Vortex (107 page)

Meer’s panic vanished in that same instant. He laughed aloud in exultation and rose to his knees, swinging from side to side-looking for more foreigners to kill.

Another small, round shape sailed out of the smoke and landed behind him.

Whummp. The blast threw him forward against the lip of his foxhole and left him lying there for a split second, bleeding and dazed. Some instinct told him to stay down, to accept defeat.

No! It would not be! Meer spat pieces of gravel and sand out of his torn mouth and pushed himself to his knees again. Vague shapes wavered in front of his watering eyes. He fumbled for his rifle.

He never really saw the British paratrooper who came screaming out of the mist and swirling dust. He was conscious only of a sudden, sharp, tearing pain as the man’s bayonet slammed into his chest, reaching for his heart.

Gerrit Meer fell backward into his half-dug foxhole. He didn’t feel the point-blank shot the Para fired to extract his bayonet. The Afrikaner sergeant was already dead, staring up at the smoke-shrouded night sky with sightless eyes. The ridge guarding the Mooi River valley had fallen.

DECEMBER
31IN
NATAL

Special Forces duty always surprised him. Capt. Jeff Hawkins knew that “unconventional warfare” was much more common and covered a lot more combat than “conventional warfare,” but the longer he fought, the fewer rules there seemed to be.

Hawkins was dressed in U.S. Army battle dress, festooned with equipment, especially extra cans of water. Tall and slender, he was better suited to the heat than the massive Sergeant Griffith. Still, nobody wanted to risk dehydration. He carried the load easily, with a wiry strength that matched his thinness. His face was thin and angled. Even his fingers were skinny.

Captain Hawkins was the leader of a U.S. Army Special Forces “A” Team.

Along with his eleven other comrades, he had landed in the Durban area with the invading forces and was now operating “behind the lines,” assisting the black resistance.

Jeff’s skin was only a shade lighter than the Africans he

?”

walked with. He had always considered himself an American black, but in this color-conscious country, he would actually be classed as “colored,” since he had both black and white ancestors. Looking at the Sotho and Zulu tribesmen walking with him, he decided the term Afro-American was a good way of describing himself.

Special Forces teams supported the local resistance with specialized skills, gathered intelligence, and coordinated operations with “conventional” U.S. forces. Except for Lieutenant Dworski and himself, all the men on the team were sergeants, noncoms with years of training and experience. It was a touchy matter, working with a different culture, advising and assisting without giving orders. And there were always complications.

They were on their way back from a two-day patrol. Jeff had led Lieutenant

Dworski and Sergeants Griffith and Lamas on an engineering reconnaissance of the Tugela River bridge. It was a potential choke point on the Allied route of advance, and they had received orders to see if it could be seized and held in advance of the attacking Allied forces. This was only one of the missions his team was performing.

The answer was an exhausting and definite no. Jeff had learned enough to know when to walk away from a posthumous medal, and this was the time. Well defended, with a screen of patrols and scouts for twenty kilometers around, it had been an adventure just getting a look at the bridge.

No, headquarters would have to find some other way out of the Drakensberg.

Those rugged mountains were coming to symbolize the South African defenders and the difficulty of the advance.

Hawkins’s feeling of disappointment was mixed with his frustration with the

African soldiers he was supposed to be training and leading. These people were supposed to be allies. He seemed to remember something about allies being people who didn’t shoot at each other, but did shoot at the same enemy. In history, this had resulted in some strange alliances, but as long as the wars had lasted, so had the alliances.

Not here. Not at first, anyway. Hawkins and the other three

Americans had shown up at a nighttime rendezvous with local resistance forces, mostly ex-
ANC
guerrillas now fighting with the Allied side.

Any meeting at night, deep in enemy territory, was risky, and even after almost two weeks of operations in Africa, Jeff was keyed up. They had approached the site, an isolated grove of trees, in single file, with

Ephraim Betalizu, their best scout, in front by fifty meters.

Ephraim had disappeared into the copse and a few minutes later had called out, in Zulu, “All clear.”

