The Forças Armadas da República da Todjammo found themselves in a very curious position. The year before, a Ukrainian freighter бігаючі ублюдок had docked at the port of Pulfinga under cover of darkness.
A surprised harbormaster, having been quickly roused from his bed after attending a government lunch party that had run late into the evening, hurried to the quay and was greeted by the ship's master who unleashed a rapid-fire barrage of Ukrainian at him. The harbormaster, still suffering from the effects of too much celebratory aguardiente – the local banana liquor – had enough problems following the pidgin Portuguese of his countrymen, let alone some Eastern Slavic dialect.
Nonetheless, the Ukrainian managed to get his point across with a few heavily accented English words and hand gestures. In between pointing at his watch, saying "hurry" and "suputnyk" and sweeping his arm to encompass the dock the harbormaster was able to figure out that the captain was in a hurry, and wanted to know where his cargo should go. The harbormaster vaguely pointed in the direction of some shipping containers and the Ukrainian's face went from frustrated impatience to a big grin. "Ok!" he said, handed a shipping manifest written in Cyrillic along with a pen and gave a whistle to his crew. Ever since they had tied up, the crew had swarmed over the ship preparing to unload whatever it was that they were carrying. The banging and clanging had dimly registered in back of the harbormaster's mind as he tried to figure out what was being asked of him. He absentmindedly signed the manifest while hoping his brain would not escape his throbbing head through his ears and, as the captain whisked the signed document back, he finally thought to wonder what the cargo was.
Almost on cue, a loud roar echoed from the innards of the ship and he winced in pain not only from what the noise was doing to his mental functions, but also the blinding headlights of the first metal behemoth that emerged from the ramp in the ship's side. Stunned, he watched as 30 Soviet-era tanks, their turrets reversed and with cartons and crates tied to their hulls, roared across the doc to be parked somewhat haphazardly in the empty parking lot by the CONEX containers. No more than five minutes had passed before the tanks were unloaded and the ship's crew had already begun to prepare to depart. Five minutes later, the harbormaster was staring at the fantail of the бігаючі ублюдок as she headed back towards the mouth of the harbor and the open sea.
Five hours later, when he had awoken back in his office, he remembered the events of the night and thought to use his computer to translate the writing on the manifest. After a few hours of effort – made more painful by the throbbing headache and they abysmally slow Internet connection, the harbormaster learned that he had signed for 30 ex-Ukrainian T-62A main battle tanks – that were supposed to have been offloaded further up the Rio Bordo in the Republic de Bunji.
Bunji and Todjammo had concluded the latest border war over a portion of land on their mutual border. The Bunjians had come off the worst for it and were clearly still put out if they were ordering "fresh" equipment. Letting them have their tanks was unthinkable. Not only from a military standpoint, but admitting that they even had them would no doubt start yet another war and that would likely disrupt the banana harvest. This point was made to him repeatedly by the government officios and military brass that was crowded into his office. They seemed to think that this metal nightmare was all his fault.
As he looked out the office window at the stack of containers that had been moved around to hide the tank lot from the public, the harbormaster remembered how his cousin would "acquire" matatus – those ubiquitous minivans that served as a combination of public transit, gypsy cab and, when they wrecked, fodder for the evening news. His cousin, Rufalo, would take them to his shop, fix up anything obviously wrong and put a new paint scheme onto them featuring a different celebrity portrait before selling them on to a new taxi entrepreneur.
A year later, the wayward tanks had been cleaned up, converted to run on banana biofuel and swapped out with some of their more heavily used counterparts in the Todjamman armed forces. They had been put up for offer with the Sultanate of Ifat ordering a company of 11 for immediate delivery.
The Liberian-flagged M/V B'Ahbsyerunkl had been contracted, the tanks had been brought to the quay and all awaited the arrival of the Czech courier with the final payment to the Department of Military Sales and Tourism (Departamento de Vendas Militares e Turismo).
Wyatt