African Dawn (14 page)

‘
Ja.
’ Braedan looked back and saw Andy had stopped rifling through the dead terrorist's pockets and was now unbuttoning his bush shirt. ‘Andy, leave it …’

‘Check, they knifed this
gandanga
,’ Andy said. ‘He was dying and instead of leaving him for us to look after him, his bloody Chinas slotted him.’

‘These bastards need sorting, one time,’ Wally said.

Braedan nodded, but he was impatient to keep moving. The fact they'd abducted a white child told him this bunch of gooks would fight to the death.

‘Braedan, check,’ Andy said, pointing.

Andy was young, a conscript who'd opted to join the RLI and get his national service over and done with quicker than if he'd signed on to one of the part-time territorial battalions of the Rhodesia Regiment. He was new to the troop and had proved himself a competent medic on the three occasions they'd needed him so far. But he didn't know what he was doing now. He was reaching under the terr's body for something.

‘Andy, no!’ Braedan yelled, seeing, too late, the topographical map that had attracted the young soldier's attention. No one sat on a map, even if they were dying. ‘Down!’

Braedan hit the ground and rolled away, catching a glimpse of Andy crouching there, frozen at first as he heard the spoon fly off the grenade that had been lying under the dead man's backside, along with the tempting prize of the map. Andy started to stand and tried to run, but he tripped over his own feet. The grenade exploded.

‘Shit,’ Braedan said. He dragged himself to his feet and patted himself down as he ran. His head was ringing and the explosion had sandblasted him with grit, sticks and small rocks, but he was unhurt. Andy, however, was screaming. He was lying face down and clawing at the dirt with his hands, and scrabbling with his feet as though he was trying to crawl away from the pain.

*

Bright Mpofu double-checked the grid reference on the map and read it out to Winston.

‘Yes, that is correct,’ Winston said to his radioman, unable to keep the alarm out of his voice. ‘What do you mean they say we are not in the frozen area?’

Bright looked worried, and he had good cause to be. ‘HQ says we are outside the boundary, and that it is five kilometres to the west, closer to Botswana.’

Winston shook his head. ‘This can't be. We radioed the sitrep two days ago, telling them we were moving into this area.’

The Joint Operations Command would be informed by a signal every time a frozen area was proclaimed or changed by the scouts. There was the inherent risk for the scouts, operating as they did dressed as enemy combatants, that they would be shot by mistake by other Rhodesian security force troops. Such catastrophes had happened before, in the early days of these unconventional operations, and the frozen area concept had been introduced to keep other units well away. Winston realised that if headquarters had miscalculated the boundaries of the frozen zone, then any security force units responding to the attack on the farm would also be unaware that there were other friendly troops in their vicinity.

Winston took the radio handset and told the operations officer, a white captain, on the other end of the radio to check the logs because Bright had told the young lieutenant on duty two days previously about their intended move to the kraal in pursuit of a band of ZIPRA terrorists.

‘Well, it's not on the log, and not on the map, over,’ the captain said. The man sounded defensive, Winston thought. If it were him, he would have been calling for the lieutenant who had failed to note the change in boundaries and demanding an answer.

‘Well, get the boundary changed
now
and signal JOC,’ Winston insisted. He knew the captain by name, and he was a good man. Despite their differences in rank, he knew he was on firm ground.

‘Affirmative. Will do, over.’

‘Do it now, now,’ Winston added. ‘There's a farm being revved not two k's from my position and a Dak just flew over. I suspect the enemy group may be heading my way and for all I know half the RLI will be coming along for the party as well.’

There was a pause on the other end of the radio as the captain grasped the seriousness of the situation. ‘OK. I'm contacting JOC right now. Don't worry. We'll sort this thing and deal with whoever stuffed up later. Just as well you contacted us when you did. Suggest you pull back west, just in case, over.’

Winston was just thinking the same thing. It angered him even more to know that if Bright's last message had been received and acted on they could have been ordered to the farm to help. Instead, an RLI fireforce had been activated as soon as the farm was attacked and could very well be heading towards them right now. Winston looked up and saw the Dakota orbiting above them. He didn't have its frequency, but he had to assume that the captain would contact JOC, who would then relay the warning to the RLI troopies on the ground to stop at the border of the frozen area.

‘Affirmative,’ Winston said to the captain. ‘We'll pull back five hundred metres so we're even further inside our boundary. Tell JOC to leave the terrs to us. I strongly suspect they're coming my way, over.’

Bright exhaled a long breath and Winston clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Good work. And don't worry, I know you sent the right coordinates in your other message. Thank God they're going to let JOC know where we are; otherwise we might have found ourselves in a contact with our own people.’

