A SONG IN THE MORNING

by Gerald Seymour

  He felt the energy surging through him. He was going forward.

  A voice . . . A man talking as to a child. A voice and footsteps . . . A caressing voice as if to quieten a child.

  Down flat, squeezing his face, side down, into the dirt of the track. He was in darkness, short of the light thrown from the road ahead. He saw a dog handler with a German Shepherd. The dog handler was cooing soft nonsense to his animal. Jack saw that the dog handler had an automatic rifle resting on the elbow of his right arm. He heard the voice drift away. He waited thirty seconds before he slowly rose to his feet and went on down the track to where the darkness merged with the light. He laid down his tube and his bag and his shotgun. He crawled forward.

  He saw the high concrete wall in front of him.

  He saw the sentry tower rising above the wall, and above the sentry tower was the bank of floodlights. He could sec low tilted roofs beyond the high concrete wall. He was separated from the wall by a narrow paved road and by a strip of lawn.

  Jack Curwen had come a hell of a long way.

  He gazed at the outer wall of Beverly Hills, the outer wall of the hanging gaol. If he had shouted then, his father would have heard him. He looked down at the luminous hands of his watch. He had six minutes before the diversion. The wall was brilliantly lit in the wash of light from the close set bulbs ahead of him. The sentry in the tower had his back to him. Jack could see the hunch of his shoulders.

  He went back for his metal tube and his bag and his shotgun. He crouched down. He was shaking. He had to will himself to control his fingers. He checked the safety fuse length that was knotted to the Cordtex equivalent.

  He checked that the Cordtex equivalent was firm where it disappeared into the readymix block in the metal tube. He opened his bag and ran his fingers, stuttering, over the charge that contained the detonator and over the charge that did not. He felt for the lengths of loose Cordtex equivalent and of safety fuse. He found the rope that was lashed to the cold bent iron. He eased the safety catch off the shotgun, he had eight cartridges in the magazine. He emptied the remaining cartridges from the carton into his pocket. He touched the smooth weight of the wire cutters.

  It was all a matter of belief . . . and arrogance.

  The wall that he faced was of no use to him. The wall fronted onto B section and onto the hanging shed. He had to be against the wall that fell away down the hillside to his right, down towards the glitter lights of Pretoria.

  Arrogance and now courage.

  He rose to his feet.

  There was a softness in his knees, there was a wetness in his belly, because he must now walk in the light along the paved road, in front of the homes of the senior officers, under the watch tower, walk for a hundred yards to the corner of the wall.

  Cheek, too, because he must walk as though he belonged.

  He looked at his watch. He had a minute and a half. He had the metal tube under his arm, and the bag on his back.

  He cocked the shot gun. He must walk. No running, no stopping.

  He came off the track.

  He ducked his head as the light found him, so that the smear marks of mud on his forehead and cheeks could not be seen from the watchtower. In the middle of the road he walked at a steady pace. He waited for the rasp of a weapon being cocked. He waited for the challenging shout. He walked towards the corner of the wall, along the road and towards the bend where it followed the side wall down the hill.

  There was a yapping chorus.

  There was a white bundle flying through the open gates from a large garden. There was a Pekingese dog circling his ankles. He saw the garden shielded an elegant bungalow. A large elderly woman in a housecoat and bedroom slippers was in pursuit of the dog.

  Jack's heart hammered.

  The woman saw a young man who carried a long circular length of metal and a bag and a firearm. She lived in the heart of the Pretoria Central complex, she was the wife of the major general who was Deputy Commissioner of Prisons (security). Her bosom lurched forward as she bent to catch the collar of the darting beast. She yanked it off the ground.

  The woman spoke to Jack in Afrikaans, and he smiled and nodded and she chastised the dog and Jack nodded again and the dog yapped at him and earned itself a volley of reproach and Jack took one step away and then two and then the woman was lecturing the beast in earnest and making for her garden and Jack was away free.

  The sentry in the watchtower saw the wife of the deputy commissioner talking at her front gate to a man. The sentry knew the dog. It was rumoured that ferret dog had killed the Siamese cat of the daughter of the Assistant Commissioner of Prisons (personnel). He thought the man must have had business at the Deputy Commissioner's house, come there before he had come on duty forty minutes earlier. He thought the dog must have chased the man down the drive. He thought it was a pity the old cow had come out so fast, a pity the man didn't have a chance to put his boot firmly into the ferret dog's arse.

  * * *

  He walked on. He felt the nakedness of his back. The wall rose beside him. The lights showed him thin, knife-edge cracks in the wall between the faced brickwork. Thiroko had told him that Beverly Hills was built on a rubbish tip.

  Heart hammering. He wondered if that helped him, helped his twelve pounds of explosive, the tip. Wailing siren, very faint. No. Must be singing. So bloody frightened . . .

  • * •

  There was for Jeez a sort of warmth in the singing. Listening to the singing he had put off his undressing and changing into his coarse cotton pyjamas. He knew that once they had started they would not finish. They would sing until the rope strangled the breath out of their throats. And a warmth, too, from the wheezed bronchitic breathing of old Oosthuizen.

