It was an ideal hiding place, blueprinted from some long-forgotten manual on guerrilla warfare. Marcus Somala, section leader of the African Army of Revolution, was proud of his handiwork. Two hours was all it had taken him the previous night to scoop out the spongy core of the tree and stealthily scatter the debris deep within the encircling brush. Once comfortably settled inside, he did not have to wait long for his concealment to pass its first test.

Shortly after dawn a black field-worker from the farm that Somala was

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observing wandered by, hesitated, and then relieved himself against the baobab. Somala watched, smiling inwardly. He felt an impulse to slip the blade of his long curved Moroccan knife out the sight hole and slice off the worker’s penis. The impulse was to Somala an amusing one, nothing more. He did not indulge himself with stupid actions. He was a professional soldier and a dedicated revolutionist, a seasoned veteran of nearly a hundred raids. He was proud to serve in the front line of the crusade to eradicate the last vestige of the Anglo cancer from the African continent.

Ten days had passed since he led his ten-man section team from their base camp in Mozambique over the border into Natal. They had moved only at night, skirting the known paths of the police security patrols and hiding in the bushveld from the helicopters of the South African Defence Force. It had been a grueling trek. The October spring in the Southern Hemisphere was unusually cool, and the underbrush seemed eternally clammy from constant rains.

When at last they had reached the small farming township of Umkono, Somala stationed his men according to the plan given him by his Vietnamese adviser. Each man was to scout a farm or military facility for five days, gathering information for future raids. Somala had assigned the Fawkes farm to himself.

After the field-worker had ambled off to begin his day’s labor, Somala refocused his binoculars and scanned the Fawkes spread. The majority of the cleared acreage, waging a constant battle against the encroaching sea of surrounding bush and grassland, was planted in sugarcane. The remainder was mostly pasture for small herds of beef and dairy cattle with a bit of tea and tobacco thrown in. There was also a garden plot behind the main house, containing vegetables for the personal consumption of the Fawkes family.

A stone barn was used to store the cattle feed and crop fertilizers. It stood apart from a huge shed that covered the trucks and farm equipment. A quarter of a mile beyond, situated beside a meandering stream, was a compound that housed a community of what Somala guessed to be nearly fifty workers and their families, along with their cattle and goats.