Comrade Sithole was bitter. He had taken an excellent transistor radio from the farm, a powerful unit with four shortwave bands. It was something he had always wanted, and now, because of the white woman, he’d had to leave it behind. That was the way it was with the white people. No good ever came from his dealings with them.
Sithole was a tall, thin man with a stoop; he had an ugly face with bulging eyes and a straggly beard. He loped rather than walked, and had the habit of standing a little too close to people when he talked.
As he covered the ground Sithole thought back to the jobs he had held in Salisbury, especially the one where he hadn’t been paid after three months. That had been when he was a waiter. At first he had shouted at the white woman who ran the restaurant, but she had laughed at him, her thin lips drawn back in mirth. Then he had threatened her. The police had come the next day. They had taken him to a cell where they beat him. It was after that he had decided he must overthrow the government. But first he had got his revenge. He had grabbed the white woman as she walked to her car behind the restaurant, pulled off her panties and stuffed them in her mouth. Then he had raped her.
That had been two years ago now. And he had nothing to show for his fighting except more bitterness. When it was over, he promised himself that he would have a farm of his own, a pretty wife and big strong sons. Then it would have been worth it. He wasn’t interested in politics, but if the Russians gave him a gun then he would listen to their Marxism, whatever it meant. Soon he would be able to walk down the streets of Salisbury again, but this time as a citizen who would be paid for the work he did, someone whom the police would treat with respect.
Before long it would be dawn. Sithole looked proudly down at the watch he had taken from the dead farmer’s hand for confirmation. They couldn’t be far from the main road now, soon they would break into separate groups. He had been nominated to go furthest north and he knew why. He was a natural tracker, his sight was exceptional, like his other senses. He would always see signs that the other men missed; several times on this mission he had saved them from walking into enemy patrols and landmines. Soon he would be commanding his own unit, just like Comrade Mnangagwa.
A loud whistle from far in the distance indicated that they were close to the road and should head off north. The order was to be his group, then Dagger’s and then Mnangagwa’s. They all knew that the woman could never have moved as quickly as they had through the darkness. The only danger to them now were the passing patrols that came along the main road early in the morning - but these patrols would only be concerned with getting to the farm they had just raided as quickly as possible.
The sun rose just after five and Comrade Sithole still had another three kilometres to cover with his men before they turned back east and began to comb the countryside. Their eyes constantly watched the road in the distance.
The noise of an approaching vehicle caused them to dive for cover and lie flat in the bush, each man with his finger curled around the trigger of his AK-47, hoping that he wouldn’t be spotted. The sound got progressively louder until the first vehicle came past them, a Land Rover with two armed police reservists. This was followed by a light truck, also with two armed policemen in the cab, and after that came a stream of ordinary vehicles driven by farmers and their wives, all heavily armed.
They could have tried to ambush the convoy but it would have been very dangerous. The Land Rover might radio for help and the next moment the area would be crawling with members of the Rhodesian Light Infantry. So they let the convoy pass by, none the wiser. They got up moments later and moved onto the road - for it was unlikely that a second convoy would come by for some time. Less than an hour later they turned off the road and began to head east towards Mozambique.
Keeping a distance of approximately one hundred metres apart, they were covering an area of around six hundred metres as they walked forwards. They were the last group to start off. The plan was a good one, for if the woman saw the first group and she headed north, sooner or later she would run into a second group. They moved very slowly now, listening for any suspicious noise, knowing it might take them more than a day to find her.
Sam felt better as the first rays of sunlight appeared over the horizon, and she began to warm up after the cold night she had spent under a rock overhang. The area on the other side of the ridge had been much flatter than she had expected, though she still found it impossible to keep moving in the darkness.
There were no noises behind her and she suspected that the terrorists had given up the chase. She avoided open patches of ground and kept to where the vegetation was most bushy. Her mouth was dry and she needed a drink of water badly. If she could just make it back to the main road she would be all right.
The bush was getting thicker now and she felt a little more secure. Maybe the army was searching for her. If the farmer had sounded the Agric-Alert she was sure they would be. And if the security forces were active in the area she would have nothing to worry about at all.
For a while she headed north, hoping to catch a dirt track coming from one of the outlying farms that had now been deserted. Eventually she found a track leading off to the west, and followed it in the hope that it would take her back to the main road. Unfortunately it turned out to be a meandering path that only linked the many unpopulated farms. By the middle of the day the sweat was pouring off her and she was feeling giddy.
She decided to rest under a tree for a time until the heat of the day had passed. In the cool of the shade she stretched out and, utterly exhausted, dropped off to sleep. In her dreams she imagined Rayne coming down the track, seeing her, running towards her with a smile on his face. Then bullets started to fly and red marks appeared across the front of his uniform. Now he was crawling towards her, but as much as she tried she could not move towards him. He was dying and she wanted to try and help him . . .
She woke up feeling very cold and scared. It was much later in the afternoon and she realised with horror that she had been sleeping a long time. Something did not feel at all right. She must move away from this place as quickly as possible.
