Over the years, during the mysterious disappearances, Tayari had become a member of a spy ring affiliated with the Eunuchs. They were supposed to investigate certain individuals, especially government functionaries for signs of self-enrichment. Tayari had learned how to fire guns, make bombs and defend himself in every way. He had proven to be a gifted bomb-maker. His handlers had allowed him to make fireworks shows as a way of honing his talent, raising funds, and getting closer to his quarries. It was much easier to get inside people’s homes. It was much easier to see what they collected and how they showed off their wealth. Excited by the audience a wedding accorded, they often boasted about money, cattle, holidays, children in foreign universities. .
In time, the ring had become very successful, and the army officers complained that as a result they spent too much time getting friends and family members out of the clutches of the investigator. They wanted the whole nonsense stopped. They had fought to bring the regime to power; they saw no reason why their families could not do what they pleased without the Eunuchs sniffing them out. When the Eunuchs were elevated to the status of a private army, Major Ozi, the new boss, disbanded the spy ring because Tayari and his friends were not Amin’s tribesmen and could no longer be trusted. Major Ozi also used the chance to exact revenge for friends in the army whose relatives the ring had reported to the Eunuchs. Tayari and his friends were arrested and locked up for a week, with no food. It was at that time that they decided to cross over to the other side and make themselves useful before the dissidents arrived.
Behind the car repair shop they made plastic and fertilizer bombs. The first bomb to go off was planted in a car driven by a notorious State Research Bureau man. Tayari and his friends recognized well the licence plates allocated to security agents. Sometimes these people travelled in unmarked cars, which just gave them away. This car was parked outside a bar on Bombo Road in the middle of the city. On a warm evening Tayari placed the device underneath the car and walked away. Six minutes later the explosion happened. It lifted the car off the ground, scooped out its entrails, and left the shell to burn. A war of attrition had been declared.
The second target was a big shop in the city centre, owned by Major Ozi. The device went off, blew out all the windows, the merchandise caught fire and the building burned all night. The fire brigade was called, but the big red machines could not come because of lack of fuel. By the time Major Ozi had used his influence to secure fuel from the nearest military depot, the shop was beyond salvation. Nobody claimed responsibility. The men on patrol had seen nothing to arouse suspicion. The finger was pointed at the dissidents, and a promise was made to crush them with maximum force. More soldiers were deployed to patrol the city in Stinger jeeps, shooting whenever something frightened them. Far away from the city the quartet drank a toast to their success and debated what to do next.
The repair shop went nowhere, but that had been the intention from the start. The boys spent most of the time idling, pretending to work, preparing themselves for the next mission. Tayari felt a bit guilty about not telling his brother the truth. But he did not blame himself much because he knew that his brother wanted to get back at the regime and would probably sympathize. He only hoped that Bat was not spending sleepless nights over the current turn of events.
The boys travelled to the city and observed how well patrolled the city centre was at night. They decided to try an easier target: Jinja. They had operated there in their spying days, tailing the bosses of big factories. They loved the place, its roominess, the weather. They decided to plant at least five bombs and deflect attention from the city before attacking it again. A bomber needs luck to go along with technical skill because so much can go wrong; theirs held well. There were lots of targets to choose from and high-ranking officers in the area.
In one explosion, the fifth and last one, General Bazooka’s wife lost an arm and was severely burned. She had gone to Jinja to visit the General’s mother and a few relatives, one of whom worked for the Bureau. The only mistake she made was to borrow the Bureau man’s car for the afternoon while hers got a tyre change. She always drove by herself, refusing to be herded like cattle by her husband’s bodyguards. The recent explosions had convinced her more than ever that anonymity was the best way to escape trouble. The car exploded when she started the engine. There were no fire extinguishers around, and the ferocity of the flames kept every rescuer at bay for some time. She was finally pulled out of the wreck, the fumes almost choking her to death. Bystanders gave her just a few days to live.
GENERAL BAZOOKA WAS CONFRONTED with a unique situation. In all the preceding years he had managed to escape untouched. The few people he lost he never mourned. In fact, he did not know what mourning was. Life seemed to come and drift away. A real man, a real soldier, never let anything get to him. He had been in all kinds of shoot-outs, ambushes, and had come out on top. He had killed robbers, soldiers in purges, civilians caught in crossfires. He had ordered bodies thrown away or drowned, and it had never bothered him. All this just cemented his belief in his own invincibility. Above all, his family was out of the game. Even Ashes seemed unlikely to dare touch his dear ones. It was a border nobody easily crossed.
Then came the news he had never even dreamed about. His rage failed to protect and numb him. He was looking into the abyss of helplessness for the first time in many years. He was pricked by thorns of self-pity; he felt the chill of loneliness, utter isolation. He simply didn’t know what to do. In the meantime, he received a message of condolence from the Marshal, who praised his wife as a woman the whole country should be proud of. It was as if the Marshal believed that she was dead. The language was so bombastic that somewhere in his heart, a small troublesome region now packed with intrigue and suspicion, he had the sneaky feeling that this might have been a plot executed with the Marshal’s blessing. But why? Had somebody accused me of treason? If so, why hadn’t they targeted me? Why have I heard nothing of it from my spies in the Marshal’s office and among the Eunuchs? he wondered.
In his heart of hearts he believed that Reptile was responsible, using the cover of the recent bombings. It felt like Ashes, that reptile. He would not come out directly and shoot her on the street, or abduct her and pound her to death like he did to Mrs. Bossman. No, he had to hide behind something in order to show his tact, and then sit back and howl with laughter because nobody could link him to the deed. Reptile definitely knew who had tried to kill his wife. This was no random bombing, especially because my wife had been driving somebody else’s car, the General thought bitterly.
General Bazooka had his wife transferred to Mulago Hospital for the best medical attention available and for proximity to her children. He planted guards on the hospital grounds and on each floor to protect her. In the hospital he was introduced to all kinds of deformity disease could inflict on the body. He saw cheeks blown out by boils, eyes runny with pus, lipless, legless, armless wrecks. He caught sight of patients with limbs caught in networks of pulleys and levers like flies in spider webs. He was especially troubled by children with single limbs playing in the hospital’s corridors, lost to the stink of formaldehyde, and the crush of visitors, nurses, doctors, cleaners. He saw victims of fires and wanted to look away. He realized that the hospital was the worst place he had ever visited: It brought him too close to his own mortality. It dispensed with all the myths of invincibility he cherished. He was no longer possessor and flaunter of life-and — death powers: the doctors and nurses were. He had to bow down to them, and listen when they talked.