Hyena Dawn Read Online Free PDF

it coming to them.
    Then, that evening, late in the summer months of 1978, as Rayne lay asleep in the Livingstone Hospital, Rhodesia’s largest fuel depot exploded in a mountain of flame. Millions of dollars- worth of fuel lit up the Salisbury evening sky in a danse macabre of light and explosions - fuel that was beleagured Rhodesia’s most precious resource, paid for with hard-earned foreign currency.
     
    Looking at the newspaper the next morning, Rayne itched to be in action again. Whatever happened, the country could not be allowed to fall into a state of anarchy. Most Rhodesians had already reaped a bitter harvest from the conflict. Sons, fathers, brothers, lovers, husbands killed in action or maimed by landmines. The women were sick of a war that never seemed to end.
    Rayne was sure Ian Smith had realised that a negotiated settlement was the only answer to the problem. The objective must now be no longer to preserve white majority rule but rather to find a way to protect white rights in a black democracy. Rayne wondered how the soldiers on both sides would manage to make the difficult transition from war to peace.
    He turned round to see Major Martin Long walking towards him. A military man in his late thirties, Long had made his name in the SAS and then the Selous Scouts. He was a front-line man. The black hair, hard face and Scots accent caused many people to mistake him for the film actor Sean Connery. He had a magnetic quality, an intensity that radiated from his probing dark eyes.
    ‘ Good to see you, sir.’ Rayne extended his right hand, relishing the freedom of movement now that the straps had been removed. Long’s iron-hard grip matched his own.
    ‘ Cut the regimental crap, Rayne. How the hell are you, you desperate bugger?’
    ‘ Well, they’ve cut me loose.’
    ‘ Yes, I heard you were a wee bother at the start. You’re well, though?’
    Long was sizing him up for something, he was sure of it.
    ‘ Well as a man can be who’s been kept in hospital against his will. I’ll be out next week, even if I have to take on Nurse Thrash hand-to-hand. But enough of that. The fuel depot going up, that must have hit us pretty badly?’
    ‘ The crafty sons of bitches. It was a masterstroke, a Soviet- backed operation. Excellent penetration of security. Minimum loss of life, maximum effect on our morale. Yes, it’s bad, laddie.
    We keep telling everyone we can keep them out of Salisbury, but the terrs have shown us up. We are the guerillas now in our own guerilla war.’ He sighed. ‘The average bloke isn’t looking for anarchy. He’s looking to win this war, and from where I sit that looks pretty bloody impossible.’
    Rayne could sense the tiredness in Long’s voice. Only someone who knew him well would have noticed it. The words etched themselves into Rayne’s brain: ‘We are the guerillas in our own guerilla war’. It echoed his own thoughts. He had become the enemy.
    ‘ Och, Rayne. Don’t look at me like that. I’m sorry about what happened to you, but it proves I was right to believe in you. You’d never have got the captain’s rank unless they thought you could handle a situation like that. Death is something you deal with personally. Each of us will walk away from this with something we didn’t want, and we’ll have to live with it.
    ‘ My father’s an army man, a good Scot. He was in the infantry in the Second World War. He once told me that the saddest part of the war was coming home victorious. He saw the jubilation in the eyes of my mother, the looks of adulation from the women who knew he’d been decorated for bravery - and who could blame them? But he and his men carried a sadness in their souls; the thought of their friends who wouldn’t be coming back. The paradox is, they’d have gone back to fight for the same cause again. That’s what being a good soldier is all about.’
    ‘ This is a bit different from the Second World War, though, sir.’
    ‘ Hear me out, you impetuous