ICON OF THE FIGHT

Chapter 17

The speaker was a thin woman who may have been thirteen or thirty. She was dark skinned with a narrow and angular face. Her eyes twinkled with mirth and excitement as she looked at us from the behind the wheel of the van. She extended a bony hand to me and gripped me enthusiastically.

"Hie, I'm Erin Erika, cyber expert par excellence. The Resistance's resident genius as relates to all matters digital, electronic, technical and mechanical. Also your number one fan! I mean, I love you dude! J Kits to the world. I'm really flying right now. J Kits in person, in my old van. I mean, who woulda thought? Man…"

"Hey, Erin, think you can get us out of here now?" Chido said patiently.

Erin gave a snappy salute. "Yes, ma'am, you got it."

She swiveled in one movement and started the motor. She quickly reversed then eased out of the parking bay, flooring the gas pedal as we headed west out of the CBD. She drove like a race car driver, drifting around the turns, looping around slower vehicles and dashing against the traffic lights. The van was apparently deceptively in good condition. It took the irregular humps in the road gracefully, its shock absorbers cushioning the ride for us. Erin apparently spoke the way she drove.

"You know," she said over her shoulders, "I always believed music has the power to heal us. And I don't mean individually. Whole countries can be brought together by good music. All differences put aside, all communication problems forgotten. I mean with a good tune, it don't matter what you're singing about. Everybody will just dance or nod in time to the beat. You maybe Zulu or Afrikaans, French or Swahili, Chinese or an Arab. You just go mnm..mnn.." She started nodding her head up and down, rolling her shoulders and shaking her upper body. "You know, like this...dah dah ting ting dah ting ting dah dah."

She whipped the wheel to the left around a corner and the van screeched across the patched blacktop, nearly throwing my head through the window. "Sorry, J Kits, I forgot to warn you to fasten your seat belt."

I looked at Chido who seemed relaxed in her seat, her belt clipped on and one hand holding to an overhead handle. "Does she always drive like this?" I asked her.

"Ever since I've known her. Sometimes she drives while typing on her tablet."

From up front, Erin laughed. "You don't have to worry, man. Chido and I, we got you. And when we got you, you're safe."

"If you say so, Erin." I tried to believe her, believe I wasn't in danger of being thrown out through the window while moving at a hundred and twenty kilometres per hour. "So how long have you two known each other?"

"Two years," Chido answered. "Give or take."

"What she mean is," Erin said," twenty four and half months ago, she found me and recruited me to work for her.  And let me tell you, I wasn't exactly in a working frame of mind. I was struggling with a lot. Hell, I had no life, man. Drugs and alcohol were my food. I lost so much weight I looked like a walking skeleton." She glanced at me and smiled. "She may not look like it, but Chido is a very capable person. She wrenched me from the clutches of Sheol and brought me out to the light." A laugh. "That sound like a line from an ass-kissing testimonial, right? But it's true…"

A loud and persistent beeping sounded from the car's speakers.

Erin barely slowed down the van, but reached over to the front passenger seat, lifted up a wide tablet and placed it on her lap. She kept one eye on the road while she tapped the screen with one hand. "It's the data access cables you guys planted at BIO, I am now in their communications. BIO has its own signal carrier, which is why I couldn't get in from the outside, without the DACs in place. See, they act as a remote spyhole, which gives me access to all outgoing and incoming communications. And right now, we got an outgoing call."

She tapped once more, routing the sound to the car's speakers. We heard the in-call ringing of a phone. It rang for a long time before it was answered. The voice which spoke was familiar.

"Hello." It was scratchy and there was the sound of gunfire in the background.

"Lieutenant Herman, this is the director." I felt Chido stiffen beside. When I looked at her, her mouth was closed in a tight line and her jaw was clenched.

"That's Mtsvodo," she whispered with surprising fierceness. In all the time I had known her, she had never shown this much emotion.

"Go ahead, sir." Herman said on the phone.

"What's your situation?" the other voice, belonging to Mtsvodo, asked.

"I am outside the wallls of Fort Rhodes with eighteen men under Sergeant Gombwe in my position. We have one personell carrier, one Humwee and I have my truck with me. The rebels have missed us. We're in position to take them from the rear. With surprise on our side we can…"

"Never mind that, I want you to wait until they are retreating. Then you ambush a detachment and capture one of their officers. When you do, find out how they acquired their uniforms and weapons. Do that right away and report back. Is that understood?"

"That is understood."

The call terminated and a relative quietness filled the van.

"How far are we from target?" Chido broke the silence.

"Less than half a mile," Erin said. "Before you ask, your equipment in a briefcase on seat behind you."

I was in the dark."What target?What equipment?" I looked out at the flashing scenery. I hadn't noticed before, but I knew this road. It forked right from the one that led home, to Jare. It went slightly north west, running besides a low range of hills. "Where are we going?

"Mugwa hill," Erin replied," you know, just above the now extinct Mugwa town."

I shuddered. Mugwa held terrible memories for me. That was where the war started for me. While tanks rolled in the streets of N'dama and thousands of armed soldiers marched alongside, I was at the Mugwa town centre, strutting around a makeshift stage and belting out my hits to a crowd of about thirty people, courtesy of Vin-com, the country's leading mobile network provider. One minute I was crooning a Vin-com jingle, the next there was a crash and smoke and dust. Went everything cleared, where the crowd had been standing was now a fiery crater. A second later the stage splintered and I was knocked unconscious. Eighteen dead, five injured and I came out physically unscathed. But mentally, psychologically, that was another story.

I was jarred to the present by the hard braking of the van. It stopped and Chido pushed me out before her. She had ditched the purse and now carried a black briefcase. She grabbed my hand and led me around the van to the shoulder of  road.

Before us was Mugwa Hill, low and sparsely forested with African mahogany, mopane and baobab trees. The road behind us was deserted, no traffic going either way. Though it was only around seven thirty in the morning, the sun was already throwing down its merciless heat on us. There was no breeze to cool or dilute the temperature or move the leafless tree branches.

"Lead the way, my friend," Chido said, nudging me.

"Ummm, where are we going? I don't see a path."

"You don't need a path, Jos. You got shoes, right?" She grinned.

I took two steps into the bush, and Erin suddenly shrieked. "BOMB!"

I leapt two feet in the air. Erin cracked up with laughter at my expense. "Damn you, Erin," I said with feeling.

"Ha ha ha, you should have scene your face. Man, you were shit scared!" She doubled over again for a while longer, then calmed down a little. "Take this, you need it."

In her hands was an enormous gun, short barrelled with a big magazine. She gave it to me and pointed to the trigger. "It already loaded an the safety is off. Just keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to do some real damage."

I nodded, feeling the metallic weight of the automatic in my hand.

"Let's go to the top," Chido said.