by Wilbur Smith
‘Keep going – we have to get the radio!’
The driver wrestled with the wrenching, bucking steering-wheel, and the nose of the truck swung back towards the kopje just as the second burst of machine-gun fire hit it. The windscreen exploded in flying diamond chips, and the driver was hurled against the door of the cab, his chest shot half-away. The truck slowed as his foot slipped from the accelerator pedal.
Craig hit the handle and yanked the door open. The driver’s body slid out of the seat and tumbled overside. Craig swung himself into his place and jammed his foot flat on the accelerator. The truck lunged forward again.
Beside Craig, Comrade Lookout was firing his AK through the gaping hole where the windscreen had been shot away, and overhead the heavy machine-gun returned the fire from the kopje with a fluttering ear-numbing clatter. The streams of opposing tracer fire seemed to meet and mingle in the air above the bare earth of the parade ground, and then Craig saw something else.
From one of the embrasures in the sandbagged walls at the foot of the hill, a black blob, the size of a pineapple, flew towards them on a tiny tail of flame. He knew instantly what it was, but he didn’t even have time to shout a warning as the RPG-7 rocket missile hit them.
It hit low into the front end of the truck, that was all that saved them – the main blast was absorbed by the solid engine block, but nevertheless, it tore the front end off the truck and stopped it as though it had run into an ironstone cliff. The Toyota somersaulted over its ruined front wheel assembly, hurling Craig out of the open cab door.
Craig crawled up onto his knees, and the machine-gun on the hill traversed back towards him. A stream of bullets showered him with chunks of hard, dried clay from the surface of the parade ground and he fell flat again.
There were stunned and wounded guerrillas scattered around the wrecked Toyota, one man was trapped under it, his legs and pelvis crushed by the steel side and he was screaming like a rabbit in a wire snare.
‘Come on,’ Craig shouted in Sindebele. ‘Get to the wall – the wall – run for the wall.’
He jumped up and started to run. The whitewashed execution wall was off to their right-hand side, seventy yards away, and a handful of men heard him and ran with him.
The machine-gun came hunting back, the whip-crack of passing shot around his head made Craig reel like a drunkard, but he steadied himself – and the man just ahead of him went down, both legs shot from under him. As Craig passed him, he rolled on his back and threw his AK up at Craig.
‘Here, Kuphela, take it. I am dead.’
Craig snatched the rifle from the air without missing a step.
‘You are a man,’ he called to the downed guerrilla, and sprinted on. Ahead of him, Comrade Lookout reached the shelter of the wall, but the machine-gunner on the kopje traversed back towards Craig, kicking up curtains of dust and lumps of clay as the stream of bullets reached out for him.
Craig went for the corner of the wall feet first, sliding like a baseball player for home base, and shot flew close around him. He kept rolling until he hit the wall and lay in a tangle of limbs, fighting for breath. Only Comrade Lookout and two others had made it to the wall – the rest of them were dead in the truck or lying broken and crumpled on the open ground between.
‘We have to get that gun,’ he gasped, and Comrade Lookout gave him a twisted grin.
‘Go to it, Kuphela – we will watch you with great interest.’
Another RPG rocket missile slammed into the wall, deafening them and covering them with a fine haze of white dust.
Craig rolled on his side and checked the AK 47. It had a full magazine. Comrade Lookout passed him another full magazine from the haversack on his shoulder, and Craig had the Tokarev pistol on his belt and two remaining grenades buttoned into his breast pockets.
He darted another quick glance around the corner of the wall and instantly a burst of machine-gun fire kicked and jarred into the brickwork around his head. He rolled back. It was only a hundred yards or so to the foot of the kopje, but it could as well have been a hundred miles. They were pinned helplessly, and the gunner up there on the hill commanded the entire compound. Nobody could move under the floodlights without drawing instant fire or a rocket from the RPG launcher.
Craig looked anxiously for the second truck, but sensibly the driver must have parked it behind one of the buildings as soon as the RPG opened up. There was no sign of any of the other guerrillas, they were all under cover, but they had taken more casualties than they could afford.
