Vortex

CHAPTER 5 Crackdown

JULY 15-PURSUIT FORCE LION, ON THE NAMBIAN

FRONTIER

One thousand feet above the arid, rolling Namibian veld, a tiny, single-engined Cessna 185 orbited-circling round and round through a crystalline blue sky. Its shadow, cast by the rising winter sun, rippled over low, barren hills and sheer walled gullies strewn with bare-limbed trees and brown, thorn-crowned brush.

Strapped into an observer’s seat in the plane’s cramped cockpit, Commandant

Henrik Kruger squinted through his binoculars into the early-mo ming glare.

The movement emphasized the wrinkles spreading through the skin around his steel-gray eyes-crow’s-feet worn into his otherwise boyish looking face by years of exposure to the sun and wind. They were the marks left by nearly two decades of dedicated military service to his country.

With one hand, he reached back and rubbed a neck grown sore from too many minutes of hunching down to see out the Cessna’s windows. At an inch over six feet, Kruger was just tall enough to find riding inside most South African military vehicles and aircraft uncomfortable. He preferred being out in the open air.

Nothing. Still nothing. He pursed his lips. The rugged terrain below made it difficult to spot the fleeing men and vehicles he sought, but the traces of their passage across the veld couldn’t be so easily concealed. It was only a matter of keeping one’s eyes open.

There. He spotted a narrow break in the normal pattern of yellowing, sun-dried grass, brown earth, and slate-gray rock. It was precisely the sort of thing he’d been searching for since it became possible to distinguish more than blacker ground against a black sky.

Kruger felt adrenaline surge through his veins and forced his excitement back. What he saw might easily be nothing more than a trail left by one of southeastern Namibia’s many grazing cattle herds. He needed a closer look to be sure.

Without lowering his binoculars, he reached over the seat and tapped the

Cessna pilot’s left shoulder, signaling a turn in that direction. The pilot, a young South African Air Force lieutenant, nodded once and pulled the small plane into a shallow dive to the left-simultaneously throttling back to give his passenger a better view of whatever it was that he’d seen on the ground.

The marks Kruger had spotted grew larger and clearer as the Cessna raced toward them at one hundred knots. His excitement returned. They were tire tracks all right; deep, furrowed ruts torn out of the ground by two or three heavily laden Land Rovers moving cross-country. Without being told, the pilot relaxed his turn, leveling out at five hundred feet to follow the tracks westward into Namibia.

Kruger lowered his binoculars and unfolded the map on his lap with one hand while pressing the transmit button on his radio mike with the other.

“Papa

Foxtrot One to Papa Foxtrot Two. Over.”

“Go ahead, Papa Foxtrot One.” His secondin-command, Maj. Richard Forbes, sounded tired. Nothing surprising in that. Forbes and his men had already been up more than half the night searching for a band of ANC guerrillas who’d tried

to cross the long, open border sector guarded by Kruger’s 20th Cape

Rifles.

The kommandant grimaced. Guarded was probably too strong a word. The frontier between South Africa and newly independent Namibia stretched over more than six hundred kilometers of desert and and veld. That meant that each of the eight infantry battalions stationed at various points along the border had to watch over sectors seventy five or more kilometers long. It was almost an impossible task-even with constant patrolling, daylight aerial surveillance, and electronic sensors planted along likely infiltration routes.

Kruger frowned, remembering the frantic events of the past few hours. A midnight clash between the guerrillas and one of his battalion’s armored car patrols had turned into a brisk, bloody firefight that had left one of his men dead and two more badly wounded. To make matters worse, the guerrillas had broken contact in all the confusion, disappearing into the hills without leaving any of their own dead and wounded behind.

When a preliminary sweep confirmed that they’d turned back toward

Namibia, Forbes had taken a mechanized infantry company out in pursuit-trying to stay close to the fleeing ANC infiltrators until daylight made aerial reconnaissance possible. They’d succeeded, and now it was up to Kruger to vector his men in for the kill.

