Текст книги "A Time to Die"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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The wire sliced through flesh and windpipe as though they were Cheddar cheese. Sean felt the momentary check as the wire came up hard against the vertebrae of the neck, but he sawed with both hands, keeping all his weight on the wire, pushing with his knee.

The wire found the gap between the vertebrae and snicked clearly through it. The man's head fell forward and tumbled into his lap, and the man blew. The air from his lungs rushed out through the open windpipe in a soft sigh. It was the sound he had told Matatu and Alphonso to wait for. He knew they would be taking their victims at this moment, but there was no sound until the man Sean had killed flopped forward and his carotid artery discharged onto the earth with a regular hiss like milk from the teat jetting into a bucket under a milkmaid's practiced fingers.

The sound alerted the fourth Renamo, the only one still alive, and he called out in a puzzled tone, "What is it, Alves? What are you doing?"

The question guided Sean to him, and he had the knife out of its sheath, holding it underhand so the point went up at an acute angle under the man's fibs. Sean pinned Win down with his left hand, holding his throat closed to prevent him screaming, working the knife with his other hand, opening the wound, twisting and turning the blade with all the strength of his right wrist.

In thirty seconds it was over. The last tremors shook the body beneath him, and Sean released him and stood up. Matatu was already beside him, his skinning knife at the ready. The knife and his hands were wet. His own work was done and he had come to help Sean, but it was not necessary.

They waited for a full minute, listening for any alarm; perhaps there was another sentry even Matatu might have overlooked, but apart from the croaking of the frogs in the reed beds and the whine of mosquitoes there was no sound.

"Search them," Sean ordered. "Take whatever we can use."

One of the rifles, all of the ammunition, half a dozen grenades, spare clothing, all the food. They gathered it up swiftly.

"That's it," Sean said. "Dump the rest of it." They dragged the bodies down the bank and pushed them out into the current, then dropped the heavy machine gun and the rest of the discarded equipment into the deep water beyond the reeds.

Sean glanced at his watch. "We are running out of time. We must bring the others across."

Claudia, Miriam, and the children were still in the reed beds on the south bank where they had left them.

"What happened? We didn't hear anything." Claudia hugged Sean's naked wet chest with relief.

"Nothing to hear," Sean told her, and picked up the sleeping children, one on each arm.

They formed a human stanchion across the current, locking arms together, bracing each other against the heavy pull of the water that was as deep as Claudia's chin. Without this support the women would have been swept away. Even with it the crossing was arduous, and they dragged themselves onto the south bank near exhaustion.

Sean would not let them rest longer than the few minutes it took to dry Minnie and wrap her in a jacket they had looted from one of the dead Renarno; then he had them up again and chivvied them onward into the forest.

"We have to get clear of the river before sunrise. China will be back as soon as it is light."

General China picked out the group of men on the riverbank at two hundred feet. As the helicopter slanted in toward them, the downdraft of its rotors furred the surface of the Save River with a dark ruffle.

The Portuguese pilot set the machine down at the edge of the forest on the south bank. China clambered out of the weapons cockpit and went striding down toward the river. Although his face was an expressionless mask, his anger boiled behind it and glinted in his eyes. He took the dark glasses from his breast pocket and concealed his eyes behind the lenses.

The circle of men opened respectfully, and China stepped through and looked down at the disembodied human head that lay on the muddy bank. It had been washed up among the reeds, the freshwater crabs had nibbled at it, and the water had leached the exposed flesh white and clouded the open eyes to opaque marbles, but the clean cut that had severed the neck was as unmistakable as a handwritten signature.

"That's the white man's work," China said softly. "His Scouts called it "wet work'; the wire was their trademark. When did it hap penT "Last night." Tippoo Tip tugged at his beard with agitation.

There had been no survivors of the ambush party, no one of whom to make an example.

"You let them get through," China accused coldly. "You promised me they would never cross the river."

"These dogs!" Tippoo Tip snarled. "Those useless pigs!"

"They are your men," China pointed out. "And men take after those who command them. Their failure is your failure, General."

It was said in front of Tippoo Tip's own staff, and he growled with humiliation. He had made the promise and failed, and he shook with anger. He glared around at his men, loo a victim, but they dropped their eyes and their faces were abject and obsequious. There was no relief there.

