Текст книги "A Time to Die"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

Around and around they cruised, five hundred feet above the treetops, crossing and recrossing the dark river at the same point, marking time, waiting for the dawn.

"Sitting duck for a Hind," Job remarked once.

"Don't wish it on us." Sean frowned at him. "If you have nothing else useful to do, get the gunner's bag. It's in the map bin."

Job lugged the bag to the front of the cabin and set it beside his seat, then settled himself comfortably.

"Read to me," Sean instructed. "Find something in there to amuse me and pass the time."

Job brought out the red plastic-covered top-secret folders one at time and thumbed through them, reading out the titles and a chapter headings from each index page.

The first three files were all field manuals for the Stinger SAM Systems, covering their deployment in every conceivable situation I I from the decks of ships at sea to their use by infantry in every he 1[i missile's performance figures in all conditions from tropical jungle climatic zone on the globe, setting out in tables and graphs t to high Arctic.

"All you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask," Job observed, and picked out the fourth manual from the bag.

STINGER GUIDED MISSILE SYSTEM TARGET SELECTION AND RULES OF

ENGAGEMENT OPERATIONAL REPORTS

Job read aloud, then turned to the index and chapter headings.

I. Falkland Islands 2. Arabian Gulf. "Sea of Hormuz" 3. Grenada landings 4. Angola Unita 5. Afghanistan Job read it out, and Sean exclaimed, "Afghanistan! See if they give us anything about the l*nd."

Job set the bulky foe on his lap and adjusted the beam of the reading lamp fromiti recess in the cabin roof above his head. He paged through the manual.

"Here we go! "Afghanistan,"" he read. ""Helicopter Types."

"Find the Hind!" Sean ordered impatiently.

"Soviet Mil Design Bureau Types, NATO Designation "H.""

"That's it," Sean encouraged him. "Look for the Hind."

aplite. Hound. Hook. Hip. Haze. Havoc "Hare," said Job. "H here it is. Hind."

"Give me the gen," Sean ordered, and Job read aloud.

This flying piece of artillery ordnance, nicknamed by the Soviets Sturmovich (or hunchback), known to NATO as Hind and to the Afghan rebels and many others who have encountered it in the field as the "flying death," has gained a formidable reputation which is perhaps not fully justified.

Sean interrupted fervently, "Brother, I hope you know what you're talking about."

Job went on.

1. Impaired maneuverability, hovering, and rate-of-climb characteristics as a consequence of the mass of its armor plating.

2. A limited range of 240 nautical miles fully loaded, again as a consequence of its armor weight.

3. A low max. speed of 157 knots and cruise speed of 147 knots.

4. Very high service and ground maintenance requirements.

"That's interesting," Sean cut in. "Even this big baby"-he patted the Hercules" control column-"is faster than a Hind. I'll remember that if we meet one."

"Do you want me to read to you?" Job asked. "If so, then shut up and listen."

"My apologies, go ahead."

It is estimated that several hundred machines of this type have been employed in Afghanistan. Generally they have met with great success against the rebels, although in excess of 150 have been destroyed by rebel troops armed with the Stinger SAM.

These figures alone prove that the Hind can be effectively engaged by the Stinger SAM System, employing the tactics set out in the following chapters.

Job read on, giving the engine type and performance, the weapons, and other statistics until at last Sean stopped him.

"Hold on, Job!" Sean pointed toward the east. "It is getting light."

The sky was pale enough to form a distinct horizon where it met the black landmass.

"Put the book away and go call Ferdinand up here. See if he can recognize where we are and show us the way home."

A strong odor of vomit surrounded Ferdinand as he stumbled onto the flight deck, and the front of his tunic was stained. He leaned on the back of the pilot's seat for support, and Sean moved to put as much distance between them as possible.

"Look out there, Ferdinand." Sean gesticulated through the bullet-punctured canopy. "Do you see anything you recognize The Shangane peered dubiously around him, muttering 9100mfly. Suddenly his expression cleared and lightened. "Those hills."

He pointed out the side window. "Yes, I know them. The river comes out between them at a waterfall."

"Which way is the camp?"

"That way, far that way."

"How far?"

"Two full days" march."

"Seventy nautical miles, Sean translated time into distance.

We aren't too far out. Thank you, Ferdinand." Sean broke out of the monotonous figure-eight pattern and leveled the Hercules" gigantic wings.

