A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

  "You bloody idiot!" He vented all his bitterness on the running figure. He barged past Riccardo, who was still standing frozen with shock on the path below him, and at that moment the lioness burst out of the edge of the reed bed where she had been lying.

  The river-bed was brilliantly lit by the lights of the truck, so Sean dropped the flashlight and swung up the rifle with both hands, but he could not fire. The angle was wrong; the girl was between him and the lioness. Claudia ran awkwardly in the clinging sand, her head twisted away from him to watch the charge, her arms pumping frantically out of time with her legs.

  "Down!" Sean shouted. "Fall flat!" But she kept running, blocking his shot, and the lioness swept in on her, sand spurting under her paws from which the curved yellow claws were already fully extended. She was grunting and roaring with each stride, and her tail was carried stiff and straight.

  In the headlights the shadows of girl and cat on the stark white sand were grotesque and black, coming together swiftly. Sean saw the lioness gather herself for the leap, and he watched helplessly over the open iron sights of the rifle; it was impossible to separate them, impossible to fire without hitting the girl.

  At the last moment Claudia tripped. Her legs, weak with fear, collapsed under her, and with a despairing wail she sprawled facedown in the sand.

  Instantly Sean zeroed his aim on the creamy chest of the lioness.

  With this rifle he could hit two penny coins flipped simultaneously into the air at a range of thirty paces, left and right, both before they fell to earth. With this rifle he had killed leopards, lions, rhinos, buffalos, elephants by the hundred-and men, many men, in the days of the Rhodesian bush war. He had never needed a second shot. Now that the target was open he could with supreme confidence send a 750-grain soft-nosed mushrooming bullet through the lioness from her chest to the root of her tail. It would be the end of the cat, and of the safari, and probably of his license.

  At the least it would mean months of investigation and trial. A dead lioness would bring all the wrath of both the government and the game department down upon him.

  The lioness was almost on top of the fallen girl, only a scant few feet of white sand lay between them, and Sean dropped his aim. It was a terrible risk, but he thrived on risk. He was gambling with the girl's life, but she had infuriated him and deserved to take her chance. He fired into the sand two feet in front of the lioness's open jaws. The huge, heavy buffet plowed in, sending up an eruption of sand, a solid fountain of flying white grains that for a moment completely enveloped the animal. Sand filled her mouth and was sucked into her lungs as she roared, sand drove into her nostrils, clogging them, and sand lashed into her open yellow eyes, tearing, raking, blinding her, disorienting her, instantly breaking her charge.

  Sean raced forward with the second barrel ready to fire, but it wasn't necessary. The lioness had recoiled, rearing back violently, clawing at her sand-clotted eyes, toppling over and then bounding up again, careering back into the reed bed, barging blindly into the sheer bank, rolling and falling and struggling up again. The sounds of her wild run and agonized roars dwindled.

  Sean reached Claudia, and with an arm around her jerked her to her feet. Her legs were unable to support her, and he had to half carry, half drag her to the Toyota and bundle her into the front seat.

  At the same time Riccardo scrambled into the back seat of the Toyota, and Sean leaped up onto the running board and with his free hand held the rifle like a pistol, pointed out into the darkness, ready to meet another charge.

  "Go!" he shouted at Job. The Matabele driver let out the clutch and they flew down the river-bed, lurching and jolting over the heavy going.

  Nobody spoke for almost a minute, until they had climbed out of the river-bed onto the smoother track. Then Claudia said in a small, strangled voice, "If I can't pee right now, I'm going to burst."

  "We could always point you at Snarly Sue like a fire extinguisher and wash her away," Sean suggested coldly, and in the back seat Riccardo let out a delighted guffaw. Even though Claudia recognized the nervous relief and tension in her father's laugh, she resented it bitterly. It aggravated the total humiliation she had suffered.

  It was an hours drive back to camp, and when they arrived, Moses, Claudia's camp servant, had the shower filled with piping hot water. The shower was a twenty-gallon oil drum suspended in the branches of a mo pane tree, a thatched grass screen open to the stars, and a cement floor.

  She stood under the rush of steaming water, and as her body turned bright pink she felt the humiliation and nausea of the adrenaline overdose fade away, to be replaced by that buoyant sense of well-being that comes only from having survived extreme danger.

  While she soaped herself, working up a rich lather, she listened to Sean. He was fifty yards away at his makeshift gymnasium at the back of his own tent, but his regular hissing breathing carried clearly as he worked out with the iron weights. He had not missed a session in the four days she had been in camp, no matter how long and hard the day's hunting had been.

  "Rambo!" She smiled contemptuously at his masculine conceit, and yet more than once during the last few days she had caught herself surreptitiously contemplating his muscled arms, his flat greyhound belly, or even his buttocks, round and hard as a pair of ostrich eggs in his khaki shorts.

