Текст книги "A Time to Die"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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While Alphonso was busy stringing the radio aerial, Matatu slipped quietly into camp. He was carrying a cylinder of freshly peeled bark whose ends were stoppered with plugs of dried grass.

He and Sean exchanged a few words, and Sean looked serious.

"What is it?" Claudia asked with concern.

"Matatu has seen a lot of sign up ahead. It looks like there is a great deal of patrol activity, Frehmo or Renanio, he can't tell which."

That made Claudia uneasy, and she moved a little closer to where Sean sat and leaned against his shoulder. Together they listened to the radio, and again there seemed to be a much higher level of traffic, most of it in Shangane or African-accented Portuguese.

"There is something brewing," Alphonso grunted as he concentrated on the set. "They are moving patrols into a stop line."

"Renamo?" Sean asked, and Alphonso nodded.

"Sounds like General Tippoo Tip's men."

"What does he say?" Claudia asked, but Sean didn't want to alarm her further.

"Routine traffic," he bed. Claudia relaxed and watched Matatu at the cooking fire as he carefully un stoppered the bark cylinder and shook out its contents onto the coals. As she realized what he was cooking, she stiffened with horror.

"Those are the most disgusting-!" She couldn't finish, and she stared in awful fascination at the huge, hairy caterpillars writhing and wriggling on the coals. Their long reddish hair frizzled off in little puffs of smoke, and gradually the worms stopped moving and curled into little crisp black sausages.

Claudia let out a tiny strangled cry and clutched at Sean's arm as she recognized them. "They aren't-!" she gasped. "I didn't!

You didn't make me! Oh! No! I can't believe-!"

"Highly nutritious," Sean assured her, and Matatu, seeing the direction of her gaze, picked one of the caterpillars out of the coals and, passing it quickly from hand to hand to cool it, offered it to her with a magnanimous flourish.

"I think I'm going to throw up," Claudia said faintly, turning her face away. "I can't believe I actually ate one of those."

At that moment the radio crackled sharply and a voice spoke very faintly in a guttural language Claudia could not understand.

However, Sean's sudden interest in the transmission distracted her from her feelings of nauseous disgust and she asked, "What language is that?"

"Afrikaans," he replied shortly. "Quiet! Listen!" But the transmission faded out abruptly.

"Afrikaans?" she asked. "South African Dutch?"

441mat's right." Sean nodded. We must be getting within extreme range. That was almost certainly a South African military transmission, probably a border patrol on the Limpopo." Sean spoke briefly to Alphonso and then told Claudia, "He agrees.

South African border patrol. Alphonso says they sometimes Pick up skip transmissions like that even further north." Sean chocked his wristwatch. "Well, it doesn't look as though General China is going to entertain us this evening. We had better pack up and get ready to march." Sean had half risen when suddenly the radio burst into LIFE again. This time the voice was so clear they could hear every intake of General China's breath.

"Good evening, Colonel Courtney. Please forgive me for the late schedule, but I have had urgent business to attend to. Come in, please, Colonel Courtney."

In the silence that followed Sean made no move toward the microphone, and General China chuckled softly across the ether.

"Still at a loss for words, Colonel? Never mind. I'm sure you are listening, so I will congratulate you on the ground you have covered to date. Quite remarkable, especially in view Of Miss Monterro's brake upon your progress."

"Arrogant bastard," Claudia whispered bitterly. "He is everything and a male chauvinist pig to boot." me by surprise. We "Quite frankly, Colonel Courtney, you took have been forced to redeploy our stop lines further south to welcome you." Again there was a short silence, and suddenly General China's voice was full of malice. "You see, Colonel, we have found where you buried your Matabele." Claudia felt Sean stiffen beside her. The silence drew out until China spoke again. "We dug up the body and we were able to judge how long it had been in the earth by the extent of putrefaction." Sean began to tremble, and China went on affably. "A Matabele can stink like a dead hyena, and your friend was no exception. Tell me, Colonel, did you put that bullet in his head? Very'sensible thing to do. He wasn't going to make it anyway.". 4 "The swine! The bloody swine"" It was wrung out of Sean.

"Oh, and by the way, the booby trap didn't work. Very amateurish effort, I'm afraid." China laughed easily. "And don't worry about the Matabele. I made it easier for the hyenas. I put two of n to work on him with pan gas Bite-size chunks, Colonel, my me Matabele goulash!" snatched it to his mouth.

