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  “How many missionaries, Bassie?”

  “There were seven; five men, two women. How many left now, we’ll find out when we get there. Mount up, broers; we have some hard driving to do.”

  The meeting broke up, the men going back to their tanks. Sitting in the turret of number one tank, van Huis pulled out the last letter he had received from his wife. It had been a chatty letter, full of news about their family and the rest of their clan. She’d told him how much she’d missed him, how much she wanted him back. Through it all, she’d stressed that she and the family were safe and well, that everything was ready for him when he returned and he shouldn’t worry about them She was fine, the children were fine, so he should just look after himself so he could come back to them. It was a perfect letter from a soldier’s wife; both loving and reassuring, a letter that raised morale. Bastiaan van Huis knew he was a very lucky man. He kissed the paper, folded it carefully away, then got on the radio to arrange artillery support.

  Lankneus Artillery Battery, Transvaal Rifles, West of Tshinsenda

  Nobody could ever say that Australian Defense Industries sales division didn’t have a sense of humor. The Kunchi 7.5 inch self-propelled gun was a case in point. The weapon had been developed, marketed, introduced into service and sold to several export customers long before anybody had looked up the meaning of its name. It had just been dismissed as another of those strange aboriginal names the Australians liked to use for their weapons. Even when the joke had finally been discovered and the embarrassed laughter had died down, the gunners had to admit it was an apt choice. A 7.5 inch artillery piece with a 60-caliber barrel made for a lot of gun.

  It had started life as a version of the 7.5-inch 50-caliber gun used by the Indian coastal artillery. The Indian and Australian armies had been looking for a heavy gun to replace their American M2 155mm Long Tom guns and M115 203mm howitzers. Both armies had wanted the world of course. The specification was for a gun that could throw a heavy shell a long way with pinpoint accuracy on a self-propelled chassis. The Americans had nothing like it. The Russian guns were mostly 122mm and 130mm and fired too small a shell for the artillerists. Then, the Australian Navy had started looking for a new heavy gun as well and eyes had fixed on the 7.5-inch. There was a problem of course, there were only four of the old 7.5-inch guns left and that was few enough for experimentation. While the gunners had played with the old guns, the designers had got to work with modern design concepts and materials and produced a new version of the weapon. They’d stretched the barrel to 60 calibers and designed a new tracked chassis to carry the weapon.

  The 7.5-inch shell itself was impressive. It weighed 200 pounds; twice the weight of the 155mm and - remarkably - the same weight as the shell from the M115. The designers began to realize something. The 7.5 inch was a sweet-spot in gun calibers; one of the places where all the lines converged to give an optimum result. They had been about to start producing new batches of the old shell when a young Canadian engineer had literally hammered on their door. His message had been quite simple. “You’re all nuts,” had been his first words. It had been an interesting debate as to whether the designers should listen to him or take him into the car park and give him a thorough beasting. At that point, somebody asked his name. It turned out he was Doctor Gerald Bull. That meant two things made them listen. One was he was the youngest man ever to hold a PhD in ballistics and the other was he’d just resigned from the Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment after they’d cut his development budget.

  His point had been quite simple. Artillery shells were atrociously badly designed. The basic layout dated from the First World War and hadn’t changed much in the meantime. They were an aerodynamic nightmare. Bull had described them as ‘a flying airbrake’. He produced drawings of a new shell, one that was longer than the conventional design and beautifully profiled with extended strakes down the side to stabilize the shell in the gun’s barrel. It even had a gas generator; a small burning charge at the base, to fill in the void left by the shell as it passed through the air. The Australian Army had hit a winning combination with its 3.7-inch Nulla long-range self-propelled gun. That had given them a taste for far-reaching artillery, but this new shell looked like something out of science fiction. In a wind tunnel, a conventional shell was almost invisible behind the mass of turbulence it generated. Bull’s new extended range full bore shell slipped through the air with barely a ripple.

