Читаем Vortex полностью

Behind them, the paratroop major commanding the Blue Train’s security force shook his head in disgust. Americans. You could spot them half a mile away.

They were so ridiculously frivolous. He turned and barked an order at the nearest soldiers.

They snapped to rigid attention.

The major took his job seriously. He and his men were sworn to defend

South Africa’s top officials with their very lives. But few of them ever truly expected it to be necessary.

THE MINISTRY OF LAW AND ORDER, PRETORIA

From where he stood, Erik Muller could only hear Vorster’s part of the phone conversation. He didn’t need to hear more.

“No, Mr. President, I won’t be taking the train with you and the others tomorrow. I’m afraid I simply have too much work to do here.” Vorster’s fingers drummed slowly on his desk, unconsciously mimicking the rhythm of a funeral march.

“What’s that, Mr. President? It’s a great pity? Oh, yes. Very definitely.” Vorster’s thick, graying eyebrows rose sardonically.

“Yes,

I’ve always enjoyed the food immensely. And the magnificent views as well. Especially those in the mountains. “

Muller fought the urge to laugh. Instead he watched Vorster pick up a pencil and draw a quick, decisive circle on the Cape Province map spread across his desk. The circle outlined a stretch of railroad track deep inside the Hex River Mountains.

“No, Mr. President. I’m sorry, but I really can’t afford to go this time.

Perhaps in January when Parliament comes back into session…. Thank you, Frederick. That’s most kind of you. And give my best wishes to your wife…. Yes. I’ll see you soon…. Yes. God be with you, too.

“

Vorster hung up.

He scowled across the desk at Muller.

“That damned buffoon. Can you believe it? Haymans still has the gall to try his smooth false phrases on me. He thinks he can win my friendship even now. With the stink of his treachery all around! “

Muller shrugged. Events would soon make Haymans’s words and actions irrelevant. Why worry about them?

Vorster tapped the map with his pencil.

“Are your people ready?”

“Yes, Minister.”

“And the terrorists?” Vorster’s pencil came down again, making another black mark in the middle of his hand-drawn circle.

“They seem prepared.” Muller leaned closer.

“I must admit that I dislike trusting their competence in these matters, Minister. The blacks have always been sloppy. Perhaps our own people could’ No Vorster waved him into silence.

“It’s too risky. Someone would talk or get cold feet.”

Muller nodded. The minister was probably right. He straightened.

“Then we can only wait and watch matters unfold. “

I “True.

Vorster rose from behind his desk and leaned over the map, his eyes scanning the railway route from Cape Town to Pretoria for the hundredth time. Apparently satisfied by what he saw, he carefully folded the map and slid it into a drawer.

When he looked up, the grim, determined expression on his face seemed carved in stone.

“God’s will be done, Muller. God’s will be done.”

Privately Muller hoped that God’s appointed agents could shoot straight.

JUNE 28-NEAR OSPLAAS, IN THE HEX RIVER

MOUNTAINS

The sun stood directly overhead in a blue, cloudless sky, bathing the narrow valley in a clear, pitiless light. Isolated patches of brush and olive-green scrub trees dotted the rugged slopes falling away from the razor-backed ridges on either side. Everything was quiet. Nothing cast a shadow and nothing moved. The valley seemed lifeless, abandoned.

But there were men there-waiting.

Andrew Sebe crouched low amid a tangle of dry brush and scattered, broken rock. He licked his bone-dry lips and tried to ignore his trembling hands.

They were trembling in anticipation he told himself, not in fear. He and his comrades were nearing the climax of long days and nights of planning, preparation, and reconnaissance.

Sebe gripped the rocket-propel led grenade launcher he held tighter, careful to keep his fingers away from the trigger. He wanted to model himself after the tall, stick-thin man squatting motionless next to him.

Kotane always exuded an air of absolute confidence. The guerrilla leader seemed able to suppress every emotion save a fierce determination to succeed, no matter what the cost. If only he could be as brave.

David Kotane glanced briefly at the young man beside him, noting the beads of sweat rolling slowly down his forehead. Then he looked away, searching the slopes for signs that would give his team’s other positions away to wary Afrikaner eyes. There, weren’t any. Good. His men were following orders perfectly so far, staying well hidden among the clumps of tall grass, dead brush, and low, stunted trees.

Kotane transferred his gaze to their target-the railroad tracks barely one hundred meters away. Viewed from above, the railway looked very much like a long, whip-thin, black snake as it wound to and fro high above the valley floor. Power lines paralleled the railroad, hanging motionless in the still, calm air.

Five minutes to go. Kotane idly caressed the small white box in his hand.