The Delta (59 page)

The men around him were all cheering and yelling now and the firing had stopped from the NDF soldiers on the hill. The range was perhaps too far for them, but not so the gunner behind the heavy machine-gun on the armoured car.

Pah-chunk, pah-chunk, pah-chunk
.

The explosions of dirt followed Gideon and were close enough to spatter against the man bleeding to death on his back. Kurtz allowed himself to hope. ‘Throw another smoke grenade!'

Kurtz signalled to a medic. ‘Get ready to treat that man as soon as he's safe. Remember to put on two sets of rubber gloves, hey.' The soldier nodded. Even in the heat of battle Kurtz had to remind his men to guard against the ever-present spectre of HIV-AIDS. There was no doubt that a significant proportion of the fighters, perhaps even the medic, were carrying the disease.

The smoke canister was thrown and it popped and sputtered into colourful life. Gideon was no more than a hundred metres from them now. The sergeant major dropped his rifle and he readjusted his grip on the wounded soldier and seemed to prepare himself for a final sprint. He lifted his muscled legs and the fall of his boots sounded like clapping as he found a surer footing on the tarmac highway. The men in the rebel camp were silent now. The fresh plume of orange smoke started to take form and rise around Gideon's knees.

Edison put down his weapon and vaulted over the barricade of sandbags. He started running towards Gideon. Hans tried to protest, but the words were killed by the pain in his side.

Pah-chunk, pah-chunk, pah-chunk
.

The grenade had done its job and Gideon and the man on his back were obscured. Edison disappeared into the billowing orange curtain. Not a man dared breathe, until the light breeze carried the smoke north towards Angola.

Edison reappeared first. He stood, oblivious to the bullets that continued to fall around him, and raised two clenched fists to the sky. He threw back his head and bellowed with the mix of rage, remorse and fear as the smoke cleared, revealing Gideon, and the man he carried, lying dead on the road.

A Caprivian agent living in Divundu, whose job was to deliver frozen meat and vegetables to the construction camp and garrison at the Okavango Dam, called Hans on his satellite phone to tell him the wall had been destroyed and the lands downriver were in flood. When the helicopter hadn't returned to Kongola with his daughter and the American on board, Hans had feared the operation had failed and they were both dead.

The news raised a half-hearted cheer from the garrison, but the death of Gideon and the others, and the realisation that so much of their ammunition was dud, had sapped their morale. What little appetite the men had for fighting was further dulled by the rest of the news from Divundu – the army garrison there was on its way to Kongola to seek revenge for the breaching of the dam. When the observation post along the road radioed to confirm that a convoy of army trucks was approaching, Kurtz ordered his sentries to pack up and return to the bridge as quickly and quietly as they could, before they were ringed by NDF forces.

Edison had contained his grief and was moving up and down the line again, trying to reinvigorate the demoralised rebel soldiers.

Kurtz's phone rang again. ‘
Ja
,' he said, unable to hide the tiredness and pain.

‘It is Webster, Major, in Katima Mulilo.'

‘What news?' Kurtz asked his agent in the provincial capital.

‘The people, Major. They are on the streets.'

Webster, unaffected by the deaths at Kongola, was ebullient in his description of people thronging the streets outside the government offices, and of convoys of cars blocking the B8, honking their horns in protest against the government and in celebration of the news about the dam. According to Webster the unofficial flag of Caprivi-Itenge – two black elephants with their trunks entwined, on a background of horizontal bands of black, white, green and blue – was flying in the streets and being waved from car windows. The police were in the streets, but so far neither side had resorted to violence.

As soon as he finished the phone call his signaller passed him the radio headphones and handset again. The OP was making a final report, as it withdrew, that the BTR 60 armoured car, which had disappeared from sight at the top of the hill after Gideon's death, was being refuelled and rearmed, and that close on a hundred troops were debussing from the army trucks which had stopped on the far side of the hill.

The sun was high overhead and Hans Kurtz took a moment to sit in the shade of a water tower beside the customs post. His signaller had vanished, but returned a few minutes later with a lukewarm mug of coffee. ‘
Dankie
,' Kurtz said. He took a sip, then, suddenly weary, rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his palms.

