Wilbur Smith - C07 A Time To Die

by C07 A Time To Die(Lit)

  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.

  "Here it is! "Hind attack system. Color code red. Numerical code S.42.A." Under the post system the Stinger missiles could be programmed to attack various targets by employing tactics and search frequencies specific to that type of aircraft. Simply by inserting one of the micro cassettes into the console of the launcher, the missile could be instructed to alter its attack technique.

  "System software cassette. S.42.A."

  "-Job followed the text with his forefinger as he read aloud from the manual-"

  "is targeted on the Hind helicopter gunship. The system employs a two color seeker that registers both infrared and ultraviolet emissions in two stages. The initial stage will lock to infrared from the engine exhaust system.

  "The Hind's exhaust suppressors divert and emit those infrared rays through heavily armored outlets below the main fuselage.

  Missile strikes on this section of the Hind have proved ineffective.

  "The S.42.A. modification automatically switches the guidance system of the Stinger into ultraviolet seeker mode when range to target is reduced to a hundred meters. Ultraviolet is emitted principally from the air intake ports of the Isotov TV3-117 turboshaft engines. This area is the only section of the fuselage not encased in titanium armor plate, and missile strikes through the engine intake posts have resulted in hundred percent kills.

  "To achieve effective ultraviolet acquisition, the initial launch of the missile must be made from below and dead ahead of the aircraft, at a range not exceeding 1,000 meters or less than 150 meters." Job closed the manual with a snap. "Big casino!" he said.

  "China is getting more than he ever hoped for."

  There were thirty-three heavy cam to carry and only twenty uninjured men, including Sean and Job. Sean cached the boxes they were force
d to leave. He would send a detail back to fetch them once they reached the Renamo lines.

  Carrying what they could, including the trainer and the position equipment, they set out along the bank of the modi fica Pungwe River at nightfall, groping for a contact with the Renaino front line. They marched all that night.

  The extended column, slowed down by the heavy cases of missiles, covered only twelve miles before sunrise. However, the weather had changed and the wind had backed into the east, bringing in low clouds and a cold drizzle of rain that would hide them from the searching Hinds. They kept going all that day.