‘It can’t end like this—’ Craig was consumed by his own sense of frustration and helplessness. ‘We’ve got to get that gun!’
The gun up on the hill, without a target, fell silent – and then suddenly in the silence Craig heard the singing begin, low at first, just a few voices, but swelling and growing strong:
‘Why do you weep, widows of Shangani
When the three-legged guns laugh so loudly?’
Then the ancient fighting chant crashed into the silence, flung out by hundreds of throats.
‘Why do you weep, little sons of the Moles,
When your fathers did the king’s bidding?’
And then from the prison huts they came, a motley army of naked figures, some of them staggering with weakness, others running strongly, carrying stones and bricks, and poles torn from the roofs of their prison. A few, a very few, had picked up the weapons of the dead guards, but all of them were singing with wild defiance as they charged the hill and the machine-gun.
‘Oh, Christ!’ whispered Craig. ‘It’s going to be a massacre.’
In the front rank of the throng brandishing an AK 47 came a tall gaunt figure, looking like a skeletal caricature of death itself, and the army of starvelings and gaol-sweepings rallied to him. Even altered as he was, Craig would have recognized Tungata Zebiwe anywhere this side of hell.
‘Sam, go back!’ he shouted, using the name by which he had known his friend, but Tungata came on heedlessly, and beside Craig Comrade Lookout said phlegmatically, ‘They will draw fire, that will be our chance.’
‘Yes, be ready,’ Craig answered. Lookout was right. They must not let them die in vain and, as he spoke, the machine-gun opened up.
‘Wait!’ Craig grabbed Comrade Lookout’s arm. ‘He must change belts soon.’ And while he waited for the gun to fire away its first belt, he watched the terrible havoc it was playing amongst the throng of released prisoners.
The stream of tracer seemed to wash them away like a fire hose, but as the front rank fell, so the men behind raced forward into the gaps, and still Tungata Zebiwe was coming on, outdistancing his fellows, firing the AK as he ran – and the gunner on the hilltop singled him out and swung the machine-gun onto him so that he was wreathed in smoking dust, still miraculously untouched as the machine-gun abruptly fell silent.
‘Gun empty!’ Craig shouted. ‘Go! Go! Go!’
They launched themselves, like sprinters off the blocks, and the open ground seemed to stretch ahead of Craig to the ends of the earth.
Another rocket missile howled over their heads, and Craig ducked on the run, but it was high, aimed in panic. It flew across the parade ground and it hit the silver bulk fuel storage tank next to the guard barracks. The fuel went up with a vast whooshing detonation. The flames shot up two hundred feet in the air, and Craig felt the hot breath of the blast sweep over him, but he kept running and firing.
He had been losing ground steadily to Comrade Lookout and the other guerrillas, his bad leg hampering him in the race for the hill, but while he ran he was counting in his head. A good man might need ten seconds to change ammunition boxes and reload the machine-gun. Since leaving the sheltering wall seven seconds had passed – eight, nine, ten – it must come now! And there were still twenty paces to cover.
Comrade Lookout reached the sandbagged fortifications and shinned up and over.
Then something hit Craig a crushing hammer-blow and he was thrown violently to the ground as bullets flew al
l around him. He rolled over and came up again running, but the gunner had seen him go down and swung the machine-gun away, back to the charging mob of released prisoners.
Hit but unharmed, Craig ran on as strongly as before, and he realized that he had taken it in the leg, the artificial leg. He wanted to laugh, it was so ridiculous and he was so terrified.
‘You can only do that to me once,’ he thought, and suddenly he had reached the foot of the kopje. He jumped up, found a hold on the top of the sandbag parapet with one hand, and heaved himself up and over. He dropped onto the narrow, deserted firing platform on the other side.
‘The radio,’ he fixed his will upon it, ‘got to get the radio.’ And he jumped down into the communication trench and ran down it to the bend in the passage. There was the sound of a scuffle, and a cry ahead of him, and as he came around the corner, Comrade Lookout was straightening up from the body of the Third Brigade trooper who had been manning the RPG.