  Moses carried the lantern ahead of her, escorting her back from the shower in her silk dressing gown, a towel tied like a turban around her hair. He had laid out her mess kit for her-khaki pants, a Gucci T-shirt, and ostrich-skin mosquito boots, exactly what she would have chosen herself. Moses washed her soiled clothes every day, and his ironing was crisp perfection. Her slacks crackled softly as she pulled them on, adding to her sense of well-being.

  She took her time drying her hair and brushing it out. She used an artistic trace of makeup and lipstick, and when she looked in the small mirror she felt even better.

  "Who's the vain one now?" She smiled at herself and went out to where the men were already at the camp fire, gratified when they stopped talking and watched her make her entrance. Sean rose from his camp chair to greet her with those silly Limey manners that disconcerted her.

  "Sit down!" She tried to sound brusque. "You don't have to keep jumping up and down."

  Sean smiled easily. "Don't let her see how she's succeeding in getting up your nose," he warned himself, and he held the canvas camp chair for her while she sat down with the soles of her mosquito boots to the camp fire.

  "Get the donna a peg," Sean ordered the mess waiter. "You know the way she likes it."

  The waiter brought it to her on a silver tray. It was perfect. A dash of Chivas whisky in a crystal glass, barely enough to color the Perrier water, and filled right up with ice. The waiter was dressed in a snowy white kanza robe, the hem well below his knees, a scarlet sash over his shoulder to denote that he was the headwaiter, and a scarlet pillbox fez on his head. His two assistants stood respectfully in the background, also in scarlet fez and flowing white robes. For Claudia it was mildly embarrassing: There were twenty servants to care for three of them, all so sybaritic and colonial and exploitative. This was 1988, for God's sake, and the empire was long gone-but the whisky was delicious.

  "I suppose you expect me to thank you for saving my life," she said as she sipped it.

  "Not at all, ducky." Sean had learned almost immediately that she hated that form of address. "I wouldn't even expect you to apologize for your crass stupidity. To be quite frank with you, I was worrying more about having to kill the lioness. Now that would have been tragic." They fenced lightly, skillfully, and Claudia found herself enjoying it. Every thrust that went through his guard gave her a satisfied glow, better even than -a good day in court. She was disappointed when the headwaiter announced in sepulchral tones, "Chef say dinner she is ready, Mwnbo," and Sean led them into the dining tent that was fit by candles in a many-branched Meissen porcelain candelabra. The cutlery was solid silver--Claudia had furtively checked the hallmarks--and the Water
ford crystal wine glasses sparkled on the tablecloth of Madeira lacework. A robed waiter stood behind each of their folding canvas safari chairs, ready to serve.

  "What do you -faficy tonight, Capo?" Sean asked.

  "A touch of Wolfgang Amadeus," Riccardo suggested. Sean pressed the "play" button on the tape deck before going to his seat, and the limpid strains of Mozart's piano concerto number seventeen shimmered in the candlelight.

  The soup was made with green peas, pearl barley, and buffalo marrow bones, spiced with a fearsome chili sauce Sean called "pell pell ho ho."

  Claudia had inherited her father's taste for chili, garlic, and red wine, but even she could not face the second course, buffalo tripes in white sauce. Both men liked their tripes green, which was simply a euphemism for their being improperly cleaned of the original contents.

  "It's only chewed grass," her father pointed out, which made her feel squeamish until she turned and caught a whiff of the special dish the chef had prepared for her alone. Beneath a golden pie crust steamed a savory stew of antelope filets and kidneys. Chef had shaken his tall white cap when she had suggested the addition of ten cloves of garlic.

  "Cookbook say no garlic, Donna."

  "My book say plenty garlic, it say very loud ten cloves garlic, okay, Chefie?" And the chef had grinned in capitulation. Claudia had almost instantly overwhelmed the entire camp staff with her easy manner and relaxed charm.

  The wine was a rich, robust South African cabernet, every bit as good as her favorite Chianti, and she gave both wine and pie her full attention. The day's rigors and the sun and fresh air had honed her appetite. Like her papa, she could eat and drink freely without adding an ounce of flesh or fat to her waistline. Only the conversation was a disappointment. As on every other evening the men were talking about rifles, hunting, and the killing of wild animals.

  The gun talk was mostly unintelligible gibberish to her.

  Her father said things like "The.300 Weatherby can move a hundred-eighty-grain bullet at thirty-two hundred feet per second; that gives you over four thousand foot-pounds of muzzle energy and stupendous hydrostatic shock."

  And Sean would respond, "You Yanks are obsessed with velocity. Roy Weatherby has blown up more bullets on African game than you have eaten spaghetti, Capo. Give me high sectional density, Nosier construction, and moderate velocity..."