‘Daddy!'

He looked up. It was his son, running towards him, followed by Miriam, dressed in jeans and a green bush shirt. The boy threw himself into his arms, but Kurtz was able to mask the pain and smile for him. ‘What are you doing here?' he asked his wife.

‘We came with the other women and children, in the boats and the
mekoro
s.'

‘You were told to stay on the other side of the border and be ready to help with evacuation of the wounded.'

‘You look pale, are you hurt, Hans? Move, baby, let Mommy take a look at Daddy.'

Kurtz shook his head and held the boy closer. ‘No. You shouldn't have come, Miriam. It's not safe to bring the boy here.'

‘The
boy
will be a man one day and he deserves to be with his father in his own land, not across the border in a foreign country. Besides, haven't you heard, Hans? It's happening. It's really happening – it was on the BBC this morning. People are rising up all along the Caprivi Strip. They're coming out of their homes in Katima and Divundu, onto the streets and waving our flag. People have had enough.'

Hans looked up at the hill and at the stain on the road where Gideon and his comrade had fallen. ‘The NDF hasn't had enough yet, Miriam. They'll be coming for us soon. You shouldn't have put our son at risk.'

She stared at him. ‘What do you want me to do?'

‘Go back to the river. Wait downstream. I will come if it gets too serious.'

She gave a snort. ‘You'll never leave. I know you. But I will take our son into the bush for a little while longer. Come to me, my boy.'

His son looked up into his eyes and Hans ruffled his hair. ‘Go with your mom. I'll be with you soon.'

The boy turned and slowly walked back to Miriam. What she saw made her raise her hand to her mouth, but it took little Frederick a couple of seconds before he noticed the stain and the wetness on his white T-shirt. ‘What is it?' he wailed, patting his father's blood with his fingers.

‘Come to me, now, my boy,' Miriam said. ‘Hans … I'll get help.'

‘The medics are busy with others. I'll wait my turn, and …' He raised a hand to stop his own words and hers. ‘Listen.' They both heard the
crump, crump, crump
. ‘Mortars! Take cover! Run, Miriam, into the bush. Hurry!'

The barrage was almost dead on target. The first two bombs fell just outside the perimeter, and the third landed right in the midst of the rebel stronghold. A man screamed and smoke and falling dirt were swept through the rebel camp on a hot wind. Miriam was crouched in the lee of the customs shack, but Hans took her by the hand and forced her to start running. ‘Downriver, as fast as you can. Go!'

‘Sir!' a soldier called. ‘Look! Infantry on the move, and that armoured car is back.'

Hans could see the men swarming over the crest of the hill, the squat angular bulk of the BTR 60 cruising slowly along behind them. The armoured vehicle had a row of smoke launchers fitted to it and these fired, sending out canisters ahead of it, which provided an instant smokescreen to cover the advance. The 14.5-millimetre gun started firing.

‘Infantry in the open … eight hundred metres … Machine-guns, fire!' Hans called. Their own limited arsenal of automatic weapons opened fire, at long range.

Explosions were going off around him now as the mortars found their mark, landing on either side of the Kongola Bridge. Hans called another squad of men from the east bank to reinforce the west, where the attack would hit. He had to trust his man in Katima that there had been no reports of a military force leaving the capital or M'pacha – yet. He imagined the Namibian government would keep a strong presence around the largest town in the Caprivi Strip for the time being.

The BTR 60 emerged from its smoke barrage and started firing at the rebel positions on the western side of the bridge. Men screamed and fell as the virtually unstoppable slugs tore through sandbags and flesh with impunity. The armoured car climbed out of the grass and onto the main road, where it settled into a sedately menacing pace, firing in long bursts as it advanced, but
never getting too far ahead of its screen of infantry, who trotted along on either side of it, gaining courage and confidence from the vehicle's presence.

An RPD machine-gun fired furiously at the BTR 60, but the 7.62-millimetre bullets bounced harmlessly off the vehicle's sloping armoured front and sides.

