End Run
DECEMBER 31IN NATAL
Special Forces duty always surprised him. Capt. Jeff Hawkins knew that “unconventional warfare” was much more common and covered a lot more combat than “conventional warfare,” but the longer he fought, the fewer rules there seemed to be.
Hawkins was dressed in U.S. Army battle dress, festooned with equipment, especially extra cans of water. Tall and slender, he was better suited to the heat than the massive Sergeant Griffith. Still, nobody wanted to risk dehydration. He carried the load easily, with a wiry strength that matched his thinness. His face was thin and angled. Even his fingers were skinny.
Captain Hawkins was the leader of a U.S. Army Special Forces “A” Team.
Along with his eleven other comrades, he had landed in the Durban area with the invading forces and was now operating “behind the lines,” assisting the black resistance.
Jeff’s skin was only a shade lighter than the Africans he
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walked with. He had always considered himself an American black, but in this color-conscious country, he would actually be classed as “colored,” since he had both black and white ancestors. Looking at the Sotho and Zulu tribesmen walking with him, he decided the term Afro-American was a good way of describing himself.
Special Forces teams supported the local resistance with specialized skills, gathered intelligence, and coordinated operations with “conventional” U.S. forces. Except for Lieutenant Dworski and himself, all the men on the team were sergeants, noncoms with years of training and experience. It was a touchy matter, working with a different culture, advising and assisting without giving orders. And there were always complications.
They were on their way back from a two-day patrol. Jeff had led Lieutenant
Dworski and Sergeants Griffith and Lamas on an engineering reconnaissance of the Tugela River bridge. It was a potential choke point on the Allied route of advance, and they had received orders to see if it could be seized and held in advance of the attacking Allied forces. This was only one of the missions his team was performing.
The answer was an exhausting and definite no. Jeff had learned enough to know when to walk away from a posthumous medal, and this was the time. Well defended, with a screen of patrols and scouts for twenty kilometers around, it had been an adventure just getting a look at the bridge.
No, headquarters would have to find some other way out of the Drakensberg.
Those rugged mountains were coming to symbolize the South African defenders and the difficulty of the advance.
Hawkins’s feeling of disappointment was mixed with his frustration with the
African soldiers he was supposed to be training and leading. These people were supposed to be allies. He seemed to remember something about allies being people who didn’t shoot at each other, but did shoot at the same enemy. In history, this had resulted in some strange alliances, but as long as the wars had lasted, so had the alliances.
Not here. Not at first, anyway. Hawkins and the other three
Americans had shown up at a nighttime rendezvous with local resistance forces, mostly ex-ANC guerrillas now fighting with the Allied side.
Any meeting at night, deep in enemy territory, was risky, and even after almost two weeks of operations in Africa, Jeff was keyed up. They had approached the site, an isolated grove of trees, in single file, with
Ephraim Betalizu, their best scout, in front by fifty meters.
Ephraim had disappeared into the copse and a few minutes later had called out, in Zulu, “All clear.”
Relaxing a little, Jeff had hand-motioned the file of soldiers forward.
He had only taken two steps, though, when he heard thrashing and the sounds of a fight. Breaking into a run, Hawkins sprinted for the trees ahead, weapon ready. He heard shouts, the sound of metal on wood, and then a muffled shot.
Jeff took the final few steps through the trees and saw Betalizu on the ground with three men standing over him. A fourth lay facedown to one side. A pistol lay on the ground near Betalizu’s outstretched hand, and two of the men held AK-47 assault rifles. Both weapons were pointed at the scout, and one man’s pose made Jeff think he had been about to pull the trigger.
Shit. Time to sound American, Jeff thought.
“What the hell is going on here? Ephraim, get up.”
Stiffly, he turned to face his scout’s attackers. Controlling the anger in his voice, he said, “Which one of you is our contact?”
One of the three, one with an AK-47 but not the man ready to fire, lowered his rifle and looked at Jeff. The American wore a standard-pattern U.S. camouflage uniform and green beret, with black plastic insignia. Although Jeff was not fully loaded with combat gear, he Appeared lavishly equipped compared to the guerrilla.
The African wore camouflage pants, a ragged T-shirt, and sandals. A big man, he had a short beard and close-cropped hair, flecked with gray.
“I am George Nconganwe, leader of this cell. You look like the Americans we expected. ” He gestured to Betalizu,
slowly standing up.
“But you have brought this traitor with you. “
Jeff felt himself bristling and tried to fight it.
“If I brought him with me, he is not a traitor. ” Jeff heard the rest of the team coming through the brush behind him.
“I will vouch for every one of my men. “
Jeff’s move was dangerous but necessary. Americans had no political currency in this area, and linking his reputation with that of the Zulus could work either way. Jeff was betting that Cape Town and Durban marked them as friends, not potential oppressors or collaborators.
Even in the weak moonlight, Jeff saw Nconganwe’s eyes move to someone behind him. Hawkins followed his gaze and saw the guerrilla was looking at Dworski, then Lamas.
Jeff introduced the lieutenant as his secondin-command, and then the rest of the team. The idea of an armed white man and a Hispanic being allies seemed to disturb Nconganwe almost as much as the Zulu. Whites were the oppressors. Hispanics were Cubans, first friends, now enemies.
He knew these men were Americans, and technically allies, but a lifetime of struggle made it hard to see past their race.
Jeff cursed his own complacency. Zulu and Xhosa had been historical enemies and also political rivals. Most of the now-shattered ANC’s membership had been Xhosa, while 95 percent of the Inkatha. movement had been Zulu. Inkatha had preached a more conservative line, while the ANC had ties with communist and socialist political groups.
Black South Africans had little experience with the idea of political dialogue. Any difference of opinion in this bloody land was cause for violence. The white government of South Africa had used this difference, and many others, to keep the two strongest opposition groups feuding between themselves. Now, even with the enemy in front of them, it was hard to forget old hatreds.
Dworski and Griffith had tended the fourth man-only knocked down and not shot, thank goodness. Only by being very businesslike had Hawkins
managed to convince Neonganwe to continue with the mission. They still had many kilometers of hostile territory to cover, and a dangerous enemy was looking for them.
Jeff’s original plan had been to place one of the local fighters with
Betalizu on point, but that was now out of the question. Betalizu did not know the area and could not scout alone. Hawkins would have to depend on strangers for his team’s security.
As they had set out, another conflict arose, with neither group willing to bring up the rear. Feeling like a schoolmaster, the American had ordered two separate side-by-side files, with the command group spread among them, keeping the peace.
The rest of the mission, successful but fruitless, had been a continuous string of compromises. Only after Betalizu and Lamas had gone forward together to survey the bridge, under the Boer sentries’ noses, had
