19 With a Bullet (18 page)

We watched the front troops get out and walk around, looking at the ground. They seemed to be chattering excitedly, so after a few minutes we also hopped down and walked over to see what was going on. In front of the Buffel’s front tyres was a patch of churned-up sand about a metre and a half wide and about 20 centimetres deep. I didn’t understand what it was for a while, until I saw a lone, clear, chevron-shaped boot spoor on the side of the path ... and then another ... and another. This was a huge fucking terr spoor! There must be hundreds of them!

“SWAPO!” said the black tracker, chewing a green stick to clean his teeth. “
Indji
! Many!”

Lieutenant Doep was on the radio. His voice crackled with excitement as he reported that we were on the spoor of somewhere between 100 and 150 SWAPO, walking in single file. The tracker with the stick said that it was about a day old; he indicated happily that we must start to run on it fast and leave immediately. I bent down to inspect the trail. There were so many walking in single file that they had actually ploughed a small furrow in the soft Owamboland sand. It looked like a giant snake winding through the bush. The only trouble was that it was heading north, back to Angola.

“They’ve already been in here for weeks—probably planted hundreds of mines. They regrouped and they’re high-tailing it back to Angola,” John said, looking down at the thick snake.

Everyone spoke slowly and softly as if in a dream. I ran my fingers through the sand that was riven by hundreds of SWAPO boots and felt a strange feeling run through me. For a long time SWAPO hadn’t really meant much more than situation reports in the morning and elusive ghosts in the bush, the only sign of their presence being the bent and burned-out wreckage of a vehicle that had fallen victim to a ‘double cheese’ landmine or a murdered village headman. Now we were starting to see them and no ghost left a spoor this wide!

These fuckers were heading for Angola—we would have to move fast to get them. I tried to imagine 150 SWAPO walking in single file, all wearing tiger stripes, carrying AK-47s and RPG rocket launchers. Fuck! We wouldn’t be able to handle them!

I felt a twinge of panic but quickly relaxed when I realized that we would surely get some aerial support on such a clear spoor. I looked around. The one black tracker was stealing the show, so happy to find the spoor that he was smiling and lying on the spoor, making as if he was fucking it. Our troops laughed. He was beside himself and got up and danced a jig on the spoor. We would joke about this display of glee for a long time to come.

Then, without warning, as if the bush gods were looking down on the hundreds of SWAPO fleeing back to safety across the border, the grey clouds that had been building for a week finally opened up, first a drizzle patting down on the leaves and then a soft, steady rain that came falling through the trees. It was the first fall of the rainy season and SWAPO’s most active time of the year.

“We’re on our own ... let’s chase it.” Lieutenant Doep came from the radio. He had a deep frown on his brow and seemed pissed off.

He chose the front Buffel to run dog, with two men on the ground. One man to run looking down and staying next to the spoor; the second running behind him looking ahead into the bush, with the support Buffel keeping up behind. Many times the vehicles would get hung up in bush and the guys running dog would find themselves far ahead of the support vehicles. The running dogs always ran the risk of an ambush, or a POMZ antipersonnel mine laid on or next to the spoor, or an anti-tank ‘cheese’ mine laid on a likely vehicle route next to the spoor ... or all three at the same time. All of us being around 20 and gung-ho, these seemed like minor details. We whooped like hunting dogs as our Buffels turned onto the spoor and crashed through the undergrowth, following the thick snake that wound silently through the bush, heading steadily north. We were in the rear Buffel, so for the time being did not have to run. We just sat strapped in, bouncing in our seats, trying to keep dry by covering ourselves with our plastic liners. Every time we bumped or clipped a tree, water would come pouring down on us from the wet foliage.

There were only a couple of hours of daylight left. I sat, quite content, under my plastic liner and opened a can of corned beef that I ate cold and then mixed up one of my powdered milkshakes with water and condensed milk. This was it. What more did I need? I was driving in a vehicle, not walking, dry, I had food and a milkshake and cigarettes and was driving on the biggest terr spoor in fucking history. My needs had become very simple in the last couple of months. Shit, you don’t need all that bullshit back in Civvy Street. The army takes good care of you; you don’t even need to think.

