Unckle

By Andrew Hutchinson

Unckle - the book, grips the reader and hauls them straight into an Asian and African adventure! The story is a fast paced narrative of action, skull duggery, treachery and mysticism. This book will catapult you from Pakistan to South Africa via China, Bangladesh and the Indian Ocean! grab the edge of your seat and buckle up! This book is a fast moving storyline with real bits of Africa on display.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Hutchinson
• Release date: Feb 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215968840

Andrew Hutchinson

Andrew writes about modern day Africa and South Africa. International adventure and homegrown business experience within the informal sector. 

Book preview

Pakistan to South Africa via Beijing Stealing people ... 

Stealing wildlife ...

... and the taking of a continent. A hardcore action-packed narrative set within a

fictional factual account

of International adventure.

ANDREW HUTCHINSON

UNCKLE 

Published by Andrew Hutchinson

East London

Email: [e-mail]

First published 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

Design and typesetting: Workshop 12

Set in 12 pt on 16 pt Cambria

CONTENTS

Glossary   i

Acknowledgements   ii

Chapter 1:  Baton Brigade   1

Chapter 2:  Resurrection   4

Chapter 3:  Nine Lives   8

Chapter 4:  The Fugitive   20

Chapter 5:  Dragonfly Departure   27

Chapter 6:  Judas Iscariot   31

Chapter 7:  Who’s the Boss   37

Chapter 8:  Skin Deep   42

Chapter 9:  The People’s Republic   48

Chapter 10:  Along Came a Spider   51

Chapter 11:  Gun Dog   56

Chapter 12:  The Deep Blue   66

Chapter 13:  Diamond Dogs   71

Chapter 14:  Go with the Flow   77

Chapter 15:  The Puppet Master   81

Chapter 16:  Poker Face   84

Chapter 17:  The Ferryman   90

Chapter 18:  Lady Luck   95

Chapter 19:  The Dog of War   101

Chapter 20:  Blood Moon   107

Chapter 21:  Bushveld Bullets   115

Chapter 22:  Guys with Guns   119

Chapter 23:  Majosa the Man   128

Chapter 24:  Treat ‘em Mean – Keep ‘em Keen  133

Chapter 25:  Keratin   142

Chapter 26:  Mpundulu   147

Chapter 27:  Die Hard   152

Chapter 28:  Murder for Money   160

Chapter 29:  Bizznizz   170

Chapter 30:  Revenge   179

Chapter 31:  Exile!   195

UNCKLE –  THANK YOUS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

James Berrange - Pinewood Studios for assistance with ISBN numbers

Harry’s Printers East London for the printing and their support

Roy Hewett and Cathy van der Merwe  for editing this work

You - the reader!

Kirsti Joan

for putting up with ‘living with a writer’ and for loving me

Workshop 12 Design Studio for typesetting/design and for going the extra mile

Findaway Voices

for distributing the audio version of this novel

Sula Book Distributors

for the distribution of the novel in Southern Africa

Printing

Cape Town version - Digital Action East London version - Harry's printers

i

GLOSSARY

Mpundulu - a mythical bird in amaXhosa folklore and ancestral worship rituals

Koevoet - a specialized South African Police unit that operated on the border between Angola and South West Africa

(present day Namibia)

Yama - the Hindu God of Death

Bizznizz - a play on the word ‘business’ in pidgin speak

SWAPO - South West African People’s Organization

Caspir - specifically engineered armour troop carrier used mainly by South African Police units

Dicores bicornis - scientific name for black rhinoceros

Sanda - mixed martial arts system developed for the Chinese Special Forces

Dum-dum bullet - a bullet where the crown of the slug has been carved into four pieces to assist with fragmentation

Djinn - Pakistani Folklore Genie which can take on different forms at will

ii

01

BATON BRIGADE

T

he baton - a fat stodge of rounded wood came down on Unckle’s ribcage. The force of the blunt object splintered the light-bone structure, shattering the

organ-protecting cradle of his skeletal frame.

The melee of panic and desperate escape rushed past and over Unckle as he slumped to the stony roadway. Sandals, feet, flowing robes and various bits of exposed flesh from both male and female protesters leaped and jumped over his prostate form. The baton returned to visit... Pain superseded the want of darkness for Unckle as tiny splinters of fragmented bone shifted between sinew and membrane. Besides the pain, the instinct of self-preservation strapped itself to his soul and Unckle absorbed the force of the baton, as the beating transformed into attempted murder, blood lust and hate which fuelled the Punjabi policeman, as he unleashed his ethnic prejudice on the crumpled man, lying broken in the dirt.

