Текст книги "The Seventh Scroll"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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"We have to make sure that the dam does not burst while people are in

there. You can imagine the consequences, should that happen."

He was silent for a moment while he let them dwell upon the possibility.

Royan shuddered slightly and hugged her own arms.

"Not very pleasant," Nicholas agreed. "So you plan to use the blocks?"

he prompted Sapper.

"That's right. I have studied the photographs taken in the quarry. I

have picked out over a hundred and fifty granite blocks lying there

completed or almost completed, and I calculate that if we use these in

combination with the steel mesh gabions and the timber coffer walls,

this would give us a firm foundation for the main dam wall."

"Those blocks must weigh many tons each," Royan pointed out. "How will

you move them?" Then, as Sapper opened his mouth to explain, she changed

her mind. "No!

don't tell me. If you say it's possible, I will take your word for it."

"It's possible," Sapper assured her.

"Taita did it," Nicholas said. "We will be doing it all his way. That

should please you. After all, he is a relative of yours."

"You know, you are right. In a strange sort of way, it does give me

pleasure." She smiled at him. I think it's a good omen. When does all

this happen?".

"It's happening already," Nicholas told her. "Sapper and I have already

ordered all the stores and equipment that we will be taking with us.

Even the mesh for the gabions has been precut to size by a small

engineering firm near here. Thanks to the recession, they had machines

standing idle."

"I have been down there at their workshop every day, supervising the

cutting and packing," Sapper butted in.

"Half the shipment is already on its way. The rest of it will follow

before the weekend."

Sapper is leaving this afternoon to take charge and get it all loaded.

You and I have some last-minute arrangements to see to, and then we will

follow him at the end of the week. You must remember I was not expecting

you back from Cairo so soon,'Nicholas said. "If I had known, I could

have arranged for us all to fly down to Valletta together."

"Valletta?" Royan looked mystified. "As in Malta? I thought we were

going to Ethiopia."

"Malta is where Jannie Badenhorst has his base."

"Jannie who?"

"Badenhorst. Africair."

"Now you have really lost me."

"Africair is an air transport company that owns one old ex-RAF Hercules,

flown by Jannie and his son Fred. They use Malta as their base. It's a

stable and pragmatic little no country African politics, no corruption -

and yet it is the door to most of the destinations in the Middle East

and in the northern half of Africa where Jannie and Fred do most of

their work. His main employment is smuggling booze into the Islamic

countries, where of course it is prohibited. He's the Al Capone of the

Mediterranean.

Bootlegging is big business in that part of the world, but he does take

on other work. Duraid and I flew into Libya from there with Jannie on

our little jaunt to the Tibesti Massif.

Jannie will be taking us down to the Abbay."

"Nicky, I don't want to be a killjoy, but you and I are now undesirable

immigrants to Ethiopia. Had you over looked that little fact? How do you

propose to get back in there?"

"Through the back door," Nicholas grinned, "and my old pal Mek Nimmur is

the gatekeeper."

"You have been in contact with Mek?"

"With Tessay. It seems that she is now his go'between.

I imagine it's very convenient for Mek to have her on board. She has all

the right connections, and she can slip in and out of Khartoum or Addis

or places where it might be awkward or even dangerous for him to be

seen."

"Well, well!" Royan looked impressed. "You have been busy."

"Not all of us can afford a holiday in Cairo whenever the fancy takes

us," he told her tartly.

"One more little question." She ignored the jibe, although she realized

that despite his easy smile her absence must have irked him. "Does Mek

know about Taita's game?"

"Not in detail." Nicholas shook his head. "But he has some suspicions,

and anyway I know I can rely on him." He hesitated, and then went on.

"Tessay was very cagey when I spoke to her on the phone, but it seems

that there has been some sort of attack on St. Frumentius monastery. Jah

Hora. and thirty or forty of his monks were massacred, and most of the

sacred relics from the church were stolen."

"Oh, dear God, no!" Royan looked stricken. "Who would do a thing like

that?"

"The same people who murdered Duraid, and made three attempts to wipe

you out."

"Pegasus."

"Von Schiller," he agreed.

"Then we are directly responsible," Royan whispered.

"We led them to the monastery. The Polaroids they captured from us when

they raided our camp would have shown them the stele and the tomb of

Tanus. Von Schiller wouldn't have to be a clairvoyant to guess where we

had taken them. Now there is more blood on our hands."

