1982
"Name?" a voice said in a thick Afrikaner accent.
Chris Gerry looked up at the man in a nutria brown uniform festooned with medals that had finally shown up to the interview and CV review. "Ten minutes late",he thought, but he bit his tongue. He was already in deep enough shit as a Rhodesian, even if he was only really half Rhodie. Unless he wanted to be stuck in a shitty soul-crushing office job in Cape Town or Pretoria, or worse yet, returning back to Mugabe's new communist hellhole, he had to be nice and ingratiate himself.
Though it was not going to be easy to ingratiate himself with the hulking interviewer. The man was obviously not designed to be appealing to new arrivals. He had piercing eyes, and a web of scars all over his face. If he had been in Salisbury, he would have thought he was a former Scout or Rhodesian SAS, but the accent gave it away. He was neither of those. If anything, he had been Recce before, or, just as likely, bog standard infantry who caught an unlucky shell and just happened to be the scariest man they could find to interview people.
"Chris Gerry."
"You have your CV as requested?"
"Of course." Gerry said, standing up and handing the interviewer a manila folder that contained his life story.
"Please, sit." the man responded, taking a seat in his own chair behind the table in the Pretoria office. Gerry obliged him. He opened the folder and began thumbing through each of the pages. Whether it was theater or not, his eyes said it all, slowly scanning left to right, one line at a time. Minutes passed, and the man cocked his head, looking back up at the pilot.
"You were in the Rhodesian Air Force?"
"Yes, from 1977 until-"
"I'm sure I know when. 1980, when Mugabe, Nkomo, and their armies of kaffirs who could barely fight a war somehow took over."
"…yes."
"Could you please explain to me how you are somehow qualified to fly the Cessna Skymaster, Hawker Hunter, and Alouette III?"
"In the Rhodesian Air Force, it was expected that within several years from graduation from basic pilot training, any pilot would be expected to be able to pilot any of the major aircraft in the fleet. I never received training on the Vampire, Canberra, or those newer Israeli choppers we got in 1979."
"Do you have combat experience? Your CV mentions nothing about combat flying."
"Don't sell yourself short. Be arrogant. They want mercs, not officers and gentlemen." he thought. He took in a deep breath. "I would think that it would be obvious that as a pilot in the Rhodesian Air Force, I would have seen combat." he responded, playing up his very slight Afrikaner accent.
"Then spit it out, what did you do? Do you have specific numbers of hours?"
"I can't say I do, I wasn't thinking Rhodesia would fall. But if you must know, I was on Operation Gatling, you know, the daring raid into Zambia?"
"That's all well and good. But that is fixed-wing. War is changing here in Africa, helicopters are the wave of the future. What about rotary wings?"
"During my first year in the Air Force, I was an Alouette III pilot flying Fireforce missions in a G car. I couldn't count how many missions I flew, but if we had a day's rest in between, it was a good week."
"So you flew consistently for three years?"
"In a manner of speaking yes, save for leave and, of course, as it was coming to an end, the tempo dropped dramatically. But I'm certainly not rusty, not yet."
"Impressive. We'll see about the second part of your statement later. We've got a lot of applicants, you're just one, so no need to waste both of our time. One final question. Why do you want to work for CFA? Why not just join the South African Air Force?"
"Because I hear the SADF is handing off operations to CFA, and I want to get on the train coming into the station. Besides, if I wasn't shooting at floppies at the air from a chopper or plane, what else could I do?"
The interviewer nodded and handed the manila folder back to him. "I see. We will be in touch as to the status of your application. Be prepared to move at a moment's notice if we decide that we are in need of your services."
"Thank you."
The man grunted. "Go." he said. Gerry was more than happy to oblige. Being in the same room with him felt like being in one with a wild animal that would savage you if you gave it the wrong look.
…
1984
"Clear the goddamn helipad you bunch of doosen!"
Gerry leaned out of the clear bubble that was the cockpit of his Alouette III, attempting to scream over the roar of the helicopter's engines, and gesturing outward with his left hand. Orthodoxy said that the right was the pilot's seat and the left was the copilot's, but orthodoxy meant little if you were going to be shit at flying. And besides, being on the right meant having to pass up some of the fun of being a PMC pilot. Yelling at stubborn brown jobs, shooting at MPLA terrs with a pistol during racetrack fire support patterns, all kinds of reasons to prefer the left.
Finally, as the chopper came even closer to the ground and began kicking up dust and sand, it seemed as if the blind and deaf ground crew regained their senses and began getting out of the way of the incoming Alouette. Sometimes he wondered how many of the troops in the CFA had worked closely with the Air Force, or had military experience at all. Not that saying it out loud would gain anything other than a busted jaw. Military experience or not, they were all tough guys, always looking to prove their worth.
As the Alouette drew closer to the ground, it kicked up more dirt and sand from the helipad and the surrounding ground, engulfing the chopper in what looked like a mini sandstorm. "Brownout." Gerry growled, putting down his helmet's visor as the dust began swirling around the cockpit.
Drawing back on the throttle, he began to count off, "Five, four, three, two, one…". On cue, he felt the wheels make contact with the ground. But that didn't change the swirling cloud of dust. Drawing back the throttle, he reached over to the center console, and clicked off several switches. As he did so, the high-pitched whine of the helicopter's turbine and the thwocka thwocka of the rotors grew quieter and slower. And with it, the duststorm dissipated.