Kurtz cursed himself for not testing some of the RPG rounds before leaving Botswana, but knew he could not have risked firing the mortars around their hideaway. The dud ammunition had forced them to improvise. ‘Molotovs!' he yelled.

Two men rose from the grass on the downriver side of the road and touched cigarette lighters to petrol-soaked rags stuffed in glass vodka and gin bottles filled with petrol. One of them was shot immediately by a Namibian infantryman and when the rebel staggered his Molotov cocktail slipped and broke at his feet. He was engulfed in flames and lurched around in circles, setting fire to the grass around him as he died an agonising, screaming death. The other man raced towards the BTR 60, evading the bullets that kicked up the dirt and whizzed around him. He tossed his flaming bottle at the armoured car, but missed any hatches or openings. His improvised bomb smashed on the steel side of the vehicle, but the fire didn't catch. The man was gunned down as he tried to run back to cover.

The gunner in the car took aim at the customs post where Hans had been sheltering. As he crawled from the shack the 14.5-millimetre bullets tore it apart, showering him with wood, tin, masonry and shredded paperwork.

‘Sir!' his signaller called from the other side of the road at the end of the bridge. ‘Here comes another one!'

Hans raised his head above a sandbag parapet and saw that another BTR 60 had just come over the hill, on the main road, and was speeding down to join the first.

‘What do we do, sir?' the signaller asked.

Kurtz pressed his hand against the wound and when he pulled it away his hand was wet with blood. ‘We fight, and we die.' He rested his AK-47 on the top of the sandbags and started firing. The soldier with the radio did the same. The BTR 60 kept coming, though, and it kept up its merciless raking of the rebel positions. The line started to crumble.

‘Fall back, fall back,' Kurtz yelled. ‘To this side of the bridge!'

His men needed little urging and those on the far side of the river began running towards him. Two died on the bridge and the others were chased by rifle and heavy machine-gun fire all the way. Kurtz looked back over his shoulder and saw the armoured car moving onto the bridge. He and his men had packed explosives around the piers supporting the bridge, but Hans had a terrible feeling nothing would happen when he gave the command to blow it.

Hans fired carefully aimed shots at the infantrymen advancing beside and behind the BTR 60. ‘Blow the bridge!'

He looked at the sergeant who was the closest they had to a demolitions expert. He had rigged the explosive switch for Sonja's truck bomb and that had obviously worked. The man pressed the electronic detonator switch and nothing happened. He looked at Kurtz. ‘Dud, sir. Like the RPGs and the mortar bombs.'

Kurtz swore. The BTR opened fire on them and men ducked low behind their hastily erected parapets. ‘It's all over, sir, isn't it?' the demolitions sergeant said.

‘Gather the women and children, Sergeant, and make a run for it. Any man who wishes to leave can do so. Go into the bush and make for the Botswana border.'

The sergeant looked around him. Fifteen or twenty men had gravitated towards the command position. ‘No sir, we're staying … if you are.'

‘I'm wounded,' Kurtz said. ‘I'll give you covering fire. Go now, while you can. Save yourselves and your families. Go back to Botswana.'

‘No, sir. Our home is here and we would rather die on Caprivian soil than rot in another country.'

The BTR fired another salvo and a man fell, his head split apart like a melon. ‘So be it. Let's show them how real soldiers fight, eh?'

Kurtz stepped back up to the firing line and took aim at the armoured car's vision slits. It was no more than a hundred and fifty metres away. Men were shooting on either side of him and he saw the madness in their eyes and heard it in their voices.

‘Medic!' a man yelled further down the line.

Kurtz turned and saw Miriam rushing behind him. He caught her by the arm. ‘What are you doing here, woman? I told you to go.'

She shrugged off his grip. ‘I've sent Frederick into the bush with one of the other women. I couldn't leave. My place is here. There are not enough people who know first aid.' She ran off, towards a fallen rebel.

The BTR 60 was on the far side of the immobilised car and
bakkie
that blocked the bridge's passage. The driver slowed to drive around it. Kurtz had planned for this choke point to provide a perfect location for his RPG crews to open up on Namibian vehicles, but the anti-armour weapons were useless.

The end is here, Kurtz thought to himself.

‘Faster!' Sonja said.