Suddenly he drew back his foot and swung a vicious kick at the severed head. The steel toecap of his boot crushed in the pulpy waterlogged nose.

"Dog!" he shouted, and booted the head again, sending it rolling down the bank. He followed it, shouting with anger, aiming wild kicks at it, until it bounced like a football and plopped over the bank into the river.

He came back to General China, panting with rage.

"Very good, General." China applauded him ironically. "Very brave. What a pity you could not do the same to the white man."

"I had every crossing of the river guarded," Tippoo Tip started, then broke off as he noticed the crudely stitched gash on China's cheek for the first time. He grinned viciously. "You have been wounded. What misfortune. It wasn't the fault of the white man, was it? Surely not. You are too cunning to let him injure you, General China-apart from your ear, of course."

It was China's turn to bridle with fury. "If only I had my own men here. These stupid dogs of yours couldn't wipe their own backsides."

"One of your men is a stooge"" Tippoo Tip roared back at him.

"He's running with the white man. My men are not traitors. I have them in my hands." He showed those great paws, shaking them in China's face, and China closed his eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath. He realized they were on the brink of an irrevocable breach. A few more words like these and he would have no further cooperation from this great bearded ape. One day he would kill him, but he needed him today.

Today the most important thing in General China's world was getting his hands on the white man, alive if possible but dead if it had to be. Without Tippoo Tip's help, there was no chance of that.

His anger and retribution must wait for another time and opportunity.

"General Tippop Tip." His tone was conciliatory, almost humble. "Please forgive me. I let my disappointment run over my good sense. I know you did your best for me. We are both of us victims of our own people's incompetence. I ask you to ignore my bad manners."

Tippoo Tip was taken off balance as China had intended, and the angry words died in his open mouth.

"Even though these fools were unable to stop them, now at last we know exactly where they are. We have their fresh spoor and a full day in which to follow it. Let us make the most of this opportunity. Let's get this tiresome business over with. Then I, and my helicopter, will be entirely at your disposal for the more important task ahead of us."

He saw he had picked the right words. Tippoo Tip's rage gradually gave way to t at s Y, avaricious express n so well.

"I have already called up my best trackers," he agreed. "I'll have fifty of my men on their spoor within the hour, men who can run an eland off its feet. The white man will be in your hands before the sun sets this evening. This time there will be no mistake."

"Where are these trackers?" China demanded.

"I have radioed."

"I will send the helicopter to fetch them."

"That will save valuable time."

They watched the Hind rise and bear away northward, low across the darkly flowing waters of the Save River. As it disappeared they both turned to stare toward the south.

"You no longer control the territory south of the river," China pointed out. "These are the forests you so cunningly relinquished to the Frelinio." He pointed at the dense stands of hardwoods that stood tall against the southern sky.

"The river is my front line," Tippoo Tip conceded reluctantly.

"But the nearest Frehmo forces are still many miles further south.

My patrols cover this ground without interference from them. The men I am sending after the white man will catch him long before he. gets into Frelimo-held territory." Tippoo Tip broke off and pointed along the riverbank. "All, here they come." A long double file of heavily armed guerrillas came trotting down the footpath toward them. "Fifty of my best men. You will eat white chickens for dinner tonight.

Don't worry, my friend. They are as good as on your plate already."

The two platoons of Renamo halted and fell out on the bank, waiting for their trackers. China was a good judge of troops. He walked among them, and he recognized in them that eagerness and enthusiasm tempered by discipline and professionalism that is the peculiar mark of first-class bush fighters. For once he agreed with Tippoo Tip. These were hard men who could be relied on to get the job done. China beckoned the section leaders across to him.

"You know who you are chasing?" he asked, and they nodded.

"The white man is as dangerous as a wounded leopard, but I want him alive. Do you understand?"

"We understand, General."

"You have a radio. I want a report of your progress every hour on the command frequency."

"Yes, General."

"And when you have the quarry in sight, call me. I will come in the hen shaw I want to be there at the death."

The section leaders looked across the river, their expressions alert, and moments later, even with his impaired hearing, China picked up the whistle of the Hind's turbos returning from the north.