*

The man in charge shoved Natalie in the back and she fell again. Couldn't he see that she could barely walk, let alone run? This time she crashed into a tree and its rough bark tore down the side of her arm.

‘Get up!’ He grabbed her other arm, but his hands were slippery with sweat. She fell from his grasp and this time her head banged against the tree. A small branch slid painfully between the gag tied around her mouth and the soft skin of her cheek. For a moment she was left hanging there, hooked on the limb.

The man grabbed her again and tried yanking her away from the tree, and in doing so he ripped the gag from her mouth. Natalie felt as though he was going to dislocate her jaw, but all of a sudden her screams were no longer muffled.

‘Aaaargh! HELP ME!’

*

‘Stuff something in his fucking mouth,’ Braedan said.

Wally looked up at him, his hands red with Andy's blood as he cut the smoking remains of Andy's camouflage shirt and trousers away from his writhing body.

‘Shut him up! I thought I heard something else.’

Andy dragged a hand through the dirt and leaves and shoved two of his fingers in his mouth and bit down on them. Braedan instantly regretted the harsh words he'd used. Andy had heard and understood. Wally tipped a water bottle over the scores of holes that peppered Andy's back and legs, then started shaking antibiotic powder over them. It must have stung because Andy kicked and convulsed and moaned into his fingers.

Braedan looked to where he thought he had heard the noise, his mouth half-open. ‘Listen,
ek se
,’ he said to Al. ‘There. It's the girl! Check the radio, Al.’

Braedan, impatient to get moving, took a few steps towards where he'd heard the scream, rifle up and ready. He looked back at Platt, who had dragged the blood-spattered radio away from Andy and now had the headphones on.

*

The Dakota that had dropped Braedan and his men had returned to Bulawayo and been replaced by a Lynx, the Rhodesian Air Force's version of a twin-boomed Cessna push-pull aircraft. The Lynx was doubling as a command and control aircraft for the rapidly escalating mission to catch the terrorists, and as a forward air controller for the other air support that was on its way.

‘Echo one, echo one, echo one, this is bravo one, radio check, over,’ the frustrated pilot said for the fifth time.

The pilot banked and brought his little aircraft down for another low-level pass over the farmhouse and the lands to the west, hoping to spot the soldiers on the ground. He saw an ambulance and three police vehicles, two cars and a truck, pulling up the long gravel driveway. A fair-haired woman was running to meet them. The house was still burning and his prop wash spun the black smoke into a corkscrew as he passed over. The pilot was about to try the RLI men again when he heard another voice using his call sign.

‘
This is cyclone seven, alpha one … one hundred and fifty kilometres and closing. Any news, over
?’

‘Negative alpha one,’ the Lynx pilot said. And that was the problem. He recognised the voice of the helicopter pilot and fully understood the man's urgent tone, and his reasons for asking the same question he had asked five minutes ago. It was George Bryant, the CO of 7 Squadron, and it was his ten-year-old daughter who was missing somewhere down there in the bush.

The pilot tried again to contact the RLI stick on the ground. ‘Echo one, echo one, echo one, radio check over …’ He waited a few seconds. ‘Echo one, if you are receiving me and unable to transmit you are to hold in place, repeat, hold in place. The boundaries of the frozen zone near your loc have been moved eastwards, I say again,
moved eastwards
. Hold in place and wait for reinforcements.’

The pilot sighed. It was going to be a long morning. Until reinforcements and the helicopters arrived, there was nothing more he could do.

*

Bright snapped his fingers, and Winston nodded. He'd heard the noise as well. The terrorists were making more noise than a herd of stampeding buffalo. They were running scared.

Winston felt the electric jolt as the adrenaline pumped from his heart to his fingertips. This was what he'd craved as a boy, the life of the warrior, and what he'd gradually come to learn over the past two years was a kind of sentence. He had proved himself, time and again, and learned that he could do this. He could kill. Whether the government of Smith-
i
was right or wrong, or whether the new man being touted as a successor, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, was a strong man or a puppet of the whites did not matter to Winston. He had known no life as an adult other than war.

Winston heard movement in the bush, then saw the white of the boy's singlet. His hand tightened around the pistol grip of his AK-47. ‘Stop,’ Winston said to the boy, his voice calm but authoritative. The headman's son came to a halt, his chest heaving with ragged breaths, and raised his skinny arms.

‘I have the comrades …’ The boy looked back over his shoulder.

