Somali tapped a big, old-fashioned silver watch on his thin wrist. She supposed he was telling them that they were wasting time talking. She found it suddenly impossible to swallow.

  She was wrong about what the Somali was saying, however.

  Ali picked up his rifle and stepped from the hut, followed by the other Arab. She heard the sound of their footsteps as they passed the window.

  She pressed herself against the timber wall and pushed her legs so that she slid up the cracked timber planks. She twisted her head and peered out.

  “What are they doing?” Ben asked her.

  She smiled. “Praying,” she said. “All three of them, praying…”

  Ben began to laugh. “My Lord,” he said. “Oh, my Lord…”

  Sally allowed herself to slip down the wall. Something sharp bit into her buttock. She looked down and saw the broken glass around her boots.

  “Ben,” she said. “Ben, please stop praying and do something useful.”

  His laughter, then, sounded manic. “Like what, Dr Walsh?”

  “Like grab a shard of glass and cut the twine around my wrists.”

  He stared at the shattered glass, then nodded shuffled on his bottom and turned so that his bound hands approached a long shard of glass. His fingers fumbled with it, blindly.

  They manoeuvred so that they were back to back. Sally felt his fingers questing around the area of her wrists as he attempted to locate the twine.

  “Whatever you do,” she said, “don’t slit my wrists. I don’t want to bleed to death.”

  He grunted something. Sally wanted to weep and laugh at the same time.

  She felt the glass bite into the twine, felt the up and down motion of the glass shard as Ben worked it patiently.

  She tried not to hope. How long did Muslim prayers last? She thought back to her friends at Kallani, slipping out of the ward to the makeshift prayer room beside the surgery. They had always seemed to be gone an age, though she suspected they took the opportunity to sneak a quick cigarette at the same time.

  The sword stood on its point against the far wall, its blade glinting in the sunlight slanting through the window. She was struck by its duality, now; a weapon existing in two mutually potential states, as the means of her liberation, or her death.

  She tugged on her binds, attempting to assist Ben’s cutting action. She felt a little give in the twine. She pulled harder; something gave again, the twine fraying.

  Ben grunted. She tugged her wrists apart and the twine separated. She was taken by a quick panic. What to do now? Take up the sword and rush from the hut, and attack while they prayed? She turned and peered cautiously through the window, then swore under her breath.

  “What? Ben asked.

  The Somali was back on the truck, stationed behind the machine gun. The Arabs were standing, brushing sand from their faded military garb.

  She turned and sat down quickly, placing her hands behind her back. She glanced at Ben. Great beads of sweat stood out like dew on his face.

  The Arabs stepped back into the hut. Ali propped his rifle in the corner near the open door. He approached the camera, knelt and fingered the controls. Sally watched the other man move across the hut and take up the sword. He hefted it in both hands, assessing its balance. His face was expressionless as he concentrated on the weapon. He really does not feel a thing, she thought; we might indeed be pigs to the slaughter.

  Ali was looking from Sally to Ben, as if trying to decide which one of them should die first. When his attention returned to the camera, she thought, she would make a run for the gun beside the door.

  She had never in her life fired a weapon. Did the rifle have a safety mechanism, a catch that had to be switched before she could fire? Or could she simply aim the rifle and pull the trigger?

  She decided to shoot the sword-wielder first, and then aim at Ali. She would keep him alive, tell Ben to order the Somali to jump from the truck and move away. She would like to keep Ali alive, deliver him to the authorities…

  She smiled at the absurdity of the thought.

  “You,” Ali snapped, gesturing to Ben. “You first.” He moved from the camera, reached down and took Ben’s arm, dragging him towards the butcher’s block. Ben caught her eyes, desperation and pleading on his face.

  Ali pushed him into a kneeling position before the block, head down. The swordsman stepped forward, took Ben roughly by the scruff of his neck and forced his face towards the curved timber slab. He pushed down brutally. Ben’s chin hit the timber, slid over the edge. His neck looked horribly exposed.

