Namibia to deal with these traitors!”
Van der Heijden nodded to himself. Surprisingly, de Wet made sense for once.
Vorster made an impatient gesture with one massive hand.
“Very well, de
Wet.” He glowered at the general.
“But do not fail me as so many have of late. I will not forgive treason or ineptitude.”
De Wet paled, murmured his understanding, and turned back to his uniformed aides.
Vorster looked at the rest of his cabinet, his weary gaze moving from face to face until it settled on van der Heijden.
“Marius?”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“Have you captured that American swine yet?”
The minister for law and order felt his stomach lurch. For personal reasons, he’d been keeping the police search for Sheffield low-key. In the confession his men had ripped out of Erik Muller, the former security chief had babbled about the young, Afrikaans-speaking woman who’d been blackmailing him. And now Emily was missing-not at the farm or at her friend’s home in Cape Town. Van der Heijden could add two and two to get four. Somehow his own beautiful, foolish, and headstrong daughter had been gulled into helping this American reporter. For her sake, he’d kept investigators from following up on several promising leads-hoping that she’d escape
South Africa before he was forced to act. Now it appeared that time had run out.
He shook his head.
“Not yet, Mr. President. But we’re hot on this man’s trail. I expect an arrest at virtually any moment. “
“Good.” Vorster stroked his chin.
“When we have him in custody, your people can undoubtedly ‘persuade’ him to recant this foolish story of his-true?”
Warily, van der Heijden nodded again. This Ian Sheffield was only a journalist after all. A few hours of rigorous torture should render him malleable to almost any suggestion.
“Excellent, Marius. ” Vorster smiled at the rest of his uncertain inner circle.
“There you are, my friends. Soon, we’ll have this American admitting that his whole story was nothing but a communist plot to sow confusion in our beloved fatherland. And on that day, all these minor difficulties will begin to fade away like the bad dreams that they truly are. Our strayed brethren in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal will return begging for our forgiveness.”
Vorster’s smile turned ugly.
“And the rooineks of the Cape and the kaffirs of Natal will weep for the days before they dared to oppose our power!”
Van der Heijden and the others stared back in open disbelief. How could their leader really believe that matters could still be so simply resolved? Mere words wouldn’t douse the fires of revolt and rebellion now burning in almost every corner of South Africa.
How could any sane man hope to avert Armageddon here?
FORWARD HEADQUARTERS, MILITARY FORCES OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
OF
CAPE TOWN, NEAR THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
Maj. Chris Taylor crouched behind a bullet-scarred Buffel armored personnel carrier, studying the hastily scrawled markings on a map of the city. He ducked as a mortar round exploded a hundred meters away, blasting leaves and bark
off an ancient oak tree and sending white-hot shrapnel sleeting through the shattered front doors and windows of the Houses of Parliament.
Smoke from burning buildings and vehicles swirled across the street and billowed high into the air-joining a dense pall produced by fires raging out of control all across Cape Town. Taylor coughed as he breathed in the acrid stuff. He tilted his helmet back up off his forehead and looked closely at his new secondin-command, Capt. John Hastings.
“You’re sure about this, Johnnie? It’s not just another damned rumor?”
Hastings shook his head.
“I talked to the new base commander myself. It’s official. Simonstown has come over to our side! “
Both men ducked again as another mortar round landed in the botanical gardens close by, showering them with dirt, grass, and pieces of mangled plants.
Hastings spat dirt out of his mouth and continued, “The Navy boys said they’d had some fighting with a few diehards, but they’ve got everything under control for the moment.”
“Damage?”
“A few fires, but no damage to the docks or ships.”
That was welcome news. Taylor had been hoping for support from the naval officers and ratings stationed at the Simonstown base. The Navy had always been the most “English” of all the South African military services. And even though its total strength didn’t amount to much more than a few aging ships, holding South Africa’s main naval base would give the provisional government’s claims to independence needed national and international credibility.
He refolded the map and rolled out from behind the APC, seeking a better view of the house-to-house fighting raging up ahead. Hastings followed suit.
Cape Town, once arguably the most beautiful city on the African continent, now looked more like wartime Berlin.
The ugly debris left by war marred the long, broad expanse of Government
Avenue and its adjoining botanical gardens. Buildings were pockmarked by bullets, mortar and grenade fragments, and cannon shells. Bodies lay here and there some crumpled on the street or pavement, others draped over rose bushes and park benches or sprawled on gravel paths. Some of the dead wore civilian clothes, others were in uniform. Strips of white cloth fluttered in a light sea breeze, tied around the outstretched arms of those who’d fought against Pretoria.
A wrecked APC blocked part of the avenue, orange flames licking skyward as its fuel tanks burned. A single charred corpse hung half in and half out of the commander’s hatch.
Taylor swallowed hard against the taste of bile, forcing himself to ignore the butchery before his eyes. Despite all the signs of slaughter, he and his men were winning. The flickering, pinprick flashes of rifle and machinegun fire that marked his battle line were farther away than when he’d last looked. And he could see an Eland armored car moving slowly forward, stopping briefly from time to time to shell buildings farther down the street. Small figures clustered along each side of the armored car, sometimes crouching for cover, but always advancing.
He nodded to himself. Vorster’s loyalists were definitely giving ground, falling back toward Table Mountain.
Taylor lifted his eyes to the flat-topped mountain rising south of the city. The escarpment loomed ominously over Cape Town’s tallest skyscrapers-a massive edifice of jagged rock covered by what looked like a thick layer of fluffy white cloud. A rippling series of red and orange flashes from the summit reminded him that the white haze wasn’t cloud at all. It was smoke from an artillery bombardment-a barrage so intense that it shrouded the entire top of the mountain.
He frowned. His gunners were firing everything they had at the fortified caves and bunkers held by government troops, hoping to knock out the artillery pieces em placed there, but it seemed likely to be a vain effort. Those fortifications were too strong to be suppressed by long-range bombardment. They’d have to be taken in a bloody succession of set-piece infantry assaults.
And that was the problem. Taylor now had enough men under his command to clear the city of Vorster’s troops. But he didn’t have enough infantry, armored vehicles, or artillery to finish the job by seizing Table
Mountain. As a result, the
battle seemed headed for certain stalemate. He and his fellow rebels might control Cape Town, but loyalist artillery batteries and troops trapped on the escarpment would dominate both its harbor and international airport.
Taylor hugged the pavement as more mortar rounds rained down on the gardens ahead, knocking down trees and smashing already shattered greenhouses.
Windblown dust, dirt, and smoke cut visibility to a matter of meters in seconds.