MiG-23 Broke my Heart Read online

  MiG-23 Broke my Heart

  Andrew Dawson AK

  The year is 1988.

  Eighteen-year-old Thomas Green, weed smoker and would-be artist, has been plucked from his comfortable, suburban existence in apartheid South Africa and thrown onto the frontline of his country’s war against what it sees as terrorism.

  As a conscript in the South African Defence Force, it’s Thomas’s job to watch the hot, sandy border for signs of the mysterious ‘red menace’.

  There are no bars nearby, no art galleries, no cinemas and no air-conditioned shopping malls. Worst of all, there are no lithe young ladies willing to pose nude for an eager painter-in-training. What Thomas has found in plentiful supply are sand dunes, barbwire fences and landmines. He may as well have landed in hell.

  When a man approaches on foot from Angola, the place where the terrorists are said to come from, Thomas discovers that life can still get a whole lot worse.

  MiG-23 Broke my Heart is a war novel, a tale of action and adventure, a fictional road trip and—deep in its dark heart—a certain kind of love story.

  Please be advised that the novel contains violence, hard-biting humour and sensitive subject matter that some readers may find disturbing.

  This is a full-length novel, which in paperback form would be about two hundred and fifty pages.

  AK Dawson

  MIG-23 BROKE MY HEART

  A War Novel

  For K.

  Chapter 1

  Thomas was bored. He was down on his stomach and elbows in a shallow ditch scooped from the side of a dune, his R4 rifle aimed at the border. He was supposed to be watching for terrorists but his eyes were on the only cloud in the sky, a little cotton swab high over the heat and sand of South-West Africa.

  ‘Hey, bru?’ he said, without looking away from his cloud. ‘Want to smoke a joint?’

  ‘Shut up, surfer boy. You’re not on Miami Beach.’

  Thomas turned and squinted up to the lip of the dune. There, silhouetted against the sun like the periscope of some buried U-Boat, was the head, shoulders and rifle of one Pieter ‘Skeletor’ Venter. He was in the same nutria-brown uniform as Thomas and topped with the same standard-issue bush hat, but his uniform was free of creases and all the floppiness had been starched from his hat.

  ‘You sure?’ Thomas had been brought up to be polite. ‘It’s Durban Poison.’

  Skeletor said nothing. He was obviously too busy looking for something to kill.

  Rolling onto his right side, Thomas reached into his webbing. He produced a soft-cover NG Kerk Bible that he thumbed open to a random page, bent back against the spine to keep from closing and wedged under his thigh so that half of it stuck out. He dug in the pouch on his waist, the one that should have held spare ammo, and pulled out a bundle of newspaper that he unfolded and shook as though it were a spice bottle. A line of Durban’s finest poison settled in the spine of the Bible. Gently, Thomas coaxed the heads to form an orderly queue on the far side of the left-hand page. The stalks he brushed away. He rolled the page into a tight cone and tore it from the book. With a lick of the translucent paper, his work was done and he popped the joint into his mouth. The whole time, his right hand never strayed from his rifle.

  ‘You’re going to rot in hell,’ Skeletor declared from on high.

  ‘Hell?’ Thomas asked through pursed lips. ‘Be like Miami Beach compared to this place.’ He sparked a match with his left hand, held it to the joint and sucked.

  ‘You may as well light a signal flare.’

  ‘Can you smoke those?’ Thomas shook the match dead.

  ‘You should try,’ Skeletor said. ‘Put one in your mouth and let it off.’

  Thomas went back to staring at his cloud. He inhaled and exhaled, blowing smoke to join it.

  Then he saw movement, a flicker in the top right corner of the rolling sandscape. He blinked, hoping it was a hallucination, then swatted, praying it might be a fly.

  ‘Chips,’ Skeletor said in warning. He saw it too.

  Thomas stubbed out the joint, grabbed his rifle with both hands and watched the speck grow from the direction of Angola – communist-controlled Angola. As it tracked through the desert towards him, it became bigger, more defined and definitely human. It had to be a terrorist. Who else could slip through the tangle of barbed wire and minefields just over the horizon? Who else would want to?