Two men, one with an AK, the other with an RPD light machine gun, materialised from the screen of mopane leaves. The machine gunner kneeled and took up a firing position behind a tree. The other stood with his AK pointed in Winston's general direction, his nostrils flared and his breathing heavy from running or a hard forced march. His uniform shirt was mottled with sweat. These were the real terrorists that Winston and his men had been hunting, and the headman's son had served them up on a platter.

Winston heard muffled sobs and the sound of something falling to the ground. ‘Get
up
!’ a voice said. Winston licked his lips. He and his men were also behind the cover of an anthill and the stoutest trunks available. The two terrorists had stopped about fifty metres from them with the headman's son, who still stood with his hands up, quavering in the no-man's land between them.

‘Which one of you is in charge?’ a voice called from behind the two lead men.

Winston saw another flash of white through the bush. His eye was immediately drawn to the face of the terror-stricken child in a torn nightdress stained with blood and dirt. When he'd heard a little girl had been taken he'd felt relieved – Mr and Mrs Bryant were getting old now, and their daughter, Hope, was away most of the year at university. He'd assumed it was another farm that had been revved. But he recognised this girl instantly. George had showed him the photo. This was George's daughter, though he couldn't remember her name. Her abductor was holding her in front of him, as a human shield.

As Winston's eyes travelled higher he saw the Makarov pistol pressed to the child's temple, and the barrel and flash-suppressor of the AK-47 slung across the man's back, protruding above his shoulder.

Winston was in cover, his body mostly behind the tree trunk and his face obscured by a net of heavy, bright-green butterfly-shaped leaves. The terrorist commander couldn't see his face, but Winston could see the other man clearly.

It was his brother.

10

‘I
t's no good. Bloody radio's
frot
, man,’ Al said.

‘Shit.’ Braedan ran his hand through his sweat-dampened hair. One man down and the radio out, and a little girl disappearing further and further into the bush with every second. He'd passed all his army courses with flying colours and he was one of the youngest lance corporals in the troop. He played rugby for his RLI Commando and he had a reputation for never backing down, for being tough and aggressive on the field. He'd won far more fights than he'd lost and he'd learned how to play the chicks well enough that he scored on every leave. But nothing in his life had prepared him for this.

‘What do we do?’ Collins asked, looking up at him. ‘He's going to do a wheels-up unless we get him to a doc soon.’

Wally Collins was ten years older than Braedan – a good, solid soldier, but he was never going to be promoted. He was relying on Braedan, a twenty year old, to lead him and the rest of them to safety or victory.

Which was worth more – Andy's life or the girl's? Shit, the gooks might have killed her by now, and they had a good lead on Braedan and his men from the start. They were probably halfway to Botswana by now. Braedan looked down at Andy Hunter. The morphine had kicked in, but Andy's back was shredded. His skin was deathly pale.

‘He can't walk, not even with help,’ Collins said, as if Braedan needed to be reminded of their fellow soldier's condition.

Al stood up from the shattered radio. ‘I'll go, man. After the little girl. You and Wally look after Andy.’

That made up Braedan's mind. ‘No. There are too many of them, Al. Shit, man, I couldn't live with myself if I sent any of you
okes
on a bloody suicide mission.’

Al nodded, and Braedan saw he was unable to hide his relief. ‘Right,’ Al said, ‘so we all carry Andy back to the farmhouse and wait for the cavalry,
ja
?’

Braedan shook his head. He knelt beside Wally and Andy and took two grenades and two extra magazines from Andy's webbing. He clasped the wounded man on the shoulder. ‘Be strong,
boet
. I tune you, you're going to be fine.’ He stood and placed the extra munitions in his own pouches. ‘Al, you and Wally carry Andy back to the farmhouse.’

‘What about you?’ Collins asked.

Braedan grinned. ‘Myself, I have some work to do.’ He turned and jogged away from them, into the bush towards where the terrorists had gone.

*

Winston blinked away the drop of sweat that rolled down his forehead and into his eye.

‘Show yourself and prove who you are,’ said his brother, Emmerson Ngwenya.

Winston wanted to believe he was wrong, but George had shown him a photo not only of his daughter but also one of Thandi and Emmerson. It had been taken around 1972 or 1973. George had been vague when Winston had asked him how he'd come to be in possession of the picture. He'd said something about his mother getting a copy from Winston's mother. Winston thought that unless his mother had changed her opinion of the Bryants, then this was highly unlikely. Thandi was smiling, but Emmerson had sneered at the camera, with the arrogance of the youthful rebel.

