A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

  As he drove, he spoke in a tightly controlled voice. "Before we commence this guided tour of the Mozambican paradise of the proletariat, this shining gem of African socialism, will you bear with me while I give you a few facts and figures." Nobody protested, so he went on. "Until 1975 Mozambique was a Portuguese colony. For almost five hundred years it had been under Portuguese control and had been a reasonably happy and prosperous community of some fifteen million souls. The Portuguese, unlike the British or German colonists, had a relaxed attitude toward miscegenation and the result was a large mulatto population and an official policy of assimilado under which any person of color, if he attained certain civilized standards, was considered to be white and enjoyed Portuguese nationality. It all worked very well, as indeed did most colonial administrations, especially those of the British."

  "Bullshit," said Claudia demurely. "That's Limey propaganda. 91

  "Limey?" Sean smiled thinly. "Careful, your prejudice is showing. Nonetheless, your average Indian or African living today in a former British colony is a damned sight worse off now than he was then.

  Certainly that goes one hundred times more for your average black man living in Mozambique."

  "At least they're free," Claudia cut in.

  Sean laughed. "This is freedom? An economy managed under the well-known socialist principles of chaos and ruination which has resulted in a negative growth rate of up to ten percent per annum for every year since the Portuguese withdrawal, a foreign debt amounting to double the gross national product, a total breakdown in the educational system, only five percent of children regularly attending a recognized school, one doctor per forty-five thousand persons, only one person in ten with access to purified drinking water, infant mortality at three hundred forty per thousand births? The only worse countries in the world are Afghanistan and Angola, but as you say, at least they are free. In America, where everybody eats three huge meals a day, freedom may be a big deal, but in Africa a full belly counts for a hell of a lot more."

  "It can't be as bad as that," she protested.

  "No," he agreed, "it's a lot worse. I haven't mentioned two other factors, the civil war and AIDS. When the Portuguese were pushed out, they handed over to a dictator named Samara Machel and his Frelimo party. Machel was an avowed Marxist. He didn't believe in the nonsense of elections, and his rule was directly responsible for the present condition of the country and for the emergence of the National Mozambican Resistance or, as it is known to its friends and admirers, Renamo. Nobody know s much about it, what its objectives are, who its leaders are. All we know is that it controls most of the country, especially the north, and that it is made up of a pretty ruthless bunch of characters."

  "Renamo is a South African front organization directed, supplied, and controlled from Pretoria," Claudia helped him out.

  "Committed to the overthrow of sovereign government and the destabilization of the southern continent."

  "Well done, ducky." Sean nodded approval. "You've been studying the wisdom and erudition of the Organization of African Unity and the nonaligned nations. You have even mastered their jargon. If only South Africa had the military and technological capability to commit half the skulduggery it is accused of, it would not be simply the most powerful country in Africa, it would be running the entire world."

  "I keep forgetting you're one of them, which is silly of me. You don't attempt to conceal your bigotry. The simple fact is that your government and apartheid are the scourge and curse of Africa."

  "Of course, we are responsible for everything-the AIDS epidemic, the famines of Ethiopia and Angola and Mozambique, the breakdown of government in Uganda and Zambia, the corruption in Nigeria and Zaire, it's all a dirty South African plot. We even killed Samara Machel, we fed vodka to the Russian crew of his Tupelov jet, and, with our incredibly sophisticated technology, lured them over the border. Machel hit one of our racist mountains with such force that his brains and major organs were instantly expelled from his body. Nevertheless, our apartheid doctors kept him alive long enough to torture state secrets out of him. That is the truth as determined by the UN and

  OAU."

  "Shut up," said Riccardo Monterro. "I've had enough. Shut up, both of you."

  "Sorry." Sean grinned at him. "I get carried away. I just wanted to let you know what to expect when we cross the border. We can just hope that we aren't going to meet any of the lads from either Frelimo or Renamo. there is not a lot to choose between them.

  They both shoot the same bullets."

  The thought made the back of his own neck prickle, and he felt his mood lighten. He was going into mortal danger again, and the thrill of it began. having the girl with him no longer irked but rather heightened that anticipation, and he felt his resentment of her begin to fade. He was glad she was here rather than jetting back to Alaska. Sean drove on in a silence that gripped them all, even the men standing braced against the roll bar in the back of the Toyota. The closer they came to the border, the deeper the silence became.

  At last Sean turned and looked over his shoulder, and Job nodded in agreement.

  "This is it, ladies and gentlemen," Sean said quietly. "All change!" He let the Toyota trundle to a halt where the track crossed a stony ridge.