  Wishing he’d taken more time to dig his foxhole, Thomas shrank down and tried to make himself small. His trigger finger trembled as he stared along the barrel of his rifle. The only thing he had ever shot at was a target in training, and he usually missed.

  The terrorist was running, leaving tracks in the sand, a zigzag pattern as though he was frantic and delirious and had lost his way. He disappeared behind the closest sand dune.

  ‘I’m going to take him out,’ Skeletor said.

  Lurching over the crest of the dune, the terrorist became visible again. His hands were in the air, waving. He must have spotted them.

  ‘Hang on, bru.’ To get Skeletor’s attention, Thomas raised his own hand like he was back in class, about to ask a question. ‘He’s signalling to us.’

  The terrorist was close enough to make out the words on his T-shirt: ‘Bob Marley’. He was close enough to see the details of his face. That wide-mouthed expression reminded Thomas of a painting he’d studied at school only six months before. It was of a stretched-out figure on a bridge with his mouth contorted and his hands up in distress. As the terrorist hurtled towards him, Thomas tried to think what the painting was called. The artist was a guy by the name of Monk or Milk. No, that wasn’t it. It was Mink. That didn’t sound right either. If he hadn’t sparked up that joint he’d be able to remember.

  The terrorist ran on, drawing a jagged line in the sand towards their position.

  Thomas noticed something else about him and said, ‘Hey, Skeletor, I don’t think he’s armed.’

  A rifle cracked. The terrorist snapped back like a cartoon dog reaching the end of his chain, and he fell, tumbling to the base of the dune.

  ‘Got him,’ Skeletor said, his shot still ringing across the lifeless landscape.

  Scream, Thomas suddenly remembered. That’s what the painting was called. The guy who painted it, his name was Munch. He was afraid of women, thought they were sinister creatures out to rob him of vital fluids, suck him dry and leave him for dead.

  ‘You go first,’ Skeletor said.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘I shot him.’

  ‘What if I step on a landmine?’

  ‘We can only hope, surfer boy.’

  Thomas spun around and opened his mouth to tell Skeletor to get stuffed. But instead of speaking, he started shifting from his foxhole. Staring down at him was the unblinking, 5.56mm eye of an R4 barrel. You couldn’t argue with that.

  Keeping his own rifle trained on the terrorist, or whatever he was, Thomas slid down the dune. He tiptoed, listening for the click of a landmine and waiting for the terrorist to rise up and attack.

  ‘Hurry up!’ Skeletor shouted. ‘Or you’ll join him.’

  As if barefoot in the hot sand, Thomas sprinted the rest of the way. When he stopped, before the next dune began, he drew a deep breath and wiped the sweat from his eyes.

  The terrorist lay on his back on the flat ground, his legs splayed open. His sandals were cut from car tyres, the straps carefully-threaded strips of leather. He wore suit trousers, rolled high at the ankles. Bob Marley, all wrapped up in dreadlocks, gazed serenely from his chest.

  Thomas swallowed, took another long breath and made himself look at the terrorist’s face, to see if he was still alive.

  It was a young face, unmarked by wrinkles, but on the smooth black skin of the terrorist’s forehead lay a neat bull’s-eye. His neck was twisted to one side and at the back of his head a bolognaise sauce of blood, brain and skull was seeping into the sand.

  ‘Hey, nice T-shirt,’ Skeletor said. He walked up and gave the terrorist a nudge with his boot. ‘Clean shot too.’

  Flies were already starting to swarm.

  ‘I think he was unarmed.’ Thomas looked around at the sand and rocks for a weapon.

  ‘He must have dropped his AK when he saw us.’ Skeletor gave the terrorist another nudge for good luck.

  ‘He was unarmed. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘So what?’ Skeletor’s sneer pressed his cauliflower ears up against his bush hat.

  ‘He was unarmed,’ Thomas repeated. This was a big deal, wasn’t it? Was he the only one who saw that? He looked to Bob Marley for support.

  Bob Marley held his silence.

  ‘Go wait in your foxhole.’ Skeletor got down on his knees and started yanking the T-shirt off the terrorist. ‘I don’t need you any more.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What do you think? His sandals look too small for me.’ Skeletor kept pulling at his souvenir.

