Текст книги "A Time to Die"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

Claudia forced herself to wait until she was certain the wardress had truly left and was not watching her through a spy hole. Once she was sure she was not observed, Claudia crawled in frantic haste to the corner where she had hidden the straw and picked it up between her lips.

Still on her knees, she crossed to the billy can and stooped over it.

She drew the first mouthful through the straw and let it trickle down her throat, closing her eyes with pleasure. It was as though she were drinking down a magic potion. She felt new strength and resolve flow through her veins.

She drank most of the contents of the billy can drawing out the pleasure of it until it was almost totally dark in the cell, but she could not bring herself to eat the sticky mess of maize cake smeared into the dirt.

She hoarded the remains of the water, taking the wire handle of the billy can between her teeth and carefully moving it to the far corner of the cell where she could ration herself to small sips during the long hours ahead. She settled down for the night feeling almost cheerful and a little light-headed, as though she had been drinking champagne rather than plain unbolted river water.

I can endure anything they do to me she whispered to herself. They aren't going to break me. I won't let them. I won't."

Her mood did not last. Almost as soon as it was fully dark in the cell, she realized her terrible mistake in leaving the uneaten maize cake on the floor. Last night there had been only one rat, and it had fled when she screamed at it. This night the odor of food brought them pouring through the gaps in the roof. To her frenzied imagination, it seemed as though the floor of the cell was swarming with furry bodies. The smell of them clogged her nostrils, the nauseating ratty smell like boiling horns and hooves in a glue pot. She cowered in her corner, shivering with cold and horror, and they brushed against her legs and scurried over her feet, squeaking and squealing as they fought for the scraps of spilled porridge.

At last Claudia succumbed to panic. Screaming, on the edge of hysteria, she kicked out at them wildly; one of them whipped around and bit her naked ankle; the sharp little teeth were like a razor cut. She screamed again and kicked, trying to dislodge it, but for a few dreadful seconds its curved teeth were buried in her flesh.

At last she sent it flying into the darkness.

The rat hit the billy can containing her treasured water, and she heard the metal clank against the wall and the liquid splash onto the earthen floor. She crawled to the overturned container and wept with despair.

After long hours of horror and dark terror, the rats consumed the last of the maize and disappeared back through the roof.

Claudia sank to her knees, exhausted both physically and emotionally.

"Please God, let it end. I can't go on."

She toppled over on her side and lay in the dirt, shivering and sobbing softly to herself, and at last dropped into the dark void of oblivion.

She woke with something tugging at her hair and a strange grinding sound very close to her ear. Still groggy with sleep, it took her long seconds to realize what was happening to her. She had slumped over sideways, and one cheek was pressed to the dirt floor. She lay for a moment, enduring the sharp pulls on her hair and the grinding crunching in her uppermost ear, and then the terror came back to her in full force.

A rat was chewing off her hair, cutting it with those sharp curved incisors, gathering it for nesting material. So great was her horror that it paralyzed her. She could not move. Her whole body tingled, her stomach knotted with cramps, and her toes and fingers curled with the strength of revulsion.

Suddenly she w4 no longer terrified. Her fear changed to anger.

In one lithe movement she rolled to her feet and began to hunt the loathsome creature.

Relentlessly she pursued it around the cell, following it only by sound, the tiny scratch and patter of its feet. She no longer kicked out wildly but deliberately aimed each blow at the sound. Twice the creature tried to climb to safety, but each time Claudia heard it and used her whole body to sweep it from the wall and knock it back to the floor.

This killing anger was an emotion she had never experienced before. It heightened all her senses; it rendered her hearing so acute could visualize each movement of her prey; it quickened that she her physical responses so her kicks were fast and powerful, and when one of them landed on the warm furry body, the shrill squeal of pain and fear from the rat inflamed her.

She cornered it against the door of the cell and again stamped on it. She felt the small bones break under her heel, and she stamped again and again, sobbing with the effort, keeping it up until the carcass was soft and mushy under her feet.

When at last she backed away and sank down in her corner, she was still trembling, but no longer with terror.

"I've never )9 killed anything before, she thought, amazed at herself and this secret savage side to her nature that she had never suspected existed.