"If you do your job, you will be rewarded. But if you fail me, you will regret it. You will regret it deeply," China promised them.

As soon as the helicopter landed, the two trackers clambered down with alacrity from the small rear cabin. Tippoo Tip shouted at them and pointed to the outgoing spoor Sean and his party had left.

Watching the trackers begin their task, China was even more confident of the outcome. These two were good. They made a quick cast ahead, and then came back to the center and squatted over the spoor, whispering together softly, touching the faint tracks with the supple wands of wild willow they each carried, tent as a pair of bloodhounds taking the scent of the chase. When in they stood up again, a change had come over them. They were determined and businesslike. They turned to face the southern forests and went away at a run.

Behind them the two full platoons of camouflaged Renamo assault troopers fanned out into their running formation and set their pace to match the trackers.

"The white woman can never keep up that speed," Tippoo Tip exulted. "We will overtake them before they reach the Frelimo lines. We will have them before the end of this day. This time they'll not escape." He turned back to China. "Why don't we follow them in the helicopter?"

China hesitated. He did not want to explain the Hind's shortcomings. It was better to. let Tippoo Tip go on believing in its infallibility. He would not discuss with him the difficulty of bringing up sufficient fuel, 4he Hind's limited range even with full tanks, or the facts that his Portuguese engineer had warned him that the turbos were long overdue for service and that the pilot had already reported a malfunction and loss of power in the starboard engine.

"I will wait here," he said. "When your men catch up with the white man, they will call on the radio. That is when I will follow them."

China adjusted his dark glasses and sauntered across to the Hind. The pilot was waiting for him, leaning with assumed nonchalance against the camouflaged fuselage below the main cockpit.

"How is the engine behavine." China asked in Portuguese.

"It is beginning to surge and miss. It needs to be worked on."

"Fuel?"

"Main tanks are down to quarter. However, I still have the auxiliary."

"The convoy of porters with the fuel will be at our forward base by tomorrow morning. The engineer can work on her tonight, but I have to have her on standby until dark. I'll need her when they catch up with the runaways."

The pilot shrugged. "I'll fly her if you are willing to take the chance on that engine," he agreed.

"Keep a listening watch on the radio," China ordered. "With luck it will all be over in a few hours."

Sean realized Claudia could not maintain this pace much further.

She was running just ahead of him, so he could study the changes Mi in her that privation and hard living had brought about. She was I so lean and wispy that her scanty threadbare shirt flapped around ir her flanks, and the legs of her trousers had been reduced by thorns and razor-edged grass to a fringe of tatters that hung halfway down her thighs; below that, the length of her legs was exaggerated by their extreme thinness, yet somehow they had retained their elegant, high-bred lines. However, the thorns and sharp grass had wrought havoc on the exposed skin of her arms and legs. It looked as though she had been scourged by a cat-o'-nine-tails. Some of the scratches were healed, others scabbed over, but a few still bled.

Her hair had grown into a lank sweat-tangled mop that thumped between her prominent bony shoulder blades with each pace, and her back was so thin he could have counted the knobs of her vertebrae beneath her shirt. The perspiration had soaked through in a dark line down her spine, and hard exercise had firmed her buttocks into a pair of India-rubber balls in the sun bleached cotton pants; through a tiny three-cornered tear a tender flash of her white bottom winked at him with each pace. Her legs were floppy with exhaustion, throwing out sideways, and her ankles were loose and wobbled under her.

He would have to let her rest very soon, and yet she had not complained, not once in all the long tortured hours since they had left the river. He grinned fondly as he remembered the spoiled, arrogant bitch who had stepped off the Boeing at Harare airport so many eons ago. This was a different woman-tough, determined, and with a spirit as resilient as a Damascus steel blade. He knew she would never give up, she would keep going until she killed herself. He reached forward and tapped her shoulder.

"Ease up, wench. We'll take ten."

When she pulled up, she was unsteady on those long legs and he arm around her shoulders to steady her. "You're a ruddy put an marvel, do you know that?" He eased her down to sit with her back against one of the lead wood trees, and unscrewed the stopper on his water bottle, and passed it to her.

"Give Minnie to me. It's time for her chloroquine." Claudia's voice was husky with tiredness. Sean swung the little girl off his back and placed her in Claudia's lap.

