Larry Bond - Vortex

Knowles were here to see it.

He smiled back.

“Maybe we should shoot for somewhere a little closer. Just for the time being, of course.”

Emily pulled nervously at separate strands of her long auburn hair.

“I

think perhaps there is one person who may be able to help us. ” She glanced quickly at Ian and then looked away.

“But it maybe risky.”

“Hold on there.” Ian shook his head.

“Remember your dad’s little list? We can’t count on any more of your friends. It’d be too dangerous for them as well as being suicidal for

US. I I

She shook her head, her expression unreadable in the darkness.

“Oh, no,

Ian. This one whose help I must beg wouldn’t be on my father’s list of my friends. ” Her voice fell to a whisper.

“Nor am I at all sure that he will come again when I call.”

And with that, Ian had to be content. She would say nothing more for the moment.

NOVEMBER 12-BRAAMFONTEIN CEMETERY,

JOHANNESBURG

The sun was coming again to South Africa, warming the air and earth below, and coloring the once pitch-black eastern sky a faint shade of mingled gray and pink. Inside the Braamfontein Cemetery, tall trees, headstones, and squat marble mausoleums that had for so long been nothing more than darker shadows among a lesser darkness took on line and form and hue as night faded slowly into day.

Ian yawned uncontrollably, rose, and stretched aching muscles. He looked warily around for signs of movement where there should be none. Both

Emily and Sibena had protested his choice of temporary sanctuary. But superstition worked both ways. Who would hunt for the living in a land of the dead?

He turned in a complete circle, studying every piece of ground in view.

And froze. A car, headlights on, moving slowly along the wide avenue running beside the cemetery. He sank back to the grass, listening now instead of looking. An engine growing louder—definitely coming closer.

Emily leaned closer and whispered, “I think it has to be the man we are waiting for. Who else would come here so early?”

“The police? A caretaker?” Ian shrugged. Emily’s reluctance to name this mystery man both irked and worried him.

He risked another glance at the oncoming car. It was close enough to make out details now. A Land Rover painted a uniformly drab green. That was odd.

The Land Rover stopped just outside the graveyard’s wrought-iron gate and sat idling.

Emily rose unsteadily to her feet.

“It’s him. It can’t be anyone else.”

Ian and Siberia started to get to their feet, but

she waved them back down.

“Come when I say … not before. Right?”

They both nodded their understanding and watched her make her way carefully downhill to the gate. Ian felt cold and damp and knew he was sweating again. What if they’d been betrayed? He studied the Land Rover through slitted eyes, ready to make a mad dash downhill if his worst fears were realized.

The driver’s door popped open and a tall, slender man stepped out onto the pavement. A man wearing an Army uniform.

Ian forced himself to breath. Emily wasn’t running away in panic-at least not yet.

She came to the waist-high stone wall separating the cemetery from the street and stood waiting. The soldier stepped closer, until he stood just across the wall. His shoulders seemed curiously rigid, almost as if he were holding himself at attention-or in check.

Emily said something too quietly to be heard at this distance, and the soldier leaned closer still before abruptly straightening up. Ian frowned.

For an instant this other man had seemed ready to embrace her. What the hell was going on here? Who was this guy anyway?

Part of his mind laughed at his own ridiculous pride. It was absurd to be jealous when half of South Africa’s police force must be busy hunting high and low for them. But a deeper, more primitive side wanted to go down there and beat the hell out of that damed soldier. Yeah, right. Me Ian, you

Emily-you my woman. Somehow he didn’t think she’d appreciate the caveman approach to love and commitment.

“There’s the signal!” Sibena tugged at his arm.

Ian glanced toward the gate. Emily was waving them down with short, sharp, urgent gestures.

Despite the jealous mutterings of his subconscious, his first impressions of this South African soldier were favorable. The man had a firm-jawed, weather-beaten face and open, intelligent gray eyes.

Ian lengthened his stride, aware that he’d also squared his shoulders. He stopped just across the wall from the soldier.

“Ian and Matthew, this is Kommandant Henrik Kruger.” Emily’s voice faltered, almost as though she’d been about to add something and then couldn’t think of the right way to say it. She recovered.

“And Henrik, these are my two friends, Ian Sheffield and Matthew Siberia. “

Friends? Ian nodded toward the South African, his face kept carefully blank. Kruger inclined his own head, acknowledging the introduction.

Neither man offered to shake hands.

“You are the American reporter the police are hunting?” Kruger’s voice was deep, almost melodic despite a clipped Afrikaans accent. An easy voice to hear amid the noise and confusion of a battle, Ian judged.

““That’s right.”

The South African soldier frowned.

“Then perhaps you can tell me why I should risk my career and my life to help you? Miss van der Heijden is a woman of my people reason enough for my aid to her … even if there were no other. “

Kruger glanced at Sibena.

“But this man is an enemy of my blood… and you are nothing more than an interfering Uitlander. Why then should I lift a finger to save you?”

Ian felt Emily stir and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, cautioning her to stay out of it. This was his fight.

He looked steadily into Kruger’s eyes.

“There’s no reason you should,

Kommandant. No reason at all. ” He heard Emily gasp softly in surprise and distress.

“Matt and I will take our chances on our own. But you’ve got to promise me that you’ll keep Emily safe or get her out of the country.”

He pressed on, anger making his voice harsher, rougher.

“And if I ever hear that you’ve broken your word or hurt her, I’ll come after you myself. Is that clear enough, Kommandant?” He stopped talking, afraid that he might have gone too far and endangered even Emily.

But then slowly, almost imperceptibly, a tight, thin smile appeared on

Kruger’s sun-browned face-spreading from his firm mouth to the crow’s-feet around his steel-gray eyes.

“You make yourself very clear,

Meneer Sheffield.

The South African officer offered his hand.

“And you can all count on my help.” He shook his head, amused at some

private joke.

“God help me, but I must have a weakness for romantic idiots.

“

Ian shook his outstretched hand-an action imitated, after a brief hesitation, by Matthew Sibena.

“Now what?”

Kruger helped Emily climb over the wall and stepped back, allowing them to cross as well. He laid a hand on the Land Rover’s open door and smiled again.

“Now, meneer, we make arrangements for the three of you to hide someplace where Vorster’s police and spies will never think to look.”

“And just where would that happen to be, sir?”

Kruger’s smile blossomed into a full-fledged grin.

“Why, inside South

Africa’s largest military base, my friend. Where else?”

NOVEMBER 12-SUPPLY BASE FIVE, IN THE HILLS NEAR PESSENE, GAZA PROVINCE, MOZAMBIQUE

The corpses were laid out in a neat, orderly row. Even their clothes had been straightened, but nobody could rearrange the bodies where they’d been torn apart. Each bore several bullet wounds in the chest or face.