A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

  Job murmured, "Twice on the trot. That ain't no fluke, man."

  Claudia laid the launcher on the table, readjusted the peak of her cap over her eyes, then placed her fists on her hips and smiled at them sweetly.

  "I thought you said you didn't know how to shoot," Sean accused her with righteous indignation.

  "Would a daughter of Riccardo Enrico Monterro not know how to shoot?"

  "But you are stridently opposed to blood sports."

  "Sure," she agreW. "I've never shot at a living creature. But I'm death to clay pigeons. Papa taught me."

  "I should have guessed when you said "Pull."" Sean groaned softly.

  "As a matter of interest"--Claudia examined the fingernails of her right hand modestly---"I was Alaska State women's skeet champion three years running and runner-up at the national championships in 'eighty-six."

  The two men exchanged embarrassed glances. "She got you with a sucker punch." Job shook his head. "And you walked straight into it with both eyes closed."

  "AD right, Miss Alaska," Sean told her sternly. "You are so damned clever, you've just landed yourself the job of instructor.

  From here on you are in charge of this equipment. Job and I will split the Shanganes into two classes and give them the basics. Then we'll pass them on to you for simulation. It'll speed up the whole works."

  General China interrupted them as he strode into the amphitheater, beret cocked jauntily, slapping his swagger stick against his thigh and taking in their preparations with quick, inquisitive eyes.

  "How soon can you begin training? I expected to be further J

  along than this."

  Sean recognized the futility of trying to explain to him. "We'll get along better without interference."

  "I came to warn you that Frehmo have launched their offensive.

  They are coming at us in force from the south and the west, a two-pronged drive, obviously trying to push us out of these hills, away from the river, into more open terrain where they can deploy their armor and their helicopters to better advantage."

  "So they are whipping the hell out of you," Sean needled him with a thinly concealed sneer.

  "We are falling back." China acknowledged the jibe with just a glitter in his eyes. "As soon as my men attempt to hold up their advance at a natural strongpoint, Frelimo simply calls in the Hinds. The Russian pilots are showing us the close-support skills they learned in the mountains of Afghanistan. They simply obliterate our defenses. It is not a pleasant experience to listen helplessly on the radio while my field commanders plead for help. How soon can I send them the Stingers?"

  "Two days," Sean said.

  "So lone. Is there no way you can hurry it up?" Impatiently China slapped the swagger stick into the palm of his hand. "I want you to let me have at least one trained team immediately. Anything to be able to hit back at them."

  "That, General China, would be crass stupidity," Sean told him.

  "With all due respect"-Sean showed none in the tone of his voice-"if you deploy the Stingers piecemeal, you'll be tipping your hand to the Hind crews."

  "What do you mean?" China's voice cracked like breaking floe ice.

  "Those Russkie pilots have met the Stingers before, in Afghanistan, you can be pretty damn sure of that. They'll know every countermeasure in the book and then a few more. Right now they are blissfully convinced that they are the only things in the sky.

  guard is wide open, but you let one Stinger By and all that will change. Okay, you might put one down, but the rest of the squadron will be ready for you."

  China's frozen expression thawed and he looked thoughtful.

  "So what do you suggest, Colonel?"

  "Hit them all at once with everything you've got."

  "When? Where?"

  "When they are least expecting it, a full-scale surprise attack on their laager-at dawn."

  "On their laager?" China shook his head irritably. "We don't know where they laager at night."

  "Yes, we do," Sean contradicted. "I have already pinpointed the laager. I'll train Alphonso and Ferdinand and set up the raid for them. Give me two days, and they'll be ready to go."

  China thought for a moment, hands clasped behind his back, staring up at the blue African sky as though he expected at any moment to see those dread humpbacked shapes appear.

  "Two days," he agretd at last.

  "Two days, and when I have your missile crews trained and ready to leave on -the raid, you let me and my party go. That is my condition."

  "There is a Frelimo column between here and the Zimbabwean border," China reminded him.

  "We'll take our chances," Sean snapped. "That is the bargain.

  Do I have your word on it?"

  "Very well, Colonel. I agree."

  "That's fine. Now, when do you expect Alphonso and his detachment to arrive?"

  "They have already reached our lines. I expect Alphonso and his men will be here in another hour or so, but they will be exhausted, they have been in action almost continuously for twenty-four hours."

  "They aren't on a Sunday school picnic." Sean was callous.

  "Send them to me as soon as they arrive.