"Remember, ten minutes, that's all."

Alphonso had taken the break to rig the radio. Mickey was squatting on one side of him, Miriam on the other. They watched with fascination as he tuned the set and began searching the bands.

There was the crackle and buzz of static followed by some faint extraneous snatches of Afrikaans, then an excited voice speaking in Shangane, very close and loud.

"Very close now," it said, and the reply came immediately.

"Keep going hard. Push them. Don't let them escape. Call me as soon as you catch them." That voice was unmistakable, and they did not need the acknowledgement to confirm it.

"Very well, General China."

The transmission ended, and Sean and Alphonso exchanged a quick hard frown.

"Very close," said the Shangane. "We can't outrun them."

"You might be able to get away," Sean said, "on your own."

Alphonso hesitated and looked sideways at Miriam. The Shantrusting eyes, and Algane maid returned his glance with open and scratched himself with embarrassment. "I'll phonso coughed stay," he muttered.

Sean laughed bitterly and said in English, "Join the club, mate.

That little witch didn't take long to hook you. These ruddy sheilas will be the death of all of us yet, you mark my words."

Alphonso frowned. He did not understand, and Sean switched back into Shangane. "Pack up the radio. If you are going to stand with us, we'd best find good place to do it. Your dung-eating Renamo brothers A* going to be with us very soon."

Sean turned and looked across at Matatu, who was instantly on his feet.

"That was China on the radio," he told him in Swahili.

"He hisses like a cobra." Matatu nodded.

"His men are on our spoor. They boast to him that they are very close.

Are there any more tricks we can use now, old friencr"

"Fire?" Matatu suggested, but without conviction.

Sean shook his head. "The wind is against us. We'd cook ourselves if we torched the forest."

Matatu hung his head. "If we keep the women and children with us, there are no more tricks," he admitted. "We are slow, and we leave a spoor that a blind man can follow in a moonless night." He shook his small, grizzled head miserably. "The only trick we have left is to fight them, and after that we are dead, my Bwana.

"Go back, Matatu. Find how close behind us they really are. We will go ahead and find a good place to fight them." He touched the little man's shoulder, then let him go. Sean watched him disappear g the tree trunks and then deliberately altered his expression before he turned to Claudia, striking a lighter, more carefree pose and putting a lift in his tone.

"How's our patient?" he asked. "She looks pretty chirpy to me."

"The chloroquine has done wonders." Claudia bounced the child on her lap and, as if to confirm her improvement, Minnie stuck her thumb in her mouth and smiled shyly around it at Sean.

He felt her smile tug at him with wholly unexpected poignancy.

Claudia laughed. "No female is immune to your fatal charms.

You've collected yourself another fan."

"Typical woman-all she really wants is a free ride." But he stroked the child's soft, woolly little head. "All right, sweetness, your horsey is ready to go."

Trustingly Minnie held out both arms, and he swung her up on to his back and strapped her there.

Claudia pulled herself stiffly to her feet and for a moment leaned against him. "Do you know something? You are a much nicer person than you pretend to be."

"Fooled you, didn't IT"

"I'd like to see you with a baby of your own," she whispered.

"Now you really terrify me. Let's go before you come up with any more crazy ideas like that one."

But the idea lingered with him as they ran on through the forest-a son of his own from this woman.

He had never even thought about that before, and then, as though to complement the idea, he felt a tiny hand reach across his shoulder from behind and touch his beard, stroking it as lightly as an alighting butterfly. Minnie was reciprocating the caress he had bestowed on her a few minutes earlier, and for a moment his throat closed up and made it difficult for him to breathe. He took her tiny hand in his. It was as silken and fragile as the wing of a hummingbird, and he was overcome with a feeling of terrible regret. Regret that there would never be a son-he accepted that at last–or a daughter. It was almost over. The hunting pack was very close behind. They could never outrun them. There was no escape; all they could hope for was a good pl in which to make the final stand. After that there was nothin'o escape, no future.

He was so wrapped up in Ins melancholy that he had run out into the open before he realized it. Claudia pulled up so sharply in front of him that he almost ran into her. He stopped at her side, d they looked about them with puzzled uncertainty.

an The forest had been laid waste. As far ahead as they could see, the great hardwoods had been swept away as though by a hurricane. Only the stumps remained, raw and bleeding gum as red as heart's blood.