Still low against the forest, he flew westward, the direction in which Ferdinand had pointed, while behind them the dawn came on apace, turning the eastern sky a hazy carmine. They chased the shades of night as they fled across the dark hills.

Sean aimed the nose of the Hercules at the gap Ferdinand had pointed out and checked his wristwatch against the panel clock.

"Time for News Desk on the Africa Service of the BBC," he said, and fiddled with the radio controls. He picked up the familiar signature tune on 15,400 megahertz.

"This is the BBC. Here again are the news headlines. In the United States, Governor Michael Dukakis has convincingly carried the state of New York against Jesse Jackson in his bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Israeli troops have shot dead two more protesters in the occupied Gaza Strip. One hundred and twenty passengers have died in an airline crash in the Philippines. Renamo rebels have high jacked an R.A.F Hercules transport from a ZimbabFean Air Force base near the town of Umtali. They have flown' it into Mozambique, where it is being pursued by aircraft " oF the Zimbabwean and Mozambican air forces. A spokesman said that both President Mugabe and President Chissano have given orders that the aircraft, which has no hostages on board but which contains sophisticated modern weapons intended for use against the rebels, is to be destroyed at all costs."

Sean switched off the set and smiled across at Job. "You never thought you'd make the news headlines, did you?"

"I can do without the fame," Job admitted. "Did you get the bit about being pursued and destroyed at all costs?"

The Hercules was fast approaching the gap in the fine of hills The light had strengthened so that Sean could make out the pearly gleam in the throat of the pass where the river tumbled down over wet black rock.

"Incoming!" Job yelled suddenly. "One o'clock low!"

With his extraordinary eyesight, he had picked it up an instant before Sean did. The Hind had been lying in ambush, squatting like some monstrous insect in a hidden clearing in the forest, guarding the entrance to the river pass.

As Sean saw it, he clearly understood the tactics Frelimo had used to cut him off from the Renamo lines. They would have sent the full squadron of Hinds in during the night, as soon as they guessed where he was headed.

Operating at the limits of their range, the Hinds would have settled in a defensive line, landing to conserve fuel, hiding in the forest and sweeping with their pulse radars, listening in the silence for the sound of the Hercules" engines.

Almost certainly they had guessed he would use the river as a navigational landmark. There would probably be other gunships waiting further upstream, forming an intercepting ring around the Renamo lines, but, erring too far south, Sean had run headlong into this one.

It leaped out of the forest, rising vertically on the silver blur of its rotor, the deformed nose drooping like a minotaur lowering its head to charge, blotched with leprous camouflage, obscenely ugly and deadly.

It was still below them but coming up swiftly, swelling in size as they converged. Within moments its Gatling cannon would bear; already it was training upward. Sean reacted without thought.

He rammed all four throttle controls fully open, and the great turbos screeched as he thrust the nose down, diving straight at the helicopter.

He saw the rockets leaving the weapon pods under the Hind's wings, each one a black dot in the center of a white wreath of smoke as it dropped clear. He remembered the statistics Job had read him only minutes before. The Hind carried two AT-2 Swatter imssiles and four 57-men rocket pods.

He dived the Hercules through the barrage of rockets. They flashed past his head, a storm of smoke and death, and the Hind was only two hundred meters ahead, still rising to meet him, firing rockets at point-blank range but not allowing for his violent maneuver.

"Hold on!" Sean shouted at Job. "I'm going to ram the bastard."

The killing rage was on him, sweet and hot in his blood. There was no fear at all, just the marvelous urge to destroy.

At the last moment, the pilot of the Hind guessed his intention.

They were so close that through the canopy Sean could clearly make out his features below the helmet. The Russian's face was doughy white and his mouth a shocking red slash like an open wound. He flicked the Hind over on its side, almost inverting it completely, closing down his collective so the gunship fell like a lead weight, trying to duck under the Hercules" outspread pinions. Got you, you son of a bitch!" Sean exulted, and the Hercules" wing hit the tail of the gunship. The shock of impact threw Sean against his shoulder straps, and the Hercules shuddered and lurched. The airspeed was knocked off her and she quivered on the edge of the stall, only two hundred feet above the forest top.

"Come on, pussycat," Sean whispered like a lover. He was babying the controls, coaxing her with gentle fingers. Her damaged wing was down, tatters of torn metal hanging from it, whipping and banging in the slipstream, and the forest tops reached up like the talons of a predator to claw them out of the sky.

"Fly for me, darling," Sean whispered, and the four engines, howling with the effort, held her up, then gradually lifted her clear.