Unckle’s mind reversed his consciousness from the current reality and fled the protest scene. Jitter - bugging up the sides of the decayed walls of the government building, his being found vantage to survey the carnage brought upon the peaceful protest - his protest!

The elevated perspective allowed Unckle a view of absolute retribution. The police unit had run amok. They had beaten, whipped and broken the protesters, male and female, regardless of age or station. These advocates of collective conscience had been squashed or punished with brute force. Screams, rancid sobs, barely audible prayers and deep throated moaning reached Unckle, as his outer body-being, sat perched on the window ledge, three stories above the carnage.

His own earthly conveyance was lying twisted and broken in the gravel. A suction of will and bottom-line grief fetched his essence and prescribed a vague promise of foundation, a foundation of freedom. Unckle re-ignited his lifeform and the outer body experience became something of a niggling query in the rear of his consciousness. The first association triggered by his re-incarnation was pain – a lot of pain! The breath sucked into his punctured lungs frothed and bubbled on the edge of his grim and twisted mouth as the CO₂ found return passage up his trachea. A Chernobyl type of blood clot crept up from his lungs. This dangerous leak of murderous ability was a direct consequence of the baton charge.

It seemed as if the darkness would harvest Unckle. He rotated in the confusion of attempted survival as the pull of death wracked his body. Nerve endings howled against any attempt at movement, expelling strength and ability...he was going to expire and die.

Unckle barely took note of the hands lifting him off the dank, stress-loaded gravel - his own excrement and urine lay as a testament to the waste of human life on this brutal day. A day that transformed Unckle and laid an unfortunate path for all others that crossed paths with the chapter and verse of Unckle’s new book of life!

A calm sound like the voice of a mother giving love to her newborn, swirled and floated around on the air. Although Unckle was unable to interact with the nuanced flow of empathy, the intimate warmth invited a semi-parlance of relaxation as he drifted into his coma. The exhaustion of mind, body and spirit milked this man of his survival code and the promise of the precious foundation evaporated with the shutting of his long eye lashes as his pupils rolled back in their sockets.

Unckle’s brain was busy behind the curtain of darkness...

02

RESURRECTION

T

he title of this chapter is a word usually or consequentially reserved for use in reference to a biblical event. Unckle was of the other book!

There was no sense of religious assumption for this man. He subscribed to the Koran on a basis of blessing - Inshalla! Unckle navigated his daily business and his life with a casual reverence of Inshalla and his understanding of the sought after blessing was rather frivolous. He was of privilege and class. On occasion he would throw down his link to class and inherited wealth, turning his back on the advice of family, spurning the safety net of his elders and making mockery of their imposed faculty of influence. Politics in Kashmir province - Pakistan, asked of Unckle more than a monetary shackle! Physical sacrifice was a demand. Decades of unease on the Kashmir border with India stirred ethnic awareness and the challenge of true rule or annexed homeland status for the Kashmir clans. Unckle was born into strife, albeit with a silver spoon in his mouth.

During the awakening from his coma, the first flight of emotion and visual gain was of early childhood reminisces - a return to safety and protection. As he attempted to navigate the bewildering circumstance and put the dots together, Unckle was consumed by the relentless attack of pain. The poppies held no sway over the pulse of his clotted life-liquid as the multiple thrombosis wormed stubbornly through clenched arteries! Drugs from the fields of Pakistan fell short in the battle to blot out the pain sensation invading his captured nervous system.

Internal damage and haemorrhaging cast doubt over Unckle’s chance at recovery.

Inshalla crossed not his lips and his tongue found no purchase on his palate. Unable to make voice or find the ritualistic blessing, Unckle lay in a foetal recovery position with nurses working in relay, as they turned and moved him to negate bedsores.

Unckle was of a privileged upbringing and this asset of class combined with his political leadership ensured the best of private care, hidden care! Care in a cave! Authorities were on the hunt!

The soft sound of care that had been with him since his retrieval from the gravel street became a vision at times. His cornea allowed  his pupils an attempt to focus. Unckle’s vision was blurred and inconsistent. Blood pressure allowed for hallucinations that were fuelled by the white powder that was cooked to reduction in the hot spoon. The soft sound cocooned Unckle as she bathed, administered and slowly brought repair to this skin-clad dumpster of the broken and mangled man -  known as Unckle.

