The news editor stood impatiently in the doorway. ?Almost done,? she said. ?Almost done.? But she knew he would wait, because this was news, good front-page material. ?With legs,? he had said in his cubicle when she had told him about it. ?Nice little scoop, Alli, very nice.?
When she had scurried out to begin writing, he had called after her: ?We?ve got a head start. When you?re done, go get us more.
is this guy? Why do they want him? And what the hell is he doing on a BMW bike, for God?s sake??
?The Rooivalks are in Beaufort West, ma?am,? said Quinn. ?They are waiting for your instructions.?
?Tell them to get some sleep. If we haven?t heard anything by dawn, they can start patrolling the N1 southward. But they must talk with us before they take off. I don'?t want contact with the fugitive before we are ready.?
?Very well, ma?am.?
She gave him time to relay the message. She counted hours. He couldn'?t be close yet, too early. If he made good time on the BMW, he would be somewhere on the other side of Laingsburg. Another two hours to Beaufort West. Not a great deal of time.
?Is the roadblock ready at Three Sisters??
?The police and traffic people are there already, ma?am. They are moaning. It?s raining in the Karoo.?
?They?ll grumble about anything, Quinn. They know they have to check all vehicles??
?They know, ma?am.?
?How long before Mazibuko gets there??
?Anytime now, ma?am. Ten minutes, no longer.?
Captain Tiger Mazibuko sat with folded hands, eyes closed in the yellow-lit vibrating interior of the Oryx, but he did not sleep.
It was the dawning realization that the Reaction Unit would never come into its own that kept him awake. His teammates were asleep. They were accustomed to the cramped, uncomfortable conditions, able to snatch a few minutes or occasional hour of sleep between events. Mazibuko, too. But rest eluded him; the germ of unease over their deployment had grown since his last exchange with Mentz. He had never thought about it this way before: they were somewhere between a counterterrorist instrument and a hostage rescue unit, cast in the mold of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team and the similar group of the British Special Air Services, the SAS. They had been operational for thirteen months and had done nothing more than simulated training exercises. Until now. Till they had to invade a drug den like fucking blue-trouser cops, and now they were to man a roadblock in this godforsaken desert to wait for a middle-aged fugitive who might once have been an MK soldier.
Maybe he should go see his father and ask him whether, before he sold out to the Boers, before he sang his cowardly song of treason, he had known someone called Thobela Mpayipheli.
His father. The great hero of many kitchen battles with his mother. His father, who beat his wife and who beat his children to the breaking point because he could not live with his humiliation. Because in a Security Police cell he had broken, and the names and places, the methods and the targets had bubbled out over the floor with the spit and the blood and the vomit. And then, deliberately released, the shame shackled to his ankles defined the shuffling course of his life.
His father.
Janina Mentz?s words could not be blocked out.
Since the beginning he had had visions, dreams at night and fantasies in his solitary moments. Fired up by the training and Mentz?s propaganda, prospects of microbattles, of lightning raids in dark passages, shots cracking, grenades exploding, smoke and cordite and life and death, bullets ripping through him, bursting his head, spattering his rage against the walls. He lived for that, lusted after it. It was the fuel of his zeal, his salvation, the ripping loose from the sins of his father, the destruction of the cells of his brain with the memories, and now he wondered if it would ever happen. Mentz telling him so seriously that the world had become an evil place, presidents and countries not knowing who was friend or foe, wars that would no longer be fought with armies but at the front of secret rooms, the mini-activities of abduction and occupation, suicide attacks and pipe bombs. September
II
was water to her mill, every statement of every radical group she held up as watertight evidence. And where did they find themselves now?
He heard a change in the note of the engines.
Nearly there.
Now they sat in a land the world had passed by. Even the terrorists were no longer interested in Africa.
The Reaction Unit, sent to man a roadblock. The world?s best-trained traffic officers.
A good thing the fucker had two pistols. A pity he was alone.
Just after two
A
.
M
. he swept easily around the last bend and saw Laingsburg brightly lit before him. Conscious that the dark blanket of night had lifted, he felt his heart beat beneath his ribs. The reserve tank light shone bright orange, leaving him no choice. He slowed down to the legal sixty, saw the big petrol station logo on the left? time to get it over with? turned in, and stopped at a pump, the only vehicle at that time of night.
The petrol jockey came slowly out of the night room, rubbing his eyes.
Thobela put the motorbike on the main stand, climbed off, and removed his gloves. He must get money out.