The needle of the rate-of-climb indicator rose jerkily; they were climbing at two hundred feet a minute.

"Where's the Hind?" Sean yelled at Job.

"She must be down," Job called back, both of them screaming at each other with terror and excitement and the triumph of it.

"Nothing could take a hit like that." Then his voice changed.

"No, there she is, she's still flying. My God, will you look at that mother?"

The Hind was hard hit, skittering out to one side, the tail rotor and rudder torn, almost completely gone. Obviously her pilot was fighting for her life as she lurched and rolled and wallowed about the sky.

"I don't believe ill She's still shooting at us!" Job cried, and a smoking rocket trail blazed across their nose.

"She's steadying." Job was watching her through the side window. "She's coming round, she's after us again."

Sean met the Hercules'climb and aimed for the pass through the hills. The rocky cliffs seemed to brush their wingtips, and the foaming white waterfall flashed beneath them.

"He has fired a missile." As Job called the warning, the pass through the hills opened up ahead of them, and Sean lifted the Hercules" maimed wing high in a maximum-rate turn.

The huge aircraft hugged the cliff face, turning the corner just as the Swatter missile locked onto the infrared emissions of her exhausts and sped down the gut of the pass. The Hercules cut the turn so finely that Sean had to use full power to hold the nose level, j; and looking upward through the skylight of the canopy, he felt as ! though he could have reached out and touched the rock face as the Hercules stood on one wmgt1p. The missile tried to follow her around, but at the critical instant the Hercules disappeared from its line of sight and the rocky corner blocked the infrared emissions of her exhausts.

The missile crashed into the cliff face, gouging out a great fall of rock and filling the pass behind the Hercules with dust and smoke.

Sean brought the Hercules back on an even keel once again, gentling her, favoring her damaged wing.

"Any sign of the Hind?"

"No-" Job broke off as he saw the dread shape materialize through the dust and smoke. "She's there, she's still coming!"

The entire rear section of the Hind's fuselage was twisted askew, and half her rudder was missing. She staggered and lurched through the air, only barely under control and falling rapidly behind the fleeing Hercules. The pilot was a brave man, serving her, keeping her in action to the end.

"WS-fired again!" Job cried as he saw the missile drop from under the stubby wing roots and boost toward them on a tail of smoke.

"She's down!" Job watched the tail rotor of the gunship break away and spiral upward while the body dropped like a spine-shot buffalo bull and hit the trees, breaking up in a tall burst of flame and smoke.

"Break right!" Job called desperately. Although the Hind was dead, her terrible offspring blazed across the sky, bearing down on them mercilessly.

Sean put the Hercules over as hard as she would go. The missile almost missed the turn and went skid din2 wide in overshoot, but it corrected itself and came around hard, spinning out a long billow of silver smoke behind it, and fastened on the starboard number two motor.

For a moment, they were blinded as the smoke of the explosion swept over the canopy and was as suddenly swept away. The Hercules convulsed as though in agony. The missile blast threw her wing up, miraculously knocking her back onto an even keel, and adroitly Sean held her there.

He looked across in horror at the damage. The number two engine was gone, blown out of its mountings, leaving a terrible gaping wound in the leading edge of the wing. It was a mortal blow. In her death throes, the Hercules careered across the sky, dragged around by the asymmetrical thrust of her five engines, the damaged wing flexing and beginning to fold backward.

Sean eased back the throttles, trying to relieve the strain and balance the thrust. He looked ahead, and there was the river, wide and shallow and tranquil above the turmoil of the falls. The first rays of the sun were buttering the tops of the trees on either bank and the crocodiles lay black on the white sandbanks.

Sean flipped on the intercom and spoke over the loudspeakers into the cargo hold. "Hold on! We are going to hit hard!" he said in Shangane, and pulled his own harness adjustment in tighter.

The Hercules lumbered down heavily, both wings so ( am aged that Sean was amazed that she was still airborne. "Too fast," he muttered. She was dropping like an express elevator. They would hit the trees short of the river. He braced himself for losing a wing and the accompanying disruption of air flow, and gingerly pulled on full flap to slow her down.

Far from destroying herself, the Hercules responded gratefully to the additional lift and floated in with a semblance of her old elegance. She skimmed the treetops on the riverbank and Sean switched off the fuel pumps, mains, and magnetos to prevent a fire.