It was then she noticed the man staring at her, not ten metres from where she was lying - a tall, ugly man dressed in a torn jacket and dirty jeans. A back-pack lay next to him on the ground, and an AK-47 rifle rested in his hands as if he had been born carrying it. He was stooping, his big, bulging eyes staring at her. Now she noticed the four others. They were behind him, crouching down in the bush.
She realised they were making sure she wasn’t armed. The man gestured for those behind him to come forward and at the same time he rose to his feet, still keeping the barrel of his rifle trained on her. He moved closer till she could smell the stale perspiration on him. He was only a pace or two away from her now, the tip of the rifle barrel almost touching her skin.
She rose instinctively and backed towards the trunks of the trees. He came forward and hit her hard across the face with the back of his left hand, and she fell to the ground. He leant down and snatched the watch off her hand and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Then he tried to pull the diamond ring that her grandmother had given her off her left hand. She had never taken it off; no one was ever going to take it from her.
‘Give me the ring.’
He had hurt her hand badly and she was angry. She curled her fingers and smashed her right hand into his face. Then she raked him with the fingernails of her left hand, the ring he had tried to remove catching his skin and cutting into it. Blood ran from his face. He staggered back, dropped the rifle and put his hands to the wound.
She ran forward and tried to pick up the rifle he had dropped. He moved quickly, slamming his boot against her fingers as they gripped the rifle barrel. She screamed with pain, staggering backwards and landing flat on the ground.
She could hear the men behind laughing. Now her attacker was furious and he grabbed her blonde hair and twisted it savagely, dragging her to her feet.
‘Give me the ring!’
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She pulled the ring off her finger and flung it into the bush where they could never find it. Then she spat in his face.
She instantly regretted it. He wrenched her hair again, yanking her back onto his chest and then clamping the rifle barrel across her throat so she could hardly breathe. Now she was hanging from his chest, held up from the neck by the rifle barrel and swinging like a puppet. His left hand came up and fastened round her throat and he dropped the rifle. Then his right hand tore her bush pants down, along with her panties.
The other men came up now and, terrified, she saw the excitement on their faces. He ripped her shirt and bra off and dropped her naked to the ground. With the pants round her ankles, she awkwardly tried to run, but he kicked her legs from under her so that she fell heavily.
Then they were on her. Two of the men grabbed her arms and she was dragged onto the dirt, face up. They pulled her arms in opposite directions, each man pushing a boot in below her armpit to brace himself. Her legs still thrashed wildly as the one who had hit her unfastened his jeans. Then he pulled her legs savagely apart and knelt on them so that she was completely pinioned. His hands worked their way over her breasts and she screamed again and tried to bite him. A leather belt was fastened around her mouth, forcing it wide open and splitting her lips. Mustering all her courage, Sam stared at the man in front of her defiantly.
Comrade Sithole thought that he would die. The pain shot through him so hard that he could hardly breathe. He had felt the tip of the boot as it connected with the bone area of his groin and caught his balls in its path.
He was knocked to the ground again as a rifle butt impacted into his skull. ‘You scum, Comrade Sithole. You disgrace your mother. Get up and face me.’
Mnangagwa was mad. They had defied him, disobeyed his orders. They had become a rabble. This was what he had to fight most against; there had to be discipline; without it they were nothing. Sithole was staring at him, defiant - and he could sense that the other men were behind Sithole. He would change that, quickly.
Sithole staggered to his feet and looked angrily at Mnangagwa. ‘I want the white whore, Comrade. She is mine. She deserves this. Her men have raped our women and taken our children to work on their farms. It is time for revenge.’
Mnangagwa realised he would have to set an example. Sithole was talking as if he commanded the men. He gestured for Comrade Dagger to come forward. Dagger was at his side immediately. Then Mnangagwa dragged Sithole to the tree where the naked white woman lay writhing on the ground, the leather belt still tight across her mouth. She tried to cover her naked breasts with her hands.
Sithole became erect again. Mnangagwa was pleased; this would teach the others a good lesson. He ordered Comrade Dagger to tie Sithole’s hands behind his back, turning him to face the other men, naked from the waist down, his proud erection visible to them all. The white woman was lying at his feet.
Mnangagwa pulled out his Makarov pistol. He spoke quietly to the men. ‘Disobey me again, any one of you, and you will die. Comrade Sithole will live, but only to serve as an example to you. As members of ZANLA we obey the rules - the rules of behaviour. Number eight states that we should not take liberty with women, number nine that we should not ill-treat captives.’
He swung round to face Sithole and neatly shot off both his testicles.
The security forces had come to the farm that morning and discovered the dead body of the farmer. They were surprised that all the booty from the farmhouse had been unceremoniously dropped outside the back door, and came to the conclusion that the terrorists must have been surprised by something.