He thumbed the transmit button again.

“Two, this is One. Tracks heading west approximately five klicks south of your position. “

Forbes came back on immediately, sounding much less tired than he had seconds before.

“Roger that, One. We’re moving. Deployment plan is India

Three. Crossing November Bravo now. Out.”

Kruger acknowledged and glanced down at his map again. The code phrase

“India Three” meant that the fourteen Ratel 20 armored personnel carriers under Forbes’s direct command would move parallel to the trail left by the guenillas-avoiding any booby traps or mines they might have planted to catch foolhardy pursuers charging straight in after them. Then, once

Kruger had pinpointed the retreating ANC force, Forbes would change course, driving hard to put his infantry, machinegun teams, and mortars out in front. With reasonable luck, the South African column would be able to smash the guerrillas in split-second ambush.

Kruger shook his head. It should work, and work at a minimal cost in casualties. But there were complications. International complications.

“November Bravo” was the radio shorthand for the Namibian border. His men were now on what was ostensibly foreign soil. If they were spotted by UN or Swapo patrols before they’d had a chance to deal with the ANC guerrillas, there’d be hell to pay. The international press would surely have a field day reporting another South African “invasion” of a neighboring country.

He frowned. Although the Republic clearly couldn’t afford to allow its enemies sanctuary so close to its borders, the new government’s strident rhetoric wasn’t making it very easy to justify these “hot pursuit” operations. It was necessary to teach the guerrillas and their supporters some hard lessons, but it seemed senseless to spill so much hot air about it. The old American adage that one should speak softly, but carry a big stick, seemed the wiser path.

“Dust on the horizon, Kommandant. Over there at three o’clock. “

The pilot’s words brought Kruger back to the present, He was a soldier with a battle to run. Politics could wait. He craned his head forward, trying to get a better view through the Cessna’s Plexiglas windows.

The light plane bucked slightly in a sudden updraft and then straightened as the lieutenant regained control. As it leveled off, Kruger saw the hazy, yellowish cloud the other man had reported. Six or seven separate dust plumes streaked the air on the horizon, tossed skyward by vehicles moving cross-country at high speed.

He shook his head, puzzled. There were too many plumes. Was the ANC force larger than reported? Or had it been reinforced? Another, even worse possibility tugged at his mind. He leaned forward against the straps holding him to the seat.

“Let’s get closer.”

The lieutenant nodded and pulled his aircraft into a gentle turn to the right. Kruger raised his binoculars again.

The specks beneath the spreading dust cloud grew rapidly larger, resolving suddenly into six large, canvas-sided trucks rolling south-led by a dazzling white jeep flying a huge blue and white United Nations flag. The same flag flew from each of the trucks.

Kruger swore under his breath. Damn and double damn. The UN peacekeepers responsible for this section of the border hadn’t been alert enough to stop the ANC’s attempted infiltration. But by God, they were quick enough off the mark to stop anyone chasing after the guerrillas. The UN truck convoy’s course would place it squarely between Forbes’s company and their quarry.

His hands tightened around the binoculars.

The Cessna’s radio crackled into life.

“This is Captain Roald Pedersen of the United Nations Monitoring Group calling the unidentified aircraft overhead. Are you receiving my transmission? Over. ” The UN officer’s accented English marked him as a Norwegian.

Kruger let the binoculars fall around his neck and thumbed his own mike.

“Receiving you loud and clear, Captain.”

“Identify yourself, please.” Pedersen’s politeness didn’t disguise the tension in his voice.

For an instant, Kruger stared at the speeding trucks below, tempted to tell his pilot to just turn and fly away. Then he shrugged. He wouldn’t gain anything by being intransigent. Observers in the truck column must have jotted down the Cessna’s identification numbers by now. No one would believe this was a simple civilian joy flight gone astray. Besides, perhaps he could reason with this Norwegian peacekeeper.

“this is Kommandant Henrik

Kruger of the South African Defense Force.”

