“That’s the hard part.”
JANUARY 21ON NATIONAL ROUTE 1
Nxumalu Mchwenge was a Xhosa, He was also an ex-member of the ANC, the
South African Defense Forces, where he had been a spy, and of Vega’s army.
Mchwenge had gladly acted as a scout for the Cubans. They had promised to drive
the Boers out, to bring about the socialist paradise that he had always dreamed of.
Then had come Potgietersrus. Thousands of black civilians had been gassed, shocking all of the native Africans working with the Cubans. A delegation sent to Vega’s chief of staff had been turned away, and two men who had protested more vigorously had been arrested, never to be seen again.
So Mchwenge had acquired another enemy. They had fled the Cuban column and joined the army opposing them. His army had no name, but with others, they had bombed and raided the Cuban liberators-tumedinvaders. Sometimes, they had even worked with white farmers to attack the Cuban soldiers, but that had been an exception, not the rule.
The war was over between the Cubans and the Boers now, but they were still his enemies. The Americans and British were probably his enemies as well, even though they had ended the war. Mchwenge had decided that he had a very short list of allies.
Now Mchwenge lay in a small rock pile fifty meters from the highway. The small, stocky black was used to the heat and discomfort, especially on a mission such as this. He had been tracking the retreating Cuban column for days, watching and thinking. Finally he had picked his spot.
Preparing carefully, he had quietly lain since before dawn, easily evading the patrols that covered the highway. Now he clutched the controller and waited.
Headquarters was the back of a truck. Its canvas cover provided protection from the summer sun, and its bed was more than ample for the few functions Vega’s staff still had to perform.
Gen. Antonio Vega, Liberator of Walvis Bay, sat easily on a camp stool in the moving truck, reading a summary of the previous day’s casualties.
The truck was moving slowly, out of deference to the thousand-plus men who still had no transport.
Facing to the open rear, he looked out and saw the entire column laid out behind him. Vega’s truck was first, not only to avoid the dust but to make him easy to find. Even with the lead position, the dust and the heat had become more than irritating, almost intolerable.
Twin lines of men filled the road, with trucks interspersed among them carrying the column’s wounded, as well as its food, water, and other supplies. There were nowhere near enough trucks to carry all the men.
Virtually all of Vega’s own transport had been destroyed on that terrible morning. These were supply vehicles that had been en route from the north, their original cargoes dumped or consumed.
His men were suffering in the heat. A week on the road had weeded out the weak or infirm, but even the strong were tested by the midday sun and the dust. There was nothing to do but march, though.
The enemy had stopped molesting his supply line and had virtually given over National Route I for his exclusive use, as long as he marched north.
A company of American and British military police preceded him, clearing the road and making sure none of the Cubans strayed. A similar unit followed, picking up any stragglers. They had also picked up more than a few deserters” defectors in Western idiom.
It angered him that all the men under his command did not share his desire to return to Cuba. Even with Castro’s wrath to look forward to, the general’s only impulse was to get home. So far, his demands for the deserters’ return had been ignored. Of course, it’s easy to ignore a beaten general.
His leg still hurt, his clothes were filthy, and he ached in a hundred places. The rigors of life in the field seemed to be no different from before, but now there was no purpose to them, nothing else to occupy his mind.
Nothing except the casualty list, he thought, returning to the paper. No deaths, he was grateful to see, but more casualties to heatstroke, foot-related injuries, and two men who were hit by a truck.
They would last, though. Without any enemy assistance, he would march his forces out of South Africa and onto the airplanes in Zimbabwe. The
Americans and British had prohibited any landings by Soviet aircraft or personnel in South
Africa, and no amount of paint would ever convince them that the Cuban Air
Force had suddenly acquired 11-76 cargo planes.
More trucks would arrive over the next few days. Once his entire column was mounted, they would move ten times as fast. He allowed himself a faint anticipation. Even with delays, General Vega knew he would be home in a week.
Mchwenge felt the column’s approach in the ground beneath him, then saw the dust plume. Finally, almost an hour after the first warning of its approach, the column’s head appeared on the horizon.
They were slow, walking at the pace of an infantryman’s tired stride. The same slowness that had made it easy to pace and scout the Cubans now maddened him, filling him with impatience.
The Xhosa picked up the controller, then put it down, then picked it up again, checking the settings on its simple controls. He put it down again, almost throwing it, and fought the urge to pick it up again and check for damage.
The rock pile was waist high and had been altered slightly by Mchwenge to provide overhead concealment, as well as shade. Gaps at various points allowed him to peer out, and his comrades, checking the day before, had assured him that he was invisible from more than a meter away.
Mchwenge lay in the dark heat and waited, watching the steady progress of the column. His original plan had been to sneak looks occasionally, remaining completely concealed to minimize the risk of detection.
When the trucks had actually appeared, though, he had found it impossible to tear his eyes away, as if from half a mile’s distance they could suddenly zoom past the spot before he could react.
So he had watched through the gaps and waited, and finally, after half a morning of waiting, he reached for the controller again.
The small black box had a wire running from it. He looked it over carefully and again fought the urge to fiddle with its insides. He had put in fresh batteries that morning and so limited himself to one press of the test button. The yellow test light came on, and Mchwenge knew he had a circuit.
He had placed a small stone twenty meters from the spot, and as the lead truck’s tires passed, he lifted a cover on the controller’s box and flipped a toggle switch up. A red light next to the yellow one came on.
The circuit was armed.
The actual spot was easy to see. The meta led road had been torn up here, by weather or fighting. Even tracked vehicles crossing it could have created the break, but it was just what he had needed.
It was no different from a hundred other gaps, but it was close to the crash site and had made their trip relatively short. Besides, why should the Cubans be suspicious? The fighting had stopped.
There was no sign of any reaction in the column, just a slow, steady march north that took them right over the break in the road.
A few miles from here, a South African jet had crashed, a forced landing by the looks of it since the airframe was still intact, The pilot had died on landing. Mchwenge’s comrades had found his dessicated body, still gripping the stick.
The plane’s ordnance load had also survived, or almost. Two five-hundred-pound bombs had been found near the wrecked plane, and one was adjudged safe enough by ordnance experts to be moved.
As the truck rolled over the gap in the meta led road, Mchwenge pressed the firing button, sending an electric pulse through a buried wire to five pounds of C4 plastic explosive. It detonated, serving the same purpose as the bomb’s damaged fuze. Two hundred pounds of Minol detonated exactly under the lead truck’s center.