Текст книги "The Angels Weep"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Текущая страница: 34 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

Roland wore full-dress uniform. the maroon beret with Bazo's head cap-badge, the colonel's crowns on his shoulders, the silver cross for valour on his breast, white gloves on his hands and the gilt and tasselled sword at his waist.

In his simple police uniform, Craig felt gauche and drab, like a sparrow beside a golden eagle, like a tabby cat beside a leopard, and the waiting seemed to go on for ever. Through it all, Craig clung to a hopeless notion that it was still not going to happen that was the only way he could hold his despair at bay.

Then there was the triumphant swell of the bridal march, and down both sides of the carpeted aisle from the house, the crowds stirred and hummed with excitement and anticipation. Craig felt his soul begin the final plunge into cold and darkness, he could not bring himself to look around. He stared straight ahead at the face of the priest. He had known him since childhood, but now he seemed a stranger, his face swam and wavered in Craig's vision.

Then he smelled Janine, even over the scent of the altar flowers he recognized her perfume, and he almost choked on the memories it evoked. He felt the train of her dress brush against his ankle, and he moved back slightly and turned so that he could see her for the last time.

She was on her father's arm. The veil covered her hair, and misted her face, but beneath its soft folds, he could see her eyes, those great slanted eyes, the dark indigo of a tropical sea, shining softly as she looked up at Roland Ballantyne.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this church, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony-" Now Craig could not take his eyes from her face. She had never looked so lovely. She wore a crown of fresh Violets, the exact colour of her eyes. He still hoped that it would not happen, that something would prevent it.

"Therefore if any man can show any just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak-" He wanted to call out, to stop it. He wanted to shout, "I love her, she is mine," but his throat was so dry and painful that he could not draw breath enough through it. Then, it was happening.

"I, Roland Morris, take thee, Janine Elizabeth, to have and to hold from this day forward-" Roly's voice was clear and strong and it raked Craig's soul to its very depths. After that, nothing else mattered. Craig seemed to be standing a little away from it all, as though all the laughter and joy was on the other side of a glass partition, the voices were strangely muted, even the light seemed dulled as though a cloud had passed across the sun.

He watched from the back of the crowd, standing under the jacaranda trees, while Janine came out onto the veranda still carrying her bouquet Of violets, dressed in her blue going-away ensemble. She and Roland were still hand in hand, but now he lifted her onto a table-top and there were feminine shrieks of excitement as Janine poised to toss her bouquet.

In that moment, she looked over their heads, and saw Craig. The smile stayed on her lovely wide mouth, but something moved in her eyes, a dark shadow, perhaps of pity, perhaps even regret, then she threw the bouquet, one of her bridesmaids caught it, and Roland swept her down and away. Hand in hand, the two of them ran down the lawns to where the helicopter waited with its rotor already turning. They ran laughing, Janine clutching her wide brimmed straw hat, and Roland trying to shield her from the storm of confetti that swirled around them.

Craig did not wait for the machine to bear them away. He returned to where he had left the old Land-rover at the back of the stables. He drove back to the yacht. He stripped off his uniform, threw it onto the bunk, and pulled on a pair of silk jogging shorts. He went into the galley and from the refrigerator hooked out a can of beer. Sipping the froth, he went back into the saloon. A loner all his life, he had believed himself immune to the tortures of loneliness, and now he knew he had been mistaken.

By this time there was a stack of over fifty exercise books upon the saloon table, each of them filled from cover to cover with his pencilled scrawl. He sat down and selected a pencil from the bunch stuck into an empty coffee mug like porcupine quills. He began to write, and slowly the corrosive agony of loneliness receded and became merely a slow dull ache.

On Monday morning, when Craig walked into police headquarters, on his way through to the armoury, the member-in-charge called him into his office.

