29 Jul 2009 |
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Nkiru woke up to the small sounds of the African morning. A mixed symphony of birds chirping, hoofed animals bleating all underscored by the tell tale hiss of insects buzzing as they respond to the Suns initial attack of what would soon become the daily roast of everything below. Immediately she noticed the small but persistent trickle of blood that meandered down her thigh and wondered if she had been hit the night before, or if it was menstrual and the start of the second period of her young life. Carefully she pried apart the French Tiger Striped Battle dress jacket and inspected her body. Starved for weeks now her chest bones lay below her ebony skin in an unhealthy and unnatural way, while her breasts once perky and the size of huge guavas were beginning to flatten out as her body continued to feed on itself. Finally she found the cut right below her left buttock and biting on her lower lip pushed down on the edge of the wound for puss or any other signs of infection just as she had been taught at Steiners Kommando Camp at Isiala Ngwa and happily acknowledged the bright red blood that bubbled to the surface. “Thank God” she whispered “No major infection yet” and efficiently bound the wound with a strip liberated from her already tattered pants……and then she heard them. Ducking low into the ditch she rolled over on her back and slipped into the cappuccino colored water of the pond that served the rice fields that had once thrived here before the folly of war. Holding her breath she submerged favoring her left hip and ignoring a slippery eel that curled up her ankle and swam towards and into the bank of Elephant grass that now offered her better protection. They were 3 of them and immediately she knew that the one in the middle was the most dangerous of them all and was going to cause her the most trouble. Like her he carried an AK 47 but unlike hers that was Russian, she could tell that his was Chinese from the embossed wood work. Nevertheless he carried it with the familiarity of a well practiced professional, barrel at navel level and sweeping the muzzle in precise arcs as he carefully waded through the mud.
These were Adekunle’s own Dobermans who upon the launch of Operation OAU had been unleashed On Biafra’s 3 remaining major cities, Owerri, Umuahia and Aba with such viciousness on the local populace that one would have to go back all the way to the Belgian Congo to match it in severity and ruthlessness. As she squinted and watched their approach with the savvy patience a Mongoose normally reserves for a Cobra she quickly rehashed in her mind the sequence of events that had led up to this very point. Held in check by the ensnared Biafran’s, sub-Sahara’s mightiest army had embarrassingly been fought to a stand still during the last couple of weeks. Internal strife between the High Command in Lagos and some of her commanders in the field, the absolutely inept refurbishing of Royal Army supplies that existed in the Ikeja warehouses to the front, one of the wettest rainy seasons in modern history and a rebel army that seemed to thrive on just the fumes of high morale despite the pounding she was receiving from both ground and air ; had created a tangled web for the same army that had moved through Port Harcourt with relative ease just months ago. But then the tide had turned. The weather broke, the NAF replaced her Egyptian MIG pilots with real ones and the new Russian Howitzers with an abandon and vast variety of shells had finally arrived courtesy of the Nigerian Navy. First Umuahia was flattened after huge loses and then Aba as well, but Owerri-even though initially over run- was retaken by the Biafran’s who rejuvenated with the huge arms cache they had captured set out with the full intent of turning the city into the Nigerian Army’s Stalingrad. The Black Scorpion himself General Adekunle was past being furious. Known for his love of drama - I mean how else you could explain Prussian riding boots in the middle of equatorial Africa - had thrown repeated tantrums and virtually flogged his tired troops into one ill fated attack after another. However, unlike with General “Air Raid “Achuzie on the other side who was flogging basically teenagers and where this tactic worked, Adekunle was flogging mostly hardened and much older criminals let out of Yoruba jails just a year ago, and they simply didn’t appreciate that kind of motivation and refused to respond. To make matters worse that Calabar punk Etuk was now stealing his God designated glory, by pulling off a series of brilliant pincer movements straight out of the Sandhurst manual and now threatened to take Owerri by way of Port-Harcourt, through Elele, Awarra, Asa, Ohoba, Avu, and Obinze . By simply deflating some of the Air from the tires of his Saladin Ferret cars he had crossed the huge quick sand like bog made worse by the rains that had protected Owerri from the South East and had actually fought his way within sights of the great Cathedral before being beaten back by the Biafran obstacle course and their Buffors that their master engineer Ozigbu, had somehow put on huge tippers and which their newly created S Battalion moved about with amazing efficiency . Under the withering fire of Swedish steel, and the detonation of at least 20 of the notorious Biafran Claymore the “Ogbunigwe” Etuk never flustered but did the wise thing and checked his advance.. Adekunle would not give him a 2nd chance to prove what the rest of the world already knew. Namely that Etuk was the best Nigerian Commander in the war period. For 2 weeks he and those who had his ear, including a Russian Air Marshal had huddled around maps of Owerri and strategized and re strategized ignoring frantic calls from Lagos concerned that everyone had lost contact with 3MC’s entire 16th Brigade. Finally at 3.00 am on the 15th day he brought his riding crop down on the map in front him “whack “ sending Gulder beer and sandwiches airborne and making his already jittery batsman jump into action. “This is how we will do it – all we need is for our spotters to make it safely here” he said stabbing at the map and marking the place called Nekede with a Titus sardine fingerprint. That was a day ago. Meanwhile in real time right in the shadow of the Agricultural School of Nekede Nkiru gingerly moved her weight from the bad leg to the good one, and shifted the focus of her lens on the next of the 3 Commandoes approaching her.
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She slowly raised her weapon and honed the scope in on the patch on his sleeve that would tell her exactly who he was. Suspicion turned into fury and then into cold calculated fear as she recognized the dreaded Octopus insignia of the Nigerian Armies 3 Marine Commandoes. She was facing the enemies answer to her own Kommando unit for the first time and she realized that she would be given no quarter especially if caught sporting one of Steiners Death head patches as she did. 
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