CHAPTER TWELVE
The three men left the Radium Beerhall. Nickolai Stanislov got into his VW Golf and went home. Michael Night gave the General a lift to his beautiful house in Hyde Park, a very wealthy suburb in Johannesburg, though a more accurate description of the General’s home would be to call it a mansion. Night opened the grand automatic gates to the General’s household with the remote Control that the General had given him some months before and drove up the long driveway, passing the tennis courts on his right hand side. Night pulled up to the imposing main entrance and the General got out and invited Night in for a night cap. Night politely refused and made his way home to his Spartan single man’s police flat in the Norwood Police Barracks.
He wanted the time alone. To drive and to hear the purr of his Lumina’s V8 on the almost empty Johannesburg streets while listening to Paul Van Dyk’s progressive trance tunes playing softly on the car’s audio system and process the precise junction in his life which he had now reached. He had taken on private jobs as a bodyguard and security contractor many times before. He had looked after politicians and celebrities, royalty and corporate giants, battered wives and threatened businessmen but he had always been able to put that work into a box, separate and secondary to his work as a police officer.
In his mind he was always a police officer first, then a contractor. But as life happens and as the years go by the realities of making money and building a future for himself and the people he loved were becoming more of a pressing matter. He too had dreams that he wanted to fulfil but on a South African Police Sergeant’s salary he could hardly afford to buy the extra tactical equipment he sometimes needed. Only since Night started to take on private jobs, through the General, was he able to enjoy the little luxuries in life, including the car he now drove. His beloved SS.
He had declared his extra money making activities to police national headquarters as is prescribed procedure for any permanent police officer and had permission granted to continue such activities. And until recently he was able to keep the two worlds separate but now things were changing for Michael Night, he could feel it.
In fact he had begun to feel a change in his heart over a year earlier while on patrol in the golf course suburb of Linksfield North. He had realised that day that there was very little, if any, economic balance in Johannesburg and that the divide between the haves and have nots was gargantuan. There he was sat in a police patrol Bakkie (pickup truck), commonly referred to as a “cheese-van” by members of the force because it is, for which no other words are adequate, a pathetic police vehicle, sat in the passenger seat with an R5 assault rifle between his legs with full level IIII body armour on, struggling to breathe and perspiring heavily from the sweltering 37 degree Celsius South African heat, protecting people who lived behind six foot walls and electric fencing, who owned three family vehicles and five bedroomed houses with swimming pools and tennis courts.
Yet the young student constable he was now training was on a salary of less than R3500 a month, about £300. That day, for some reason, it struck him how absurd the system was. And for the life of him he couldn’t understand why he didn’t tell the young student constable there and then to do something more lucrative with his life and explain that in this world no one pays to have a police officer protect them. And that ultimately making money is more important than saving lives, in this society, in the 21st century of greed and rapacious banks and bankers. Become a banker or a lawyer, he wanted to tell the aspiring officer, you may go to hell when you die and you may screw other people over while making your money but at least you will be able to provide for yourself and look after your family. He wanted to tell the young SC maybe you will even be able to live your dreams if you put down the badge and pick up the briefcase.
He didn’t though, because Michael Night loved what he did as a police officer, he loved protecting the weak and innocent from the strong and evil. That was true for most South African police officers and police officers from all over the world, they become policemen because it is more than just a job. Being a police officer is a calling. And in a better world it could have been the greatest job of all. Except in this realm money matters and how much of it you make, matters. And police officers, in South Africa at least, make no money at all – people living in the United Kingdom can make ten times as much money per month as a South African Constable just on hand outs, on benefits, without working, without saving lives and without serving anyone or anything except themselves.
Taking down uSathane under the World Net banner as a private security operative could be the official start of a transition from Law Enforcement Officer to Defence Contractor for Night. And under World Net he could start to finally earn enough money to begin to live his dreams, to travel the world and make a difference albeit clandestinely for he knew the General did not acquire his untold wealth through traditional means alone.
