Hyena Dawn

by Christopher Sherlock

  The moment she got to the hotel she went to her room and phoned Deon.

  ‘There’s no legal way of stopping them, Sonja. They have too much power. Muller’s on their payroll and he’s slowly destroying my credibility in the force. I know he wants me to resign, but they’ll have to throw me out.’

  ‘Deon, you must be careful. They know you’re involved with me. They’ve killed Pieter. Now you’re in the firing line.’

  ‘I’ll worry about me. You must come back here now, and then I’ll sort those bastards out once and for all. It’s either them or me.’

  Colonel Michael Strong stretched out his arms and then recoiled at the sudden smell of his own sweat. It was five days since he had last washed. They had become like animals, living in the dirt round the perimeter of the airport.

  Even though his nerves had hardened, the anticipation of the action scared him. One wrong move and they would all be dead. He watched every man closely, always looking for signs of strain or weakness. It would only take one fool to give the game away, and he would have to dispose of any man whose nerves broke now.

  He wondered if Rayne was operating under the same strain in Beira. He had last seen Bunty Mulbarton the day before. That was when he realised what he must look like - seeing Bunty so haggard and exhausted. Incredibly, Bunty had been able to mine the road to the airport without being detected.

  One thought worried him constantly. What if the escape plane didn’t arrive? Had Rayne made some form of contingency plan? He was sure Rayne must have something up his sleeve, but what?

  Through the sights of his machine-gun he watched a squad of Russian soldiers move over the tarmac. He calculated that he could have brought each one of them down if necessary. The distance was just three hundred metres, he could do it with one squeeze of the trigger. The figures looked almost like toy soldiers through the shimmering heat haze on the tarmac.

  The sweat dripped from his forehead onto the stock of the machine gun. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was just after two in the afternoon. Four bloody hours to go, he thought to himself - as he remembered that he was the one who had started routine watches of six hours on and six hours off. It was painful, but it was the only way of guaranteeing their safety.

  The General sat alone at the edge of the yacht club, staring out to sea. Nothing could go wrong, he kept repeating to himself, nothing. The logic of it was overwhelming. The Rhodesians could never stave off an all-out attack on Salisbury, their arrogance would be knocked out of them for good. Only the pilots would know of his private orders, and their battle plans would only be opened after take-off.

  The time for questioning would come after the attack. It would be a daylight assault, early in the morning when everyone was at their least alert. First a wave of bombers would destroy the airfields, and fire bombs would then be dropped on the capital to create as much havoc as possible and bring people out of the buildings and into the streets.

  Then would come the second wave. Fire at random and destroy all people in view. Vorotnikov smiled as he repeated the order to himself. The planes would strafe everything in sight, there would be a bloodbath of epic proportions. No stupid settlement plans after that, and no danger of any whites sticking around. Aschaar’s plan would just have to adjust itself. The executions could begin after twenty-four hours - people’s courts would deliver the death sentence.

  The West, no doubt, would celebrate the victory and keep quiet about the carnage. As far as the rest of the world were concerned, the Rhodesians were degenerate racists anyway, and deserved everything they got. The few liberals would be quietly forgotten. Vorotnikov would bury them.

  Still, he did need the blonde American journalist. She would tell the official story of the glorious new state; she would interview the white people - who would be so terrified by that stage that they would say anything that was required of them . . .

  After that there would be martial law and complete expropriation of all white-owned property: a true people’s revolution that would be an inspiration to the USSR. His name would feature in Pravda, honours would flood in ... He dreamed of travelling through the streets of Salisbury to the sound of cheering crowds, the saviour of the oppressed.

  He finished his drink and stood up. He must return to the villa and his friend, the South African businessman. Usually he would not have drunk so much, but the tension was getting to him. He would have to be careful.

  Sam 2

  Sam was scared. They’d moved her to another village, which hadn’t made her feel any safer. She wished she was back in America, a child again, with her parents to protect her. She day­dreamed sometimes that she was on their ranch and riding her pony up to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada . . . This was all so foreign. She lay down on the hessian hammock in the comer of the hut and dozed off to sleep.

  She was woken in the darkness. She lashed out and a strong hand caught her own in a vice-like grip.

  ‘Sam. It’s me.’

  She felt her pulse quicken. She was pleased to see him, yet she was glad it was dark so that he could not see the warm smile that flooded her face.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tongogara, I’ve been scared.’

  ‘Relax, they’ll never find you even if they come looking.’

  ‘And if they torture the villagers?’ She saw his face crease with agitation in the half-light and she wished she had not asked such a stupid question.

  ‘They would remain silent. For me, they would die.’

  ‘I have made you angry. Please forgive me.’ She wanted him to like her, not to think that she was just a helpless, vulnerable woman.

  ‘I am not angry with you, just with myself. I have seen strange things, parachutes hidden in the bush near Beira.’

  ‘God! Rhodesians?’

  ‘If it’s them, then they must be here because they have found out about the invasion plans. How would they have found out?’

