Vortex

“No!” Taylor shouted. He sprinted toward the colonel. The personal consequences and discipline be damned. Discipline meant following lawful orders, not committing coldblooded murder at the whim of a madman.

He was still ten meters away when Reitz turned and saw him coming.

Pure hatred on his face, the Afrikaner swung his pistol in Taylor’s direction. Without thinking, he fumbled for his own sidearm as Reitz aimed and fired.

Automatically, he threw himself to the ground, thumb cocking the hammer of his own weapon. The pistol’s blinding flash and the crack of a bullet racing close overhead reached Taylor at almost the same instant. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hastings charging forward, and Reitz turned, drawing down on the running officer.

No! Taylor squeezed the trigger, something inside him seeming to leap out along with the bullet.

Reitz staggered back, agony on his face as bright-red blood spread across the chest of his uniform jacket. He tried to hold his aim on Hastings and failed. Then his legs folded and he crumpled to the grass. One hand clawed briefly at the sky and then fell back.

Hastings skidded to a stop and knelt beside the fallen Afrikaner.

Taylor rose to one knee, stunned by the speed with which he’d moved from officer to prisoner to mutineer. He wanted to stop and think, to understand what he had done, but there wasn’t time. He levered himself to his feet and ran toward Reitz, shouting, “Get an ambulance!”

It struck him as odd that nobody was calling for help for all the protestors who’d been shot, but that the colonel’s wounding brought an instant reaction from him.

Hastings laid the colonel’s head down on the ground.

“We don’t need an ambulance, Major.”

Taylor could see Reitz’s unseeing, open eyes and shuddered. But he didn’t feel ashamed, or even sorry. He’d killed before, in battle, and this felt no different. Reitz had been bent on murdering unarmed civilians, not because of what they had done, but because of who they were.

He looked from the corpse to find many of Hastings’s soldiers and all of

A Company’s officers surrounding him. One of the lieutenants, Kenhardt, said, “You’re in command now, Major. What are your orders?”

The other officers and noncoms nodded eagerly.

Again, Taylor had the sensation of being pulled along by events instead of shaping them. Was he in command? Despite shooting his own colonel? He shook his head, trying to clear it. Someone had to take charge. In the circumstances, the battalion’s senior captain would be a better choice-but that was Kloof. The crackle of automatic weapons fire drew his attention to the far side of the stadium. Kloof and his men were still shooting unarmed protestors.

Right, first things first. He grabbed the nearest enlisted man and ordered, “Tell Captain Kloof to cease fire and report back here on the double. Nothing more than that, understand?”

The private nodded and ran off.

Hastings looked troubled.

“Chris, that damned Afrikaner will just order you, me, and everyone else in reach arrested. We’d probably be shot after the kind of trial these people would give us. ” His junior officers nodded their agreement.

Taylor’s mind raced. These people, Hastings had said contemptuously. As though the men in Pretoria weren’t worth obeying. Well, was that so far off? Vorster, his cabinet cronies, and pet generals certainly weren’t the

Army and the government he’d sworn to serve. Everyone in authority seemed to have gone mad.

He shook his head. Hastings was right. Vorster’s Afrikaner fanatics would kill him, they’d kill Hastings, and anyone else who crossed their path.

And they would just keep on killing.

All right. He’d stopped Reitz from killing. Now he’d see how much more killing he could stop. Or start, he reminded himself. Crossing the line from personal disobedience to armed rebellion could not possibly be a bloodless journey. But perhaps it was a journey that should have been begun long ago, he thought, remembering all the wasteful violence and death he’d seen these past few months.

Taylor took a deep breath and nodded to Hastings.

“Form your troops,

Johnnie. I have new orders for them.”

Five minutes later, Kloof trotted up to see two soldiers carrying Reitz away, and A Company formed by platoons near its armored personnel carriers. Paramedics from neighboring hospitals were already moving slowly through heaped bodies outside the stadium-sorting the dead from the wounded and those who might live from those who would surely die.

He ran the last twenty meters to where Taylor waited.

“Good God, Major!

What’s happened to the colonel?”

It was the first time Taylor had ever seen the younger Afrikaner officer forget to salute.

The major nodded to Hastings, who silently walked away toward his waiting troops. Guiding Kloof by holding his upper arm, Taylor moved in the opposite direction.

“Unfortunately, Captain, Colonel Reitz was killed while attempting to commit murder.”

Kloof drew back in shock, able only to exclaim, “What?” and stare at him.