Larry Bond - Vortex

The Afrikaner farmer looked up into the sardonic eyes of the tall, muscled Zulu leaning negligently against his kitchen countertop.

“You will not harm us then … as you promised?”

The Zulu smiled wryly and shook his head.

“Of course not. We do not make war on women, children, or old men. We leave that to your government.”

The black man stood up straight, suddenly seeming even taller.

“But the police are another matter entirely. They are fair game.”

He stroked the R4 assault rifle cradled in his hands.

“A beautiful weapon, Mr. Uys. Another reason we owe you our thanks. It will make our task this morning much easier.”

Uys’s leathery, weather-worn face crumpled. He’d been issued the rifle as a member of the neighborhood Commando-one of South

Africa’s paramiliuuy home-guard units. And commandos were supposed to kill antigovernment guerrillas, not arm them. He’d failed his nation and failed his people.

the Zulu leader watched him sob for a moment and then turned away, disgusted. He looked at the younger black man standing close to Uys’s moaning, panic-stricken wife.

“Watch them closely, but do not hurt them.

You know when to leave?”

The younger man nodded, eyes bright and excited.

“Good. Mayibuye Afrika!” The older Zulu raised his new assault rifle high in a salute and strode out of the farmhouse toward the rest of his waiting men.

White South Africa was about to learn that not all Zulus had forgotten their warrior past.

NATAL POLICE PATROL, NEAR RICHARDS BAY

Blue light flashing, the police squad car turned off the highway to the left, bumping over gravel and loose dirt onto an unpaved track leading to the Uys family steading.

Four uniformed officers of the South African police crowded the car-two in back and two in front. All were middle-aged reservists called back to duty when the younger men went north to join the police and Army sweeps through black townships.

“Ag, man, I tell you, there’s been some blery heavy fighting up there in the Namib. 1,ots of boys won’t be coming home. That’s what I’m hearing anyway.” The driver kept his eyes on the road, but his mind was on the argument they’d been having off and on since leaving the station that morning.

One of the two men in back snorted.

“And I say that’s just defeatist bullshit, Manic. I read the papers, man, and I’ve seen nothing about heavy casualties.”

“No surprise there, man! You think they’re going to print everything that happens? Just so some communist spy can read it with his morning post?”

The driver smiled as his

sarcasm drew chuckles. He glanced over his shoulder at a beet-red face.

“They’re tossing big shells back and forth up there, Hugo. And I know what that’s like. I was in Angola back in ‘75 when those verdomde Cubans started pouring one hundred twenty-two millimeter shells in on our poor heads like they was raindrops. I said to myself, I said, Manic… A barrage of groans drowned out the driver’s thousandth recitation of his heroic wartime exploits.

The squad car bounced and rolled over ruts left by the heavy trucks that carried Piet Uys’s wool to market and his unneeded sheep to the slaughterhouse.

The youngest of the four men squirmed uncomfortably in the front seat.

“How much farther to this place anyway? I’ve got to take a piss like you wouldn’t believe.”

The driver laughed.

“I’m not surprised, man. You must have drunk ten cups of coffee with your lunch. Don’t you know all that caffeine’s bad for you?

It will kill you someday. Shit!”

He slammed on the brakes and fought for control as the squad car fishtailed to a bone-jarring stop amid a yellow-gray cloud of dust and thrown gravel.

Rocks spanged off the cab of the large, open-topped truck blocking the road.

“Christ! Those damned blacks could have killed us with that stunt!” The driver sounded personally aggrieved at the thought that anyone would wish him harm.

“Get out and see if they’ve left the keys in the cab, Hugo.

Otherwise we have to go around.”

The beefy policeman in back nodded and reached for the squad car’s door handle. He never finished the movement.

Bullets shattered the front windshield and punched in through the car’s thin metal sides-tearing through flesh and ricocheting off bone before tumbling off end over end into thin air. Three of the four South African policemen died instantly. The fourth lived just long enough to claw futilely for his holstered pistol before sliding slowly down the bloodsoaked seat.

Thirty meters up the hillside, the Zulu leader rose from his crouch, already replacing the half-used clip in his assault rifle with practiced hands. He turned to the small group of men hiding beside him.

“Take all their weapons and ammunition. And look for a portable radio set. We will need it all before we are done. “

He watched in silence as they raced down the hill toward the bullet-riddled police car. The assault rifles, shotguns, and pistols carried by the dead policemen would more than double the firepower at his disposal. Better still, the news of this bold deed would spread, drawing more young men from the kraals and city streets to his side-and to the cause of his exiled chief.

He smiled. After more than a century of uneasy peace, the Zulu war regiments, the imp is were once again on the march.

SEPTEMBER 6-MINISTRY OF LAW AND ORDER,

PRETORIA

Brig. Franz Diederichs sat at attention in front of Marius van der

Heijden. A general in the Security Branch of the South African Police,

Diederichs was a short, wiry man whose narrow face was dominated by a pair of cold blue eyes and a cruel, thin-lipped mouth. It was a face that reflected its owner’s character and temperament.

“You understand the importance of this assignment, Franz?”

Diederichs nodded once.

“Yes, Minister.”

Van der Heijden ignored him. In his view, subordinates were, by definition, incapable of fully understanding anything they hadn’t heard at least twice.

“The President’s decision to give this ministry direct control over KwaZulu reflects his personal confidence in our ability to get the job done. Nothing must shake that confidence, understood?”

Diederichs nodded again, carefully concealing his impatience. Both van der Heijden’s mannerisms and his ambitions were well-known to those who worked for him.

“Good.” The deputy minister of law and order laced his fingers across a prominent paunch.

“Then you will also understand my insistence that this ‘insurrection’ —he sniffed

contemptuously, as though that were too significant a term for what was happening in Natal—be smashed as quickly as possible.”

Diederichs leaned forward.

“Will I be able to call on additional police units or troops, Minister?”

Van der Heijden shook his head.

“No. Manpower is too scarce at the moment. Every trained man is needed for service on the Namibian front or to help maintain order in the townships. You must work with what you have. You must use terror, Franz!” He pounded his desk once and pointed a plump finger in Diederichs’s direction.

“Terror must swell your ranks!”

His outstretched finger swiveled and came to rest, aimed now at the portrait of Karl Vorster hung prominently on the far wall.

“The President himself agrees with this precept. In his own words, Brigadier. In his own words! He has said that he wants one hundred dead Zulus as payment for every policeman they have so foully murdered. Ten kraals are to be wiped from the face of the earth for every white farm they dare to attack!

Blood must answer for blood! And fire for fire! Show no mercy toward these traitorous blacks, Franz.” Van der Heijden paused, breathing hard.