Free Wolfsbane by William W. Johnstone Page B

evening meal, Pat allowed himself a pipeful of Captain Black while sitting on the steps of his house. The pipe was an ornate affair, one he had picked up in Mombasa, Kenya, years back. The pipe had a huge bowl, outlayed with silver.
    He had good memories of Kenya. He had made friends there, both black and white, and had enjoyed his stay at the old hotel by the Indian Ocean. Then, growing restless, Pat and the English mercenary, Travers, had hopscotched across Tanzania, Burundi, the bottom part of Zaire, and into Angola, to join up and fight with the Western-leaning rebels in that part.
    Pat rubbed his leg: he had picked up another piece of lead while in Angola’s bush.
    For a time on this pleasant, quiet evening, Pat allowed himself the luxury of memories: some good, some bad. Travers, he had later heard, had been killed in an ambush, his body mutilated and put on display by the communist-backed guerrillas. Pat, by that time, had wearied of war. He had long since slipped out of Angola, past the Caprivi Strip, and into Rhodesia.
    And it would always be Rhodesia to Pat—and most men like him. Never Zimbabwe, as the natives wanted, and called it.
    Pat was not a racist; he did not hate men for the color of their skin. To hate someone for solely that reason, Pat felt, was the height of ignorance, and he did not believe in apartheid, although he did understand the Afrikaners’ point of view. Indeed, Pat understood the mood of most white Africans. But he also tried to understand the passions of black Africans—those with some degree of intelligence—to govern themselves; to be as one, regardless of color.
    Puffing on his pipe, enjoying the new feelings of good health and sobriety, Pat shook his head at the maze of problems facing not just South Africa, but most of the continent. Someday, Pat felt, that part of the world was going to erupt into a blood bath.
    â€œRight and wrong on both sides,” he muttered.
    For a time, several months, Pat had roamed the southern part of Africa, not as a mercenary, a warrior, but as a tourist. From Salisbury all the way down to Cape Town, one of the most spectacularly beautiful cities in the world.
    From Cape Town over to Port Elizabeth, then up the coast to Durban, then cross country to Johannesburg. But it was just north of Salisbury, Rhodesia, that Pat reminisced the fondest memories, the gentlest emotions. For it was there he had met Emily. And had they been allotted the time for their relationship to grow, to flourish, he would have probably chosen to remain in Rhodesia, and applied for citizenship. Even with all the problems facing that country.
    Emily, with her mother and father, worked a good-sized farm just outside the town of Kildonan. Pat stayed with them for almost three months, taking to the land, loving the hard work, and falling in love with Emily. He was a man grown, and was in love for the first time in his life. The family had asked no questions of him, but knowing full well he was, in all probability, an American mercenary.
    Then one night, suddenly, as it always happens, the terrorists swept out of Mozambique, attacking the farm. Pat was gone into Salisbury for supplies. He returned to find the farm house rocketed, still burning, smoking, bullet pocked. No survivors, and the women had died hard.
    Something the American liberal press always seems to ignore in their reporting.
    Pat stayed for the funerals, then, wearying of it all, went back home. To South Carolina.
    Didn’t do me much good to come back here, he reflected sourly, as soft night spread its dark shadows over the marshland. The sky was black velvet, touched with pockets of diamonds.
    He suddenly, and for the first time in years, the memory coming to him in a rush, wondered about the special forces captain he and his team had been sent in to rescue from that beleaguered outpost. What was his name? Simmons. Yeah, that was it. Lyle Simmons. Good man. Had a sensational-looking wife, Pat