African Dawn (13 page)

Jesus moaned. ‘They will hang me.’

Beria grabbed the other man under the shoulders and lifted him a little, so that his back was against a tree. ‘Shush,’ Beria said as the man cried out in pain. ‘Perhaps we can come free you from prison. I will personally recommend it to the leaders.’

The boy looked at Beria as if he wanted to believe him.

‘Now, close your eyes. Rest.’

Jesus did as he was told, and Beria unsheathed the bone-handled knife at his belt. He put one hand over the wounded man's mouth and with the other, slid the blade up under his rib cage and into his heart. He held Jesus Christ as his body shuddered, until he was still.

Beria wiped the knife, and then his hands, on the dead man's khaki shirt. He took two magazines and a grenade from Jesus's pouches, then tucked the fallen fighter's AK under the crook of his arm. His work done, Beria stuffed the extra magazines in his own webbing, retrieved his rifle and trotted off after the rest of his men. He wasn't sure how many settlers he and his men had killed, but the Bryants' farmhouse, built with the blood and sweat of the
povo
, whose land they had stolen, was burning. Beria had lost a man, but his death would be avenged with the girl's, once he and his men had finished with her.

The girl looked so much like her aunt had at the same age that it made him hard. He'd thought about her often over the years, especially while he did his time in the juvenile prison, of how he would take his revenge on her. He smiled to himself as he ran through the bush.

9

N
atalie was beyond terrified. She screamed into the stinking piece of cloth tied into her mouth as another thorn pierced the soles of her feet. They were on fire, and it felt as though the man who dragged her along was going to rip her arm off each time she stumbled.

The longer they ran through the bush the more time she had to think about what was going to happen to her.

The leader, she didn't know his name, had her again now. He'd snatched her back from the man called Comrade Moto, who had been gentler with her. The two men had talked to each other in Ndebele and Natalie only understood a few words. She'd got the impression Comrade Moto wanted to let her go, but the leader had yelled at him, then snatched Natalie back, hurting her in the process. When she'd tried to mouth something through the gag, to beg him to let her go, he had slapped her on the side of her head and knocked her to the ground again.

It had all been so confusing. She kept hoping it was a nightmare and that any second she'd wake up, but when she looked down at the brightening gold of the grass, when the men stopped to briefly confer about something, she saw the red of her blood on the stalks. This was real. She started to cry again.

Grandma Pip had led her from the bedroom to the farmhouse's safe room. She'd told Natalie to lie on a mattress and had laid another on top of her. Natalie had been too scared to be left alone, smothered like that, but when the next explosion landed close enough to shake the plaster from the ceiling, she did as she was told. The walls of the room were lined with sandbags. Grandma Pip had gone back out into the hall and Natalie could hear her talking on a radio while a gun started firing.

‘Pip, get more ammo!’ she'd heard Grandpa Paul call out. The gunfire had been scary, but the explosions were worse.

The fourth one landed right on the house. Natalie felt like someone had
klapped
her on both ears at the same time. Something fell on the mattress on top of her. Smoke and dust filled the room. She couldn't hear. She knew she needed to move.

Natalie pushed and wriggled and struggled until she could get out from under the mattress. A layer of plaster dust covered everything and part of the roof was missing. She heard the crackle and felt the heat of a fire taking hold. A rafter beam had fallen across the mattress. Half of the wall between the safe room and her dad's old bedroom had been blown away and the stack of sandbags had fallen over. The ripped hessian of the bags was spilling red dirt like blood on the floor. The air stank of chemicals.

Flames whooshed out in a jet from the kitchen down the corridor.

‘Gas!’ Grandpa Paul seemed to whisper from beyond the kitchen. As much as she wanted to, Natalie couldn't run down the hallway to the sound of her grandfather because the fire blocked her way.

‘Natalie,’ she thought she heard her Grandma saying softly.

‘Here!’ Natalie thought she was yelling as loud as she could, but she could hardly hear her own voice. The flames licked at the carpet that ran down the polished concrete floor of the hallway.

Natalie had no choice but to turn and run down the corridor, towards the back door of the farmhouse. She slipped on a mixture of dust and water running from the bathroom. The back door was locked and she had to reach up to slide the bolt. Her back was starting to sting as the fire leapt from room to room, chasing her through the house. She screamed and this time she heard herself a little better.

Natalie turned the door handle and heaved, but still it wouldn't open. She looked over her shoulder and saw the fire had taken hold of the splintered rafters in the roof. It was moving closer and closer. She rattled and turned and pulled on the doorknob, but it was locked. Behind her, there was more gunfire. She screamed again. She was going to die because she didn't know where the key to the back door was. Natalie banged on the door with her fists.