  "Where are we?" Riccardo asked.

  "As close as we can safely get to the border, about three miles.

  From here, it's shanks" pony."

  Riccardo swung one leg out of the truck, but Sean said sharply, "Hold it, Capo, step onto that slab of rock. Leave no tracks."

  One at a time, each carrying his or her own pack, they alighted from the truck, at Sean's instruction stepping precisely in the footsteps of the person in front. Matatu was the last off, and he went backward, brushing over the signs with a switch of dried grass, wiping out every trace of their departure from the truck.

  The chef had come with them to drive the truck back to the camp. "Go in peace, Mambo!" he called to Sean as he puffed away.

  "Fat hope," Sean laughed, sending him off with a wave. Then to Job: "Antitracking, let's go!"

  Neither Riccardo nor Claudia had ever watched anti tracking procedure, for while hunting they had always run free in pursuit.

  The formation for anti tracking was Indian file, Job leading and everyone else stepping in his footprints. Behind them all Matatu, the old maestro, was covering the signs, replacing a pebble lichen side up, stroking a blade of grass into its original position, flicking at the earth with his grass switch, picking up a leaf dislodged from a low-hanging branch or the bruised blade of grass on which a foot had trodden.

  Job avoided the gaime paths and soft ground, always choosing the line of march that was most obscure and yet moving surprisingly fast, so that within half an hour Claudia felt the chill of fresh sweat between her shoulder blades and at the cleavage of her shirt front.

  Job led them to the top of a low kopJe, and Sean motioned to them to conceal themselves below the skyline with the sunset behind them.

  Watching them work, Riccardo remarked softly, "Pumula and Dedan seem to know what they're doing." The two of them had moved out to guard the flanks without being ordered to do so.

  "Yes." Sean settled down between him and Claudia, using the same low bush for cover. "They were both noncoms in the Scouts.

  They've done this before."

  "Why are we stopping here? Claudia asked.

  "We are sitting on the border," Sean explained, "and we'll spend the last of the daylight studying the ground ahead. As soon as the moon comes up, we'll move in. You can relax until then."

  He lifted his Zeiss binoculars and stared through them; a few yards away Job lay on his belly and focused his own pair of binoculars in the same direction. They lowered the binoculars from time to time to blink their vision clear or polish an imaginary speck from the lens. Claudia had noticed how they protected and looked after these most essential tools of their craft, but apart from that, their concentration on the terrain ahead was absolute and ended only when the l
ast gleam of the sunset faded. Then Sean buttoned the binoculars into his top pocket and turned to her.

  "Time for your makeup," he said. For a moment she did not understand. Then she felt the greasy touch of camouflage cream on her cheek and instinctively pulled away.

  "Hold still," he snapped. "Your white face shines like a iniffor.

  It's good for insects and sunburn also."

  He daubed her face and the backs of her hands.

  "Here comes the moon." Sean finished working on his own camouflage and screwed the top back on the tube of cream. "We can go in now."

  Sean changed the formation once again, putting out Job and Pumula as flankers while he led the center. Once again Matatu brought up the rear, diligently sweeping their tracks.

  Once Sean stopped and checked Claudia's equipment. A loose buckle on her pack had been tapping regularly in time with her stride, a noise so small that she had not noticed it.

  "You sound like the charge of the Light Brigade," he breathed in her ear as he adjusted it.

  "Arrogant bastard," she thought.

  They went on in silence, an hour and then another hour without pausing. She never knew the exact moment when she crossed the border. The moonlight through the forest was silvery, and the shadows of the trees flickered over Sean's broad shoulders ahead of her.

  Gradually the silence and the moonlight gave the march a dreamlike unreality, and she found herself mesmerized by it, her movements were like-those of a sleepwalker, so that when Sean stopped abruptly she bumped into him and might have fallen had he not whipped. a hard, muscular arm around her and held her.

  They stood frozen, listening, staring into the dark forest. After almost five minutes Claudia moved slightly to free herself from his arm, but instantly his grip tightened and she submitted to it. Out on the right flank, Job gave a bird call, and noiselessly Sean sank to the ground, drawing her down with him. Her nerves strained tighter as she realized there must be real danger out there. Now his arm no longer annoyed her. Instinctively she relaxed and pressed a little closer to him. It felt good.

  Another soft bird call from the darkness, and Sean put his lips to her ear. "Stay!" he breathed. She felt lonely and exposed as he released her and she watched him disappear like a ghost into the forest.