"Craig, I've got movement papers for you. You are being detached on special assignment." What is it?" "Hell, I don't know. I just work here. Nobody tells me anything, but you are ordered to report to the area commander, Wankie, on twenty-eighth-" The inspector broke off and studied Craig's face. "Are you feeling okay, Craig?" "Yes, why do you ask?" "You are looking bloody awful." He considered for a few moments. "I tell you what, if you sneak away from here on the twenty-fifth, you could give yourself a couple of days" break before reporting to your new assignment." "You are the only star in my firmament, George." Craig grinned lopsidedly, and thought to himself, "That's all I need, three days with nothing to do but feel sorry for myself." The Victoria Falls Hotel is one of those magnificent monuments to the great days of Empire. Its walls are as thick as those of a castle, but painted brilliant white. The floors are of marble, with sweeping staircases and colonnaded porticos, the ceilings are cathedral-high with fancy plaster-work and gently revolving fans. The terraces and lawns stretch down to the very brink of the aby's through which the Zambezi river boils in all its fury and grandeur, Spanning the gorge is the delicate steel tracery of the arched bridge of which Cecil Rhodes ordered, "I want the spray from the falls to wet my train as it passes on its way to the north." The spray hangs in a perpetual snowy mantle over the chasm, twisting and folding upon itself as the breeze picks at it, and always there is the muted thunder of falling water like the sound of storm surf heard from afar.

When David Livingstone, the missionary explorer, first stood on the edge of the gorge and looked down into the sombre sunless depths, he said, "Sights such as these must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight." The Livingstone suite, which looks out upon this view, was named after him.

One of the black porters who carried up their luggage told Janine proudly, "King Georgey slept here and Missy Elizabeth, who is now the queen, with her sister Margaret when they were little girls." Roly laughed. "Hell, what was good enough for King Georgey!" and he grossly overtipped the grinning porters and fired the cork from the bottle of champagne that waited for them in a silver ice-bucket.

They walked hand in hand along the enchanted path beside the Zambezi river, while the timid little spotted bushbuck scuttled away into the tropical undergrowth and the vervet monkeys scolded them from the tree-tops. They ran laughing hand in hand through the rain forests, under the torrential downpour of falling spray, Janine's hair melted down her face, and their sodden clothing clung to their bodies.

When they kissed, standing on the edge of the high cliff, the rock trembled under their feet and the turmoil of air displaced by the volume of tumbling water buffeted them and flung the icy spray into their faces.

They cruised on the placid upper reaches of the river in the sunset, and they chartered a light aircraft to fly over the serpentine coiling and uncoiling gorge in the noon, and Janine clung to Roland in delicious vertigo as they skimmed the rocky lip of the gorge. They danced to the African steel band, under the stars, and the other guests who recognized Roland's uniform watched them with pride and affection.

"One of Ballantyne's Scouts," they told each other, "they are very special, the Scouts." And they sent wine to their table in the manorial dining-room to mark their appreciation.

Roland and Janine lay late in bed in the mornings and had their breakfast sent up to them. They played tennis and Roland lobbed his service and returned to her forehand. They lay in the sunlight beside the Olympic-sized pool and anointed each other with sun cream In their brief bathing suits they were magnificently healthy clean young animals, and so obviously in love that they seemed charmed and set apart. In the evenings they sat under the umbrella spread of the great trees on the terrace and drank Pimms No. I cup, and experienced a marvelous sense of defiance in flaunting themselves to the full view of their mortal enemies on the far side of the gorge.

Then one day at dinner, the manager stopped at their table.

"I understand that you are leaving us tomorrow, Colonel Ballantyne. We shall miss you both." "Oh no!" Janine shook her head laughingly. "We are staying until the twenty-sixth." "Tomorrow is the twenty-sixth, Mrs. Ballantyne." he head porter had all their luggage piled at the hotel entrance and Roland was settling their bill. Janine waited for him under the portico. Suddenly she started as she recognized the battered old open Lan dRover that swung in through the gates, and parked in one of the open slots at the end of the lot.

Her first reaction, as she watched the familiar gawky figure untangle his long legs and flick the hair out of his eyes as he climbed out, was quick anger.

"He's come on purpose," she thought. "Just to try and spoil it all." Craig came ambling towards her with his hands thrust into his pockets, but when he was less than a dozen paces from where she stood, he recognized her and his confusion was obviously unfeigned.

Jan, he blushed furiously. "Oh my God, I didn't know you'd be here." She felt her anger recede. "Hello, Craig dear. No, it was a secret, until now." "I'm so dreadfully sorry-" "Don't be, we are leaving anyway."

"Sonny boy," Roland came out of the doorway behind Janine and went to throw a brotherly arm around Craig's shoulders. "You are ahead of time. How are you?" "You knew I was coming?" Craig looked even more confused.