Sean lunged for the microphone and yelled into it. "You filthy "You depraved bloody animal!" he ghoul! By Christ, you'd better pray I never get my hand s on you!" He broke off, panting with the strength of his outrage.

"Thank you, Colonel." There was a smile in General China's voice.

"I was getting bored with talking to myself. It's good to be in contact again-I've missed you."

With a huge effort Sean resisted the temptation to reply and instead switched off the set. "Pack up." His voice was stiff trembling; with fury. "China will have us pretty well pinpointed after that little outburst. We've got to move fast now."

"Like we were dragging our heels before?" Claudia asked with resignation, but she stood up obediently.

Yet their progress was slower this night. Twice before midnight Matatu cautioned them to wait, warned by his animal sixth sense of danger ahead. Each time he went forward to scout the track and found the ambush that had been set for them, and each time they were forced to make a slow and stealthy detour to avoid the trap.

"General Tippoo Tip's men," Alphonso muttered. "He must be helping General China. There are men waiting for us on every path."

However, after midnight their luck changed for the better.

Matatu came across a well-used path running almost directly southward and discovered that only a short time before a large detachment of men had passed along it in the same direction they were headed.

"We'll use their spoor to cover our own." Sean seized the opportunity and put Matatu in the lead, with Claudia following him, while he and Alphonso took the drag, deliberately treading over the small, distinctive foot marks of the leading pair, obliterating them and losing them in the heavy sign the party of Tippoo Tip s men had left behind them.

They hurried along the path until Matatu's sharp ears picked out the tiny sounds the Renamo patrol was making as it moved forward in the silence of the night. Then they moderated their pace and trailed them at a discreet distance, letting the patrol run interference for them.

Keeping in contact with the enemy, maintaining the strict interval that was the fine between discovery and concealment, was a delicate and eerie business for which they had to rely completely on Matatu's hearing and night sight, but they were moving at almost double the pace they could have hoped for without this assistance.

A little before dawn the Renarno patrol stopped just ahead of them, and they crouched in the darkness and listened to them setting up an ambush on both sides of the pathway. Once the ambush party was settled in, Matatu led them on another detour to meet the path again further on, and they struck out southward once again.

"We have covered twenty-five miles by my reckoning," Sean murmured with grim satisfaction as the first delicate light of dawn paled the eastern stars. "But we cannot risk moving further in daylight. The country is crawling with Renamo. Matatu, find us a place to lie up for the day."

During that night march, they had moved into an area of wet vlei ground on the approaches to the Save River, and now Matatu led them deliberately into the tall swamp grass. They waded knee deep across the flood plains that guarded the river, picking their way between shallow open lagoons from which the mosquitoes rose in gray clouds. The water covered their tracks and Sean brought up the rear of the file, meticulously closing the swamp grass and brushing it upright behind him to disguise their passing.

A few hundred yards off the path Matatu discovered a small dry island only inches above the level of the floodwaters, and as he stepped onto it there was a violent upheaval in the reeds as a heavy body rushed through it.

Claudia screamed with shock, certain they had blundered into another murderous Renamo ambush. However, Matatu whipped out his skinning knife and with a shrill war cry dived into the grass; there was a wild commotion as he wrestled with a writhing, scaly body twice his own size.

Sean rushed forward to help him, and between them they clubbed and stabbed the creature and dragged it out of the grass onto the island. Claudia shuddered with horror as she realized it was a huge gray lizard, almost seven feet long, with a speckled yellow belly and a long whip of a tail that still twitched and lashed from side to side.

With squeaks of glee Matatu immediately began to peel off the scaly skin.

"What is it?"

"Matatu's favorite delicacy, leguan." Sean whetted the blade of his trench knife on thQ,palm of his hand and then helped Matatu butcher the monitor lizard.

The flesh from the tail was white as filets of Dover sole, but Claudia grimaced when Sean offered her a strip.

"You and Matatu would eat your own offspring," she accused.

"That from the girl who dines regularly on mo pane caterpillars!"

"Sean, I couldn't, I really couldn't force myself. Not raw."

"We haven't any dry wood for a fire, and you have eaten Japanese sashimi, haven't you? You told me you loved it."

"That's raw fish, not raw lizard!"

