Despite the jealous mutterings of his subconscious, his first impressions of this South African soldier were favorable. The man had a firm-jawed, weather-beaten face and open, intelligent gray eyes.
Ian lengthened his stride, aware that he’d also squared his shoulders. He stopped just across the wall from the soldier.
“Ian and Matthew, this is Kommandant Henrik Kruger.” Emily’s voice faltered, almost as though she’d been about to add something and then couldn’t think of the right way to say it. She recovered.
“And Henrik, these are my two friends, Ian Sheffield and Matthew Siberia. “
Friends? Ian nodded toward the South African, his face kept carefully blank. Kruger inclined his own head, acknowledging the introduction.
Neither man offered to shake hands.
“You are the American reporter the police are hunting?” Kruger’s voice was deep, almost melodic despite a clipped Afrikaans accent. An easy voice to hear amid the noise and confusion of a battle, Ian judged.
““That’s right.”
The South African soldier frowned.
“Then perhaps you can tell me why I should risk my career and my life to help you? Miss van der Heijden is a woman of my people reason enough for my aid to her … even if there were no other. “
Kruger glanced at Sibena.
“But this man is an enemy of my blood… and you are nothing more than an interfering Uitlander. Why then should I lift a finger to save you?”
Ian felt Emily stir and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, cautioning her to stay out of it. This was his fight.
He looked steadily into Kruger’s eyes.
“There’s no reason you should,
Kommandant. No reason at all. ” He heard Emily gasp softly in surprise and distress.
“Matt and I will take our chances on our own. But you’ve got to promise me that you’ll keep Emily safe or get her out of the country.”
He pressed on, anger making his voice harsher, rougher.
“And if I ever hear that you’ve broken your word or hurt her, I’ll come after you myself. Is that clear enough, Kommandant?” He stopped talking, afraid that he might have gone too far and endangered even Emily.
But then slowly, almost imperceptibly, a tight, thin smile appeared on
Kruger’s sun-browned face-spreading from his firm mouth to the crow’s-feet around his steel-gray eyes.
“You make yourself very clear,
Meneer Sheffield.
The South African officer offered his hand.
“And you can all count on my help.” He shook his head, amused at some
private joke.
“God help me, but I must have a weakness for romantic idiots.
“
Ian shook his outstretched hand-an action imitated, after a brief hesitation, by Matthew Sibena.
“Now what?”
Kruger helped Emily climb over the wall and stepped back, allowing them to cross as well. He laid a hand on the Land Rover’s open door and smiled again.
“Now, meneer, we make arrangements for the three of you to hide someplace where Vorster’s police and spies will never think to look.”
“And just where would that happen to be, sir?”
Kruger’s smile blossomed into a full-fledged grin.
“Why, inside South
Africa’s largest military base, my friend. Where else?”
CHAPTER 22
Green Light
NOVEMBER 12-SUPPLY BASE FIVE, IN THE HILLS NEAR PESSENE, GAZA PROVINCE, MOZAMBIQUE
The corpses were laid out in a neat, orderly row. Even their clothes had been straightened, but nobody could rearrange the bodies where they’d been torn apart. Each bore several bullet wounds in the chest or face.
Maj. Jorge de Sousa had seen bodies before-hundreds, it seemed. Like these, most of the dead had been simple, unarmed Mozambican peasants, but these villagers hadn’t been shot by Renamo guerrillas. They’d been gunned down by socalled allies” guarding a Cuban supply depot.
There were a dozen such depots, each carefully hidden among the low, brush-choked hills surrounding Pessene. Each supply dump held a sizable fraction of the food, fuel, and ammunition needed to support the Cuban tanks, motorized rifle troops, and artillery moved into Mozambique over the past four weeks.
Each was guarded by a platoon or more of soldiers, a mixed
unit of Cubans and Libyans stationed together to foster “fraternal socialist awareness.” Or so their political officers had claimed. Well, de Sousa thought coldly, these troops certainly didn’t look fraternal. They stood clumped in distinct national groupings while he and Lieutenant Kofi inspected their victims.
There were five bodies-two men, two women, and a teenage boy. All were pathetically thin, almost skeletal, dressed in rags that passed for clothing. They’d been shot for trying to steal a fifty-kilo sack of rice.
The rice bag, no different from hundreds of others piled high throughout the supply dump, lay nearby, also displayed as evidence. Apparently it had taken all five of them just to pick it up and carry it, a sign of their weakened condition.
The Cuban lieutenant in charge of this detail explained in Spanishaccented
Portuguese, “We heard a noise last night and fired a flare. Then we saw these thieves trying to make off with the rice, so we arrested them. And then we shot them.” Smiling, he motioned toward the row of corpses, slowly lowering his arm when he saw no praise forthcoming from de Sousa.
The Mozambican major turned on his heel and walked over to the Libyans.
Their uniforms were the same dark khaki color, but had a different cut, and they wore billed caps instead of the soft, floppy “sun hats” of the Cubans.
Both groups were armed with AK-47 assault rifles.
Their apparent leader, if de Sousa understood the Libyan’s rank insignia, was a sergeant whose dark-skinned face seemed locked in a perpetual scowl.
Without saying anything he looked the major up and down as he approached.
Finally, prompted by a glare from the Mozambican officer, the Libyan reluctantly came to attention and tossed off a salute that was almost grounds for a charge of insubordination.
De Sousa tried Portuguese, then English, even Tsonga, without getting any intelligible response. As a Moslem from one of Mozambique’s northern provinces, Kofi had more luck with his Tsonga-accented Arabic. The sergeant gave slow responses to the lieutenant’s questions.
Kofi turned to de Sousa.
“He says they have orders to execute anyone who tries to steal from the supply dumps, Major. “
De Sousa sighed wearily. His orders had been to guard the dumps, using force only if necessary. Someone else had obviously amplified those orders considerably.
When he’d been made responsible for the security of these supply dumps, he’d thought he would be protecting them from Renamo attacks-not from his own countrymen. But the guerrillas had stayed clear, scared off by each depot’s defenses. Instead, starving villagers had flocked to the area -drawn by rumors of vast stockpiles of foodstuffs.
Everyone in Mozambique was starving. If you chased peasants away, twice as many would return. If you arrested them, you’d have to feed them with food you didn’t have, or dip into the supplies you were supposed to protect. And if you used up these supplies, the Cuban column slated to attack South
Africa from Mozambique might not be able to reach its objectives.
It was what an American would call a catch-22, de Sousa thought. Then he shrugged. Americans always thought every problem had to have a solution. As a Mozambican, he knew that wasn’t true.
The men in Maputo had thrown in their lot with Cuba’s grand strategic gamble. And that meant that almost every truck, every railroad car, and every cargo plane coming into their country carried military supplies-not foodstuffs for civilian consumption. Until the Cubans completed their logistical buildup and launched their attack, Mozambique’s peasants would suffer.