Hyena Dawn (11 page)

Soon it was clear to them that the farmer had lived alone. But there was another car parked behind the farmhouse as well as the farmer’s Land Rover. The farmer must have had a visitor. The question was, where was he?

Comrade Mnangagwa looked across the green valley, down to where the river glistened in the last sunlight of the day. How many more would it take? How many of these white settlers would have to die before they accepted what was inevitable? Enough of this stupid election and these interfering British politicians! He was sick of their sanctimonious attitude. This country was named after one of their kind, as were most of the cities and towns. The logic of Western politics evaded Comrade Mnangagwa. They were all so sorry now, these white men from their strange, cold land over the seas.

And these Rhodesians who called him a terrorist. What would killing a few white farmers do to make up for all that he and his people had suffered at their hands? He thought of his own son, buried in an unmarked grave after dying in detention. Yes, he, Mnangagwa, would have liked to own a farm like this; but under white rule it could only ever be a dream. When ZANLA had control, he would become what he had always wanted to be, a city man. A lawyer. He had been lucky enough to get an education before he joined the cause.

He pulled the leaflet out of his pocket, studied the crude drawing and laughed aloud. His fellow comrades also laughed because they feared him, this educated man whose discipline was a legend amongst them. They thought he laughed at the death of the farmer.

The headline on the leaflet Mnangagwa was holding read ‘Terror and death is the way of the communist camp instructors in Mozambique.’ The picture showed a man beating a new recruit and the story told how all the men in the Mozambique communist training camps lived in fear, expecting torture or death any minute. He knew that only the most illiterate tribesman would believe this story - but such a man would not be able to read it anyway. Mnangagwa wondered how the men in Salisbury who were so good at waging war could be so naive when it came to propaganda. But then the white men were stupid enough to believe that the people would accept the puppet president Gumede and the sell-out Bishop Abel Muzorewa. He knew that those who had fought for so long would never accept such a ridiculous situation.

For Mnangagwa the only acceptable answer would come when the supreme commander of ZANLA, Robert Mugabe, ruled the country. Mugabe was a Mashona like himself, and the Shona peoples were in the majority. Their sworn tribal enemies were the Matabele, and these people made up the ZIPRA forces to the west of Rhodesia under the command of Joshua Nkomo. As far as Mnangagwa was concerned, Joshua Nkomo would always be an also-ran, he could never be president and rule over the Shona peoples. Mugabe was the only choice. After all, he had the support of President Samora Machel of Mozambique, and only Machel could guarantee that the new state would have a route to the sea. That was essential, for it would only be a matter of time before relations between the new state and South Africa soured. After Rhodesia, South Africa was the next goal. But that would be another war, one not even worth contemplating till this one was well finished.

A man was running towards him at great speed. As the man got closer, Mnangagwa saw that it was one of his privates, Comrade Dagger, a quiet and efficient fighter. His skill with the hunting knife he always carried had earned him his name. The man stopped within a metre of him and stood loosely to attention.

‘
Comrade Commander.’

‘
I hear you, Comrade Dagger. Speak.’

‘
Comrade Commander. There is a white woman on this land. She has a camera.’

The man addressed him simply as ‘Commander’. Names of commanding officers were rarely used because of the danger of their being found out by the hated Selous Scouts. Comrade Dagger wore the safety-pin identity tag they had all adopted for that week. Only trusted men in the units would be aware of the importance of the little safety-pin; the absence of it would result in questioning, and death if the right answers were not forthcoming.

Mnangagwa listened to the words of Comrade Dagger and felt a tenseness creeping over his body. Perhaps they had been incorrectly informed. Perhaps the farmer did have a wife. But then he had seen no women’s clothes in the house. And a farmer’s wife would never be stupid enough to walk unarmed, alone, with only a camera, in this area. No, it must be someone else. A friend? A visitor?

‘
Where is this white woman, Comrade Dagger? Why did you not kill her?’ The edge must always be there, he could never allow a moment’s weakness. Their role was to terrorise the population, softness got them nowhere.

‘
She was not armed. She does not know that I saw her.’

‘
Is the coward’s blood of the Matabele dog in your veins?’

‘
She ran up the ridge. She will not get far. We will capture her and make her sing. It will be dark soon.’

He knew that Comrade Dagger did not want to march through the night, but they must find this woman quickly and silence her. She had seen them and that was bad. Perhaps she had taken pictures. He knew that she would make for the main road between Umtali and Watsomba, then she would wait for one of the patrols.

It would not be difficult to catch her. His men would have to leave all the things they had taken from the farm because the weight would slow them down. He himself never soiled his hands with the white man’s things, but his troops would not like leaving what they had taken. That was good. It would teach them a lesson. Especially as they would not be able to return to collect them, because later there would undoubtedly be security forces in the area, checking out the farmer’s death.

He yelled at them to regroup. They stood in front of him, laden with booty from the farmhouse. On his command they dropped it to the ground. He could see the veiled anger in their eyes - fifteen of them including himself.

‘
The white woman. She must be caught. I want her camera, and I want her alive - only kill her if you have to. We will split into three groups of five. I will command one; Dagger, you the other, and Sithole the rest. We will start off now over the north ridge. We will skirt along the edge till we come to the main road, then we will separate and head back. We will find her as she makes for the road. We will meet tomorrow night at the place of the hyena.’

Mnangagwa watched the other two groups disappear quickly into the bush, then he went back to the car behind the farmhouse. He searched through it and in the cubby-hole found a notebook, some pictures and a passport. An American passport.