"Same difference. Think of it as a kind of African sashimi," he coaxed her gently. When at last she gave in and tasted it, she found it surprisingly palatable, and her hunger overcame her squeamishness.

For once there was no shortage of water, and they filled their bellies with sweet white meat and floodwater, then curled up on their blankets. With the tall swamp grass swaying over their heads to protect them from the burning sunlight and the eyes in the sky, Claudia felt secure and gave in to her fatigue.

Once in the middle of the day, she woke and lay in Sean's arms to listen to the sound of the searching Hind.

"China is working the riverbanks ahead of us," Sean whispered.

The sound of the Hind's turbos rose and fell as it turned on each leg of the search pattern, and Claudia felt her stomach muscles knotting and contracting as it grew louder, passing only a short distance south of where they lay, and then finally faded into silence.

"He's gone." Sean hugged her. "Get some sleep.

She woke again with a sense of panic on her, but when she tried to MO ve she found herself held down firmly and the palm of someone's hand clamped painfully across her mouth. She turned her eyes sideways, and Sean's face was close to hers.

"Quiet!" he breathed in her ear. "Not a peep out of you."

When she nodded, he released her and rolled over to look out through the screen of swamp grass. She did the same and peered out across the shallow waters of the lagoon.

At first she saw nothing. Then she heard someone singing. It was a sweet girlish treble softly piping a Shangane love song, and with it came the sound of light footfalls in the shallow lagoon water.

The singing came very close, so close that Claudia instinctively shrank nearer to Sean and held her breath.

Suddenly the singing girl stepped into the line of her vision through the aperture in the grass before Claudia's eyes. She was a slim, graceful lass, just past puberty, for though her features were sweet and childlike, her breasts were big and round as tsama melons. She wore only a ragged loincloth pulled up between her long, coltish legs and her skin glowed in the late afternoon sunlight like burnt molasses. She seemed as wild and fey as a spirit of the forest, and Claudia was instantly enchanted by her.

In her right hand the girl carried a light reed fishing spear with multiple barbed grains, and as she waded softly through the lucid warm waters she held the spear poised to strike.

Abruptly the song died on her lips and she froze for an instant, then lunged with the grace of a dancer. The shaft of the spear twitched in her hands, and with a happy little cry she lifted a long, slimy catfish clear of the water. It wriggled on the end of the spear, its wide whAered mouth gulping and grunting, and the girl clubbed its flattened skull and dropped it into the plaited-reed bag at her waist.

She washed the fish slime from her small pink-palmed hands, picked up the spear, and resumed her fishing, coming on directly toward where they lay in the patch of swamp grass. Sean reached out and squeezed Claudia's arm, cautioning her not to move, ut the black girl was already so close that with a few more paces she would stumble over them.

Suddenly she looked up, directly into Claudia's eyes. The two of them stared at each other for only a moment, then the girl whirled and darted away. In an instant Sean was up and racing after her, and from the grass on either side both Alphonso and Matatu rushed out to join the chase.

The girl was halfway across the lagoon before they caught up with her; she tried to dodge and double back, but each way she turned there was one of them ready to cut her off and at last she stood at bay, wild -eyed and panting with terror but holding the fishing spear determinedly in front of her. Her courage and spirit were wasted against the three men facing her; like a cat surrounded by Alsatians, she had no chance of escape.

Matatu feinted at her flank, and the instant she turned the point of the spear toward him Sean knocked it out of her hands and swept her up under his arm. He carried her kicking and clawing back to the island and dumped her on the dry land. She had lost both her straw bag and loincloth in the struggle, and she crouched naked and trembling, staring up at the men who surrounded her.

Sean spoke to her in soft, soothing tones, but at first she would not reply. Then Alphonso questioned her, and as soon as the girl realized that he was of her own tribe, she seemed to relax slightly.

After another few gently questions, she made a hesitant breathless response.

""What does she say?" Claudia could not restrain her concern for the child.

"She is living here in the swamps to hide from the soldiers," Sean answered. "Renamo killed her mother and Frelimo took her father and the rest of her family away to cut trees in the forest. She escaped."

They questioned the girl for almost an hour. How far ahead was the river? Was there a crossing? How many soldiers were there at the river? Where were the Frelimo cutting trees? As she replied to each question, the girl's terror abated. She seemed to sense Claudia's sympathy and looked toward her with a pathetic childlike trust.