‘Go for the gun,’ Craig ordered him. ‘I’ll take the radio room.’
Craig climbed up the sandbagged passageway, passing the dugout where he had been quartered on his last visit.
‘Now, first on the left—’ He dived into the opening, brushing aside the curtain of hessian, and he heard the radio operator in his dugout at the end of the passage shouting frantically. Craig hurled himself down the narrow passage, and paused in the doorway.
Too late. His stomach turned over in a despairing convulsion. The radio operator, dressed only in a vest and underpants, was hunched over the radio set on the bench by the far wall of the dugout. He was holding the microphone to his mouth with both hands, shouting his warning into it in English, repeating it for the third time, and, as Craig hesitated, the acknowledgement boomed from the speaker, also spoken in clear English.
‘Message received and understood,’ said the voice of the operator at Brigade headquarters in Harare. ‘Hold on! We will reinforce you immediately—’
Craig fired a long burst of the AK, and his bullets smashed into the radio, shattering the housing and ripping the wiring out of it in a glittering tangle. The unarmed radio operator dropped the microphone and cowered against the sandbag wall, staring at Craig, blubbering with terror. Craig swung the AK onto him, but could not force himself to fire.
Instead, the burst of automatic fire came from the passageway behind Craig, startling him, and then for an instant the operator was pinned to the wall by striking bullets and he slid down into a huddle on the floor.
‘You always were too soft, Pupho,’ said the deep voice beside Craig and he turned and looked up at the gaunt naked figure that towered over him, into the scarred and desiccated visage, into the dark, hawk-fierce eyes.
‘Sam!’ Craig said weakly. ‘By God, it’s good to see you again.’
The first truck had its entire front section wrecked by the RPG while the rear wheels of the second truck had been destroyed by heavy machine-gun fire. The fuel tanks of both vehicles were registering empty.
As briefly as he could, Craig explained to Tungata the plans for getting out of the country.
‘Eight o‘clock is the deadline. If we don’t make it back to the airstrip by then, the only way out will be on foot.’
‘It’s thirty miles to the airstrip,’ Tungata mused. ‘There is no other vehicle here. Fungabera took the Land-Rover when he left two days ago.’
‘I can pull the rear wheels out of the wrecked truck – but fuel! Sam, we need fuel.’
They both looked towards the blazing tank. The flames were still towering into the night sky and clouds of dense, black smoke rolled across the parade ground. In the light of the flames, the dead men lay in windrows where the machine-gun had scythed them down, but there were no surviving prison guards either. They had been torn to pieces and beaten to bloody pulp by their prisoners. How many dead, Craig wondered, and shied away from the answer, for every death was his direct responsibility.
Tungata was watching him. He was now dressed in random items of clothing gleaned from the lockers of the barrack room, most of it too small for his huge frame, and the prison stench still hung around him like a cloak.
‘You were always like this,’ Tungata told him softly, ‘after an unpleasant task. I remember the elephant culls – you would not eat for days afterwards.’
‘I’ll drain the one tank into the other,’ said Craig quickly. He had forgotten how perceptive Tungata was. He had recognized Craig’s remorse. ‘And I will get them started on changing the wheels. But, you must find fuel for us, Sam. You must!’ Craig turned and limped towards the nearest truck, thankful to be able to evade Tungata’s scrutiny.
Comrade Lookout was waiting for him. ‘We lost fourteen men, Kuphela,’ he said.
‘I am sorry.’ God! How inadequate.
‘They had to die one day,’ the guerrilla shrugged. ‘What do we do now?’
There were heavy wheel-wrenches in the toolboxes of the trucks, and enough men to lift the rear end bodily and chock it with timber baulks while they worked. Craig supervised the swopping of rear axle and wheels, while at the same time he rolled up his trouser leg and stripped off his leg. The machine-gun bullet had ripped through his aluminium shin, leaving a ragged exit hole in the calf, but the articulated ankle was undamaged. He tapped the sharp petals of torn metal down neatly with a hammer from the toolbox, and strapped the leg back in place. ‘Now, you just hold together a little longer,’ he told it firmly, gave the leg an affectionate pat and took the wheel-wrench away from Comrade Lookout who had already cross-threaded two of the nuts on the rear wheel of the truck.
