He was still sitting there half an hour later when Constable Francis came over and gently nudged him.

“Come, Patrick, let me take you to my place. There is nothing to be gained by staying here.”

Francis led the unresisting Fawkes to the Bushmaster and tenderly deposited him in the passenger’s seat.

As the vehicle passed through the gate, Fawkes stared straight ahead, did not look back. He knew he would never see or set foot on his farm again.

17

Although it seemed as though his head had barely hit the pillow, Hiram Lusana had been asleep for seven hours when he was roused by the knock at his door. The wristwatch on the bed table read six o’clock. He cursed, rubbed the sleep from his coffee-brown eyes, and sat up.

“Come in.”

The knock came again.

“I said, Come in,” he grunted loudly.

Captain John Mukuta entered the room and stood stiffly at attention. “Sorry to wake you, sir, but section fourteen has just returned from its reconnaissance of Umkono.”

“So what’s the emergency? I can study their report later.”

Mukuta’s eyes remained fixed on a spot on the wall. “The patrol experienced trouble. The section leader was shot and lies critically wounded in the hospital. He insists on reporting to you and no one else.”

•— Operation Wild Rose I 77

“Who is he?”

“His name is Marcus Somala.”

“Somala?” Lusana’s brow knitted. He got out of bed. “Tell him I’m coming.”

The captain saluted and left, softly closing the door behind him, pretending not to have noticed the second shape curled beneath the satin sheets.

Lusana reached over and pulled away the top sheet. Felicia Collins slept like a statue. Her short Afro hair gleamed in the half light and her lips were puffy and parted. Her skin was the color of cocoa and her conical breasts, with their dark, full nipples, heaved with each deep breath.

He smiled and left the sheet off. Still half asleep, he weaved into the bathroom and splashed handfuls of cold water on his face. The eyes that stared back from the mirror were streaked with red. The face around them was lined and haggard from a night heavily laced with liquor and sex. He tenderly patted the battle-worn features with a towel, returned to the bedroom, and dressed.

Lusana was a small, wiry man, medium boned and lighter skinned than any man in the army of Africans he commanded. “American tan” is what they called it behind his back. And yet any remarks about his color or his offhand stateside manner were not uttered out of disrespect. His men looked up to him with a primitive sort of awe of the supernatural. He had the air of assurance that most lightweight fighters have in their early careers; some might call it an air of arrogance. He took a last fond look at Felicia, sighed, and walked across the camp to the hospital.