  ‘But he was unarmed, bru.’

  Skeletor looked up, leaving Bob Marley creased over the terrorist’s head. ‘I’m going to count to ten, surfer boy. If you’re not back in your foxhole by the time I get there, I’m going to shoot you. Is that clear?’

  Thomas couldn’t stop staring at the T-shirt.

  ‘One, two…’

  He watched as flies darted in and out of the neck opening.

  ‘…three, four…’ Skeletor raised his rifle and took aim.

  It was the smell not the threat that made Thomas want to leave. Noticing it, he covered his no
se and drew away. He retraced the footprints he had made for Skeletor to use as a track through the potential minefield.

  ‘…five, six, seven…’

  He curled up in his foxhole, away from the stench of a young body with all the life squeezed out of it.

  ‘…eight, nine, ten. You’re lucky, surfer boy!’

  But Thomas didn’t feel very lucky. He felt hot, itchy and unsettled. Why him? Why did he have to defend the border against this mysterious red menace, a threat he hadn’t even heard of until a few months ago? He wouldn’t have cared less if the terrorist had trotted past their position, made it all the way to Pretoria and pissed on the stairs of the Union Buildings. He really, really didn’t want to be here. Anywhere, even back home with his overprotective mom and overbearing dad, would be better than this.

  Shifting to his side, he reached for his Bible.

  Chapter 2

  The distant snort of a diesel engine found Thomas hunched in his ditch, desperately sucking the last drag from his last joint of the day. He wasn’t nearly stoned enough to go back, but he pushed himself to his feet one-handed and dusted off his uniform. ‘Here’s the cavalry,’ he said.

  ‘I know, surfer boy. You think I’m blind?’ Skeletor had dragged the body over their footprints, leaving a smear in the sand, and was posed at the bottom of the dune with one foot on the terrorist’s bare torso.

  Thomas flicked his stub of burning paper to the ground then slid down to watch the Buffel charge through the desert.

  The heavily-armoured vehicle kicked up dust against the darkening sky until, with a sandy skid, it stopped and a side plate flew down. Whooping and cheering troopies poured out to congratulate Skeletor on his first kill. With a ‘One, two, three!’ the terrorist was hoisted up and strapped like fresh game to the front grill. Coils of sisal were wound tight around his neck, arms and legs, but that didn’t stop his head lolling forward as if he was drunk, exposing the gaping, sand-caked exit wound. Thomas winced as Skeletor gave a final twist to the knot around the terrorist’s neck.

  Inside, Thomas found a space between two sunburnt, tired-eyed troopies and braced himself as the engine started and the game of human pinball began. He shook in his seat, smashed into his neighbours and rattled against the wall behind while the big transport galloped through humps, bumps and what felt like a herd of zebra. The Buffel troop carrier could withstand a landmine, shrug off a hand grenade and take a bullet without flinching, but it sure as hell wasn’t comfortable.

  Skeletor didn’t seem to mind though. He spent the journey chattering to all who would listen about how he had killed the terrorist. ‘Should have seen him,’ he shouted above the engine noise. ‘Armed to the teeth.’

  ‘Jesus, Skeletor,’ a trooper muttered beside Thomas. ‘Jy’s a legend.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Skeletor snapped. ‘That’s the Lord’s name and I’ll not have you take it in vain.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Instead of going straight back to base, the driver took them on a detour through the nearby village, a one-goat town of tin shacks and mud huts huddled around a fickle waterhole. Thomas gazed through Plexiglas at the inhabitants, mostly women and children, who stared without expression, hands slack at their sides, at the macabre warning tied to the front of the Buffel.

  ‘Ja, take a good look,’ Skeletor said, even though the villagers couldn’t hear. ‘This is what happens when you support the bad guys.’

  Thomas wanted to tear off his uniform and cover his face in shame.

  Outside the village lay a rubbish dump strewn with plastic, bottles, bones and other waste that couldn’t be recycled as building material. This was where their driver chose to stop.