She waited for a feeling of guilt and disgust to overwhelm her.

Instead she felt as strong as though she had come through some ordeal that had armed her and equipped her to overcome whatever dangers and hardships lay ahead.

"I'm not going to give in, not ever again," she whispered. "I'm.

going to fight and to kill if I have to. I'm going to survive.

In the morning when the wardress came for the billy can Claudia confronted her resolutely, thrusting her face only inches from the black woman's and keeping her voice measured but firm.

"Take this out." She indicated the rat's carcass with her foot.

The woman hesitated and Claudia said, "Do it no w!" The wardress picked up the mangled carcass by the tip of the tail and glanced back at Claudia with a measure of respect in her dark eyes.

Carrying the empty billy and the dead rat, she left the cell. len she returned a few minutes later with the refilled billy can and the bowl of maize meal, Claudia subdued her thirst and maintained her new attitude of calm authority as she indicated the sewage bucket.

"That has to be cleaned, she said. The woman snapped a retort in Portuguese.

"I'll do it." Claudia did not waver but held the other woman's gaze until she broke the eye contact. Only then did she turn her back and offer her manacled hands to the wardress.

"Undo these," she ordered. Obediently the wardress unclipped the key from her webbing belt.

Claudia almost cried out as the handcuffs came away. The blood rushed back to her hands, and she held them to her chest and inst the pain, horrified massaged them tenderly, biting her lips ago by the condition of her swollen hands and torn, bruised wrists.

The wardress prodded her in the small of the back and gave an order in Portuguese. Claudia took up the handle of the sewage bucket and, brushing past the woman, climbed the stairs. The sunlight and warmth and clean dry air were like a benediction.

Claudia looked around the stockade quickly. It was obviously a women s prison, for a few dispirited feminine figurer, lolled in the dust beneath the single ebony tree in the center. They were in ragged loincloths. Their naked upper bodies were so painfully thin the ribs stood out clearly beneath the dusty dark skin, and their breasts, even those of the younger women, were empty and dangled as loosely as the ears of a spaniel. Claudia wondered what their crimes had been or if their mere existence had caused their captors offense.

She saw that her bunker was only one of a row of a dozen or so.

It was obvious these were reserved for the more important or dangerous prisoners.

The gates of the stockade were guarded by a pair of burly black females dressed in the usual tiger stripes and toting AK assault rifles. They peered curiously at Claudia and discussed her with Dilation. Beyond the gates, Claudia had a glimpse of the broad green flow of the Pungwe River and for a moment entertained fanciful visions of plunging into it to bathe her battered body and wash her filthy clothes. But the wardress prodded her painfully in the back and urged her toward the screened latrines at the rear of the stockade.

When they reached them, the wardress made hand signals for Claudia to empty her bucket into the communal pit, then turned away to chat with one of the other war dresses who had sauntered across to join them, AK-47 rifle over her shoulder.

The back wall of the latrine was also the rear wall of the stockade. However, it offered no avenue of escape. The poles were as thick as her leg, lashed securely together with bark rope, and their tops were several feet higher than she could reach.

She abandoned the idea of escape before it was fully formed and tipped the contents of the bucket into the deep pit. Immediately a humming cloud of des rose from the depths and circled her head.

Wrinkling her nose with disgust, Claudia was backing toward the exit when a soft whistle stopped her dead. It was a low-pitched, mournful note, so unobtrusive she would have ignored it completely if she had not heard it so often before. It was one of the clandestine signals Sean and his trackers used. Sean had told her once that it was the call of a bird called a boubou shrike, and because of its associations rather than its pitch it electrified her.

She glanced quickly toward the screened entrance to the latrine, but it was safe. She heard the voices of the wardress and her colleague still chatthig outside, and she pursed her lips and tried a soft, unconvincing imitation of the whistle.

Instantly it was repeated from just beyond the back wall of the latrine, and Claudia's hopes soared. She dropped the bucket and ran to the wall of poles, putting her eye to one of the larger chinks.

She almost screamed when an eye looked back at her from only the thickness of the poles and then a voice, a well-remembered voice, whispered, "Jambo, memsahib."

"Matatu," she gasped.

