by Wilbur Smith
‘Stop!’ Sally-Anne ordered.
‘It is dangerous to stay,’ said Timon.
‘Stop,’ Sally-Anne repeated.
She left the door open, and went among the huts. Working swiftly, changing roll after roll of film with practised nimble fingers, while her white lips trembled and her eyes behind the lens were huge with horror.
‘We must move on,’ said Timon.
‘Wait.’ Sally-Anne moved quickly forward, doing her job like the professional she was. She moved behind a group of huts. The smell of burning flesh nauseated Craig, and the heat from the fires came at him in great furnace gusts as the breeze veered.
Sally-Anne screamed and the two men jumped from the Land-Rover and ran, cocking their rifles, diverging to give each other covering fire, Craig finding his old training returning instinctively. He came around the side of a hut.
Sally-Anne stood in the open, no longer able to use her camera. A naked black woman lay at her feet. The woman’s upper body was that of a comely, healthy young woman, below her navel she was a pink skinless monstrosity. She had dragged herself back out of the fire into which they had thrown her. There were places on her lower body where the burning was not deep, here the flesh was piebald pink and weeping lymph. Then in other places the bone was exposed; her hip-bone, charred black as charcoal, protruded obscenely from the scorched meat of her pelvic area. The lining of her stomach had burned through and her entrails bulged from the opening. Miraculously, she was still alive. Her fingers raked the dust with a repetitive, mechanical movement. Her mouth opened and closed convulsively, making no sound, and her eyes were wide open, aware and suffering.
‘Go back to the Land-Rover, please, Miss Jay,’ Timon Nbebi said. ‘There is nothing you can do to help her.’
Sally-Anne stood stiffly, unable to move. Craig put his arms around her shoulders and turned her away. He led her back towards the Land-Rover.
At the corner of the burning hut Craig glanced back. Timon Nbebi had moved up close to the maimed woman, he stood over her with the AK 47 held ready on his hip, his whole attention was focused upon her and his face was almost as riven with suffering as was the woman’s.
Craig took Sally-Anne around the hut. Behind them there was the whip-crack of a single shot, muted by the crackle of flames all around them. Sally-Anne stumbled and then caught her balance. When they reached the Land-Rover, Sally-Anne leaned against the cab and doubled over slowly. She vomited in the dust and then straightened up and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
Craig took the bottle of cane spirit from the cubby hole. There was an inch of the clear liquor remaining. He gave it to Sally-Anne and she drank it like water. Craig took the empty bottle back from her, and then abruptly and savagely hurled it into the burning hut.
Timon Nbebi came around the hut. Wordlessly he climbed behind the steering-wheel and Craig helped Sally-Anne into the rear seat. They drove slowly through the rest of the village, their heads turning from side to side as each fresh horror was revealed.
As they passed the little church of red brick, the roof collapsed in upon itself, and the wooden cross on the spire was swallowed in a belch of sparks and flames and blue smoke. In the bright sunlight the flames were almost colourless.
Timon Nbebi used the radio the way a navigator uses an echo sounder to find the channel through shoal water.
The Third Brigade road-blocks and ambushes were reporting over the VHF net to their area headquarters, giving their positions as part of their routine reports, and Timon pin-pointed them on his map.
Twice they avoided road-blocks by taking side-tracks and cattle paths, groping forward carefully through the acacia forest. Twice more they came to small villages, mere cattle stations, homes of two or three Matabele families. The Third Brigade had preceded them, and the crows and vultures had followed, picking at the partially roasted carcasses in the warm ashes of the burned-out huts.
They kept moving westwards, when the tracks allowed. At each prominence that afforded a view ahead, Timon parked in cover and Craig climbed to the crest to scout ahead. In every direction he looked, the towering blue of the sky above the wide horizon was marred by standing columns of smoke from burning villages. Westwards still they crawled, and the terrain changed swiftly as they approached the edge of the Kalahari Desert. There were fewer and still fewer features. The land levelled into a grey, monotonous plain, burning endlessly under the high merciless sun. The trees became stunted, their branches heat-tortured as the limbs of cripples. This was a land able to support only the most rudimentary human needs, the beginning of the great wilderness. Still they edged westwards into it.
