The atmosphere was calmer on Fridays, the officers beer nights at the mess, kids played carefree, and even the weather always seemed fairer in the barracks on Fridays.
Not this Friday. The tension in the air could cook an egg. The children didn't come out to play; they didn't come out at all. Not this Friday were the skies blue, didn't rain and it didn't quite shine.
The wee hours it was when came the banging on the chalet door.
"It has begun sir. The boys here in Abeokuta have struck" shouted the firm voice outside.
Still trying to snatch out of my dream, I heard him again.
"We have to get to Supreme Commander." He had a husky voice with a deep accent. Familiar, yet quite different than I'd heard before, Lieutenant Dada it was.
"How can we rescue the Supreme Commander" I asked.
"No sir, we will have to do the same thing. The same thing they did to us on January 15th." He replied.
"What?! Operation Aure?" I enquired in shock.
I'd hoped that this day would never come, prayed it would just roll itself under the rug. Rumours of the July Rematch had been making the rounds, the officers whispered it, the recruits longed for it, but no one knew the whens, the hows, the ifs. All we knew were the whos and whys.
Now I just asked and they just told.
"Yes Sir, The most important target is the Supreme Commander. For as long as he is there, everything we are doing here is nothing. We should go there."
I tasted the fear in my throat. Tried as I did to swallow, there was this discomfort that lingered in my neck. Flavoured with death.
Still in pajamas, I ordered Lieutenant Onoja, just returned from training in America, to hand me his US army fatigues, wore them over my pajamas and grabbed his grenade. I needed a grenade not a gun, a way out rather than get caught. Itd be a mission of suicide if ever did turn sour.
Onoja telephoned Lieutenant Colonel Murtala , informing him that we could no longer obey his stand down order. The Wedding, codename Operation Aure, had already been initiated and identities of our officers compromised so we couldnt stop now, lest we all went down.
We screened infantry men to get those whom we could trust then myself, Dada, Onoja, Lieutenants Shelleng and Bako herded them into two Land Rover vehicles and headed for the Government House in Ibadan.
It was no task disarming the men guarding the Presidential Lodge as we got them into what they thought was a drill. Before long, we'd rearmed loyalists to our cause.
The 4th Battalion which I failed to recall at the time was the most chaotic of them all. They were remnants of the Glovers Hausas the British governments answer to the Third Reich in Burma. Plundering massacring mindless vandals trained to take pleasure in crude torture, pointless interrogation, and unfettered violence. Yet, when it mattered the most, I forgot to remember.
After Major Njoku escaped, the rattling machine gun fire made it clear what these soldiers yearned; blood, enough blood, so much blood as to eclipse January 15th.
We laid siege at the building several hours before the Governor came down. The shock on his face seeing me,
"Major, what is it you want?" He Demanded.
I'd rehearsed the words over and over all through the night, yet bringing them alive was much harder.
"Sir, you're under arrest, please raise up your arms." I stammered.
As my voice grew bolder, I added "We want to arrest you, and we want to arrest the Head of State."
These were the most deadly words any soldier should never have to utter. Lieutenant Colonel Fajuyi looked me in the eye just one flash and gradually shifted his gaze to the grenade in my left hand. His last iota of doubt evaporated as he led me into the office where General Ironsi sat at his desk waiting.
"Yes, young man, what is the matter?" Ironsi asks. His voice was calm as one expecting flimsy messages from an errand boy. He caught a glimpse of the explosive in my grasp, and seemed to bother even less.
I moved in his direction with Fajuyi in front of me as I retort sharply,
"The matter is you sir, you're under arrest. You killed our brothers, and in January, when you came for support, we risked our necks quelling the mutiny. The dissidents were not court-martialed, now we hear through this journalist 'Peter Pan' that you will release them and declare them national heroes. National heroes for killing the Sultan? For maiming honourable soldiers?"
I stared at his mystical crocodile totem, imagining it come to life with the breath of an industrial size vacuum cleaner, sucking in the ammunition from the 106 recoiless rifles...
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