by Deon Meyer
Two difficult alternatives.
I chose to go over.
It sapped my strength. What if I left the stones in the rucksack here, and picked them up again on the way back? No. What if someone was waiting in Luckhoff to see if I was carrying the stones?
Down the other side, I could see the town down below; my knees wanted to give way down the slope. Then my leg began to hurt, that one that had been wounded. A faint ache, a dull throb. I thought it had healed completely.
I was worried. How much more was it going to hurt? I ran more slowly. I had enough time.
I ran into town. I saw that it had taken me three hours and thirty-one minutes. I would have to run back faster. I didn’t know if I could.
Beside the stone on the corner of Fowler and Barnard Street was a military water bottle. It was full of water. I unscrewed it and drank. The water was lukewarm and tasted of copper. I lifted the stone. The message in the letter was: Shake a leg. Time’s a-wasting.
Chapter 60
The first KTM war: II
Sofia Bergman
A deserted town at dawn is a much lonelier place than a one-man farm.
I was up early, I washed and dressed and went looking for food in the Pop-In supermarket. There was nothing. Literally nothing on the shelves. The shop had been thoroughly and systematically emptied.
I walked down Market Street. A family of meerkats scampered across the street. I went into houses and guest houses, looked in kitchens and pantries. Nothing to eat, everything taken. I walked back to my hotel room.
I collected all my things and walked down to the hotel dining room. The tables were set with white tablecloths and small white salt and pepper pots, cutlery that didn’t shine any more. Everything under a layer of Karoo dust. Animals and insects had nibbled on the tablecloths and place mats.
I ate my biltong and drank my water and imagined it was a banquet in a castle. I checked my supplies. I had rations for another two days. I couldn’t remember how far Bloemfontein was from Hanover. Three hours by car? Four hours? Let me be conservative and say it was four hundred kilometres. That wasn’t so far. And there were towns along the way. Colesberg was a bigger town, there might be someone there, or something to eat, and it might be two days’ walk away. Three, if I had to hunt food as well. I could hunt, I could survive.
I stood up, determined to face the challenge that lay ahead.
I heard the sound of engines in the distance. A whole lot of engines.
I ran towards the N1.
I didn’t make it. Not even close. I ran the sixty kilometres that were more like seventy in just under eight hours.
‘Ran’ is not the truth. The last fifteen kilometres I jogged and stumbled and staggered and walked and fell.
It was the boots and the rucksack and my leg that sank me. The boots chafed more and more, until the pain in both my heels became unbearable. After nearly fifty kilometres I stopped and pulled off the boots. The blisters on my heels burst, bits of skin stuck to the socks, they bled, burned like fire. I put the socks and boots back on. I should never have stopped, they hurt more than ever. The rucksack jolted and chafed and the weight felt like lead. And my leg throbbed, excruciating, as I stumbled on.
When my watch told me seven hours had passed, the pain of humiliation burned through me as well. I had told my pa I didn’t want to be like him and now I was. All my heroic deeds would be forgotten now. I would just be the little brat who thought because he was the chairman’s son, and sat near Domingo at night, he could just become a Spotter, like that.
And the pain of betrayal. Domingo had betrayed me.
It was to preserve the last shred of honour that I kept on. At least I could show that bunch of troops who had looked down on me this morning that I could finish the sixty, even though it was twice as much as they had had to do. But I would never speak to Domingo again, he was dead to me, he had stabbed me in the back in every possible way.
The hardest was the last two kilometres, through the gap of the one-lane bridge, across the Havenga Bridge, and up the hill to the SpOT headquarters. Exhaustion was greater than the pain.
I hobbled the last two hundred metres, there was nothing else I could do.
I saw them waiting for me. Two teams, in line, standing at attention. Domingo in front of them, stopwatch in hand. I walked up to him. He pressed the stopwatch.
He shouted so that everyone could hear: ‘Seven hours, fifty-seven minutes.’
I stood, my head bowed.