  The ordnance laboratories had made a test batch of 155mm shells to the new design and the results had been stunning. The M2 155mm could throw a 100 pound shell 22,000 yards. The same gun fired the new shell 32,000 yards, equal to the much-vaunted Nulla, and that was with a gun not optimized for the new shell and the ammunition itself that had been hand-made. By the time the new 7.5-inch gun was ready, the design of the shells had been refined and an initial production batch was available for trials. That led to a problem. The instrumented range wasn’t big enough for the new gun threw the new 200 pound Extended Range Full Bore Base Bleed shell an astounding 55,000 yards. It wasn’t that easy of course. There were development problems with gun, shell and carriage but they’d been straightened out in time. When the new gun was finally unveiled, the Kunchi was the best artillery piece in the world by a large margin. It had been selling as fast as ADI could move them off the production lines ever since.

  Staff Sergeant Arend Quarshie looked up at the 40-foot long barrel towering over his head and reflected on how apt the Australian name had been. In the South African Army, the gun was called the Lankneus, the long-nosed one. That meant more or less the same thing. Army humor was pretty much the same around the world. There were eight guns in this battery position. It was one of the three heavy batteries deployed by the Transvaal Rifles. With their unprecedented range, the guns could cover a huge length of the border - or alternatively throw their shells far into stam country the other side.

  “You have the fire plan, Staff?” Major Kieran Neumetzger had appeared out of the darkness to make a final check on his battery’s readiness. Technically, each of these guns was commanded by a Lieutenant, with a Captain in charge of each two-gun section. There was a reason for the high proportion of officers. These guns could also fire nuclear rounds if needed. However, Lieutenant Kleyn was sick and Quarshie was in command of his gun for the night’s work.

  “Entered into fire control, Sir. Ready to go when we get the order.”

  “Very good, Staff. Make sure the men have their hearing protection in place.” Neumetzger vanished into the darkness again.

  Quarshie picked up the order. “You heard our Major. Get your headsets on. The bosses back in The World don’t like deaf employees.” He picked up his own headset. It had the radio earphones built into it so the orders and fire direction commands could be transmitted to him and from him to his gunners.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The word came through on the battery net, “Gun One. Ranging shot.” A string of numbers followed. Quarshie repeated them to the gun crew. Behind him, men rolled the long, slender shell from the magazine on the eight-by-eight parked near the gun and slid it forward. He checked the markings on the shell. Black body, white band around the nose. High explosive, common. Quarshie had a repeated nightmare in which he somehow failed to notice the white shell body with fluorescent orange and red bands and the sinister black trefoil, but he never failed to notice the boiling red and black mushroom cloud that marked the full horror of the error. So he checked the shell and checked it again as it was rammed into the breech with the propellant behind it. Six bags, just like the orders said. Then the clang as the breech closed and the whine as the gun elevated and traversed into position and he raised his hand high over his head.

  The word came over the radio. Quarshie repeated it, dropping his hand sharply. The gunner pressed the fire button. No lanyards to be jerked here, the shells were fired electrically. The great gun crashed. The sound of its firing shook the ground as the tracked carriage leapt backwards to dig its spa
de deep into the ground. The barrel recoiled back, the violence of the shot hurled it against the hydraulic recoil buffers that returned it to the firing position. He heard the sound of the shell going out. It was not a shrill, piercing whine like the old guns with their awkward shells, but a soft moan that reminded Quarshie of the times he had spent with a lady of negotiable affection. He even convinced himself he could see the faint red dot from the base-bleed system as the shell went downrange.

  This shell wasn’t intended to go all the way to its target. It was being tracked by a radar set mounted on the fire control vehicle and its trajectory being compared with the one the fire control men had calculated. From that, they worked out how far from its target that shell would have been and what corrections were necessary to allow for the changes. Then, one of the men in the vehicle blew the shell up in mid-air.

