A novel ~ in 1978 a small contingent of Rhodesian Air Force pilots ferried 18 Cessna 337G air planes to the beleaguered country from Europe. This event, which has never been published, has formed the basis for a story of how a group of pilots are able to ferry similar sized planes to South Africa to interrupt the investiture of the first black president of the Republic.
During the Rhodesian Bush war many clandestine operations took place. Aircraft were obsolete and Sanctions prevented them from being replaced easily. Many innovative people thought up all sorts of ideas to get spares, weapons and new equipment.
The largest operation was the acquiring of aircraft. The planes were flown across thousands of miles of unfriendly Africa.
Later on there were many people who wanted to see the South Africa of Nelson Mandela fail. Hiring several of the Sanctions Busters from the Bush War and many of the pilots involved in the original ferry such a group purchased small modern, for their time, aircraft to form a unit that could destroy the inauguration ceremony of the first Black President in Pretoria - an event that attracted many world leaders and gathered them together in one place in the open outside the Union Buildings.
This would have been an ideal opportunity for the lunatic right and or left to disrupt the political world and set back development all over the world.
This novel is the story of how the intention was carried out and how it was eventually foiled.
Excerpt
Max Donner could see the boy grinning at him. A frozen leer
cemented into place by the finality of death. He lay near the crudely
white-washed hut, his head propped at an unnatural angle by the
wall.
He's accusing me, Max thought, his heart was pounding painfully
and his breath coming in short pants, I should have helped him. Then
common sense regained the initiative. Perhaps his intervention
would have hastened the end for the boy, but his own fate would
have been assured, and his sacrifice would have served no purpose.
With the realization of his own impotence in the face of overwhelming
odds he began to think clearly again, the momentary panic that had
assailed him moving from his mind. Typical, he though, every time
I'm faced with a difficult situation I crack up.
He lay still in the ditch, the lower part of his body immersed in the
foul slime from the cattle pen. The putrid air was making him choke,
but he couldn't move, couldn't even brush off the flies that had
congregated around his eyes and nose, in case the movement was
noticed by the sentry who stood less than ten metres from him. He
shuddered involuntarily as the boy moved; then realized it was rigormortis
setting in. He had watched and listened to the torture as it
progressed, degenerated from brutal blows to the body to sadistic
displays of cruel enjoyment. He couldn't be more than fourteen, but he
hadn't started screaming until they attacked the tender, intimate areas
of his body.
Appalled at first by what appeared to be a systematic interrogation of a
suspect Max had became more and more incensed as the torture
progressed and he had realized that it was simple sadism. The boy
knew nothing that the soldiers needed to know. They were amusing
themselves by inflicting pain on a helpless victim for the pleasure the
acts and his screams gave them.