"Hell, Royan, how can you take responsibility for von Schiller's

madness? I am not going to let you punish yourself for that." Nicholas's

tone was sharp and angry.

"We started this whole thing."

"I don't agree with that, but I admit that von, Schiller is the one who

must have cleaned out the maqdas of St. Frumentius and that the stele

and the coffin are now almost certainly part of his collection."

"Oh, Nicky, I feel so guilty. I never realized what a danger we were to

those simple devout Christians."

"Do you want to call off the whole thing?" he asked cruelly.

She thought about it seriously for a while, then shook her head.

"No. Perhaps when we go back we will be able to compensate the monks for

their losses with what we find in the bottom of Taita's pool."

"I hope so," he agreed fervently. "I do hope so."

The giant Hercules -Mkl four-engined turbo, prop aircraft was painted a

dusty nondescript brown, and the identification lettering on the

fuselage was faded and indistinct. There was no Afticair legend

displayed anywhere on the machine, and it had a tired and scruffy

appearance that spoke eloquently of the fact that it was almost forty

years old and had flown well over half a million hours even before it

had fallen into Jannie Badenhorst's hands.

"Does that thing still fly?" Royan asked, as she looked at it standing

forlornly in a back corner of the Valletta airfield. Its drooping belly

gave it the air of a sad old streetwalker who had been put out of

business by an unexpected and unlooked-for pregnancy.

Jannie keeps it looking that way deliberately," Nicholas assured her.

"The places that he flies to, it's best not to draw envious eyes."

"He certainly succeeds."

"But both Jannie and Fred are first-rate aero-engineers, Between them

they keep Big Dolly perfect under her engine cowlings.

"Big Dolly?"

"Dolly Parton. Jannie is an avid fan." The taxi dropped them and their

meagre luggage outside the side door of the hangar, and Nicholas paid

the driver while Royan thrust her hands -into the pockets of her anorak

and shivered in the cold wind off the Mediterranean.

"There's Jannie now." Nicholas pointed to the bulky figure in greasy

brown overalls coming down the loading ramp of the Hercules. He saw them

and jumped down off the ramp.

"Hello, man! I was beginning to give up on you," he said as he came

shambling across the tarmac. He looked like a rugby player, as he had

been in his youth, and the slight limp was from an old playing-field

injury.

"We were late leaving Heathrow. Strike by French air traffic control.

The joys of international travel," Nicholas told him, and then

introduced Royan.

"Come and meet my new secretary," Jannie invited.

She may even give you a cup of coffee."

He led them through a wicket in the main hangar door and into the

cavernous interior. There was a small office cubicle beside the entrance

with a sign over the door saying Africair' and the company logo of a

winged battleaxe.

Mara, Jannie's new secretary, was a Maltese lady only a few years

younger than himself. What she lacked in youth and beauty she fully made

up for across the chest.

"Jannie likes them mature and with plenty of top hamper," Nicholas

murmured to Royan from the side of his mouth.

Mara gave them coffee, while Jannie went over his flight plan with

Nicholas.

"It's a little complicated," he apologized. "As you can imagine, we will

have to do a bit of ducking and diving.

Muammar Gadaffi is not wallowing in affection for me at the moment, so

I' rather not overfly any of his territory.

We will be going in through Egypt, but without landing there." He

pointed out their flight path on the maps spread over his desk.

"Bit of a problem over the Sudan. They are having a little civil war

there." He winked at Nicholas. I However, the northern government are

not equipped with the most up-to'date radar in the world. Lot of old

Russian reject stuff. It's an enormous bit of country, and Fred and I

have worked out their blank spots. We will be keeping well clear of

their main military installations."

"What's our flying time?" Nicholas wanted to know.

Jannio pulled a face. "Big Dolly is no sprinter, and as I have just told

you we will not be taking any short-cuts."

"How long?"Nicholas insisted.

"Fred and I have rigged up bunks and a kitchen, so that during the

flight you will have all the comforts of home." He lifted his cap and

scratched his head before he admitted, "Fifteen hours."

"Has Big Dolly got that sort of endurance?" Nicholas wanted to know.

"Extra tanks. Seventy-one thousand kilos of fuel. Even with the load you

have given us, we can get there and back without refuelling." He was

interrupted by the huge hangar doors rolling open, and a heavy truck

being driven through. "That will be Fred and Sapper now." Jannie swigged

the last of his coffee and hugged Mara. She giggled, and her bosom

quivered like a snowfield on the point of an avalanche.

