Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of author Douglas De Bono

Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of
author Douglas De Bono.

The Mercenary

Ian Maxwell was a retired member of the South African National Defense Force, who continued to make his living spilling blood. He signed up on his seventeenth birthday and volunteered to fight Cubans in one of the proxy wars between the United States and the Soviet Union. The officers he served under recognizing a natural talent for strategy and tactics enlisted him on the fast track through Officer Candidate School, and honed his nascent intelligence into a lethal warrior.

He might have remained a serving officer had Apartheid persisted. Everything changed when Nelson Mandela passed from political prisoner to the father of a nation. While Ian never thought of the blacks one way or the other, he came to resent the witch hunt throughout the army and the security forces. Any Boer descendent was instantly suspect and Maxwell’s life came under microscopic introspection.

No one disputed the crimes committed by the white minority government. The Western press sought out every hard luck story and beaten prisoner to tell the world about the white savages oppressing a black majority. Yet, when the new black majority government turned a blind eye to the murder of dissenters and confiscation of property, the media failed to muster the same enthusiasm for the truth. Maxwell tired of the double standard and one night he vanished.

Post Colonial Africa was a basket case. Civil war, revolution, and coup d’etat became the norm rather than the exception. Maxwell found plenty of opportunities to ply his talents and he developed a healthy reputation as someone who knew how to get the job done. Soldier of fortune and mercenary were the usual titles associated with his work. Maxwell preferred to think of himself as a technician.

Maxwell caught the Tabing International Airport hotel shuttle to the Natour Muara—a fifty-two room establishment, rating three stars that offered air conditioning and private bathrooms.

Tabing International is situated north of Padang, Indonesia, Sumatra’s provincial capital, and the drive into the city follows the coast road. Maxwell stared out the shuttle’s window at the Indian Ocean and the waves rolling along the white sand beaches. The countryside was a mixture of the traditional Minangkabau houses with horn shaped roofs and office warehouses plastered against a jutting mountain range further inland.

Padang’s boundaries are marked by the Bakali River along the north and the Batang Arau River to the south and east. The Ocean borders the western edge. Padang is a small city covering ten square kilometers that three quarters of a million people called home.

Maxwell had driven through other Padangs over the years. The urban centers always boiled down to the same mishmash of narrow and confusing streets running in all directions. The people were undernourished, exemplified by their smaller stature and wiry frames. Three and four wheeled vehicles, mopeds, and bicyclists carried people across the city. Traffic signals were at best a suggestion and pedestrian casualties as common as morning rain.

Places like Padang grew out of European trading posts, in this case the Dutch back in 1680. The street systems were designed as defensive barriers to invaders, producing a Byzantine maze—a terrific idea for hand-to-hand combat in a by-gone era, but absolutely useless in the modern industrial age.

Maxwell noted the locations of City Hall, Parliament House, and the Central Mosque. Casually, he considered the tactical requirements to take down each target. Although, he doubted anyone wanted to hire his services to overrun Western Sumatra, he analyzed Padang as a potential target. A practitioner of war, Maxwell knew how to break things and kill people. He adhered to no ideology, other than the one currently paying his rate.

His summons came through a personal ad placed in the Mail & Guardian. The message listed an email address that cost nothing to open and could just as easily be abandoned. The Americans might be able to track every email sent, but they still needed to work their way through the spam advertising Viagra, body part enhancements, and get-rich-quick schemes. Maxwell suspected the National Security Agency discarded such emails faster than most people could click their DELETE buttons. So, he liberally sprinkled his response with references to the same things. After all if he were designing a system to find the bad guys that is what he would do.

The 1990s ushered in professional mercenary companies, seeking legitimacy through the United Nations. Corporate policies and international banks entered into the lucrative world of war making and soldiers for hire. The transformation froze out the rogue states like Libya and designated terrorist groups from the pay-as-you-go military services. A comforting thought for a world attempting to create a paradigm for the post Cold War.

Maxwell replied to the Mail & Guardian ad using a remailer website located in the Czech Republic. Remailer systems accept a plain text message and forward the message to a specified email account. It thwarted anyone attempting to trace the email headers and identify the sender.

So far, Maxwell’s career rated a footnote in the files of most intelligence services. Maxwell never sold out to corporate interests. Instead, he chose to remain an independent, hawking his services to the highest bidder. He even came up on a CIA list of potential assets for clandestine action in certain parts of the world. No one fingered him as a potential combatant in the War on Terrorism, but then, no one had suspected Mohamed Atta intended to fly a Boeing 767 into the World Trade Center either.

A sealed message waited for Maxwell at Natour Muara’s main desk. Once inside his room’s bathroom, Maxwell read the contents before burning the rice paper and flushing it down the toilet. He considered the instructions and searched his memory. He could not imagine any action he had taken in the last twenty years that might have antagonized the Indonesian Government. His gut told him this was a forthright offer and not a trap.

All the same, Maxwell dismantled the shaving cream dispenser and extracted a palm sized pepper spray canister. Not the best choice for a defensive weapon, but better than nothing.

The next morning, dressed in cargo pants and a safari jacket, Maxwell set out down Gurun Road. He passed the New Kartika Hotel on the way to the tourist information center. Private tour guides parked in a circle around the center, and his approach triggered a collective response from different drivers, offering rides to well known destinations.

Maxwell angled towards a tired looking, open air Jeep advertising rides to Panorama Park, located on the outskirts of Bukittinggi. The locals claimed Bukittinggi was a lovely and friendly town nestled in the mountains just south of the equator. Panorama Park overlooks a four kilometer long chasm of sheer rock walls plunging 120 meters to a river valley in the Minagkabau Highlands.

He tapped the Jeep’s hood, asking, “Do you think it might rain today?”

The driver glanced up from his newspaper, “Only in London.”

“Splendid,” replied Maxwell.

The driver discarded the newspaper to the back seat and scrambled out onto the pavement. He skirted around the side of the Jeep and opened the side door, waving Maxwell into the passenger seat.

Maxwell reached for a seatbelt that was not there. Instead he braced himself against the wind screen frame and the rattling door. His driver jammed the shift lever into first and roared out into traffic, never checking to see who or what might be headed their way. They sped up Muara Street, weaving in and out of traffic, and broke away from Padang and settled down into a two hour, careering journey towards Maxwell’s waiting client.