Wilbur Smith - C07 A Time To Die

by C07 A Time To Die(Lit)

  "We'll deal with that one when we come to it."

  Matatu pulled up again. "They cooked here last night." He pointed to the remains of a camp fire, and there were the marks where they had sat while they rested and ate. A few black safari ants were scurrying about the site, foraging for the scraps of food they had spilled, and there were more cigarette butts. search! Sean ordered. "Job will have tried to get a message to us. While Matatu and Pumula went over the area carefully but bee quickly, Sean glanced at his watch: 1600 hours; they had. just over three hours. They still had plenty of daylight and going a good chance to catch them before dark.

  "Here is where they put the mein's litter." Matatu pointed out the marks in the earth. "Here she stood."

  Sean studied her footprints, smaller, neater, and narrower than the boot prints of her captors. When she walked she had favored her leg, dragging the toe.

  "Did you find anything?" he demanded roughly. "Did Job leave a message?"

  "Nothing." Matatu shook his head.

  "All right. We'll drink now," he ordered, handing out salt tablets and caution them to self-control.

  Three swallows each from the bottles, then they screwed the stop from his pack. He didn't have topers tightly closed. They had paused for less than five minutes.

  "Let's go," said Sean.

  An hour later they found where the raiders had slept. The fact t beside their that they had moved on after eating and not slep cooking fire told Sean that they were trained troops.

  "Search again," Sean ordered. Any information Job could have left for them would be valuable.

  "Nothing," Matatu said back a few minutes later. Sean felt a prick of disappointment. d. He was about to turn away "M right. Keep going," he ordered when something made him pause. He glanced around the camp site. b sleep?" he demanded.

  "Where did the memsahi "There." Matatu pointed. Somebody, probably Job, had cut an of leaves and grass for her mattress. Her body had flattened armful the pile. Sean squatted beside it and carefully sifted through it, searching for any clues.

  There was nothing. He lifted away the last few leaves and was beginning to rise to his feet. He was disappointed; the feeling that she had left something for him had been very powerful.

  "So much for ESP," he grunted. Then he noticed the button, half buried in the dust under the mattress of straw.

  He picked it out and stood up. It was a brass button from the waistband of her denim jeans, engraved "Ralph Button."

  "Designer jeans, that's my ducky." He slipped it into his pocket.

  "But it doesn't tell me anything," he broke off, unless..." H knelt again and gently brushed aside the dust under where the button had lain. He was right; she had used the button as a marker. he Beneath it she had buried a scrap of cardboard, the flap torn from the lid of a packet of cheap Portuguese cigarillos. It was not more than two inches long and half as wide, very little space for the message she had written with a charcoal stick scavenged fire. from the 15 mAma. That was invaluable intelligence, confirming Matatu's estimate of numbers, and now at least he knew who they were dealing with: Renamo.

  CAvE. The next word puzzled him. "Cave?" Suddenly he realized it was the old public schoolboy warning from the Latin caveat beware

  He smiled despite himself.

  "ere did she ever learn a Limey expression like that?" Then he remembered she was a lawyer and read on.

  CAVE.

  T1 ExPECT You- She and Job would have overheard them discussing the Pursuit. That information was just as valuable.

  ALL OK. And she had signed it, C He stared at the scrap of cardboard, holding it in the palm of his hand as though it were a relic of the true cross.

  "You little beauty, you," he whispered. "You've got to be the brightest, gutsiest..." He shook his head in wonder, a choking sensation in his throat. For the very first time he admitted his Ion ng for her, then suppressed it firmly as he came to his fee gi t.

  There was neither time nor opportunity for such self-indulgence now.

  "Renamo," he told Matatu and Purnula. "You were right, the are fifteen of them. They know we are following. We can expect an re ambush."

  They both looked grave. Sean anced at his wristwatch. "We can catch them before dark." 91 Within an hour they came upon the first ambush the Renarno had set for them. Four men had lain beside the trail at the point where the causeway across the flood plains joined the main forest on the higher ground. The ambush had been cunningly sited on the far edge of a narrow vlei, across open ground with a good field of I T ; 178 fire. it had been abandoned only a short time before they came up to it.

  "They are putting down a rolling rear guard." Sean felt queasy at the risk he had taken with such a reckless pursuit.

  in the dust were the distinctive double marks left by the bipod of an RPD light machine gun, one of the simplest and yet the most deadly effective of all guerrilla weapons. If he had led his men into the vlei while that gun was still in position, it would all have been over in a few hellish seconds. He had been pushing too hard, not taking even elementary precautions. His concern for Claudia had unbalanced his judgment.

  Renamo had pulled out just before they reached the vlei. They had judged the time of his arrival with disconcerting accuracy, the margin had been far too narrow. The crew of the RPD would have moved back and re sited the ambush farther along the trail in order not to fall too far behind their main party.