  They came in at last, moving with the slack, stumbling gait of a boxer at the end of ten hard rounds. Their tiger mission sl gut the Unimog truck and crossed mt4 Mozambique on abandoned foot.

  He "The bush is full of Frelimo, and the air is full of hen shaw and wiped Ins face wearily on a grubby, tattered bandanna.

  paused hcraft, but the hen shaw can speak from the sky. They

  "It is wite;

  taunt us in the Shangane language. They tell us they have magic that turns our bullets and rockets to water."

  Sean nodded grimly. The Russians must be using sky-shout amplifiers to demoralize the Renamo defenders. That was another trick they had learned in Afghanistan.

  "All along the line our men are being shot to Pieces, or are running away. We cannot fight against the hen shaw

  "Yes, you bloody well can." Sean seized the front of his tunic.

  "I'D show you how. Get your men up. There'll be plenty of time to sleep later, when we have burned those Russian bastards out of the sky.

  g Sean and Job had worked and fought with all these men and had come to know them by name and deed, so they had formed a fairly accurate picture of their individual worth and capabilities.

  They knew that there were no cowards nor shirkers among those out.

  However, there them. Alphonso had long ago sifted were those whom Job classified as "oxen," the strong and stupid, the muscle and cannon fodder. The others were of varying degrees of intelligence and adaptability. At the top of the heap were Alphonso and Ferdinand.

  Sean and Job sorted them into two groups and concentrated their efforts on the most promising in each group, quickly picking out those who had the image recognition to translate what they saw on the aiming screen of the launchers into finite terms in shape and space.

  At the end of almost three hours, they had picked out twenty men who had the potential to assimilate the necessary training swiftly and to act as number ones in the missile teams, and as many again who might be able to fulfill the number two backup role.

  The others, who showed no aptitude, were allotted to the assault team, which would be using conventional weapons in the attack Sean was planning. Of the missile trainees, Sean took one group and Job the other, and they began the monotonous task of familiarizing them with the actual weapons. Once again they relied on the technique of repetition and reinforcement. Each trainee had his turn at stripping and reassembling, locking and loading, and aiming the launcher. While he did so, he explained to the class exactly what he was doing, and Sean and Job corrected their mistakes while the rest of the class taunted them.

  It was late afternoon before Sean sent the first group of five men, which included both Alphonso and Ferdinand, to Claudia for simulated attacks with the training equipment.

  and was immediately Alphonso scored three consec
utive hits detailed to act as Claudia's assistant and translator. By nightfall an five members of the first group had scored three consecutive hits, which Claudia had arbitrarily decided was her passing standard, and Sean and Job had another ten men ready to begin simulator training as soon as it was sufficiently light the following morning.

  When it was too dark to continue, Sean dismissed Alphonso and his group, and they staggered off wearily into the night, Punchdrunk with fatigue and the effort of learning.

  Joyful, the chef, had stolen the tripe from the buffalo carcass ious evening. After the day's that had fed the officers" mess the prey heat they were a little ripe, but he had disguised that fact with a liberal addition of chopped wild onion tubers and peri-peri sauce.

  Claudia paled when Joyful proudly placed a steaming bowl of the tripe in front of her. In the end, hunger overcame her fastidiousness. 4.

  "Put hair on your chest," Sean comforted her.

  "That, my darling man, isn't high on my list of beauty aids."

  "Okay, then." He smiled at her. "Put some weight on those skinny little buns of yours."

  "You don't like my buns?"

  "I love your buns. That's why I want more of them, as much as I can get."

  When Matatu came creeping in out of the darkness, Sean fed him, and he gorged on tripes until his naked belly bulged like a shiny black beach ball.

  "All right, you greedy little bugger," Sean told him. "Now it's time for you to earn your keep."

  They led him up to the dark amphitheater, where they found Job waiting for them. He had already assembled the raw materials for building the scale model of the gunship laager. By the light of two paraffin lanterns, they started to lay it out. Matatu had been a party to these model constructions so many times during the bush war that he understood exactly what was required of him. Like so many who have never acquired the skills of reading and writing, Matatu had a photographic memory.

  lilt He strutted about importantly, giving Sean and Job instructions, showing them the topography of the countryside in and surrounding the laager the shape of the hill on which it had been built, the relationship of it to the main road and the railway fine.

