A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

  "The extreme emaciation and those characteristic lesions are diagnostic," he explained. "The woman is suffering from what we in Africa call the "slim sickness.""

  "AIDS," Claudia whispered, and her voice was filled with the dread that single word conjured up.

  Despite himself, Sean took a step back from the dreadful figure before him.

  "Yes, Miss Monterro," China agreed. "AIDS in its terminal stage."

  He touched one of the marble-hard chancres on the woman's belly with the point of the blade, and she gave no reaction as it split open and a mixture of pus and dark tarry blood oozed from the wound and trickled down into the matted bush of her pubic hair.

  "Blood," whispered China, and gently scooped it up onto the bright silver blade. "Warm, living blood, swarming with the virus."

  He proffered the blade for Sean's inspection. Involuntarily Sean pulled back further as blood dripped from the point.

  "Yes," China nodded. "Something that even the bravest have reason to fear, the most certain, the most lingering, the most loathsome death of all the ages."

  With his free hand he took hold of Claudia's wrist. "Consider this other blood. The sweet bright blood of a vibrant, beautiful young woman." The scratch on the back of Claudia's hand was vivid, but the tiny flow of blood from it almost quenched it.

  "Blood to blood," China whispered. "Sick blood to healthy blood."

  He brought the filthy blade closer to Claudia's hand, and she stiffened in the chair, straining silently against the manacle, her the knife.

  face white with horror as she stared at "Blood to blood," China repeated. "Shall we let them mingle?"

  Sean found he could not speak. He shook his head dumbly, staring at the knife.

  "Shall we do it, Colonel?" China asked. "It's all up to you now."

  He brought the blade closer to the open wound in Claudia's smooth, creamily tanned skin.

  "Just another inch, Colonel," China whispered. Suddenly Claudia screamed. It was a wild ringing release of horror and terror, but China did not flinch. He did not look at her face, and his knife hand was steady and tremor less

  "What shall we. dc, Colonel Courtney?" he asked.

  He lowered the knife and touched her wrist with the flat of the blade, leaving a smear of diseased blood on the unblemished skin, only inches from the scratch on Claudia's hand. Then, slowly, he moved the knife downward.

  "Speak quickly, Colonel. In seconds it will be too late." The knife left a shiny track of blood like the shine trail of some disgusting snail across her skin. Inexorably it moved down toward the open wound.

  "Stop it!" Sean screamed. "Stop it!"

  China lifted the blade away and looked at him inquiringly.

  "Does that mean we have reached an agreement?"

  "Yes, damn you to hell! I'll do it!"

  China tossed the contaminated knife into a corner of the dugout, then opened one of the drawers in his desk and brought out a bottle of Dettol antiseptic. He soaked his handkerchief in the undiluted fluid, then carefully wiped the smear of diseased blood from Claudia's skin.

  The tension went out of her rigid body and she slumped in the chair. She was panting softly and trembling like a kitten left out in the rain.

  "Turn her loose," Sean croaked.

  China shook his head. "Not until we have made our terms of agreement clear."

  "All right," Sean snarled. "And the first of those terms is that my woman comes with me on the mission. No more dugouts filled with rats."

  China pretended to ponder that. Then he nodded. "Very well, but the second term is that if you fail me in any way, Alphonso WM kill her immediately."

  "Get Alphonso in here," Sean demanded. The sweat had not yet dried on his forehead, and his voice was still rough and unsteady.

  "I want to hear you give him his orders."

  Alphonso stood to attention and listened expressionlessly as China told him, "However, if the attack fails, if you are intercepted by Frelimo before you reach the laager, or if any of the hen shaw are allowed to escape-" Sean interrupted. "No, General, a hundred percent success is too high to hope for. Let us be reasonable and realistic. If I can destroy all but six of the Hinds, then it must be counted that I have fulfilled my part of the bargain."

  China frowned and shook his head. "Even six Hinds will be sufficient to ensure our defeat. I'll allow you two. If more than two Hinds escape from the laager, your mission will be a failure, and you must pay the price." He turned back to Alphonso and went on with his instructions. "And so, Sergeant, you win obey all orders from the Colonel, carrying out the attack exactly the way he has planned it. But if the raid fails, if more than two hen shaw escape, you are to take full command, and your very first duty will be to shoot the two whites and their black servant-you will shoot them immediately."

  Alphonso blinked almost sleepily at the order. He did not turn his head to look at Sean, and Sean found himself wondering if, despite their relationship, the friendship that had grown up between them, despite the fact that Alphonso had Caw bun Nkosi Kakulu and Babo and had exhorted him to lead the mission, if despite all of this he would carry out the execution order.