  "Flankers out," Sean ordered reluctantly. "Ambush precautions." It would slow them to half their previous speed. Now it would be impossible to catch up with Renamo before nightfall.

  Three men were too few. It left only Matatu on the spoor and Sean and Pumula on the Banks. They had a single weapon between them, the big-bore, slow-firing double. They were going in against trained bush fighters armed with automatic weapons, and they were expected.

  "Just another name for suicide," Sean told himself. But despite the odds he had to restrain himself from quickening the pace.

  In the center, Matatu whistled. At that moment he was out of Sean's line of sight. Even though it was not a warning signal, Sean fell flat and carefully checked his front and both flanks before he stood up again and went to join him.

  Matatu was squatting beside the trail with his loincloth drawn up modestly between his legs, but his expression was worried. He stabbed a finger at the' spoor without speaking. Sean saw immediately what was trdtibling him.

  "Where the hell did they come from?" It was a protest more than a question. The original band of Renarno had been reinforced by an even larger group; at a glance it looked like a full company of infantry. The odds against them had just been multiplied many times, and for the first time Sean felt the lead weight of despair on his shoulders.

  "How many" he demanded of Matatu. This time, even he could not give an exact figure. The tracks were overlapped and confused.

  Matatu took a little snuff, using the ritual to disguise his uncertainty. He sneezed, and his eyes ran with tears that he wiped away with his thumbs. Then he held up the spread fingers of both hands and shut them four times.

  "Forty?"

  Matatu grimaced apologetically and showed another set of fingers.

  "Between forty and fifty." Sean unscrewed his water bottle and took a mouthful. The water was hot as soup, but he gargled with it before he swallowed.

  I will count them later," Matatu promised, "when I have learned them all, but now. He spat on the trampled earth, mortified by his failure.

  "How far behind are we?" Sean demanded, and Matatu used his forefinger like the hour hand of a clock to indicate a segment of the sky.

  "Three hours," Sean translated. "We'll never catch them before nightfall."

  When it was dark Sean said, "We'll eat while we wait for the moon." But when it rose, it was only a sliver of silver, soon blotted out by cloud, and there was not enough light to follow even that broad clear spoor. Sean thought of keeping going blindly through the night, trying to get ahead of them and then shadowing them, hopin
g for some fortuitous opportunity to reach Claudia and Job and release them.

  "That's dreaming in Technicolor," he told himself They had been going hard for days now and were all tottering on the edge of exhaustion. Blunderin around in the dark, they would either run on top of the Renamo night guards or miss them completely.

  "We'll sleep now." He was forced to give up at last. As Renarno knew they were being followed, they might send a detachment back to try and surprise them.

  Sean went into laager for the night well off the trail, in a thicket of thorn that would snag an attacker attempting to sneak up on them. They all desperately needed rest, and he would rely on the thorn rather than postin sentries. The night was icy cold, and they lay in a huddle, sharing each other's body warmth. Sean was already sliding into the black hole of exhaustion when Matatu's whisper called him back.

  "There is one of them," Matatu began, then broke off.

  Sean opened his eyes with resignation. "Tell me," he invited drowsily.

  "There is one of these Renamo I have seen before."

  "You know one of them?" Sean came fully awake.

  "I think so, but it was long ago, and I cannot remember where."

  Sean was silent as he considered that simple statement and what it really entailed. Sean would have had difficulty remembering the face of every person he had met in, say, the last ten years. Here was Matatu bemoaning the fact that he could not instantly recognize a single set of footprints, which he had last seen years previously, out of a jumble of other tracks.

  Even though he had seen Matatu Perform similar feats so many aim times before, he felt a creep of doubt at Matatu's el mil darkn "Go to sleep, you silly little bugger." He s ed in the ess, by the scruff of the neck, and shook his woolly took the little man head with rough affection. "Perhaps You'll dream his name in your sleep. she was running naked through a Sean dreamed of Claudia.

  dark forest. The trees were black and leafless, with crooked limbs.

  A pack of wolves pursued her. They also were black as night but glistening white fangs and red lolling tongues. Claudia called with his name as she ran, and her skin was pale and luminous as the moon. He tried to go to her, but his legs dragged as though he waded through a pool of treacle. He tried to call her name, but his tongue was lead in his mouth and no sound came from his throat.

  He awoke with a hand roughly shaking his shoulder. He tried to shout again, but it came out in a garbled slur. t6wake up!" Matatu shook him. "You were crying and moaning. Renamo will hear You!"

  He sat up quickly. The cold seemed to have frozen the muscles n him. it took in his legs, and the terror of the dream was still upO him seconds to focus on reality and remember where he was.

  "You're getting past it, boyo." He was humiliated. A Scout slept ess or had his throat soundlessly and awoke to immediate aw aren cut while he was grunting and snoring- whispered. Already the "It win be light enough soon," Matatu dawn chorus of bird cab tinkled and chirruped through the forest and he could make gut the latticework of thorn branches against the sky.

