A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

  "What have you got that I've never had before, sweetheart?

  AID ST They pushed their Way through the rustling nylon skirts and lawyers will handle that. You will be entitled to half of that... clouds of cheap perfume and at the door paid their five dollars.

  The doorman stamped their wrists with an indelible dye in lieu of an entrance ticket and they ducked through the black curtain.

  The music was a stunning, painful assault, the lights were revolving strobes and ultraviolet. The dance floor pulsated with humanity transformed into a single primitive organism, like some gigantic amoeba.

  "Where's the bar?" Sean bellowed into Job's ear.

  "I'm a stranger here myself." Job seized his arm and they struggled through the engulfing sea of light and sound and gyrating bodies.

  The faces around them were transported as if in a religious fervor, eyeballs rolled glaring white in the rays of the ultraviolet $ V, lamps, sweat glistened on upraised arms and streamed in rivulets down jet black cheeks.

  They reached the bar. "Don't risk the whisky!" Job yelled. "And make them open the beer in front of you."

  They drank directly from the cans, besieged in a corner of the bar with the ocean of humanity pressing hard against them.

  There were a few white faces, all male, tourists and Peace Corps and military advisors, but most of the clientele were black soldiers still in uniform so that Sean and Job blended into their surroundings.

  "Where are you, Cuthbert, in your Superman shirt?" Sean pushed away one of the more persistent bar girls and peered over the heads of the dancers. "We'll never find him in here."

  "Ask one of the harm en Job suggested.

  "Good thinking." Sean reached across and grabbed the front of the Barman's shirt to get his attention, then stuck a five-dollar bank note into his top pocket and shouted the question in his ear.

  The Barman grinned and yelled back, "Wait! I find him."

  Ten minutes later they saw Cuthbert working his way down the bar toward them, a skinny little man wearing a Superman T-shirt at least two sizes too large for him.

  "Hey, Cuthbert, anybody ever tell you that you look like Sammy Davis Junior?" Sean greeted him.

  "All the time, man." Cuthbert looked pleased. Sean had obviously picked out his pet vanity.

  "Your uncle sends his love. Can we go somewhere to talk?"

  Sean suggested as they shook hands.

  "Best place to talk is here," Cuthbert answered. "Nobody else going to hear a thing you say. Get me a beer, can't talk with a dry throat."

  Cuthbert downed half his beer at a draft and then asked, breathless from the effort, "You were supposed to be here last night.

  Where you been, man?"

  "We were delayed."

  you should have been here last night. Would have been easy, man.

  Tonight, well, tonight is different." - "What has changed?" Sean asked with a sink of dread in his chest.

  "Everything changed." Cuthbert said. "The Hercules arrived seventeen hundred hours. Come to pick up the goods."

  "Has it left yet?" Sean demanded anxiously.

  Don't know for sure. She was still there when I left the base at twenty hundred hours. Sitting out there in front of number three hangar. Perhaps she still there now, perhaps she long gone. Who knows?"

  "Thanks a lot," Sean said. "That's a great help."

  "That's not all, man." Cuthbert clearly enjoyed being the bearer of evil tidings.

  "Hit us with it, Cuthbert."

  He finished the beer in another long swallow and held up the empty can. Sean ordered another and Cuthbert waited for it, drawing out the suspense masterfully.

  "Two full para commandos of the Fifth Brigade came down from Harare in the Hercules. They real cool, those Fifth Brigade cats," Cuthbert said with relish. "They real mean dudes, no shit."

  "Cuthbert, you've been watching too much Miami Vice on television," Sean accused, but he was worried. The Fifth Brigade were the elite of the Zimbabwean Army, converted by their North Korean instructors into ruthlessly efficient killing machines. Two full para commandos of a hundred men each, added to the standing garrison of Third Brigade troops-almost a thousand crack veterans on base.

  "Your uncle says you are going to take us in, Cuthbert. Pass us through the gates."

  "No way, man!" C#thbert was vehement. "Not with those Fifth Brigade cats in there."

  "Your uncle will be pissed off with you, Cuthbert. He's a pretty al cat himself, man, Uncle China is." Sean imitated Cuthbert's co hip jargon.

  Cuthbert looked worried. "Man, I've fixed your pass," he explained hurriedly. "You'll have no trouble getting in. The guards are expecting you. You don't need me, man. No sense I should compromise myself, no sense at all."

  "You've got the pass here?"

  "Right on. The password too. You'll have no trouble."

