Both women's hair had been braided, crudely, to keep it out of the way. Their legs were also bound snugly at knees and ankles, so they bent slightly. For some reason the men's legs weren't tied — they pointed straight down toward the ground, their now-useless genitals dangling between. From the way each corpse twisted and swung, Ilse could tell they were stiff, though the women's breasts jiggled strangely as their feet jostled each other, no rigor mortis in the fat underlying their nipples.
From the look of the bodies their flat bellies, they all appeared fairly young, fit. Maybe they were troops who'd spoken out one time too often. Maybe the others in their unit had been made to watch in the clearing, or even to yank the benches out from under them. Did they hang them all at once, or one at a time so the remaining victims could watch and listen? Ilse knew it could take five or ten minutes before each stopped struggling completely, and then they'd hang limp, hips cocked slightly forward, buttocks and members relaxed. As Clayton and SEALs One and Seven scouted, Ilse moved toward the corpses. Their faces were horribly swollen and dark, eyes bulging blindly, tongues sticking out, giving them from the neck up an odd uniformity, androgynous, sexless. Ilse looked farther down, fascinated in spite of herself. From the length of one woman's pubic hair, either she trimmed it frequently or she couldn't be more than sixteen — Ilse could make out the cleft of her crotch, as rainwater streaked down her thighs.
Ilse realized Jeffrey was standing next to her now, also staring. This had happened recently, probably the evening before — the bodies weren't bloated yet, and there wasn't much of a smell. If they'd lost control of their bowels and bladders while led to the gibbet or on it, the deluge had washed it away. If the men came hard like some did, there wasn't a trace of it now. But the associations were too strong for her. Ilse turned to Jeffrey and buried her head, helmet and all, in his chest.
"Use the anger," Jeffrey said, holding her, stroking her back. "Feel it stirring your blood."
CHAPTER 12
Gunther Van Gelder ordered another straight gin. This wasn't recommended for people recovering from heatstroke, but he needed something to deaden his mind. The cabaret was noisy and crowded, full of tobacco smoke and wild people, and the raunchy floor show music blared. Given the late hour and very strict curfew, the customers were all military officers, high-powered politicos, and women they'd brought as their dates. Several people had offered to buy Van Gelder a drink. His naval uniform with gold submarine badge did the trick. But each time he politely refused. He needed to be alone. Several whores who worked the bar had approached him aggressively too. Again he refused, not because he didn't like girls. He was just in the wrong sort of mood. He'd been at sea too long. The changes around him were shocking.
The war was going so well, everyone said. Axis strength was increasing, the Allies a mere empty shell, right thinking had total control. Was this, then, why the nightly news on the one TV station still working — government-owned — always opened with more executions? Was this why even right-thinking Boers averted their eyes from the sky, wearing dark sunglasses outdoors even at night, afraid of an infernal nuclear flash? Was this why children were starving, white children, and people were eating their dogs?
Careful, Gunther, he told himself. This is dangerous talk, even alone in your mind. Van Gelder laughed, chiding himself at the irony, that he'd come here of all places for solitude. But a submariner made his own privacy wherever he went, internally. Duty, patriotism, glory, and honor. Disaffection, dissent, treason, and death. There was no middle ground anymore. Slavery, oppression, environmental destruction, all were common currency of this New Order that wanted to run half the world. It was becoming too much like the last New Order, the torchlight parades and the terror, the fearful or eager obedience, abdicating all moral standards, the marching bands and the slaughter. He could see it much too clearly now — how could everyone else be so blind?
Another woman approached him. She wasn't bad-looking, this one, nice clothes and subtle makeup — but then the resurgent Union of South Africa's brave fighting men deserved the best of the best. She fingered Van Gelder's qualification badge, the diesel boat over oak leaves and trident which he'd striven so hard to deserve. She couldn't possibly know what it stood for, the sacrifices, the risks. She offered to party for free. Van Gelder told her to leave him alone, and looked at his watch. He was due back on Voortrekker, inside the bluff, in barely a couple of hours, and he knew he was getting intoxicated. He had a responsibility, to his captain and ship and his crew. Van Gelder sighed. When push came to shove, there really was no escape. The navy was his life, his family, the underwater world was his home, the sea his most passionate mistress.
The hooker was very persistent. She told him he was cute and snuggled against him. She said she'd do whatever he wanted, and reached for his crotch.
Very well, Number One, he told himself, then laughed at his own little joke. There were other distractions than drinking, other forms of release and denial. He asked the young woman her name.
CHAPTER 13
To Jeffrey it seemed Ilse had gotten past some kind of hump, made some sort of decision. Her eyes and her jaw said no nonsense now, and her tone of voice backed it up. SEAL Two, their corpsman, treated the welt on her neck with an ointment. After more mines, another helo, and another enemy patrol, the team egressed the Hawaan Nature Reserve. They skirted a commercial nursery, closed and looking abandoned. Apparently they'd made it through the main defensive crust along the water's edge. They moved south, paralleling the beach, through forests and fields bordering a residential development, exclusive homes on big tracts. The houses were quiet, bare, completely blacked out. Jeffrey thought them evacuated.
The raiding party changed course to the west, inland again, and climbed more. They crested the ridge above Umhlanga Rocks, crossing the skyline in a clump of trees down on their bellies. This side of the crest there were no structures, no local roads. The ground in front of them dropped off steeply, and it was tricky to balance with their gear. Fully exposed to the weather, face-on to the wind and the rain, their progress was slowed to a stagger.
Somewhere below them, Jeffrey knew, lay the N2 Freeway, the major multilane artery that paralleled the coast— it was ten miles straight to downtown Durban. Jeffrey thought he heard heavy truck engines going north from the city, either troop movements or a supply column. They were too distant to see anything, no hope to get useful intel. Three miles beyond the N2, the briefing maps had shown, was a major railroad line, but no sign right now of a train. Beyond that, Jeffrey also knew, were the Durban defense district's mobile reserves, including main battle tanks. The group headed south again. They avoided a remotely operated antishipping/antiaircraft radar site ideally placed on the ridge. The team kept a safe distance from Autumn Drive, a dead-end road with a police station. Twice in natural clearings in the woods they found camouflaged heavy-machine-gun nests, stocked with lots of ammo and with perfect fields of fire — both emplacements were unoccupied, with no thermal signature, lying in wait for an Allied invasion.
They hauled ass farther on, paused to take five, and turned back toward the Indian Ocean, back over the ridge crest. Behind Jeffrey now, inland across the N2, was the sprawling Mount Edgecombe Country Club, presumably deserted this time of night. To Jeffrey's left, in the direction of the Ohlanga estuary from whence they'd come, was a ten-acre overgrown field.