  Sean moved in a low crouch, rifle in one hand, reaching forward to touch the earth with the fingers of his left hand, brushing away the dry twigs and leaves that might crackle under his foot before stepping forward. He sank down ten feet from where Job lay and glanced across at his dark shape. The pale palm of Job's hand flashed a signal, and Sean concentrated on the left front that Job had indicated, For long minutes he neither saw nor sensed anything untoward, but he trusted Job completely and he waited with a hunter's patience. Suddenly he caught a taint on the night air and he lifted his nose and sniffed at it. Both his confidence and his patience were repaid. It was the acrid stink of burning tobacco, one of those cheap black Portuguese cigarillos. He remembered them so well they had been issued to the guerrillas in the days of the bush war and were probably Frelimo issue still.

  He signaled Job and they went forward, leopard-crawling, absolutely silently, for forty paces. Sean picked out the glow of the cigarette as a man drew on it. Then the man coughed, a soft phlegmy sound, and spat. He was at the base of one of the large trees directly ahead; now Sean could make out his shape. He was sitting with his back to the trunk.

  "Who is he? Local tribesman? Poacher? Bee hunter? Refugee?"

  None of those seemed likely. This one was awake and alert, almost certainly a sentry. As Sean reached that conclusion, he sensed other movement farther out, and he flattened against the earth.

  Another man emerged from the forest and came directly to where the sentry was rising to his feet to meet him. As soon as he stood. Sean could make out the AK-47 rifle slung over his shoulder, muzzle down. The two men talked softly together.

  IT', "Changing the guard," Sean thought as the new sentry leaned against the tree and the other man sauntered back into the forest.

  "That is where the camp is," Sean guessed.

  Still on his belly, he leopard-crawled forward, passing well wide of the sentry, who would be fresh and vigilant. Once he was within the perimeter, Sean rose into a crouch and went forward swiftly.

  He found the camp in a fold of ground up against the hills. It was a fly camp no huts or shelters, only two small fires that had burned down to coals. He counted eleven men lying around the fires, all of them with a blanket pulled completely over their heads in typical African fashion. There might be five or six others on guard duty, but it was a small band.

  Even lacking automatic weapons, Sean and his men could have dealt with them. All of Sean's men still carried their piano-wire no loses and Matatu his skinning knife with the blade so sharp it was honed down to half its original width. Nobody in the camp would even have woken up.

  Sean shook his head with regret. He was certain now that these were either Frelimo regular troops or Renamo guerrillas. He had no quarrel with them, whoever they were. Just as long as they did not interfere with his elephant hunt. Sean backed away to where Job was waiting for him at the perimeter.

  "Eleven of them at the fires," Sean breathed.

  "I found two more sentries," Job said, nodding.

  "Frelimo?"

  "Who knows?" Job shrugged. Sean touched his arm and they crept away farther out of earshot of the camp so they could speak more freely.

  "What do you think, Job?"

  "A small group, they mean little. We can go around them."

  "They could be the advance guard for a bigger party," Sean suggested.

  "These are not crack troops," Job muttered contemptuously.

  "Smoking on guard duty, sleeping next to a fire. They aren't soldiers, they are tourists." Sean smiled at the term of derision. He knew that Job's determination was more Anglo-Saxon than African. Once he had decided, it was difficult to dissuade him.

  "You want to go on?" he asked.

  "For five hundred thousand dollars?" Job whispered. "You're damned right I want to go on!"

  Claudia was afraid. The African night was so charged with mystery, uncertainty, and menace. The wait aggravated her feeling of apprehension. Sean had been gone for almost an hour, and though her father was close beside her she felt alone and very vulnerable.

  Suddenly Sean was back, and she experienced a rush of relief.

  She wanted to reach out and cling to him and was ashamed of herself for the weakness. Sean was whispering to her father, and she drew close to listen. Her arm touched Sean's bare arm, but he did not seem to notice, so she left it there for the feeling of security and comfort it gave her.

  "Small party of armed men camped up ahead," Sean was explaining. "Not more than twenty of them. We don't know who the hell they are, but we can circle around them and keep going, or we can turn back. It's up to you, Capo."

  "I want that elephant!"

  "This is probably your last chance to pull out," Sean warned him.

  "You're wasting time," Riccardo said. Claudia was torn by her father's decision. It would have been such an anticlimax to turn back now, and yet her first taste of the real flavor of Africa had been disconcerting. She realized as the march resumed and she fell in behind Sean that this was the first time in her life that she had been beyond the trappings and buttresses of civilization, the first time there was no police force to protect her, no recourse to law or justice or mercy. Here she was as vulnerable as an antelope to the leopard, in a forest full of predators.