Godfrey Shongwe was a man who believed that manual labour was a highly contagious disease. For fifty years, he had successfully vaccinated himself against it with a steady regimen of excuses, delegation, and strategic incompetence.
But today, the universe—and Zweli Masilela—had cancelled his prescription.
Godfrey stood in the back lot of the Shongwe Enterprises yard in Pretoria West. The heat was already rising off the asphalt, smelling of oil and old rubber. He was wearing his second-best Italian suit, a charcoal grey number that was currently being ruined by the vehicle in front of him.
“I am not driving that,” Godfrey said, his voice pitching high with indignation. He pointed a manicured finger at the beast.
It was a 1995 Mercedes-Benz Powerliner tipper truck. Once, perhaps in the golden era of democracy, it had been white. Now, it was the colour of a bruised banana, covered in rust spots and red dust. The passenger door was held shut with baling wire. It didn’t just leak oil; it seemed to be sweating it.
“It is the only way, Uncle,” Zweli said. He was already in the driver’s seat of the second truck—an equally decrepit Hino—revving the engine. The smoke belching from the exhaust was black and thick.
“But I am a shareholder!” Godfrey sputtered, turning to Beauty, who stood clutching her clipboard like a shield. “Beauty, tell your husband! I am an executive. I do strategy. I do lunch. I do not drive ten-ton trucks to illegal quarries!”
Beauty looked at her uncle. She looked at the time—1:00 PM. The site was dead. The suppliers were terrified. The deadline was a guillotine hanging over her neck.
“The Architect has blocked every legitimate supplier, Uncle,” Beauty said, her voice hard. “If we don’t pour concrete by tomorrow morning, we lose the contract. If we lose the contract, the bank takes the house. And if the bank takes the house…” She paused, looking pointedly at Godfrey’s shiny shoes. “…where will you live? With Auntie Sandra’s mother in the village? Without WiFi?”
Godfrey paled. The thought of rural exile was more terrifying than death.
“Fine!” Godfrey shouted, throwing his hands up. “Fine! I will drive the cursed thing. But if I get dust in my lungs, I am suing the company for medical damages!”
“Get in, Dad,” Themba grumbled. He was already sitting in the passenger seat of Godfrey’s truck, looking like he wanted the earth to swallow him whole. He was wearing a tight muscle shirt and designer jeans, utterly unprepared for a day of smuggling.
“Let’s move,” Zweli called out, shifting his truck into gear with a bone-jarring clunk. “Follow me. And keep your distance. The brakes on that one are… emotional.”
The Road to the West: 1:45 PM
The convoy of two rattled out of the city, heading west toward the Magaliesberg mountains.
This wasn’t the Pretoria of malls and government buildings. This was the fringe. The landscape changed from manicured office parks to scrapyards, spaza shops, and open veld.
Inside the lead truck, Zweli drove with one hand on the massive steering wheel, the window wound down to let in the hot air. The radio was broken, but he didn’t mind the silence. He was thinking.
He checked his rearview mirror. Godfrey’s truck was lagging, swerving slightly every time they hit a pothole.
The Architect, Zweli mused. Eastern European backing. Data centres. This is bigger than I thought. They won’t just stop with threats. Once they realise we are getting cement, they will move to physical interception.
He tapped his pocket. He had left the Black Card at home, hidden in an old shoe. He couldn’t risk being searched by corrupt cops. Today, he had to rely on something else.
In the second truck, the atmosphere was poisonous.
“This is humiliating,” Themba muttered, scrolling on his phone. “I can’t get a signal out here. I was supposed to meet a girl at Ayepyep tonight.”
“Shut up, Themba,” Godfrey shouted over the roar of the engine. He was wrestling the steering wheel like it was a python. Sweat was pouring down his face, ruining his collar. “Can’t you see I am piloting a death machine? Why is the gear stick vibrating like that?”
“Maybe it’s going to explode,” Themba said helpfully. “Dad, why do we listen to Zweli? He’s a nobody. Since when does he give orders?”
“Since he started paying for surgeries and finding security guards,” Godfrey grunted, shifting gears and grinding the clutch so hard it sounded like a blender eating rocks. “The boy has found a stash of money. Maybe drug money. We play along until we find where he hides it. Then…” He smiled grimly. “Then we take the stash and kick him back to the street.”
Devil’s Gullet: 2:30 PM
They turned off the tar road onto a gravel track that wound up into the hills. The signpost was riddled with bullet holes and spray-painted with a skull.
NO ENTRY. TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.
“Zweli is insane,” Godfrey whispered, his knuckles white. “He is leading us to our execution.”
The trucks groaned up the steep incline, tyres spinning in the loose shale. Finally, the track levelled out into a massive, gouged-out crater in the side of the hill.
