Bekker sounded almost uninterested.
“On the contrary. It simplifies matters enormously.”
Marvelous.
“Good luck, then, Captain.”
“It’s not a question of luck, sir,” Bekker corrected him.
“It’s more a question of ballistics and kill radii.”
Muller hung up, stung by the army officer’s unconcealed sarcasm. For a brief moment, he considered arranging a much-needed lesson in humility for the man-something that would teach him to show more respect for his superiors. Then he shook the thought away. Bekker’s talent as a competent and calculating killer made him too valuable a tool to waste. Personal vengeance was a useless luxury when playing for such high stakes.
Muller’s eyes narrowed. There would be time enough later to settle scores with those who’d wronged him. All of them. Every last one of those on a long, unwritten list kept carefully in memory from his boyhood on.
He smiled, drawing a strange kind of comfort from imagining the suffering he would someday inflict.
IN THE HEX RIVER MOUNTAINS
David Kotane wriggled backward on his belly, hugging the ground until he could be sure he was well hidden among the shadows and tall grass. Safe for the moment from prying eyes and telescopic sights, he rose and gently brushed the dirt off his clothes before squatting again with his back to a gnarled, termite-gnawed tree trunk.
He looked slowly around the small, almost overgrown clearing, studying each of the men crouching around him in a semicircle. Worn, anxious faces stared back, waiting for him to speak.
“They’re all around us. ” The guerrilla leader kept his tone matter-of-fact, concealing his own fears.
“You’re sure, comrade?”
Kotane looked squarely at his secondin-command, a grayhaired survivor of several clandestine operations, and nodded.
“Quite sure. The Afrikaner bastards are being very careful, but I spotted signs of movement in every direction. “
“What do we do now?” Andrew Sebe, the youngest of the group, was scared to death and it showed.
“We wait for darkness,” Kotane said calmly.
“There’ll be no moon till late, so it’ll be pitch-black out there. We’ll be able to slip away right under their noses.”
Sebe and several other younger, less experienced men looked relieved. The older guerrillas exchanged more knowing glances. They were well aware that the odds against surviving the next several hours were astronomical.
“In the meantime we’ll take up firing positions here, here, and there.”
Kotane sketched the outline of an all-around defense in the dirt.
“If the soldiers try to come for us before dark, we’ll gut them.”
Heads nodded around the circle. They had enough firepower to inflict serious losses on any attackers trying to cross the open ground surrounding their little tangle of trees. They couldn’t defeat the government troops pursuing them, but they could make sure the South
Africans paid a high price in dead and wounded. And in its own way that would be a kind of victory for the guerrilla team.
Unfortunately, it was a victory the South Africans had no intention of giving them.
COMMAND GROUP, REACTION FORCE BRAVO TWO
Capt. Rolf Bekker focused his binoculars on the small copse of trees four hundred meters away. Nothing. No signs of movement at all. The guerrillas weren’t showing any evidence of panic-despite being surrounded by a reinforced company of battle-hardened paratroops.
He nodded slowly to himself, a thin, wry smile on his lips. Whoever commanded those ANC terrorists was good. Damned good. Of course, the attack on the Blue Train had already shown that. He’d only had to take a quick look at the torn-up tracks, smashed locomotive, and body-strewn hillside to know at once that he was up against a real professional.
Bekker’s smile disappeared. It would be a pleasure to kill such a man.
He lowered his binoculars and held out his hand. Corporal de Vries, crouched nearby, snapped the microphone into his hand.
Bekker held it to his lips and thumbed the transmit button.
“Bravo Two
Alpha to Bravo Two Foxtrot. Are you in place? Over. ” ” Foxtrot here, Alpha.” The lieutenant commanding a section of four 81mm mortars attached to Bekker’s company answered promptly.
“Deployed and ready to fire. Over.”
Bekker turned and glanced down the steep slope behind him. The four mortar teams were clearly visible at the foot of the hill, clustered around their weapons as though praying.
“Give me a spotting round, Foxtrot. ” Bekker turned back while talking and lifted his binoculars again.
“On the way.”
A dull noise like a muffled cough confirmed the lieutenant’s words. Almost instantly, Bekker saw a burst of purplish smoke appear on the rolling grassland close to the copse of trees. He mentally calculated distances and angles.
“Give me another spotting round, Foxtrot. Down fifty and right thirty. “Roger, Alpha.” Five seconds passed.
“On the way.”
This time the smoke round landed squarely in the middle of the tiny group of trees. Hazy, purple tendrils rose from the impact point and drifted slowly north in the wind.
Say good-bye, you black bastards, Bekker thought as he clicked the mike button.
“On target, Foxtrot! Fire for effect! “
Behind him, the four mortars coughed in unison, flinging round after round of HE high into the air. Four. Eight. Twelve. The crews worked rapidly, almost as though they were well-oiled machines-efficiently sending death winging on its way to a target they couldn’t even see.
Bekker watched in fascination as the mortar salvos slammed into the
ANC-held clump of trees. Bright, or angered explosions rippled through the foliage, tearing, shredding, and maiming every living thing they enclosed.
Other bombs burst in the air overhead, spraying a killing tain of white-hot shrapnel downward.
Within seconds, the smoke and dust thrown skyward by the bombardment obscured his view. The only things still visible within the billowing black, gray, and brown cloud were split-second flashes as more mortar bombs found their target.
Bekker let the mortars go on firing far longer than was necessary. Forty rounds of high explosive reduced the small copse of trees to a smoking wasteland of torn vegetation and mangled flesh.
THE OOST COTTAGE, IN THE HEX RIVER MOUNTAINS
Riaan Oost could hear the explosions echoing in the distance as he tossed a single suitcase into the back of his pickup truck. The sounds confirmed what logic had already told him. Kotane and his men wouldn’t be returning.
It was past time to leave.
Long past time, in fact. The ANC’s Cape Town safe house was a three-hour drive away under normal conditions. And conditions were unlikely to be normal. Oost roughly wiped the sweat from his palms onto his jeans and turned toward the front door of his cottage.
“Marta! Come on! We’ve got to go!”
His wife appeared in the doorway, staggering under the weight of a box piled high with photo albums and other mementos of their married life.
Oost swore under his breath. She had no business bringing those. Things such as those were sure to arouse suspicion if they were stopped at a security checkpoint before reaching Cape Town.
He stepped in front of her, blocking her path to the truck.
She looked up guiltily.
“I know, Riaan, I know. But I couldn’t bear to leave them behind.” She sniffed, fighting back tears.
Oost felt his anger fade in the face of her sadness.
“I am sorry. ” His voice was gentle.
“But you’ve got to leave them here. It’s too risky.”
He reached out and took the box out of her unresisting hands.
In silence, she watched him carry her small treasures back into the cottage.