A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

  He cast his mind back to that distant day. The man had made such an impression on him that even from the crowded and confused events of that bloody little war he retrieved a clear image of Comrade China. He remembered his fine Nilotic head and the dark intelligent eyes, but his physical features were hazy compared to Sean's memory of the sense of confidence and purpose the man exuded. He had been a dangerous man then, and Sean expected that by now he would be even more experienced and formidable.

  Sea shook his head. At one time his nickname in the Scouts had been "Lucky Courtney"; it looked as though he had used up his ration of that commodity. He couldn't have chosen anybody he would have wanted less to command the column of Renamo than Comrade China.

  Matatu had almost exhausted his mirth and was now battling with the hiccoughs that followed, clutching at his naked belly and throat to hold them down, while occasional spasms of laughter interspersed the loud hiccoughs.

  "I'm sending you back to Chiwewe," Sean told him harshly, and the laughter and hiccoughs were instantly extinguished. Matatu stared at him in disbelief and utter despair. Sean could not face those eyes and their tragic accusation.

  He turned to Pumula and brusquely called him across to where he lay. "This note is for the chef at camp. Tell him to radio the message to Miss Reema in Harare. Matatu will guide you back.

  Don't stop to pick your nose on the way, do you understand me?"

  "Mwnbo. " Pumula was an old Scout. He would obey without argument or question.

  "All right, go," Sean ordered. "Go now." And Pumula held out his right hand. They shook hands the African way, gripping palms and then thumbs and then palms again. Pumula crawled down off the ridge and, once he was clear, jumped to his feet and trotted away. He did not look back.

  At last Sean forced himself to look at Matatu, who was crouchk ing low to the ground, trying to make his small frame smaller still to escape Sean's notice.

  "Go!" Sean ordered brusquely. "Show Pumula the way back to Chiwewe Matatu hung his head and shivered like a whipped puppy.

  ISO

  NINE,

  "Get the hell out of here!" Sean growled at him. "Before I kick your black butt!"

  Matatu lifted his head. His eyes were tragic, his expression abject. Sean wanted to pick him up and hug him.

  "Get out of here, you silly little bugger!" Sean made a face of terrifying ferocity. Matatu crept away a few paces and then paused and looked back imploringly.

  "Go!" Sean lifted his right hand threateningly. At last the little man accepted the inevitable and slunk away down the slope. Just before he disappeared into the coarse scrub at the foot of the slope, he paused and looked back one more time, seeking the faintest sign of encouragement or weakness. He was the epitome of dejection.

  Deliberately Sean turned his back on him and raised the binoculars to study the terrain ahead, but after a few seconds the image bluffed. He blinked his eyes to clear them and despite himself glanced quickly over his shoulder. Matatu had vanished. It was a strange feeling not to have him there. After a few minutes Sean lifted the binoculars again and resumed his study of the escarpment fine, pushing Matatu out of his mind.

  On either side of the mouth of the long valley, the red rock cliffs stretched away unbroken as far as he could see. They were not particularly y high; at the lowest points they were only a few hundred feet, but they were vertical and some stretches were even overhanging where softer strata of rock had been eroded from under the harder superimposed upper layers, and formed a shallow horizontal cave.

  The entrance of the valley was as inviting as the mouth of a carnivorous plant to an insect, and the cliffs were forbidding and inaccessible, but Sean concentrated upon them. He swept them with the binoculars in both directions as far as he co d Of course, it might be necessary to move some miles along the cliff to find a route that was Scalable, but that would burn up precious time. He kept swinging the binoculars back to the same point.

  A quarter of a-mile to the right-hand side of the nearest rock portal of the valley, there was a route that looked as though it might just go, but it wouldn't be easy without a companion and lacking even basic rock-climbing equipment. He would be burdened by the rifle and his pack, and he would have to make the attempt in the dark. To go out on that exposed cliff in daylight would be to invite a little AK target practice.

  Through the binocular lens he picked out a rocky buttress that was faulted like a fire escape. It seemed to offer a way around the overhanging section of cliff, and above that it led to a narrow horizontal ledge running several hundred feet in either direction.

  ir From that ledge there appeared to be two possible routes to the top of the cliff, one a narrow crack or chimney and the other an open face down which grew the exposed serpentine roots of a huge ficus tree that stood tall and massive against the skyline. The roots crawled and twined against the sheer red rock like a nest of mating pythons, forming a ladder to the top of the cliff.

  Sean glanced at his wristwatch. He had three hours to rest before it was dark enough to make the attempt, and suddenly he felt exhausted.

  He realized that it was not only the physical exertion of the chase but also the emotional drain of having glimpsed Claudia and Job in the Renarno column and the parting with Matatu.