The truck parked at the far end of the hangar, where. an array of

equipment and stores was already neatly stacked, ready for loading. When

Fred climbed down from the cab, Jannie introduced him to Royan. He was a

younger version of the father, already beginning to spread around the

waist, and with an open bucolic face, more like a Karroo sheep farmer

than a commercial pilot.

"That's the last truckload." Sapper came around the front of the truck

and shook Nicholas's hand. "All set to begin loading."

"I want to take off before four 'clock tomorrow morning. That will get

us into our rendezvous at the optimum time tomorrow evening,'Jannie cut

in. "We have a bit of work to do, if we are going to get some sleep

before we leave." He gestured to the pallets waiting to be loaded.

I wanted to get some of the local lads to give a hand with the loading,

but Sapper wouldn't hear of it."

"Quite right," Nicholas agreed, "The fewer who are in on this, the

merrier. Let's get cracking."

The cargo had been prepacked on the steel pallets, secured with heavy

nylon strapping and covered with cargo netting. There were thirty-six

loaded pallets, and the canvas packs containing the parachutes formed an

integral part of each load. This huge Cargo would require two separate

flights to ferry it all across to Africa.

Royan called out the contents of each pallet from the typed manifest,

while Nicholas checkd it against the actual load. Nicholas and Sapper

had worked out the loads carefully to ensure that the items that would

be required first were on the initial flight. Only when he was Certain

that each pallet was complete in every detail id he signal to Fred, who

was operating the forklift. Fred ran the arms into the slots of the

pallet and lifted it, then he drove it out of the hangar and up the ramp

of the Hercules.

In the hold of the enormous aircraft, jannie and Sapper helped Fred to

position each pallet precisely on the rollers and then strap it down

securely. The last part of the cargo to go aboard was the small

front-end-loading tractor.

Sapper had found this in a secondhand yard in York, and after testing it

exhaustively declared it to be a "steal'. Now he drove this up the ramp

under its own power, and lovingly strapped it down to the rollers.

The -tractor made up almost a third of the total weight of the entire

shipment, but it was the one item that Sapper considered essential if

they were to complete the earthworks for the dam in the time that

Nicholas had stipulated.

He had calculated that it would require a cluster of five cargo

parachutes to get the heavy tractor back to earth without damage. Fuel

for it would of course present a problem, and the bulk of the second

cargo would be made up of dieseline in special nylon tanks that could

withstand the impact of an airdrop.

it was after midnight before the aircraft was loaded with the first

shipment. The remaining pallets were still stacked against the hangar

wall awaiting Big Dolly's return for the second flight. Now they could

turn their full attention to the farewell banquet of island specialities

that Mara had laid out for the ' in the tiny Africair office.

"Yes," Jannie assured them, I she's also a good cook," and gave Mara a

loving squeeze as she rested her bosom on his shoulder, leaning over him

to refill his plate with calamari.

"Happy landings!" Nicholas gave them the toast in red Chianti.

"Eight hours between the throttle and the bottle," jannie apologized, as

he drank the toast in Coca-Cola.

They lay down their clothes to get a few hours' sleep on the bunks

bolted to the bulkhead behind the flight deck, but it seemed to Royan

that she was woken only a few minutes later by the quiet voices of the

two pilots completing their pre-take-off checks, and the whine of the

starters on the huge turbo-prop engines. As Jannie spoke on the radio to

the control tower, and Fred taxied out to the holding point, the three

passengers climbed out of their bunks and strapped themselves into the

folding seats down the side of the main cabin. Big Dolly climbed into

the night sky and the lights of the island dwindled and were swiftly

lost behind them. Then there was only the dark sea below and the bright

pricking of the stars above. Royan turned her head to smile at Nicholas

in the dim overhead lights of the cabin.

"Well, Taita, we are back on court for the final set." Her voice was

tight with excitement.

"The one good thing about being forced to sneak about like this is that

Pegasus may take a while to find out that we are back in the Abbay

gorge." Nicholas looked complacent.

"Let's hope that you are right." Royan held up her right hand and

crossed her fingers. "We will have enough to worry about with what Taita

has in store for us, without Pegasus muscling in on us again just yet."

They are on their way back to Ethiopia," said von Schiller with utter

certainty.

"How can we be certain of that, Herr von Schiller?" Nahoot asked.

