He rolled back into cover, reaching for his command phone. Table Mountain would have to wait. He had more immediate problems.
Behind him, the setting sun dipped lower, dropping steadily toward the western horizon. Night was falling across a South Africa now fully engulfed in bitter civil war.
CHAPTER 21
Flight
NOVEMBER 11 -- HEADQUARTERS, 20TH CAPE RIFLES, VOORTREKKER HEIGHTS MILITARY CAMP, NEAR PRETORIA
Furnace-white arc lights burned all along the perimeter of the Voortrekker
Heights Military Camp-stripping the night away from barren brown hillsides. No trees, clumps of brush, or even patches of tall grass remained either to soften the outlines of those rugged slopes or to conceal an approaching enemy. Together, the perimeter lights and the empty kill zones they fit made it impossible for anyone to mount a successful surprise attack on South Africa’s major military headquarters. But the dazzling glare also washed out any glimpse of cold, clear stars speckled across a pitch-black sky or the warm, golden glow of Pretoria’s streetlamps and cozy homes.
Commandant Henrik Kruger regretted that. Any reminder of life outside this sterile military encampment would have been welcome.
Since leaving the Namibian front more than a month be4”
fore, his battered battalion had been penned up among Voortrekker Heights’ drab, look-alike barracks, parade grounds, maintenance sheds, and vehicle parks. Some high-ranking nitwit in the Ministry of Defense had ordered all enlisted personnel and noncommissioned officers restricted to base.
He and his officers had stayed with them, determined not to let a piece of bureaucratic idiocy endanger bonds of trust and loyalty forged in combat. Still, he had to admit to himself that he also had other, more personal reasons for avoiding Pretoria or nearby Johannesburg.
He was afraid that even the sight of their bustling streets, shops, and restaurants might awaken painful memories of his brief, happy time with
Emily van der Heijden-memories that were three years old now. True, he’d known that their engagement was mostly her father’s idea, but he’d hoped that he could reconcile her to the thought of their marriage. In retrospect, it had been a foolish hope. The gaps between their ages, their politics, and their interests were simply too wide to be easily bridged.
Kruger smiled crookedly. He’d been alone and aloof for most of his adult life-content in the masculine, monastic world of the professional military. Given that, it was strange that he should have found the one woman of his heart, only to learn that she had no room in hers for him.
He gripped the wood railing of his veranda until his knuckles stood out white against the surrounding blackness. With an effort, he forced his mind away from lasting personal grief to professional concerns.
Such as this absurd decision to keep his battalion confined to
Voortrekker Heights. Vorster and his minions must fear that exposure to the political dissent and economic hardship sweeping the country might tempt their soldiers to commit treason or desert. So they’d denied his troops and the other weary combat veterans returning from Namibia promised home leaves, weekend passes, and any other opportunity to escape the rigid confines of a military life for even a short while.
Kruger relaxed his grip and flexed his aching fingers. Anybody brighter than a brain-dead Defense Ministry bureaucrat could have predicted the result. Weeks of bloody fighting followed by more weeks of mind-numbing routine-drill, calisthenics, drill, spit-and-polish inspections, and still more drill-had produced a battalion practically boiling over with resentment and barely suppressed rage.
More than a dozen of the 20this veterans were in punishment cells right now-locked up on charges ranging from simple insubordination to being drunk while on duty. Kruger shook his head angrily. He’d rather chance the desertion of a few men than watch this slow, steady disintegration of what had been a proud fighting unit.
As matters stood, the 20th Cape Rifles was now effectively a weaker battalion than it had been in Namibia. Citizen Force replacements were filtering in slowly, fleshing out skeletal companies and platoons to something near their authorized strength. Unfortunately, most of the reservists were short on needed training, experience, and esprit de corps.
Kruger frowned. His companies were also short of heavy weapons and vehicles. They’d left what remained of their old gear in Namibia to equip the battalion replacing them on the line. In return, his troops had been promised first pick of the new armored personnel carriers, mortars, and heavy machine guns that were supposed to be rolling off the ARMSCOR production lines. So far, at least, they’d had little to pick from. Strikes and skilled-labor shortages had cut production well below required levels.
And as a result, he had barely enough APCs to mount one of his three infantry companies. The other two could move only by truck or on foot.
The sound of guttural laughter emanating from the nearby bachelor officers’ quarters turned his worried frown into a scowl. Tanks, artillery, APCs, and antitank weapons might be in short supply-but not, it seemed, junior staff officers with strong political ties to the Vorster government. They’d arrived in eager, interfering droves.
So though the 20th was short of trained troops and weapons, it had a battalion staff bloated to a size more suitable to a brigade. Kruger didn’t have any illusions about why the Defense Ministry had seen fit to dump so many fanatics in his lap. They were there to keep tabs on him-to make sure
that he and the other officers didn’t lead their men into rebellion.
His scowl grew deeper. He didn’t mind their prying and spying so much.
He could cope with that. But the overabundance of inexperienced, inept, and arrogant Afrikaner officers was yet another source of friction in a battalion already rubbed raw.
“Vorster’s pets,” as they were known, tended to treat the 20this enlisted men-most born and raised in the Cape
Province-as nothing more than would-be traitors and renegades.
Well, perhaps that wasn’t too far off the mark, he thought wryly, remembering the news passed on by his friends inside the Ministry. It was incredible. Cape Town in flames and armed conflict spreading across the whole province like wildfire. Natal torn by guerrilla war, atrocity, and revenge. And antigovernment commandos roaming vast stretches of the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State virtually at will. Karl Vorster’s criminal stupidity and his illfated Namibian invasion had combined to tear South Africa to pieces in the space of a few short months.
He raised his eyes again, scanning the night sky above the low hills rising to the north for some sign of the city just beyond them. Nothing.
Only the glaring lights and the elongated, ugly shadows cast by armored cars patrolling the perimeter. But even at this distance, he could tell that several of the armored cars had their weapons turrets pointing inward-toward the base’s barracks and armories. He smiled sourly.
Vorster’s loyalists were taking few chances. And rightly so.
Kruger started to pace slowly up and down the darkened veranda. Many of his friends and fellow soldiers had already joined those rebelling against Pretoria’s authority. Soon it would be his turn. Very soon.
JOHANNESBURG
The unmarked police minivan sat on a narrow side street, wedged between a silver Astra and a dark blue Toyota pickup.
Two uniformed officers slouched in the front seat with their ties hanging loose and collar buttons unfastened. One, a big, beefy man with thinning, straw-colored hair, sipped moodily at a styrofoam cup half-full of lukewarm coffee. His partner, smaller and darker-haired, sighed briefly and stubbed his cigarette out in the door ashtray. Both men were silently cursing the trick of fate that had saddled them with such a worthless assignment.