  Alphonso was a Shangane and a warrior with a deep sense of tribal loyalty and a tradition of absolute obedience to his chief and tribal elders.

  "Yes," Sean thought. "He'd probably have a few regrets, but without question or hesitation, he would do it."

  He raised his voice. "All right, China, we all know exactly where we stand. Let Miss Monterro come to me now."

  The bodyguard removed her handcuffs, and politely General China helped her out of the chair. "I apologize for the unpleasantness, Miss Monterro, but I'm sure you will understand the necessity for it."

  Claudia was unsteady on her feet, and she staggered. When she reached Sean, she clung to him.

  "And so I'll wish you farewell and good hunting." China gave them a small, mocking salute. "One way or the other, we will not meet again, I'm afraid."

  Sean did not deign to reply. With the case of cassettes in one hand and his other arm around Claudia's shoulders, Sean led her to the doorway.

  They moved out two hours before darkness. It was an unwieldy column, and the missile launchers and the backup missiles made awkward burdens; apart from their weight, the length of the packs made them cumbersome. They hooked up in thick bush when the path narrowed and slowed down the column's ability to react to threat and danger.

  At first Sean kept the column bunched up in a close, cohesive whole. They were still some miles from the tenuous front line of the Renanio army and would not be seriously menaced until much later in the march.

  However, taking no chances, Sean kept the assault troops of the vanguard and rear vigilant and at the utmost degree of readiness to repel any attacks and to give the missile bearers a chance to escape. To ensure this, Sean sent Job to the head of the column while he stayed in the center, from which he could reach any trouble spot quickly and where he could be near Claudia.

  "Where's Matatu?" she asked Sean. "We've just gone off and left him. I'm so worried about him."

  "Don't worry about leaving him behind. He's like one of those puppies you can't send him home. He'll follow me anywhere. In fact, the little bugger is probably watching us out of the bush at t s very moment."

  And so it proved, for as darkness descended on the column, a small shadow appeared miraculously at Sean's side.

  "I see you, my Bwana," Matatu twinkled.

  "I see you also, little friend." Sean touched his woolly head as he would his favorite gun dog. "I've been waiting for you to find a way for us through the Frelimo lines, and so lead us to the roosting place of the ugly falcons."

  Matatu swelled with self-importance. "Follow me, my Bwana, he said.

  Now, with Matatu to guide them, Sean could rearrange the column into a more streamlined formation for passing through the Frelimo advance and getting into their rear.

  To his advantage was the size of the battle being fought ahead of him
. There were six thousand Frelimo and Zimbabwean troops advancing against less than half that number of Renamo defenders, and the area of the battlefield was tens of thousands of square miles in extent. The fighting was taking place in small, isolated pockets, while most of the ground was wild, rugged, and drafted.

  Sean sent Job and Matatu ahead with a small party of assault troops to find any wide gaps in the line and steer them through.

  The rest of the column followed at a discreet interval, protected by the conventionally armed assault division of Shanganes.

  They kept going steadily through the night, runners coming back from the vanguard to guide them whenever it was necessary to make a detour or change direction.

  At intervals during the long, cold march, they heard distant gunfire and the sound of mortars and heavy machine guns as elements of the Frelimo advance ran into the Renamo defense.

  Occasionally they saw the twinkle of signal flares soaring above the dark forest, but there was no sound of Isotov turbos and helicopter rotors in the night. It was clear the Hinds were limiting their depredations to the daylight hours, when they could distinguish friend from foe and make their close-support operations more effective.

  An hour before dawn Job came back down the column to find Sean. "We aren't going to reach our first objective until an hour or so after first light," he reported. "The pace has been slower than we expected.

  What do you want us to do? Shall we take a chance on the Hinds finding us?"

  Sean looked up at the sky before he replied. The first lemon colored flush of dawnlyas paling out the stars.

  , "The forest roof isn't dense enough to hide so many men and so much equipment, "he decided. "We have to keep going and get them into hiding" Tell Matatu to quicken the pace."

  "What about the Hinds?"

  "The main fighting is well behind us now, that is where they will be headed. We have to take the chance but move fast."

