Vortex (16 page)

“Here!” Ian pulled Knowles down beside a rust-eaten car stripped of its tires, doors, and engine. They were within twenty yards of the barricade.

Knowles knelt upright and propped his camera up on the edge of the car’s crumpled hood. Ian crouched beside him, feeling calmer now that they were in cover.

An eerie stillness settled over the street. Smoke from the burning tires and houses made it impossible to see far beyond the barricade. But no shapes moved in the oily mist, and fewer shots and screams could be heard.

For an instant Ian wondered if the police raid was over, either called off or beaten back. Had Nyanga’s people put up enough resistance to discourage

South Africa’s hardened riot troops?

A roaring, thundering, grinding crash jarred him back to reality, and he stared in shock as an enormous Hippo armored personnel carrier smashed into the barricade at high speed, sending tires, furniture, and boxes flying apart in what seemed slow motion. Rocks clanged harmlessly off the APC’s metal hide as it lumbered on down the street-leaving a trail of crushed, still-burning debris behind itself.

Riot police appeared suddenly out of the smoke, charging through the gap left them by the Hippo. Gas masks with clear plastic visors and bulbous filters gave them a strangely alien appearance. One went down in a tangle of equipment, hit hard in the head by a thrown rock. The black teenager who’d thrown it cried out in triumph and knelt to pick up another. Both he and his joy were short-lived.

Ian winced as a point-blank shotgun blast ripped the young rock-thrower into a ragged, bleeding mess. He swallowed hard against the bitter taste in his mouth.

The police seemed to take that first shot as a signal, and they began firing wildly, indiscriminately-spraying shotgun blasts into the street and houses around the barricade. Splinters whined through the air, blown off buildings by hundreds of pellets concentrated into narrow, killing arcs.

Ian felt something whip crack past his head and ducked. Jesus. He’d never been shot at before.

He poked his head back above the car, noticing that Knowles had never stopped filming. My God, nothing seemed to faze the man.

The street looked like a slaughterhouse. Patches of its hard packed dirt surface were stained, soaked in blood. There were bodies all around-some lying motionless, others thrashing or twitching uncontrollably in agony. A few of Nyanga’s young men still stood their ground, flailing desperately away at the policemen pouring through their shattered barricade. But most were running. Riot troops chased after them, firing from the hip or swinging whips and truncheons in vicious, bone-crunching blows.

Ian jogged Knowles’s elbow and jerked his head toward one of the tiny alleys opening onto the street. They had all the videotape they needed to make a damned good story out of this blood bath. No useful purpose would be served by hanging around until the police spotted them. It was time to get out.

Knowles slung the camera over his back and followed Ian into the alley.

They ran hard, jumping piles of untended garbage and forcing their way through patches where weeds had grown waist high. Behind them, the police gunfire rose to a higher-pitched, rattling crescendo, spreading rapidly to all sides. At the sound of it, both men ran faster still, trying to escape what seemed like a quickly closing net.

Ian’s lungs felt as though they were on fire, and every breath burned going down. His legs seemed to weigh a ton apiece. Knowles wasn’t in much better shape as he stumbled panting along behind. But he kept running, following any street or winding alley that led south-toward the chain link fence, their car, and safety.

Their luck ran out less than a hundred yards from the fence.

Four burly men dressed in brown, military-style shirts and trousers stepped into the alley ahead of them, shotguns and clubs at the ready. Their faces were hard, expressionless.

Ian skidded to a stop in front of them, his heart pounding. Knowles stumbled into him and backed up a step, breathing noisily through his mouth.

Ian raised both hands, empty palms forward, and stepped closer to the waiting men. It seemed strange that they weren’t wearing the standard gray trousers and blue-gray jackets of the regular police. Just who were these guys anyway?

“My colleague here and I are journalists. Please step aside and let us pass. ” Nothing. Ian tried again, this time in halting Afrikaans.

The largest, an ugly, redfaced man with a flattened, oft broken nose, sneered, “Kaffir-loving, rooinek bastards.”

Ian recognized the contemptuous slang term for Englishmen and felt his hopes of skating out of this situation sink. He shook his head.

