Rogue's March by W. T. Tyler Read Free Book Online Page A

Wouldn’t have him.”
    Their conversation had been interrupted by the arrival of the sedan from the internal security sub-office to take Reddish away to the army depot. There he examined a cache of weapons discovered at an army checkpoint aboard a trader’s truck south of Uvira along the lake. They were concealed beneath bags of rice and tinned goods marked with Chinese characters, smuggled in from Tanzania. The major at Kindu had reported to his headquarters in the capital that he’d seized a shipment of Chinese-supplied weapons and rations intended for old rebels in the bush preparing to reopen the insurrections. The President had been alarmed at the report; so had Kadima, the interior minister, and Bintu, the President’s chef du cabinet .
    Reddish had been dubious. He’d told Kadima he would look at the weapons himself.
    â€œ Chinois ,” the army captain muttered, prodding a mud-caked carbine with his foot. He had a broad, stupid face; the whites of his eyes were muddy, the pupils dilated, like a hashish addict’s.
    The cache of weapons lay on a wooden pallet in an ordnance repair shop, half covered by a filthy tarpaulin. In the dim light of the shop, Reddish found what he’d expected to find—a potpourri of rusty old ordnance the rebellions had given back after a few years—old Belgian rifles, German 9-mm Schmeisser submachine guns, Italian 9-mm Berettas, and two Danish 9-mm Madsen submachine guns. The automatic pieces were once mercenary hardware, stolen, sold, stolen, and sold again, most recently to the trader who’d smuggled in the Chinese rice and tinned goods from across the lake. A few had a coating of fresh light oil, but the remainder had been heavily coated with fish oil and stank as oppressively as the tarpaulin. A few were missing firing pins; others had ruptured barrels. Pushed down the bore of a Belgian rifle was the shaft of a hunting arrow with a broad scalloped point of hand-forged iron.
    â€œMasakita,” the captain grumbled. He disappeared off into a dark corner and returned with an empty rice sack, pointing out the Chinese characters.
    â€œHe says the guns were for Masakita’s followers,” the security chief translated.
    â€œHow does he know that?” Reddish asked, cataloguing the guns in his notebook.
    â€œHe says Masakita was in China.”
    â€œAsk him which guns are Chinese.”
    The captain searched among the weapons Reddish had moved aside and dug out a Danish 9-mm Madsen. The hieroglyphics of the armorer’s die might have looked like a Chinese character to a bush soldier, but the weapon was Danish, once a mercenary piece, now part of the gun traffic along the frontiers of this ramshackle empire. Poachers bought guns; so did brigands, provincial officials, and frightened tribesmen beyond the reach of an inept administration.
    Reddish pulled the old arrow from the rifle bore and studied the arrowhead, intrigued. “I think it’s a hippo arrow, isn’t it? Used by the hunters on the lake?” He held the arrow out to the captain, who made no move to take it.
    â€œHe doesn’t hunt hippos,” explained the security chief.
    â€œWhat does he hunt then?” Reddish asked, losing interest.
    â€œHe hunts what the soldiers always hunt,” the chief said to him softly as they went back to the car—“rice, cigarettes, and beer from the trucks.”
    â€œContraband, is that it? Everything they can get their hands on?”
    The chief nodded. “When the army is hungry or bored, everything is contraband.”
    Michaux had guessed Reddish’s purpose in coming. He greeted him at dusk as Reddish returned to the cercle for dinner, rising from his chair on the verandah, propped grotesquely on his heavy walking stick.
    â€œIs that what brings you out here for a few hours, looking for new rebels en brousse ? Look for yourself, mon vieux ! What do you see except exhaustion?” His