  He anti tracked meticulously back off the ridge and searched for a secure place to hole up during what was left of daylight. When he found a hidey-hole among rock and scrub with a safe line of retreat, he loosened his bootlaces to rest his feet but kept the rifle in his lap and slumped down over it. He munched a maize cake and protein bar from his emergency pack and drank a few careful mouthfuls from his water bottle.

  He knew he would wake when the sun touched the horizon. He closed his eyes and almost instantly fell asleep.

  On the journey back to Chiwewe camp, Matatu led Pumula at a steady trot. They kept going through the night and the next afternoon stopped to refill their water bottles in the marsh where they had spotted Tukutela from the air.

  Pumula wanted to rest. Matatu did not bother to argue with him. He faced toward the west and went away at his swaying trot on his skinny knob-kneed legs so Pumula was forced to follow.

  They crossed the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe during t dark hours of the night and ran into the safari camp in the middle of the following afternoon.

  The consternation caused by their arrival was tremendous. In his agitation, the chef even forgot to don his tall cap and snowy apron before rushing out of his hut to greet them and demand the news of the mambo.

  Matatu left Pumula to hand over Sean's written message and answer the barrage of questions. He went to his hut and curled up like a puppy on his bed, an ancient iron frame with a lumpy coir mattress, a gift from Sean and his most treasured possession. He slept through all the subsequent excitement, even the chef bellowing into the microphone of the VHF radio, attempting by volume alone to reach Reema in Harare, almost three hundred miles distant.

  ISO

  April, When Matatu awoke, he had slept five hours. The camp was dark and silent. He repacked the small leather pouch that was his only luggage, retrieved his remaining store of precious snuff from under his mattress, and refilled the horn that hung around his neck.

  He crept quietly from the sleeping camp. When he was well clear, he straightened up and faced toward the east.

  "Silly little bugger," he said happily and began to run, going back to his rightful place beside the man he loved more than a father.

  Sean woke with the first chill of evening in the air. Ahead the cliffs of the escarpment were fading into the smoky purple dusk. Sean stretched and looked around for Matatu. When he remembered he was gone, it gave him a physical jolt in the pit of his stomach. He tied his bootlaces and drank again. When he stoppered the water bottle, he held it to his ear and shook it. Still half full.

  He opened the breech of the.577, slipped the cartridges out of the twin chambers, and exchanged them for two others from the loops on his bush jacket. He squeezed
an inch of black camouflage cream from the crumpled tube and rubbed it over his face and the backs of his hands. That completed his preparation and he stood up and moved quietly up the slope.

  He spent the last twenty minutes of daylight glassing the entrance to the valley and the top of the cliffs through his binoculars.

  As far as he could see, nothing had changed. Then he studied and memorized the route up the cliff face.

  As the night spread its cloak over the escarpment, he slipped quietly over the ridge and crept tip toward the base of the cliff. The bush grew dense and tangled there, and it took him much longer than he had anticipated to reach the rocky wall. It was almost completely dark by then, but he was able to identify the starting point of the climb by a small bush growing in a crack of the cliff that he had marked through the binoculars.

  Sean had never used a carrying sling on his rifle. It could be mortally dangerous in thick bush when the sling caught on a branch just as a buffalo or wounded elephant began its charge. He lashed the short-barreled weapon under the flap of his backpack with his sleeping bag. The butt stuck out on one side of his shoulders and the muzzles on the other, making an awkward unbalanced load. He went to the cliff face and laid his hands on it, getting the feel of it. The stone was still hot from the sun and the texture was smooth, almost soapy, under his fingers.

  Before the war, rock climbing had been one of his passions. He loved the risk, the terror of the open face and drop sucking at his heels. He had climbed in South America and Europe as well as on the Drakensberg and Mount Kenya. He had the requisite sense of balance and the strength in his fingers and arms. He could have been one of the top international climbers but for the intervention of the bush war. However, he had never attempted a climb like this before.

  His boots were soft velskoen without reinforced toes. He had no ropes, no anchorman, no pitons or carabiner, and he would be opening this route in darkness, barely able to see the next hold above, following a pitch he had studied from a mile distant, going blind on red sandstone, the most treacherous of rock.

  He stepped up onto the face and began to climb. He used his toes and his fingers, leaning back from the rock, keeping in fine balance, never stopping, never jerking or fighting the holds, flowing upward as smoothly as molten chocolate.

  At first the holds were solid, the kind he called "jug handles"; then the face leaned out slowly and the holds were mere flakes and indentations. He used them lightly and briefly. A touch of his fingers, a nudge of his toes and he was past, putting the minimum of weight on each but even then feeling the frailer flakes of stone grate and creak threateningly under his fingers-but he was gone before the hold could fail.