Pedersen’s next words dashed that hope.

“You’re violating Namibian airspace, Kommandant. And I’m ordering you to leave immediately.”

Order? The bastard. Kruger fought his temper and spoke calmly.

“I urge you to reconsider your ‘suggestion,” Captain. I’m currently pursuing a terrorist force that crossed into our territory and killed one of my men. Surely we have the right to defend ourselves?” He released the transmit button.

“I’m sorry, Kommandant.” Better. The Norwegian sounded genuinely apologetic.

“But you haven’t got jurisdiction on this side of the line any longer. I must insist that you turn back immediately or I will be forced to take stronger measures. “

Kruger pondered that. What stronger measures? The UN troops weren’t likely to start shooting-at least not without being shot at first. But what could he do if they continued interposing themselves between his oncoming soldiers and the still-fleeing guerrillas? Blast them out of the way? Not likely. Not if he wanted to avoid a major international incident and the resulting damage to his country’s reputation and his own career.

He glanced at the map still open on his lap. Forbes and his APCs would be visible to the UN convoy in minutes dramatically raising the stakes in any prolonged confrontation. What now seemed a simple border violation by a single aircraft would suddenly become a full-scale raid by South

African armored vehicles and infantry.

He swore under his breath. There weren’t any good choices. He thumbed the mike’s transmit button hard enough to hurt.

“Papa Foxtrot One to Papa

Foxtrot Two. Over.”

Forbes’s clipped accents spilled over the airwaves.

“This is Two, One.”

“Break off pursuit. I say again. Break off pursuit. Return to base.” The words left a foul taste in Kruger’s mouth. Being defeated by an armed enemy would have been bad enough. But being driven off by interfering “peacekeepers” was even more irritating.

He didn’t doubt that the Norwegian captain and his men would try their best to catch the fleeing guerrillas. The UN troops were honorable in their own way. But they lacked the combat experience and field craft to do a thorough job. The ANC’s terrorists would escape to live and murder another day. It was a depressing thought to carry back empty handed to the dusty airstrip beside the 20this bunker-ringed camp.

JULY 1 B-NYANGA BLACK TOWNSHIP, NEAR CAPE

TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

Shots and screams echoed over the roar of anno red-car engines and crackling police bullhorns.

“Goddamn it!” Ian Sheffield kicked wildly at the dirt, trying to vent some of his anger and frustration. It didn’t help.

By rights, this should have been one of the best news gathering days of his tour in South Africa. Hints dropped by a sympathetic officer and a long, wearying listening watch to a moderately illegal police scanner had paid off. He and Sam Knowles had come on the scene just after the government’s paramilitary security units moved into the crowded huts and alleys of the

Nyanga Township. But it was going to be a wasted effort unless they could get some good footage of the brutal police sweep going on just two or three hundred yards away.

And that was just what they weren’t to be allowed to get. A solid phalanx of blue-and-gray-uniformed riot troopers, wheeled armored cars, and growling German-shepherd attack dogs blocked the motorway off-ramp leading to Nyangaholding the gathering mass of foreign correspondents at bay as if they were wild animals.

Ian and Knowles could hear the shooting and see oily, black columns of smoke rising from burning homes, but they couldn’t see anything from where the police had stopped them.

Vorster’s security services weren’t taking any chances that foreign cameras could videotape their goon squads on the rampage. No videotape meant no story-at least not on the television news broadcasts that brought the world to living rooms across America and Europe. The network anchors in New York,

London, and Paris wouldn’t waste much airtime reporting a story without exciting visuals.

“Well, well, well. Whatta ya know…. There is another way in to that dump.”

Ian stopped in mid kick and spun around to face his cameraman.

Knowles was leaning against the hood of their station wagon, scanning a coffee-stained and torn street map of the areas around Cape Town.

Ian joined him.

“What have you got, Sam?”

Knowles’s stubby finger traced a winding, circuitous route on the barely legible map.

