Shooting Butterflies Read Online Free Page A

magazine. Each man had plenty of extra ammunition in spare magazines along with grenades in his chest webbing, a bayonet, and a .9mm pistol holstered on his belt.
    Shilo looked around. They were all dressed in East German ‘rice-flecked’ pattern shirts and trousers, the standard issue of theMozambique People’s Liberation Forces, so they looked exactly like any other Mozambique soldier would. Their disguise was perfect.
    He knew his black skin shone at night, so he’d applied plenty of the camo cream the white men in his unit slathered over their faces to try to look as black as he did. But they failed. Their eyes always gave away that they were white men. Nothing would ever dim the blueness from Sergeant Riley’s eyes. He noticed Sergeant Riley pull his bush hat lower over his eyes as if he was thinking the same thing.
    The brief for their original mission had been a strike on a building that was being used as an ammunition depot. But on entering the plane, a new captain had joined them. He was from the Psychological Operations Unit – PSYOPS, as everyone referred to them, or, as they called themselves, POU.
    Shilo knew they were in for a different mission now. It was common knowledge that the main emphasis of PSYOPS was to cause confusion in the black populations and undermine their morale so much that they would be unwilling to fight against the Rhodesians, and even further, be encouraged to defect from any communist groups they found themselves sympathetic towards.
    He frowned as he listened to the changes to their original orders.
    â€˜â€¦ they must never try to re-form here again,’ Captain Kirchman Potgieter was saying.
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ the company said together, but Shilo had missed the beginning of his orders.
    â€˜Anyone addressing me as captain or sir from now on gets his nose broken. You’ll only address me as Buffel.’
    The men remained silent. The reputation of the mad PSYOPS Unit had preceded him. They would obey.
    â€˜Your final objective after the raid on the training camp is to round up the survivors. Then and only then do you assemble back at the vlei for helicopter retrieval. No one will stay at the school while I finish up. You will wait for me at the vlei before you take off and return to base. Understood?’
    â€˜Yes, Buffel,’ the company said. But that didn’t mean they liked it.
    Just having the PSYOPS captain along on the mission made Shilo’s stomach lurch. The man was up to something, and it wasn’t above board.
    â€˜Remember ZANLA is using this school as a guerrilla training camp,’ Buffel said.
    Shilo had participated in previous cross-border raids into both Mozambique and Zambia. Many of those attacks had been on training camps such as this one. They were usually performed successfully. But judging by the coordinates of this school, the camp had been moved deep into Mozambique’s interior in the hope the Rhodesian forces would not follow.
    The gooks were wrong. The Rhodesian forces were there to take it down, which was nothing out of the ordinary, but the big difference was having a PSYOPS captain with them.
    Shilo smelled a rat. They were being lied to.
    He looked at Buffel. The man was huge, even as white man standards went. His shorts were cut shorter than regulation, the pockets sticking out below the hems, hanging against his hairy legs that he’d covered in blotchy patterns with camo cream. He wore veldskoene and no socks. His shirt was camo, like his pants, and bore no insignia. His green combat vest wasn’t like any Shilo had seen before. It sat tight around him and had more pockets than army issue. He carried an oversized cargo bag, which wasn’t usual for someone to jump with, and the bag was attached to him at all times, as if he couldn’t bear to be without it. His beard, wiry and wild, covered most of his face and only beady brown eyes could be seen between the blackness smeared onto