If It's Thursday

. . . This must be a coup--oops!

As they boarded their flight in Swaziland last week, the burly young men in blazers, sports shirts and flannels looked every inch a South African rugby club off on a holiday to the Seychelles, the small (pop. 65,000), sun-drenched chain of islands off the East African coast. But soon after they arrived at Mahe's airport, their vacation plans went abruptly awry. When a surprised immigration official discovered a gun in one of the visitors' bags, the chap's companions whipped out automatic weapons. Obviously, this was no ordinary package tour. This was a coup, and the sportsmen were mercenaries hired to topple the left-wing regime of President Albert Rene.

After the mercenaries waged a 20-hour airport battle with government forces, the coup collapsed. Forty-four of the mercenaries escaped by hijacking an Air India Boeing 707 that had landed during the battle; the others were dead, arrested or in hiding. President Rene launched a nationwide man hunt and ordered all foreigners in the islands--including visiting U.S. Ambassador William Harrop--confined to their hotels.

The attackers--mostly said to be former members of Rhodesian and South African army units as well as a few Americans, Britons and other Europeans--were reportedly paid $1,000 and promised a further $10,000 if their mission was successful. It was unclear who put up the money. Rene, 46, who was established in power by a coup in 1977, has plenty of enemies. His Marxist leanings have embittered wealthy islanders and prompted two previous coup attempts.

This time the mercenaries planned to infiltrate Mahe after they landed and stage the coup later in the week, possibly as the first phase of a bigger operation involving local sympathizers and a back-up force of other mercenaries. But the premature Shootout left the scheme in shambles and the first wave of attackers stranded at the airport--until they captured the control tower and gave the Air India plane permission to touch down. The landing was nearly a disaster; the pilot just missed a Seychelles army truck parked on the runway and was forced to hop over another, which the plane did brush with a wing flap. "I'm afraid you have arrived at a most unfortunate moment," one of the mercenaries told the 79 startled passengers and crew on board as mortar and machine-gun fire blazed around them. "You'll just have to wait." Three hours later, the surviving soldiers of fortune, carrying the body of a dead comrade, trooped onto the plane and ordered it to fly to South Africa. Arrested upon landing at Durban, they now face prison terms of five to 30 years for hijacking. qed

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