“No, we’re

Americans. Look, we’re just here doing our job.”

It sounded pretty feeble even to his ears. The four brownshirts moved closer.

More feet pounded down the alley behind them.

“Don’t look now, but I think we’re surrounded,” Knowles muttered.

The largest Afrikaner held out a large, calloused hand.

“Give us the verdomde camera, man, and maybe we let you go with your teeth still in your mouth. A blery good deal, ja?”

His friends snickered.

Great. Just great. Ian eyed the big man narrowly. A bare knuckled barroom brawler. Nothing fancy, there. He didn’t doubt that he could take the bastard. Unfortunately, that still left at least three in front, and God only knew how many behind.

But the tape in that camera represented the biggest story to come his way since he’d landed in South Africa. He

couldn’t just meekly hand it over. Not without putting up some kind of resistance, even if it was only verbal. He shook his head slowly.

“Look, guys. I’d like to oblige, but the camera doesn’t belong to me. It’s company property. Besides your own government has given us permission to cover the news here. So if you try to stop us, you’re breaking your own laws.”

He paused, hoping they’d take the bait and start arguing with him. Every passing minute increased the chance that someone in the regular police chain of command would show up-taking these plug-ugly paramilitary bastards out of the picture, no matter who they worked for.

They didn’t fall for it. Ian saw the big man nod to someone behind him and heard Knowles cry out in pain and anger an instant later. He whirled round.

Two more brown shirt thugs stood there smirking. One shook the video camera in his face in mock triumph while the other held Knowles’s arms behind his back. Ian noticed blood trickling from a cut on his cameraman’s lower lip.

That was too goddamned much. He took a step forward toward them, his teeth clenched and jaw rigid with anger.

Knowles spat out a tiny glob of blood and said quickly, “Don’t, Ian. That’s just what they want.”

Ian shook his head, not caring anymore. One or two of these morons was going to regret pissing him off. He started to lift his hands Something flickered at the corner of his eye. A club? He ducked, knowing already that he’d seen it too late.

The big Afrikaner’s shotgun butt smashed into the side of his skull, sending a surging, tearing, burning wave of pain through Ian’s head. The alley whirled round in his dazed vision and he felt himself sliding to his knees. God, it hurt. He’d never been in so much pain before. The sunlight that had seemed so dim seconds before now seemed intolerably, horribly dazzling.

He heard Knowles shouting something he couldn’t make out through the roaring in his ears. He looked up and saw a heavy leather boot arcing toward his face.

This time, mercifully, the lights went out and stayed out.

III

JULY
19—
POLITICAL
DETENTION
LEVEL
,
CAPE
TOWN

MAGISTRATES’
COURT

No shadows softened the cellblock’s steel-barred doors, long empty corridors, and row after row of small square holding pens. There were no shadows because the harsh, overhead fluorescent lights were never turned off. They stayed on, robbing prisoners and guards alike of any sense of passing time.

As Ian lay faceup on a concrete slab that passed for a bed, he noticed that the cracked white ceiling tiles of his cell had finally stopped spinning around and around. And his head, though it still hurt, no longer felt swollen up like a pain-filled helium balloon. He almost smiled at the strange-sounding simile. Maybe he’d taken more punishment than he remembered.

Just the ability to think straight at all was a major improvement, he decided. In the hours since he’d struggled back to some semblance of consciousness, stray bits and pieces of rational thought had tumbled through his mind, coming and going among a host of jumbled memories, dreams, and half forgotten songs. But now he could start putting all the pieces back together, forming them into some sensible picture of what had gone on since they’d tossed him into this cramped, dingily antiseptic cage.

For instance, he remembered seeing Sam Knowles being locked into a similar cell just down the hall. And this time, Ian did smile, remembering the steady stream of swear words and obscene, elaborate insults pouring out of his cameraman’s mouth. Knowles at least, though bloody, had very definitely been unbowed.

That was a comforting image to hold on to in the midst of a series of much more depressing visions of his likely future. Ian had no illusions left about his network’s compassion or generosity. A reporter who got himself beaten up and deported while getting an exciting story would be embraced with open arms. But a reporter who got tossed out without anything to show for it, save a few bruises, was a has-been heading straight for the television trash heap.