  “Sally…” Ben sobbed.

  The Arab stepped back, positioning himself with a fidgeting two-footed shuffle like a golfer addressing a tee-shot. He adjusted his hold on the hilt of the sword until he’d achieved a comfortable grip.

  I must act, she thought; I must act now.

  She screamed and launched herself forwards. She scattered the camera and tripod, caroming into Ali and knocking him off his feet. She reached out and grabbed the gun. Fumbling with the remarkably heavy weapon, she slipped her forefinger around the curved metal of the trigger.

  She lifted the rifle, swaying, and pointed it at Ali and the other Arab.

  Both men stared at her, frozen. Ali had picked himself up from the floor and was crouched, stilled by the weapon in her hands. The Arab with the sword was poised as if flash-frozen, his expression incredulous.

  Before she thought what to do next, Ali’s eyes lifted, flicked behind her, and in that instant Sally thought: I should not have screamed…

  Something slammed into the back of her head and she yelled in pain and fell to the floor, spilling the rifle.

  Someone kicked her in the stomach — the swordsman — and the Somali who’d attacked her now dragged her in the corner and squatted over her, forcing the muzzle of his pistol against her temple.

  She breathed hard, fighting the pain that throbbed in the back of her skull.

  On the floor, foetal, Ben was sobbing to himself.

  Ali was yelling at her, incoherent with rage, spittle flying.

  The Somali said, “He says, you watch your boyfriend die, then your turn.”

  On the floor, Ben began to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

  Sally curled against the wall and stared at Ben, unable to close her eyes despite knowing what — thanks to her incompetence — was about to happen.

  Ali picked up the camera and reassembled the tripod. He switched it on, caught Sally’s eye and smiled.

  The swordsman stepped up to the block for the second time, adjusted his footing, then his grip, and lifted the sword.

  Sally wanted to cry
out, vent her rage, but all she could do was cower into herself and sob.

  The swordsman raised the weapon above his head, its blade catching the sunlight.

  Sally looked away, biting her lip, steeling herself for the terrible sound of the sword as it hit the back of Ben’s neck.

  The moment seemed to go on forever.

  Through the window, she saw something flash high in the sky. She looked up, experiencing the ridiculous hope that it might be a helicopter, searching for them. She saw nothing more than a glint of light high up, soon gone. The blue sky seemed to have dulled, as if a mist had descended.

  She stared at the timber beside her head, holding herself tight, the point of the Somali’s pistol still pressed, painful and hot, against the skin of her temple.

  “…for ever and ever, Amen…”

  Then silence.

  She wondered if the swordsman was playing a vindictive game, delaying the inevitable so that Ben should suffer all the more.

  She forced her gaze from the wall and stared at the swordsman. He stood, legs apart, sword half raised, a curious expression of puzzlement on his bearded face.

  Ali yelled at him in Arabic.

  Sword still poised, horizontal to his body above Ben’s bared neck, the swordsman replied. He appeared faintly comical, frozen in position, speaking in a low voice.

  Beside her, the Somali sniggered to himself.

  Ali strode over to the swordsman, reached out and slapped his face softly, almost mockingly.

  On the floor at their feet, Ben still murmured the Lord’s Prayer with quiet dignity.

  As she watched, the swordsman turned away from Ben and dropped the sword on the floor, and Sally could only assume that, for some reason, he had been unable to bring himself to murder Ben.

  Yelling his disgust, Ali snatched up the sword, pushed the Arab to one side, and stood over Ben. He raised the sword, and this time Sally could not bring herself to avert her gaze.

  When Ali had raised the sword so that it was at a right angle to his body, he paused. Or, at least, that was what it looked like to Sally. He held the sword at arm’s length, directly above Ben’s neck, and seemed unable to lift the weapon any further. He appeared to be shaking as if with suppressed rage.