"I knew," Roland admitted, "but not so soon. You were supposed to report on the twenty-eighth." "George gave me a couple of days." Since that first startled exchange, Craig had not looked at Janine again. "I thought I would spend them here." "Good boy, you will need the rest.

You and I are going to be doing a bit of work together. I tell you what, Sonny, let's have a quick drink. I'll explain it to you some of it anyway." "Oh, darling," Janine cut in swiftly, "we don't have time. I'll miss the flight." She could not bear the hurt and confusion in Craig's eyes another moment.

"Darn it, I suppose you are right." Roland checked his watch.

"It will have to keep until I see you the day after tomorrow, Sonny," and at that moment the airways" bus drove into the hotel driveway.

Roland and Janine were the only passengers in the mini-bus out to the airport.

"Darling, when will I see you again?" "Look, I can't say for sure, Bugsy, that depends on so many things." "Will you telephone me or write even?" "You know I can't." "I know, but I will be at the flat, just in case." "I wish you would go out to live at Queen's Lynn that's where you belong now." "My job." "The hell with your job. Ballantyne wives don't work." "Well, see here, Colonel, sir, this Ballantyne wife is going on working until-" "Until?" he asked.

"Until you give me something better to do." "Like what?" "Like a baby." "Is that a challenge?" "Oh please, Colonel, sir, do take it as one." At the airport there was a cheerfully rowdy young crowd, all the men in uniform, come to see the aircraft leave. Most of them knew Roland and they plied him and Janine with drinks. It made the last minutes more bearable. Then suddenly they were standing at the gate and the air hostess was calling for boarding.

"I shall miss you so,"Janine whispered. "I shall pray for you."

He kissed her and held her so fiercely that she almost lost her breath.

"I love you, "Roland said. "You never said that before." "No," he agreed. "Not to anybody before. Now, go, woman before I do something stupid." She was the last in the straggling line of passengers that climbed the boarding-ladder into the elderly Viscount aircraft parked on the hard stand. She wore a white blouse with a daffodil-yellow skirt and flat sandals. There was a matching yellow scarf around her hair and a sling-bag over her shoulder. In the doorway of the aircraft at the top of the boarding-ladder, she looked back, shading her eyes as she searched for Roland, and when she found him she smiled and waved and then stepped through the fuselage door.

The door closed and the boarding-ladder wheeled away. The Rolls-Royce Dart turbo-prop engines whined and fired, and the silver Viscount, with the flying Zimbabwe bird emblem on its tail, taxied downwind to its holding point.

Cleared for take-off, it lumbered back down the runway, and climbed slowly into the air. Roland watched it bank onto its southerly heading for Bulawayo, and then went back into the airport building, showed his pass to the guard at the door and climbed the steps to the control tower.

"What can we do for you, Colonel?" the assistant controller at the flight planning desk greeted him.

"I am expecting a helicopter flight coming in from Wankie to pick me up–" "Oh, you are Colonel Ballantyne yes, we have your bird on the plot. They were airborne twelve minutes ago. They will be here in an hour and ten minutes." While they were talking, the flight-controller at the picture windows was speaking quietly with the pilot of the departing Viscount.

"You are cleared to standard departure, unrestricted climb fifteen thousand feet. Over now to Bulawayo approach on "18 comma six.

Goodday!" "Understand standard departure unrestricted climb to flight level-" The pilot's calm, almost bored voice broke off and the side-band hummed for a few seconds. Then the voice came back crackling with urgency. Roland spun away from the flight planning desk, and strode to the controller's console. He gripped the back of the controller's chair and through the tall windows stared up into the sky.

The high fair-weather clouds were already turning pink with the oncoming sunset, but the Viscount was out of sight, somewhere out there in the south. Roland's face was hard and terrible with anger and fear, as he listened to the pilot's voice grating out of the radio speakers.

"The portable surface-to-air missile-launcher, designated SAM-7, is a crude-looking weapon almost indistinguishable from the bazooka anti-tank rocket launcher of World War II. It looks like a five-foot section of ordinary drainpipe, but the exhaust end is slightly flared into the mouth of a funnel. At the point of balance, there is a shoulder-plate below the barrel and an aiming and igniting device like a small portable AM radio set attached to the upper surface of the barrel.