My brief spell of contentment was broken by a flutter of panic. Lieutenant Doep had said that we were on our own. Did that mean no support? We were not much more than a platoon; the enemy had more than a company, maybe two. It didn’t make sense.

“Hey ... you think we’ll catch them before they go over?”

John Delaney, who had become the Buffel’s new bush expert, paused and looked around thoughtfully before answering. “Ja, I dunno. They don’t seem to be headed directly north. Maybe they want to hook up with another group before they cross back into Angola.”

We had about an hour left until sundown, made premature by the low ominous clouds that had enveloped the world. Just before the light faded, Lieutenant Doep called a halt to the chase and we built lean-tos around the Buffels with our plastic liners and settled down. It was a long, cold, miserable wet night. Then, to top it all, early in the morning the heavens opened with a bombardment of thunder, sheet lightning and an hour of driving rain that rendered our lean-tos useless, sending us scurrying under the Buffels, wrapped in our plastic liners, shivering and waiting for daylight.

First light revealed a miserable grey, overcast dawn. We packed up and a scowling Lieutenant Doep put our Buffel second in the chase. We set off on the spoor in the dawn light, our teeth chattering from the cold and wet. The night’s rain had destroyed much of the spoor but the deep furrow remained—smudged but clear—winding like a snake in and out of thickets, through
muhangu
fields and straight across long open
chanas
. These terrs weren’t worrying about trying to hide. They were pushing hard and probably felt they were home and dry, almost back in Angola. We found dozens of large blue and white cans of sardines and a sort of corned beef discarded next to the spoor with ‘Product of Denmark’ on the labels. We also found a number of broken glass vials scattered around the spoor.

“Hey, look at this! They’re shooting it up. That’s why they’re moving so fast!” I picked up one of the smoky brown vials, sniffed at it and looked to see if there was a lable on it. There wasn’t.

We had been told that SWAPO would sometimes inject themselves with adrenaline when on long speed-marches or hot pursuits and were capable of covering incredible distances. I had thought that half the things we had heard were bullshit but here was the proof right before my eyes. These guys were probably as high as kites and moving at twice the speed of normal marching men. By mid-morning the sun had broken through the clouds and we ran shirtless, drenched in sweat. By noon they had started to bombshell.

Here and there a group of ten or 15 would break off on their own, disappear into thick bush, then break off again in ones or twos. Somehow they either knew we were on them, or it was just a standard precautionary tactic. This was a proven last-line defence tactic that had saved many a guerrilla’s life in South West Africa, the former Portuguese territories and Rhodesia. After splitting up into ones or twos each man would fend for himself, making his own way, then regroup when they reached their prearranged rendezvous point.

The only way to combat this would be to leapfrog ahead onto the main spoor with helicopters to stop them before they all disappeared into the bush but—for some reason I could never find out—we could not get choppers to come to our assistance. The main spoor was a lot thinner now but also a lot fresher. We had been chasing it hard since first light and even I didn’t need a tracker to tell me that these terrs were not far ahead.

Our Buffel was now in front. John Delaney was running on the spoor and I was behind him, scanning the bush for any sign. I had taped two 35-round magazines together for a quick change and stuffed a white phosphorus grenade in my pocket for easy access. I never did like the clip-type chest pouches that we had in our Fireforce vests. They were tricky to clip open quickly with one hand; you had to hold down the vest with one hand and tug on the clip pouch with the other. Sometimes it would get caught on the water bottles at your side.

We had found some huge terr shit next to the spoor that was very fresh. I was nervous. I did not like the idea of running straight into a 50-man ambush.

“Where the fuck are the gunships?”

Doep told us that H Company was on Fireforce standby to come to our aid if we needed it, when we made contact. What would that help us if we ran into an ambush and they took 15 minutes to get here? I was starting to see the great foresight and logic of the men who ran our little war. They did not seem detail-orientated and clearly favoured a brand of impenetrably hidden logic that we were yet to figure out. I had always heard that you wanted to attack your enemy at three-to-one odds but I was quickly learning that this was not how the SADF was run. They seemed to believe in one-to-three, with us being the one!