"Silly little bugger." Matatu gave her the only words of English he knew, and she had to fight to prevent herself bursting out in laughter of relief and hope and amusement at the incongruity of that greeting.

"Oh Matatu, I love you," she blurted out, and a folded scrap of paper was thrust through the chink into her face. The instant her fingers closed on it, Matatu's eye was snatched away from the peephole as though on a fishing line.

"Matatul" she whispered desperately, but he was gone. She had spoken too loudly, and she heard the wardress call out and her footsteps at the entrance.

Claudia spun around and with the same movement crouched over the reeking pit. The wardress looked around the thatched screen and Claudia mapped at her furiously, "Get out, can't you see I'm busyr" The woman jerked her head back. Claudia was trembling with excitement as she unfolded the note and recognized the handwriting, and at the same time she was stricken with terror that it would be taken from her before she could read it. She refolded it quickly and slipped it deeply into the back pocket of her trousers, where she would be able to retrieve it even with her hands cuffed behind her.

Now she was eager to return to the privacy of her cell. The wardress pushed her down the stairs, but without the viciousness of before.

Claudia replaced the sewage bucket in the corner, and when the wardress pointed at her wrists, she held them out obediently. TIM touch of the metal on her abraded and bruised skin seemed even more galling than it had been before. The muscles and tendons of her upper arms and shoulders knotted in protest.

Once Claudia was manacled the wardress seemed to recapture her harsh mood of authority. She tipped the contents of the maize bowl onto the 1loor and lifted her boot to grind it into the dirL Claudia flew at her. "Don't you dare!" she hissed, thrusting her face close to the woman's and glaring into her eyes so viciously that she recoiled involuntarily.

"Get out!" Claudia told her. "Allez! Vamoose!" The wardress backed out of the cell with a muttered but unconvincing show of defiance and dragged the door closed behind her.

Claudia was amazed at her own courage. She leaned against the door, trembling with the effort that the contest of wills had cost her, only then realizing the risk she had taken-she could have been brutally beaten or deprived altogether of her precious supply of water.

It was Sean's letter that had given her the strength and bravado to defy the wardress. Leaning against the door, she reached back into her pocket and touched the scrap of folded notepaper, merely to reassure herself that it was safe. She would not read it yet. She wanted to delay and savor that pleasure. Instead she retrieved her drinking straw from its biding place.

After she had drunk from the billy, she ate the maize cake, delicately picking it out of the dirt with her teeth and trying to shake loose the earth and dirt that clung to the sticky lumps of porridge. She was determined not to leave a scrap of it, not only because she was hungry but because she knew she would have need of all her strength in the days ahead, and also because she had learned that food scraps attracted the rats. Only when she had eaten and drunk did she allow herself the luxurious pleasure of reading Sean's note.

She took it out of her pocket and carefully smoothed it between her swollen fingers. Then she squatted and placed it in the beam of sunlight that fell in a corner of the cell. At last she turned and knelt over it.

She read slowly, moving her lips like a semiliterate, forming every word he had written as though she could taste it on her tongue.

"Be strong, it won,"I-be for much longer and remember I love u. Whatever happeds, I love you." Her vision swam with tears YO as she read his la,stVords. Then she sat back and whispered softly, "I'll be strong. I promise you I'll be strong for you, and I love you too. With my very existence, I love you."

"They may fight like women," said Sergeant Alphonso as he surveyed the piles of captured Zimbabwean Army equipment, "but at least they dress like warriors."

The uniforms had been supplied by Britain as part of its aid commitment to Mugabe after the capitulation of Ian Smith's white regime. They were of the finest quality, and Alphonso and his men stripped off their old faded and patched tiger-striped battle dress with alacrity. In particular they were delighted with the gleaming black leather paratrooper boots with which they replaced their eclectic collection of tattered joggers and grubby tennis shoes.

Once they had decked themselves out in this captured finery and fallen in on the beaten-earth parade ground, Se aiD and Job went down their ranks, checking and instructing them on the correct way to wear each item of uniform. The quartermaster tailor followed behind them, correcting any gross discrepancy in size and fit.

"They don't have to be perfect," Sean said. "They won't be on parade, just good enough to pass a casual glance. We haven't got time to waste on the niceties of dress."

