I attended the final briefing in Pretoria with Diedies. Since approval for the mission had already been given, this briefing served to coordinate Air Force support, as well as contingencies in case of a capture or E&E situation. Diedies ran through the operational plan and then covered all the contingencies should anything go wrong. He listed the requirements for C-130 transport to Rundu, drop-off and pick-up by helicopter and procedures for telstar (comms relay). Close air support was not even mentioned, as the mission would be completely clandestine and non-traceable. UNITA would claim any credit, and the South African government would deny involvement in the event of the mission being compromised.
For this operation a new element was introduced to the emergency plan. Each operator drafted a personal contingency plan, dubbed “Captured Info”, that contained all the actions he would execute in case he was captured and managed to survive. The content would be memorised and the document handed to the Tac HQ commander for safekeeping before the deployment. Each operator had a secret code – unobtrusive hand signals, facial expressions or blinking the eyes in a certain way – by which he would communicate should he be captured and exposed on TV.
Every possible means of communication with own forces would be considered and described in detail, while methods of receiving messages, through a Red Cross representative, a visiting family member or a lawyer, would be included. Coded messages could, for example, be hidden in the text of a magazine that the captured operator might receive through a visitor. The Captured Info plan became part of our emergency procedures; we rehearsed it before every deployment until the content was ingrained.
A few days after arriving at Rundu, mission commander Ormonde Power called us for an intelligence update from Dave Drew. While the rehearsals were reassuring, the final intelligence brief was not. According to information gleaned from UNITA, the MiGs were allegedly guarded by FAPLA troops who slept underneath them.
Just before deployment, Colonel Terence Murphy, the senior Ops officer at Special Forces HQ, flew to Rundu from Pretoria, accompanied by Eric McNelly, the counterintelligence guy, and Oom Sarel Visser, our chaplain. Colonel Murphy asked to see the team alone. When he faced the three of us – Diedies, Neves and me – behind closed doors he said, “We cannot afford to have you compromised – either killed or captured. The boss man said I must give you the option not to deploy. If they are indeed sleeping under the aircraft there is no way you can get in without being compromised.”
“You see, Colonel,” Diedies responded, unfazed, “if we don’t go, we’ll never know. Let’s rather go see for ourselves. If they are indeed sleeping under the aircraft, we can’t do the job. If they’re not, we’ll get the job done.”
And that was that. No further argument.
Still, these must have been trying times for Diedies. He had become engaged, and his fiancée, Rietjie Wentzel, worked at the intelligence division of Special Forces HQ. Rietjie was close to the action in the sense that she was informed about all our missions. She would literally follow every step of the deployment and would know immediately when the team was in trouble.
Final kit inspection was done by Eric McNelly and Diedies. They went meticulously through every single piece of equipment, Eric checking for non-traceability and Diedies for functionality, camouflage and whether the item was properly secured to the webbing. Every torch, every night-vision device, every radio had to be switched on and tested. Magazines were emptied and reloaded; weapons were tested again.
Just before we deployed, Oom Sarel read from the Bible, gave a brief message and shared communion with the operators and the doctor.
Two Pumas transported us to a UNITA base approximately 80 km southeast of Menongue. Our old friend Mickey, now a UNITA major, flew with us and acted as our liaison. It was a well-established base, and we were allocated the “guesthouse”, complete with beds and mattresses made of cut branches and grass. We had to wait a while for our transport and for the right moon phase – between dark moon and first quarter – which would give us a slight moon in the early evening.
When our transport, a South African Kwêvoël truck, finally arrived, it took a day’s slow driving to reach the drop-off point, as UNITA was weary of FAPLA aircraft and ground patrols. At the drop-off the UNITA soldiers established a temporary base where they would wait for our return. The doctor remained with them, while Diedies, Neves and I started the approach to the target.
Even though the Menongue airfield might have been easier to penetrate than Lubango, it was an exceptionally difficult target to reach due to the open fields surrounding the town. Furthermore, the Angolan militia, a uniformed citizen force equipped with rifles, had the nasty habit of patrolling from kraal to kraal, occasionally shooting, apparently at random and at no specific target. This was quite nerve-racking to a team hidden in the undergrowth.
Diedies and I left Neves on the high ground east of the target. He would establish comms and wait for our return. If we didn’t show up after two days, he would E&E back to the UNITA forward base, from where they would launch a search.
I navigated, as DR navigation had by now become my forte. During the planning and rehearsals, Diedies and I had agreed that I would navigate to the target, while he would lead the way once inside. The standard procedure by that time was that he would be in front without night-vision goggles, relying on his senses only, while I would bring up the rear with night vision. The reason for this was that the person with the night sights would be temporarily blinded every time he removed the instrument from the eyes. However, the goggles served the purpose of picking up the glow of fires, cigarettes and other light sources.
For the penetration, Diedies had his South African-made BXP (with silencer) at the ready, while I had my AMD-65 out. Should we bump into enemy soldiers we could eliminate them without making too much noise and move out before the alarm could be raised. On the actual target it might even give us the chance to finish the job. The AMD was meant for more serious business – if we had to engage in a firefight.
At first light we found ourselves on the edge of the cultivated lands. Hiding places were scarce, but we managed to crawl under a thicket, where Diedies covered me up with leaves and grass, then crawled in close for me to cover him. By then we had perfected a technique where we would lie close together on our backs, the one’s head by the other’s feet, weapons at the ready. This provided us with good all-round observation; as our heads were facing upwards we could detect noise and movement all around. It also gave us split-second reaction time in all directions, as one could either sit up or roll over. For drinking water, each had a tube leading from the water bag inside the kit. For nourishment we would snack on energy bars or nuts at the quietest time of day – when the sun was at its highest and sound and smell did not travel far.
The biggest challenge was waiting for the day to pass. Boredom can bring on all kinds of negative thoughts, and the fear of being compromised is an ever-present companion. That day proved to be a particularly demanding one. There was much shooting and yelling all around us, to such an extent that we thought our tracks had been discovered. By about 09:00 two youngsters made their appearance and climbed a tree overlooking our hide. The next moment they started chopping away at the higher branches and spent the whole day trimming the tree away to a stump. Most of the time one of the tree-choppers was almost directly above us.