He held the nose high, bleeding off speed, and the needle on the airspeed indicator wound back sharply. The stall warning buzzer sounded, then the deafening klaxon of the landing gear chimed in, trying to warn him that his wheels were stiff up.

The controls went sloppy as the Hercules approached a stall, but they were out in the center of the river, twenty feet up and dropping fast. The crocodiles slid off the sandbar directly ahead, chummg the green water in panic, and Sean kept feeling the control column back and back, fending her off until the last possible moment.

He felt the tail touch the water. The airspeed indicator was right down to forty knots. Mie Hercules stalled and belly-flopped into the river. A solid green wave broke over the nose and washed the canopy, spurting in1hrough the bullet holes.

Both Sean and Job were flung violently forward against their shoulder harnesses, then the Hercules bobbed up and surfed on her belly, slowing down and turning to stop broadside to the current.

"Are you all right?" Sean barked at Job. In reply, Job unbuckled his harness and leaped out of the copilot's seat.

The deck was canted under Sean's feet as he stood up. Through the canopy he saw that the Hercules was floating aimlessly down on the current. Her empty fuel tanks and the air trapped in the fuselage were keeping her afloat.

"Come on!" He led Job back into the main hold and saw at a glance that the cases of missiles were still secured in their heavy cargo nets.

The Shanganes were in a panic, at least two of them injured, writhing and moaning in the puddles of drying vomit on the deck, one with a sharp, jagged end of bone protruding through the flesh of his broken arm.

Sean spun the locking wheel on the emergency hatch and kicked it outward. Immediately the nylon escape chute inflated and popped out like a drunkard's yellow tongue to flop onto the surface of the water below.

Sean leaned out of the open hatch. They were drifting toward another sandbar, and he judged that the water under their keel was only shoulder deep, for he could see the bottom clearly.

"Ferdinand." Sean picked him out of the mob of mflhng Shanganes. "This way, get them out!" He saw Ferdinand sober and lash out at the panic-stricken troopers around him, driving them toward the hatch.

"Show them how it's done," Sean ordered Job. "And once you are down, get them to haul the hull onto the sandbar."

Job folded his arms over his chest and jumped feet first onto the chute. He shot down into the water, then floundered to his feet.

The water came up to his armpits. immediately he waded to the Hercules" side and threw his whole weight against it.

One at a time, the uninjured Shanganes followed him down the chute, and at the bottom Job took charge of them. Sean shoved the last trooper through the hatch, then leaped out himself.

low blood warm. As soon as The water was just a few degrees be he surfaced he saw that all the men were straining against the Hercules'floating carcass and slowly moving her across the flow of the river. He added his own weight to theirs, and gradually the bottom shelved beneath their feet and the water dropped to the level of their waists.

The belly of the Hercules ran aground, and she settled heavily as the fuselage flooded. The men dragged themselves onto the sandbar and collapsed in sodden heaps, their expressions dull and bovine from the aftereffects of terror and exertion.

Sean looked around him, trying to assess their position and plan his priorities. The Hercules was stranded high enough to ensure that only the lower part of the fuselage was flooded and that the iles would not be submerged and have their delicate electronic circuitry ruined.

The current had swept them in under the sheer riverbank, against which the summer floods had piled dead trees and drift wood high. The sandbar was merely a narrow strip below the bank.

"We must move fast," Sean told Job. "We can expect that the Hind was able to transmit a signal to the rest of the squadron, and they'll come looking for us."

"What do you want to do first?"

"Unload the Stingers," Sean answered promptly. "Get them busy." Once Sean climbed aboard again, he found that the hydraulic rams on the cargo door were still operating off the batteries and he lowered the ramp.

The weight of each wooden case was stenciled on it, 152 pounds.

"They are light, two men to a case," Sean ordered, and he and Job rifted them onto the shoulders of each pair as they stepped forward soon as they received it, they trotted down the ramp onto the sandbar and up the bank into the trees. Ferdinand showed them where to stash them and cover them with driftwood.

It took less than twenty minutes to unload the cargo, but every minute Sean was in a ferment of impatience and anxiety. As the last case was carried ashore, he hurried out onto the ramp and peered up at the sky, expecting to hear the approaching whine of rotors and Isotov turbos.

"Our luck isn't going to last," he told Job. "We must get rid of the Hercules."

"What are you going to do, swallow it or bury it?" Job asked sarcastically.