  He wondered what the other two Whites in C section 2 thought about sharing their block with Black terrorist Commies, what they thought about Jeez being amongst friends.

  * * *

  He was at the corner. He was at the furthest point from the sentry tower, and when he was round the corner he would be at the furthest point from the remote camera on the wall above the airlock entrance . . .

  • * *

  Ros drove fast down from the motorway and onto Potgieterstraat. Jan had his window down, and the grenades and the pistols in his lap.

  * * •

  He heard the men singing, a murmur in the night as with leaves in a gentle wind . . .

  • * *

  The colonel swayed back in his chair. The words, telex typed, bounced at him from the page. James Carew had written to Mrs Hilda Perry. Mrs Hilda Perry lived at Churchill Close, Leatherhead, Surrey. Jack Curwen lived at Churchill Close, Leatherhead, Surrey. He swept open the drawer of his desk. He needed the telephone directory of the Department of Prisons.

  • * *

  He glanced at his watch. He was on the countdown. He started to mouth away the final seconds . . .

  • * •

  Jan ripped the lever of the first R.G.-42 high explosive grenade, tossed it through the window. The Beetle was coming slowly now past the wall of Local, at the junction with Soetdoringstraat. His finger was in the loop of the lever of the next grenade as they approached the gates of S.A.D.F

  headquarters.

  * * *

  He could see the camera rotating patiently towards him. He was fifty yards from the corner behind him, seventy-five yards from the camera ahead.

  Jack twisted, ducked towards the wall. He heard the crack thump of the first grenade . . .

  God, I love you, little bastard kids.

  . . . The tube down on the ground, a foot from the wall, paying out the Cordtex equivalent and the length of safety fuse, looking for the camera and the camera moving at steady, inexorable pace towards him, about to include him in the vision arc. The second grenade explosion, the metal box thump of the grenade going. He looked again for the camera. He saw the camera swinging away from him, aiming for the main approach road that came from the direction of the grenade blasts. Struggling in his pocket for
the lighter, and his fingers floundering with the car keys.

  The third grenade explosion . . .

  Brilliant bloody kids, because you've pulled the camera off.

  . . . Pistol shots in the night, soft fire crackers half a mile away. The lighter in his hand. The flame cupped. The flame held round the cut edge of the safety fuse. Jack ran back.

  He flung himself down onto the hard road. He pressed his face down onto the road surface. A moment of desperate stillness.

  He felt the blast bludgeon over him. He felt the pain roaring in his ears. He felt the fine draught of the debris hurtling back past him.

  He crawled on his knees and elbows into the grey dust cloud. He groped until he found the hole. His hands were in the hole and scraping to find the reinforcing steel cords.

  Coughing dust, spitting fragments. Cutters from his pocket.

  Finding the steel cords, fastening the cutters on them, heaving with his hands at the arms of the cutters, squeezing the arms of the cutters until there was the snap and the tension break. He was in the hole, choking, hacking. His shoulders were in the hole. If his shoulders were in then the hole was large enough. He wanted to scream, he wanted to shout that he had won. He was crawling through the hole and pulling his bag and lifting his shotgun. He wanted to shout because he thought that he had won something.

  He came through. He crawled into a lit garden. Ahead of him was another wall, and the ground between him and the other wall was lit as by sunlight. He saw to his right the white flood brightness high on the stanchion poles.

  He was charging forward.

  It was 22 seconds after the exploding of the shaped charge.

  He fired six shots from the pump action to blow away the lights. Not darkness, there were the distant lights above the watch tower on the back wall, but shadows thrown by trees and shrubs and bushes that were the gardens around the hanging gaol.

  A charge now. Only speed mattered. He saw ahead the pointed roofs of C section I, and C section 2, and C section 3. The gaps between the roofs were the exercise yards, covered by the grilles.

  He ran towards the gap that marked the exercise yard of C section 2, and his fingers were in his bag, reaching for the rope that was lashed to the length of bent iron.

  19

  He could hear nothing.

  His ears were dulled by the explosion at the outer wall.

  In silent ballet a deer that was no taller than his knee cavorted away from him. He saw between shadows the noiseless flight of a young warthog.

  The piece of bent iron was in his hands, and the rope. It was his grappling hook and his climbing rope.

  Jack came to the wall.

  He arched the bent iron over the wall. He lost sight of its fall. He heard the first sound that infiltrated his senses. He heard the scrape of the bent iron on the metalwork of the grille above the exercise yard. New sounds now flooding his ears as he pulled on the rope, tested the strain. There was the sound of a siren, rising as if it were cranking itself awake.

  There was a shout. He heaved on the rope. He slid back as the bent iron slipped, fastened again, slipped again, held.

  Once more he tugged at the rope, using desperate strength.

  The rope and the hook were steady. The iron was lodged as a hook into the grille. He tucked the shotgun, barrel up, under the shoulder strap, weighed in by the bag hanging across his stomach and his thighs, and he started to climb.

  His feet stamped on the wall as he dragged himself upwards.

