Read The Soldier who Said No for Free Online Page A

could create his own exfiltration route. He slowly completed a set of stretching exercises while still lying down. The headache was worse when he moved. He quickly reviewed his options.
    Unlike prior operations which had always been directed by his Special Forces commanders, he had been sent on this deep infiltration mission by Military Intelligence in such secrecy that even his own unit was unaware of his whereabouts. According to their records, De Villiers and Lieutenant Jacques Verster were on annual leave.
    Exfiltration was always going to be problematic. The evacuation team would have to be despatched from Rundu an hour before the operation reached its climax. There would be a small window of about five to ten minutes before the FAPLA forces would be swarming all over their position.
    Before their selection for this operation, De Villiers and Verster had been paired on various missions for more than a year, sometimes just the two of them against the enemy and the elements, sometimes as part of a larger operation. The Recces usually worked in teams of two or twelve. They were men trained for special tasks deep inside enemy territory, but this time De Villiers and Verster had been briefed for something different, and it required their special talents. As members of 4 Reconnaissance Unit, they had received most of their training at Donkergat, a SpesOps unit in Langebaan. 4 Recce’s special expertise was in marine-based operations, but for this operation Verster and De Villiers were dropped deep into Southern Angola, north of a small town called Vila Nova Armada where, at the height of their own war in Angola, the Portuguese had established a small naval facility on the Cuito River to patrol the river north and south of the town and to ferry troops and machines of war across it.
    Verster and De Villiers had been sent to kill a man, a single soldier, a high-ranking terrorist, they had been told, who would be sent to inspire and motivate the FAPLA and SWAPO soldiers fighting in the south-eastern provinces of Angola.
    The men behind the scheme were expert in covert operations of a special kind. Their operations were often planned in distant, unimportant bases, far from the eyes and ears of the top brass in Pretoria. They did their dry runs on the secluded farms of sympathisers, or in abandoned city apartment blocks, always arriving in unmarked minibuses and dressed in mufti. They wore uniforms only when it was necessary for subterfuge. While they were in the pay of the regular army, their operations were neither official nor legal.
    De Villiers and Verster had reached their position in the early hours after midnight and had covered themselves with the camouflage provided by the shrubbery on the outskirts of the town. They were at the distant end of a broad and uneven airstrip that had been carved out of the bush. The town was without electricity and was situated at the opposite end of the airstrip. It could not be seen at night from where they were.
    Then they waited.
    Outwardly they presented as UNITA guerrillas, carrying the stock AK 47 assault rifles millions of soldiers use across continents, simple and reliable under field conditions, the brainchild of Mr Mikhail Kalashnikov. They had grown their beards and De Villiers had had his hair and beard dyed black. They carried no means of identification or any equipment, rations or clothing that could be traced back to South Africa. What little food they had had been vacuum sealed in plastic tubes like processed cheese, even their cooked maize porridge.
    They took turns to sleep. They watched the sunrise and drank from their water bottles and ate their sparse provisions. They watched through the spotter’s scope as the soldiers assembled in the town square. They knew it was time to set up their weapon.
    But they had not been told the name of their target. All they knew was that he would come to address the FAPLA soldiers they could now see as small as ants in the