They began to clap. First slowly, and, I thought, sarcastically. But then louder and faster. I looked up at Domingo. He face gave nothing away behind the dark glasses.
The applause subsided. Domingo said, ‘It’s the sixth fastest time.’
I didn’t understand.
Domingo looked at the two teams. ‘Was it good enough?’
‘Yes, Captain,’ they shouted back.
Domingo nodded and thrust out his hand to me. ‘Welcome to the Spotters.’
On 23 August I moved to the barracks of the Special Ops Team. I was assigned to Team Bravo. My life changed irrevocably. SpOT was my new home. My room in the Orphanage was given to a child who had grown too big for the children’s communal dormitory.
The Spotters were my new kin. Team Bravo was my new family. Some weekends when we were off I would go and visit Pa and Okkie, but it wasn’t the same any more, even though Okkie was over the moon when he saw me, even though I tried to spend as much time as possible on Saturdays and Sundays with him. Because the bond between Pa and Okkie had strengthened. As though Okkie were taking my place with Pa. And Pa with Okkie. Pa seemed to have made peace with the fact that he had lost me. He was courteous to me, warm even, but not in the old way.
I was still only sixteen, but I was old and intelligent enough to know it was Pa’s way of handling and processing the pain that I had caused. It made me feel guilty, but I didn’t dwell on it, I rationalised it and worked it away. And boy, did Domingo make us work. Long, intense days, and often nights too. The longer our training continued, the more I was certain he had a military background. Not just what he taught us – the drills, the discipline, tactics, weapons and hand-to-hand combat, map reading, veld survival, action and reaction – but also the way he taught us, the methods, the jargon, his skill and the quiet self-confidence, everything together said he knew exactly what he was doing.
On 24 March in the Year of the Dog I shot two men in Boom Street, Vanderkloof. I was thirteen years old. That was the first day of the end of my childhood.
And 22 August in the Year of the Jackal was the last day of my childhood. From the next day on I was a soldier. We were in a war and many battles lay ahead. And it was good and right, because in my heart I was a predator, a warrior, and I would remain that for the rest of my life.
19 November
I was the youngest member of SpOT Team Bravo. We rode in the trailer of the Volvo truck – the same horse that Pa and I came to Vanderkloof in that first time. But with a different trailer. Shorter. Modified. There were hidden peepholes and camouflaged firing holes. There were steel plates welded over to protect us. There were racks for guns and ammunition, and air vents so we wouldn’t suffocate or get too hot. There were bins for food and water and personal possessions, as we might have to spend hours or days in there, who knew. There was an electric hot plate and a kettle and a small fridge.
The lorry was a copy of Thabo and Magriet’s, it was the bait; down the side were the words: Peace to you. We Trade Food.
Up front in the cab were our two oldest Bravo members, Cele and Brits. Cele drove. They had let their hair and beards grow, they looked like gypsies, like pedlars.
Team Bravo.
Domingo broke down my impetuousness, my pride and my individuality. He reduced me, like all his troops, to just a member of the team. That was all that existed for us, all that was important to us. The team. It was our world. Cele and Brits. Jele, Taljaard, Esau, Ximba, Aram, Masinga, Jakes, Wessels and me. I was now only known
as Storm, as Spotters had no Christian names.
We hunted the KTM on the N1. We knew they were there. We knew they had lookout posts and radios. We knew their strategy was first to observe. Two or three motorcycles: Domingo called them the Scouts. So we all called them that. When the KTM Scouts were satisfied that their prey could be caught, they let the others know by radio. Then they sent the Shepherds – six motorcycles that followed a vehicle and drove them on, like a shepherd, into the ambush.
We knew, because that was what they did with our expeditions. Those who survived told us.
Today we are taking the war to the KTM, today was our first revenge attack.
Sofia Bergman
I reached the N1 just in time to see them arrive.
If you stand in the middle of the road and look to the south-west, the road makes a turn to the left. So you can hear them coming, but you can’t see anything until they are relatively close.