“See this? These bastards have all the major roads blocked, and probably all of the minor ones, too. But I’ll bet they don’t have enough men to cover every nook and crank in this rabbit warren.”

Ian looked at the area Knowles was pointing to. The Philippi Industrial

Park. A maze of aluminum-sided warehouses, factories, and storage sheds.

Ian shook his head regretfully.

“Wouldn’t work, I’m afraid.” He traced the shaded border between the township and the industrial area.

“There’s a barbed-wire-topped chain link fence running all along this area.”

Knowles grinned and reached in through the car window onto the passenger seat. He lifted a towel-wrapped bundle and briefly exposed a pair of wire cutters.

“Fences, old son, are meant to be cut …… Ian thought he’d never seen his stocky sidekick look so much like the fabled Cheshire Cat. He matched Knowles’s broad smile with one of his own and opened the car door.

Twenty minutes later, the two men crouched behind a rusting row of trash bins-less than fifteen feet from the chain link fence separating Nyanga

Township’s ramshackle huts from the industrial park’s machine shops and warehouses. Tendrils of smoke and faint shouts, shots and screams, drifted faintly downwind from the north-clear proof that South Africa’s riot troops were still engaged in what they euphemistically called “the suppression of minor disturbances.” Ian planned to call their bloody work something very different. But first he and Knowles had to get inside the township, get their videotape, and get out. And that might not be so easy.

He risked a quick glance toward the nearest police post, two hundred yards down the fence. The ten shotgun-armed policemen manning the sandbagged post were alert, but they were looking the wrong way. They were there to stop

people from escaping-not to stop journalists from breaking in.

Ian pulled his head back around the corner and carefully unwrapped the wire cutters. Knowles knelt beside him, video camera and sound gear slung from his back.

“Everything cool?” The little man sounded breathless. Not scared, Ian decided, just excited.

He nodded.

“We’re clear.”

“Well, let’s do it, then.”

With their hearts pounding and equipment rattling, the two men raced to the fence and dropped flat-waiting for the angry shouts that would signal that they’d been seen. None came.

Ian rolled onto his side and slipped the wire cutter’s sharp edged jaws over a rusting metal strand near the bottom of the fence. They slipped off at his first attempt to snip through the strand. And then a second time as he tried again. Christ. His fingers felt three times their normal size. As if they’d been pumped full of novocaine.

Knowles moved restlessly beside him, but didn’t say anything.

Ian wiped both hands on his pants and tried a third time, applying steady pressure to the wire cutter’s twin handles. C’mon, cut, you bastard. This time the fence strand snapped apart with a low twang. Finally.

He kept working-slicing upward through the fence in a series of steady, repetitive motions. Slip the cutter’s jaws over a chain link. Don’t think about the police standing guard not far away. Just squeeze. Squeeze hard.

Move on to the next strand and do it all again.

He finished almost without realizing it.

“That’s good enough,” Knowles whispered, taking the wire cutters out of his hand.

Ian came back to his surroundings and studied the ragged hole he’d torn in the fence. His cameraman was right. The opening was just big enough for them to wriggle through and just small enough so that it might not be too noticeable from a distance.

He sneaked another quick glance toward the police post.

The South African riot troops were still looking the wrong way. It was time to move, before one of them grew wary or bored and decided to scan the rest of the local scenery.

Ian rolled onto his back and pulled himself through the gap. Knowles wriggled through the fence after first passing the camera through the narrow opening.

They were inside.

Without stopping, Ian rose to his feet and raced forward into a narrow alley between two of Nyanga’s small, aluminum-sided houses. Knowles followed, unslinging his camera as he ran.

Both men paused to get their bearings and then moved on-walking toward the noise of the riot spreading fast through the township. As they felt their way gingerly ahead, stepping wide over trash littering the alley, Ian took a deep breath, trying to suck air into his heaving lungs. It was a mistake.

