Alternities by Michael P. Kube-McDowell Read Free Book Online

Fria and skimming the desolate salt pans, dunes, and bare rock of western Etosha.
    Presently the spectacular eight-thousand foot mass of the Brandberg, thrust upward out of the plain like a granite invader from a world below, slid past out the left-hand windows. Then it was dead east by compass across the Namib Desen, to avoid the South African enclave at Walvis Bay and the string of tiny towns along the railroad which ran northeast into Damarland.
    West of Okombahe, the Angolan pilot took his plane off the deck, climbing a thousand feet above the hardveld until he had spotted the dry bed of the Omaruru River. For nearly five minutes, they were on the radar at Rooikop Airfield, and possibly at Windhoek as well.
    That was the most nervous time for the lone passenger, a moustachioed white man who wore khaki shorts like a tourist and never initiated a conversation except with an order. The name he used was Kendrew, though it was understood that it was not his real name. Real names were for realities which contained morning newspapers and traffic jams.
    Kendrew knew that there were no military aircraft based at either field and that the plane would not linger long enough for the supersonic interceptors from Cape Town to hunt it down. But still, he worried. It was exposure, and Kendrew hated exposure like a finicky housewife hates water spots on the crystal. Even when the flaw went unnoticed, it irked him that he had not found a way to eliminate it.
    Suddenly there was the truck, sitting square in the middle of the riverbed less than a mile ahead. A half-dozen Freedom Now soldiers milled about near it. One of them would be Xhumo.
    The pilot buzzed the truck playfully, dipping down until the plane roared by a mere dozen feet above the canvas canopy. Then he brought the high-wing Fokker around in a tight turn, scanning for the markers the guerrillas had laid out across the ground for him. The landing seemed to take forever, the Fokker floating down, crabbing in a crosswind, flaring.
    Then the wheels touched, the cabin bounced, and the drone of the engines waned for the first time since Baia dos Tigres. It was replaced by the noise of the FN truck roaring up out of the wash to chase down and draw alongside the plane.
    Kendrew bounded out of the cabin, but neither Xhumo nor his men needed direction. The plane’s crowded cargo area was unloaded with brisk efficiency: eight long boxes containing French automatic rifles, twenty cases of ammunition, and the treasure—three crates containing a dozen American-made shoulder-launched antiarmor rockets.
    The Buzzsaw launchers had been a special request, with a special target—South Africa’s deep-water port facilities at Walvis Bay. Loss of the port would add to the pressure already created by raids on the Luderitz-Port Elizabeth railway and Upington road. Already sentiment was growing in Johannesburg for abandoning the half-century trusteeship of the old German protectorate. Let them go, went the thinking. There’s nothing there worth this much fighting. Let them have it.
    When that happened—and Kendrew thought inevitably it must—the FN could focus their efforts on the real prize, toppling the Soviet-backed white government of South Africa. For the black majority it was a war of liberation. For the United States it was a chance to regain access to the awesome mineral resources capricious Nature had hidden in the tip of the African continent.
    “You understand that you have to crack the storage tank,” Kendrew said to Xhumo when the unloading was done, “or the fuel won’t burn. Go for the kerosene first. HE, HE, then incendiary. Save the antiarmor rounds for the motor pool.”
    “Many thanks. Soon we give a party in Walvisbaai,” Xhumo said, his smile a yellow crease across his face. “You tell President Robinson he is invited.”
    Kendrew grunted. “You throw a party in Johannesburg, and I promise you he’ll come.”
Washington, D.C, The Home Alternity
    Peter Arnold Robinson