I stood there out of breath from running, the noise of the engines growing, closer and closer, and my heart sang; there were other people, there was life on the N1, everything was going to be okay. I had my rifle over my shoulder and my crossbow on my rucksack, in the middle of the N1. I smelled the tarmac heating in the early summer morning sun, and the unique Karoo dust smell of roads, and then I saw the first one come around the bend and I jumped out of the way. It was a motorcycle, the rider lying low as he took the bend, approaching at high speed, then another and one more and another. I stood on the edge of the road beside the N1 and waved as they shot past – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve; the wind from each one moved my hair so that I had to brush it back. I stood and waved my hand like a child at a parade, and I thought, if they don’t stop, that meant there were lots of people in this new world, it was nothing strange to see a girl standing beside the N1 here near the deserted town that once was Hanover.
Then they turned around.
Team Bravo had eleven members. Plus Domingo.
We should have been twelve, but not enough people could complete the selection trials. They tried – new arrivals, people who turned sixteen, others who had tried before and failed and wanted to try again.
We were the crème de la crème.
Two were in the cab in front. Nine at the back. Plus Domingo. Each of us had our full fighting kit on. Helmets. Earphones so we could hear each other – and the two up front.
Team Alpha were at the base in Amanzi. Domingo had flipped an old five-rand coin to decide which team would take part in the first operation. Bravo won. Now we believed we were the better team.
‘Contact,’ said Brits from the passenger seat up front. ‘From the rear.’
Our hearts all beat a little faster.
We took up our positions at our peepholes. Mine was at the port side of the trailer. Domingo taught us to talk about port and starboard when we worked with vehicles. When Pa heard me say ‘port’ he said, ‘Oh, that’s left. Do you know how I know?’
He said that to Okkie, not me.
‘No, how do you know, Pa?’ I asked.
Pa kept looking at Okkie. He said, ‘It comes from the days when ships were steered with a rudder that was fixed on the right side of the boat, so the ship tied up with the left side against the dock when it was in port. So port side is the left. Cool, hey?’
‘Cool!’ Okkie chortled.
I was no longer part of Pa’s Team Alpha.
My spyhole in the port side of our assault vehicle, our Trojan Horse, was the one that no one wanted. It was the one that you could see nothing through, except the veld beside the road. The best spyholes were those that looked to the front and the right and the rear. But I was the youngest member of the team. My teammates sometimes called me the ‘Beardless Wonder’ when I beat them on the shooting range. I got the peephole that nobody wanted.
‘Two bikes,’ said Domingo. He looked towards the rear. He could look through any spyhole, as he pleased, because he was the captain. ‘It’s the Scouts.’
The question was, would the KTM Scouts see there was something special about our lorry? Or something suspicious?
Domingo quickly moved to a peephole on the right side. ‘Here they come . . .’
And then to the one looking forward.
‘They’re studying our merchants up front,’ he said. And then to Cele and Brits in the cab. ‘Just wave at them, nice and friendly.’
I could hear two motorbike engines above the drone of our diesel. Our Volvo was running on the very first diesel that had been produced in Amanzi from sunflower oil. So far it ran as smooth as silk. I stood and listened while the seconds turned to minutes, Domingo still looking out, the KTM still beside us. Why so long? What did they suspect?
‘There they go.’
The tension ebbed in the trailer. We heard Brits let out a breath in the cab. ‘Wait and see,’ he said.
‘So far, so good,’ said Captain Domingo.
Chapter 61
The first KTM war: III
Sofia Bergman
They slowed and turned, all twelve of them, then stopped next to me, revving their bikes, making an incredible racket. I laughed, I was so happy to see them, to hear the noise, the sound of human activity. They turned their bikes off, removed their helmets. They all had black helmets. All had firearms fastened to their backs. Long hair and beards, all men.