Piles of rotting, uncollected garbage, the sewage backing up from inadequate sanitation systems, and now, stray wisps of tear gas, all came together to create a single, gut-wrenching odor. He clenched his teeth, fighting down a wave of nausea.

The alley they were in ran straight north between rows of dilapidated, windowless homes, paralleling one of Nyanga’s unpaved main streets. Nothing moved, except for a few scrawny rats that scampered quickly out of their path.

After a few minutes of hard walking, Knowles stopped short of what looked like a major cross street. He looked up at Ian.

“Where to now, kimosabe?”

Ian cocked his head, listening to the continuing sounds of chaos. They seemed louder ahead and to the left. He stepped out of the alley and turned in that direction.

Almost immediately they started seeing people streaming south, fleeing what now sounded more like a pitched street battle than a routine, if brutal, door-to-door police sweep. Most were women and children-some carrying hastily snatched bundles of their household belongings, while others, weeping, ran empty-handed.

Ian saw Knowles raise his camera and start panning from side to side. He moved forward again, with the short, stocky

cameraman tagging along by his side. The pictures of panic stricken flight would be dramatic, but they had to get closer to the action. People back home needed to see just what Nyanga’s inhabitants were running away from.

The two Americans pushed their way north up one of the refugee-choked streets, dodging frightened men, women, and children carrying what they could of their furnishings away from the fighting. The mixed smells of smoke and tear gas grew stronger, and Ian could see orange and red flames leaping from rooftopt farther down the street.

There were more men in the crowd hurrying past. Many had been shot or badly beaten and were being half-carried, half-dragged away by their friends or relatives. Ian had a dizzying impression of a whirl of torn, bloodstained shirts, fearful eyes, and angry, shaking fists, some aimed in his direction.

Their undisguised hatred shocked him until he remembered his white skin.

For all Nyanga’s inhabitants could know, he and Knowles might be members of the state security services-taking pictures for later use both in criminal prosecutions and covert retaliation. Ian felt sweat trickling down his back and beading on his forehead. The fact that they could be in as much danger from the township’s people as they were from the police hadn’t really sunk in before. It wasn’t a reassuring thought.

Ian slipped a hand into his pants pocket, unconsciously fingering his plastic-cased press card as if it were some kind of religious talisman. But he knew it would be a singularly ineffective protection if the township’s angry young men turned on anyone trapped in the wrong-colored skin.

Knowles’s hand touched his arm and he started, instantly ashamed that he’d shown his nervousness so openly.

The cameraman pointed farther up the street.

“I think that’s where we want to be. Whatever bastards are driving these people back are going to have to come through that.”

Ian’s eyes followed his friend’s pointing finger and he nodded. Knowles was right, as usual. The locals had built a barricade of flaming truck and car tires, old furniture, and boxes of canned foods dragged from a nearby grocery. Greasy black smoke from the burning tires hung over the whole street, cutting off the sun and throwing everything into a kind of gray, gloomy half-light.

The two men jogged closer to the barricade, looking for a sheltered vantage point.

They could see the barricade’s defenders clearly now. Young men. Teenagers.

Even a few boys who couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old.

None of them were running, and all clutched a rock, chair leg, or tire iron. Any kind of improvised weapon that would give them a chance to hit back at those responsible for this unwarranted attack on their homes and families.

“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.

He swayed upright.

“All right. Here’s the deal. First, you let us out of your damned jail. Then you arrest those bastards who attacked us. “

Ian took a shallow breath, calmer now.

“And after that’s done, we’ll talk about how you can pay us back for the damage to our stuff and for this.

” His fingers gently brushed the painful swelling behind his left ear.

Finished, he stood waiting for the expected explosion and immediate order for his expulsion.

It didn’t come.

Instead, the commandant simply smiled coldly.

“I shall not debate the matter with you, Meneer Sheffield. I reserve that for those I consider equals. And you are most emphatically not my equal.” His hands idly caressed the polished surface of his desk.

He stared straight into Ian’s eyes.

