A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

  Claudia was crouched against the far wall, but as he burst into the hut behind the falling door panel, she rushed forward to meet him. He caught her in his arms, but when she tried to kiss him he whirled her around by one arm and ran with her to the door.

  "What's happenings" she gasped.

  "We are making a break." As they ran out into the sunlight again he saw that Job and Dedan had a hold on the bottom strand of the fence.

  With all the strength of their arms and legs, they were dragging it upward, opening a narrow gap between the wire and the sun-baked earth. Sean stooped to the same strand from the inside, settling his grip between the clusters of spikes, and heaved upward. Under the combined strength of the three of them the ground at the foot of the nearest fence pole cracked and gave, the pole was lifted a few inches out of the hole in which it was planted, and the strand of wire came up in their hands.

  "Down on your belly!" Sean grunted at Claudia. "Get under it!"

  She was lean and nimble as a ferret, and the barbs cleared her back with inches to spare as she wriggled through.

  "Hold it!" Sean barked at Job, and they strained up, black muscles knotting, faces contorted with the effort.

  Sean dropped flat and pushed himself under the wire. Halfway through he felt one of the steel spikes snag in his flesh and stop him dead. "Pull me through," he ordered, and while Dedan continued to hold up the wire, Job stooped and they linked hands in a fireman's grip.

  "Pull!" Sean ordered, and Job heaved. Sean felt his flesh tear and the blood spurt down his back, then he was free.

  As he rolled to his feet, Claudia gasped, "Your back!" But he seized her arm again and demanded of Job, "Which way?" He knew Job would have studied the camp during the days he had been imprisoned here. He could rely on his judgment.

  "The river," Job responded immediately. "If we can float down clear of the camp."

  "TAad the way," Sean ordered. He had to shout to make himself heard. All around them rose the stutter of automatic small-arms fire. There was the deeper clatter of heavy machine guns, sounding like a stick drawn sharply across a sheet of corrupted iron, and then even that din was drowned out by a thunder like Victoria Falls in flood. Sean knew exactly what it was, although he had never heard it before-the sound of the Gatling-type, multi barreled cannon mounted in the nose of a Hind helicopter, firing 12.7-men bullets like the jet of a fire hose.

  He felt Claudia falter beside him at the gut-melting terror of that sound, and he jerked her arm. "Come on!" he snarled at her.

  "Run!" She was still limping slightly from her injured knee ligament as they followed Job and Dedan down toward the river.

  Though they were still under the spread branches of the forest, just ahead of them was open ground.

  A small -party of Renamo were doubling across this opening, coming up the track toward them, eight or nine men in Indian file.

  Each of them carried an RPG mobile rocket launcher. As they ran, their faces were turned up toward the sky, seeking a target for their rockets.

  The detachment of racketeers was still two hundred meters from them when suddenly the earth around them erupted. Sean had never in all his war experience seen anything like it. The ground dissolved, seemed to turn to a liquid that boiled into a fog of dust under the jet of 12.7-men cannon shells.

  Along a wide swathe of cannon fire all was destroyed. Even the trees disappeared in a whirlwind of wood fragments and shredded leaves; only the shattered stumps still stood as the storm of fire passed on. The ground was left like the furrows of a freshly plowed field, and on it was scattered the remains of the party of RPG rocket men. They were hacked and minced as though they had been fed through the cogs of some fearsome machinery.

  Sean still had a grip on Claudia's arm, and he pulled her down into the grass beside the track just as a shadow swept over them.

  However, the canopy of branches overhead must have screened them from the eyes of the gunner in the helicopter. Job and Dedan had also dived for cover in the grass verge beside the path and avoided detection.

  The Hind cruised overhead, barely fifty feet above the tops of the trees, and abruptly they had a full view of the machine as it crossed over the open ground where the torn corpses of the rocket men lay scattered. Sean felt a physical shock at the sight of it. He had not expected it to be so large and so grotesquely ugly.

  It was fifty feet long. The Russians themselves called it "Sturmovich," the humpback. It was a deformed monster: aberrant and ungainly, the green and brown splotches of tropical camouflage giving it the appearance of disease and leprous decay. The bulging double canopies of armored glass looked like malevolent eyes, and so fierce was their gaze that Sean instinctively flattened himself in the grass and flung a protective arm over Claudia's back.

  Below the gross body of the gunship hung an assembly of rocket s, and as they stared at it in awe the machine hovered and PM rotated on its own axis, lowered its blunt unlovely nose, and fired a spread of rockets. They launched with fiery sibilance on plumes of white smoke, streaking across the river and bursting on the ant's nests of sandbagged bunkers in fountains of flame and smoke and dust. The noise was deafening, and the shrill whine of the gunship's rotors was like an awl screwing into their eardrums.