Von Schiller glared at him. The Egyptian irritated him intensely, and he

was beginning to regret having employed him. Nahoot had made very little

headway in deciphering the meaning of the engravings on the stele that

they had taken from the monastery.

The actual translation had offered no insurmountable problems. Von

Schiller was convinced that he could have done this work himself,

without Nahoot's assistance, given time and the use of his extensive

library of reference works.

It comprised, for the most part, nonsensical rhymes and extraneous

couplets out of place and context. One face of the stele was almost

completely covered by columns of letters and figures that bore no

relation whatsoever to the text on the other three faces of the column.

But although Nahoot would not admit it, it was clear that the underlying

meaning behind most of this had eluded him. Von Schiller's patience was

almost exhausted.

He was tired of listening to Nahoot's excuses, and to promises that were

never fulfilled. Everything about him, from his oily ingratiating tone

of voice to his sad eyes in their deep lined sockets, had begun to annoy

him. But especially he had come to detest his exasperating habit of

questioning the statements that he, Gotthold von Schiller, made.

"General Obeid was able to inform me of their exact flight arrangements

when they left Addis Ababa. It was very simple to have my security men

at the airport when they arrived in England. Neither Harper nor the

woman are the kind of people that are easily overlooked, even in a

crowd. My men followed the woman to Cairo-'

"Excuse me, Herr von Schiller, but why did you not have her taken care

of if you were aware of her movements?"

"Dummkopf!" von Schiller snapped at him. "Because it now seems that she

is much more likely to lead me to the tomb than you are."

"But, sir, I have done-' Nahoot protested.

you have done nothing but make up excuses for your ilure. Thanks to you,

the stele is still an enigma,'

own fa von Schiller interrupted him contemptuously.

"It is very difficult-'

"Of course it is difficult. That's why I am paying you a great deal of

money. If it were easy I would have done it myself. If it is indeed the

instruction to find the tomb of Mamose, then the scribe Taita meant it

to be difficult."

"If I am allowed a little more time, I think I am very near to

establishing the key-'

"You have no more time. Did you not hear what I have just told you?

Harper is on his way back to the Abbay gorge. They flew from Malta last

night in a chartered aircraft that was heavily loaded with cargo. My men

were not able to establish the nature of that cargo, except that it

included some earth-moving equipment, a front-endloading tractor. To me,

this can mean only one thing.

They have located the tomb, and they are returning to begin excavating

it."

"You will be able to get rid of them as soon as they reach the

monastery." Nahoot relished the thought.

"Colonel Nogo will-'

"Why do I have to keep repeating myself?" Von Schiller's voice turned

shrill and he slapped his hand down on the tabletop. "They are now our

best chance of finding the tomb of Mamose. The very last thing that I

want to happen is that any harm should come to them." He glared at

Nahoot. "I am sending you back to Ethiopia immediately.

Perhaps you will be of some use to me there. You are certainly no use

here."

Nahoot looked disgruntled, but he had better sense than to argue again.

He sat sullenly as von Schiller went on, "You will go to the base camp

and place yourself under the command of Helm. You will take your orders

from him.

Treat them as if they come directly from me. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Herr von Schiller," Nahoot muttered sulkily.

"Do not interfere in any way with Harper and the woman. They must not

even know that you are at the base camp. The Pegasus geological team

will carry on its normal duties." He paused and smiled bleakly, then

went on, "It is most fortunate that Helm has actually discovered very

promising evidence of large deposits of galena, which as you may know is

the ore from which lead is obtained. He will continue the exploratory

work on-these deposits, and if they bear out their promise they will

make the entire operation highly profitable."

"What exactly will be my duties?" Nahoot wanted to know.

"You will be playing the waiting game. I want you there ready to take

advantage of any progress– that Harper makes. However, you are to give

him plenty of elbow room.

You will not alert him by any overflights with the helicopter, or by

approaching his camp. No more midnight raids.

Every move that you make must be cleared with me before, I repeat

before, you take any action."

"If I am to operate under these restrictions, how will I know if Harper

and the woman have made any progress?"

"Colonel Nogo already has a reliable man, a spy, in the monastery. He

will inform us of every move that Harper makes."

"But what about me? What will be my work?"

"You will evaluate the intelligence that Nogo collects.

You are familiar with archaeological methods. You will be able to judge

what Harper is trying to achieve, and you will be able to tell what

success he is enjoying."

"I see,'Nahoot muttered.

"If it were possible I would have gone back to the Abbay gorge myself.