"I speak English a little, miss," she whispered at last.

Claudia was startled. "How did you learn?"

"At the mission, before the soldiers came and burned it and killed the nuns."

"Your English is good." Claudia smiled at her. "What is your name, child?"

"Miriam, miss."

"Don't get too chummy," Sean warned Claudia grimly.

"She's a darling little thing."

Sean seemed about to reply but then thought better of it and looked up at the sunset instead. "Damn it, we have missed China's radio schedule. Let's get ready to move out. Time to get cracking."

It took only minutes for them to gird up for the march, and with her pack on her back Claudia asked, "What about the girl?"

"We'll leave her here," Sean said, but something in his voice and the way he looked away worried Claudia. She started to follow Sean as he stepped off the island into the water. Then she stopped and looked back. The black girl still squatted naked, staring after Claudia unhappily, but behind her stood Matatu, and he had the skinning knife in his right hand.

Realization dashed over Claudia like a huge wave of icy anger.

"Sean!" Her voice shook as she called him back. "What are you going to do to this child?"

"Don't worry about it," he told her brusquely.

"Matatu!" She began to tremble. "What are you going to do?"

And he grinned at her. "Are you going to-T" She drew her finger across her own throat, and Matatu nodded merrily and showed her the knife.

"Ndio, " he agreed. "Kufa. " She knew that Swahili word.

Matatu had used it whenever her father had shot down an animal and Matatu had slit its throat. Suddenly she was shaking with anger. She rounded on Sean.

"You're going to murder her!" Her voice was shrill with outrage and horror.

"Wait, Claudia, listen. We can't leave her here. If they catch her it would be suicide."

"You bastard!" she screamed at him. "You're as bad as any Renarno thug, as bad as China himself!"

"It's our lives, don't you understand? It's survival."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing!"

"This is a hard, cruel land. If we are to survive, we have to live by those standards. We can't afford the folly of compassion."

She wanted to attack him physically; she balled her fists in the effort of self-control, but her voice was still shrill. "Compassion and conscience are all that separate us from the animals." She drew a deep breath. "If you value what there is between us, you won't say anything more, you won't try to rationalize what you almost did to this child."

"You prefer to be captured by General China?" he demanded.

"Ms child, as you call her, won't hesitate to give them our exact whereabouts."

"Don't, Sean! I'm warning you, everything you say is causing damage to our relationship that can never be repaired."

"All right, then." Sean reached out to take her hands and draw her to him. "What do you want us to do with her? I'll do whatever you say. You want us to turn her loose to report to the first Renamo patrol that comes along, I'll do it."

Claudia was standing rigid in the circle of his arms, and though the strident edge was gone from her voice, it was cold and determined. "We'll take her with us."

Sean dropped his arms. "With us?"

"That's what I said. If we can't leave her, then that's the only solution."

Sean stared at her and she went on firmly, "You said you'd do whatever I say. You made me a promise."

He opened his mouth, then closed it and looked at the black girl.

She had understood some of the argument, enough to know that her LIFE was at stake and that Claudia was her champion, her savior. When Sean saw the expression on the child's face, suddenly he was filled with shame and self-disgust. It was an alien sensation.

During the bush war the Scouts had left no witnesses. This woman of his was turning him soft, he thought, then smiled and shook his head-or perhaps she was simply humanizing him.

"All right." He was still smiling. "The girl comes with us on condition that you forgive me."

Their kiss was bx*el, cool. Claudia's lips were tightly closed.

Sean understood it would take time for her to recover from her outrage.

She turned from Sean and lifted the black girl to her feet.

Miriam clung to her thankfully.

"Fetch her loincloth," Sean ordered Matatu. "And put your knife away. The girl is coming with us." Matatu rolled his eyes in disapproval. But he went to find the girl's single item of clothing.

While Miriam rewound the scrap of rag around her waist, Sergeant Alphonso leaned on his rifle and watched her with interest.

It was obvious that he was not unhappy with the decision to spare the girl. Claudia did not approve of his appraisal of her protegee, and she opened her small personal pack and dug out her one spare shirt, a camouflage Renamo sweatshirt from General China's stores.

The shirt hung half down MtriajVs thighs and satisfied Claudia's sense of decorum. The black girl was delighted, her terror of a few minutes before forgotten as she Preened in her new finery.

