A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

  All he knew was that it required a delicate and expert touch on the controls and was entirely different from piloting a fixed-wing aircraft.

  He looked back calculatingly at the Russian pilot. Despite the acne and his unprepossessing appearance, he thought he detected a stubborn, proud streak in the man's pale eyes, and he knew that the air force officers were among the elite of the Soviet armed forces. The Russian was almost certainly a fanatical patriot.

  "Not much chance of getting you to act as ferry pilot," he guessed. Then he spoke aloud: "all right, gentlemen, let's get out of here." He indicated the exit from the emplacement, and under the barrel of the AKM they trooped toward it obediently. As the Russian pilot passed, Sean stopped him and lifted the Tokarev pistol from the holster at his hip. "You won't need that, Ivan," he said, and tucked the pistol into his own belt.

  There was a fortified workshop almost abutting the Hind's emplacement. It had been excavated into the hillside and roofed with poles and sandbags. Sean herded the Russians down into it, then looked around him.

  The battle had fizzled out, though a few desultory shots and the pop and bang of burning ammunition could still be heard.

  Through the drifts of smoke and dust, he saw the Shanganes of the Renamo force rounding up the prisoners and searching for loot and booty. He recognized some of the missile crews. Once the Hinds had been destroyed, they must have abandoned their Stingers and rushed up the hill to join the sack of the laager.

  He saw one of themWayoneting a Frelimo prisoner in the buttocks and legs and roaring with laughter as the man squirmed in the dirt, kic0big aridocontorting his body in an attempt to avoid the point of the blade. Other Renamo were emerging from the dugouts, rifles slung over their shoulders and arms full of booty.

  Sean was accustomed to the ethics of irregular troops in Africa, but this blatant in discipline annoyed him. He snarled at them, and it was a measure of the force of his personality and the authority he wielded over them that even in the heady moments of victory they obeyed him with alacrity. The Renamo who had been torturing his prisoner paused only to dispatch the maimed victim with a bullet in the back of the neck before hurrying t o Sean's bidding.

  "Guard these white prisoners," Sean ordered them. "If harm comes to them, General China will roast your testicles on a slow fire and make you eat them," he warned.

  Without looking back he strode through the laager, reasserting his command, getting his triumphant howling shrieking Shanganes back to sanity. He saw Sergeant Alphonso ahead of him.

  "We can't carry much loot away. Let the men take their pick, and then I want limpet mines in the storerooms after everything has been drenched with avgas from the drums," he ordered Sergeant Alphonso. He glanced at his wristwatch. "We can expect Frelimo to counterattack the laager within the hour. I want to be gone by then."

  "No!" Alphonso shook his head. "General China has moved three companies in between us to hold the Frelimo counterattack.

  He has ordered you to hold this position until he arrives."

  Sean pulled up short and stared at Alphonso. "What the hell are you talking about? China is two days" march away on the river!"

  Alphonso grinned and shook his head. "General China will be here in an hour. He followed us with five companies of his best troovs. He has never been more than an hour behind us, not since we lit the river."

  "How do you know this?" Sean demanded.

  Alphonso grinned again and patted the radio on the back of the trooper who stood beside him. "I spoke to the general ten minutes ago, as soon as we killed the last of the Russian hen shaw

  "Why didn't you tell me before this, you bastard?" Sean growled.

  "The general ordered me not to. But now he has ordered me to tell you that he is very pleased with the killing of the hen shaw and he says that you are like a son to him. When he arrives he will reward you."

  "AB right." Sean changed his orders. "If we have to hold the laager, get your men into the perimeter defenses. We win use the 12.7-men heavy machine guns."

  Sean broke off as a Shangane trooper came running up the hill toward him.

  "Nkosi!" The man panted. As soon as he saw his face, Sean knew it was bad news.

  "The woman?" he demanded, seizing the messenger's arm. "Is the white woman hurt?"

  The Shangane shook his head. "She is safe. She sent me to you.

  It's the Matabele, Captain Job. He is 4it."

  "How bad?" Sean was already starting to run, and he shouted the question over his shoulder.

  "He's dying," the Shangane called after him. "The Matabele is dying."