  Claudia covered both her ears and sobbed. "Oh God! Oh God!"

  The Hind revolved slowly, seeking fresh targets and again they cowered away from it. It moved away from them, hunting along the bank of the river. The Gatling cannon in its remote-controlled turret in the nose fired blasts of solid metal into the forest, destroying all in its path.

  "Let's go"" Sean shouted above the uproar, dragging Claudia to her feet. Job and Dedan ran ahead of them, and the earth plowed by the gunship's cannons was soft and spongy under their feet.

  As they passed the dead men, Job stooped without breaking his run and snatched up one of the undamaged RPG launchers. At the next stride he stooped again and grabbed a fiberglass backpack that contained three of the finned projectiles for the RPG, then went bounding away, on toward the riverbank. With her injured knee Claudia could not match that pace, and even with Sean pulling her along they fell almost a hundred yards behind.

  Job and Dedan reached the riverbank. It was steep and rocky, fractured cliffs of water-polished black stone. A gallery of tall riverine trees spread their branches out over the swiftly flowing apple-green waters.

  Job looked back at them anxiously, for they were still out in the open. His face contorted as he screamed a warning, dropped the fiberglass pack at his feet, and swung the short squat barrel of the RPG up to his shoulder, pointing it at the sky above Sean's head.

  Sean did not look up; he knew there was no time for that. He had not isolated the shrieking rotors of the second incoming Hind from the deafening uproar caused by the first machine, but now the din was escalating to the point of pain.

  Running beside them was a narrow don ga eroded by the storm waters of the rainy season but now dry and sheer-sided. Sean swept Claudia off her feet and jumped with her in his arms. The earthen gulley was six feet deep, and they hit the bottom with an impact that clashed Sean's teeth together just as the lip of the gulley dissolved under a jet of cannon fire. The earth on which they lay shuddered like a live thing beneath them, as though they were insects being shaken from the flanks of a gigantic horse. Earth, ripped from the lip of the gulley by the sheets of cannon fire, fell

  4it on them in clouds, heavy clods raining on their backs, knocking the breath out of them, dust choking them, burying them alive.

  Claudia screamed and tried to fight herself out from under the layer of dust and dry earth, but Sean held her down.

  ll "Lie still," he hissed at her. "Don't move, you dilly bird." The Hind swiveled and cruised back, now directly over the gulley, searching for them, the gunner traversing the thick stack of multi barrels of the Gatling cannon in its remote turret.

  Sean turned his head slightly, looking up from the corner of one eye. His vision was obscured by dust, but as i
t cleared he saw the i great splotched nose of the ffind hanging in the air only fifty feet above them. The gunner must have picked out their white skins, which made them targets of preference. Only the thin layer of fresh earth protected them from his scrutiny through the gunsight of his cannon.

  ""Hit him, Job," Sean pleaded aloud. "Iffit the bastard."

  on the ciff above the river, job dropped on one knee The RPG-7 was one of his favorite weapons. The huge gunship was hovering over the gulley only fifty yards away.

  He aimed twelve inches below the edge of the pilot's canopy.

  The RpG was highly inaccurate, and even at point-blank range he gave himself latitude should the missile By off track. He held the cross wire steady for a beat of his pumping heart, then Pressed the trigger. The exhaust of white smoke blew back over his shoulder and the rocket streaked away, flying fair and true, to strike only inches higher than he -had aimed on the run where the armored tai use Se glass canopy joined the camouflaged me f la The rocket burst with a force that would blow the engine block out of a Mack truck or burst the boiler of a railway locomotive.

  For an instant the front of the Hind was obliterated by flame and smoke, and Job whooped triumphantly, jumping to his feet, expecting the hideous monster to crash out of the Sky in a sheet of its own smoke and fire:4 Instead the huge helicopter jumped higher, as though the pilot had flinched at the rocket burst close beside him, but when the smoke blew away, Job realized with disbelief that the fuselage was unscathed. There was only a sooty black smear on the painted metal to mark the spot where the rocket had struck.

  him As he stared, the ugly nose of the Hind swiveled toward and the many-eyed muzzles of the cannon sought him out. Job hurled the RPG launcher away and jumped out from the cliff top, dropping twenty feet to hit the water, just as the cannon tore the great branches from the tree under which he had stood. Cannon fire chewed through the Mink as cleanly as a lumberjack's cross ad saw. The entire tree leaned outward, then toppled down the cliff and hit the surface of the river in a cloud of spray.

  The Hind pulled away, lifting and banking, cruising on down the riverbank. Unharmed by the rocket hit and as deadly as before, it sought its next target.