–However, this is not possible. It may take time, months perhaps, before

Harper makes any important progress. You know as well as anybody that

these things take time."

"Howard Carter worked for ten years at Thebes before he found the tomb

of Tutankhamen," Nahoot pointed out maliciously.

"I hope that it will not take that long," said von Schiller coldly. "If

it does, it is very unlikely that you will still be involved with the

search. As for myself, I have a series of very important negotiations

coming up here in Germany, as well as the annual general meeting of the

company. These I cannot miss."

"You will not be coming back to Ethiopia at all, then?" Nahoot perked up

at the prospect of escaping from von Schiller's malignant influence.

"I will come as soon as there is something for me there.

I will be relying on you to decide when my presence is needed."

"What about the stele! I should-'

"You will continue to work on the translation." Von Schiller forestalled

his objections. "You will take a full set of photographs with you to

Ethiopia, and you will continue your work while you are there. I shall

expect you to report to me by satellite, at least once a week, on your

progress."

"When do you want me to leave?"

ly, "Immediately. Today if that is possible. Speak to Frulein Kemper.

She will make your travel arrangements." For the first time during the

interview Nahoot looked happy.

Dolly droned on steadily southeastwards, ig and there was very little to

relieve the boredom of the flight. The dawn was just breaking when they

crossed the African coast at a remote and lonely desert beach that

Jannie had chosen for just this reason.

Once they were over the land there was as little of interest to see as

there had been over the sea. The desert stretched away, bleak and brown

and featureless in every direction.

At irregular intervals they heard Jannie in the cockpit speaking to air

traffic control, but as they were able to hear only half the

conversation they had no idea as to– the identity or the nationality of

the station. Occasionally Jannie dropped the heavily accented English he

was affecting and broke into Arabic. Royan was surprised by Jannie's

fluency in the language, but then as an Afrikaner the guttural sounds

came naturally to him. He was even able to mimic the different accents

and dialects of Libyan and Egyptian convincingly as he tied his way

across the desert.

For the first few hours Sapper pored over his dam drawings; then, unable

to proceed further until he had the exact measurements of the site, he

curled up on his bunk with a paperback novel. The unfortunate author was

unable to hold his attention for long. The open book sagged down over

his face, and the pages fluttered every time he emitted a long grinding

snore.

Nicholas and Royan huddled on her bunk with the chessboard between them,

until hunger overtook them and they moved to the makeshift galley. Here

Royan took the subservient role of bread'sticer and coffee-maker, while

Nicholas demonstrated his artistry in creating a range of Dagwood

sandwiches. They shared the food with Jannie and Fred, perched up behind

the pilots' seats in the cockpit.

"Are we still over Egyptian territory?" Royan asked.

With his mouth full, Jannie pointed out over the port wingtip of Big

Dolly. "Fifty nautical miles out there is Wadi Halfia. My father was

killed there in 1943. He was with the Sixth South African Division. They

called it Wadi Hellfire." He took another monstrous bite of sandwich. "I

never knew the old man. Fred and I landed there once.

Tried to find his grave." He shrugged eloquently. "It's a hell of a big

piece of country. Lots of graves. Very few of– them marked."

Nobody spoke for a while. They chewed their sandwiches, thinking their

own thoughts. Nicholas's father had also fought in the desert against

Rommel. He had been more fortunate than Jannie's father.

Nicholas glanced across at Royan. She was staring out of the window at

her homeland, and there was something so passionate and fraught in her

gaze that Nicholas was startled. The temptation to think of her as an

English girl, like her mother, was at most times irresistible. It was

only in odd moments such as these that he became intensely aware of the

other facets of her being.

She seemed unaware of his scrutiny. Her occupation was total. He

wondered what she was thinking what dark and mysterious thoughts were

smouldering there.

He remembered how she had seized the very first opportunity on their

return from Ethiopia to hurry back to Cairo, and once again a feeling of

disquiet came over him. He wondered if other emotional ties of which he

was unaware might not transcend those loyalties which he had taken for

granted. He realized with something of a shock that they had been

together for only a few short weeks, and despite the strong attraction

that she exerted over him he knew very little about her.

processor' Alost POPU

At that moment she started and looked round at him quickly. Crowded as

they were at the portside window, they stared into each other's eyes

from a distance of only a foot or so. It was only for a few seconds but

what he saw in her eyes, the dark shadows of guilt or some other

emotion, did nothing to allay his misgivings.