‘Doll,’ said the one in the middle, with a touch of grey in his long hair, and what Pa used to call a whisky nose. His small brown eyes sparkled mischievously, like a naughty boy. He seemed to be the oldest, and at that moment I liked him. ‘Where the hell did you come from?’
‘From the farm,’ I said.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ said Whisky Nose. And his companions laughed, all of them having a good laugh at me.
Nine a.m. We were driving on the N1 between Three Sisters and Richmond. We ate our rations (rusks from our own bakery, biltong from the butchery) and drank tea with no sugar (but with milk from our own dairy). We waited to see if the KTM Scouts had taken the bait. The Volvo growled on at eighty kilometres per hour.
Our entire plan of attack was aimed at driving into an ambush. Over and over we had practised shooting from inside the trailer, how to jump out. How to go into nearby buildings, sweep and secure them, room by room.
We learned to cover each other in the veld while moving forward, on flat terrain, in hills, from above or below.
My rifles were beside me, an ordinary R4 and my R4 DM. I was the sharpshooter, the sniper. I was the team member who had to cover everyone. They trusted me, believed in me. We trusted each other, we were brothers and sisters. Esau and Masinga were the women in Team Bravo. Esau held the record for the most sit-ups in one minute. Sixty-one. At nineteen years old she was a machine.
We collected every single report of every expedition, vehicle and arrival that had been stopped or attacked by the KTM. And everyone who had been led into an ambush by the KTM. We knew the KTM were clever. They didn’t use the same spot each time. Sometimes the ambush was in a town like Hanover or Colesberg on the N1, or Middelburg on the N9, or Smithfield on the N6. Sometimes – especially on the district roads – the ambush was where people were forced to slow down, like a mountain pass with its sharp bends, or a place where the road surface had eroded badly. Sometimes it was just a random place.
We believed the KTM consisted of eight or ten separate cells, because they were active over such a wide area. We suspected that the main concentration was in and around Bloemfontein, but the different cells covered different routes.
We wanted to take some of them captive so we could get more information. To do that we had to drive into an ambush first.
Our battle cry for today was ‘Don’t let a single one get away.’ That was what Domingo made us shout out loud, for hours on end, on the parade ground. If a single one of them got away, he would tell the rest there was a war on the way. We wanted to maintain the element of surprise as long as we possibly could.
Just past Richmond Cele called from the cab, ‘Here they come. Up ahead.’
Everyone with a forward view went to a peephole. The rest of us heard the roar as they raced at us, then past us. ‘I count ten of them,’ said Brits.
‘So do I,’ said Domingo. I heard the satisfaction in his voice, as if he were looking forward to what lay ahead.
I couldn’t say that I looked forward to it. I was afraid, but I hid it well.
Sofia Bergman
Whisky Nose pushed his motorbike stand out with a booted foot, climbed off the bike and walked up to me. I put out my hand to greet him. ‘I’m Sofia Bergman, sir,’ I said.
The men chuckled. A few said ‘Sir!’, and then they guffawed louder. He didn’t shake my hand, just looked me up and down. He was a big man, much taller than me, his belly hanging over a thick black leather belt.
‘Sofia,’ he said, ‘you’re a pretty little doll, aren’t you?’ and he raised his hand and squeezed my breast. I was shocked, enraged. How rude. I smacked his hand away and he hit me full in the face, his fist connecting with my cheekbone. I stumbled backwards.
To be honest I still wasn’t afraid at that point. I just hadn’t expected it, because he had such mischievous eyes, and now I was furious, because he was a disgusting swine. And my cheek hurt.
More laughter from his cronies, mocking, jeering now. Whisky Nose grabbed my rifle. ‘Don’t want you to shoot me, doll,’ he said, tugging me off balance, the rifle still strapped over my shoulder.
‘I think Number One will want this one for himself,’ one of the other men said.
‘Number One isn’t here,’ said Whisky Nose, and he grabbed me by the hair and yanked me upright. It hurt like crazy. I saw red, and shot up and hit him in the face with my fist, right on his ugly nose, because he was a disgusting swine.