The earth was torn and scarred where the huge trunks had come crashing down. Bright piles of sawdust remained where their branches had been stripped and the logs cut into lengths, and between the windrows of discarded branches and wilting boughs were the drag roads along which the precious timber had been hauled away.

Miriam stopped beside Sean. "This is where my people were forced to work," she said softly. "Frelimo came and took them to cut the trees. They chained them together and made them work until the meat was torn from the bones of their hands. They beat them like oxen and worked them until they fell and could not rise."

"How many people?" Sean asked. "So many trees have been destroyed."

"Perhaps a man or woman died for every tree," Miriam whispered "They took everybody, thousands upon tens of thousands."

She pointed to the horizon. "They work far south now, and they leave no tree standing."?

Sean felt the anger beginning to rise through his amazement.

This was destruction on a scale that affronted the law of nature and the sanctity of life itself. It was not just that those trees had taken three hundred years to reach their full majesty and had been destroyed with a few hours" callous work with the ax blades. It was more, much more. This forest was the source and fountain of myriad forms of life, inset and bird, mammal and reptile, of man himself. In this vast devastation all would perish.

It did not end there. With his own fate determined, with a term and a number of the hours that remained of his own life, Sean was overtaken by a prophetic melancholia. He realized that the destruction of this forest was symbolic of the predicament of the entire continent.

In a few fleeting decades, Africa had been overtaken by its own inherent savagery. The checks that had been placed on it by a century of colonialism had been struck off.

Chains perhaps those checks had been, but since being freed of them the peoples of Africa had been rushing headlong, with almost suicidal abandon, toward their own destruction.

Sean felt himself shaking with impotent rage at the folly of it and at the same time saddened, sickened almost unto death, by the terrible tragedy of it all.

"If I have to die," he thought, "then it's best to do so before I N see everything I love, the land, the animals, the people, all of it destroyed."

With his arm around Claudia's thin shoulders and the little black girl strapped on his back, he turned and looked back the way they had come. At that moment, Matatu came scampering out of the forest behind them. There was desperate urgency in his gait and the fear of death in his small wizened features. "They are very close, my Bwana. They have two trackers leading them. I watched them work-we will not throw them off.

They are good."

"How many troopers with them?" With an effort Sean cast off he oppressive mantle of dejection.

"As many as the grass on the plains of Serengeti," Matatu replied.

"They run like a pack of wild dogs on the hunt and they are hard men and fierce. Even the three of us will not stand too long against them."

Sean roused himself and looked around him. The cut line in which they stood was a natural killing ground, devoid of cover except for the knee-high stumps of hardwood. The open ground stretched two hundred meters wide to where the deadwood was piled in untidy windrows, the leaves long, withered, and browned, the branches forming a natural barricade.

"We'll make our stand there," Sean decided swiftly, and signaled Alphonso forward. They crossed the open ground at a run, bunched up with the two women in the middle. Miriam was drag her little brother along by one arm, and Alphonso ran protectively beside them. The big Shangane was heavily burdened with the radio and the packs of ammunition and stores they had picked UP from the ambush at the Save River, but he had also carried Mickey whenever the boy tired, setting him down on his feet for only short intervals. The three Shanganes, man, woman, and boy child, had very swiftly formed their own distinct core within the band, drawn together by tribal loyalties and natural physical attraction. Sean knew he could rely on Alphonso to take care of his trac own, and that allowed him to concentrate on his own particular charges, Claudia, Matatu, and now the little girl.

Alphonso needed no orders. Like Sean, he had a soldier's eye for terrain, and he ran unerringly toward a section of the tumble of discarded branches that formed a natural redoubt and that commanded the best field of fire across the cut line.

Swiftly they settled in, dragging some of the heavier branches into place to strengthen their position, laying out their weapons and spare ammunition, making their very limited preparations to stand off the first rush of the attackers.

Claudia and Miriam had taken the children a little further back to where a hollow in the earth and two especially large tree stumps formed some sort of shelter. His own preparations complete, Sean crossed to them quickly and, squatted beside Claudia.