She turned back to Jannie, leaning over his shoulder to ask, "When will

we cross the Nile?"

"On the other side of the border. The Sudanese government concentrate

all their attentions on the rebels in the far south. There are some

stretches of the river here in the north that are completely deserted.

Pretty soon now we will be going down right on the deck, to get under

the radar pings from the Sudanese stations around Khartoum.

We will slip through one of the gaps."

jannie lifted the aeronautical map on its clipboard from his lap, and

held it so she could see it. With one thick, stubby finger he showed

Royan their intended route.

it was drawn in with blue wax pencil, "Big Dolly has taken this route so

often that she could fly it without my hands on the stick, couldn't you,

old girl?" He patted the instrument panel affectionately.

Two hours later, when Nicholas and Royan were back at the chess board in

the main cabin, Janrfie called them on the PA, "Okay, folks. No need to

panic. We are going to lose some altitude now. Come up front and watch

the show."

Strapped into fold-down seats in the back of the flight deck, they were

treated to a superb exhibition of low flying by Fred. The descent was so

rapid that Royan felt they were about to fall out of the sky, and that

she had left her stomach back there somewhere at thirty thousand feet.

Fred levelled Big Dolly out only feet above the desert floor, so low

that it was like riding in a high-speed bus rather than flying. Fred

lifted her delicately over each undulation of the tawny, sun'scorched

terrain, skimming the black rock ridges and standing on a wingtip to

swerve around the occasional wind-blasted hill.

"Nile crossing in seven and a half minutes." jannie punched, the

stopwatch fixed to the control wheel in front of him. "And unless my

navigation has gone all to hell there should be an island shaped like a

shark directly under us as we cross."

As the needle of the stopwatch came up to the mark, the broad,

glittering expanse of the river flashed beneath them. Royan caught a

brief glimpse of a green island with a few thatched huts on the tip, and

a dozen dugout canoes lying on the narrow beach.

"Well, the old man hasn't lost his touch yet," Fred remarked. "Still

good for a few thousand miles before we trade him in."

"Not so much of the old man stuff, you little squirt. I have some tricks

up my sleeve that I haven't even used yet."

"Ask Mara." Fred grinned affectionately at his father as he banked on to

a new southwesterly heading, and with his wingtip so close to the ground

that he scattered a herd of camels feeding in the sparse thorn scrub.

They lumbered away across the plain, each trailing a wisp of white dust

like a wedding train.

"Another three hours' flying time to the rendezvous." Jannie looked up

from the map. "Spot on! We should land forty minutes before sunset.

Couldn't be better,'

"I' better  go back and change into my hiking gear, then." Royan went

back into the main cabin, pulled her bag from under the bunk and

disappeared into the lavatory. When' she emerged twenty minutes later

she wore khaki culottes and a cotton top.

"These boots were made for walking." She stamped them on the deck.

"That's fine." Nicholas watched her from the bunk.

"But how about that knee?"

t vopuiuj ProcesV

"It will get me there," she said, defensively.

"You mean I am to be deprived of the pleasure of back acking you again?"

The Ethiopian mountains came up so subtly on the eastern horizon that

Royan was not aware of them until Nicholas pointed out to her the faint

blue outline against the brighter blue of the African sky.

"Almost there." He glanced at his wrist-watch. "Let's go up to the

flight deck."

Looking forward through the windshield there was no landmark ahead of

them – just the vast brown savannah, speckled with the black dots of

acacia trees.

"Ten minutes to go," Jannie intoned. "Anyone see anything?" There was no

reply, and they all stared ahead.

"Five minutes."

"Over there!" Nicholas pointed over his shoulder.

4 "That's the course of the Blue Nile." A denser grove of thorn trees

formed a dark line far ahead. "And there is the smokestack of the

derelict sugar'mill on the river bank.

Mek Nimmur says that the airstrip is about three miles from the mill."

"Well, if it is, it's not shown, on the chart," Jannie grumbled. "One

minute before we are on the coordinates."

The minute ticked off slowly on the stopwatch.

"Still nothing-' Fred broke off as a red flare shot up from the earth

directly ahead and flashed past Big Dolly's JI nose. Everyone in the

cockpit smiled and relaxed with relief.

"Right on the nose." Nicholas patted Jannie's shoulder in

congratulations. "Couldn't have done better myself."

Fred climbed a few hundred feet and came round in a one-eighty turn. Now

there were two signa I fires burning out there on the plain – one with