At her feet was a rubber mat. Natalie dropped to her knees. She could smell cool, clean air coming in a draught from under the door. Behind her, the hallway was filling up with choking smoke. She lifted the mat, thinking Grandma would have left the key under it. There was nothing.

Boom!

Natalie rocked back on her haunches. The door had just shuddered as though someone had kicked it. ‘Grandpa Paul! I'm in here!’

Boom!

The door rocked again. ‘Hurry!’

A paling splintered and a black hand reached inside.

Natalie screamed.

*

Comrade Moto froze and raised his AK-47 to his shoulder. The sky was brightening by the minute and the long shadows gave the boy's movement away. The boy was running down the path towards them. ‘Halt!’ Moto called out.

The boy wore a grubby white singlet and baggy shorts. He was barefoot, skinny and looked to be in his early teens. He stopped and raised his hands. ‘Don't shoot!’ he called back in Ndebele.

‘Bring him here,’ Beria said. He stopped and held the girl still. She was becoming more compliant as she learned that disobedience would be dealt with immediately. She was sobbing. Beria was annoyed by the presence of the boy. He was one more witness to the fact that they had taken the white child. He would have to be dealt with.

Moto shoved the boy in the small of his back with the tip of his AK's barrel.

‘What do you want?’ Comrade Beria asked him.

‘I come from the kraal, where you stayed last night, comrade …
sah
…’

‘What of it?’

‘My father, the headman, he says there are more comrades in the village. They wish to meet up with you.’

Beria knew of no other freedom fighters operating in the area, but then again, why would he? This band of intruders could be genuine comrades or, of course, they could be the dreaded
Skuz'apo
.

Beria's choice was simple. Now that he knew there was another group of armed men in the kraal, he could link up with them, or he could deliberately head off in a different direction and disappear. He could kill the messenger to ensure no one followed them or knew which way they had headed.

They all looked up at the drone of aero engines above.

Moto raised a hand to his eyes to shield them from the glare of the rising sun. ‘
Ma-brooka
.’

The nickname for the white soldiers came from the word for little girls' underpants,
brookies
, a reference to the Rhodesian Light Infantry's bush uniform, which usually included short camouflaged shorts. Beria followed the Dakota's track and, along with the others, counted the four parachutes that blossomed in its wake. They were too far away to fire on, and doing so would simply give away their position. The arrival of the RLI airborne troops changed things.

Beria bit his lip and held up a palm as Comrade Moto started to say something. He needed to think. There were only four men in the RLI fireforce stick, but it was not only them they had to be concerned about. If the stick made contact with them, they would call in the spotter aircraft and the K-Cars – the killing cars, as the air force's helicopter gunships were known.

The girl complicated things as well. On one hand, she was slowing them down. Beria could kill her now – releasing her was out of the question as she might be able to identify them at some time in the future. However, as long as they held her – and her tiny bare feet would give her away to even the most inexperienced tracker – the
kanka
would be less likely to drop bombs or spray the bush with 20mm cannon fire. The Botswana border was only about twenty kilometres away. If he could lure the
Ma-brooka
into an ambush and dispatch them quickly, he might gain enough time to slip across the border before the security forces could get organised to send more soldiers or police. His chances of eliminating the RLI stick before they could get word to an orbiting command and control plane would be greatly enhanced if they had more firepower. With Jesus dead he was down to five men.

‘We move back to the kraal,’ Beria told his men. ‘If these other
comrades
seem in any way suspicious, we kill them all. Understood?’

He looked at all their faces and each man nodded. The little girl started to cry again. Beria grabbed her by the throat. ‘Shut up … one word and I kill you.’ She blinked away her tears and nodded. Yes, she slowed them down, but she would be their prize once this day was done. And if they were cornered and faced death, then she might be their ticket across the border as a hostage.

*

Winston roused those of his men who had not been woken by the far-off sound of the mortar explosions and gathered them outside the headman's hut. ‘We can't wait,’ he whispered to them. ‘It sounds like the terrs are revving a farm. We have to go find them and get them before they kill more innocent people.’ Each nodded his assent. They were good men, good warriors.

The headman emerged from his hut, wringing his hands. ‘My son is not yet back.’

‘I know this area,’ Winston said to him. ‘There is a farm over that way.’ He pointed to the east, from where the noise had come.

