From time to time the door was opened, the glaring fluorescent light was turned on, and a minidrama was played out. Three times, additional men were pushed in, always bleeding from fresh cuts and scrapes and puncture wounds. Twice, certain men’s names were called and they went out. Those times, the stillness in the fetid tunnel took on a new quality, a communal gathering together, because those men were going to their death.
“John Emiru. Nahum Tomugwang. Godfrey Okulut.”
Each man, tattered, encrusted with blood, struggled to his feet and climbed over all the other legs to the doorway. Each man was handcuffed, his hands in front of his body. Quiet good-byes were said by the men still seated on the tunnel floor. The handcuffed men nodded, keeping their heads down. The door shut. The light went out. Bishop Kibudu said, “They will soon see God.”
“There are many ways to die here,” said a man across the way. “They don’t like to use bullets, that’s too expensive. They may strangle you with wire. They may cut you through with swords. They may beat you with tire irons.”
“Sledgehammers,” said another man. “When they take out the men one at a time, it’s for the sledgehammer.”
Lew scratched his bites and licked his dry lips. “Why one at a time?”
“Well, two at first,” said the man. He had the manner of a fussy teacher, perhaps at the high-school level. “Two men are taken out. One is handed a sledgehammer and told if he will beat the other man to death he will be set free. So he does it, and then another man is brought out and given the sledgehammer and told he will be set free if he kills the second man. And so on.”
“It is Satan’s work,” Bishop Kibudu said. “To try to make the sin of murder a man’s final act before he goes to God’s judgment. These people have given themselves over to the Prince of Darkness.”
Each time the door opened, someone called to the guard to ask what time it was. The stupidity of that, here where time no longer mattered, finally prompted Lew to comment to the bishop, “He sounds as though he’s got an appointment somewhere.”
“It’s for the history,” the bishop said.
“History?”
“This will come to an end. There will be survivors. Each one of us records in his mind as much as he can of what goes on here. At two in the morning of March twenty-eighth, nineteen seventy-seven, this person and that person were taken away. When this is over, the survivors will write down what they know. They shall bear witness for the rest of us.”
“And if there are no survivors?”
“God survives. God’s history lasts. God’s justice is final.”
The light came on, the door opened, and the soldier was there, with two other soldiers, both carrying rifles with bayonets attached.
“What time is it?”
“Three-thirty in the morning. Lewis Brady.”
“God be with you,” the bishop said.
It is sometimes possible to defeat handcuffs. If, when the cuffs are being attached, one tenses one’s forearms and thumbs and fingers just so, the wrists expand slightly and the cuffs are likely to be attached one notch looser than otherwise. That’s the first step.
It seemed to Lew the first step had worked; when he relaxed, the cuffs didn’t feel particularly tight.
The soldiers with the bayoneted rifles apparently spoke no English. They jabbered together in some other tongue—not Swahili—and directed Lew with gestures and shoves. They would be going back the way he had come.
Along the way, on the right, was an open door leading to a fairly large concrete cell. The three men who had been taken away an hour ago were in there, on their hands and knees, scrubbing the cell with their cuffs still on. At first it looked as though a fifty-gallon drum of chocolate syrup had burst in there, but then Lew realized it was blood. Thick on the walls, lying in three-inch-deep puddles on the floor. A warm sick fragrance flowed out the open door. The kneeling men were themselves now covered with the blood as they soaked rags in it and squeezed out the rags over buckets. Lew staggered, feeling nausea and vertigo, but the soldiers shoved him on, and the vision of that cell was left behind.
Lew continued to totter and to slump, giving the impression that he was very weak, and while slumped he greased his hands with the sweat from his chest and neck.
To remove the handcuff, you fold the base of the thumb in as tight to the palm of your hand as you can get it, at the same time folding the little finger in from the other side. You push the cuff upward along the hand, screwing it back and forth. You spit on your hand to increase the lubrication. There’s a spot where the bone at the base of the thumb and the bottom knuckle of the little finger conspire against you, but you keep twisting, feeling the flesh tear, feeling the sting of sweat and saliva in new cuts. But once you’re past that point, the handcuff is off.
At the foot of a flight of stairs, with the soldiers behind him, Lew fell forward onto the steps. Head lowered, looking past his body, he could see their feet as they came up to chivvy him onward. It was the left cuff that was loose, so when he sprang up turning from the steps he lashed his right hand around, the dangled cuff smashing into one soldier’s face. The man screamed, dropping the rifle, falling back against the wall, and Lew kicked out at the other soldier’s groin.
But number two was already backpedaling, aiming the rifle. He seemed uncertain what to do, had probably been ordered to bring Lew along without too much violence; they still wanted to question him about the CIA.
Before the soldier could make a decision, Lew jumped him, lunging forward, then ducked to the side as the man brandished his rifle. Lew’s right arm thrust forward beside the rifle, the loose cuff sliding onto the bayonet, scraping along it to the hilt like a perfect throw in a ring-toss game. Lew flung his arm upward, and the rifle twisted out of the soldier’s hand and fell to the ground. Lew kicked him in the face as he reached for the weapon, grabbed it himself, turned, and as the other soldier came groggily away from the wall Lew ran him through with the bayonet. He heard the blade grate and break against the concrete wall.
The other soldier tried to run, back down the corridor. Lew caught him in three steps, folded his arms around the man’s head, and snapped his neck. He let the body drop, then looked from one soldier to the other. Both dead. Good.
When in action, when plying his trade, there was a thing that took over in Lew, a welding of mind and body as complete and as efficient as that in a concert pianist on a stage or a basketball player on the court. At other times he might have opinions about war, about destruction, about killing, but when he was in it, the opinions ceased to exist. He was a craftsman of death, and he was good at his craft.
The rifles were their only weapons. In their pockets were some Ugandan shillings and some matches, all of which he took. Also the key to the handcuffs.
Without the cuffs, carrying the rifle with the unbroken bayonet, still shoeless, Lew hurried up the stairs.
At the top, the corridor turned to the right. Looking around the corner, Lew saw a guard seated on a bench, gazing at a comic book, apparently half-asleep. He was possibly thirty feet away.
A shot would attract attention, even in here. Lew detached the bayonet, leaned the rifle against the wall, and held the bayonet against his right forearm, its hilt in the cupped palm of his hand. Then, his manner confident and decisive, he strode around the corner and directly toward the guard.
He had thought it out this way: either his presence in this building as a prisoner was generally known, or it was not. Did every paltry soldier know every detail of the events here? There was a good chance that a white skin and a self-confident manner would carry the day.