He opened it and stared at the picture. An attractive white woman. The document was a mass of stamps and he noted that she was a journalist. A rare catch if they got her. He stuffed the papers into the breast-pocket of his shirt.

They left the grounds surrounding the farm house and disappeared into the bush, heading for the ridge, moving fast. In an evening they could cover forty kilometres if the terrain was not too bad. This was their life, moving from place to place, never forming a permanent camp unless they were well inside the Mozambique border. They always obtained food and shelter, whenever they needed it, from the people who worked on the farms. Now in the darkness they moved with practised ease, rarely bumping into a tree or rock and never making any noise. They had set up so many ambushes themselves that they were careful to avoid those set by the enemy.

Comrade Sithole was bitter. He had taken an excellent transistor radio from the farm, a powerful unit with four shortwave bands. It was something he had always wanted, and now, because of the white woman, he’d had to leave it behind. That was the way it was with the white people. No good ever came from his dealings with them.

Sithole was a tall, thin man with a stoop; he had an ugly face with bulging eyes and a straggly beard. He loped rather than walked, and had the habit of standing a little too close to people when he talked.

As he covered the ground Sithole thought back to the jobs he had held in Salisbury, especially the one where he hadn’t been paid after three months. That had been when he was a waiter. At first he had shouted at the white woman who ran the restaurant, but she had laughed at him, her thin lips drawn back in mirth. Then he had threatened her. The police had come the next day. They had taken him to a cell where they beat him. It was after that he had decided he must overthrow the government. But first he had got his revenge. He had grabbed the white woman as she walked to her car behind the restaurant, pulled off her panties and stuffed them in her mouth. Then he had raped her.

That had been two years ago now. And he had nothing to show for his fighting except more bitterness. When it was over, he promised himself that he would have a farm of his own, a pretty wife and big strong sons. Then it would have been worth it. He wasn’t interested in politics, but if the Russians gave him a gun then he would listen to their Marxism, whatever it meant. Soon he would be able to walk down the streets of Salisbury again, but this time as a citizen who would be paid for the work he did, someone whom the police would treat with respect.

Before long it would be dawn. Sithole looked proudly down at the watch he had taken from the dead farmer’s hand for confirmation. They couldn’t be far from the main road now, soon they would break into separate groups. He had been nominated to go furthest north and he knew why. He was a natural tracker, his sight was exceptional, like his other senses. He would always see signs that the other men missed; several times on this mission he had saved them from walking into enemy patrols and landmines. Soon he would be commanding his own unit, just like Comrade Mnangagwa.

A loud whistle from far in the distance indicated that they were close to the road and should head off north. The order was to be his group, then Dagger’s and then Mnangagwa’s. They all knew that the woman could never have moved as quickly as they had through the darkness. The only danger to them now were the passing patrols that came along the main road early in the morning - but these patrols would only be concerned with getting to the farm they had just raided as quickly as possible.

The sun rose just after five and Comrade Sithole still had another three kilometres to cover with his men before they turned back east and began to comb the countryside. Their eyes constantly watched the road in the distance.

The noise of an approaching vehicle caused them to dive for cover and lie flat in the bush, each man with his finger curled around the trigger of his AK-47, hoping that he wouldn’t be spotted. The sound got progressively louder until the first vehicle came past them, a Land Rover with two armed police reservists. This was followed by a light truck, also with two armed policemen in the cab, and after that came a stream of ordinary vehicles driven by farmers and their wives, all heavily armed.

They could have tried to ambush the convoy but it would have been very dangerous. The Land Rover might radio for help and the next moment the area would be crawling with members of the Rhodesian Light Infantry. So they let the convoy pass by, none the wiser. They got up moments later and moved onto the road - for it was unlikely that a second convoy would come by for some time. Less than an hour later they turned off the road and began to head east towards Mozambique.

Keeping a distance of approximately one hundred metres apart, they were covering an area of around six hundred metres as they walked forwards. They were the last group to start off. The plan was a good one, for if the woman saw the first group and she headed north, sooner or later she would run into a second group. They moved very slowly now, listening for any suspicious noise, knowing it might take them more than a day to find her.

Sam felt better as the first rays of sunlight appeared over the horizon, and she began to warm up after the cold night she had spent under a rock overhang. The area on the other side of the ridge had been much flatter than she had expected, though she still found it impossible to keep moving in the darkness.

There were no noises behind her and she suspected that the terrorists had given up the chase. She avoided open patches of ground and kept to where the vegetation was most bushy. Her mouth was dry and she needed a drink of water badly. If she could just make it back to the main road she would be all right.

The bush was getting thicker now and she felt a little more secure. Maybe the army was searching for her. If the farmer had sounded the Agric-Alert she was sure they would be. And if the security forces were active in the area she would have nothing to worry about at all.

For a while she headed north, hoping to catch a dirt track coming from one of the outlying farms that had now been deserted. Eventually she found a track leading off to the west, and followed it in the hope that it would take her back to the main road. Unfortunately it turned out to be a meandering path that only linked the many unpopulated farms. By the middle of the day the sweat was pouring off her and she was feeling giddy.

She decided to rest under a tree for a time until the heat of the day had passed. In the cool of the shade she stretched out and, utterly exhausted, dropped off to sleep. In her dreams she imagined Rayne coming down the track, seeing her, running towards her with a smile on his face. Then bullets started to fly and red marks appeared across the front of his uniform. Now he was crawling towards her, but as much as she tried she could not move towards him. He was dying and she wanted to try and help him . . .