  It was fifty-two seconds of time since the shaped charge had detonated against and through the outer wall. A life time of Jack's experience. All about speed, all about confusion, all about men staying rooted in their positions for precious seconds, all about officers who made decisions seconds after being asleep in their homes or dozing in the armchairs of their mess. Speed from Jack, confusion from the prison staff, his certain purpose, their being taken by surprise, on these his chance depended.

  He tried to walk up, throw his body back from the wall.

  The way the marines or the paratroopers did it. But the marines and the paratroopers weren't carrying a shotgun, and the marines and the paratroopers had proper combat packs and not a grip bag on a shoulder strap. And the marines and the paratroopers wouldn't be alone. Jack climbed the wall. His ears now were filled with the howl of the sirens.

  He reached the top.

  He was a darkened figure that swung first an arm and then a leg and then a shoulder and then a torso over the top of the wall, nursing his weight off the shotgun. He rolled from the top of the wall to crash onto the grille above the exercise yard. There was a moment when he was dazed, when he saw below him the dull colours of flowers in a small square of earth under the grille. If he let himself stop for more than a split second he was dead. He pushed himself away from the wall, out over the grille, the shotgun free in his hands, pressing back the safety catch.

  He saw the spit of flame from the window to his right, from the window that gave air onto the catwalk above the corridor of C section 2. He was rolling, swivelling his hips to turn himself, to keep the momentum from his fall. Because he was rolling, moving, the rifle shot had missed him, and the second shot missed him. Sharp, granite chips of sound against the blanket wail of the siren. He aimed the shotgun at the window. There had been a pale face visible between the slats of the window. The pale face was scarlet, peppered, gone. A scream of pain, of fear, to merge with the siren.

  Jack crouched.

  Left hand in his bag. The charge with the detonator in his fingers. The moment when he had to stop. The moment when he had to put down the shotgun on the grille. He had the charge in his hand and the roll of adhesive tape. Fast movements as he pulled himself onto the sloping roof above the cell block, as he reached for the window in front of him, the window that led to the catwalk. The window was a set of vertical bars, four inches apart, concrete, with louvred glass slats. He slapped the charge against the central bar. His fingers were stripping adhesive tape from the roll. He was kicking with his feet to hold a grip on the metal of the sloping roof. He had the charge in place, he had the adhesive tape back in his bag, when he saw the man who lay on the catwalk and moaned and who held his hands across his face. He dropped the length of Cordtex equivalent and safety fuse back down the slope of the roof. He let his grip go, his feet slide, came to rest on the grille. The lighter was in his hand. He guarded the flame against the safety fuse. He ducked, reached for the shotgun, plucked out of his pocket more cartridges, reloaded.

  The blast sang in his head. The explosion blotted out the siren sound, and the shouting, and the first rumble of booted feet on the catwalk.

  Jack scrambled up the roof. A gaping hole for him to pitch himself through, left arm first with the shotgun, left elbow through, left shoulder, and his forehead caught against a shard of glass and was slashed. No stopping. He tumbled onto the catwalk and his fall was softened by the cringing body of the guard.

  He stood.

  He opened his lungs.

  He shouted.

  "Jeez."

  He heard his voice boom back at him from the confines of the catwalk, from the short corridor below him, from through the cell windows around him that were flush into the catwalk.

  "Jeez. Where are you?"

  It was one minute and twenty-four seconds of time since the hollow charge had detonated.

  He heard a gravel voice. He heard the reply.

  "I'm here."

  * * *

  A babble of voices springing from the personal radios, concentrating around the controller in his glass-fronted booth beside the airlock main entrance.

  "It's not in B section . . ."

  "A section's fine. What's with B section and C section?"

  ". . . over."

  "I repeat, nothing in B section . . . "

  "Is this a fire practice, Johan?"

  "Are we to stay or are we to move . . .?"

  "If you have nothing to report for Christ sake keep . . ."

>   "Who's giving orders . . . ?"

  " . . . several shots, rifle fire, I think, sounded like A section."

  "Was that a bang on the outer wall . . .?"

  "What has happened to the lights . . .?"

  "Duty Officer, do you hear me?"

  "Has the military been telephoned . . .?"

  Chaos sweeping the ears of the controller.

  • * •

  The guard in the sentry box thought of the man he had seen with the gun and the length of circular metal, the man who had been talking with the wife of the deputy commissioner.

  He felt the crimson of panic, that he would be blamed, surging up from his gut.

  • • *

  There were five prison staff locked into the main C section corridor. None of them had a weapon, they were in contact with prisoners. They cowered on their haunches in the corridor.

  Locked into C section 2's corridor, Sergeant Oosthuizen shouted into the wall telephone, but he could find no one to listen . . .

  * • *

  Jack blew the window out that looked down onto the cell.

  The charge without the detonator, gone a cream cake. Back on his feet. The cell below him was a dust box, a grey cloud haze, and the ceiling light had been smashed. He peered down, trying to probe the dust and darkness to see the man.

  Time running, and time that was his life and Jeez's life. He fell through the window gap. He bounced on the mesh over the cell. He had Cordtex equivalent and safety fuse in his hand. Six feet of Cordtex equivalent and twelve feet of safety fuse. He laid the length of Cordtex equivalent against the angle of the mesh and the vertical wall. It was above the bed.