Against the forward bulkhead of the Hercules" hold was a 120ton loading winch, used to drag cargo aboard. Under Sean's instruction four Shanganes ran out the winch cable and used the Hercules" inflatable life raft to take the end of it across the river and shackle it to a tree on the far bank.

While they were doing this, Sean and Job searched the Hercules and stripped it of everykitern of useful equipment, from the first aid kit to the stores of coffee and sugar in the tiny forward galley. With satisfaction, Semi saw that the tropical first aid box was substantial and contained a good supply of malarial prophylactics and antibiotics. He sent it ashore with one of the Shanganes and ran back to the loading ramp.

The dinghy was returning, and still there was no sound or sight of marauding Hind gunships. It was too good to bear thinking about.

"Get everybody ashore," Sean told Job, and went to the winch controls. As he engaged the clutch, the steel cable came up taut and the Hercules" hull, which was heavily beached on the sandbar, if lurched and began to swing. He kept the winch running, and the sand gritted and scraped under her belly as she was dragged into deeper water.

As soon as she was afloat, Sean half closed the ramp to prevent her flooding too rapidly and winched her into the middle of the river, where the current was swiftest. As soon as she took the current and began to drift downstream, Sean grabbed the bolt cutters from their rack on the bulkhead and sheared the cable. The Hercules floated free.

On impulse Sean cut a four-foot length from the end of the severed winch cable. The stainless steel strands immediately began to unravel of their own accord. He rolled three of the separate strands into a tight loop and slipped the roll into his back pocket.

Job would fit hardwood buttons to the strands. The garroting wire was one of the Scouts" favorite clandestine weapons, and Sean had felt half naked since he had lost his in the pack he had dropped down the cliff. He transferred his full attention back to the Hercures.

"The fuel tanks are almost empty," he murmured as he watched her progress downstream. "She should float until she reaches the falls." He stayed on board while at least two miles of riverbank went by.

In the meantime he used the bolt cutters to sever the hydraulic pipes and fuel leads that ran along the roof of the cargo hold. A mixture of hydraulic fluid and Avtur dribbled and spurted and puddled onto the floor of the hold. Satisfied at last that he had done everything possible to throw off the pursuit, he balanced in the open escape hatch and pulled the pin from the phosphorus grenade he had commandeered from Ferdinand.

"Thanks, old girl," he spoke aloud to the Hercules. "You have been a darling. The least I can offer you is a Viking's funeral." He rolled the grenade down the deck of the hold, then leaped out of the hatch and hit the water. He came up swimming, reaching out in a full overarm crawl with the image in his mind of those fat black crocodiles he had seen on the sandbar.

Behind him he heard the muffled bump of the exploding grenade, but he never paused or looked back until he felt ground under his feet. By then the Hercules was a quarter of a mile downstream, burning furiously but still afloat. Black, oily smoke boiled up into the clear morning sky.

Sean waded the last few yards to the steep bank and crawled up it on hands and knees. While he sat there panting and gulping for breath, he heard the familiar and by now well -hated sound of rotors and Isotov turbo engines coming in fast. The smoke of the burning Hercules was a beacon the Hinds would have spotted from fifty miles out.

Sean took a handful of mud from the bank on which he sat and smeared his bare arms and face. He crawled under a dense bush on the bank and watched the Hind come sweeping in over the treetops, banking in a wide circle around the burning hulk of the Hercules and then hovering like an evil vampire two hundred feet above it.

The flames reached one of the fuel tanks and the Hercules exploded in a dragon's breath, scattering pieces of itself across the river, the flames hissing into steam as they hit the water. The Hind hung over the river for almost five minutes, perhaps searching for survivors. Then abruptly it rose high, turned its nose southward, and dwindled to a speck against the blue.

"Limited range and endurance, like the man said." Sean stood up from his hiding place. "Now go home like a good little Russkie and report the target destroyed. Go tell Bobby Mugabe he doesn't have to worry about his precious Stingers falling into the wrong hands."

He reached into his top pocket and brought out the packet of Dutch cigars. The cardboard disintegrated in his hands, and the leaf had dissolved into a soggy porridge. He tossed it into the river.

"Time I gave up anyway," he sighed, and trudged along the bank, heading upstream.

Job was working on the two injured troopers. "This one has got a nice set of cracked ribs and a broken collarbone." Job finished the strapping and then indicated the other patient. "I left this one for you."

"Appreciate it," Sean grunted, and examined the broken arm.

"It's a bloody mess."