  ‘Perhaps from the South Africans? They have the best intelli­gence system in Africa. I don’t think they could be here in large numbers, you would have seen more evidence of them. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Sam, many of my own people are against the idea of the invasion. There has been enough death and devastation in this war. By sacking Salisbury we shall merely confirm what the Rhodesians and South Africans are always asserting in the world media.’

  ‘That you’re a bunch of savages.’ In the half-light she saw the irritation on his face, but he still managed a smile.

  ‘You put it so eloquently. If we can settle this war peaceably, an example will be set for South Africa. If the Rhodesians interfere here now, it will be more ammunition for us at the United Nations. But I can’t believe that the Rhodesians would be so stupid as to launch an attack against Mozambique at this sensitive stage.’

  ‘They might be a crack force, the SAS or the Selous Scouts. Could you locate them?’

  She felt a tremor of hope. Perhaps Rayne might be amongst them. She was reminded of her love for him. And yet she needed Tongogara; she couldn’t quite come to grips with her feelings for this man who’d saved her life.

  ‘If I found them, they’d kill me or I’d kill them. This is war.’ They sat for a long time in the darkness, not saying a word. Sam wished that he would take her in his arms, she wanted him desperately. Wanted to feel the strength of him.

  He moved towards her and she felt the electricity tingling through her body. But he only kissed her softly on the cheek, then he got up and left without a word.

  Maybe they were watching him now. The war was almost a game for them, while for him it was his soul. Why did they fight so well? That was something that intrigued him. Was it because the Rhodesians were a frontier people? Perhaps they were slightly crazy.

  He would keep a low profile if they moved in, and make sure his own men kept out of the way. Let the Russians be the cannon fodder for once, it would teach them a good lesson. Th
ey were not as strong as they thought. An engagement with the Selous Scouts would ruin their yet untested image of strength.

  Tongogara walked easily in the darkness, making little noise and always aware of what was happening around him. The war was only the beginning for the black man in Africa. His dream was to establish an Africanist state, neither communist nor capitalist. Tongogara felt deep resentment at the way the foreign governments tried to impose their own political systems on the new black states. Before these white men had come into Africa, his people had had their own political systems; but now, in states like South Africa and Rhodesia, the people had been oppressed for so long that they had forgotten their heritage, lost all their pride.

  And then the bitterness came back to him, as fresh as the day he had decided to fight for the cause. The white Rhodesians had so little to lose. If the tide turned against them they would merely retreat back to Britain or across the border to South Africa, with their material wealth substantially intact. And how they would jeer at the mistakes of the new black government - mistakes that were the direct result of their own policies. Of course, men who had no experience of power would abuse it at first, this was inevitable.

  The white man loved Africa, the land he had taken from the black man, and he could not stand to see it plucked from his grasp. God, how he wished he had been born in another place, at another time, content to live quietly with his wife and bring up his children!

  Tongogara stumbled on through the darkness. Back to his men, back to the war.

  After a hot bath and a shave Lois was transformed. Rayne still couldn’t believe the sudden turn of events: it was a miracle that Lois had been able to fly the helicopter so close to Beira without being detected by the Russian radar systems at the airport. The bikes and other equipment were already in position, the helicop­ter hidden under a screen of camouflage mats and foliage.

  He gave Lois a complete breakdown of his own battle plan and then went down for dinner with Guy as usual. He realised there was no point in keeping Lois’s existence a secret any longer - on the contrary, it was now vital that everyone knew about Lois, in case anything happened to himself. Everyone must know that they had a second way out if the plane didn’t come.

  To Rayne’s surprise, Guy was not particularly astonished. ‘I couldn’t believe that such an able commander as yourself would have relied on just one avenue of retreat. We all guessed you had something up your sleeve, but why was it so important for you to go through that charade of dismissing Lois when we were in South Africa?’

  ‘I felt then that secrecy was very important. I couldn’t be certain, until we were here, that everyone was completely behind me, and I didn’t want anything to jeopardize Lois’ side of the operation. As it was, he had a very close shave with the South African army after we left. You don’t get any second chances in this business, as you well know. Tomorrow I want to get Lois out of town and back to the helicopter. If the plane does arrive on schedule, he’ll make his own way out.’

  ‘But it’ll take him a lot longer in the chopper.’

  ‘He knows the risks. I made sure that he was one hundred per cent aware of them. We couldn’t have a better back-up man.’

  Early the next morning, Rayne took Lois up onto the hotel roof to show him exactly how they planned to attack the bank. At nine o’clock a big Mercedes pulled up outside. Rayne recognised Bernard Aschaar. He handed the binoculars to Lois.

  ‘That’s Bernard Aschaar, head of Goldcorp, one of the world’s most powerful mining companies. He’s one of the coordinators behind this little show. He’s got a small fortune in this bank.’ Lois said nothing but Rayne saw his jaw tighten and his fists clench. It was unlike Lois to show emotion so openly.

  ‘It’s him, it’s the same bastard. I’d like to strangle him with my bare hands.’

  Rayne had never heard Lois talk in this way before. Suddenly he had a new insight into the man, he saw the bitterness that drove Lois on.

  ‘You know Aschaar?’