The weapon is operated by two men. The loader simply places the missile in the exhaust breech of the barrel and, making sure the fins engage the slots, pushes it forward until its rim engages the electrical terminals and locks it into the firing-position. The missile weighs a little less than ten kilos. It has the conventional rocket shape, but in the front of the nose cone is an opaque glass eye, behind which is located the infra-red sensor. The tail-fins are steerable, enabling the rocket to lock onto and follow a moving target.

The gunner settles the barrel across his shoulder, places the earphones on his head, and switches, on the power pack In the earphones he hears the cyclic tone of his audio-warning. He tunes this down below the background infra-red count, so that it is no longer audible.

The weapon is now loaded and ready to fire. The gunner searches out his target through the cross-hatched gun-sight. As soon as an infra-red source is detected by the missile's sensor, the audio warning begins to sound and a tiny red bulb lights up in the eye-piece of the gun-sight to confirm that the missile is "locked-on. It remains only for the gunner to press the trigger in the pistol-type grip and the missile launches itself in relentless pursuit of its prey, steering itself to track it accurately through any turns or changes of altitude.

Tungata Zebiwe had held his cadre in position for four days.

Apart from himself, there were eight of them and he had chosen each of them with extreme care. They were all veterans of proven courage and determination, but, more importantly, they were all of superior intelligence and capable of operating under their own initiative.

Every one of them had been trained in the use of the SAM-7 missile launcher in both roles of loader and gunner, and each of them carried one of the finned missiles in addition to their AK 47 assault rifles, and the usual complement of grenades and AP mines. Any two of them could make the attack, and had been thoroughly briefed to do so.

The wind direction would dictate the departure track of any aircraft leaving the main runway of Victoria Falls airport. Wind velocity would also affect the aircraft's altitude as it passed over any specific point on the extended centre-line and crosswind legs of its outward track. Fortunately for Tungata's calculations, the prevailing northeasterly wind had been blowing at a steady fifteen knots during the entire four days in which they had been in position.

He had chosem a small kopje, thickly wooded enough to give them good cover, but not so thick that it impeded the view over the surrounding tree-tops. From the peak in the early mornings, before the heat-haze and dust thickened, Tungata had been able to see the stationary silver cloud of spray that marked the Victoria Falls on the northern horizon.

Each afternoon they had practised the attack drill. Half an hour before the expected time of departure of the scheduled Viscount flight from Victoria Falls to Bulawayo, Tungata had moved them into position. six men in a ring below the summit to guard against surprise attack by security forces, and three men above them in the actual attack group.

Tungata himself was the gunner, and his loader and backup loader had both been chosen for the acuteness of their hearing and the sharpness of their eyesight. On each of the three preceding afternoon drills, they had been able to hear the turbo-prop Rolls-Royce Dart engines minutes after takeoff. They were in climb power-setting, and the whine was distinctive, it drew the eye to the tiny crucifix shape of the aircraft against the blue.

On the first afternoon, the Viscount had climbed almost directly over their kopje, at not more than eight thousand feet in altitude, and Tungata had locked on and tracked it until it passed out of sight and then out of hearing. The second afternoon the aircraft had passed at about the same altitude, but five miles to the east of their position.

That was extreme range for the missile. The audio-signal had been weak and intermittent, and the lock-on -bulb had glowed only fitfully.

Tungata had to admit to himself that an attack would probably have failed. The third day the Viscount had been east of them again, three miles out. It would have been a good kill, so that the odds seemed to be about two to one in their favour.

This fourth day he moved the attack team into position on the summit fifteen minutes early, and tested the SAM launcher by aiming it at the lowering sun. It howled in his ears at the excitation of that immense infra-red source. Tungata switched off the power pack and they settled down to wait, all their faces lifted to the sky.

His loader glanced at his wristwatch and murmured, "They are late." Tungata hissed at him viciously. He knew they were late, and already the doubts were crowding in flight delayed or cancelled, even a leak in their own security, the kanka might already be on their way.

"Listen!" said his loader, and seconds later he heard it also, the faint whistling whine in the northern sky.

"Ready!" he ordered, and settled the shoulder-plate into position and switched on the power pack The audio-warning had been pre-set, but he checked it again.

