Teardrops of the waning moon

by Steve Reeder

  “How’re we doing, Franz?” Freeman was awake.

  “I’m doing pretty well, but you have a hole in your arm and dirty great gash in our head,” Franz told him with an encouraging grin.

  “How far do you think we are from the RV point?”

  Franz shrugged. The Rendezvous Point was the last thing on his mind at the moment. “We’ll see come daylight. The problem is that we had to come too far north.”

  While Franz was giving it some more thought Freeman drifted off again. How far north were they? Too darned far!

  The trouble had started almost as soon as they had left the escarpment above the town. Franz had taken a turn that had led into a dead-end surrounded on three sides by a steep climb with rocks that the Toyota had no chance of negotiating, and he had to turn back. At the point where he’d made the error, they had found that the Angolans had driven straight passed them. Franz decided that the best course of action was to keep going as much eastwards as he could but circling around to the north, basically ending up driving parallel to the Angolan truck’s route. And the idea had worked right up until the point where the Angolans had blundered into their path, surprising both parties. A brief firefight had ensued leaving one Angolan dead and Freeman with a hole in his arm and nasty gash above his left temple which had also knocked him unconscious and, Franz suspected, concussed. The quickly disappearing light had saved the two South Africans as they bashed their way through small bushes and twisted and turned around larger trees and rocky hills until the Angolans had finally called it a day. Now he could see them several kilometres to the south west, but had no idea how far from the RV they were, or even which direction it was. He let Freeman sleep and hoped that daylight would bring clarity and not a truck full of angry, heavily armed Angolans.

  Twenty Seven

  June. Durban.

  The loud knocking startled them both.

  “Are you expecting anyone?” he asked, his voice sounding strained.

  “No.” Tanya glanced at the clock above the stove. It read two-fifteen. Most of the people living in the block of flats would be at work. “You don’t think . . ?”

  “No,” he shook his head. “There is no reason to believe that anyone knows that I’m even back in South Africa, let alone that I’d be here.”

  Tanya hesitated a second longer. The loud rapping was repeated. “Tanya?” a shrill voice called.

  “Oh,” she said, and smiled with relief. “It’s my downstairs neighbour, Mrs Ashe. She’s been retired forever and corners me whenever she can. Talks on and on about the silliest things.”

  “Still,” he said, “maybe you should see what she wants? I’d rather not have too much attention drawn to your flat. You know, just in case.”

  Mrs Ashe called out Tanya’s name again, more loudly this time.

  “I guess you’re right, and she is likely to keep on if she thinks that I’m home.”

  Tanya wasn’t quite sure why she did it, but as she stood up from the table she leaned over and kissed him lightly on the lips. As she slipped quickly away to answer the door, he was left with a sense of warmth that wasn’t just sexual. He had been right to come and see her after all.

  He was pouring boiling water into her mother’s special tea-pot when Tanya returned. She laid the slip of paper on the kitchen table and watched him perform this simple domestic task; making tea for the two of them. He turned and caught her expression, causing them both to smile self-consciously.

  “I guessed that it was my turn to make the tea,” he said. Tanya nodded but kept quiet. “Was that it,” he asked with a nod at the slip of paper. “That is what all the shouting was for?”

  “She wasn’t shouting,” Tanya laughed, “that was just the way she speaks!”

  He carried two cups of tea from the counter and set one down in front of her. “From the post office,” he commented, picking up the slip. “Registered post.”

  “Yes.” Tanya studied his face. “But Mrs Ashe told me that is was an international letter.”

  He read the slip again, scrutinising the words more carefully. “It doesn’t say anything about where it came from, just that there is a registered letter.”

  “Well she sounded quite certain of herself.”

  He sipped the hot tea and considered for a minute. Tanya seemed to be waiting for him to make a decision.

  “What time does the post office close?” he asked finally.

  “Three o’clock, I think.” She glanced at the wall clock again. The time had moved onto twenty to three. “It’s the main post office in town, but if I take my scooter I can make it before they close?”

  He was tempted to say that it could wait until the next day – and even then it would not be likely to have anything to do with him – but the possibility of the international letter being true made him agree with her.

  Tanya made it through the doors of the post office with not a second to spare. One of the African staff members had shut the door behind her even before she had got to the counter. The clerk ignored her polite greeting and rummaged in the back without enthusiasm and returned with a thick A-4 sized envelope. She made Tanya show her ID book and sign for the letter before handing it over to the younger woman. Tanya looked at the handwriting and her eyes widened with shock. The letter was from Zambia and the handwriting was not the same as that on the parcels that her visitor had sent. What did this mean? Was one of the other boys still alive? Was her visitor telling her the whole truth? “Bomber?” she whispered, and a faint flutter of hope flickered within her.

  The nagging doubt hit her again as she opened the door to her mother’s flat. If this letter came from someone other than the man in her kitchen, then was he lying to her? Or was there one of the others still alive that he did not know about?

  “Tanya?” he called out questioningly.