  ‘It’s a long story, and it’s not pleasant.’ He was silent for a few moments, then spoke again. ‘It’s a part of my life I’d rather forget. I was working as an aircraft mechanic at the Rand Airport. Times were tough and as usual they were especially tough for me. I was desperate for money, and no doubt someone got to know about it. Anyway, one day I got a phone call and a message to say, was I interested in a special job, a one-off affair that would give me enough to retire on? Of course, I said I was. One thing led to another and eventually I agreed to fix a plane for them.’

  ‘How do you mean “fix a plane”?’

  ‘Sabotage. You fiddle with the controls, it’s easy enough, and it can’t be detected after the crash. It’s a popular way of wiping out businessmen who’ve become a problem. That’s what they told me this was about, fixing the private plane of some bastard who’d taken a lot of people for a lot of money. I couldn’t argue with that, so I agreed to do the job. The money was incredible. All I had to do was fix the controls, leave my job and collect the cash. The crafty bastards had lied to me from the beginning.’

  ‘They never paid you?’

  ‘Oh yes, they paid me, but then they tried to wipe me. They were scared of an investigation. They never told me a pro­fessional pilot would be on the plane and that there’d be passengers. I’d never have done it then, I swear to you that’s the truth.

  ‘There was a whole article about it on the South African TV news. The moment I saw that I knew what was going on. There was this girl on the plane, the daughter of some wealthy financier, and it was her they’d really wanted me to wipe out. Typical big business strategy - hit the bastard where it hurts most and then railroad him. I’m sure the buggers didn’t give up after the sabotage effort failed.’

  Rayne felt himself going cold but said nothing. Lois’s was not the only life that had been affected by the incident. Now Rayne knew exactly who had tried to kill Penelope. He was going to get the bastard, that was for sure. Lois misinterpreted Rayne’s clenched jaw.

  ‘Look, I know it was attempted murder, but believe me, I’d never have done it if I’d known there were innocent people involved. They sent a hit-man to get me that evening. He nearly did, but he took me for a sucker, didn’t know I had a black belt. I killed him. After that I got the hell out of the country. Now I’m back in hell.’

  ‘So what do you feel about Aschaar now?’

  ‘I’m going to get him. If not here, in Johannesburg or some­where else, I don’t care how long it takes. You see, that’s my goal, to hit the bastard back. After I’d fought their hit-man I had to have both of my testicles removed. It’s not something you forgive.’

  ‘Lois, if there’s any way we can get him after the attack, we will. His plane is still on the airstrip - and if he isn’t out by early Sunday afternoon, he won’t be going anywhere in a hurry.’

  Siva Singh sat in his office for a long time without moving. A small voice inside his head told him to phone the General immediately, but another, more urgent voice told him not to.

  He had no doubt that Aschaar would carry out all the threats he had made, and worse. Anyway, perhaps he knew a lot more than Singh. If the invasion succeeded then all would be well and Singh would make a lot of money; but if it was a failure there was now another option, in many ways equally attractive. It was merely business: he had just transferred his interests from the General to Mr Aschaar. He pulled a tissue from one of the drawers in his desk and cleaned the blood off his face.

  Then he set about cleaning up the broken articles on the floor. It would never do for the staff to know that he had just been slapped around by one of his important clients.

  The afternoon sun was low in the sky as Rayne drove the Peugeot slowly along the dirt road. The road-block had been easy, the guard was beginning to know him well. He gave the man a packet of cigarettes, talked to him for a few minutes and then drove on. The guard would never have believed that there was another man hidden in the boot of the car.

  Ray
ne pulled over at the side of the road and got out of the car, walking straight to the back and opening the boot. Lois emerged, partially covered in dust. He got into the passenger seat and Rayne started the car again. After another kilometre Lois gestured to a tree on the right.

  ‘That’s where the first bike is hidden. I’ve also buried a 9mm beneath it with twenty rounds. A couple of grenades as well.’

  Rayne kept on driving, anxious not to waste time. A bit further on Lois gestured to the left and Rayne saw a small rocky outcrop. ‘Under a pile of stones, directly behind that lot.’

  Rayne nodded and kept the car moving.

  ‘The helicopter is another five kilometres down this road on the left. You have to pass through some very thick bush to get to it. About three hundred metres from the road there are thin lines attached to grenades fixed in the trees. Once you’ve avoided those, you’re safe. You can drop me off here. I don’t want to go any closer in the car.’

  ‘Thanks, Lois, for everything. On Sunday you should hear a lot of noise at about five in the afternoon. We should be with you within the hour if our own transportation doesn’t come in. I suggest, if we don’t pitch up, that you get the hell out of here by six-thirty.’

  ‘I’ll wait. They won’t find me.’

  Rayne slowed the car down, they shook hands and then Lois got out and disappeared into the bushes in seconds. Rayne turned the car round and headed back towards Beira.

  Now there was only one day left, and he hadn’t seen a sign of Sam anywhere. He kept the car going at a slow pace and tried unsuccessfully to concentrate on anything he might have left out . . . Perhaps there was another clue to her whereabouts that he had missed. He couldn’t let the men down, but there was no way he was going to leave till he had found her.