“You are wounded?” Kruger had to scream it into his ear to be heard. The
Afrikaner officer had a ragged, bleeding cut over one cheekbone, but no other apparent injuries.
“No!” Ian shouted back.
“What happened?”
“We hit a mine.” Kruger coughed as a thicker tendril of smoke curled in through the viewslits in his commander’s cupola. It smelled very much like burning oil. His eyes widened.
“We must get out! We’re on fire!”
Oh, shit. Ian whirled and lurched through the debris toward Emily. Sibena scrambled to his feet beside her. Behind him, he could hear Kruger rousing the rest of his crew and staff.
” Ian, thank God . She clutched at his arm as he helped her up.
“Yeah.” He turned to Sibena.
“Matt! Hit those clips!” He pointed to the metal locking bars holding the rear hatch shut.
“Right.” Sibena spun them up and away. Ian put his hand on the hatch handle and then felt someone grab his shoulder in a strong grip. He turned to see Kruger.
The South African had an assault rifle slung over his own
shoulder. His staff officers and vehicle crew crowded behind him with their own weapons.
“Let my men go first. We have enemies out there. “
“You got it.” Ian, Emily, and Matt squeezed to one side of the battered
Ratel-allowing the six men by.
The soldiers shoved the hatch open and threw themselves through the narrow opening one after the other. Staying low, they fanned out in a semicircle around the wrecked APC. A lieutenant stayed by the door to help the others out. Smoke and blowing sand cut visibility to meters at best.
Ian’s hearing was coming back. He wasn’t sure what sounded more dangerous-the staccato rattle of automatic weapons fire outside or the steady crackle of the flames now engulfing the Ratel driver’s compartment.
The young officer standing outside signaled him frantically.
“Come on, man.
Pass her through. I’ll get her to cover.”
Ian guided Emily through the hatch and turned to motion Sibena forward And an assault rifle opened up from somewhere close by, spraying rounds at full automatic. Several punched into the hatch door and howled off into the surrounding smoke.
Ian whirled round in horror. His vision darkened and then cleared. Emily and the lieutenant lay tangled together on the ground, bright blood staining the sand around them.
“No!” Without thinking Ian dived through the hatch.
She was still alive, though bleeding badly from one shoulder. The staff officer was dead. He’d taken most of the burst.
Ian scrabbled through the dead man’s gear looking for his medical kit. He needed bandages to stop the bleeding. He never even thought to look up.
Ten meters away, Staff Sgt. Gerrit Roost rose from his foxhole, cradling his R4 assault rifle. He yanked out the empty thirty-five-round clip and shoved in a full magazine. This one would be an easy kill. He started to raise his weapon, sighting straight at the kneeling civilian’s chest.
Three separate hammer blows knocked him off his feet. Astonished, Roost strained to raise his head and saw the ugly,
red-rimmed holes torn in his chest and stomach. Then he saw the man who’d shot him. His mouth dropped open. A kaffir! He’d been killed by a damned black!
The Afrikaner sergeant died with that look of shocked, unbelieving surprise frozen on his face.
Matthew Siberia let go of the trigger he’d squeezed and held down, threw the dead lieutenant’s rifle from him as far as it would go, and ran to help Ian.
EMERGENCY AID STATION, ON THE HILL NEAR SKERPIONENPUNT
Henrik Kruger stood looking at a scene straight out of his worst nightmares. Wrecked trucks and armored personnel carriers were strewn up and down the road and across the hillside in almost every direction. Most were still on fire, sending greasy plumes of smoke billowing up to stain the sky. Bodies sprawled beside the vehicles, some in heaps, others alone.
Others littered the hilltop.
Stretcher parties wandered through the carnage, looking for wounded they could carry up to the aid station behind him. He smiled bitterly. Aid station. That was an impressive sounding name for what was only a patch of bare rock and sand covered by a hastily rigged tarp.
Dozens of seriously injured men lay in rows behind him. His lone surviving surgeon and handful of corpsmen were completely swamped by sheer numbers. As it was, they were still frantically engaged in triage-the gruesome, though essential, task of sorting those who were sure to die from those who might be saved with the limited gear and supplies on hand.
Kruger clasped his hands tightly behind his back, trying hard not to hear the low, sobbing moans rising from the rows of wounded. Tears rolled slowly down his face, stinging as they dripped into his torn cheek. This isn’t a battlefield, he thought. This is a butcher’s yard. For both sides.
“Wommandant!”
Several of his men waved him over to a foxhole not far from his wrecked
Ratel. He sighed, wiped his face roughly, and moved in that direction.
They’d found the paratroop commander. Maj. Rolf Bekker lay crumpled near the bottom of his foxhole- wounded and only semiconscious, but still alive. Kruger stared down at the man. From the look of things, the paratrooper had taken a faceful of grenade fragments, been shot, and then left for dead when Kruger’s infantry overran this part of the hill.
The South African felt a cold rage building up inside him as he looked at Bekker. This was the bastard who’d murdered his battalion. The man whose soldiers had shot Emily. Kruger’s fingers brushed the 9mm pistol at his side. Revenge would be so simple. So easy. Too easy. He shook his head. There’d been enough killing.
He straightened up.
“Take him to the aid station and have him patched up.
I want this bastard to live.”
The kommandant turned and walked away, heading for the small cluster of officers awaiting their next orders. Orders? What orders could he give?
Ian Sheffield intercepted him. The tall American looked gaunt and completely exhausted.
“Henrik, I need one of your Land Rovers and a driver.”
Kruger stared at him for a moment, taken aback by the sudden request.
Then he sighed and nodded.
“I understand, Ian. With luck, you and Emily can still reach Cape Town.” He motioned to the wreckage strewn around them.
“I gather it’s pretty clear that the rest of us have come as far as we can. I’ll arrange for extra supplies and cans of petrol. “
“No, you don’t understand.” Ian shook his head in exasperation and smiled tightly.
“I just want a ride into the nearest town with a phone. I think it’s time we tried to scare up some help.”
The American’s thin smile faded as a high-pitched scream rose from the aid station.
“God only knows, Henrik, but I think we could sure use some right now.”
OPERATIONS CENTER, D. F. MALAN AIRPORT, CAPE TOWN
More than a dozen U.S. Air Force technicians and radar consoles crowded the darkened room. Calm, quiet voices rose and fell as they controlled the movements of incoming and outgoing C-5s and C-141s crammed with troops, equipment, and supplies.
“MajorT I
Irritated at the interruption, the Operations Center duty officer glanced up from the argument he’d been having over the availability of JP-4 and
JP-5 fuel stocks.
