Hyena Dawn (45 page)

‘
Don’t underestimate him, Jay.’

‘
I’ve discovered his weak link. Marisa, his wife, has proved most cooperative. She has already borne me a son.’

Max Golden grimaced. ‘Was that really necessary?’

‘
Do you think Aschaar would have shown me any compassion?’

‘
None.’

Sonja said goodbye to Helen and drove slowly back to her hotel. Her second visit had been worth it. She gripped the steering wheel very tightly. Already it had cost her all her strength to go against the blackmail threats from Goldcorp, and each day she dreaded the appearance of the photographs and the subsequent scandal. Only Deon gave her the courage to go on. Even now, in England, she knew she could rely on him.

Helen’s story had confirmed her fears. Bernard and Jay would stop at nothing to achieve their ends; she, Sonja, was just a pawn in a larger game.

The moment she got to the hotel she went to her room and phoned Deon.

‘
There’s no legal way of stopping them, Sonja. They have too much power. Muller’s on their payroll and he’s slowly destroying my credibility in the force. I know he wants me to resign, but they’ll have to throw me out.’

‘
Deon, you must be careful. They know you’re involved with me. They’ve killed Pieter. Now you’re in the firing line.’

‘
I’ll worry about me. You must come back here now, and then I’ll sort those bastards out once and for all. It’s either them or me.’

Colonel Michael Strong stretched out his arms and then recoiled at the sudden smell of his own sweat. It was five days since he had last washed. They had become like animals, living in the dirt round the perimeter of the airport.

Even though his nerves had hardened, the anticipation of the action scared him. One wrong move and they would all be dead. He watched every man closely, always looking for signs of strain or weakness. It would only take one fool to give the game away, and he would have to dispose of any man whose nerves broke now.

He wondered if Rayne was operating under the same strain in Beira. He had last seen Bunty Mulbarton the day before. That was when he realised what he must look like - seeing Bunty so haggard and exhausted. Incredibly, Bunty had been able to mine the road to the airport without being detected.

One thought worried him constantly. What if the escape plane didn’t arrive? Had Rayne made some form of contingency plan? He was sure Rayne must have something up his sleeve, but what?

Through the sights of his machine-gun he watched a squad of Russian soldiers move over the tarmac. He calculated that he could have brought each one of them down if necessary. The distance was just three hundred metres, he could do it with one squeeze of the trigger. The figures looked almost like toy soldiers through the shimmering heat haze on the tarmac.

The sweat dripped from his forehead onto the stock of the machine gun. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was just after two in the afternoon. Four bloody hours to go, he thought to himself - as he remembered that he was the one who had started routine watches of six hours on and six hours off. It was painful, but it was the only way of guaranteeing their safety.

The General sat alone at the edge of the yacht club, staring out to sea. Nothing could go wrong, he kept repeating to himself, nothing. The logic of it was overwhelming. The Rhodesians could never stave off an all-out attack on Salisbury, their arrogance would be knocked out of them for good. Only the pilots would know of his private orders, and their battle plans would only be opened after take-off.

The time for questioning would come after the attack. It would be a daylight assault, early in the morning when everyone was at their least alert. First a wave of bombers would destroy the airfields, and fire bombs would then be dropped on the capital to create as much havoc as possible and bring people out of the buildings and into the streets.

Then would come the second wave. Fire at random and destroy all people in view. Vorotnikov smiled as he repeated the order to himself. The planes would strafe everything in sight, there would be a bloodbath of epic proportions. No stupid settlement plans after that, and no danger of any whites sticking around. Aschaar’s plan would just have to adjust itself. The executions could begin after twenty-four hours - people’s courts would deliver the death sentence.

The West, no doubt, would celebrate the victory and keep quiet about the carnage. As far as the rest of the world were concerned, the Rhodesians were degenerate racists anyway, and deserved everything they got. The few liberals would be quietly forgotten. Vorotnikov would bury them.

Still, he did need the blonde American journalist. She would tell the official story of the glorious new state; she would interview the white people - who would be so terrified by that stage that they would say anything that was required of them . . .

After that there would be martial law and complete expropriation of all white-owned property: a true people’s revolution that would be an inspiration to the USSR. His name would feature in
Pravda,
honours would flood in ... He dreamed of travelling through the streets of Salisbury to the sound of cheering crowds, the saviour of the oppressed.

He finished his drink and stood up. He must return to the villa and his friend, the South African businessman. Usually he would not have drunk so much, but the tension was getting to him. He would have to be careful.

Sam 2

Sam was scared. They’d moved her to another village, which hadn’t made her feel any safer. She wished she was back in America, a child again, with her parents to protect her. She daydreamed sometimes that she was on their ranch and riding her pony up to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada . . . This was all so foreign. She lay down on the hessian hammock in the comer of the hut and dozed off to sleep.

She was woken in the darkness. She lashed out and a strong hand caught her own in a vice-like grip.

‘
Sam. It’s me.’