  Skeletor and three others jumped out and untied the terrorist. Thomas stayed in the Buffel, watching from the window while they dragged the shirtless man to a patch of oily sand and doused him with fuel from an orange canister. A match was thrown. Prongs of brilliant yellow stabbed at the sky, followed by sooty smoke, a fire that could easily be seen from the village.

  Even from inside the Buffel, the smell of charred meat was strong, reminding Thomas of the farewell braai his dad had thrown the night before he reported to Natal Command. He dropped his head between his legs and tried not to breathe.

  ‘You missed a beautiful bonfire,’ Skeletor said when he came back, troopies chuckling like naughty schoolboys around him.

  Thomas didn’t look up until the side panel slammed shut and they started moving, their hearts-and-minds tour of the village complete.

  When the Buffel stopped next, its complement of troopies shot from it like fizz escaping a shaken Coke bottle. Thomas stumbled out last and instead of following the tide of soldiers going back to barracks, took a moment to steady himself. Maybe he was more stoned than he had thought.

  He was in the vehicle depot, surrounded by sleeping trucks, jeeps and armoured cars. Branching out from this dusty square were wide, well-lit streets that led to the hard-packed sand walls of the base. In every street he saw brown-uniformed soldiers rushing to inspections, the mess hall or the post office, or simply running because an officer had told them to.

  Moon Base Alpha, aka Fort Retief, had been his home for the last few weeks, his reward for completing basics. It was an old whaling station tucked away in the top-left corner of South-West Africa. Nearby was a beach lapped by water so cold it made sopranos of the deepest baritones, and otherwise the place was surrounded for hundreds of kilometres by sand, sad little villages, picked-clean bone and more sand. There were no bars, no cinemas and no pretty girls interested in posing for a young artist – no reason at all to apply for a weekend pass. And the worst thing was that he was stuck here for another seventeen months and eight days. Even then, when his duty to his country was discharged, he would still be eligible for call-up to more camps like this one. It was enough to make Thomas wish he had studied for his final maths paper and made it to university, even for the engineering degree that his dad had insisted he apply for instead of fine art. At least that way he would have been drafted into officers’ training after graduation, or gone to the air force or navy instead.

  He chose the widest street, the one that ran to the main gates and trudged down it, saluting all he passed. It was army custom to streek, stiffen up, and salute those with rank, and to Thomas, a lowly Rifleman, that meant just about anyone who wasn’t him.

  After making it to bungalow 4E, he crossed the veranda and stopped at the doorway.

  Skeletor was already inside, strutting back and forth beside his bunk at the far end of the long room, his rifle and trophy T-shirt held aloft, the platoon gathered round like flies attracted to the scent of death. ‘I ordered the terr to stop,’ he told his audience, ‘but he kept coming. Crazed look in his eyes. Armed with rocket launchers, grenades, you name it.’

  Still at the doorway, Thomas folded his arms. ‘I was there, Skeletor. I saw what happened.’

  The platoon fell silent. Skeletor turned slowly, lowered his rifle to body level and emitted a death ray of a look.

  Thomas swallowed, all the moisture gone from his mouth. ‘Ja, like I said, guys, I was there. Skeletor was a real legend today. Really brave.’ He made himself smile.

  The buzz around Skeletor resumed. The crowd’s orbit grew tighter. Back slaps, high-fives and handshakes were exchanged as Skeletor recounted how he had blown the heavily-armed terrorist’s brains clean out of his head.

  Thomas turned away. He walked down the road, saluting as he went, and crossed over to the prefab building that housed the post office. It wasn’t as if he ever got mail but he didn’t want to be around Skeletor at the moment, at least not until his drug-induced sensitivity wore off, and this was as good a time waster as any.

  ‘Number?’ asked the potato-faced Lieutenant behind the counter.

  ‘8800421567. I was on patrol, so I missed the call.’

  The Lieutenant rose slowly from his plastic chair and dug through the hessian sacks dumped on the floor. ‘Thomas Green?’

  ‘That’s me, sir.’

  ‘What’s it worth to you?’

  ‘Five?’ His immediate thought was that it was a letter from his parents. He had received nothing from them, not even a postcard, since he had come here, and it was beginning to feel as if they had forgotten about him.