Relaxing a little, Jeff had hand-motioned the file of soldiers forward.

He had only taken two steps, though, when he heard thrashing and the sounds of a fight. Breaking into a run, Hawkins sprinted for the trees ahead, weapon ready. He heard shouts, the sound of metal on wood, and then a muffled shot.

Jeff took the final few steps through the trees and saw Betalizu on the ground with three men standing over him. A fourth lay facedown to one side. A pistol lay on the ground near Betalizu’s outstretched hand, and two of the men held AK-47 assault rifles. Both weapons were pointed at the scout, and one man’s pose made Jeff think he had been about to pull the trigger.

Shit. Time to sound American, Jeff thought.

“What the hell is going on here? Ephraim, get up.”

Stiffly, he turned to face his scout’s attackers. Controlling the anger in his voice, he said, “Which one of you is our contact?”

One of the three, one with an AK-47 but not the man ready to fire, lowered his rifle and looked at Jeff. The American wore a standard-pattern U.S. camouflage uniform and green beret, with black plastic insignia. Although Jeff was not fully loaded with combat gear, he Appeared lavishly equipped compared to the guerrilla.

The African wore camouflage pants, a ragged T-shirt, and sandals. A big man, he had a short beard and close-cropped hair, flecked with gray.

“I am George Nconganwe, leader of this cell. You look like the Americans we expected. ” He gestured to Betalizu,

slowly standing up.

“But you have brought this traitor with you. ”

Jeff felt himself bristling and tried to fight it.

“If I brought him with me, he is not a traitor. ” Jeff heard the rest of the team coming through the brush behind him.

“I will vouch for every one of my men. ”

Jeff’s move was dangerous but necessary. Americans had no political currency in this area, and linking his reputation with that of the Zulus could work either way. Jeff was betting that Cape Town and Durban marked them as friends, not potential oppressors or collaborators.

Even in the weak moonlight, Jeff saw Nconganwe’s eyes move to someone behind him. Hawkins followed his gaze and saw the guerrilla was looking at Dworski, then Lamas.

Jeff introduced the lieutenant as his secondin-command, and then the rest of the team. The idea of an armed white man and a Hispanic being allies seemed to disturb Nconganwe almost as much as the Zulu. Whites were the oppressors. Hispanics were Cubans, first friends, now enemies.

He knew these men were Americans, and technically allies, but a lifetime of struggle made it hard to see past their race.

Jeff cursed his own complacency. Zulu and Xhosa had been historical enemies and also political rivals. Most of the now-shattered ANC’s membership had been Xhosa, while 95 percent of the Inkatha. movement had been Zulu. Inkatha had preached a more conservative line, while the
ANC
had ties with communist and socialist political groups.

Black South Africans had little experience with the idea of political dialogue. Any difference of opinion in this bloody land was cause for violence. The white government of South Africa had used this difference, and many others, to keep the two strongest opposition groups feuding between themselves. Now, even with the enemy in front of them, it was hard to forget old hatreds.

Dworski and Griffith had tended the fourth man-only knocked down and not shot, thank goodness. Only by being very businesslike had Hawkins

managed to convince Neonganwe to continue with the mission. They still had many kilometers of hostile territory to cover, and a dangerous enemy was looking for them.

Jeff’s original plan had been to place one of the local fighters with

Betalizu on point, but that was now out of the question. Betalizu did not know the area and could not scout alone. Hawkins would have to depend on strangers for his team’s security.

As they had set out, another conflict arose, with neither group willing to bring up the rear. Feeling like a schoolmaster, the American had ordered two separate side-by-side files, with the command group spread among them, keeping the peace.

The rest of the mission, successful but fruitless, had been a continuous string of compromises. Only after Betalizu and Lamas had gone forward together to survey the bridge, under the Boer sentries’ noses, had

Nconganwe said anything good about the Zulu.

They had slept that night in a hide about five kilometers from the bridge. Before sleeping, Nconganwe and Jeff had talked, first about the struggle in South Africa, then about America’s multiracial society. The

Xhosa had trouble with the concepts that made American society work.