  In places he could not see above his head and he climbed by instinct, reaching up in the darkness, his fingertips as sensitive as those of a pianist as they brushed the rock and then locked into it.

  Without check or pause, he covered the first pitch and reached the ledge a hundred feet up from the base.

  The ledge was narr*er than it had appeared through the binoculars, no more than nine inches wide. With the pack strapped on his back and the Afle protruding on each side of his shoulders, it was impossible for him to turn his back to the rock and use the ledge as a bench to sit upon.

  He was forced to stand facing the cliff, his heels hanging over the edge and the weight of pack and rifle pulling on his shoulders, trying to drag him backward. He was less comfortable on the ledge than he had been on the face. He began to shuffle along it, spreading his arms like a crucifix to steady himself, his fingers groping for irregularities in the rock face, the sandstone an inch from the tip of his nose.

  He went left along the ledge, seeking the vertical crack he had spotted through the binoculars. It had been his first choice of the M I two possible routes. Sean had the rock climber's instinctive distrust of roots and branches and tufts of grass. They were always unreliable, too treacherous to risk life on.

  He counted his shuffling crablike paces along the ledge, and by the time he reached a hundred the ledge under his toes had narrowed dangerously and the muscles in his thighs were burning and qwv ering from the unnatural strain of counterbalancing the rifle and pack.

  Twenty paces more and the cliff face was beginning to bulge out toward him, forcing him further backward. He had to thrust his hips forward to keep himself from toppling out over the sheer drop. It was only a hundred feet to the bottom, but it would crush and kill just as surely as a fall from the top of Eiger north face.

  The strain on his legs was intolerable now. He thought of going back and trying the roots of the ficus, but he doubted he still had that choice. He wanted to stop, just to rest his legs a moment and gather himself, but he knew that would be the end of it. To stop on a pitch like this was defeat and certain death.

  He made himself take another pace and then another. Now he was forced backward so his back was arched and his legs were numb to the ankles; he could feel them juddering under him, knew they were going. Then suddenly the fingers of his left hand touched the crack, and it was as though a syringeful of adrenaline had been squirted into one of his arteries.

  His legs steadied under him, and he managed another pace. His fingers danced over the crack, exploring it swiftly. It was not wide enough to get his shoulder into it, and it narrowed quickly.

  Sean thrust his hand into it as deep as it would go, then bunched his fist, jamming it securely into the crack. Now he could hang back on his arm and rest his back and his aching legs. His breathing hissed and sawed in his chest and the sweat was streaming down his body, soaking his shirt. Sweat melted the camouflage cream from his face and burned his eyes, blurring his vision.

  He blinked rapidly and lifted his head. He was surprised to see that the cliff face above him was visible against the night sky and that he could make out the crack running vertically up its side.

  He turned his head and saw that while he had been climbing the moon had cleared the horizon in the east. Its beams had turned the forest below to a frosty silver.

  He could not wait any longer. He had to keep moving. He reached up with his free hand, thrust it into the rock crack above the other, and made another jam-hold. Then he twisted his foot and pressed the toe into the crack three feet up from the ledge; b( straightened his foot and it wedged securely. He put his weight on it and, with the other foot, stepped up and repeated the action.

  Hand over hand, foot over foot, he walked up the crack, hanging back from the rock face, once more in balance, the strain removed from his legs and back and his weight evenly distributed.

  He could see the top of the cliff now, only a hundred feet above his head. Then he felt the crack begin to open wider; his fists and feet were no longer finding secure jams. One of his feet slipped under him, rasping harshly over the rock until it caught again.

  He turned his body, trying to wedge his shoulder into the crack, but the barrel of the rifle clanged against the face, blocking his turn. He hung there for a few seconds before he could force himself back into balance on his legs and then groped above his head, searching the depth of the crack for another secure hold. He found only smooth sandstone, and he knew he was stuck.

  He had about fifteen seconds before his legs gave way under him. He understood clearly what he had to do, but it went contrary to all his instincts.

  "Do it," his voice grated in his own ears. "Do it or die."

  He reached down and opened the quick-release buckle on the waistband of his backpack. Then he straightened one arm and reached backward and downward; the carrying strap slid off his shoulder and down his arm, catching in the crook of his elbow.

  The altered weight of the pack and the rifle slewed his whole body around, and he had to fight to stay on the cliff face.

  He thrust his head into the crack, trying to hook onto the rock with his chin and the back of his head, the strap of the backpack locking his arm behind him. His head jammed in the crack, he gathered all his strength, braced his neck muscles, and let go. Now he was held
only by his head and feet, and he straightened both arms behind him. For an aching moment the strap caught on a fold of his bush jacket, thevlt slipped down over his arm.