  Claudia showed a new talent Scan had not suspected. Using the soft white wood of the baobab tree, she whittled eleven tiny scale models of the Hind gunships. They were fully recognizable as what they represented, and when she sat them in their emplacements within the perimeter of the model laager, they added an authentic touch.

  It was well after midnight before Claudia and Scan crept naked under the mosquito net in their dugout. They were both weary to their bones, but even after they had made slow, languorous love neither of them could sleep, and they lay close in the darkness and talked. Mention of her father earlier in the day had caused Claudia to hark back to her childhood. Listening to her, Sean was relieved that she was able to speak naturally and easily about her father.

  She had conquered the initial shock and sorrow, and she remembered him now with only a nostalgic melancholy that was almost pleasure in comparison to the pain that had preceded it.

  She described to Sean how at the age of fourteen, the very year her womanhood had first flowered, the wonderfully secure cocoon of her life had burst asunder in her parents" traumatic divorce. She painted a picture for him of the years that had followed: the droughts of loneliness when she was separated from her father followed by the roaring floods of love and conflict when they came together again.

  "You can see why I'm such a crazy mixed-up kid," she told him.

  "Why I have to strive to be the best at whatever I do, and why I'm always drawn to try and protect the underdog. Half the time I'm still trying to win Papa's approval, while the other half of the time I'm trying to flout and reject his elitist materialistic view of life."

  She snuggled against Sean. "I truly don't know how you are going to handle me."

  "Handling you will always be a pleasure," he assured her. "But keeping you in your place looks like a full-time job."

  "That's just the sort of thing Papa would have said. You and I. are in for some rip-roaring fights, mister."

  "Ah, but just think of the reconciliations, what fun they will be."

  In the end they managed a few hours of sleep and awoke surprisingly refreshed and clearheaded to take up the training where they had left off at nightfall the previous day.

  While Claudia ran the last of the trainees through the attack sequences on the simulator, Sean and Job squatted beside the model of the gunship laager and Sean explained his plans for the attack. Job listened attentively and made the occasional suggestion, until at last they had it all clear in their own minds--the approach march, the attack, and the withdrawal together with the alternative actions to be taken if there were a hitch anywhere along the line.

  "Okay." Sean stood up. "Let,s give it to the lads."

  The Shangane troopers watched, totally absorbed, from their perches on the rock slopes of the amphitheater while Sean and Job described the plans for the raid. They used river pebbles to denote the various units of the raiding party, moving them into place around the laager. When the attack began, Claudia manipulated her model Hinds and there were enthusiastic cheers from the watching Shanganes as one by one they were brought crashing to earth by volleys of Stinger missiles.

  "Right, Sergeant Alphonso." Sean replaced the counters in their original positions. "Show us the attack again."

  Five times they went over it. In turn each of the section leaders described it to them, and the final cheers as the Hinds were destroyed lost none of their gusto for being so often repeated. At the end of the fifth show, Sergeant Alphonso stood up and addressed Sean on behalf of the entire unit.

  "Nkosi Kakulu, " he began. He had never before used this form of address to Sean. Wsually this was reserved for very high-ranking tribal chieftains. Sean was aware of the honor, and this proof that he had at last won the full respect and loyalty of these fiercely proud and hard-bitten warriors.

  "Great Chief," Alphonso said, "your children are troubled."

  There was a murmur of agreement and nodding of heads. "In all that you have told us of the battle, you have not assured us that you will be there to lead us and put fire in our bellies as you did at Grand Reef Tell your children, Nkosi Kakulu, that you will be with us in the midst of the fighting and that we will hear you roaring like a lion as the hen shaw fall burning from the sky and the Frehmo baboons run from us screaming like virgins feeling the prong for the very first time."

  Sean spread his hands. "You are not my children," he said.

  "You are men of men, just as your fathers were men before you."

  There was no higher compliment he could Pay them. "You do not need me to help you to do this thing. I have taught you all I know.

  The flames in your bellies burn with the same fury as the fire in the tall dry grass of winter. The time has Come for me to leave you.

  This battle is yours alone. I must go, but I win always be proud that we were friends and that we fought side by side as brothers do."

  There was a low chorus of dissent, and they shook their heads and spoke together in low rumbling tones.

  Sean turned away and saw that while he had been speaking, General China had come up and now stood quietly among the him trees at the riverside, watching There were a dozen officers in all wearing the and men of his personal bodyguard beh d him, same maroon berets, but somehow they seemed insignificant as China stepped forward and instantly commanded the attention of every person in the amphitheater.