had been uprooted when the tree had fallen. He very carefully got to his knees and peered around the root structure.
Here lies Master Sergeant William Thomas, who took a look when he should have had enough fucking sense to keep his fucking head down.
He could see nothing but the dead cows; the two Simbas he had taken down were hidden by the bush.
Neither could he see Sergeant First Jette or any of the other shooters. There was the sound of gunfire in the distance.
Then came the sound of something crashing through the bush, and he scanned the area quickly. The first life he saw was three cows, running as fast as they could.
Fuck it, those cows never did anything to me.
Then three more women, and behind them two, three, five, seven armed males.
He debated moving the lever from SINGLE SHOT to AUTO, decided to leave it on SINGLE SHOT, and moved back up the tree trunk so that he could steady his left hand on it.
He had just taken a bead on the chest of the first of the armed males when there was a deafening burst of fire from an FN rifle on AUTOMATIC. It was right over his head, and he turned and saw two of the shooters, standing erect, firing at the Simbas.
When he turned and looked for the Simbas again, they were nowhere in sight.
He issued an order.
“Get up here behind the log, and put those weapons on single shot,” he ordered.
His voice sounded funny, and it took him a moment to remember—this was not the first time this had happened to him—that he had been deafened by the weapons firing so close to his head.
The two shooters obeyed his order, taking up positions behind the trunk of the fallen tree.
And then, for perhaps three minutes—which seemed much longer—absolutely nothing happened.
There was no sound of gunfire, no noises in the bush, and there was nothing, human or animal, to be seen.
And then Sergeant First Jette appeared, far to the right. He looked around, and Thomas sensed he was looking for him. Thomas raised his arm over the tree trunk and waved it until Jette saw it and waved back. Then Jette signaled that they should move down the trail in the direction of Colonel Coizi’s men.
Thomas stood up and signaled for Jette to go first, he would bring up the rear.
The odds are that some nervous soul is going to take a shot first, and identify the target later, at anything coming down that trail. Let them shoot another African, not Mrs. Thomas’s favorite son, Billy.
“All right, get going,” he ordered the two shooters with him. “Form on Sergeant First Jette.”
And you can relax, fellows. You can run off into the bush if you want to. Doubting Thomas has done all the killing he wants to for today.
Two minutes—a hundred yards—later, there was the sound of a single shot. As a reflex action, Thomas dropped to the ground.
He could see Jette standing up, pointing his rifle at the ground, and then firing. Jette moved twenty yards and fired again at the ground.
Christ, he’s shooting the wounded!
Well, maybe they’re already dead, but he’s making sure.
It’s a lucky thing I ordered him on point. I don’t think I would have wanted to do that. I don’t think I could have done that.
He got to his feet and started walking again.
There was the sound of single shots being fired from what sounded like several hundred yards away.
These are not nice people. They cut Clarence Withers’s head off. And his leg. And I suppose there’s a good chance that at least some of them were in Stanleyville, where they cut people’s livers out and ate them.
But I still don’t like the idea of shooting them to make sure they’re dead.
The truth seems to be, Billy Thomas, that you’re not nearly as tough as you like to think you are.
“I will leave Lieutenant Breque in charge here,” Colonel Coizi said. “To dispose of the Simba bodies and collect their weapons. You and I and Sergeant First Jette will return to Outpost George in the jeep.”
"Yes, sir,” Thomas said.
“I would like to send a truck back for the dead cattle; it would be a waste to leave it here.”
“Yes, sir.”
The shooter who had been carrying Thomas’s radio walked up to them.
Thomas switched it on.
“Birddog, you there?”
“I was beginning to think you were some lion’s lunch,” Geoff Craig’s voice came back immediately. “What’s going on down there?”