Ian groaned softly. Being kicked out of South Africa without the chance to see Emily again was bad enough. The thought of being sent to read the weather in somewhere called Lower Podurtkia made his almost certain deportation even worse.

“Hey, you! Amerikaan! On your feet. The new kommandant wants to see you.”

Ian turned his head. A warder stood just outside his cell door. Keys dangled from the man’s plump hand.

Head pounding again, Ian slowly sat up and levered himself off the concrete slab. The cell door slammed open.

“Come on, man. Don’t keep the kommandant waiting. You’re in enough blery trouble as it is. ” The warder motioned him out into the corridor where

Knowles and three other guards stood waiting.

Fifteen minutes later, the two men found themselves standing in front of the detention-center commandant’s enormous, highly polished desk. Two bearlike guards stood to either side. Ian wondered whether they really expected Sam and him to try to jump their chief, or whether they were simply posted as part of a general pattern of intimidation. More the latter than the former, he suspected.

At first glance, the new commandant himself looked more like someone’s kindly, mild-mannered junior clerk than a secret policeman. But that pleasant resemblance dissolved on closer examination. The man’s pale blue, almost reptilian eyes rarely blinked behind thick, wire-rimmed glasses. And his puffy, thin-lipped face seemed permanently set in a sour scowl. He wore a plain uniform devoid of any badge of rank or other ornamentation-except for a single red, white, and black pin fastened to his tunic. The

Afrikaner’s fingers drummed rhythmically while he leafed through the single document blotting the surface of his desk.

Ian focused his still-blurry vision, trying to make out the insignia embossed on the man’s lapel pin. For a second, it wavered in and out of focus. Then he recognized the symbol-the three-armed swastika of the

Afrikaner Resistance Movement, the
AWB
. Jesus Christ. He struggled to keep the shock he felt off his face. The AWB’s fanatics were supposed to be nothing more than a lunatic fringe groupa group despised as much by the ruling National Party as by anyone else in South Africa. So what the hell was a high-ranking official doing wearing their insignia? Not only wearing it, but wearing it proudly, he thought, studying the commandant’s arrogant profile.

Things began failing frighteningly into place. The brownshirts who’d beaten them up were undoubtedly members of the AWB’s Brandwag, or

Sentry-a heavily armed paramilitary organization. The AWB’s leaders had sworn to use their private army of storm troopers against those they labeled communists and black troublemakers. Now they seemed to be actually putting their threats into violent practice. And doing so with the active approval of those in the new government.

Ian shivered involuntarily at the thought of the AWB’s ignorant, torch-carrying hatemongers running wild through South Africa’s townships and city streets. What kind of madman would give such thugs free rein?

He lifted his eyes from the commandant’s tunic and saw the harsh, unsmiling visage of Karl Vorster staring back at him from the wall.

My God, he realized, they’ve already taken the time to manufacture idealized portraits of the new president. And for the first time, he began to consider the possibility that Vorster was something much worse than a somewhat simpleminded political hard-liner.

“My, my, Meneer Sheffield, what a shocking list of crimes. Violating a police line, brawling with appointed representatives of the government, breaking the Emergency Decree’s restrictions on press coverage… what am I going to do with you?” The commandant’s dry, sneering voice brought

Ian back to the more basic consideration of his own personal fate.

Oh, oh. Decision time. Should he play it safe and act suitably meek and apologetic in the hope that they’d let him stay in South Africa? Or show the sons of bitches that they couldn’t scare him and probably get strapped into the first

plane heading overseas’? He found the decision surprisingly easy to make.

Somehow he found the thought of kowtowing to the prim little neo-Nazi in front of him too sickening to contemplate seriously. He mentally kissed both Emily and his career good-bye.

Ian leaned closer to the desk.

“I’ll tell you what you can do, you .. ” He closed his mouth on the term he’d been about to use. Even as angry as he was, it didn’t seem very wise to call the prison commandant a son of a bitch to his face.