"Load!"he said. He felt the missile go into the breech and weight the barrel slightly tail-heavy. He heard the clunk of the rim seating itself against the terminals.

"Loaded!"his No. 2 confirmed and tapped his shoulder. He traversed left and right, making certain he was firmly settled, and his loader spoke again. "Nansi! There!" He extended his arm over Tungata's left shoulder, and pointed upwards with his forefinger.

Tungata searched, and then caught the high silver spark as the sunlight reflected off burnished metal.

"Target identified!" he said, and heard his two loaders move aside softly to avoid the backblast of the rocket.

The tiny speck grew swiftly in size, and Tungata saw that it was tracking to pass less than half a mile to the west of the hillock, and that it was at least a thousand feet lower than it had been on the preceding afternoons. It was in a perfect position for attack. He picked it up in the cross, wires of the gun-sight, and the missile howled lustfully in his earphones, a wicked sound like a wolf-pack hunting at full moon. The missile had sensed the infra-red burn from the exhausts of the Rolls-Royce engines. In the gun-sight the lock-on bulb burned like a fiery red Cyclops" eye, and Tungata pressed the trigger.

There was a stunning whoosh of sound, but almost no recoil from the weapon across his shoulder as it exhausted through the funnel vent in the rear. He was enveloped for micro-seconds in white fumes and whirling dust, but when they were whipped away by their own velocity, he saw the little silver missile going upwards into the blue on the feather of its own rocket vapours. It was like a hunting falcon bating from the gloved fist, going up to tower above its quarry. Its speed was dazzling, so that it seemed to dwindle miraculously into nothingness, and there was only the faint drumming rumble of its rocket-burn.

Tungata knew that there was no time for a second launch. By the time they could re-load, the Viscount would be well out of range.

They stared up at the tiny shiny aircraft and the seconds seemed to flow with the slow viscosity of honey.

Then there was a little flick of liquid silver that distorted the perfect cruciform of the aircraft's wing profile. It popped open like a ripe cotton pod, and the Viscount seemed to lurch and yaw, then steady again. Seconds later they heard the crack of the strike to confirm what they had seen, and a hoarse roar of triumph burst up out of Tungata Zebiwe's throat.

As he watched, the Viscount banked into a gentle turn, then abruptly something large and black detached itself from the port wing, and fell away towards the earth. The aircraft dropped its nose sharply, and the engine noise rose into a shrill wild whine.

Standing in the control tower, staring out through the floor-to-ceiling non-reflective glass window into the mellow evening sky, and listening to the rapid tense exchanges between the flight controller and the Viscount pilot, Roland Ballantyne was held in a paralysing-vice of helplessness and rage.

"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Viscount 782, do you copy, tower?" "Viscount 782, what is the nature of your emergency?" "We have taken a missile strike on our port engine housing. We are engine out."

"Viscount 782, I query your assessment." The pilot's tension and stress flared. "Damn you, tower, I was in "Nam. It's a SAM hit, I tell you.

I have activated -the fire-extinguishers and we still have control. I am initiating a one hundred and eighty-degree turn!" "We will have all emergency standby here, Viscount 782. What is your position?" "We are eighty nautical miles outbound." The pilot's voice cracked. "Oh God!

The port engine has gone. It's fallen clean out of her." There was a long silence. They knew the pilot was fighting for control of the crippled machine, fighting the asymmetrical thrust of the remaining engine which was trying to flip the Viscount over into a graveyard spiral, fighting the enormous weight transfer caused by the loss of the port engine. In the cOntrol tower they were all frozen in silent agony, and then the radio speaker crackled and croaked. "Rate of descent three thousand feet a minute. Too fast. I can't hold her. We are going in. Trees, too fast. Too many trees. This is it! Oh mother, this is it!" Then there was no more.

In the control tower Roland sprang back to the flight planning desk, and snapped at the assistant controller. "Rescue helicopters!"

"There's only one helicopter within three hundred miles. That's your one coming in from Wankie." "The only one, are you sure?" "They have all been pulled out for a special op. in the Vumba mountains, yours is the only one in this zone." "Get me in touch with it," he ordered, and took the microphone from the controller as soon as contact was established.

"This is Ballantyne, we have lost a Viscount with forty-six crew and passengers, "he said.