"Thank you, Donna, think you very much. You good lady."

"All right," Sean intervened. "The fashion show is over. Let's move out." And Alphonso took Miriam's arm.

only then did the girl realize she was being abducted, and she pulled away and broke into a passionate protest.

"Damn it!" Sean exploded. "Now we are really in trouble! "what is it?" Claudia demanded.

"She isn't alone. She's got others with her."

"I thought she had lost her parents!"

"That's right, but she's got a brother and sister hidden in the selves. Damn swamps. Two kids so young they can't fend for them it! Damn it!"

Sean repeated bitterly. "Now what the hell do we do?"

with us also," Claudia "We fetch the children and take them stated simply.

"Two brats! Are you crazy? We aren,t running an orphanage."

"Do we have to go over this one more time?" Claudia turned her back on him in exasperation and took Miriam's hand. "It's all right. You can trust me. We'll look after all of YOU."

The black girl quieted and stared at Claudia with a puppy's trust and adoration.

"I'ere are the children? We'll fetch them." hand into

"Come, Donna. I show you." Miriam led her by the the swamp.

It was almost dark when they reached the tiny island where Miriam had hidden the children in a clump of papyrus. When she parted the thick green stems, two pairs of huge dark eyes stared out at them like owlets from the nest.

"A boy." Claudia lifted him out. He was five or six years of age skinny and shivering with fright. "And a girl." She was younger: not more than four, and Claudia exclaimed as she touched her.

sick"" The little girl was too "She's burning up. This child is very weak to stand, and she lay curled like a dying kitten, trembling and mewling softly.

"Malaria," said Sean, and squatted beside the child. "She's riddled with it."

"We've got chloroquine in the medical pack." Claudia reached for it briskly.

"This is madness!" Sean growled. "We can't lumber ourselves with this bunch. It's a nightmare!"

"Do shut up!" Claudia snapped. "How many chloroquine do I give her? The instructions say, "For children under six years, consult a physician." Thanks a lot, we'll try two tablets."

As they worked over the child, Claudia asked Miriam, "What are their names? What do you call the children?"

The answer was so long and complicated that even Claudia looked daunted, but she recovered quickly. "I'll never pronounce that," she said finally. "We'll call them Mickey and Minnie."

"Walt Disney will sue," Sean warned, but she ignored him and wrapped Minnie in her own blanket.

"You'll have to carry her," she told Sean matter-of-factly.

"If the little bugger pees on me, I'll wring her neck," he protested.

"And Alphonso can carry Mickey."

ts were thor Sean could see that Claudia's maternal inst inc additional burden that oughly aroused, and his resentment of this had been thrust upon them was tempered by seeing how the new responsibilities had changed her. Claudia had sloughed off her exhaustion and lethargy and was more vigorous and incisive than she had been since Job's death.

Sean lifted the child's almost weightless little body onto his back and strapped it there with a strip of the blanket. The heat of the fever soaked through the blanket as though she were a hot-water bottle. However, it was a familiar experience to the child, who had been carried since infancy in this fashion, and she was immediately quiet and somnolent. "I still can't believe what's happening to me," Sean muttered. "A goddamned unpaid nursemaid at my age." But he plunged into the swamp once more.

Before the night had h#ll run out, Miriam proved to be an asset that far outweighed the additional burden she and the two children had placed on them. She knew the river area with the intimacy of a swamp creature. She went ahead with Matatu and guided him through the labyrinth of islands and lagoons, picking out the secret pathways that saved them hours of wearisome exploration.

A little after midnight, when Orion the great hunter stood directly overhead with his bow at full draw, Miriam led them out onto the bank of the Rio Save and pointed out the ford through which a man could wade to the far bank.

They rested, and the women tended the children and fed them morsels of leguan meat. The chloroquine had taken effect, and the little girl was cooler and less fretful. After a hurried meal the men concealed themselves in the reed beds and stared out across the black waters in which the stars were reflected like drowning fireflies.

"This is the most dangerous point," Sean whispered. "China was patrolling the river all day yesterday in the Hind, and he'll be back at first light. We don't dare waste time here. We have to get across and get clear before sunrise."

"They'll be waiting on the far side," Alphonso demurred.

"They'll be expecting us."

"That's right," Sean agreed. "They are here, but we know they are here. We'll leave the women on this side and go across to clear the far bank. We can't use firearms, it will have to be knives and wire. It's wet work tonight." He used the old Scout term for it.