"Nice adjective," Job agreed. Two inches of the shattered humerus protruded from dark bruises and blood clots. A buzzing swarm of metallic blij– flies were circling the clots, and Sean brushed them away.

What have you "done so far?"

"Given him a handful of painkillers from the med box."

"That should stun an ox." Sean nodded. "Get me a piece of nylon fine and two of the strongest Shanganes."

The arm had shortened dramatically, and Sean had to get the ends of the broken bone to meet again. He looped the nylon rope around the trooper's wrist and gave the ends to the Shangane strongmen.

"When I say pull, you pull, understand?" he ordered. "Okay, Job, hold him."

They had done this before, Often. Job took up a position sitting behind the patient, slipped his arms under his armpits, and locked them around his chest.

In going to hurt you," Sean promised the patient. The man stared back at him impassively "Ready?" Job nodded, and Sean glanced up at the rope They laid back with a will.

The"

" d man's eyes snapped wide open, and a rash of sweat injure his skin.

droplets like blisters burst out on "Pull harder!" Sean snarled at Ferdinand, and the arm began to owly into elongate. The sharp point of protruding bone withdrew SI the flesh.

The Shangane ground his teeth together with the effort of rening himself from screaming– The sound was like two pieces of strai being rubbed together forcibly, and it grated along Sean's glass The point of bone popped back into the swollen purple nerve ends. asp together deep in the wound, and Sean heard the two ends r flesh. told Ferdinand, and deftly placed a "That's it! Hold it!" he side of the arm. He it up as firmly an then nodded at Ferdinand.

it go." Ferdinand released the pressure, and the "Slowly. Let straight.

splints held the arm science," Job murmured.

"Another breakthrough for medical -An elegant and sophisticated procedure, Doc."

"Can you walk?" Sean asked. "Or do we have to carry You home?"

"of course I can walk." The trooper was indignant. "Do you think I am a womanT"

"If you were, we would ask a top bridal price for YOU-Sean grinned at him and stood up.

"Let's inspect the loot," he suggested to Job. It was their first crates from the Hercules.

opportunity to examine the There were thirty-five of them piled haphazardly under the spreading branches of an African mahogany. With Ferdinand and r of his men assisting, they sorted through them, stacking them fou neatly after noting the lettering on each. Thirty-three cases, each weighing 152 pounds, were marked: STINGER

GUIDED MISSILE SYSTEM I X GRIP STOCK AND ANTENNA I X INTERROGATOR 5 X

LOADED LAUNCH TUBES and sixty-five shots, and there are "That gives China a hundred out of eleven Hinds left in the squadron after the one you knocked the sky," Job calculated. "Sounds good to me-" n with the way some of these beauties shoot, they are go" 9 to need every one of them," Sean grunted. Then his expression of deliberate Pessimism lightened. "Well well! Here is one for the link!"

of the two remaining odd-sized cases was stenciled: One STINGER GUIDED MISSELE SYSTEM TRAINING SET M. 134 TRACKING BEAD TRAINER "That will make somebody's life a lot easier," Job agreed. The captured manuals had discussed this training system, which allowed an instructor to monitor a trainee's tracking technique during a simulated missile launch. It would be invaluable equipment for whoever was given the job of teaching the RenamO troops to use the system.

However, it was not until Sean examined the last and smallest of the prize dawned on him. The small case that the full value wooden crate was stenciled:

GM GUIDED MISSILE SYSTEM

POSTMODUZICATION SOIFIWAU "Sweet Trinity," he whistled. "It's a post, not a common or her ell garden system, but a ruddy post that we have got Ourselves "Let's take a look!" Job was as excited as he was.

Sean hesitated, likeg-child tempted to onen his gift before the dawn of his birthday. He glanced up at the sky, looking for Hinds.

Strange how he bag picked up that nervous habit from his Shanganes.

we daren,t move until dark. Plenty of time to kill," he caPitulated, and leaned over to draw the bayonet from the sheath of Ferdinand's webbing.

Gently he prized open the lid of the crate and lifted away the slabs of white polyurethane packing. The software was contained in a heavy-duty plastic carry pack. He sprang the catches on the lid and opened the case. The dozens of software cassettes were each color-coded, sealed in transparent glassine envelopes and fitted into tailored slots in the interior. This was what they had read about in the manuals they had borrowed from Carlyle, the British gunnery officer.

"Get the manuals," Sean told Job. When he brought them over, they squatted beside the open case and pored through the heavy volume that described the post system.