  "Let's go." Sean took Job's arm and steered him toward the door. "That Hercules could take off any time."

  Cuthbert hurried between them down the lane to where the three Unitnogs were parked.

  "Here's the pass." He handed the plastic-covered card to Sean.

  It was slashed with a scarlet "Top Priority" cross.

  "The password is a number, "fifty-seven," and your reply is "Samara Machel." Then you show the pass and sign the book.

  Simple as a pimple, man. You in like Flynn."

  "I'll tell your uncle you couldn't bring yourself to come with US.

  "Hey, give me a break, will you? No sense me getting culled, man.

  I'm more use to my uncle alive and kicking than dead meat."

  "Cuthbert, you are wasted in signals. You definitely should be on television." Sean shook hands with him and watched him scurry back into the Stardust Club.

  There were clusters of women around the back of each of the three trucks, giggling and joking with the troopers who hung out over the tailgates. One of the girls was climbing aboard, boosted by eager hands, her miniskirt tucked up high on her long thin black legs.

  "Get those whores out of there, Sergeant," Job snapped at Alphonso. The women around the tailgates scattered and three or four others descended hastily from the backs of the Uniniogs with their skimpy clothing in varying states of disarray.

  Sean and Job climbed into the cab of the lead truck, and as they drove off Sean buttoned on his tunic and tipped his cap over one eye at a rakish angle.

  "What are we going to do?" Job asked.

  "Number three hangar at Grand Reef is in full view of the main road. We will drive up the highway. If the Hercules is still there, we go in. If not, well, we'll go back the way we came."

  "What about the Fifth Brigade?"

  "They're just a bunch of ex-gooks," said Sean. "You weren't afraid of them before, so what's changed?"

  "Just asking to pass the time." Job grinned at him sideways.

  "You want to tell Alphonso about them?"

  "What Alphonso doesn't know won't hurt him," Sean said.

  "Just keep going."

  The column of three trucks drove sedately through the sleeping town of Unitali. The streets were deserted but Job obeyed the traffic fights punctiliously, and then they were out on the open highway.

  "Twelve minutes past eleven." Sean checked his watch, then read the road sign in the beam of the headlights. "Grand Reef Military Base, fifteen kilometers."

  tightness in his stomach muscles, the short He felt the familiarness in his breath, and consciously slowed and regulated his breathing.

  It was always like this before a scene.

  "There she is," Job said softly as they topped a rise in the highway.

  The airfield was fully lit, the beacon lights glowing orange and the blue and green dotted lines of the taxiways and runway beyond them.

  In the stark white light of the floods, even at a distance of almost two miles, the Hercules looked gigantic. its forty-foot-high tail fin towered above the roof of number three hangar.

  The Royal Air Force rounders were painted on the monstr
ous silver fuselage and on the high tail fin, and Sean immediately that it was one of the Marshall stretched-out converrecognized of Lockheed's Hercules original C-MK3 transports made for sions the R.A.F.

  Pun over," Sean ordered. Job flicked his taillight indicators and pulled into the side of the road. He switched off his headlights, and one after the other the following Unimogs did the same.

  In the silence Sean said softly, "So the Hercules is still here. We are going in."

  "Let's do it," Job agreed.

  and ran back to the second Sean jumped down from the cab truck just as Alphonso climbed down to the roadside.

  "Sergeant, you knoW" what to do. I'll give you forty-five minutes to get into position. Then I want exactly ten minutes of diversionary fire, everything you've got."

  "The first plan was twenty minutes of diversion."

  "That's changed," Sean told him. "We expect a much stronger response than we first thought possible. Ten minutes and then pull out fast. Head straight -back for Saint Mary's Mission, we are abandoning the RZ ;nlthe Umtali pass. Hit them hard and then get out. Understoo&"

  "Yehbo.

  "Go!" Sean said, and Alphonso jumped up into the cab.

  Through the open window he saluted Sean and gave him a cheery grin.

  "Break a leg," Sean said softly, and the Uniniog pulled out and headed down the highway toward the brightly lit base.

  Sean watched the headlights turn off the main highway onto the secondary road that bypassed the perimeter fence of the airfield.

  Then he lost them among the trees. Sean marked the time with the bevel ring on his Rolex and walked back to join Job in the leading truck.

  He lay back in the passenger seat, pushed his cap to the back of his head, and focused his binoculars through the open window at the huge aircraft that squatted on the tarmac under the floodlights.