"As soon as the shooting starts, I want you to take Miriam and the children and run for it," he told her. "Keep heading south." He broke off as he realized that she was shaking her head and her jaw was clenched obstinately.

"I've run far enough," she told him. "I'm staying with you." She laid her hand on his arm. "No, don't argue. It would be a waste of time."

"Claudia!"

"Please don't," she forestalled him. "There isn't much time left.

Don't spend it arguing."

She was right, of course, Sean knew. To try to run further on her own was pointless with two children to care for and a team of Renamo on her spoor. He nodded.

"All right," he agreed. He took the Tokarev pistol from his belt, cocked it, and carefully engaged the safety catch. "Take this."

"What's that for?" She stared at the weapon with distaste.

"I think you know what it's for."

"The same way as Job?"

He nodded. "It would be easier than going China's way."

She shook her head. "I couldn't," she whispered. "If there is no other way, at the end, won't you do it for me?"

"I'll try," he said. "But I don't think I'll have the guts. Here, take it, just in case." Reluctantly she accepted the pistol and tucked it into her belt.

"Now kiss me," she said.

Matatu's whistle interrupted their embrace. "I love you," Sean murmured in her calf.

"I'll love you she replied, "through all eternity."

He left her and crawled back into the piles of deadwood. At Matatu's side he sank down and peered out through the chink between two branches toward the edge of the forest.

For many minutes he saw nothing. Then there was a shadowy frit of movement among the holes of the standing hardwood, and Sean laid his right hand on the pistol grip of the AKM rifle and raised it until the butt stock touched his cheek.

The silence drew out in the languorous sunlit afternoon while they waited. No bird sang, no creature moved, until at last there was a muted bird whistle from the edge of the forest and a man shape detached itself and flitted into the opening, showing for just hi a small part of a second, then disappearing behind One Of the t ck tree stumps. As soon as it was gone another broke from the tree line a hundred meters further to the left and darted forward– This also disappeared, and almost immediately, out on the right, a one third Renamo guerrilla emerged.

"Three only," Sean murmured. They were not going to expose more men than that, and these were good. They advanced in fleeting rushes, never two together, widely spread out and wary as old torn-leopards coming in to the bait.

"What a pity," Sean thought. "We are only going to get one out he mark."

of this lot. I had hoped for a better killing to get us off t He concentrated on the advancing scouts, trying to pick the most dangerous of their enemies.

"Probably the one in the center," he decided, and almost immethe flick of the man's diately his choice was confirmed as he saw hand from behind the stump that hid him. He was signaling one that marked of the others forward, coordinating the advance, and him as the main man, the one to take out first.

"Let him come in close," Sean told himself. The AKM was no sniping rifle, and he didn't trust its accuracy over a hundred meters. He waited, willing the man in, watching for him over the sights of the rifle.

I The Renamo jumped up and kept coming. Sean saw that he was young, mid-twenties, with bandoliers of ammunition over both shoulders and a Rastafarian hairstyle, ribbons of camouflage rag braided into his hair. There was an Arabian cast to his features and an amber patina to his skin. He was a good-looking lad except that his left eye was a little askew and it gave his face a sly, knowing expression. ose enough. Sean Close enough to see the cast in his eye was el lined up carefully on the tree stump behind which the Renamo had disappeared. He drew a breath, exhaled half of it, and let the first joint of his right forefinger rest lightly on the trigger.

The Renamo popped up into his sights. Sean took him low, deliberately declining a clean kill. He knew what damage the 7.62IN men bullet would do as it plunged through his belly at over three thousand feet a second, and he knew from bitter experience just how unnerving it was to have one of your comrades lying in no-man's4and with his guts shot out, screaming for water and mercy. In the Scouts they called them "warblers," and a warbler in good voice could inhibit an attack almost as effectively as a RPD machine gun.

well-placed Sean heard the bullet hit the Renamo in the stomach, that meaty thump like a watermelon dropped on a stone floor, and he went down out of sight in the trash and debris.

Instantly there was a heavy volley of rifle fire from the edge of the forest, but it was obvious from the wild aim that they had not spotted Sean and the firing stuttered swiftly into silence. Renamo was conserving ammunition, a sure sign of their discipline and training. Second-rate African troops started firing at the beginning of a contact and kept shooting until their last round was expended.