After the men were fully kit ted out, Sean and Job worked on their plan of Grand Reef base for the rest of that day and most of the night.

First they sat on opposite sides of a desk in the headquarters communications room and brainstormed for every detail of the base layout they could dredge from their memories. By nightfall they were satisfied they had the most accurate picture that they could hope for. However, Sean had learned from experience that it was difficult for an illiterate to visualize physical reality from a two-dimensional drawing, and discreet inquiry had revealed that almost all his new command, though battle-tried warriors, could neither read nor write.

Most of the rest of that night they worked on building a scale model of the base, setting it out on the beaten surface of the parade ground, working by lantern light. Job, who had an artistic Barr, whittled model buildings from the soft balsa like wood of the baobab tree and used water-washed pebbles of various colors from the sandbanks of the river to lay out the airstrip, roads, and perimeter fences of the base.

The following morning the raiding party was paraded and inspected by Captain Job and Sergeant Alphonso and then seated around the model in a ring. The model proved to be a major success, provoking lively comment and query.

First Sean described the raid, moving =tchboxes; down the pebble roadways to represent the column of Unimogs, illustrating the diversionary attack on the perimeter, the withdrawal of the loaded trucks, and the rendezvous on the Umtah road. Once he had finished he handed his pointer to Sergeant Alphonso.

"All right, Sergeant, explain it to us again." The ring of attentive troopers delighted in correcting the occasional mistakes and omissions Alphonso made. When he was finished, he handed the pointer to his senior corporal to repeat the lecture. After five repetitions they all had it perfectly memorized, and even General China was impressed.

"It only remains to see if you can do it as well as you explain it," he told Sean.

"Just give me the trucks," Sean promised.

"Sergeant Alphonso was with the unit that originally Captured them. He knows where they are hidden. Incidentally the guards major whose uniform you will use was killed in the same action."

"How long ago was that?" Sean asked.

"About two months ago."

"Beauty!" said Sean bitterly. "That means those trucks have been lying in the bush all that time. What makes you think they am still there, or that they are still in running order?"

"Colonel." China give that thin, cold smile Sean was coming to know and loathe so well. "For Miss Monterro's sake, You had ile better pray they-are." The smile vanished. "Now, wh the draw their rations and ammunition, you and I will have a final discussion. Come with me, Colonel."

Once they were in the communications room of the command bunker, China turned to Sean, his expression bleak. "During the night I received a radio message from my agent at Grand Reef base. He only transmits in an emergency, otherwise the risk is too high. This is an emergency. Training on the Stinger systems is complete. They have orders to move the missiles out of Grand r Reef within the next seventy-two hours, depending on availability of transport aircraft."

Sean whistled softly. "Seventy-two hours-in that case we won't make it."

"Colonel, all I can tell you is that you had better make it. If you don't, you will have no further value to me and I win begin thinking of old times." He touched his damaged ear significantly. Sean stared him out silently until China went on, "However, not all the news is bad, Colonel. My agent will meet you in Umtah and give full intelligence on the buildings where the Stingers are being YOU held, the room used as a lecture theater, and the training manuals.

He will accompany you to the base. He is well known to the guards at the gates. He will assist your entry and guide you to the training center.

"That's something," Sean growled. "Where will I meet him?"

"There is a nightclub in Unitali-the Stardust, a gathering place for pimps and whores. He will be there every evening from eight until midnight. Alphonso knows the club. He will take you to it."

"How will I recognize your agent?"

"He will wear a T-shirt with a large portrait of the comic book hero Superman on the chest," China said. Sean closed his eyes as though in pain while China went on, "The man's name is Cuth Sean shook his head and whispered, "I don't believe this is happening to me. Superman and Cuthbert!" He shook his head again as if to clear it. "What about the RZ with the porters at Saint Mary's Mission?"

"That is arranged," China assured him. "The porters will cross the border tomorrow night as soon as it is dark and conceal themselves in the caves in the mountains above the mission station to await your arrival."

Sean nodded and changed the thread of the discussion. 611f we leave now, how long will it take for us to reach the spot where the Unimogs are hidden?"

"You should be there before noon tomorrow."