The still-thick spoor led into a low thicket of thorn bush that grew up a small incline. It was a perfect place for an ambush. John and the tracker in front waved their hands and stopped running; we followed suit and went down onto one knee. The Buffels came to a stop 20 metres behind us. Lieutenant Doep motioned for us to advance into the thicket, then waved us on, annoyed when we hesitated for a minute and none of us moved. No one wanted to be the first to enter the eerie thicket of bush that reeked of ambush. The five of us who were running dog and the two trackers looked at each other as we steeled ourselves to go in.

We slowly stalked into the bush and disappeared in the shadows of the overhead canopy of leaves. I had my R4 rifle on full automatic and held it up high in an odd way, with the handgrip almost next to my temple and with my head pulled into my shoulders, trying to protect my face behind the metal part of my rifle. I was walking in a curious crouch, almost like a duckwalk, in an effort to make myself a smaller target. In this peculiar manner, I scanned the bush with hard eyes.

My stomach had been up in my throat with fear, but now it disappeared and that strange, dead-calm feeling took over over once again. I felt a cold and reckless resignation to get it over with, whichever way it went. I tightened my torso muscles as tight as I could in an involuntary effort to deflect the hail of AK-47 bullets that I expected to come at any second. I was just behind John Delaney, the platoon ‘veteran’ who, along with Lieutenant Doep, had already walked into an ambush like this while running dog and had survived to tell the tale. John, too, was walking in the same strange duckwalk that seemed to be a natural instinct. We had pulled ahead of the others who seemed to be shuffling on the spot and not keeping up.

The tracker was at my side; his eyes were huge and white against his tar-black face. He was in a crouch and stopped in mid-stride with his mouth hanging open as if tasting the air, like a snake, or perhaps just plain scared shitless. We stopped soundlessly in our tracks. He crouched in this position for a second or two and then motioned to us with his wide eyes and pointed with his chin that he thought something was in front of us. I saw then that he was in complete control of himself, but the other tracker—a skinny troop with an oversized uniform—had dropped ten yards behind us.

Bam!

A staccato rifle shot close by shattered the tense stillness like a small bomb. Instantly I dropped like a dead man and rolled into some foliage next to the natural path that led into the thicket. I held my rifle tight into my shoulder and glared with both eyes down the barrel, waiting to see any movement in front of us, my finger tight on the trigger. There were no more shots and, after long seconds, I looked around and saw that all five of us were in the same position, except that one tracker had his rifle pointing forward and his eyes tightly closed.

“They’re behind us,” I hissed to myself. It had sounded as though the shot had come from somewhere behind.

I quickly scanned the bush to the side and saw nothing—no gun smoke or movement. I signalled to John who was staring stone-faced into the bush. I was puzzled, because it now dawned on me that it had sounded more like an R4 than an AK-47. We lay still for a few minutes and then we heard relaxed voices coming from the Buffels some 30 metres back.

“What the fuck?”

I was still intently scanning the bush in front of me, not convinced that it was all clear. So was the black tracker who had not lost his concentration. We both lay flat with our rifles pointing straight ahead into the dark thicket. John was looking back, as he was in a position to see what was happening by the Buffels. After a minute he motioned for us to move back. We slowly backed up out of the thicket. Had there been an ambush waiting for us in that thicket, where the 50-man SWAPO spoor led? We would never know. Maybe now the bush gods were looking with favour on us as they had done on SWAPO when they brought the season’s first rain to wash out their spoor as we had come upon it. Maybe we too had now been saved from walking into an ambush by something that had happened behind us. We slowly backed away from the thicket, back to the vehicles.

When we got to the parked Buffels we found that Kurt Barnes, who had had his R4 on ‘fire’, had accidentally let off a round that had ricocheted into Kevin Green sitting next to him. I never did find out what really went down. As far as I could gather, everyone in the Buffel was ready to open fire into the thicket when Kurt had let a round off that ricocheted off the inside of the Buffel, narrowly missing Greef’s head and ploughing through Kevin Green’s hand.