This was “Devil’s Gullet.” It was an old limestone quarry that had officially closed in the 90s, but in reality, it was a hive of illegal activity. Men covered in grey dust worked with pickaxes and old machinery. There were no safety vests here. There were only bandanas and weapons.
Zweli stopped his truck in the centre of the clearing. Godfrey pulled up behind him, stalling the engine with a violent shudder.
A group of five men emerged from a corrugated iron shack. They were carrying AK-47s—old ones, from the border wars, but deadly nonetheless.
Leading them was a man who looked like he was carved from the rock itself. He was short, broad, and had a beard that was wild and grey. He walked with a severe limp, dragging his left leg.
This was “Mad Dog” Dlamini.
Zweli stepped out of the truck. He didn’t raise his hands. He walked forward calmly.
“Stop right there!” Mad Dog barked. His voice sounded like gravel in a cement mixer. He racked the slide of a pump-action shotgun. “This is private property. Are you the police? Or the Green Scorpions?”
Godfrey and Themba stayed locked inside their truck, terrified.
“Neither,” Zweli said, stopping ten paces away. “I am a builder. I need 40 tons of rapid-hardening cement. Cash.”
Mad Dog laughed. It was a dry, hacking sound. “Cash? You think you can just drive in here with those rust-buckets and buy my product? We don’t sell to strangers. Strangers bring trouble.”
“I know you don’t,” Zweli said. “But I also know that the big suppliers in town have been squeezed. There is a shortage. And I know you have a warehouse full of bags you can’t move because your usual buyers are scared of the police checkpoints.”
Mad Dog narrowed his eyes. “You know a lot for a stranger. Who sent you?”
“Hunger sent me,” Zweli said. “My family needs to eat.”
Mad Dog spat on the ground. “Everyone is hungry. Go away. Before I confiscate your trucks and leave you to walk home.”
Themba whimpered inside the cab. “He’s going to kill us. Put it in reverse, Dad!”
“I can’t find reverse!” Godfrey panicked.
Zweli didn’t move. He looked at Mad Dog. He switched his vision—not physically, but perceptually, using the diagnostic gaze taught in the Book of the Golden Lotus.
He looked at Mad Dog’s leg. He saw the inflammation. It wasn’t an injury. It was gout—severe, crystallised uric acid deposits in the ankle joint. The pain must be excruciating, like walking on broken glass.
“Your left foot,” Zweli said softly. “It feels like it is on fire, especially at night. You can’t sleep. The whiskey helps for an hour, but then it makes it worse.”
Mad Dog froze. The shotgun lowered slightly. “What did you say?”
“Gout,” Zweli said. “The rich man’s disease in a poor man’s body. You have tried the clinic pills. They make you sick. You tried the traditional herbs. They didn’t work. Now you just suffer.”
Mad Dog limped closer, his eyes suspicious. “Are you a Sangoma?”
“I am a man who knows pain,” Zweli said. “And I can take yours away. Right now. In exchange for the cement.”
The men around Mad Dog laughed. “He is crazy, boss! Shoot him!”
Mad Dog silenced them with a hand. He was desperate. The pain had been blinding him for weeks. “You lie. Doctors said I need surgery.”
“Give me your hand,” Zweli said, extending his own.
Mad Dog hesitated. Then, driven by the constant throbbing in his ankle, he reached out his rough, calloused hand.
Zweli didn’t shake it. He grabbed Mad Dog’s wrist. His thumb pressed hard into a specific point between the thumb and index finger—the He Gu point—while his middle finger dug into the inside of the elbow—the Qu Chi point.
“Breathe out,” Zweli commanded.
Mad Dog grunted.
Zweli sent a pulse of Qi into the meridian. It was a clearing strike, designed to flush the energy blockage causing the inflammation.
Mad Dog yelped. “Eish! It burns!”
“Wait,” Zweli said, holding the grip for ten seconds. Then he let go. “Walk.”
Mad Dog looked at him, then down at his leg. He took a tentative step. Then another. He stomped his foot.
The agony that had been his constant companion for months was… gone. It was just a dull ache now.
“Hau!” Mad Dog exclaimed. He jumped up and down. A smile broke through his beard, transforming his scary face into something almost childlike. “The fire is gone! The fire is gone!”
He looked at Zweli with awe. “You are a wizard.”
“Just pressure points,” Zweli shrugged. “It will come back if you keep drinking cheap whiskey and eating red meat. But I can write you a list of roots to boil that will keep it away forever.”
Mad Dog threw his head back and laughed. “Boys! Put down the guns! This man is a healer! He fixed the leg!”
He walked up to Zweli and slapped him on the shoulder. “You want cement? Take it! Take it all! Half price! No, for you—special friend price!”
Godfrey and Themba watched from the truck, mouths hanging open.
“Did… did he just massage the gangster into giving us a discount?” Themba asked, baffled.
