by Steve Reeder
The sun was hot and brassy in the cloudless sky. Reece checked his watch and was surprised to see that the fire-fight that was raging ever closer was only five minutes old. Reece felt like he’d aged a decade.
The nature of the battle changed suddenly and for a moment Reece missed it, but then it dawned on him, and he saw what had changed. The Cuban advanced was faltering, first on their left flank which dragged the centre to an indecisive standstill and troops on the right over-ran the skirmish line and were looking uncertain. Section Three had arrive – Reece could see them in the distance, a hundred metres or more to the west of his exposed position – spreading out and immediately advancing in short runs towards the enemy, keeping a constant rate of fire at the Cuban line. The Cuban flank was desperately falling back to form its own defensive line. The tables had turned. Reece’s decision to get out of the buffel and join the battle was quickly abandoned when two more rounds smashed into the glass just inches from his face. The three riflemen that he could see in front of the vehicle were suddenly up and dashing forward in short organised runs. Reece looked towards the rear and saw the whole ten man section on the move, only be halted as one of them staggered and fell, clutching his upper thigh and screaming in pain and fear. The Cubans, it seemed, were not giving up without a fight. Within seconds the battle became a stalemate with neither group willing to risk the casualties that an all-out attack would bring.
An eerie quiet settled on across the bushveld as Reece reached the fallen soldier.
“Hang in there, Barnard,” Reece told him as he got the medical bag open and sorted through the contents.
“What’s happening, Reece? Is it over?” Barnard was deathly white under his tan, his voice raspy and haggard. Reece decided that the injured man was in shock.
“Yeah,” Reece looked to the south and could see more of the Cubans with their hands in the air. “When Cunningham and Els opened fire with the LMG the Cubans decided that discretion was the better part of valour. Some of them are still running but most have surrendered.”
“They took their time – Cunningham, I mean.”
“They had a long way to go to find some high-ground off to the West.” Reece studied the injured man’s leg.
“Your leg is a bit of a mess, Old Boy. But there doesn’t seem to be much bleeding.”
“It was so bloody painful at first but now I can’t feel a thing - it seems numb.”
“I have an idea that is going to change when I start putting a dressing on. So I’m going to stick a couple of shots of something into your leg, OK?”
“Go for it,” Barnard replied, gritting his teeth like he feared the pain of a needle more than the bullet.
Dave Vos arrived while Reece waited for the aesthetic to take effect. “You OK, Barnard?” Vos asked.
“Ja, I think so. But it is starting to hurt like hell. I thought that stuff was to stop pain?”
“Give it some time, Bud,” Reece replied. “What’s happening, Dave?”
“Section One has a casualty too, and it looks bad,” Vos told him. “You’ll need to get across there with the medic-bag.”
“OK. I think Barnard’s femur has been broken by the bullet, and if I’m right then it’s going to be a mess. We need a Cassavac pretty quickly. Frankly I’m surprised it’s not pissing blood.”
“OK, well Corporal Jones is on the radio to HQ demanding some support,” Vos replied. He looked around him and spotted Jones squatting next to the section one casualty seventy to eighty metres away. “If I get Barnard’s leg bound up, can you take this bag over to where Jones is and help them?”
“Sure. What about any Cuban casualties?”
“They have a medic with them…not much in the way of supplies, but that is their problem - you get over to Jones.”
The sun had already set on northern Namibia causing the temperature to dip slightly, and Tommy Freeman was pontificating on one of his favourite subjects. Reece could hear him from within the tent as he arrived back in the platoon lines.
“When you fancy shagging a bird that you meet in a club,” Freeman was telling John Smit, “it is important to use the right pick-up line to get her attention. And a bit cheeky and funny can be very good.”
“Like what, for instance?” Smit asked.
“Like this one; say to her ‘hello, Darling, you had your mile-a-year yet?’”
“Her what?” Smit asked, clearly confused. “Mile of what?”
