His hands tightened around the binoculars.
The Cessna’s radio crackled into life.
“This is Captain Roald Pedersen of the United Nations Monitoring Group calling the unidentified aircraft overhead. Are you receiving my transmission? Over. ” The UN officer’s accented English marked him as a Norwegian.
Kruger let the binoculars fall around his neck and thumbed his own mike.
“Receiving you loud and clear, Captain.”
“Identify yourself, please.” Pedersen’s politeness didn’t disguise the tension in his voice.
For an instant, Kruger stared at the speeding trucks below, tempted to tell his pilot to just turn and fly away. Then he shrugged. He wouldn’t gain anything by being intransigent. Observers in the truck column must have jotted down the Cessna’s identification numbers by now. No one would believe this was a simple civilian joy flight gone astray. Besides, perhaps he could reason with this Norwegian peacekeeper.
“this is Kommandant Henrik
Kruger of the South African Defense Force.”
Pedersen’s next words dashed that hope.
“You’re violating Namibian airspace, Kommandant. And I’m ordering you to leave immediately.”
Order? The bastard. Kruger fought his temper and spoke calmly.
“I urge you to reconsider your ‘suggestion,” Captain. I’m currently pursuing a terrorist force that crossed into our territory and killed one of my men. Surely we have the right to defend ourselves?” He released the transmit button.
“I’m sorry, Kommandant.” Better. The Norwegian sounded genuinely apologetic.
“But you haven’t got jurisdiction on this side of the line any longer. I must insist that you turn back immediately or I will be forced to take stronger measures. “
Kruger pondered that. What stronger measures? The UN troops weren’t likely to start shooting-at least not without being shot at first. But what could he do if they continued interposing themselves between his oncoming soldiers and the still-fleeing guerrillas? Blast them out of the way? Not likely. Not if he wanted to avoid a major international incident and the resulting damage to his country’s reputation and his own career.
He glanced at the map still open on his lap. Forbes and his APCs would be visible to the UN convoy in minutes dramatically raising the stakes in any prolonged confrontation. What now seemed a simple border violation by a single aircraft would suddenly become a full-scale raid by South
African armored vehicles and infantry.
He swore under his breath. There weren’t any good choices. He thumbed the mike’s transmit button hard enough to hurt.
“Papa Foxtrot One to Papa
Foxtrot Two. Over.”
Forbes’s clipped accents spilled over the airwaves.
“This is Two, One.”
“Break off pursuit. I say again. Break off pursuit. Return to base.” The words left a foul taste in Kruger’s mouth. Being defeated by an armed enemy would have been bad enough. But being driven off by interfering “peacekeepers” was even more irritating.
He didn’t doubt that the Norwegian captain and his men would try their best to catch the fleeing guerrillas. The UN troops were honorable in their own way. But they lacked the combat experience and field craft to do a thorough job. The ANC’s terrorists would escape to live and murder another day. It was a depressing thought to carry back empty handed to the dusty airstrip beside the 20this bunker-ringed camp.
JULY 1 B-NYANGA BLACK TOWNSHIP, NEAR CAPE
TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
Shots and screams echoed over the roar of anno red-car engines and crackling police bullhorns.
“Goddamn it!” Ian Sheffield kicked wildly at the dirt, trying to vent some of his anger and frustration. It didn’t help.
By rights, this should have been one of the best news gathering days of his tour in South Africa. Hints dropped by a sympathetic officer and a long, wearying listening watch to a moderately illegal police scanner had paid off. He and Sam Knowles had come on the scene just after the government’s paramilitary security units moved into the crowded huts and alleys of the
Nyanga Township. But it was going to be a wasted effort unless they could get some good footage of the brutal police sweep going on just two or three hundred yards away.
And that was just what they weren’t to be allowed to get. A solid phalanx of blue-and-gray-uniformed riot troopers, wheeled armored cars, and growling German-shepherd attack dogs blocked the motorway off-ramp leading to Nyangaholding the gathering mass of foreign correspondents at bay as if they were wild animals.
Ian and Knowles could hear the shooting and see oily, black columns of smoke rising from burning homes, but they couldn’t see anything from where the police had stopped them.
Vorster’s security services weren’t taking any chances that foreign cameras could videotape their goon squads on the rampage. No videotape meant no story-at least not on the television news broadcasts that brought the world to living rooms across America and Europe. The network anchors in New York,
London, and Paris wouldn’t waste much airtime reporting a story without exciting visuals.
“Well, well, well. Whatta ya know…. There is another way in to that dump.”
Ian stopped in mid kick and spun around to face his cameraman.
Knowles was leaning against the hood of their station wagon, scanning a coffee-stained and torn street map of the areas around Cape Town.
Ian joined him.
“What have you got, Sam?”
Knowles’s stubby finger traced a winding, circuitous route on the barely legible map.
“See this? These bastards have all the major roads blocked, and probably all of the minor ones, too. But I’ll bet they don’t have enough men to cover every nook and crank in this rabbit warren.”
Ian looked at the area Knowles was pointing to. The Philippi Industrial
Park. A maze of aluminum-sided warehouses, factories, and storage sheds.
Ian shook his head regretfully.
“Wouldn’t work, I’m afraid.” He traced the shaded border between the township and the industrial area.
“There’s a barbed-wire-topped chain link fence running all along this area.”
Knowles grinned and reached in through the car window onto the passenger seat. He lifted a towel-wrapped bundle and briefly exposed a pair of wire cutters.
“Fences, old son, are meant to be cut …… Ian thought he’d never seen his stocky sidekick look so much like the fabled Cheshire Cat. He matched Knowles’s broad smile with one of his own and opened the car door.
Twenty minutes later, the two men crouched behind a rusting row of trash bins-less than fifteen feet from the chain link fence separating Nyanga
Township’s ramshackle huts from the industrial park’s machine shops and warehouses. Tendrils of smoke and faint shouts, shots and screams, drifted faintly downwind from the north-clear proof that South Africa’s riot troops were still engaged in what they euphemistically called “the suppression of minor disturbances.” Ian planned to call their bloody work something very different. But first he and Knowles had to get inside the township, get their videotape, and get out. And that might not be so easy.
He risked a quick glance toward the nearest police post, two hundred yards down the fence. The ten shotgun-armed policemen manning the sandbagged post were alert, but they were looking the wrong way. They were there to stop
people from escaping-not to stop journalists from breaking in.
Ian pulled his head back around the corner and carefully unwrapped the wire cutters. Knowles knelt beside him, video camera and sound gear slung from his back.