“Maybe so.” Knowles sounded unconvinced.
“You gonna let a little thing like that stand in the way of a good intro line?”
“I know guys who wouldn’t.” Ian smiled ruefully.
“But I probably couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I started pulling stuff like that.”
Ian heard the sanctimonious tone he’d just used and secretly wondered just how well his scruples would stand up to another few months of virtual exile in South Africa. Damn it! He needed a big story to break back onto the charts in the States. And he needed it soon.
Knowles slung the Minicam carrying case over his shoulder and checked his watch.
“Well, you’d better sleep on it and get good and creative.
“Cause you’ve only got until eleven o’clock tomorrow morning to come up with an opening spiel. “
The little cameraman easily dodged Ian’s mock, slow-motion punch and headed for the station exit.
Behind them, the paratroop major commanding the Blue Train’s security force shook his head in disgust. Americans. You could spot them half a mile away.
They were so ridiculously frivolous. He turned and barked an order at the nearest soldiers.
They snapped to rigid attention.
The major took his job seriously. He and his men were sworn to defend
South Africa’s top officials with their very lives. But few of them ever truly expected it to be necessary.
THE MINISTRY OF LAW AND ORDER, PRETORIA
From where he stood, Erik Muller could only hear Vorster’s part of the phone conversation. He didn’t need to hear more.
“No, Mr. President, I won’t be taking the train with you and the others tomorrow. I’m afraid I simply have too much work to do here.” Vorster’s fingers drummed slowly on his desk, unconsciously mimicking the rhythm of a funeral march.
“What’s that, Mr. President? It’s a great pity? Oh, yes. Very definitely.” Vorster’s thick, graying eyebrows rose sardonically.
“Yes,
I’ve always enjoyed the food immensely. And the magnificent views as well. Especially those in the mountains. “
Muller fought the urge to laugh. Instead he watched Vorster pick up a pencil and draw a quick, decisive circle on the Cape Province map spread across his desk. The circle outlined a stretch of railroad track deep inside the Hex River Mountains.
“No, Mr. President. I’m sorry, but I really can’t afford to go this time.
Perhaps in January when Parliament comes back into session…. Thank you, Frederick. That’s most kind of you. And give my best wishes to your wife…. Yes. I’ll see you soon…. Yes. God be with you, too.
“
Vorster hung up.
He scowled across the desk at Muller.
“That damned buffoon. Can you believe it? Haymans still has the gall to try his smooth false phrases on me. He thinks he can win my friendship even now. With the stink of his treachery all around! “
Muller shrugged. Events would soon make Haymans’s words and actions irrelevant. Why worry about them?
Vorster tapped the map with his pencil.
“Are your people ready?”
“Yes, Minister.”
“And the terrorists?” Vorster’s pencil came down again, making another black mark in the middle of his hand-drawn circle.
“They seem prepared.” Muller leaned closer.
“I must admit that I dislike trusting their competence in these matters, Minister. The blacks have always been sloppy. Perhaps our own people could’ No Vorster waved him into silence.
“It’s too risky. Someone would talk or get cold feet.”
Muller nodded. The minister was probably right. He straightened.
“Then we can only wait and watch matters unfold. “
I “True.
Vorster rose from behind his desk and leaned over the map, his eyes scanning the railway route from Cape Town to Pretoria for the hundredth time. Apparently satisfied by what he saw, he carefully folded the map and slid it into a drawer.
When he looked up, the grim, determined expression on his face seemed carved in stone.
“God’s will be done, Muller. God’s will be done.”
Privately Muller hoped that God’s appointed agents could shoot straight.
JUNE 28-NEAR OSPLAAS, IN THE HEX RIVER
MOUNTAINS
The sun stood directly overhead in a blue, cloudless sky, bathing the narrow valley in a clear, pitiless light. Isolated patches of brush and olive-green scrub trees dotted the rugged slopes falling away from the razor-backed ridges on either side. Everything was quiet. Nothing cast a shadow and nothing moved. The valley seemed lifeless, abandoned.
But there were men there-waiting.
Andrew Sebe crouched low amid a tangle of dry brush and scattered, broken rock. He licked his bone-dry lips and tried to ignore his trembling hands.
They were trembling in anticipation he told himself, not in fear. He and his comrades were nearing the climax of long days and nights of planning, preparation, and reconnaissance.
Sebe gripped the rocket-propel led grenade launcher he held tighter, careful to keep his fingers away from the trigger. He wanted to model himself after the tall, stick-thin man squatting motionless next to him.
Kotane always exuded an air of absolute confidence. The guerrilla leader seemed able to suppress every emotion save a fierce determination to succeed, no matter what the cost. If only he could be as brave.
David Kotane glanced briefly at the young man beside him, noting the beads of sweat rolling slowly down his forehead. Then he looked away, searching the slopes for signs that would give his team’s other positions away to wary Afrikaner eyes. There, weren’t any. Good. His men were following orders perfectly so far, staying well hidden among the clumps of tall grass, dead brush, and low, stunted trees.
Kotane transferred his gaze to their target-the railroad tracks barely one hundred meters away. Viewed from above, the railway looked very much like a long, whip-thin, black snake as it wound to and fro high above the valley floor. Power lines paralleled the railroad, hanging motionless in the still, calm air.
Five minutes to go. Kotane idly caressed the small white box in his hand.
Two red lights glowed faintly above two metal switches.
A faint clattering sound growing slowly louder reached his ears. Rotors.
Kotane looked west, his eyes flicking back and forth across the horizon.
There! He spotted the camouflaged Puma helicopter weaving back and forth above the railroad tracks-flying steadily east.
Kotane motioned Sebe to the ground and flattened himself as the helicopter came nearer. The Afrikaners were making a routine last-minute aerial sweep down the rail line. No surprise there. They weren’t taking any chances-not when
a train filled with the white government’s top officials was on its way down the tracks.
Whup-whup-whup-whup. The Puma was closer now, much closer-skimming low above the power lines. Kotane shut his eyes tight as it roared directly overhead, trailing a choking, rotor-blown hail of dead grass and dust.
He stayed still, listening intently as the helicopter’s engine noise faded.
Going. Going. Gone. He spat out a mouthful of weeds and dirt and risked opening a single eye. The Puma’s rotor blades flashed silver in the sunlight as it rounded a bend and vanished.
Kotane sat up, elated. They’d done it! They’d evaded the last Afrikaner security patrol. Nothing could stop them now. He tapped Sebe on the shoulder.
“Get ready, Andrew. And remember, make your shots count. Just like we practiced, right?”
The younger man nodded and rose to his knees, cradling the grenade launcher in both arms.
Kotane risked a quick glance at his watch and turned to stare down the track. Any moment now…
“The Blue Train came into view from down the valley, gliding almost noiselessly along the track at thirty miles an hour. Orange-, white-, and blue-striped South African flags fluttered from the front fender of the electric locomotive. The rest of the train-twelve gold-windowed sleeping cars, a saloon car, a dining car and kitchen, generator wagon, and baggage car-stretched in a long, undulating chain behind the engine.