Prose

From the cover of the Blue gum tree Ryno can observe the enemy camp clearly; where it lies to the west, northwest and southwest of him and runs along the eastern bank of the river.

That Cassinga had been a mining town is quite clear to Ryno, when he looks at the shaft towers of the dilapidated iron mine that rises into the air west from him.  Cassinga had however taken on a new role, as it had become the enemy’s operational headquarters for southern Angola.

The enemy camp lies in a long narrow strip on the road from Ongiva (Pereira d'Eca) that runs to Menongue (Villa Arthur de Paiva).  From the west another road from Lubango (Sa' da Bandeira) meets the Ongiva-Menongue road.  North from the enemy camp another road breaks away from the Ongiva-Menongue road to runs in a northwestern direction to Serpa Pinto.

There is no sign of the previous night’s thunderclouds and the sharp sun burns in his eyes, where it hangs in a turquoise blue sky.  Ryno watches a Mi-24 “Hind-D” attack helicopter, where it takes off at the enemy camp and flies away along the river to disappear as a small dot.

At about nine o’clock the three boys drive some cattle from a kraal in the direction of the river, after which some of the black rural women get busy around the huts.

It is soon clear that except the three boys only women are resident at the huts.  “It must be a nest of prostitutes,” Ryno remarks and smile thought struck while he observes the rest of the camp with the binoculars.

To the north, an orchard of orange trees cuts off the camp.  West of the huts a road runs to a helicopter landing zone.  South of the huts there’s an engineering complex and opposite the huts there are a string of bunkers that are armed with heavy machineguns and 14,5 mm-antiaircraft guns.

In spite of the call of the owl earlier that morning, Ryno realises that his luck is still holding.  He smiles when he comprehends that he approached the huts out of a south-western direction, without noticing the bunkers and that he had sneaked right trough them.

At eleven o’clock it is cooking hot and Ryno draws the camouflaged cap lower over his eyes and it feels as if his clothes are plastered to his body.

At half past one his throat burns from thirst and he drinks only a few sips of lukewarm water, from one of the four water bottles that he had brought along and he eats a few energy bars that he had earlier taken from one of the ration packs.

 At five o’clock the sun hangs in the sky as a flaming white ball and the heat is still singeing, although the trees are already throwing long shadows.

A few white-headed vultures turn in black specks high above him and they suddenly give short chattering noises, before they turn away in the direction of the hillock where it lies north from Ryno.

Through the lenses of the binoculars he observes a Land Cruiser coming from deeper in the enemy camp and a red cloud of dust that hangs behind the vehicle, where it is driving along the road that goes right through the camp in the direction of the mud huts.

He doesn’t wait a moment longer and takes the Heckler and Koch 417 rifle.  It is clear that the information that had been given to him is accurate.  After equipping the rifle with a telescopic sight, Ryno removes a cigar shaped object from the rifle bag.

The silencer is screwed on to the barrel of the Heckler and Kock, before Ryno takes another magazine out of one of the ammo pouches to trade with the original one.  The bullets in this magazine had been carefully loaded and prepared by him.  There’s a soft clicking sound when he cocks the weapon and he switches the safety catch on, before he hangs it on its rifle belt over a branch next to him.

When the Land Cruiser stop in front of the mud huts, Ryno has already adjusted the telescopic sight.   A sweatband is bound around his head to keep the sweat away from his eyes and the mud huts that are five hundred and fifty meters form him, look as if they are right in front of him.  The Heckler and Koch has long been a good friend of his and he is deadly accurate with it.

There’s not even a breeze blowing and the grass stubble doesn’t even move, but when the vehicle stops in a cloud of dust he notices a group of black young women appearing out of the huts.

The doors of the Land Cruiser open and three men in camouflage uniforms appear.  Two are black and one is a Cuban and Ryno immediately recognizes the black man with the scar over his right cheek.

It is clear why the mud huts are visited when three of the women are chosen and money is exchanged quickly right there.

Ryno knows that he can hit both the black man without the scar and the Cuban quite easily, but one of the women stays in the firing line of the man with the scar.

.”Such a idiot,” he remarks angrily.  To be able to hit both the man with the scar and the woman is no real trick, but he does not want to kill the man with the scar or wound him badly and he waits for the group to disappear in numbers of two’s into different huts.

It is much cooler in the blue gum tree, when he brings the telescopic sight of the Heckler and Koch to his eyes and let the cross hairs rest on one of the front wheels of the vehicle.

There’s a sound that is hardly audible and though the telescopic sight Ryno, notices a hole appearing in the wheel with the vehicle going slight skew forward and he knows that he and the rifle are both ready.

It is nearly a half hour later that the Cuban appears from one of the huts and shakes his head while he looks at the wheel, before he goes off to call the two black men.

Ryno can see the astonishment on their faces, where the three men gather at the flat tyre.  He notices that the man with the scar stands slightly away from the other two men and he pulls the trigger two times in quick succession.

The man with the scar see the heads of the two other men explode right in front of his eyes, but before he is able to move, there’s a burning sensation in his shoulder and he is jerked back and he does not hear any shots being fired.

Through the lenses of the binoculars Ryno notices the man with the scar crawling beyond the cover of the vehicle, while some of the women run screaming through the orange orchard in the direction of the headquarters.