Prose

The wind hits the rain with whipping venom in Ryno Burger’s face where he gazes into the night at the open hatch of the Hercules.  The heavy weather is unusual for a late February 1983 summer and the South African bush war still rages on and the aeroplane drones forth into the night deep over hostile Angola.
 
For forty-five minutes Ryno has breathed in pure oxygen to get rid of the nitrogen in his blood and had to change bottles, before he walked up to the hatch.  Nitrogen in his blood can with a high parachute jump, like a deep dive under water lead to decompression illness.


Nevertheless the rain and wind swishes unnoticed past him, as he is equipped with HALO/HAHO-equipment that is similar to that being in use with the French Special Forces.  The jumping goggles avert the rain and he is breathing through the oxygen apparatus.
 
His eyes is drawn to slits although the goggles are sheltering them and he notices that the light above him is still flashing red, before he returns his gaze to the black hole beneath him.
 
For a moment it feels as if a mighty bomb explodes in his face when a gigantic lightning bolt flashes past and it is if he is thrown back into the aircraft, before the darkness of the night folds impenetrable around the aeroplane.
 
 Another lightning bolt lights up the night and the loudspeaker crackles in his helmet.  “We are just above twenty seven thousand feet (seven thousand six hundred meters, it registers in his head) with a strong south westerly wind and you are on jumping position.  Your target lies about five kilometres to the North.  Good luck.”

The Colonel’s hand on his shoulder and the flashing green light at the hatch makes him take action.  He lingers just another fraction of a second before he hurls himself into the night and he is falling with stretched out arms and legs away from the aeroplane.
 
It had been decided to use a HALO (High Altitude-Low Opening) jump instead of a HAHO (High Altitude-High Opening) jump to avoid enemy radar and to reach the target unnoticed.

It is as if he is falling into a bottomless shaft and trough the pouring rain he feels the cold steel of the heavy-hitting Heckler and Koch 417 rifle that is equipped with a silencer and is buckled onto him in a waterproof zipping bag.
 
The weight of the webbing and H-frame backpack, eats into his shoulder and he forces himself to look mechanically at the lightened indicating plate of the altimeter on his arm, while he uses the fall to come as near as possible to the enemy camp.

There had been a dispute about the Heckler and Koch 417 rifle and if he rather had to take two Russian weapons along, but Colonel Breytenbach was on his side of the arguments.  The Heckler and Koch 417 rifle he had taken from a British SAS-soldier who was acting for the opposing side, during a secret operation in Botswana and it is a story about which he does not now have time to think about.

The droning sound of the aircraft is suddenly gone and only the sounds of the strong wind, the falling rain and thunder flashes fills his ears and suddenly he feels forsaken and alone as if he is the only person on this planet.

His intellect tells him that he is falling at terminal velocity and that in this hellish night he is not going to reach the ground safely, if he doesn’t pull the parachute’s string at this very moment.  Still the altimeter shows that he has not yet reached the opening height and he falls further down into the black hole that the night has become for him.

When the parachute opens above him and it feels as if he is pulled upwards, he is gliding like an eagle and his experience with the roaring wind is better than any bungi-jump that he has taken up to now.

It is barely moments before the strong wind lurches him about wildly and it takes all of his experience, concentration and training to get the parachute under control.

There is no sign of the Hercules as if it was only a part of his imagination and he remembers the anxious expressions on the faces of the crew of the aircraft.

”Only a madman will fly on a night like this,” the pilot commented on a question if a Mig would not bother them and that is exactly what they are.  Mad and totally nuts he realises and here they are tempting the gods on an insane mission, but it fits him well and he is smiling.

He rather senses the trees beneath him than are seeing the branches and grabs on to the cross section and guides the parachute to where he feels an open stretch of ground should be.  The strong wind blows him a bit off course and he is almost on top of the Acacia tree before he becomes aware of it.

It is for a moment as if the parachute is caught in the branches, but he barely misses the tree and to his relief a lightning bolt lights up the aria around him.
 
He notices the nearing ground and his hands locks around the ropes of the parachute and he pulls himself upwards and makes a perfect landing with bended knees in the long elephant grass.
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It feels as if the stormy wind wants to pull him of his feet while it drags on the parachute and with icy fingers he loosens the parachute.