Reece could hear Bomber suddenly laughing loudly, “Cock, Smitty, also known as; Slang, Dick, Penis or ‘your-wedding-tackle’.”
“I still don’t get you.” Smit said.
“Look,” Freeman said, grabbing back the initiative, “If the average dick is 6 inches - ”
“Or in Tommy’s case three inches.”
“Shut up, Bomber. Where was I? Oh yeah, if the average is six inches and you take fifty strokes to ‘finish the job’, then you will have given her twenty-five feet! So if you divide twenty-five inches into a mile, which is, err - whatever it is, and she hasn’t had that many times sex - ”
“Nice to see your grammar is as bad as your arithmetic, Tommy,” Reece said as he entered the tent.
Freeman flipped Reece a middle finger. “Yeah, and what’s your best pick-up line, Reece, ‘Nice legs, babe, what time do they open’?”
Reece dumped his webbing at the foot of his bed and sat down. “I don’t need a line, Tommy. Just the right look will do it.”
“Fuck off with your ‘right look’! You get a bird into the back seat of your car with just a look?”
“Oh, he’s not kidding,” Bomber said with a sad smile and shake of the head. “We were at The President’s hotel bar in Pretoria a few weeks back, and there were these three girls there - hot numbers, you know? Sean just looks at them until one of the girls notices us. She says something to the other two, who then look our way. Sean just smiles at one of them, raises an inquiring eye-brow and nod at the door. Hey-presto! The next thing you know they are out the door with his hand already on her arse and I end having to drive the other two home after spending a fortune on drinks for them! And do you know what the worst thing about this was?” Freeman shook his head at the memory. “Neither of the other two would let me shag them!”
“Tommy,” Reece addressed the visibly disbelieving soldier. “It is never what you say; it’s how and when you say it.”
Franz laid aside the novel he’d been reading and looked up at Smit. “Smitty, do yourself a favour; if you want to pick up a girl, just go and talk to her. Introduce yourself, pay her some compliments and see if she likes you. If she does, then don’t be shy. Don’t be a pig either, mind you. There is always the chance that she might actually like you without the stupid lines.” He turned and directed his next comment at Reece. “So, I heard the Pumas flying you guys back. What happened out there? You break the buffel?”
“Quite a major contact,” Reece told them. “Cubans, would you believe, and a lot of them.”
By the time Reece had told the whole story, the Section-Two tent was filled to breaking point with an assortment of men from the junior platoon as well as members of Section’s One and Three who had come to tell their own personal tales.
“Anyway,” Reece said, wrapping it up. “The puma’s arrived along with two gun-ships and a platoon of Meat-bombs and four medics.”
“Hold on a second,” Franz demanded. “You say you did a blood transfusion directly from Daly?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Well Pienaar was in a bad way, losing blood by the bucket and there was only one bag of fluids. Jones said that the Pumas were still too far away, so I rigged up a system to transfuse blood directly from Daly, feeding his blood straight into the IV line that I’d plugged into Pienaar’s arm.” He motioned towards Daly, who help up his left arm and showed off the sticky plaster covering the inside of his left elbow. “Luck for Pienaar that Daly is blood type ‘O’.”
“The C.O. has promised me free beer for a
week!” Daly said with a grin.
“And how is Pienaar doing now?” Bomber asked.
“I don’t know,” Reece said. “One of the pumas took him and Barnard – and four of the Cubans – directly down to Oshikati. I guess we’ll hear at tomorrow morning intelligence briefing?”
As the crowded tent emptied Franz came across to sit with Reece. “You OK, Sean? That’s two major contacts you’ve been involved in in a matter of days.”
“I’m not the only one.”
“The others are not in my section, so…?”
“I’m fine.” Reece rubbed his face and massaged his tired eyes with finger-tips. “Only a few days to go, hey?”
“True. Just a few days, and we’re out of here. Off to find our fortune,” Franz said. “I can’t say that I’m going to miss this place at all.”