Jeff explained his own upbringing. While he had seen and experienced discrimination during his life, there had been nothing like apartheid.

Even more so, American society as a whole seemed committed to the idea of the races living together on an equal basis. This was something few

South Africans, white or black, had actually seen. Nconganwe had trouble accepting that it actually existed.

In African culture, the family and extended family were everything.

Loyalty to one’s clan was far more important than any feeling of nationhood. America had forged her own borders. South Africa’s had been drawn by European colonists, with no thought to the peoples already living there.

Jeff’s own family was important to him, but he thought of himself as an

American, not a Hawkins or a Chicagoan. Some of that was his upbringing, but the American ideals of one man, one vote and the rule of law were a basic part of his beliefs, and his loyalty went to the country that represented those beliefs.

And what nation should the Xhosas or Zulus feel allegiance to? The government was the enemy and the South African nation was a collection of peoples kept deliberately apart. There was no concept of the “melting pot” or a pluralistic society. That much of apartheid had taken root.

A hundred-plus years after the Civil War, Americans were still sorting out race relations. Jeff wondered how long it would take in South Africa.

He and Nconganwe had talked for over an hour, and like most Africans Jeff had talked to, Nconganwe seemed willing to take part on faith, but would have to see the rest for himself. Jeff decided to settle for that.

The following day they had marched home through enemy territory, although the Boers’ grasp on it was weak and fading.

It was rough country, in the foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains. The paths rose and fell, passing through brown hills that broke into green only near a river or stream.

The team was headquartered in Tlali, a large village whose chief had been delighted to host Hawkins and his team, since the armed Americans would protect him from the lawless bands that now preyed on the population.

Tlali’s population was Sotho, another tribe common in South Africa, but one not as antagonistic to the Zulu.

The Sotho had actually managed to maintain their own independent nation within the territory of South Africa, mostly by virtue of being on top of an escarpment, surrounded by steep walls, Lesotho was still in the thrall of South African power, but it was also a source of pride. Tlali lay outside its borders, but still maintained the cultural links.

The patrol was walking southeast, toward TIali, when they came over a small rise and saw the village ahead. It lay nestled on a steep hillside, as if to keep the flatter land clear for farming. Fields of maize surrounded the neat thatched huts, and Jeff felt almost at home as he walked toward the village. It made him feel closer to his unknown ancestors….

JANUARY I -TLALl

Hawkins awoke with a start. Even in relatively safe quarters, a part of him always was on edge. His hand was halfway extended toward a pistol nearby when he saw it was Griffith leaning over him.

Relaxing, he glanced at his watch. It was four in the mo ming His body was still sore from two days’ march, and Hawkins said, “This had better be good, Mike.”

“It is, Captain, sir. Very, very good.” Griffith’s exuberant mood intrigued Hawkins, and the officer quickly rose and dressed, then stepped out into the cool darkness.

A small fire was burning in an open space between the huts, and Jeff saw several figures crouched around it, including George Nconganwe. He and

Dworski and Betalizu were all speaking in low voices. He could hear the lieutenant telling the Xhosa about growing up in a Polish neighborhood in Philadelphia.

Nconganwe greeted Jeff and said, “I wanted to bring this information myself. I do not understand it all, but the man who passed it to me said that your people would understand. ”

Jeff sat down next to the fire.

“Thank you for bringing this information.

I am sure it will be very useful.”

“I am supposed to tell you that the surveillance radar covering Ladysmith has just broken down. Its ‘transmit-receive relay’ has failed, and they are having difficulty obtaining another. They continue to ‘radiate,” but they cannot see anything on the radar screen. I know the man who overheard this. The Boers did not think he would understand.

“Additionally, some of the garrison was seen leaving town, moving north in trucks.”

Jeff felt his chest tighten a little and fill with excitement. This might be the big break the Allies needed. Ladysmith was a strategic town past the Drakensberg Mountains. If its defenses were weakened .