“You are a guest in this country, meneer. You exist at my sufferance. I suggest you remember that in the future.”

Ian held his breath, surprised into silence. Were they going to let him stay?

The commandant’s thin, cold smile vanished.

“You have much to learn about the role you can play in South Africa, Meneer Sheffield. We Afrikaners are not the kind of weak willed decadent, impoverished tribesmen with whom you socalled journalists can play god. We do not care in the least what you and your prating colleagues think of us or our policies. “

A fanatical gleam appeared in the man’s pale, un winking eyes.

“The true God alone shall judge our actions to save our folk. “

“If that’s the case, why not just kick us out and have done with it?” Ian heard Knowles choke back a muttered warning to shut up.

The Afrikaner steepled his hands.

“I assure you most solemnly, meneer, if it were up to me alone, I would gladly send you back to your own godless land by the next available transport.

“But”—the hands separated and spread into the semblance of an uncaring shrug-“it seems that there are those in higher places who have some small interest in you and your friend. So I shall be merciful this once. You’re free to go. Immediately. ” The commandant jerked his head toward the office door and lowered his eyes to the open file on his desk, apparently dismissing the whole matter from his mind.

Scarcely able to believe his good fortune, Ian was halfway to the door before he remembered their damaged gear. The green-eye shade boys in New

York were bound to squawk unless he and Knowles made every effort to find another way to pay for the needed repairs and replacements. It was the same old story. If the network bosses liked you, you could even get away with writing off a trip to the south of France as a research expense. But woe betide anyone else who turned in an expense account showing anything more pricey than lunches at the local equivalent of McDonald’s.

With that in mind, he decided to press his luck a little further. He spun round sharply-stepping briskly aside as one of the guards treading close on his heels nearly blundered into him.

“Not so fast, Commandant. What about our camera and sound equipment? Who’s going to pick up the tab for the stuff your goon squad smashed?”

The Afrikaner’s head came up as fast as a striking snake’s. Despite the man’s earlier contemptuous words, Ian was shocked by the undisguised hatred apparent on his face.

“Get out of my office at once! And be thankful that only your verdomde equipment was broken. It can be repaired. Skulls and ribs are not so easily mended!”

The expression of open anger faded from the commandant’s face, replaced by a calmer, colder, infinitely more chilling look of calculated malice.

“Do not cross my path again, Meneer Sheffield. It would not be the action of a wise or healthy man. I trust I make myself clear?”

He glanced at the guards still standing to either side.

“Now take these

Uitlanders out of my sight before I change my mind and have them locked up again.”

The Afrikaner’s pale, hate-filled eyes followed them all the way out the door.

Neither man spoke until they were near the main gate leading out of the

Magistrates’ Court complex. Then, at last, Sam Knowles broke the tension-filled silence.

“Jesus Christ, Ian. Remind me to loan you my copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People before you get us both killed.”

Ian laughed softly, a somewhat forced, embarrassed laugh.

“Sorry, Sam.

I’ve learned not to eat with my hands in fancy restaurants, but I guess nobody ever taught me how to keep my big mouth shut around junior-grade gestapo wanna bees like that SOB. back there.”

“Yeah.” Knowles thumped him lightly on the shoulder.

“Well, the next time we’re looking down someone’s gun barrel, try to remember that discretion is always the best part of valor. Will you do that for me, huh?”

Ian nodded.

“Good.” The little cameraman shifted gears abruptly.

“Now just who the hell in Pretoria do you suppose likes you enough to spring us from the pokey?”

Ian didn’t answer him until they had passed a pair of armed sentries and stood blinking in the brilliant winter-afternoon sunshine. A taxicab sat parked along the curb.

“I don’t know anyone that high up in Vorster’s good graces, but I know someone who does,” Ian said.

The taxi’s rear door opened and a beautiful, auburn-haired woman got out.

Knowles pursed his lips in a silent, appreciative whistle.

“I see. I do believe I begin to sec.”