"Is there anything else we should discuss?" Sean asked. When China shook his head, Sean stood up, slung his AKM assault rifle on one shoulder, and with his free hand lifted the small canvas duffel bag that contained the dead guards major's uniform and his personal kit.

"Until we meet again, General China."

"Until we meet again, I will take good care of Miss Monterro.

Never fear, Colonel."

The column was heavily laden. Each man carried food and water for two days together with ammuration, the extra belts for the RpD machine guns, grenades, and rockets for the RPG-7 launchers.

Though they could not run under that weight, Sergeant Alphonso, who was driving the van, set a cracking pace. Before jightfall they passed through the Renanio lines into the "destruction area," a Eree-fire zone where there was a possibility of encountering Frehino patrols, and Sean ordered a change of formation.

They opened up to intervals of ten meters between the men in the angle file of the men column, and he posted flankers at the head and tail to guard against surprise attack.

They kept going hard during the night with ten-minute breaks every two hours, and by dawn they had covered almost forty miles.

During the dawn break, Sean moved up to the head of the column and squatted between Alphonso and Job.

"How much further to the trucks?" Sean demanded.

"We have done well," Alphonso, replied, and Pointed ahead.

"The trucks are there in that valley."

They were on the foreslope of another area of hilly, forested ground, and below them the terram, was broken and bad. Sean appreciated why General China had chosen this area of the Serra da Gorongosa to defend. There were no roads in this wilderness, and an attacking army would have to fight its way past an endless series of natural strong points and fortresses.

The valley Alphonso pointed out was some miles ahead of them and beyond it the country changed from its savage mood and Battened into a broad gentle plain. Down there the dark forest was broken up and blotched with paler grasslands.

Alphonso pointed to the horizon. "Over there are the railway line and the road to the coast..." He was about to speak again when Sean caught ins arm to silence him and cocked his head in a listening attitude.

It was some ;minds%efbre the sound separated itself from the gentle susurration of the dawn wind in the forest below them and hardened into the whine of turboshaft engines and spinning ratam "There!" Job's eyesight was phenomenal and he picked out the approaching specks even against the dark background of hills and forests.

"Hinds." Sean spotted them just as Alphonso shouted, "Take cover!" The column scattered into cover and they watched the gunships come on, rising and dropping as they kept low over the hills, sailing northward toward the Renamo lines in an extended formation. 263 Sean watched them through the Russian-made binoculars he had acquired from the Renamo stores. It was the first opportunity he had had to study a Hind at leisure. There were four of them, and Sean surmised that there would be three flights of four machines to make up a full squadron of twelve.

"My God, they are grotesque," he murmured. It seemed impossible that anything so heavy and misshapen could ever break the ties of gravity. The engines were housed in the top of the fuselage below the main rotor and formed the humpback that gave the machine its nickname. The air intakes to the turbos were situated above the cockpit canopy. The belly drooped like that of a pregnant sow. The nose was deformed by the hanging turret that housed the Gatling cannon, and from the stubby wings and bloated belly were suspended an untidy array of rocket systems, ordnance stations, and radar aerials.

At the rear of the engine mountings the ungainly lines of the machine were further disturbed by another extraneous structure that seemed to have been tacked onto it as an afterthought.

"Exhaust suppressor boxes." Sean remembered an article he had read in one of the flying magazines to which he subscribed.

These structures masked the exhaust emissions of the twin turboshaft engines and shielded them from the infrared sensors of hostile missiles. The author of the article had lauded their efficacy, but although they made the machines almost invulnerable to heat seekers, the weight of the devices combined with that of the titanium armor to reduce the Hind's speed and range severely. Sean wished he had read the article with more attention, for he could not recall the figures for air speed and range the author had quoted.

The flight of gunships passed a mile or so to the east of them, boring steadily northward.

"General China is in for a breakfast show," Job remarked as he rose from cover to reassemble the column and continue the march.

Although they had been going all night, the pace never slackened, and even Sean was impressed by the condition and training of Alphonso's company. "Almost as good as the Scouts," he decided. Then he grinned to himself. "Nobody could be that good."