Nineteen
The transport platoon truck rumbled out of Ruacana at five-thirty on the 27th with Ricky Steffen on board. Bomber and Reece watch it leave, making sure that there was no trouble at the main gate. As soon as the vehicle’s headlights disappeared, Bomber thumped Reece lightly on the shoulder.
“So it begins, old buddy,” Bomber said.
“Yeah, there’s no turning back now.”
“I just hope Cole has everything under control with the plane. Maybe we should have sent Steff all the way back to Jo’burg to collect a plane?”
“It’ll be fine, Bomber. Charlie Cole’s a good guy, he’ll have it all sorted.” Reece checked his wrist-watch. “Not much use going back to bed now - stand-to in twenty minutes.”
“Let’s go see if the kitchen-mechanics have any coffee.”
“I’m sure they’ll have something brewing, but I can never tell what it’s meant to be.”
Her phone rang seven times before Bomber hung up. He waited five minutes and tried again. This time she answered almost immediately.
“Hello? Tanya speaking.”
“Hi, babe, it’s me.”
“Bomber! It’s so nice to hear your voice again.”
“It’s great to hear yours too, Babe. I can’t talk for long. I’m on a payphone at the airport and this is the last chance I’ll have before we leave for the trip.”
“Is everything OK? It’s all going well?”
“So far so good. I’ll call you again as soon as I can. I’m not sure where that would be from but with luck we’ll be back in camp by the 5th without anyone knowing that we had been missing.”
“Are you leaving tomorrow?”
“Yes, Steff will be picking us up at eight, so we have a night of hanging around here hoping that no-one asks us what we are doing. We’ll probably go sleep in one of the stores that no-one seems to be using just at the moment.”
“Just you take care, Bomber. I want you back, OK?”
“Will do, Babe. Now I must get back to camp; there are two officers looking at me and probably wondering why I’m here.”
Night was closing in quickly as it does in the tropics when Franz burst into section two’s tent. “We have a problem,” he told the others. “The CO just sent for me and told us that this section is being given the job of escorting two prisoners back to Pretoria tomorrow.” He paused. “Why are you all looking so miserable?”
“That’s not our only problem,” Bomber said. “Steffen was just on the phone to the captain about a message from my brother about our uncle not being able to make it.”
“What the fuck is that about?”
“It did my head in for a bit, especially since I don’t have brothers or uncles, but then Sean suggested that we go hang around the payphone at the post office and true enough Steff called an hour ago. Cole and the pilot didn’t turn up.”
“Any word from Charlie?” Franz asked, directing the question at Reece.
“Not yet. I tried his home phone but his mother said she didn’t know where he was.”
Franz sat on Reece’s bed alongside Freeman. “So what now?” he asked.
“Well,” Reece told the others, “firstly we need to get Steff back here. He’s not part of our section and that means the deal for him to come on patrol with us is now off and Van Niekerk will want him back. Section One is going on that patrol in our place and Steff will be going with them.”
“Do you think the plane crashed somewhere?” Freeman asked. The others said nothing but looked concerned. “I guess there would be something on the news if it did, wouldn’t there?”
“Fuck knows,” Reece muttered darkly. “I’ll try calling Charlie this evening and if that doesn’t work then we’ll have to try again from Pretoria.”
“What time are we leaving and how long are going to be state-side for, Franz?”
“We fly out on the 10.30 Dak, so I’ve been told that we need to be at Ruacana airport to meet the MP’s by 10h00 at the latest. The RSM has laid on a jeep for us. As for the return trip; we’ve been given orders to be on the Monday morning Flossie back to Ondangwa, so we’ll have a three day pass.” The C130 transport planes were generally referred to as flossies.
“So no matter how we look at it, the diamond heist if off?” Freeman asked. He had taken to referring to it as The Diamond Heist the day before.
“Let’s play it by ear,” Reese suggested. “If we can get hold of Charlie and maybe meet up in Pretoria then we can re-access.”