The sun made its noon and slid down the sky, and they had made good a mere thirty miles since dawn. Still at least another twenty miles to reach the border, Craig estimated from the map, and all three of them were exhausted from the unremitting strain and the heat in the unlined metal cab.
In the middle of the afternoon, they stopped again for a few minutes. Craig brewed tea, Sally-Anne went behind a low clump of thorn scrub nearby and squatted out of view, while Timon hunched over the radio.
‘There are no more villages ahead,’ Timon said as he retuned the set. ‘I think we are clear, but I have never been further than this. I am not sure what to expect.’
‘I worked here with Tungata when we were in the Game Department. That was back in ’72. We followed a pride of cattle-killing lions nearly a hundred miles across the border. It’s bad country – no surface water, soft going with salt-pans and—’ he broke off as Timon signalled him urgently to silence.
Timon had picked up another voice on the radio. It was more authoritative, more cutting than the reports of the platoon he had been monitoring. Clearly it was demanding priority and clearing the net for an urgent flash. Timon Nbebi stiffened, and exclaimed under his breath.
‘What is it?’ Craig could not contain his forebodings, but Timon held up a hand for silence and listened to the long staccato transmission that followed in Shona. When the carrier beam of the radio went mute, he looked up at them.
‘A patrol has picked up the three men we marooned this morning. That was an alert to all units. General Fungabera has given top priority to our recapture. Two spotter aircraft have been diverted to this area. They should be overhead very soon. The general has calculated our position with great accuracy, he has ordered the punitive units to the east of us to abandon their missions and to move in this direction immediately. He has guessed that we are trying to reach the border south of Plumtree and the railway-line. He is rushing two platoons down from the main border-post at Plumtree to block us.’ He paused, took off his spectacles and polished the lenses on the tail of his silk cravat. Without his spectacles, he was as myopic as an owl in daylight.
‘General Fungabera has given the “leopard” code to all units—’ He paused again, and then almost apologetically explained, ‘The “leopard” code is the “kill on sight” order, which is rather bad news, I’m afraid.’
Craig snatched the map and unrolled it on the bonnet. Sally-Anne came back and stood close behind them.
‘We are here,’ he said, and Timon nodded agreement. ‘This is the only track from here on, and it angles northwards about west-north-west,’ Craig muttered to himself. ‘The patrol from Plumtree must come down it to meet us, and the punitive groups must come up it behind us.’
Again Timon nodded. ‘This time they won’t drive past us. They’ll be on the lookout.’
The radio came alive again and Timon darted back to it. His expression became even more lugubrious as he listened.
‘The punitive unit behind us has picked up the tracks of the Land-Rover. They are not far behind and they are coming up fast,’ he reported. ‘They have contacted the patrol on the road ahead of us. We are boxed in. I don’t know what to do, Mr Mellow. They’ll be here in a few minutes.’ And he looked appealingly at Craig.
‘All right.’ Craig took control quite naturally. ‘We’ll go for the border cross-coun
try.’
‘But you said that is bad country—’ Timon began.
‘Put her into four-wheel drive and get going,’ Craig snapped. ‘I’ll ride on the roofrack to guide you. Sally-Anne, take the front seat.’
Perched on the roofrack, the AK 47 slung over one shoulder, Craig took a sight with the hand-bearing compass from Timon’s map-case, made a rough calculation of the magnetic deflection, and called down to Timon.
‘Right, turn right – that’s it. Hold that course.’ He was lined up on the white glare of a small salt-pan a few miles ahead, and the surface under them seemed firm and reasonably fast. The Land-Rover accelerated away, barging through the low thorn scrub, weaving only when they came to coarser thorn or one of the stunted trees. Craig called corrections after every deviation.
They were making twenty-five miles an hour, and it was clear as far as the horizon. The pursuing trucks, heavy and cumbersome, couldn’t outrun them, Craig was sure, and the border was less than an hour ahead, darkness not far off. That cup of tea had cheered him, and Craig felt his spirits lift.
