by Larry Bond
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 stopp
ed 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 sh
ook 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.