He knew the General was involved in Private Military Defence Contracts across the continent and had been instrumental in the downfall of more than one African dictator and the eradication of some of the most brutal insurgents in Africa. Night knew that the General was a predominant force in the war on terror in Africa.
What Stanislov didn’t know when he questioned Night earlier on in the evening was that Night himself had his own sources of Intelligence, how could he not, a large number of the men contracting throughout Africa were friends of his or friends of friends.
Night had also attended a number of dinner parties at the General’s residence where numerous members of the South African government had been present as well as the heads of state of over a dozen African countries. Nothing extraordinary was ever said at these black tie events, at which Night would actually work as a close protection operative when he needed the extra cash, under the General’s employ, although the General always preferred Night to attend as a guest. The predominant theme that Night always picked up was that of increasing Africa’s influence internationally through what he often heard referred to as “more modern means.”
The more immediate attraction of killing uSathane and his ZNA Platoon of disciples as a Contractor was the chance to do it as part of a unit of men that would truly be an ultimate fighting force. The members of Mike Romeo were all former 32 Battalion men.
32 Battalion was a special light infantry battalion of the South African Army, composed of black and white commissioned and enlisted personnel. It was also known as the Buffalo Battalion or The Terrible Ones, founded in 1975 by a Colonel in the South African Special Forces Brigade. It was disbanded on 26 March 1993 at the request of the African National Congress prior to the elections in 1994.
But the true pull for Michael Night would be to operate alongside men of the South African Police Special Task Force. After leaving the South African Army Commando Unit and joining the South African Police the one organisation that Night had desired joining or at least trying out for selection was the Special Task Force. The selection and training period was nine months.
Phase One is four weeks in duration and is designed to build stamina in the men, not a pointless exercise but to prepare already fit and healthy men, numbering around 20, who have been selected from around 500 applicants for their advanced fitness among other important attributes, for perhaps the most gruelling Special Forces selection phase on earth called Vasbyt, Afrikaans for BITE DOWN HARD.
This means marching the men for 200 kilometres or 125 miles over four days without sustenance or slumber, subjecting the wannabe Taakies to advanced sleep deprivation and incredible hunger while carrying 50 kilograms or 110 pounds on their shoulders by way of a chunk of railway track and chain and ball, purposely designed to be difficult to carry.
This for instance is in comparison to the British Army’s SAS Phase One Final Endurance test known as The Long Drag where the men are made to march 40 miles or 64 kilometres carrying a weight of 55 pounds or 25 kilograms. The hardest and strongest of the police officers who actually pass Vasbyt then undergo another seven
months of basic Task Force training and must take an advanced Special Forces course for a further three years before they are fully fledged members of the STF and are allowed to wear the Military Style police uniform and the highly coveted unit insignia.
By 2005 the reputation of the men of the South African Special Task Force as extreme combat operators had become well known globally and over 80 per cent of its active members had been recruited by private security companies and military contractors from all over the world to work in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
Night had been invited to try out for selection, a rare occurrence, by the Unit’s Commander Colonel Jacob Luthuli at the beginning of the year. He had respectfully declined the offer as he didn’t want to make the commitment. He didn’t want to pledge to another three years in the force, not at this point in his life, not with thoughts of travelling the world and moving to London forming in his mind and now with the opportunity to do so seemingly possible.
For the moment he relished the thought of working within the World Net element alongside his brothers Daniel Shaka and Nickolai Stanislov with men of the Police’s Special Task Force and the Army’s 32 Battalion. They would be a frightening proposition to any enemy anywhere in the world in any platform, urban, jungle or bush. And against uSathane in a desert battlefield that promised an old school colossal firefight, no heavy weaponry, no smart bombs, no planes, no unmanned drones or guided ballistic missiles, it would be a gunfight that made life worth living, in Night’s opinion, or indeed worth dying for.
Michael Night had made up his mind. He was in, all in. Against uSathane and ready to take on new challenges with the General and under the private firm of World Net.