  "Let's go." Sean stood up.

  While the sun was still low and the dew was on the grass, they up to the dry river-bed in which Renarno had bivouacked for came the night.

  The band had moved on again at first light but could not be far ahead.

  matatu picked Claudia's footprints Out Of the ruck in the soft sand of the river-bed. she moves with less pain," he told Sean-The leg is healing, but Job and Dedan are still carrying her. Here she climbed into the litter."

  Matatu left the distinctive feminine prints and hovered over another set of larger male tracks that to Scan were indistinguishable from all the others, except that whoever had made them wore boots with a double herringbone pattern on the sole. " Im him"

  aw Matatu whispered. "I know the way this one walks." He shook his head in frustration and turned away.

  They went forward with extreme caution now. e trail led them T'h directly toward the higher ground along the escarpment of the valley, and soon they entered the foothills. Whoever was commanding the Renamo column knew exactly where he was headed.

  Sean was expecting at any moment to make contact with the rear guard of the column. He dreaded the thought that the first warning they might receive could be the wicked crackle of an RPD light mi'e gun, filing at a rate of six hundred rounds a minute.

  Here in the hills every boulder, every fold of ground was a possible enemy redoubt and had to be minutely inspected before W they could move on. Sean fretted with impatience but forced himself to gear his advance to the difficult terrain.

  i They turned the corner of another low hill and through a frieze Of graceful lusm trees an open vista stretched ahead to where the massif of the central escarpment rose above its foothills.

  "There it is," Sean murmured. "That's where they'll be laying for us."

  The spoor was pointed directly at a pass through the escarpment. The entrance was guarded by chffi of red stone. The gut of the pass was almost devoid of trees or cover and yet the sides were heavily hushed. It was a natural trap, a perfect killing ground.

  Matatu whistled in the center. Sean doubled over, keeping Off the crest as he ran down to join him. From the center, there was an Unimpeded view up the gut of the valley and Sean saw movement against the scree and yellow grass. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes, and the line of dark moving specks resolved through the lens into a column of men.

  They were toiling up the incline in single file. Most of them wore tiger-striped camouflage and jungle hats, although a few were dressed in a motley of denim and khaki. The front of the column was already into the bush at the head of the valley at least three miles distant, but through his binoculars Sean counted twelve men The litter was in the center. Four of them were carrying it t I was men on the front poles and two on the back. Sean tried to pick out Claudia's form, but before he could refocus his binoculars the litter and the bearers had reached the tree fine and disappeared.

  Sean lowered his binoculars and polished the lens with his handkerchief. Pumula had come in from the other flank, and now he and Matatu crouched in the junibolme of rock and coarse bush and

  _"J

  studied the lie of the land in gloomy silence. Again Sean raised the rfec glasses and studied the steep bushy sides. It was ape t site for an ambush; they could catch Sean's party in enfilade and crossfire as they tried to climb the valley.

  "How many did you see?" Sean asked without lowering his binoculars. "Have they all gone to the trees at the head of the in valley?"

  "I saw only a few," Pumula murmured.

  "Masesh, " Matatu spat unhappily. He was referring to the lees of millet beer that, after fermentation, the Batonka fishermen use as a ground bait to lure the shoals of bream into Lake Kariba's shallows.

  He spat again. "That valley is the mouth of the crocodile. They want us to put our heads into it."

  Sean studied the sides of the valley, taking his time, every few minutes lowering the binoculars to rest his eyes and then lifting them again. He began at the top of the slope and swept gradually downward. when he reached the bottom, he began at the top again, going over the same ground time and again. He tried not to think of that sighting of the litter or the tiny figure he thought he had seen upon it. He concentrated entirely on his search, and ten minutes later he was rewarded.

  It was a single flash of sunlight reflected from the lens of a wristwatch or the lens of a pair of field glasses' Yes Matatu, "There they are." He lowered his own glasses.

  you are right. They have put out the bait, now they are waiting for US. 99 He sat down behind the boulder and tried to think it through logically, but Claudia's memory kept intruding and deflecting his reasoning. There was only one certain conclusion, and that was that it was hopeless to continue the pursuit. He looked up. Matatu and Pumula were watcl&g him with expressions of blind faith. In almost twenty years he had never seen him at a loss. They waited patiently for himtdperform the miracle yet again.

  Se
an found it "infuriating. He jumped up and went back down upon him. He found the hill to think without those trusting eyes a spot that was well concealed and yet had a good all-around view so that nobody could sneak up on him. He settled down with the.577 across his lap to consider his options.

  The first one he crossed from his mental list was an attack on the Renamo column. Even leaving aside the puny forces he had available, he had to consider the hostages they had in their hands. Even with a company of fully armed Scouts, he would still have been unable to attack.

  "SO what can I hope to achieve by following them?" he asked himself "Apart from gratifying this new and mawkish desire to be as close as possible to Claudia Monteffo."