‘All right, you bastards, come and get us!’ he challenged the unseen enemy and laughed into the wind. He had forgotten the way adrenalin buzzed in the blood when danger was close. Once he had thrived on the feel of it, and the addiction was still there, he realized.
He swivelled and looked back, and saw it immediately – like a little willy-willy, the dust devils that dance on the desert in the hot stillness of midday, but this dust cloud was moving with purpose, and it was exactly where he had expected to find it, due east of them and coming fast down the road they had just left.
‘I have one patrol in sight,’ he leaned out and shouted down to the open driver’s window. ‘They are about five miles behind.’
Then he looked back again, and grimaced at their own dust cloud thrown up by the four-wheel drive. It followed them like a bridal train and hung for minutes after they had passed, a long pale smear above the scrub. They could hardly miss it. He was watching the dust when he should have been looking ahead. The ant-bear hole was screened from the driver’s view by the pale desert grass. They hit it at twenty-five miles an hour, and it stopped them dead.
Craig was hurled forward off the roof, flying out over the bonnet to hit the earth with his elbows and his knees and the side of his face. He lay in the dust, stunned and hurting. Then he rolled into a sitting position and spat muddy blood from his mouth. He checked his teeth with his tongue, and they were all firm. There was no skin on his elbows, and blood seeped through the knees of his jeans. He fumbled at the strap of his leg and it was intact. He dragged himself to his feet.
The Land-Rover was down heavily on her left front, chassis deep in the hole. He limped to the passenger side, cursing his own inattention, and jerked the door open. The windscreen was cracked and starred where Sally-Anne’s head had hit, and she was slumped forward in the seat.
‘Oh God!’ he whispered, and lifted her head gently. There was a lump the size of a blue acorn over her eye, but when he touched her cheek, her vision focused and she looked at him.
‘Are you hurt badly?’
She struggled upright. ‘You are bleeding,’ she mumbled, like a drunk.
‘It’s a graze,’ he reassured her, and squeezed her arm, looking across her at Timon.
His mouth had struck the steering-wheel, his upper lip was cut through and one of his incisors had broken off at the gum. His mouth was full of blood, and he staunched it with the silk scarf.
‘Get her in reverse,’ Craig ordered him, and pulled Sally-Anne from the cab to lighten the vehicle. She staggered a few paces and flopped down on her backside, still groggy and confused from the head blow.
The engine had stalled, and it baulked at the starter while Craig fretted and watched the dust cloud behind them. It was no longer distant, and it was coming on fast. At last the engine caught, stuttered and then roared as Timon trod too heavily on the pedal. He let out the clutch with a bang, and all four wheels spun wildly.
‘Easy, man, you’ll break a halfshaft,’ Craig snarled at him.
Timon tried again, more gently, but again the wheels spun, blowing out dust behind them, and the vehicle rocked crazily but remained bogged down.
‘Stop it!’ Craig pounded Timon’s shoulder to make him obey. The spinning wheels in the soft earth were digging the Land-Rover into its own grave. Craig dropped on his belly and peered under the chassis. The left front wheel had dropped into the hole, and was turning in air, the weight of the vehicle rested on the blades of the front suspension.
‘Trenching-tool,’ Craig called to Timon.
‘We left them,’ Timon reminded him, and Craig went at the earth on the rim of the hole with his bare hands.
‘Find something to dig with!’ He kept on digging frantically.
Timon hunted in the back locker and brought him the jack handle and a broad-bladed panga. Craig attacked the edge of the hole with them, grunting and panting, his own sweat stinging the open graze on his cheek.
The radio jabbered. ‘They have found the spot where we left the road,’ Timon translated.
‘Christ!’ Craig sobbed with effort, that was less than two miles back.
‘Can I help you?’ Timon was lisping through the gap in his teeth.
Craig did not bother to reply. There was only room for one man at a time to work under the chassis. The earth crumbled and the Land-Rover subsided a few inches, and then the free tyre found purchase in the bottom of the hole. Craig turned his attention to the sharp edge of the hole, cutting it away in a ramp so that it would not block the wheel.