"I copied the transmissions," the helicopter pilot answered.

"You are the only rescue vehicle, what is your ETA?" "I'm fifty minutes out." "What personnel do you have aboard?" "I have Sergeant-Major Gondele and ten troopers." Roland had planned to rehearse night jump-landings during the return to Wankie. Gondele and his Scouts would be in full combat gear, and they would have Roland's personal pack and weapons aboard.

"I'll be waiting on the tarmac for your pick-up. We will have a doctor with us, , he said. "This is Cheetah One standing by." Janine Ballantyne had the aisle seat, in the second last row on the port side of the Viscount. In the window seat was a teenage girl with braces on her teeth and her hair in pigtails. The girl's parents were in the seats directly in front of her.

"Did you go to the crocodile farm?" she demanded of Janine.

"We didn't get around to it,"Janine admitted.

"They have got a huge big croc there, he's five metres long. They call him Big Daddy," the girl bur bled

The Viscount had stabilized in its climb attitude, and the seatbelt lights went out. From the seat behind Janine the blue-uniformed hostess stood up and went forward along the aisle.

Janine glanced across the aisle, across the two empty seats, through the Perspex porthole. The lowering sun was a big sullen red ball, wearing a moustache of purple cloud. The forest roof was a sea of dark green that spread away in all directions below them, its monotony broken by an occasional pimple of higher ground.

"My daddy bought me a T-shirt with Big Daddy on it, but it's in my case-" There was a shattering crash, a great swirling silver cloud obscured the portholes, and the Viscount lurched so wildly that Janine was hurled painfully against her safety-belt. The air hostess was flung upwards against the roof of the cabin, and she fell back like a broken doll and lay twisted across the back of one of the empty seats.

There was a cacophony of shrieks and screams from the passengers and the girl clung desperately to Janine's arm, shrilling incoherently.

The cabin tilted sharply but smoothly as the aircraft banked, and then suddenly the Viscount plunged forward and swung viciously from side to side.

The safety-belt held Janine in her seat, but it felt like an insane roller-coaster ride down the sky. Janine leaned over and hugged the child to try and still her piercing screams. Although her head was being whipped from side to side, Janine got a glimpse out of the porthole, and saw the horizon turning like the spokes of a spinning-wheel, and it made her feel giddy and nauseated. Then abruptly she focused on the silver wing of the aircraft below her.

Where the streamlined engine-nacelle had been was a ragged hole.

Through it she could see the fluffy roof of the forest. The torn wing was flexing and twisting, she could see the wrinkles appearing in the smooth metal skin. Her ears were popping and creaking with the violent pressure-change, and the trees were rushing towards her in a sombre green blur.

She tore the child's arms from around her neck and forced her head down into her own lap. "Hold your knees," she shouted. "Keep your face down." And she did herself what she had ordered.

Then they hit, and there was a deafening rending, roaring, crashing tumult. She was flung mercilessly about in her seat, tumbled and battered, blinded and stunned and hammered by flying pieces of debris.

It seemed to go on for ever. She saw the roof above her clawed away and blinding sunlight struck her for an instant. Then it was gone, and something hit her across one shin. Clearly, above all the other sounds, she heard her own bone break, and the pain shot up her spine into her skull. End over end she was hurled, and then another blow in the back of the neck and her vision exploded into shooting sparks of light through a black singing void.

When she recovered consciousness, she was still in her seat, but hanging upside down from her safety-strap. Her face felt engorged with the blood that had flowed into it, and her vision wavered and swam like a heat mirage. Her head ached. It felt as though a red-hot nail was being driven into the centre of her forehead with a sledgehammer.

She twisted slowly, and saw that her broken leg was hanging down in front of her face, the toe pointing where the heel should have been.

"I will never walk again," she thought, and the horror of it braced her. She reached for the release on the buckle of her safety-belt, and then remembered how many necks are broken from a release in the upside-down position. She hooked her elbow through the arm of her seat, and then lifted the release. Her hold on the seat flipped her as she fell and she landed on her hip with her broken leg twisted under her. The pain was too much and she lost consciousness again.

It must have been hours later that she woke again for it was almost dark. The silence was frightening. It took her many groggy seconds to realize where she was, for she was looking at grass and tree trunks and sandy earth.