Undoing his crash harness, Gerry brought his right leg in, bringing the kneeboard closer to him. He turned to the commandos he had just ferried back who were looking at him expectantly for a debrief, or better yet, an invitation to celebrate another successful mission. Gerry waved his hand "Just a second. Gotta write down how many terrs we got and things we broke. How many you reckon we got?".
One of the younger recruits piped up. "I'd reckon at least fifty MPLA"
"No harm in adding fifty percent then, we're not sure exactly how many after all, are we? 75 MPLA…and what, two BMPs and three lorries?"
"Sounds about right to me." Robert van Bool, the gunner technician on the twenty millimeter cannon the Alouette carried on its port side, added in.
"Alright then…75 MPLA, estimated, 2 IFVs, 3 lorries. A good day as usual." Gerry muttered as he scribbled down the report on a piece of looseleaf, signing and dating it at the bottom left.
"Now we can move on to more important matters." he continued, stepping out of the helicopter and following after the mercenaries towards their tents.
The African sun was hanging low over the savannah, and in a few hours it'd be dark. Unlike in the bush in Rhodesia or the border down south for the troopers in the SADF, the night was the best time. Guards had to be posted, but the MPLA troops wouldn't dare attack anyone in the border region with Zaire. No point ruining relations with one of the few allies they had in the region, or worse yet, attacking the CFA and giving South Africa even more of an excuse to drop a nuclear weapon on them. It didn't matter what they were actually doing, for all intents and purposes, they were a private security force for a legitimate corporation, and any assault on them would be spun as an attack on South African civilians. And spin was everything, a lesson Rhodesia had learned the hard way.
As they assembled around an oil drum turned into a fire pit, Gerry piped up to the rest of the men in his Alouette's stick. "So, you all realize this was our fiftieth mission together right?"
The CFA troops all looked at him sideways as if to say "Yeah, and?". But after a few seconds, some of them began nodding their heads in approval of what had just been implied.
"Oh yeah." one of the Afrikaners responded. "It's also getting pretty dark out, so no worries about any attacks. And better yet I hear tell some of the crates we got in have some supplies for a braai." he continued with a smile.
"Wouldn't it be a waste if we left them? Beer would get skunky before we did another fifty missions." Gerry responded.
"Yes, yes it would."
"Then let's all get together for our fifty-first mission, ensuring that the Angolans don't capture our braai and beer." Gerry said with a chuckle.
…
"I'm telling you, I was on Gatling!"
"Come on Gerry, you keep saying that, but it's just too unbelievable."
"I was in No. 1 Squadron wasn't I?"
"Yeah, well…"
"Everyone in No.1 flew on Gatling. I think you all forget that it wasn't just Chris and his Canberra that bombed Westland's Farm." Gerry said as he took another sip of his beer. The bottle of Amarula liquor had been depleted within an hour of it being brought out. Now all that was left was cheap Zimbabwe beer. It wasn't Rhodie, but it was close enough, and maybe it was made by some old and stubborn ones who followed Smith's example and remained behind to go down with the ship until they could do no more and would have to abandon Mugabe's little tinpot dictatorship.
"I mean, you got a point, maybe you did fly Gatling."
"I always got a point, I'm almost always right."
"Ehhhh…"
"Watch your mouth, don't go putting doubts in my head, I gotta be on my A game when I fly those missions with you all."
"Truth. So how much longer we got out here?"
"I dunno, maybe a month, month and a half? I'm fuckin' drunk man, I don't know." Gerry responded, laughing hysterically as he said the latter half of his sentence. "I just wanna get back."
"Got someone waiting for you?"
"Hah, I left all that behind in Rhodesia, but here in South Africa, I can't say the girls are any less attractive. And with the money we're getting from this, I could get any woman I wanted."
"Ain't that the truth. Should ask for the money in Krugerrands, make like Bokassa, get yourself a throne and a scepter."
"Fuuuuuuck yes. I'd love a scepter."
"Oh yeah, without a doubt."
…
Gerry stumbled into his CFA supplied tent. He stunk of booze, but right now he couldn't care less about that. Collapsing onto his bed, he laid with his head out in case he had forgotten to drink liquor before beer and prepared himself for the raging headache he was about to have in a few hours. But it was worth it. In the Wamboland, every day was a gift, and you had to live it to its fullest. Even if that meant regretting it the next morning.
…
As he woke up, he realized he wasn't lying down. He was sitting, in a rather uncomfortable chair, with a goddamn fluorescent light right in his face. His head was pounding like he has just gotten his ass kicked, and he felt like he was about to throw up. "Did the Angolans get us? Should have just chopped my own fingers and balls off, saved them the trouble." he thought.
He squinted through the assault on his eyes, and saw there was another person sitting across from him at the table, currently impossible to see clearly through the light. But he wasn't Angolan, not from his posture and what he could make out of his uniform.
"Where am I?" Gerry asked.
"We'll discuss that later. We need some information first."
"Fuck you kaffir."
"Not a nice way to start a conversation. Just some basic stuff. What is your name?"
What is this, another interview?
"Chris Gerry."