Whether Emmerson knew whose child he had kidnapped didn't matter – the fact that he would kidnap a little girl for any reason was almost beyond belief. He had seen the atrocities ZANLA and ZIPRA had inflicted on people who sided with the government, but he could only guess what his brother had in store for George's daughter. Was it personal?

Bright looked at him from behind the neighbouring tree, and Winston blinked again. Winston saw Obert, from the corner of his eyes, shifting from foot to foot.

If Winston showed himself to his brother, he was sure Emmerson would recognise him immediately. What would his brother do then? Winston studied the wide eyes, the cruel set of Emmerson's mouth, and saw the way he did nothing to relieve the pressure of the gun on the girl's temple as her tears flowed.

Winston decided to do what he knew his brother would do. He drew a breath and aimed.

*

Natalie screamed into the gag as the man's blood spurted all over her.

He'd been holding the gun to her head but had relaxed his hold a little when one of his men asked him something. In turning to answer, her abductor had lowered the pistol's barrel. Natalie had squirmed and then the gunfire had started.

The man holding her pitched back as though he'd been slammed in the face with a sledgehammer. He still had his arm around her and she fell back on top of him. He was clutching at his upper body somewhere and blood jetted from him. Natalie could feel it on her back and she screamed again. She rolled over, and blood sprayed into her face. The man yelled in pain as she wriggled on him to try to get to her feet. It wasn't easy with her wrists tied behind her. She saw his gun in the grass, where he'd dropped it. She knew as soon as he could get to it he would shoot her. Even as she rolled to her knees she saw him scrabbling in the dirt for the pistol with one hand, while he held the other to a spot above his right lung. Blood was pumping out between his fingers.

Bullets were zinging and whizzing all around her, but all she wanted to do was get away from that foul man who'd been pushing and shoving and hurting her. There were flashes of fire from the mopane trees in front of her. If these men were shooting at the terrs, they must be army guys, she thought.

Her feet were bloody and pricked with thorns, and not having the use of her arms for balance made running even harder. She tripped and fell, crying and yelling into her gag. A big man stepped from the trees in front of her and she saw his canvas tennis shoes and camouflage trousers. She craned her head to look up at him.

‘Come,’ he said, motioning her towards him. He was black, and looked like another terrorist. Natalie had no idea what was going on.

The big man raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired another couple of shots, then changed magazines. Natalie got up onto one knee, and then to her feet. She wasn't going to run into the arms of another bad man. She turned to run away from the two sets of warring Africans.

‘Get down, girl!’ the man yelled. She stopped. Natalie was in the open, with bullets flying all around her. Another man cried out in pain. ‘Covering fire!’ the big man yelled. The sound of bullets seemed to increase in ferocity as the man ran to her. He wrapped a muscled arm around her and half-lifted, half-dragged her to a large tree. He sat her down. ‘I am a friend. I know your father. He is my friend.’

Natalie looked up at him and started to cry. She didn't know how this bloody terr would know her dad, or if he was here to help her or kill her. She was tired and sore and scratched and cut and all she wanted was to go home to Grandma Pip and her mom and dad.

The black man reached a hand out to her and she cringed into the rough bark of the tree. ‘I'm not going to hurt you.’ He hooked a finger in the gag around her mouth and pulled it free. ‘There, is that better?’

She nodded, trembling.

‘Winston!’ another man called. ‘They are running. What shall we do?’

‘Leave them, Bright. We have the girl. Jonathan?’

‘Here,’ called the third member of their stick.

‘Obert?’

Winston paused then tried the other man's name again. There was no answer. ‘Find him, Bright.’

‘All right.’

The man called Winston pulled out a knife from a sheath at his belt.

‘No!’

‘Hush, little one,’ he said to her. ‘I'm just going to cut the ties on your wrist. Turn for me. It's all right. I know your father.’

Natalie blinked back her tears and slowly turned. She tensed her whole body, waiting to feel the pointed blade pierce her back at any second. She whimpered as she felt the steel against the inside of her wrists.

‘Obert is dead,’ the man named Bright called.

Natalie felt the big man pause with the knife. ‘Don't hurt me, please!’ Thoughts raced through her mind, terrifying her even more …
He's going to kill me; please, God, don't let him kill me; he just said he knew my dad so I wouldn't struggle.
Natalie looked over her shoulder, eyes wide with fear.

The big man called to his men, ‘Leave him, but get his weapon. We'll pull back to the kraal and call for reinforcements there.’

Someone screamed from the bush. The man called Bright raised his hand and said something, then the gunfire started again.

Natalie saw her chance and leapt up and ran.

‘No! Come back!’ the man called after her.