Resurrection would imply, a rising, a return from the dead and no notable effects of ill-health or untoward physical appearances of the one returned from the dead...unless of course you were the one nailed to the cross at Calgary. Then the war wounds would have been illustrative of your persecution and a manual of convincing material for those doubting Thomas’

Unckle’s following was not of biblical proportions and his wounds incurred while leading the lambs were not of an investigative nature - no one could physically lay an eye on the wounds or finger a puncture hole or pick a scab. These wounds were more dangerous, more ingrained than those suffered by believers of religion, as they were persecuted by the other side over the ages! Unckle had always carried about himself a persona of menace. Nothing short of a summarized form of psychosis.

The return from the abyss of darkness would herald a transition for Unckle, a transition from leader to underground cult figure. The baton wielding policeman would have no inclination of his involvement in the about-turn of Unckle’s standing or the chameleon of mental camouflage that sometimes confused the resurrected Unckle.

As Unckle herded together his bits of physical repair, his brain was another story! The soft sound fixed his physicality but there was no antidote for the chemical concoction that brewed beneath his skull. A broth of hate and a roughly hewn guide to self, permeated a steam of psychopathic flexibility, the multiple layers of Unckle became a hot-hob of personalities. It was as if a leopard crawled around the space found between his cranial sac and the cauliflower-like headquarters of his persona and central nervous system.

Chemical imbalance reached around the cranium of Unckle, an unseen leopard hunting in the darkness, a predator biting and scratching at his balance of personality. Long trenches of excavation brought disruption and ill-repair to the neuron bank of his brain.

Unckle could finally assume his homo sapien status and stand upright in his cave of care. Little did the care-givers know of his ruptured mental state. They viewed the standing man and fell to the floor of the cave, in reverence to Allah and the impossible return to strength of the once-broken Unckle!

03

NINE LIVES

A

snow leopard is a rare feline of alpine domicilium. Secretive and elusive in nature, this cat kills under a cloak of mystery and folklore. Unckle was to reach an assimilation of this Asian predator - elusive, deadly and cunning - a loner of the high alpine ridges. Both Unckle and the snow leopards would occupy carefully chosen caves from which to patrol and hunt, and their predation yielded results for both hunters. The cats hunted to survive, but Unckle hunted for revenge. Blood lust and exacting tolls of punishment governed the killings for Unckle. Physical strength was an uneven gift, received on some days and nonexistent on others, but the psychosis remained.

Peace reached out to Unckle. Sometimes, in the cave where he had found recovery, he would recall the soft sound which tempered his memory of events. Most of the time, a white powder, a hot spoon, a syringe and a goat-hide strap commanded the pursuit of peace for Unckle. This product of Pakistan received attention from Unckle on a regular basis. His strength was facilitated by the drug and the finished product was to become a major factor in Unckle’s life ... he just didn’t know it yet. For now, it was all about long-range sniper rifles and the Indian Government’s logistical routes. The future was of no importance, the squeeze of the trigger and the goat hide was all that mattered. Being vulnerable outside his cave, he narrowed down his excursions for killing to definite intel and minimal exposure. Unckle had backup. His backup came in the form of the nurse and a backbencher of a cousin’s brother ... close family had forsaken Unckle after his first killing foray.

The extended family member, Shokat, had definitive political ambitions, while the nurse ... well, she was in love with Unckle ... she was largely unaware of the mental transition he had undergone.

Destabilization and disorder suited Shokat’s agenda! Every squeeze of the trigger brought more discussion to Shokat’s door as the cost of the Kashmiri occupation torched the Indian currency at will. Shokat occupied a seat on the Provincial Services Committee - much the same as a kangaroo court - which consisted of a few entrenched members, relics of past fiefdoms holding on to a piece of the pie, handed down to them from across the Indian / Kashmir border.

The nurse was not fond of wealth nor social climbing. She was a fixer always looking to fix something. She was well below a caste investigation ... should anyone start to investigate her origin, she would be done for! The nurse was of mixed ethnic upbringing, but more than that, she was of Western birth. She was smuggled to Pakistan as a young child and the receiving master had hidden her origin. This fixing was a deeply embedded need. This need in itself had to represent a reflex psychosomatic condition relating to her own theft, the stealing away of herself from the family that lost sight of her for an instant at the V & A Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa.

The politician and the nurse provided Unckle with supplies and conviction, the conviction to kill. Profiteering was Shokat’s game and Unckle was the perfect pawn. In fact, Unckle had been under Shokat’s spell all his life. Grooming by Shokat had started at an early age.

The nurse toiled up the mountain side. The narrow, rockstrewn path was her electricity, the narrow footpath fuelling her every step with heightened anticipation. The moon scudded behind the clouds of wispy cirrus and stretched alto cirrus moisture. The deep valleys always had wind and high altitude temperature changes chased columns of air all over the Alpine ranges. The wind itself