Kruger turned to the tall, burly, towheaded officer on his right.
“D
Company will bring up the rear. No offense, Hennie, but I hope we won’t have too much work for your boys on this jaunt.”
Hennie Mulder, the captain commanding his heavy weapons company, nodded soberly. His truck-carried 8 1 mm mortars and Vickers heavy machine guns represented a large part of the battalion’s firepower, but they were also relatively immobile and required time to deploy. The battalion would only need D Company’s weapons teams if it met strong resistance-and that, in turn, would mean Nimrod was going badly.
“Wommandant?”
Kruger looked toward the hesitant voice. Robey Riekert,
his youngest and least experienced company commander, had a hand half-raised.
“Yes, Robey?”
“What about artillery support, sir? Do we have any guns on call?”
Kruger shook his head.
“Not deployed. With luck, we’ll be pushing ahead too fast. But there’ll be two batteries of SP guns attached to the column behind us. So if we run into any real opposition, we’ll be able to give the
Swapos a few one fifty-five millimeter shells for their pains.”
More laughter, this time less forced.
A sudden howling, thrumming roar drowned their laughter, grew louder still, and then faded as fast as it had come. Startled, several officers cast frightened glances up toward the tent’s low canvas ceiling and then looked sheepish as they made sense of the noise. The battalion had just been overflown by several large aircraft. Aircraft flying westward into Namibia.
Kruger checked his watch. Nimrod was on schedule. He stood straighter.
“Very well, gentlemen. That’s our cue. You may put your companies on the road. Good luck to you all. “
The tent flap be flied open briefly and sagged back as his officers ran toward their waiting commands.
A COMPANY, 2ND BATTALION, 44TH PARACHUTE
BRIGADE, OVER NAMIBIA
The ride was much rougher this time, even though they weren’t flying as low as they had been on the Gawamba raid. There was a reason for that. Air Force manuals said that the big C-160 Transall troop carriers exhibited “poor gust response,” which was an aerudynamic way of saying that turbulence at low altitude made the plane bump and shudder like a truck on a rutted road.
Capt. Rolf Bekker found himself yawning uncontrollably -a yawn that nearly made him bite through his tongue as the Transall bucked upward, caught in yet another air current rising off Namibia’s rugged hills. He forced his mouth shut and frowned. They’d already suffered through two hours of this jarring ride since taking off from the staging airfield near Bloemfontein. How much farther did they have to go, for Christ’s sake?
He shook his head wearily. Fatigue must be muzzling his ability to think.
He knew precisely how much longer they had to fly before reaching the target. And he knew exactly how long it had been since he’d had a decent hour’s sleep.
Bekker was enough of a soldier not to complain about the hour set for their drop, but a dawn landing meant a midnight assembly for a four
A.M.
takeoff. The hectic preparations had been structured to allow him six hours sleep, but last-minute crises and changes had robbed him of all but a brief nap. There was certainly no way he could sleep on this plane, not with its washboard ride on a hard metal seat.
So, Bekker thought, I will start the biggest military operation in my career tired and short on sleep. When he was tired, he got irritable-not entirely a bad thing.
He only wished he had a better view of the ground below. Bekker preferred going into combat in helicopters-at least their open doors usually gave the troops a chance to get oriented before touchdown. Now, though, he had just a single window to look out of, a window about as clear as the bottom of a beer bottle. He and his men would have to jump trusting that the Transall’s pilot could see the drop zone, and trusting in his ability to put them in it.
Bekkcr wriggled around, straining against the seat straps to took out the window. Nothing but dark sky, paling faintly to gray behind them. He couldn’t even see the rest of the battalion, spread out in five other aircraft.
There were supposed to be other planes in the air as, well-Impala 11 ground attack aircraft to provide close air support, and Mirage jet fighters supplying top cover. None were visible through the dirt-streaked window. Nothing but the huge spinning blades of the Transall’s portside turboprop.
Bekker pulled his eyes away from the empty window and scanned the rows of fold-down metal seats lining either side of the plane’s crowded troop compartment. Just over eighty men sat silently, slept, talked, or read as they waited to risk
their lives. He and his troops were dressed in heavy coveralls and padded helmets-gear designed to help absorb some of the shock generated by slamming into the ground at up to twenty-five kilometers an hour. Parachutes increased the bulk of their weapons and packs. They only carried one chute each. At this attitude, there wouldn’t be time for a reserve chute if the first one failed.
The eighty men in this plane represented just half his company. The rest, led by his senior lieutenant, were on another cargo plane-nearby, he hoped.
They’d better be. He’d need every available man to accomplish his mission.
He sighed. At least with a low-altitude drop and static lines, all the troops jumping from this Transall should come down close together. And the
Namibians would be totally surprised.
A bell sounded and a red light over the door came on. The jumpmaster waiting near the door straightened. Holding up his right hand with the fingers extended, he shouted, “Five minutes!”
At last. Bekker hit the strap release and rose from his seat.
“Stand and hook up!”
His men hurried to comply, hurriedly slinging the weapons they’d been checking or stuffing books into already bulging pockets. As they stood, the floor of the plane tilted back sharply as it pulled into a steep climb from a “cruising” altitude of one hundred fifty meters up to three hundred the minimum safe altitude for a static line drop. The engine noise changed, too, building from a loud, humming drone to a teeth-rattling bass roar as the loaded plane clawed for altitude.
Bekker was sitting in the front of the cargo compartment, near the nose. As his men hooked up, he walked rearward, looking over the two files of paratroopers, one standing on each side of the plane. He inspected each static line to make sure it was properly routed, then swept his eyes over the rest of their equipment-personal weapons, grenades, radiosatl the material they’d need to survive once on the ground and in contact with the enemy.
From time to time he stopped to clap a shoulder or to exchange a quick joke, but mostly he moved aft in silence. These men were all combat veterans, and they were as ready as he could make them. With little time to spare, he came to the head of the lines of waiting men. He turned and stood facing the closed portside door. On the opposite side of the cabin, Sergeant Roost took his position by the starboard door.
Bekker hooked his own static line onto the rail and watched closely as his radioman, Corporal de Vries, checked it and his other equipment. The shorter man mouthed an “Okay” and gave him the thumbs-up.
The final seconds seemed to take hours.
As the Transall leveled out, its engine noise dropped from a roar, down past the previous drone to a steady low hum. Bekker knew the pilot was throttling down to minimum speed, trying to reduce the rush of air past the aircraft. At the same time, the jumpmaster prepared the two side doors, one after the other.
Swinging inside and back, the opening door let in bone chilling cold air and the roar of laboring engines. Bekker had to steady himself against the buffeting as the air roared in.