More than once Sean dropped back to check that the men he had in the drag were anti tracking and covering spoor, for now there was real danger a Frelimo patrol might find them. He had fallen only a few hundred meters behind the rear of the column and was down on one knee, studying the earth intently, when suddenly he knew that he was not alone, that he was being watched.

instantly Sean threw himself forward, the rifle coming off his shoulder as he rolled over twice into the cover of a fallen log beside the path and froze, his finger on the trigger, his gaze raking the bush where he thought he had seen the flirt of movement.

It was closer than he had imagined. From the clump of grass right beside him came a mischievous giggle. Sean raised his head and whispered furiously, "I've warned you not to sneak up on me like that."

Matatu's head popped out of the grass, and he grinned merrily.

"You are getting old, my Bwana. I could have stolen your socks and boots without you knowing."

"And I could have shot your brown backside full of holes. Did you find the memT" Matatu nodded, and his smile slipped.

"Where is she?"

"Half a day's march upstream, in a stockade with many other women.

"Is she well?"

Matatu hesitated, torn between telling the truth and telling Sean what would please him. Then he sighed and shook his head. "They keep her in a hole in the ground, and there are marks on her arms and legs. They force her to work with the shit-buckets-" He broke off as he saw Sean's expression and went on hurriedly, "But she laughed when she saw me."

"Did you give her the paper?"

"Ndio. She hid it in her clothing."

"Nobody saw you?"

The reply was beneath Matatu's dignity, and Sean smiled. "I know, nobody sees Matatu unless Matatu wants them to..." He broke off, and both of them looked upward.

Faintly, from far away, came the now familiar whistle of turboprop engines and rotors.

"The Hinds, return iQ from clobbering the Renamo lines," Sean murmured. The machines were out of sight beyond the canopy of the forest trees, but he sound passed swiftly southward.

"With their limited range, their base can't be too far," Sean thought. He looked at Matatu thoughtfully. "Matatu, those indeki, could you find the place where they come from, and where they return to?"

Matatu's gaze flickered with a moment's doubt. Then he grinned, once again brimming with bravado. "Matatu can follow anything, man or animal or indeki, anywhere it goes," he boasted confidently.

"Go!" Sean ordered. "Find the place. There will be trucks and Iwo many white men. It will be well guarded. Don't let them catch you.

Matatu looked affronted, and Sean clasped Ins shoulder with affection. "When you have found the place, come back to General China's camp at the Pungwe River. I will meet you there."

As unquestioningly as a gun dog sent to retrieve a downed pheasant, Matatu bounded to his feet and tucked up the folds of his loincloth.

"Until we meet again, go in peace, my Bwana.

"Go in peace, Matatu," Sean called softly after him as the little man trotted away into the south. Sean watched him out of sight and then hurried to catch up with Alphonso's column.

"They keep her in a hole in the ground, and there are marks on her arms and legs." Matatu's words echoed in his head, fueling his imagination and anger and determination.

"Hold on, my love. Stick it out. I'll come to get you... soon," he promised her-and himself.

They crossed the rim of another line of rocky kopjes, using a screen of jesse bush to conceal their movements against the skyline, and from good cover on the foreslope Alphonso pointed down into the valley below.

"That is how we brought the trucks in," he explained, and Sean saw that the dry river course would be the only access for a vehicle into this bad country. Even then it must have been a laborious task negotiating the rocky chutes and barriers that broke up the stretches of smooth river sand in the depths of the gorge.

"Where did you hide the trucks?" Sean asked without lowering his binoculars.

Alphonso chuckled. "Unless Frehmo is cleverer than I think they are, I will show you."

They left sentries posted along the ridge to warn of the approach of an enemy patrol. Then Alphonso led the rest of the column down into the gorge. The lower they descended, the steeper became the sides, until there were sheer cliffs on each side and they were forced to take a narrow game trail to the river bottom. It was suffocatingly hot in the narrow gorge; no breeze reached down here, and the rocks absorbed the sun's heat and threw it back at them.

"The trucks?" Sean demanded impatiently.

Alphonso pointed to the cliffs opposite. "In there," he said.

Sean was about to snarl irritably at him when he realized that the cliffs had been carved by wind and flood water over the ages.

"Caves?" he asked, and Alphonso led him through the ankle-deep river sand to the cliff face.