  She had just about decided to open the A4 size envelope, but now she hesitated. Her fingers were shaking with anxiety and a curious fear.

  “Are you alright?” He had come through to the living room and stood looking her with a concerned expression.

  “I’m fine,” she faked a smile, “this is just something for my mom and I was wondering if I should send it down to Cape Town or keep it for her.”

  “And the decision is . . ?” he asked with a cheeky grin.

  Tanya laughed at him, all the uncertainty banished by that grin. “I’ll just put this safely in mum’s room.”

  “OK. I put the kettle on, so we may be having yet another cup of tea,” he said, laughing outright this time.

  Tanya smiled automatically at the comment and carried the letter down the passage to her mother’s bedroom. Cursing silently over her silliness – now she couldn’t very well open the envelope until she was alone – she slid it under the mattress of the bed.

  Could Bomber still be alive?

  “Franz and Freeman were late for the rendezvous,” he told her as she cleared away the cups. “Hours late and naturally we began to wonder…”

  Reece sat up at the sound distant of gunfire. Dawn was just minutes away and the Toyota had not arrived. By midnight Cole had begun to question whether they should go on without the other two.

  “Let’s just give them a few more hours,” Bomber had suggested. “I’m sure Franz would wait for us if we had been late.”

  “Yes, but the question is this,” Cole stated, “how long do we wait? There has to be a point when we say time’s up and Franz will have to look after himself . . . providing that the two of them are still alive and free.”

  “Charlie, you don’t know Franz . . .”

  “Yeah, I know, he’s your section leader and your mate.”

  “. . . as well as Sean and me. Franz is a Wiley bloke and Tommy is no mug either. They can look after themselves.”

  “So if we get separated then they make out OK?”

  “Sure, but let’s wait till first-light anyway, OK?”

  “Sean? What do you say?” Cole asked, looking inside the cab of the Ford ba
kkie where Reece was resting.

  “I’m cool with waiting. I could do with a few hours’ sleep anyway.”

  Bomber had agreed to take the last watch and called softly to the others when the rattle of automatic rifles sounded to the west. Cole was with him in seconds, followed by Reece who carried his boots with him.

  “Can you see anything?” Cole asked?

  Bomber pointed across the broken ground to the west. “Wait for a moment and you see some headlights bouncing along, perhaps two to three kilometres away. At a guess I’d say that it’s Franz and he is being chased by someone in a heavy truck.”

  “Yes, I see them now,” Cole replied. “They don’t seem to be making much progress though, do they?”

  “Its rough countryside, Charlie, but that dry pan that we passed yesterday is just over there,” he pointed again, “and they are heading straight for it.”

  “So, is there a plan?” Reece asked.

  “Sort of,” Cole told him. “Bomber and I are going to take the LMG and head for that pan. If they head straight across it . . .”

  “Ambush!” Bomber exclaimed with a grin.

  They had so nearly caught the white men! If that fool – he turned and glared at the offending soldier on the back of the truck – hadn’t dropped his rifle and the shot hadn’t fired. Now they were having to battle across the worst ground for any vehicle; stubby trees grew in between scattered rocks just big enough to break any one who tried to drive over them and the land rose and fell like waves in a choppy sea.

  Just then the truck bounced over a three foot wall of earth causing the men on the back to go air-borne before being slammed back against the floor of the truck bed. The sergeant swore and glared at the young office at the wheel.

  “Don’t worry so much, Sergeant, I know where we are, and we will be out of this very soon,” the officer said. “There is open and clear ground just ahead and we can catch them again.”

  The older NCO said nothing. He knew that the only chance they had of catching the lighter vehicle ahead was if it ran into trouble or the trooper firing sporadically from the roof of the truck managed to hit its target. Perhaps the smoother ground ahead would allow him a better shot.

  The truck emerged into the clear ground with a suddenness that was almost unsettling. Immediately the light machine gun above their head began to fire long bursts. Three hundred metres ahead of them the white Toyota was weaving back and forth in a desperate bid to escape the hail of rounds that could be seen throwing up chunks of earth around them. Then the gunner found his target and the rear window shattered and large areas of the front wind-screen became starred. The young officer cheered and thumped the NCO on the leg, but he didn’t see what the older man saw through the driver’s side window.

  Five hundred metres to the south on the edge of the pan Bomber Harris squeezed the trigger on the stolen machine gun. The second short burst found its target, ripping into the side of the truck and shredding the front tyre. The truck slewed to a stop and Bomber switched his aim to the rear wheel and fire three times before that too deflated. The Angolan troops had debussed swiftly and professionally and were spreading out in a skirmish line facing the low bank of earth that the two South Africans hid behind. Cole watched them as they rose and began trotting towards him. “Can’t fault their guts, can you?” he muttered to Bomber.

  “No. How long are going to wait here? We’ve stopped the truck.”

  “Hang on a bit. We’ll wait until they get within AK range, then we’ll see if we can reduce the odds a bit . . . give them a bit further to go to back to their truck too. You’d better save what ammo you have left for the gun.”