  The tail ramp at the rear of the fuselage was lowered like a drawbridge, and he could see into the cavernous cargo hold. There were four or five human figures moving about inside the hold and two more at the foot of the ramp. As he watched, a forklift truck trundled out of the open doors of number three hangar. Its fork arms were loaded with a stack of long wooden cases, four of them, one on top of the other. The cases were of raw white wood, and stenciled on them in black paint were letters and numerals he could not decipher. He did not need to-the shape and size of the crates were unmistakable.

  "They are loading the Stingers," Sean said, and Job sat up straight in the driver's seat.

  The forklift truck wheeled around the stern of the Hercules, then climbed the open ramp and disappeared into the cargo hold. Minutes later it reappeared, drove down the ramp, and wheeled into the hangar. Sean glanced at his watch. Only five minutes had passed since Alphonso had driven ahead to set up the mock attack.

  "Come on," Sean muttered, and shook the Rolex on his wrist as if to speed up the mechanism.

  Twice more they watched the loaded forklift truck make the journey from out of the hangar and up into the belly of the Hercules and return empty.

  Then it turned aside and parked at the far end of the hangar. The driver in blaze orange overalls climbed down from his seat and sauntered back to stand with the two other stevedores at the tail ramp.

  "Loading completed," Sean whispered again, and checked his watch. "Seven minutes to go."

  Job unbuttoned the flap of his holster and drew the Tokarev 7.62-men pistol. He withdrew the magazine and checked the load, then slapped the magazine back into its recess in the pistol grip and returned the pistol to its holster.

  Through the binoculars, Sean saw the men who had been working in the cargo hold come down the ramp in a group. Three of them were white men, two in flying overalls and the other in British regulation battle dress. Two pilots and one of the Royal Artillery instructors, Sean guessed.

  "Start up!" he said, and Job kicked the engine to life.

  We should try to knock out those floodlights," Sean muttered. We can't load the truck in the full glare, not with the Fifth Brigade breathing down our necks."

  He was looking at his watch, tilting the dial to catch the glow of the instrument panel. "Okay, Job. Here we go!" he said, and the unimog pulled forward. In the rearview mirror, Sean watched the second truck, driven by Ferdinand, fall in behind them.

  As they drove parallel to the main runway of the airfield, Sean was assailed with a thousand memories. It all seemed exactly as it had been ten years before. No hangars or buildings had been added. He picked out the windows of his old office in the main admin block beyond the control tower, and as Job slowed the truck and turned onto the short driveway that led from the highway to the base gates Sean almost expected to see the insignia Of the Ballantyne scouts between that of the Rhodesian Light Infanthe Rhodesian African Rifles on the arch above the gates.

  try and the wire mesh gates, Job halted the truck under the lights facing and two guards came to each of the side windows of the cab. They carried their AK rifles at the trail and peered in at Job and Sean.

  Job lowered the side window, exchanged the Passwords with the commander of the guard, and handed him the plastic-covered pass. The man took it to the guardhouse and made an entry in the register, then two of his men opened the main gates and he waved the convoy through.

  Casually Sean returned the salute the guards threw him as he passed, and he told Job quietly, "Just like Cuthbert said, simple as a pimple. Now head straight down toward the admin block, but turn behind the control tower as you reach it."

  Job drove slowly, obeying the on-base fifteen mph. speed limit, and Sean unbuttoned the flap of his webbing holster and drew his pistol. He withdrew the magazine, pressed two cartridges out into the palm of his hand, then reloaded them in reverse order and slapped the magazine back into its recess in the Pistol grip' Why do you alwaysjo that?" Job asked.

  "Just for luck," lit said, as he saw Job watching.

  "Does it work?7 Job wanted to know.

  "Well, I'm still alive, aren't IT" Sean grinned tightly. He pulled back the slide to pump a round into the chamber of the pistol, engaged the safety, and slipped the weapon back into its holster.

  "Pull in behind the number three hangar," he told Job, who swung the truck across the hard stand in the full glare of the overhead floodlights into the shadowy area at the back of the hangar, where they were screened from the control tower and the admin block.

  As the truck stopped Sean jumped down and glanced around him quickly. The second Unimog pulled in beside the first, and armed men in battle dress swarmed out over the tailgates of both.

  With three quick strides Sean reached the back door of the corrugated metal wall of the hangar. It was unlocked and he stepped through. Job followed him immediately.

  The hangar was empty except for a single light aircraft parked in the far corner. The bleak concrete floor half the size of a football field was stained with old oil spills, and the steel girders of the roof arched high overhead. It was brightly lit.