  Quarshie’s radio beeped again. A new set of numbers came over the link to him. Each gun was getting its own set; only a fool kept his artillery pieces too close together. The barrel moved slightly; a minute fraction to one side, a touch less elevation. Then another shell rolled out of the magazine. The four loaders moved it forward to the loading tray and into the breech. Black body, white ring around the nose.

  “Fire for effect!”

  Once again, Quarshie dropped his hand. Once again the gun hurled its shell downrange, towards its target deep in stam country. He didn’t know where the shell was going, he didn’t know why it was going there and, the truth was, he really didn’t care too much. It was his job to send the shells downrange with the pinpoint accuracy that everybody expected from a Lankneus battery and that was what he intended to do. The drill was laid down; six shots in the first three minutes, then one shot every two minutes after that. A slow rate of fire compared with the smaller field guns, but they had their job and Lankneus had its.

  Free of the barrel of the guns, the shells arced through the air towards their target just south of Kawimba. Photographs had shown a militia kamp just outside the town. The shells were targeted on that. Those who made the decisions hadn’t wanted to waste the 7.5-inch shells so they’d decided to devastate the militia huts. Perhaps give the poor stams who lived in the town a few days of peace before another gang turned up to victimize them. For all that, this was a diversion, not the main point of tonight’s shoot.

  Descending on their target, the 200-pound shells plowed into the kamp. They blew the huts apart, sending steel shards tearing through the mud and concrete blocks that made their walls. The roar of the explosions could be heard miles away, especially at the kamp at Tshinsenda. There, the militia thugs looked at the brilliant flashes, saw the rolling explosions and heard the moan of the shells overhead and made their plans. They knew the Army from over the border would be following up the bombardment. The rival group now under those shells would not survive the night. That meant they could go to the town they had once terrorized to loot, rape and kill. Tomorrow, they could spread fear as they asserted their domination over Kawimba and all who lived there. Tonight, they would watch the destruction of their rivals.

  Ratel Infantry Platoon, Transvaal Rifles, South African Border

  Second Platoon swung north as they hit the road, heading up towards Kawimba. Their commander had strict orders. This was a feint, a demonstration; it wasn’t worth the life of a single South African soldier. He was to take no chances, not do anything other than to make a lot of noise and fire off a lot of ammunition. As it had been explained to him, Lieutenant ‘Geldsakke’ in the Oliphant platoon was running short on his allowance this month. They had to blast off lots of ammunition so his vader could make some more. Van Huis in the tank platoon was the butt of a lot of jokes about his family’s part in the great family of businesses that supplied so much of South Africa’s armaments, but there was quiet respect for the fact that he hadn’t ducked serving his time or sought out a soft option.

  Captain Shumba Geldenhuys watched his second platoon head off, then concentrated on his own job. His Ratel platoon was turning on to the road, track was much more like it, and picked up speed. The Ratel eight-wheeled armored personnel carriers could be in Tshinsenda, a little bit over five miles down the road, in just under ten minutes. The lumbering Olifants would be following him as fast as they could but they were slow. They were Indian-built Centurions, descended from British infantry tanks. Geldenhuys knew what that meant. Excellent armor, mediocre gun, poor speed. McMullen Industries had rebuilt them with van Huis TV-12 diesels instead of their petrol engines and 100mm guns in place of the 90mm the Indians had used, but they were still slow. In this action, time would be everything. The Ratels would speed on ahead while the tanks followed behind and reached the battle as quickly as they could. Geldenhuys just hoped they would be in time to help out if things got really ugly.

  Outskirts of Tshinsenda.

  The monsters came out of the darkness. Their eyes glared white fire, their voices screamed a terrifying battle-howl of fury. The Ratels had their headlights full on and their sirens were blaring at maximum volume to create the maximum level of shock. It didn’t make much military sense to do things that way, but not everything that worked had to make sense. This was a technique that had proved useful before and against much more determined opposition than a mob of disorganized bandits who called themselves a militia.

