The sergeant nodded in satisfaction.
“A good clean sweep of all the AWB trash. That’s what the kommandant said he wanted. And that’s what we’re giving him.”
No kidding, Ian thought, still amazed by the speed of Kruger’s move to rid himself of Vorster’s toadies and spies. As he watched, the prisoners were stripped of all their weapons and rank insignia and crammed into three of the battalion’s troop trucks. R4-armed guards scrambled atop
Ratels stationed to the front and rear-perched there to deter any escape attempts. The rest of the battalion’s junior officers and staff were already scattering-trotting toward their own APCs and trucks.
Engines roared to life from one end of the column to the other. The men and vehicles of the 20th Cape Rifles were ready to move again.
Kruger appeared at the open window on Ian’s side of the truck with Emily beside him, her eyes blinking rapidly against the harsh light of the bright sun.
“You have room up front for another passenger, I trust?”
Ian smiled faintly, still not sure what to make of this man who seemed able to swing so swiftly and easily between cold ferocity and warm companionship. He popped the door open and slid over into the middle of the seat.
“Any time, Kommandant. “
Kruger helped Emily up and stood back as she pulled the door shut. Then he leaned in through the open window.
“Both of you may now move about more freely. I do not think you need fear Pretoria’s informants. Not in this battalion at least.
My men and I are no longer subject to Vorster’s illegal orders. “
“And Matthew Sibena?” Emily asked.
“What of him?”
Kruger looked taken aback for a moment. He’d obviously forgotten all about the young black man.
“He can also come out of hiding.” He paused, apparently searching for the right way to say something.
“However, it would be best if he does not call too much attention to himself. My soldiers may not like what they have seen of the AWB and its fanatics, but that does not make them ‘liberals’ in matters of race. You understand?”
Emily nodded once.
“We understand. And we thank you for all your help,
Henrik.”
Ian felt her warm hand slip into his and relaxed. He studied the other man’s calm, weather-beaten face.
“So I guess we’re not heading north to the Transvaal, then?”
Kruger nodded.
“You guess right, meneer.” He pointed toward the narrow dirt track ahead of his Ratel.
“That road will take us west and then southwest-the beginning of what I am sure will be a long journey to the
Cape.”
They were going to try driving all the way to the Cape Province? Ian whistled softly. A long journey indeed! The last reports he’d seen had claimed the nearest rebel forces were in Beaufort West-more than a thousand kilometers away over unpaved back roads scarcely worthy of being called by that name.
“Assuming we make it, Kommandant, what will you do then?”
“Who can say? Join the new government? Surrender to your newly arrived
American army of occupation? Scatter to our homes?” Kruger shrugged.
“I
truly do not know.”
Ian asked, “And your AWB prisoners? What will happen to them?”
“We will keep them with us for a while. Any of those verdomde traitors would gladly shoot me or you, especially you, Meneer Sheffield. They would also certainly betray the Twentieth’s position to their masters.”
“But are we taking them all the way to Cape Town?” Emily asked.
The kommandant shook his head.
“No, I don’t want those
jackals with us, but I cannot afford to turn them loose. Certainly in a few days our defection will be noted at headquarters. After that, we can discard them at some small town as we pass. We will be commandeering any gasoline we find, and if we cut the telephone lines, they will do us no further harm. 11
He glanced south, down the highway to Pretoria.
“In any event, my friends,
I am not at all sure we will survive long enough to worry about such matters.”
Neither Ian nor Emily needed to ask what he meant by that.
Suddenly, Kruger showed his teeth in a lightning-quick grin.
“Still, we shall have a few hours’ head start on the hounds. I plan to make the most of them.”
And with that, he swung away, striding quickly and confidently toward his waiting command vehicle.
In minutes, the trucks and APCs of the 20th Cape Rifles were rolling north along the highway. One by one they turned left onto the tiny dirt road heading west into Bophuthatswana -west toward the Cape Province, the U.S.
intervention force, and safety.
DECEMBER 14-STATE SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBER, PRETORIA
Fifteen men, half of them in uniform, crowded around an array of maps spread out on the chamber’s large teakwood table. Small colored flags and numbered blocks of wood represented the ground units and air squadrons locked in combat across South Africa. Their positions were plotted with extreme care since shifts of half an inch in any direction could indicate either a stunning victory or a disastrous defeat.
Marius van der Heijden tried hard to hide both his boredom and his increasing frustration. As always of late, the State Security Council’s morning briefing showed every sign of dragging on into the late afternoon.
He risked a quick, irritated glance at the tall, haggard man bent over the maps. There stood the sole reason for this absurd waste of time.
As the nation’s battlefield situation worsened, Karl Vorster’s interest in military minutiae only grew more pronounced. Not content with the kind of broad overview needed to make vital strategic decisions, he seemed obsessed with comparatively unimportant details-combat reports from individual infantry companies and tank squadrons; fuel and repair states for individual aircraft; even raw, unfiltered data gathered by recon units probing enemy positions or occupied territory.
We don’t have a president anymore, van der Heijden thought sourly, we have just another incompetent brigade commander. He grimaced. While
Vorster fiddled with his maps and wooden blocks, the rest of the government bumbled along on a sort of automatic pilot-hobbled by increasingly bitter personal and departmental rivalries. And all at a time when the wars with Cuba, its allies, and the United States and Great
Britain were strangling what remained of the Republic.
Even in loyalist-held areas, key industries were at a standstill. Basic munitions and armaments production goals weren’t being met. Fuel shortages were crippling both civilian transport and power production.
Outlying rural regions and the black townships were running low on food.
Much as van der Heijden hated to admit it, his own Ministry of Law and
Order reflected the chaos sweeping through South Africa. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his police and Security Branch troops had gone over to rebel forces in the Cape and the Orange Free State. Hundreds more were trapped in enemy-occupied territory-either dead or captured or in hiding.
Communications across the rest of the country were so poor that his surviving police commanders were largely forced to administer their districts on their own initiative, acting more as feudal magnates than as cogs in a smoothly functioning bureaucratic machine.
“What? What do you mean they’ve disappeared? How could such a thing be possible? How can a whole battalion vanish into thin air?”