She felt her pulse quicken. She was pleased to see him, yet she was glad it was dark so that he could not see the warm smile that flooded her face.

‘
I’m sorry, Tongogara, I’ve been scared.’

‘
Relax, they’ll never find you even if they come looking.’

‘
And if they torture the villagers?’ She saw his face crease with agitation in the half-light and she wished she had not asked such a stupid question.

‘
They would remain silent. For me, they would die.’

‘
I have made you angry. Please forgive me.’ She wanted him to like her, not to think that she was just a helpless, vulnerable woman.

‘
I am not angry with you, just with myself. I have seen strange things, parachutes hidden in the bush near Beira.’

‘
God! Rhodesians?’

‘
If it’s them, then they must be here because they have found out about the invasion plans. How would they have found out?’

‘
Perhaps from the South Africans? They have the best intelligence system in Africa. I don’t think they could be here in large numbers, you would have seen more evidence of them. What are you going to do?’

‘
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’

‘
You’re crazy.’

‘
Sam, many of my own people are against the idea of the invasion. There has been enough death and devastation in this war. By sacking Salisbury we shall merely confirm what the Rhodesians and South Africans are always asserting in the world media.’

‘
That you’re a bunch of savages.’ In the half-light she saw the irritation on his face, but he still managed a smile.

‘
You put it so eloquently. If we can settle this war peaceably, an example will be set for South Africa. If the Rhodesians interfere here now, it will be more ammunition for us at the United Nations. But I can’t believe that the Rhodesians would be so stupid as to launch an attack against Mozambique at this sensitive stage.’

‘
They might be a crack force, the SAS or the Selous Scouts. Could you locate them?’

She felt a tremor of hope. Perhaps Rayne might be amongst them. She was reminded of her love for him. And yet she needed Tongogara; she couldn’t quite come to grips with her feelings for this man who’d saved her life.

‘
If I found them, they’d kill me or I’d kill them. This is war.’ They sat for a long time in the darkness, not saying a word. Sam wished that he would take her in his arms, she wanted him desperately. Wanted to feel the strength of him.

He moved towards her and she felt the electricity tingling through her body. But he only kissed her softly on the cheek, then he got up and left without a word.

Maybe they were watching him now. The war was almost a game for them, while for him it was his soul. Why did they fight so well? That was something that intrigued him. Was it because the Rhodesians were a frontier people? Perhaps they were slightly crazy.

He would keep a low profile if they moved in, and make sure his own men kept out of the way. Let the Russians be the cannon fodder for once, it would teach them a good lesson. They were not as strong as they thought. An engagement with the Selous Scouts would ruin their yet untested image of strength.

Tongogara walked easily in the darkness, making little noise and always aware of what was happening around him. The war was only the beginning for the black man in Africa. His dream was to establish an Africanist state, neither communist nor capitalist. Tongogara felt deep resentment at the way the foreign governments tried to impose their own political systems on the new black states. Before these white men had come into Africa, his people had had their own political systems; but now, in states like South Africa and Rhodesia, the people had been oppressed for so long that they had forgotten their heritage, lost all their pride.

And then the bitterness came back to him, as fresh as the day he had decided to fight for the cause. The white Rhodesians had so little to lose. If the tide turned against them they would merely retreat back to Britain or across the border to South Africa, with their material wealth substantially intact. And how they would jeer at the mistakes of the new black government - mistakes that were the direct result of their own policies. Of course, men who had no experience of power would abuse it at first, this was inevitable.

The white man loved Africa, the land he had taken from the black man, and he could not stand to see it plucked from his grasp. God, how he wished he had been born in another place, at another time, content to live quietly with his wife and bring up his children!

Tongogara stumbled on through the darkness. Back to his men, back to the war.

After a hot bath and a shave Lois was transformed. Rayne still couldn’t believe the sudden turn of events: it was a miracle that Lois had been able to fly the helicopter so close to Beira without being detected by the Russian radar systems at the airport. The bikes and other equipment were already in position, the helicopter hidden under a screen of camouflage mats and foliage.

He gave Lois a complete breakdown of his own battle plan and then went down for dinner with Guy as usual. He realised there was no point in keeping Lois’s existence a secret any longer - on the contrary, it was now vital that everyone knew about Lois, in case anything happened to himself. Everyone must know that they had a second way out if the plane didn’t come.

To Rayne’s surprise, Guy was not particularly astonished. ‘I couldn’t believe that such an able commander as yourself would have relied on just one avenue of retreat. We all guessed you had something up your sleeve, but why was it so important for you to go through that charade of dismissing Lois when we were in South Africa?’

‘
I felt then that secrecy was very important. I couldn’t be certain, until we were here, that everyone was completely behind me, and I didn’t want anything to jeopardize Lois’ side of the operation. As it was, he had a very close shave with the South African army after we left. You don’t get any second chances in this business, as you well know. Tomorrow I want to get Lois out of town and back to the helicopter. If the plane does arrive on schedule, he’ll make his own way out.’