With a smooth motion he unzips one of the watertight bags and takes the Heckler and Koch 417 with its infrared scope and silencer is in his hands and he quickly cocks the weapon.

Ryno makes a three hundred and sixty degree sweep of the aria around him, but there are only bushes and trees and he only hears the sound of the falling rain and strong wind.

The polypropylene undergarments are still keeping him hot and moments later his parachute is rolled up and buried in the wet ground and in the flash of another lightning bolt he notices that the trees and bushes about him looks haunted while the wind is swishing about.  It suits him well as he is just another shadow in the darkness of the bush.

He also hides his helmet, oxygen mask and oxygen tank and although he wears a camouflaged windbreaker, it feels to Ryno as if the wind will never stop blowing and his hands are icy cold.

Quickly he unzips his windbreaker and uses the infrared binoculars, which hang around his neck, before he zips the jacket close again.  The windbreaker does not stop him form getting wet and he is dripping wet but the cold does not really bother him.

Once again he makes a three hundred and sixty degree sweep of the aria around him with the binoculars, but still there is no sign of anything living.  However a movement in the bushes about three hundred meters away from him, draws his attention and he takes cover on the ground behind a small bush.


The rifle is ready in his hands and the husky barking of a bushbuck sounds up from the mopani bush and Ryno relaxes his finger from the trigger of the Heckler and Koch 417 and brings the binoculars again to his eyes.

Through the lenses of the binoculars he can see the mane hairs of the buck standing straight and how the animal snuffs the air anxiously.  For a moment he wonders if it will not be a good plan to shoot the buck, but he is too near to the enemy camp to make a fire and have got ample provisions.

Ryno is downwind from the bushbuck and after a while it starts to graze peacefully and Ryno realizes that he cannot be to far from the river as bushbucks do not wander too far from water.

All of a sudden it stops raining and the odour of the wet earth is strong and Ryno takes a compass bearing and moves northwest into the direction where the river should be.

It is still dark when he reaches the river, which is flowing strong after the rain of the past weeks.  He moves along the bank of the river until he notices the outlines of a small hillock that lies northeast from the river.

It is before daybreak that he reaches the enemy camp that looks somewhat forsaken and a big bunch of round native huts and he is forced to move eastwards back into the undergrowth and he walks into the direction of the Menongue-Techamutete road.

He feels somewhat exposed when he reaches the road and from the cover of the bushes is scouting the aria carefully.  It is still rather dark and the darkness gives a false safety to him, but he is well aware of this.

Everything seems deserted and he makes sure to brush his tracks away and not to leave any sign of his presence when he moves over the road to the walled graveyard. 

Ryno sails nimbly over the low wall and he is inside the graveyard, between rows of graves.  The woven Mexican type Iron Gate with its elegant arc, gives an unreality to this place when the moon appears suddenly through the clouds.

The tombstones throw dark shadows into his direction and it looks as if the graves are reaching out to him with deadly fingers and for a moment Ryno stops to look around him before he walks deeper into the cemetery.

He suppresses a curse when he stumbles over a loose brick, where it lies on the sidewalk next to the graves and luckily he retains his balance.

There are some Cypress, Willow and Blue gum trees in the graveyard and it takes Ryno a few minutes to find a Blue gum tree that is suitable for his purpose.  When an owl calls unexpectedly out of one of the trees, Ryno knows that no one has noticed him.  Is it a bad sign he wonders and is glad when the bird flies away?

It is difficult to climb the tree in the dark and the slippery trunk that is wet from the rain makes it more hair rising.

At sunrise he is sitting in the fork of one of the branches and it is impossible to see him from either the ground and from the sky.
 
It is the kind of red spectacle that only the bushveld can bring about and still the bushes around him remains dark until the sun becomes white hot and the first signs of life appear at the mud huts

The shrill barking of a underfed dog draws Ryno’s attention and he searches with the binoculars in the direction of the sound.  When he notices the dog sniffing on the ground where he had passed the huts, he is wondering if the dog is following his trail.

He is almost certain that the animal is on his track when the dog takes direction to the road.  There is suddenly however the cackling of chicken, when the dog diverts to the bushes and disturbs a hen from her nest.

Three black boys come running cursing from different huts and the poor dog has to suffer under their kicks.  That the dog does not present any danger is soon evident to Ryno where he relaxes while he is waiting.