Free Casca 12: The African Mercenary by Barry Sadler Page B

and Dzhombe rose from the earth, turned to face the four directions of the wind, raised his arms to the mountains and cried to his men:
    "Make your offerings to the earth!"
    The fifteen men threw themselves at the girls, raping each one, spilling their seed into their bellies. Not until each girl had been ravished by each man did Dzhombe speak again, this time to the wizards.
    "Complete the offering."
    One by one the wizards took the bleeding girls to a place that had been prepared the week before. Into a trench dug in the earth they lay each girl down and prayed over her, begging the gods to accept their offering.
    When all three were in the ditch, the men gathered above them and began to shove the moist, claylike earth on top of them. Numb from the ganga smoke and pain of their marriage rites, they tried to scream, but it was too late. Their thin legs were too weak to fight the weight of the earth being pushed on top of them.
    The rites were complete. The earth would be reborn again by the seed of the men in the bodies of the brides.
    Dzhombe's guards were on the alert at their posts when he returned. Saying nothing, Dzhombe went to a nearby stream and washed his body clean of its now streaked coat of ashes. Putting his uniform back on, he sat in the front seat of the weapons carrier and waited to be taken back to his capital. All was well, and the gods were pleased. It was time to return to the outside world, but he took with him, as always, a part of the old.
     
     

CHAPTER NINE
    "Mr. Romain, I presume," said the Oxbridge accented voice, his tone clearly meaning I am a regular army officer and you are not. Those exact words were unsaid, but the message was unmistakable. Casey and his men were distasteful to this graduate of Sandhurst, the British West Point that produced even stuffier officers than did its American counterpart. As with West Point alumni, once the new officers got the bullshit out of their brains, they were among the best military minds the world could produce, and if one didn't like their style, one couldn't argue with their sense of honor and personal courage. The British did do some things right, and training soldiers to be tough was one of them.
    Casey stood in front of the officer with the full, bristling mustache and starched khaki drills, and said, once he got a look at the pips on the man's shoulders, "Major, I can tell right now that we may have some problems in communicating, so let's get it out in the open. I don't give a damn if you approve of me or my men, but we are here to do a job, and we're going to do it, even if it is the death of us," he paused for a moment, "and you."
    "Very good, Mr. Romain. You have made your position quite clear, and perhaps you're right. Incidentally, my name is Montfort. Your original contact assigned me to this job with orders to give you all the assistance you require, and in spite of any differences between us, that is exactly what I shall do. Now, if you will follow me, I will take you and your men to your quarters." He pointed across the landing strip to a cluster of Quonset huts. Casey told Beidemann to have Fitzhugh get the men and their gear, and follow him when they were ready.
    As they crossed the strip, Montfort gave Casey the tourist guide treatment. The field was set on a plain surrounded by low brush reaching out as far as the eye could see and spotted in places by giant baobab trees. Casey knew that in the trees and brush lived thousands of animals. Birds, lemurs, and leopards shared the baobabs. Lions and warthogs staked out their territories in the brush. A pair of vultures rode the hot air currents, rising from the flat runway to soar and glide in search of something dead or too weak to fight. Montfort pointed to them and said, "Not a bad omen, I hope." And he smiled.
    "This, by the way, was an emergency field built by the South Africans during World War Two and used by them as a refueling depot on their way to the front in North Africa. At the