  The problem was that things were already coming apart in the chaos of a night action. Geldenhuys had followed Second Platoon along the orange-yellow laterite road all right and found the unmarked side turning easily enough. He’d taken them across the disused and derelict railway line. That’s where the trouble had started. The track, it was little better than a path, went through a particularly dense patch of Oerwoud. The reconnaissance photographs failed to show that it was obstructed by fallen trees and partially washed away. The wretched state of the track slowed the wheeled Ratels down so much that Geldenhuys had begun to fear that the Olifants would catch up with him. That was an embarrassing thing for an infantryman who believed in wheels.

  The wheels versus tracks argument was one that had bedeviled the South African Army for years. Further south, on the veldt, there was no real dispute. The extra mobility and reliability of wheeled vehicles had led the South Africans to rely on them. But, as the country had expanded northwards, the terrain closed in. Wheeled vehicles were at a disadvantage compared with tracks, as Geldenhuys had just found out. As much as anything else, that was why the expansion had stopped where it did. It would not be many miles further north where the oerwoud changed into real jungle. Up there, even tanks would have trouble maneuvering.

  The Ratels struggled through. Eventually they had burst out into a patch of open ground that should have led them to the right position for their attack. They were already more than 15 minutes behind schedule due to the terrible condition of the track they had used so Geldenhuys had hurried his maneuver and swung south too early. Now he faced the job of working his way up the length of the arrowhead instead of taking it all out at once. One part of his mind was screaming abuse at himself. My hurry, my need to get in ahead of the tanks had screwed everything up and probably cost the kidnapped missionaries their lives. Geldenhuys looked across at the darkened civilian area, just where were the tanks anyway? By the amount he’d been delayed, he’d expected to see them already at work.

  Two of the three Ratels had stopped. The seven infantrymen in each were already debussing, spreading out in a line beside their vehicles. The 23mm auto-cannon in the Ratel’s turret poured fire into the buildings ahead of them. The incendiary tracers set the wooden structures ablaze and lit the whole scene in an eerie flickering orange red light. The militia people in the huts were pouring out. Most were mown down by the nine machine guns mounted on the two troop-carrier and Geldenhuys’s command vehicle. More still being picked off by the riflemen on the ground. There was return fire, a lot of it. Most was automatic fire that arched high overhead. Some was rocket fire. The light from the fires and the tracers stained the exhaust trails bright red as the
y too arched overhead. That was one thing one could rely on when fighting the militias. They always fired high, never allowing for the recoil of their weapons on full automatic.

  Across the open ground between the Ratels and their infantry and the huts, Geldenhuys saw the militia who had survived the first savage blasts of fire trying to defend themselves against the assault. He could see them in the shadows cast by the burning huts. Mostly they were standing erect, holding their rifles sideways and over their heads as they hosed out wild, random bursts. He could guess that what was left of the livestock in the kraals behind him were taking the brunt of the gunfire, that and the poor baastard villagers trying to hide in their own huts. The white muzzle-flash from the militia’s weapons gave them away more than any other single factor. Geldenhuys could hear his own men firing, the slow, vicious crack of the 7.65x54mm cartridges fired on semiautomatic contrasting with the hammering noise of the automatic weapons on the other side.

  The South African Army had never believed in the intermediate caliber idea. Their G1 FAS rifles were chambered for a full-powered rifle round. It was based on the old 7.65x53mm sold by Mauser but redesigned, modernized and boosted to much higher chamber pressures. They’d made the case a millimeter longer to stop the new cartridge being fed into old 7.65mm Mauser rifles, but it had turned out that the tolerances were enough to allow the rifles to chamber both. Fortunately, the immensely strong Mauser action meant no serious accidents had taken place. Geldenhuys could see the effects the rounds were having. As each militia rifleman gave his position away, the heavy, high-velocity bullets cut them down.