“That’s if he’s not lying scattered in tiny bits across the bush somewhere between Pretoria and Ondangwa.”
“You are real little ray of sunshine, Tommy, you know that?” Reece snarled. “Now shut the fuck up and go chat to your buddy in the NCO mess. Get us a dozen beers and let’s have a drink.”
Twenty
September. On an aeroplane.
The flight to Pretoria involved two flights; one in an old Dakota from Ruacana to Ondangwa in northern Namibia and then onwards on board a C130 to the Wonderboon air force base outside Pretoria. The trip had an air of unreality about it. One of the two prisoners was a high-ranking SWAPO officer who spoke seven different languages including German – having spent some time in East Germany being trained by the Russians – and he and Smit had jabbered away in German from Ondangwa all the way to Pretoria. The rest of the section looked on with bemused expressions.
“As it turns out,” Bomber told Tanya on arrival at Wonderboom, “Smitty’s family is German and Scottish on his father’s side and Afrikaans and Swedish on his mother’s side, and they all speak four languages.”
Freeman later commented that the Smit family could have fought the Boer war, won and lost it, signed the surrender as winners and losers, then started the League of Nations, all by themselves.
Tanya, who had driven all night from Durban to meet Bomber and the others when they landed, looked around the small terminal. “Where are Sean and…what is your other friend’s name?”
Bomber looked across at the officer commanding’s office where Reece and Franz had taken the two prisoners. “Franz Coetzer,” he told her. “He’s the section leader. They’re just handing over the SWAPO prisoners to the Military Police. They shouldn’t be long.”
“Have you boys given up the diamond idea?” she wanted to know.
“I don’t know, babes. It’s one of those things that we are going to have to talk about. I guess there is no reason that we can’t simple do it next month, is there?” Bomber replied. But no-one seemed inclined to answer that.
“Good news, guys,” Franz announced as he finally reached them. “For you at least; we’ve all been given two weeks pass starting Monday, but apart from me you can all go home now. I have to report to the Major back at the HQ - then I’m going with him to visit Billy in One Military Hospital.”
“Have you heard how he’s doing?” Reece asked.
“He’s doing fine, this visit is just something you have to do when they give you command. Anyway, I’ll drop round the barracks and see how Mark is doing as well.”
“Who are these guys?” Tanya wanted to know.
“The other two guys in our section; Billy was
injured in a land-mine explosion up north and Mark was send back weeks ago with Yellow Jaundice,” Franz explained to the frowning girl. “I don’t think there’s much chance of him being sent back up to the border, but I’d better see how he’s doing while we’re here.”
“Probably been sitting on his arse all day and shagging all night,” Freeman ventured.
“If I may call your collective attention back to the problem at hand,” Reece said, “We need to get together and talk about the diamond thing.”
“So what’s the plan of action for today, Sean?” Smit asked.
“Let’s ask Cole that question,” Reece replied and pointed towards to the parking lot where a mustard-coloured Ford Cortina had just pulled into a slot. “That will be him now.”
Tommy Freeman took a long drag on the joint and exhaled with an exaggerated smile. He offered the joint to John Smit who was sitting next to him on one of the small sofas. Smit shook his head, “I’ve had enough, Tommy. You finish it.” Freeman smiled happily at that suggestion. The music playing on the Hi Fi even suited the mood; Cole had the complete collection of Bob Marley.
The six of them, including Tanya, had gathered in Cole’s two-bedroom flat in Edenvale early Sunday evening. Now, five hours and a lot of alcohol later, the music had been turned down and the occupants of the flat were a long way from sober. Reece was sprawled in an easy-chair that had seen better days and looked as if he may be sleeping. Franz and Cole sat beside each other on the second sofa sharing a bottle of rum. Cole stole occasional glances at the orange coloured bean-bag in the corner where Bomber and Tanya sat in a world of their own. There was much kissing and furtive wandering hands which were playfully slapped away. A lava lamp stood on a small table next to the couple, slowly recycling blobs of purple wax.