‘Sally-Anne, you get behind the steering-wheel.’ He spoke jerkily between each blow with the panga. ‘Timon and I will try to lift the front.’ He crawled out from under the body, and wasted a second to look back. The dust of the pursuit was clearly visible from ground level. ‘Come on, Timon.’
They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the radiator, and bent their knees to get a good grip on the front fender. Sally-Anne sat behind the dust-smeared windscreen. The lump on her forehead looked like a huge, blue, bloodsucking tick clinging to her pale skin. She stared at Craig through the glass, her eyes and her expression desperate.
‘Hit it!’ Craig grunted and they straightened together, lifting with their knees and all the strength of their bodies. Craig felt the front end come up a few inches on the suspension and he nodded at Sally-Anne. She let out the clutch and the engine blustered, the wheel spun, and she jerked back and then stuck fast, blocking on the edge of the hole.
‘Rest!’ Craig grunted, and they slumped gasping over the bonnet.
Craig saw the dust of the pursuit was so close that he expected the trucks to appear beneath it as he watched.
‘Okay, we’ll bounce her,’ he told Timon. ‘Hit it! One! Two! Three!’
While Sally-Anne raced the engine, they flung their weight on the fender in a short regular rhythm. ‘One! Two! Three!’ Craig gasped, and the vehicle started surging and bouncing wildly against the rim of the hole.
‘Keep her going!’
Dust boiled around them, and the voice on the radio yelped exultantly like a lead hound taking the scent. They had seen the dust.
‘Keep it up!’
Craig found strength and reserves that he had never known were there. His teeth ground together, his breath whined in his throat, his face swelled dark angry red, and his vision starred and filled with shooting light. Still he heaved, and knew that the sinew and muscle in his back was tearing, his spine felt as though it was crushing – and suddenly the Land-Rover’s wheels bounced over the rim and it shot backwards, clear and free.
Deprived of support, Craig fell on his knees, and thought he did not have the strength to rise again.
‘Craig! Hurry!’ Sally-Anne yelled at him. ‘Get in!’
With another vast effort, he heaved himself upright, and staggered to the moving Land-Rover. He dragged himself up onto the bonnet, and Sally-Anne accelerated away; for long second
s Craig clung to the bonnet, as strength oozed back into his limbs. He crawled up onto the roofrack, and peered over the back of the cab.
There was only one truck behind them, a five-ton Toyota painted the familiar sand colour. Through the shimmer of heat mirage, it appeared monstrous, seeming to float towards them, disembodied from the earth. Craig blinked the sweat out of his eyes. How close was it? Hard to tell over level ground and through the mirage.
His vision cleared, and he saw that the ungainly black superstructure above the Toyota’s cab was a heavy machine-gun on a ring mount with the gunner’s head behind it. It looked at this distance to be the modified Goryunov Stankovy, a nasty weapon.
‘Sweet Jesus!’ he whispered, as for the first time he became aware of the Land-Rover’s altered motion. She was vibrating and shaking brutally, and there was the shrill protest of metal bearing on metal from the left front end where she had hit – and the speed was down, way down.
Craig leaned out and yelled into the driver’s window.
‘Speed up!’
‘She’s busted up front.’ Sally-Anne stuck her head out of the window. ‘Any faster and she’ll tear herself to pieces.’
Craig looked back. The truck was closing, not rapidly, but inexorably. He saw the gunner on the cab roof traverse his weapon slightly.
‘Go for it, Sally-Anne!’ he shouted. ‘Take a chance of it holding. They’ve got a heavy machine-gun and they’re coming into range.’
The Land-Rover lumbered forward, and now there was a heavy clattering combined with the whine of metal. The vibration chattered Craig’s teeth, and he looked back. They were holding the truck off – and then he saw the pursuing vehicle judder to the recoil of the heavy weapon on the cab.
No sound of gunfire yet, Craig watched with an academic interest. Abruptly dust fountained close down their left flank, jumping six feet into the heated air in a diaphanous curtain, appearing ethereal and harmless, but the sound of passing shot spranged viciously like a copper telegraph wire hit with an iron bar.
‘Turn left!’ Craig yelled. Always turn towards the fall of shot. The gunner will be correcting the opposite way, and the dust will help obscure his aim.