Manu Herbstein
2050.The global village has disintegrated.The Third World War, ending in a stalemate, has left the planet split between two hostile powers, each with a captive sphere of influence. The Atlantic Ocean has become an American sea.West Africa has become a desert of failed states and anarchy, dotted with mines and oil rigs, stockaded and armed by U. S. corporations. From their island outpost of St. Thomas (São Tome), the Americans dispatch expeditions of geologists and mining engineers into the dangerous interior of the Dark Continent to search for untapped resources. One such expedition has gone missing. Ekem “Crash” Ferguson, born in the U.S. in 2008 of African parents and abandoned to the care of foster parents, is a Captain in the Marine Corps. His career blocked and his marriage failing, he accepts an offer to proceed to Ghana on a one-man mission to find the missing experts. His arrival in Africa is inauspicious: in a shack amongst the coconut palms he comes across two human skeletons. A boy guides him to a coastal village. He tells the chief that he has come to Ghana to search for his natural parents. The chief delegates fisherman Kofi Kom to accompany him to Kumasi, the Ashanti capital, 120 miles up-country. Kofi leaves Crash at a run-down lakeside holiday resort while he proceeds to Kumasi to obtain permission to enter the city. A troupe of actors is rehearsing a version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in the local language, Twi. He meets an ambitious young feminist actress, Yaa. In Kumasi, Kofi finds Crash a room and suggests that he employ Boafo, who occupies the adjacent room, as his guide. In a bar, Crash hears rumors of Americans imprisoned in the Kumasi Fort. Despite his failure to gain access to the Fort, he is convinced that the missing Americans are imprisoned there. When Boafo takes him to a soccer match at the city’s stadium, he identifies this as an ideal landing ground for the VTOL aircraft, Thunderbirds, which will stage a rescue mission. Crash is not aware that Boafo is a professor of electronics and has been monitoring his communications with Washington. Crash goes to the stadium at dead of night to await the arrival of the three Thunderbirds, each carrying an armored vehicle that will take the rescue party to the Fort. As the Thunderbirds touch down, they are blown up. Crash survives and is arrested. The wristcom which he has used to communicate with Washington is confiscated. Anokye, the Ashanti king’s first minister, interrogates Crash. He is put on trial and convicted but Anokye intervenes to save him from execution. His sentence is unusual. He will feature in a movie to be made about the abortive invasion, designed to build up nationalist sentiment. Yaa is appointed to direct the movie. The movie is premiered at Edweso, Yaa’s home town. There, Crash meets Robert Service, one of the missing Americans, who turns out to be Yaa’s husband. Service tells him that after the sudden death of the team’s leader, he and his colleagues discovered that they were being used as dupes to locate natural resources that could be exploited by American corporations. All of them agreed to stay on in Ashanti to assist in developing the crippled economy. As part of his sentence, Crash travels the country as the movie is screened in one village after another. He is impressed by what he perceives as a unique social experiment, led by Anokye, an attempt to build a decent, viable society in an economy barely above subsistence level. Back in the U.S. Crash is charged with treason, tried and subsequently executed.