  Sean crawled to his knees coughing and gasping. "Are you all right?" he croaked, but for "a moment Claudia could not answer him. Her eyes were blinded with sand, and her tears cut wet runners through the dust that caked her cheeks.

  "We've got to get into the water." Sean pulled her to her feet and half pushed, half pulled her up the side of the gully.

  They ran together to the top of the cliff and looked down. The felled tree was floating away on the current, a huge raft of leafy branches.

  "Jump!" Sean ordered. Claudia did not hesitate. She threw herself far out and dropped away to strike the water feet first. Sean followed while she was still in the air.

  He surfaced with Claudia's head bobbing beside him. The dust was washed off her face, and her hair was slicked over her eyes, shiny with streaming water. Together they struck out for the floating mass of branches and leaves. She was a strong swimmer, and even with boots on her feet and fully dressed she kicked out powerfully and dragged herself through the water with a full overarm crawl.

  As she reached the floating tree trunk, Job stretched out a long arm and drew her in beneath the branches. Dedan was already there, and Sean ducked in a second later. Each of them clung to a branch and the leaves formed a low green bower over their heads.

  "I hit him," Job complained angrily. "I hit him right on the nose with a rocket. It was like hitting a bull buffalo with a slingshot. He just turned and came straight at me."

  Sean wiped the water from his eyes and face with the palm of his hand. "Titanium armor plate," he explained quietly. "They are almost invulnerable to conventional fire, both the pilot's cockpit and the engine compartment are tight and solid. The only thing you can do when one of those bastards comes at you is run and hide."

  4 He flicked his sodden hair back out of his eyes. "Anyway, you pulled him off us. He was just about to blast us with that dirty great A cannon." He swam across to Claudia.

  "You shouted at me," she accused. "You were quite rude. You called me a dilly bird."

  "Better abused than dead." He grinned at her, and she smiled back. Is that an invitation, sir? I would let mind a little abuse--from YOU.

  underwater, he slipped an arm around her waist and hugged her. My God, how I have missed your cheek and sauce."

  She pressed herself against him. 641 (WY VC111i2W after you were gone she whispered.

  "Me too," he confessed. "Up to then, i thought I couldn't stand you. Then I realized I just couldn't do without you "I feel weak when you say that. Tell me you really mean it."

  "Later." He hugged her. First lets just try and get out of here alive." He left her and paddled across to Job's Side Of the leafy cavern.

  can you see the bank?"

  job nodded. Looks like the raid is over. They are coming Out of the bunkers."

  from under the concealing branches. He saw Sean peered out about on the near bank. "They'll be troops moving cautiously picking up the pieces for a while before they realiZe we've scarP end but keep an eye on them."

  He paddled across to Dedan, who was watching the far bank.

  "What do you see? "They are busy with themselves." Dedan pointed- A stretcher party was working along the bank, picking up the dead and the wounded, while work details had already begun repairing the damaged fortifications and replacing destroyed camouflage- Nobody looked out moss the' river

  Them was other debris floating downstream with them, severed branches and damaged equipment, empty oil drums, enough to draw attention away from their flimsy refuge.

  "If we can avoid discovery until nightfall, we should have floated down beyond the army. Just keep both eyes wide open, Dedan."

  "Mambo, " he acknowledged, and concentrated his attention on the bank.

  Sean swam quietly back to Claudia and hung on to the branch beside her.

  She reached out for him, immediately.

  "I don't like you to be away for even a moment," she whispered.

  "Did you really mean what you saidr" He kissed her, and she kissed him back 80 fiercely her teeth bruised his lower lip. He enjoyed the mild pain She broke the embrace at last and immediately demanded "Did you mean chI can't do you," he answered. you can do better than that."

  "You are the most magnificent woman I've ever known."

  "That's not bad, but it's still not what I want to hear.

  "I love you," he admitted.

  "That's it, oh Sean, that's it. And I love you too." She kissed him again, and they were oblivious to all else, their mouths blending and their bodies clinging wetly together below the surface.

  Sean did not know how long it was until Job disturbed them.

  "We are going ashore," he called.

  t The push of the current had forced the floating tree to the outside of the next river bend, and it was already dragging on the submerged sandbar. When Sean lowered his feet, he touched bottom.

  "Walk it into deeper water," Sean ordered. Still concealed beneath its leafy bulk, they heaved and pushed it out until they felt it come free of the sandbar. The current picked it up again and drifted it into the next stretch of the river.

  Sean was panting from the effort as he hung on to a branch above his head, only his head above the surface. Claudia paddled across to him and hung on to the same branch.

  "Sean," she said. Her mood had changed. "I haven't been able to ask you, mostly because I don't want to hear the answer." She broke off and drew a deep breath. "My father?" she asked.

  Sean was silent as he sought the words to tell her, but it was Claudia who spoke again.