  As the light strengthened, the faces of the men in the long column turned more frequently and fretfully to the sky. The pace was fast, almost a run. Although they had been going all night, the Shanganes bore their heavy burdens with all the hardiness and fortitude of the African, burdens that would have broken the heart and back of even a strong white man.

  it was light enough to define the treetops against the orange blossom of dawn when Sean heard the dread whistle of turbos, faint and distant, passing to the east. The Hinds were flying their fast sortie of the day, and the alarm was shouted down the length of the column. The porters dived off the path, seeking the nearest cover, and the section leaders crouched ready to wave the captured Frehmo colors Sean had provided for each of them should the Hinds spot them and come in to strafe them.

  The deception was not necessary, for the pair of Hinds passed two miles east of their position. Sean saw their silhouettes, like deformed pats, black against the oncoming dawn, and minutes later heard the thunder of their Gatling cannons and the boom of their assault rockets as they pounded another Renamo stronghold among the ironstone hills far behind them.

  Sean got the column moving again, and the glimpse they had been given of the "flying death" sped their feet. An hour later, the tail end of the column clambered swiftly down the almost sheer side of the gorge at the bottom of which lay the dry river-bed and the caves where the captured Unimogs had been hidden.

  It was almost a homecoming, and the men crept thankfully into the gloom of the caverns and laid down the heavy packs.

  "No fires," Sean ordered. "No smoking."

  They ate their rations of cold stodgy maize cakes and dried fish and then curled on the cavern floor and slept like a pack of hounds exhausted at the end of a day's hunting.

  Sean found a private place for Claudia at the back of the cavern, behind a natural screen of tumbled sandstone blocks. He spread a blanket on the rocky floor, and she sat cross-legged upon it and munched the unappetizing rations. But before she had half finished, she slumped sideways, asleep before her head touched the floor. Sean spread the other blanket over her, for it was chilly in the depths of the cavern, and then went back to the entrance.

  Alphonso had rigged the antenna of the small portable two-way VHF radio. He was crouched beside the set with the volume turned com low listening to the situation reports of the Renamo field manders as they reported in to General China's headquarters.

  "It goes very badly," he told Sean glumly. "Frelimp will be on the riverbank by noon tomorrow, and unless the general pulls back he will be overrun." Alphonso broke off as he recognized their call sign in the jumbled static of the wave band.

  "Banana Bush, this is Warthog," he replied into the hand Mike and then gave the "primary objective established" code: Coca Cola Sean smiled at this subtle commentary on modern Africa, and Banana Bush acknowledged and signed off. Their next report scheduled for dawn tomorrow, by which time the fate of the his.

  mission would be decided one way or the other.

  Sean left Alphonso rolling up the antenna and packing the radio into its carrying case and from the entrance of the cavern watched the party of five men who under Job's supervision were sweeping the sandy river-bed with thorn branches to obliterate the last traces of their passing.

  Job climbed back to the mouth of the cave and Sean asked, "Sentries?"

  "On each of the peaks." Job pointed to the heights above them.

  "I have covered every approach."

  "All right." Sean led him back into the cavern. "It's time to arm and program the Stingers."

  It took almost a full hour to assemble the launchers, connect the battery packs, and feed the cassettes into the microcomputers in the consoles. Finally each of the launchers was fully armed and programmed for the "two-color" attack sequence on the Hind gunships, and they handed them back to the Shangane section leaders.

  Sean glanced at his wristwatch, mildly surprised that it was still keeping time after all the abuse he had given it recently.

  "We can grab a few hours" shut-eye," he told Job, but neither of them made a move to do so.

  Instead, as if by consent, they moved back to the entrance of the cavern, away from the others, and leaned against the rock wall with their shoulders almost touching, staring thoughtfully out into the river-bed where the early sunlight was sparkling the crystalline sand like powder snow.

  "If you had taken my advice, you could be living high in the fleshpots of Harare now," Sean murmured.

  "And never have the chance to bag a Hind?" Job smiled carefully; his damaged lip was crusted with a fragile scab, and a drop of blood like a tiny ruby appeared as it split open again. He dabbed at it with the corner. of his bandanna as he went on, "We have hunted all the dangerous game together, Sean, in all the worst places. Buffalo in the jesse bush, elephant in the Kasagasaga. This will be another trophy, the best and biggest."

  Sean turned to study his face. It was typical of their friendship that their feelings should be so perfectly in tune. During the long night march, Sean's fury and hatred of General China had abated and given way to this emotion Job had just articulated, the excitement of the hunter. They were both hunters; the chase was a fire and a passion in their blood that they had never attempted to suppress. They understood each other, recognized and accepted this bond between them that had grown stronger over the twenty years of their friendship. Yet, Sean realized, they had seldom spoken of their feelings for each other.

  "Perhaps now is the time to do so," he thought, and said aloud, "We are more than brothers, you and me."