"Sebenza enamanzi. In more ways than one, it will be wet work tonight."

Sean's wire was a four-foot length of stainless steel, the single strand he had cut from the winch cable of the Hercules aircraft before abandoning it. Job had carved two hardwood buttons and fixed them to either end of the wire to form grips. It rolled into a coil the size of a silver dollar and slipped easily into the grenade pocket of his webbing. Now Sean fished it out and unrolled it. He tested it, settling the wooden buttons between his fingers and jerking it tight, grunting with satisfaction at the familiar tension in the single resilient strand. Then he recoiled the wire and slipped it over his left wrist like a ban e.

The three of them stripped completely naked; wet clothing dripped water to alert an enemy or give him a hold in a hand-to hand struggle. Each of them wore his knife on a short cord around his bare neck.

Sean went to where Claudia waited with the children in the reeds. When he kissed her, her lips were soft and warm and she clung to him briefly.

"Have you forgiven me?" he asked. As answer UM again.

"Come back soon," she whispered.

The three men slid into the water soundlessly, keeping close contact, and dog-paddled quietly out from the bank, letting the current carry them well down below the ford.

They landed in a bed of papyrus on the south bank and slid ashore on their bellies. Sean's naked white body gleamed in the starlight. He rolled in the sticky black swamp mud until it coated every inch of his skin, then scooped a double handful and rubbed it over his face.

"Ready?" he asked quietly. He freed the trench knife in its sheath at his throat. "Let's go!"

They moved out away from the river and circled back upstream toward the ford. The swamps were confined to the north bank, while this side of the river was drier and the forests grew almost to the river's edge. They stayed in the shadows beneath the trees for concealment. As they drew closer to the ford they moved more cautiously, spreading out, Sean in the middle and Alphonso and Matatu on the flanks.

Sean smelled Renamo before he saw them, an odor of stale native tobacco smoke and dried sweat in unwashed clothing. He froze, listening and staring ahead with all his soul concentrated on it.

A little ahead of him in the darkness, a man coughed softly and cleared his throat, and Sean placed him accurately. He sank down and touched the earth, sweeping a clear spot with his fingertips for his next footstep, so no twig or dry leaf would betray him. One step at a time he moved forward until he had the Renamols head silhouetted against the starry sky. He was sitting behind an RPD machine gun on its bipod, staring out across the river.

Sean waited and the minutes drew out, five, then ten, each one a sep orate age. Then someone else yawned and stretched out on the left flank, and immediately an angry whisper cautioned him to silence.

"Three of them." Sean memorized each position and then withdrew as quietly and cautiously as he had come in.

On the edge of the forest Alphonso was waiting for him, and minutes later Matatu crept back to join them.

"Three," Alphonso whispered.

"Yes, three," Sean agreed.

"Four," Matatu contradicted them both. "There is another one just below the bank." h4latu missed nothing, and Sean accepted his estimate without reservation.

Only four Renamain the ambush. Sean was relieved. He had expected more, but China must be spreading his men thinly to cover every path and every ford of the river.

"No noise," Sean warned them. "One shot and we'll have the entire army doing a war dance on our backs. Matatu, you take the one you found below the bank. Alphonso, the one in the reeds who spoke. I'll take the two in the center." He slipped the wire bangle off his left wrist and unrolled it, once more stretching and testing it between his hands to get the feel of it.

"Wait until you hear my man blow before you strike yours." He reached out and lightly touched their shoulders, the ritual benediction, then they separated and drifted away into the night, back toward the river.

The machine gunner was exactly where Sean had left him, but as Sean moved in behind him a few scattered clouds obscured the stars, and Sean had to wait for them to clear. Every second's delay J increased the chance of discovery, and he was tempted to work only by sense of touch, but he restrained himself. As the sky cleared he was glad he had done so. The sentry had removed his cap and was scratching the back of his head; that raised hand would have blocked the wire and prevented a clean kill. There would have been a scream, gunshots, and every Renamo within miles would have come down on him.

He waited while the sentry relieved his itch and readjusted his cap. Then, as he dropped his hands, Sean reached forward and looped the wire noose around his throat in one swift wrap. In the same movement he hauled back with the full strength of both his arms and shot his right knee between the man's shoulder blades.