*

Braedan had gone to ground behind a fallen tree when the rounds started coming down range in his direction. It was odd, but he thought he could hear fire going the other way, away from him, from off to his left.

Perhaps the gooks hadn't actually seen him and were just firing blind. He peered around the corner of the log and saw one of them, not thirty metres away. The man was firing an AK, but across Braedan's front, not at him. These guys … everyone said they were hopeless soldiers who couldn't shoot straight. Living proof, right before his eyes. The guy was jumpy as hell, too, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Just then he heard a high-pitched voice scream ‘
No!
’ Christ, he thought. The girl. She was still alive. What were the bastards doing to her?

Braedan had fired his weapon plenty of times before and he thought he had killed two men; however, other members of his troop had claimed the same kills, so he couldn't be really sure. He put the fidgeting floppy in his sights, drew a breath and squeezed the trigger. The man fell back behind his tree and didn't get up again. There was no doubt about that one.

Braedan knew he couldn't lie here. He heard voices. There were
maningi
gooks – plenty of them – and he knew he had to get up and into the fight.

‘
Don't hurt me, please!
’ a little girl's voice cried out.

Braedan swallowed hard. They were going to fucking kill or rape a ten-year-old girl. He planted his left fist in the dirt and pushed himself up.

He heard one of the gooks saying something about pulling back to a kraal, but then he drowned out their voices and his own fears with a primal, animalistic yell that came from deep down in his core. Braedan vaulted the dead tree and ran forward, the FN tight in his shoulder as he looked down the barrel for a target.

A young African in a Russian hat turned to stare at the noise he was making. He had an AK in his right hand and raised his left, palm out. ‘No, don't shoot. We are –’

Braedan fired twice. The double tap. Both rounds found their mark in the
gandanga's
chest. The man fell back, blood spewing from his mouth. He saw a flash of white through the dull greens and browns of the trees. Two down. He was fucking invincible. He searched for another target.

‘
No, come back
,’ called a man with a deep African voice.

‘I'm fucking coming for you, cunt,’ Braedan said.

Another terr stepped from behind a tree, dropped his rifle and raised his hands. Braedan spun and fired twice. His first shot missed, but the second caught the man in the guts. Braedan ran to him and stood over him; he was writhing in pain.

‘No!’ the man said.

‘Where is she?’ Braedan said, his chest heaving from the run, from the adrenaline, from the sheer rush of it all. He was almost there.

‘No!’ the terrorist said again through his pain. ‘We are … we are –’

He had no time to waste. He'd seen the girl running. He pointed the barrel of his FN at the man's forehead and finished him off. ‘Thanks for coming, China.’

He ran into the bush, following the sound of the little girl's screams.

*

Winston thought about letting the girl run. She was heading away from where Emmerson and his men had come from, although from the gunfire behind him it sounded as though they were in pursuit. No, he had to get her.

She tripped and screamed and he closed the distance between them in a few long bounds. He didn't waste his time trying to calm her. He drew his knife and reached down for her skinny little wrists. Perhaps if he freed her she might calm down and trust him.

‘Noooo!’ she shrieked.

‘Bastard,’ said a voice behind Winston.

Winston turned, knife in hand, and saw the RLI soldier standing there.

‘Thank God,’ he said, dropping his knife and rifle and spreading his arms wide.

*

Braedan stood in the clearing, the morning light filtering down through the mopanes, turning the dry grass a beautiful golden yellow.

The little girl was on the ground, her nightdress stained with dirt and blood. Her hands were bound behind her and she was scrambling in the dirt and grass like a centipede, trying to put as much distance as she could between herself and the filthy terr.

The man had spread his arms, like he was Jesus Christ himself, and had the hide to grin at him. ‘Bastard,’ Braedan said.

‘
Thank God
,’ the man said.

Braedan was breathing hard out of his nose, like a stallion blowing after a charge. The gook probably thought he'd spend time in gaol, or maybe swap sides, like they'd all heard some of the
magandanga
did. He had the guts to kidnap and try and murder a little girl, but not to stand and fight. The gutless prick started to say something, but Braedan had no time for his words.

He knew what he had to do. There would be no trial for this one, no comfy prison cell, no lawyers for this piece of filth. Sometimes he wondered if it was all worth it. Braedan was young, but he wasn't stupid. He knew the security forces' losses were mounting and the gutless, back-stabbing politicians were already working on a deal to put a criminal in charge of the country. Others were in the business of compromising and taking the path of least resistance.

Not Braedan Quilter-Phipps.

‘My brother –’ the terr started to say.

‘I'm not your fucking brother,’ Braedan said. He took aim and put two in the man's black heart.