The Soldier who Said No by Chris Marnewick Page A

he head for the river first and replenish his water, or continue to follow the tracks leading back towards Vila Nova Armada?
    In the bush you have to improvise, as De Villiers’s training had emphasised. He recalled an uncle regaling them as children with the feats of a notorious goat thief who had roamed across parts of the Transvaal and Botswana in the sixties. The legend had it that he could open a pair of police handcuffs behind his back with a matchstick and that no police cell could hold him long enough for the Periodical Court Magistrate to try him. De Villiers’s uncle had laughed as he shook his head. ‘You know,’ he had said, ‘that man had more tricks in him than the leader of a troop of baboons. He could walk for miles on the fences between farms and the bloodhounds would be lost, unable to follow a spoor on the ground. He tied his shoes to his feet back-to-front, so the trackers would be following his spoor in one direction, while he was making good his escape in the opposite direction.’
    De Villiers obliterated the signs of his presence before he sat down where the radio operator had been. He removed his boots – they were similar to those worn by the 32 Battalion soldiers, khaki canvas laceup boots, with a series of eyelets. It took him a while to tie his boots to his feet back-to-front. When he tried to walk on them, he saw that he had tied the boots to the wrong feet. The right boot would have to go on the left foot. The second time was easier, and after wiping away the spoor left by his mismatched boots, he was ready for the journey.
    De Villiers carefully took his bearings and folded the map away before he started walking, his eyes scanning the tracks from side to side. He made his way slowly, carefully walking in the tracks left by the captain and his men, hiding his footprints within the broad swath they had cut while tracking him.
    Two hours later, De Villiers approached the evacuation zone with extreme caution.
    ‘I smell you,’ a voice said in Afrikaans. It was weak and came from somewhere to the front and left, near a clump of tall trees.
    ‘Who are you?’ De Villiers asked cautiously.
    ‘They killed me.’ The voice was weak.
    ‘But you’re speaking to me,’ De Villiers said as he edged closer.
    ‘I’m hungry.’
    By now De Villiers had closed in on the man. ‘I greet you,’ he said.
    It was a Bushman. He was hanging upside down from the branches of a mopane tree, a carpet of bronze leaves under his head. He was wearing army fatigues, the khaki brown trousers and shirt, but was barefoot and hatless.
    De Villiers studied the scene from a distance. He skirted the tree carefully, looking for a trap. There was none. Whoever had done this had not expected anyone to come looking for the Bushman. The man had been beaten severely and there was a pool of dried blood directly under his head amongst the dead leaves and twigs.
    ‘Are you alright?’ De Villiers asked, approaching the Bushman. He angled his head to examine the man’s face more closely. There was blood in every crease of the wrinkled face.
    ‘I’m alive again, friend.’ The voice was weary but firm.
    ‘I’ll help you get down.’
    The man’s hands had been tied behind his back. De Villiers stooped to remove the Leatherman from its sheath and quickly cut through the polyester chord. The Bushman rubbed his wrists as De Villiers contemplated ways to cut the rope to free his legs. The Bushman was suspended so that his head was nearly two metres above the ground, just high enough for a lion or leopard to get hold of this unexpected bounty, but too high for De Villiers to cut through the rope without having to climb the tree. The trunk was rough and straight, with the first bifurcation at least four metres off the ground.
    He contemplated giving the man the knife, but the Bushman’s hands appeared to be lifeless and clumsy.
    ‘I’m going to jump and cut the rope and you’re going to fall down.’
    ‘Please cut me,’ he