  “Do you think that they will have spares for both wheels?”

  “Probably. They should have, but it will take quite a bit of time to change them.”

  The troops had advanced to within three hundred metres and now began a fire-and-movement pattern, alternate troopers dashing forward in short runs and in between covering the advance of their mates. Bomber risked putting his head above the parapet and fired a burst at each end of the line and then one at the man who seemed to be commanding it. Cole nodded his satisfaction as two of them went down, and motioned Bomber to make a run for the Cortina, taking the LMG with him, while he stayed and carefully fired several more times to give bomber some time, and then he too slid backwards, staying below the line-of-sight of the soldiers and made a run for it. How long it would take the Angolans to realise that they were no longer under fire Cole did not know, but it wouldn’t be long, and by then the three of them needed to be out of range of the Angolan machine-gunner.

  Reece halted the Cortina at the side of the track. They had known that the track was there; it was marked on the map, but they were still surprised to find that they had been that close to it.

  “So where is the Toyota?” Reece asked, looking both ways and seeing nothing but a dead, half eaten antelope.

  “Good question,” Cole replied. “Any ideas?”

  “Well, they seemed to be East of us last time I saw the bakkie,” Bomber told them, “But . . .”

  “Look there,” Reece interrupted, pointing at the track in front of them. “Those are fresh tyre tracks.”

  “They could be anyone,” Cole suggested.

  Reece got out, walked into the middle of the track and squatted. The sun was fierce on his back as he studied the tyre marks. “Well,” he rose and looked about him, “these are the only new tracks on this so-called road and the others are weeks old by the look of them. So the question is, what are the chances that anyone else came along this morning, in the past hour or so, and left these tracks?”

  “Can you tell which direction the vehicle was travelling in?” Bomber asked.

  “Of course I can. It was heading east, same as us.”

  “Bullshit, Sean, how can you tell that?”

  “Look here,” he sank to his knees again and pointed at the impression that the tyres had left. “You see on the side of the track? The sand has been flung towards the west, which will happen as the tyre finds traction and pushes the vehicle to the east.”

  “He’s right,” Cole told Bomber with a grin and turned to Reece. “So, great Apache tacker, can you follow this white man’s tracks some more?”

  Reece laughed and suggested that the chances were good that the tracks were going to go pretty much along the ‘road’ from here on. “We just need to follow and we’ll find Franz and Freeman soon enough.”

  The sun was an hour past midday when they spotted the dusty white Toyota. Franz was standing facing them as they rounded a bend in the road caused by a large collection of boulders. He lowered the automatic rifle when he recognised the Cortina Bakkie.

  Bomber, who was driving the Cortina pulled up alongside the Toyota.

  “What the hell kept you lot?” Franz asked wearily.

  “Sorry,” Bomber replied. “Did you stop to wait for us, or there something wrong?”

  “Ran out of fuel and I’m hoping that you guys have some.”

  “Yeah, we have three twenty litre drums of diesel on the back,” Reece answered. “Where’s Tommy?”

  Franz looked down-cast and pointed to the passenger seat. “He’s dead. I didn’t even realise he’d been hit again. It happened when you guys ambushed the soldiers – I’m assuming that it was you?”

  Reece and Cole both nodded their affirmation.

  “But when I stopped here and asked Tommy how he was - ”

  Reece and Bomber both glanced inside the Toyota and looked grim. Three of their friends were now dead in a matter of a few days.

  It was up to Charlie Cole to ask and finally he brought up the delicate subject of what to do with Freeman’s body.

  “Are we going to try and take him with us? I mean, we don’t know how many days it is going to be before we get across the border let alone find someone in Zambia that we hand him over to.” The other stared at him silently. “Look I know he’s your mate, but even when we get to Zambia, what really c
an we do? Hand him to the police?”

  After a tense silence that stretched uncomfortably for a minute Reece said, “No, you are right, Charlie. We bury him here, beside the road, and if at some in the future we can do so, we’ll come back for him. OK?”

  The others reluctantly nodded but it was Cole who took the short-handled spade out from behind the driver’s seat and set about digging a grave.

  Dusk had come and gone and the surviving South Africans were stopped again.

  It had taken Bomber just minutes to empty the three twenty-litre drums into the Toyota and after a moment of silence and a few words from Franz they left Tommy Freeman to his eternal rest; or at least until they could come back and retrieve his body. The Cortina was abandoned with no fuel almost immediately. For the best part of two hours they had ground their way along the rough and badly maintained dirt road, often not getting out of second gear. The Zambian border, according to Reece’s map-reading, was just over fifty kilometres away, but the sounds of a heavy diesel engine had been reaching them whenever the wind blew from the west. The Angolans were back in the hunt and the border would not be reached that day.

  Finally Cole decided that rest was needed and they ploughed through the long dry grass and parked the Toyota twenty metres from the road. Reece took first watch and reported that the Angolans seemed have stopped too.