The headman nodded. ‘Will you go join them, in their fight?’

Winston was dressed and ready to kill and he wanted nothing more than to follow the sounds and take the fight to the real terrs. Unless it had changed hands, it would be the Bryant farm – the parents of his friend, George, who had shown him and his family nothing but kindness.

He needed time to think. ‘What do you say, old man? Should we join in the killing of the settlers who live over there?’

The headman stared at him for a long second while he worked up the courage to speak his mind. ‘Those are good people. I know them. To kill them would be a sin.’

‘I could beat or kill you for saying something so traitorous, old man, for siding with the settlers.’

The headman nodded slowly. ‘Yes, but you will not.’

‘Come,’ Winston said to his men. The headman had been cannier than Winston had given him credit for. ‘We will find our comrades and join them in their fight,’ he said loud enough for the few villagers who were poking their heads out of their huts to hear him.

He turned and the headman grabbed hold of the sleeve of his shirt. ‘Please remember, my son is out there somewhere.’

Winston gently freed his arm from the bony fingers. ‘I know. He will be safe. You have my word.’

Winston gave the signal for his men to move out, with Obert, his best tracker, moving ahead of them to scout the way. Once they were well clear of the village, Winston called a halt. He took off his Russian-made pack and opened it. He pulled out a torch with a red filter, and a topographical map of the area. He knew where they were, and what the problem was, but he needed to explain it to his men.

‘Gather around,’ he said, calling Obert and the others in. ‘We are here,’ he said, pointing to the cluster of black dots that represented the kraal, between the farming district of Plumtree and the Botswana border. ‘The farm the terrorists are attacking is here,’ he moved his finger across two grid squares – two kilometres to the east of their current position, ‘but we cannot go there now, because it is outside the boundary of our frozen area, by one kilometre. The boundary runs north–south, halfway between us and the farm.’

He looked at the faces of his men to see if they understood the predicament. Each of the three men nodded. A frozen area was a no-go area, marked on the map, which ensured that no other Rhodesian security forces would enter on foot while a Selous Scouts group was operating in that area. No air force aircraft would bomb or strafe the area either.

Obert cocked his head and raised a hand. They all listened, and heard the gunshots. ‘FN, but far,’ Obert said.

Winston nodded his concurrence. ‘We go no further. If the
magandanga
come this way, we kill them. We don't want to go any closer to the boundary of the frozen area. There will be PATU farmers looking for black men to kill, and maybe –’

They all looked up at the lightening sky. They watched the Rhodesian Air Force Dakota pass overhead. ‘An RLI fireforce,’ Winston said. ‘That settles it. We must wait here.’

In the distance they heard the crackle of more gunfire. The farmers – perhaps the people he knew – were putting up a fight.

‘Bright,’ Winston said to his radio operator. ‘Send a sitrep. Let headquarters know where we are.’

*

Wally Collins held up a hand, signalling Braedan and the others in the stick to stop.

Braedan dropped to one knee, raising the barrel of his FN. His heart started beating faster and he watched Wally slowly turn his hand so that his thumb was pointing down. Braedan crawled forward, to where Collins had taken up a fire position behind a stout mopane tree. Braedan looked to where Collins was pointing and, after staring hard through the shroud of butterfly-shaped leaves, he made out the pointed crown of an East German bush hat and the muzzle brake of an AK-47.

The man wasn't moving. If he was a sentry, he was either very calm or he was asleep. ‘Cover me,’ Braedan whispered. ‘Put two in him if he starts to move.’

Collins nodded and peered through the rear sight of his FN.

Braedan eased himself up, skirted right and started circling slowly towards the man. He, too, had his rifle up and ready. He watched the terr over the top of his FN, his finger curled through the trigger guard. He stopped when he trod on a dry twig and it snapped. The man, Braedan could see now, had his back to a tree trunk and his hat pulled low down over his eyes.

Braedan straightened. ‘Dead,’ he called out to Collins. He looked around as the rest of the stick moved up. He saw the scuffed leaves of the terrorists' spoor.

Andy knelt by the body and raised a hand to the dead man's throat. ‘Still warm. They were here just now.’

‘Check his pockets quickly,’ Braedan said to the medic. ‘Wally, Al, scout ahead a bit, hey, into the
shateen
. They're leaving spoor like
maningi
jumbo.’

‘Girl's still with them,’ Collins said. He picked up a leaf and examined it. His thumb and forefinger came away red and sticky. ‘The poor little thing's feet are bleeding.’

‘Bastards. Come on, let's go,’ Al said.