  No normally intelligent person could keep that up hour after hour, she had told herself. Yet every night of the safari so far she had gone to bed and left the two of them at the camp fire, still at it over their cognac and cigars.

  When they spoke of the animals, however, she could take more interest and even participate, usually to vent her disapproval. They talked mostly of particular individual animals, legendary old males for which Sean had pet names, which annoyed Claudia, just the way it irritated her when he called Papa "Capo," as though he were a Mafia don. One such animal he referred to as "Frederick the Great," or simply "Fred." This was the lion they were hunting now, the lion for which they had hung the buffalo carcass.

  "I've seen him twice so far this season. One client even had a shot at him. Mind you, he was shaking so much with nerves that he missed him by a football field."

  "Tell me about him." Riccardo leaned forward eagerly.

  "Papa, he told you about him last night," Claudia reminded him sweetly.

  "And the night before, and the night before that-"

  "Little girls should be seen and not heard." Riccardo chuckled.

  "Didn't I ever teach you anything? Tell me about Fred again."

  "He's got to be well over eleven foot, and not just length. He's got a head on him like a hippo and a mane like a black haystack.

  When he walks, it ripples and tosses like the wind in a msasa tree," Sean rhapsodized. "Cunning? Sly? Fred knows it all. He's been shot at at least three times that I know of. Wounded once by a Spanish hunter over in Ian Piercy's concession three seasons ago, but he recovered. He didn't get that big by being stupid."

  "How are we going to get him?" Riccardo demanded.

  "I think the two of you are disgusting," Claudia cut in before Sean could reply. "After seeing those glorious creatures today, those beautiful little cubs, how can you bring yourself to kill than?"

  "I didn't see any cubs shot today," Riccardo remarked as he nodded to the waiter offering him another helping of tripe. "In fact, we went to a great deal of trouble and risk to ensure their survival."

  "You're devoting forty-five days of your life to the sole purpose of killing lions and elephants!" Claudia shot back. "So don't get all righteous with me, Riccardo Monterro."

  "I'm always fascinated by the confused thought processes of your average shrieking liberal," Sean intervened. Claudia turned on him gleefully, lusting for battle.

  "There's no confusion in my mind. You're here to kill animals."

  "The same way a farmer kills animals," Sean agreed. "To ensure a healthy, flourishing herd and a place for that herd to survive."

  "You're not a farmer."

  "Oh, yes, I am," Sean-contradicted. "The only difference is that I slaughter them on A range, not in an abattoir. But like any farmer, my chief concern is the survival of my breeding-stock."

  They're not domestic animals," ClaudIa contested. "Those are beautiful wild animals."

  "Beautiful? Wild? What the hell has that got to do with it? Like anything else in this modern world, the wild game of Africa has to pay its way if it's going to survive. Capo here is paying tens of thousands of dollars to hunt a lion and an elephant. He is giving those animals a monetary value far above goats and cattle, so that the newly independent government of Zimbabwe is willing to set aside concessions of millions of acres in which the game can persist. I rent one of those concessions, and I have the strongest incentive in the world for protecting it from grazers and poachers and making certain I have plenty of game to offer my hunters. No, ducky, legal safari hunting is one of the most effective arms of conservation in Africa today."

  "So you're going to save the animals by shooting them with high-powered rifles?" Claudia demanded scornfully.

  "High-powered rifles?" Sean laughed softly. "Another emotive liberal parrot cry. Would you prefer us to use low-powered rifles?

  Wouldn't that be rather like demanding that the butcher use only blunt knives to cut throats? You are an intelligent woman; think with your head, not your heart. The individual animal is unimportant. His life-span is limited to a few short years-in the case of this lion we are hunting, probably twelve years at the very most. What is beyond price is the continued existence of the species as a whole.

  Not the individual, but his entire kind. Our lion is an old male at the very end of his useful LIFE-span, during which he has protected his females and young and already added his genes to the pool of his race. He will die naturally within the next year or two. Much better that his death produce ten thousand dollars in cash which will be spent on providing a safe place for his cubs to live than having this wilderness encroached upon by swarming black humanity and its scrawny herds of goats."

  "My God, listen to you." Claudia shook her head sadly.

  "Swarming black humanity" are the words of a racist and a bigot.

  It's their land; why can't they be free to live where they choose?"

  "And that is the logic of woolly-headed liberalism." Sean laughed. "Make up your mind whose side you are on, the beautiful wild animals or the beautiful wild blacks. You can't have it both ways; when the two come into competition for living space, the wild animals always come off losers-unless we hunters can pay the bill for them."

  He wasn't an easy man to argue with, she conceded, and she was relieved when her father cut in and gave her a moment to gather her wits.

  "There can be no doubt on which side my darling daughter stands. After all, Sean, you are talking to a senior member of the commission for the reinstatement of the Inuit people to their traditional lands."