They found Samantha Elliot’s car and started to search for her body, moving out from the farmhouse in wider and wider circles. By dusk they had still found no trace of her. They knew how easy it was for the terrs to vanish into thin air after an attack of this nature. Either Miss Elliot was lying dead further out in the bush or she had been taken hostage.
They felt none too comfortable in this outlying homestead with the body of the dead farmer as their only company. Darkness came quickly, and having gathered together everything of value from the house, they returned to headquarters in Umtali where they laconically reported the death of yet another farmer in the Thrasher operational area.
The commander of the police station rubbed his eyes as he completed the report, and consigned it to the growing pile at the corner of his desk. Then he took it off the pile and stared at the section on Miss Elliot.
At over sixty he had been through the Second World War and had had quite enough of death for one lifetime. He often wondered what quirk of fate had caused him finally to settle in this place, where he had thought he was retiring to a peaceful life. He had met the dead farmer a few times and had found him a pleasant, quiet fellow, not the sort to mistreat his black workers. At least it was fortunate he hadn’t a wife and children left behind to face the world alone.
Miss Elliot was a problem. An embarrassment.
As he tidied up his desk and positioned the in-tray in readiness for the next morning’s reports, he noticed a telegram that had been dropped on his desk some fifteen minutes before. It was from an American magazine editor, wanting to contact Miss Elliot urgently.
The commander started sweating. If Miss Elliot had been kidnapped it could cause him no end of problems. Reluctantly he picked up the phone and rang high command in Salisbury. There was a long silence after he had told them the story. He was ordered to keep quiet and wait for instructions. He put the phone down ruefully.
The commander locked the door of his office behind him and, as he walked down the corridor, he congratulated himself on selling off his farm years before, just when the going was beginning to get rough. At least he had some money in the bank, as well as some inherited money in England. He could always consider emigrating to South Africa if things got really bad, unlike that poor bastard out there who would soon be put to rest in the church graveyard.
Nice place, that farm. You could probably pick it up for next to nothing now, but no one would want it. Things were just too uncertain.
‘Welcome to Camp Siberia. It’s not a pleasant place but at least the Rhodesians and their bombers can’t find it. I have little time for dealing with prisoners, so please tell me the story of your capture, and something of your background. Then I will decide on your future.’
Mnangagwa had brought her to this place, to see this man, one of the high commanders of ZANLA. His tone irritated her. Sam was not the sort of person who liked to be told what to do.
‘Does it really matter to you? What’s the choice? Death, rape, or long-term imprisonment? It’s not my fault I was brought here. If I’d resisted I’d have been killed. I don’t know anything of use to you so there’s little point in your questioning me.’
He smiled as she spoke, a wry smile. He was an enormous man, not just physically big, but with a magnetic personality. His dark eyes were hypnotic. He had a chiselled jaw, perfectly square, and above it, sensitive lips that often smiled to reveal the neat line of his teeth. Most of the terrorists she had seen over the past two days looked scruffy in their dark jeans and green denim shirts, but this man looked as if the uniform had been tailor- made for him. Over the shirt he wore a light camouflage jacket and on his head a peaked cap.
‘You are an American. An American journalist in Rhodesia. This is very unusual. I find it strange that your capture has not been reported on the Rhodesian radio service. It crosses my mind that you might be a spy.’ His voice was very deep, and his speech precise. No word was wasted.
‘Tell me your name, American woman.’
‘Samantha Elliot. I am a reporter for a leading American magazine. I’ve been covering this war for the last three years. I was doing an article on the farmers of the eastern frontier when your men captured me.’ She was worried that her disappearance had not been reported. What had happened to the farmer? She wanted to be alone, to rest and think.
The man laughed long and loud. ‘You are very luc
ky, Miss
Elliot. You have told me the truth. Now you will be able to see the war from the point of view of the other side. You will be able to see what pleasant people your Rhodesian friends really are.’
‘You misunderstand me. The people who read Time revel in my reports on the destruction of Rhodesia. They like to see the Smith regime suffer. They wait like vultures for the kill. The whole war has become an important American issue.’
She found she was getting irritated. Why was she having to defend herself and her work?
‘You are cynical, Miss Elliot.’
‘This is not my first war. I was in Vietnam, where I worked as a correspondent. I had to take risks - you only got noticed if you went where the killing was. It’s the risk of death that carries the interest in war, just as it is in motor-racing or boxing. Except that as a war reporter the price of a good shot is a lot higher.’
‘You love violence?’
She was shocked. He was very perceptive, this ZANLA commander. She had not imagined men like this directing the terrorist war. He was looking at her threateningly, his eyes running up and down her body. She was still standing in front of him, he had not asked her to sit. She decided she didn’t care any longer. She opened the front of her shirt and swung her naked breasts in front of his eyes.
‘See. This is what you want, isn’t it? The first thing your “freedom fighters” tried to do when they caught me was rape me. I suppose if I hadn’t been lucky they would have shot me after that. Fair enough. Life’s cheap around here. If you want a fuck, take it, buster.’
Hyena Dawn Page 8