Through suddenly narrowed eyes, the short, stocky cameraman watched his friend and partner take the steps two at a time down to meet Emily van der Heijden..

JULY 20-D. F. MALAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT,

NEAR CAPE TOWN

The announcement buzzed and crackled through the overhead loudspeakers in the same dry, garbled, and disinterested voice used in airports all the world over.

“South Africa Airways Flight one forty-eight to Johannesburg is now ready for boarding. All passengers with confirmed seating are requested to come to the Jetway at this time. “

Ian felt his pulse race as Emily kissed him hard one last time and pulled away.

He started to reach for her and stopped as she shook her head sadly.

“I

must leave.” She blinked away sudden tears.

“I’m afraid there’s no more time.”

Ian fumbled for the handkerchief in his jacket pocket and then gave it up as he saw Emily sling the traveling case over her shoulder.

“Look, if you don’t want to go, then don’t. Stay here with me.”

Another headshake, slightly more vehement.

“I cannot, no matter how much I would wish it. My father is a hard man, Ian. To him, a bargain is a bargain-no matter how forced it might be. So if I do not return home as I promised, he’ll have you rearrested and sent back to America. And I cannot let that happen.”

Ian looked down at the scuffed tile floor. What was happening to her was largely his fault. She’d learned of his arrest when he hadn’t shown up for a dinner date the day of the riot. Nearly out of her mind with worry, she’d done what she would ordinarily have regarded as unthinkable. She’d phoned her father, asking for his help.

As the new government’s deputy minister of law and order, Marius van der

Heijden had the clout needed to spring an unruly pair of American journalists. The man was also a scheming, blackmailing bastard, Ian thought angrily. His price for their release had been Emily’s surrender of her hard won independence-the independence she’d won only after years of stormy argument and outright shouting matches. In her father’s words, she was to be “obedient.”

Emily softly touched his arm.

“You understand?”

He swore in frustration.

“Jesus Christ, this isn’t the Middle Ages! What’s he expect you to do for him… cook, clean, and keep house like every other good little Afrikaner girl?”

The ghost of a smile appeared on Emily’s face.

“No, he knows me better than that. He just wants to keep me away from you and your ‘immoral’ influence.”

The faint smile disappeared.

“Though of course he will expect me to help him around the house. To serve as hostess for parties and braais. ” She used the Afrikaans word for barbecues.

Ian picked up her other bag, and together they walked toward the passenger line forming at the gate.

Emily kept talking, as if she hoped to bury her sadness under a flow of everyday conversation.

“You see, my father’s new position compels him to be more social. And it is important, I suppose, that he be able to show the kind of home his colleagues would regard as ‘normal.”

“

Ian nodded, but couldn’t think of anything to say. He knew how much Emily valued her freedom and how much she loathed her father’s extremist political positions. Now she was willingly going back to everything she had once escaped.

And all for him.

Her sacrifice made his own troubles seem small in comparison.

“Boarding pass, please. ” He looked up. They were already at the gate. A young, uniformed flight attendant had her hand out for Emily’s ticket.

“Look, can I write or call you?” The desperation in his voice was audible.

Emily’s voice dropped to a bare, husky whisper he had to strain to hear clearly.

“No… that would be the worst thing. My father must believe I have broken entirely with you.”

“But…”

She gently laid a finger across his lips, stilling his protest.

“I know,

Ian. It is terrible. But believe this. I will contact you as soon as I can.

As soon as I can find a way to do so without my father’s knowledge.”

Her hand dropped away from his face.

The flight attendant coughed lightly.

“Please, I must have your boarding pass.”

Silently, Emily handed over her ticket and stepped onto the carpeted ramp leading to the waiting plane. Then she turned.

“Remember that I love you, Ian Sheffield.

She disappeared around a bend in the ramp before he could say anything past the sudden lump in his throat.

Ian stood watching until he saw her plane lift off the runway and turn east, sunlight winking painfully off its silvery wings.