“He is a witch,” Godfrey whispered, crossing himself. “I told you. He is using dark magic.”
The Loading: 3:30 PM
The sun was brutal as they loaded the trucks. Even Godfrey was forced to help, fearing that if he sat still, Mad Dog might change his mind.
Zweli worked like a machine, tossing 50kg bags of cement onto the truck bed as if they were pillows. Themba struggled with one bag at a time, wheezing.
Within an hour, both trucks were heavy, their suspensions sagging low.
“Go carefully,” Mad Dog warned as Zweli climbed back into the cab. “The police are not the problem today. There are black SUVs patrolling the R511. Private military. They are looking for trucks.”
“The Architect’s men,” Zweli nodded. “Thank you, Mad Dog.”
“If they trouble you,” Mad Dog grinned, patting his shotgun, “Send up a smoke signal. We don’t like private military here.”
The Return Journey: 4:30 PM
The convoy was slow now. Heavy. The old engines screamed as they crawled back toward the city.
Zweli was on high alert. He watched every side road.
They were five kilometres from the Atteridgeville turn-off when it happened.
A black SUV shot out of a side road, blocking the lane ahead. Zweli slammed on the brakes. The heavy truck skidded, dust flying, coming to a halt meters from the SUV.
Godfrey, behind him, wasn’t so quick. He slammed into the back of Zweli’s truck—BANG—shattering his remaining headlight and crumpling his grille.
“Idiot!” Zweli cursed.
Two men stepped out of the SUV. They were dressed in tactical gear, faces covered. They held assault rifles.
They didn’t speak. They just pointed the guns at Zweli’s windshield.
Zweli raised his hands. He looked in the mirror. Another SUV had pulled up behind Godfrey, boxing them in.
They were trapped on a lonely stretch of road, with 40 tons of evidence and nowhere to run.
The phone in Zweli’s pocket buzzed. It was a text from Comfort.
Alert: Police are 20 minutes away. You are on your own.
One of the gunmen walked to Zweli’s door and yanked it open. He grabbed Zweli by the collar and dragged him out, throwing him into the dirt.
“On your knees!” the gunman shouted.
Another gunman dragged a weeping Godfrey and a hyperventilating Themba from the rear truck, throwing them next to Zweli.
“Please!” Godfrey sobbed, his suit ruined in the dust. “I am just the driver! I don’t know anything! He made me do it!” He pointed at Zweli. “Shoot him! He is the ringleader!”
Zweli closed his eyes for a second, disappointed but not surprised by the betrayal.
The leader of the gunmen walked up to Zweli. He pulled down his mask. It wasn’t a stranger.
It was Khumalo. The man Zweli had been paralysed with a nerve pinch in the office.
Khumalo smiled, but his eyes were full of hate. He was limping slightly.
“You like nerve pinches, hey?” Khumalo sneered. He raised the butt of his rifle. “Let’s see if you can pinch a bullet.”
He aimed at Zweli’s head.
“Wait,” Zweli said. “If you shoot us, you leave the trucks. You can’t drive them. They are tricked out. Only we know the sequence to start them.”
It was a bluff—a desperate one.
Khumalo laughed. “I don’t want the trucks. I’m going to burn them. With you inside.”
He signalled his men. They produced jerry cans of petrol. They started splashing fuel over the bags of cement and the cabs of the trucks.
“No!” Godfrey screamed. “My suit! My life!”
Zweli looked at the petrol splashing near his boots. He looked at Khumalo. He looked at the distance between them—three meters.
He could take Khumalo. He could disarm him. But there were three other gunmen with rifles aimed at Godfrey and Themba. If he moved, his in-laws died.
Zweli needed a distraction. He needed chaos.
Suddenly, a low rumble shook the ground. A sound like thunder, but rhythmic. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Everyone froze. Khumalo looked around. “What is that?”
The sound grew louder. It was coming from the sky.
A shadow swept over them.
A police helicopter? No. It was black. Unmarked.
It hovered low, the downdraft kicking up a blinding storm of red dust.
Khumalo shielded his eyes. “Who is that?”
Then, the helicopter’s PA system crackled to life. A voice, magnified to god-like volume, boomed down. It wasn’t the police. It was a voice Zweli knew.
It was Comfort Sindane.
“DROP YOUR WEAPONS. THIS IS A PRIVATE DEFENSE CONTRACTOR OPERATING UNDER SECTION 49. YOU ARE TARGETED BY SNIPERS. DROP THEM OR DIE.”
Red laser dots appeared on Khumalo’s chest. One. Two. Three.
Khumalo looked up, terror dawning. He looked at Zweli.
Zweli smiled, dusting off his knees as he stood up.
“I told you,” Zweli said over the roar of the rotors. “I have contacts.”
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