An hour later Tungata came striding up to where Craig and his gang were lowering the truck’s body onto its cannibalized rear axle. Craig was black to the elbows with thick grease. Sarah hurried to keep up with Tungata. Next to him she seemed slim and girlish, despite the rifle she carried.
‘No fuel,’ Tungata said. ‘We’ve searched the camp.’
‘I reckon we have fifteen litres.’ Craig straightened up and wiped the sweat off his face with his shirt-sleeve. It left a smear of grease down his cheek. ‘That might take us twenty miles. If we are lucky.’ He checked his watch. ‘Three o’clock – where did the time go? Sally-Anne will be overhead in just over two hours. We aren’t going to make it—’
‘Craig, Sarah has told me what you have done, the risks, the planning, all of it—’ Tungata said quietly.
‘We haven’t got time for that now, Sam.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I must speak to my people, then we can go.’
The prisoners who had survived the slaughter on the parade ground gathered around him as Tungata stood on the bonnet of the truck. Their faces were upturned towards him, lit by the harsh glare of the floodlights.
‘I must leave you,’ Tungata told them, and they groaned, ‘but my spirit stays with you, it remains with you until the day that I return. And I swear to you on the beard of my father and by the milk that I drank from my mother’s breast, that I shall return to you.’
‘Baba!’ they called to him. ‘You are our father.’
‘The Shona kanka will be here very soon. You must go into the bush, carry with you all weapons and food you can find and go with these men.’ Tungata pointed to the little group of guerrillas around Comrade Lookout. ‘They will lead you to a safe place, and you will wait until I return in strength to lead you to what is rightfully yours.’ Tungata held his arms extended in blessing. ‘Go in peace, my friends!’
They reached up to touch him, some of them weeping like children. Then, in little groups, they began to drift away towards the gate of the compound and the darkness beyond.
Comrade Lookout was the last to go. He came to Craig and smiled that cold white wolfish smile.
‘Though you were in the forefront of the fighting, you did not kill a single Shona – not here nor at the bridge,’ he said. ‘Why is that, Kuphela?’
‘I leave the killing to you,’ Craig told him. ‘You are better at it than I am.’
‘You are a strange man, oh writer of books – but we are grateful to you. If I live that long I will boast to my grandchildren of the things we did together this day.’
‘Goodbye, my friend,’ said Craig, and held out his hand, and when they shook hands it was with the double grip of palm and wrist and palm, a salute of deep significance. Then Comrade Lookout turned and loped away, carrying his rifle at the trail and the night swallowed him. The three of them, Craig, Tungata and Sarah, stood by the cab of the truck and the loneliness held them mute.
Craig spoke first. ‘Sam, you heard the radio operator speaking to his headquarters. You know that Fungabera will have already sent in reinforcements. Are there any troopers between here and Harare?’
‘I do not think so,’ Tungata shook his head. ‘A few men at Karoi, but not a large enough force to respond to an attack like this.’
‘All right – let’s say that it took them an hour to assemble and despatch a force. It will take them another five hours to reach Tuti—’ he looked at Tungata for confirmation, and he nodded.
‘They will hit the mission at approximately six – and Sally-Anne should be overhead at five. It will be close, especially if we have to make the last few miles on foot – let’s get moving.’
While the others climbed up into the cab, Craig took a last look around the devastated compound. The flames had died down, but smoke drifted over the deserted hutments and across the parade ground where the dead men lay. The scene was still brightly lit by the floodlights.
‘The lights—’ Craig said aloud. There was something about the lights that worried him. The generator? Yes, that was it – something about the generator that he must think of.
‘That’s it!’ he whispered aloud, and jumped up into the cab. ‘Sam, the generator—’
He started the motor, and put the truck into a roaring turn. The engine room was at the back of the hill, part of the central complex protected by sandbags and by the fortifications on the high ground above it. Craig parked the truck close to the steps that led down into the power house, and he ran down and burst into it.