  Sean knew where to look; he himself had selected the copse of knob-thorn acacia as Job's attack position. The first rays of the morning sun were turning the tops of the knob-thorns to gold as Sean ran down the hill. With the help of two Shanganes, Claudia had moved Job onto soft level ground beneath one of the trees. She had propped his head on one of the backpacks and had a field dressing over the wound.

  She looked up and cried, "Oh, Sean, thank God!" Her shirt was drenched with drying blood, and she saw Sean's expression. "Not my blood," she assured him. "I'm all right."

  Sean transferred all his attention to Job. His face was a sickly blue-gray color, and the flesh seemed to have melted from his skull like hot tar.

  Sean touched his check, and his skin was cold as death. Frantically he searched for a pulse in the wrist of Job's good arm.

  Although it was faint and rapid, his relief was intense.

  "He's lost huge quantities of blood," Claudia whispered. "But I've contained the bleeding now."

  "He's in shock," Sean muttered. "Let me have a look."

  "Don't lift that dressing," Claudia warned him quickly. "It's ghastly.

  He was hit on the point of the shoulder by a cannon shell.

  It's just mangled flesh and bone chips. His arm is hanging by a shred of muscle and sinew."

  "Take Matatu with you," Sean cut in brusquely. "Go up to the laager. Find where they had their first aid post. The Russians will have a decent stock. Find it. I want plasma and a drip set. Dressings and bandages, those are the most urgent. But if you can find antiseptic and painkillers-" Claudia scrambled to her feet. "Sean, I was so worried about you! I saw-" A

  "You don't get ri4 of me that easy." He did not look up from Job's face. "Now off you go, and get back here as quick as you can.

  Matatu, go with Donna, look after her."

  The two of them went at a run. Until they returned with medical supplies, Sean was helpless. But for something to keep himself occupied he wet his bandanna from the water bottle and began to sponge the blood and dirt from Job's face. Job's eyelids fluttered open, and Sean saw that he was conscious.

  "Okay, Job, I'm here. Don't try and talk."

  Job closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he swiveled them downward. He was too weak to move his head, yet he was trying to look down at his body, trying to check the extent of his injuries. It was always the first reaction.

  "Is it lung blood I'm losing? Are both my feet still here, both my hands-?"

  "Right arm and shoulder," Sean told him. "Twelve-point-seven millimeter cannon nicked you. Just a little bitty scratch. You are going to make it, lad, written guarantee. Would I lie to you?"

  A faint smile tugged up the corners of Job's mouth, and he lowered one eyelid in a conspiratorial wink. Sean felt his heart begin to break. He knew he had lied. Job wasn't going to make it.

  "Relax," he ordered cheerfully. "Lie back and enjoy it, as the bishop said to the actress. I'm in charge here now."

  And Job closed his eyes.

  Claudia picked out the medical dugout by the Red Cross insignia at the entrance. There were two Shangane Renamo looting the interior, ransacking it for booty, but Claudia shrieked at them so violently that they slunk away guiltily.

  The labels on the cartons of medical supplies were all in Russian Cyrillic script. Claudia had to rip the lids open and check the contents of each. She found boxe
s that contained a dozen plastic bags of clear plasma each and gave two of them to Matatu. The drip sets were on the shelf below. Field dressings and bandages were easy, but she was flummoxed by the tubes of ointments and pill bottles. However, the contents of one tube were yellow-brown and had the characteristic iodine aroma; she selected those, and then she found that some of the labels also had notations in French and Arabic. She had a smattering of both languages, enough to identify which were antibiotics and painkillers.

  She found two field packs, obviously prepared for use by the Russian first aid teams, and included these in her selection; then she and Matatu, heavily laden, hurried out of the first aid post.

  Before she reached the perimeter of the laager again, a dreadfully familiar figure loomed out of the banks of drifting smoke ahead of her-the very last person she had expected to see here.

  "Miss Monterro," General China called. "What a fortunate encounter. I need your assistance." China was accompanied by half a dozen officers of his staff.

  Claudia recovered swiftly from the shock of the unexpected meeting. "I'm busy," she snapped, trying to step around him. "Job is badly wounded. I have to get back to him."

  "My need is greater than anybody else's, I'm afraid." China put out an arm.

  "Forget it," Claudia flared at him. "Job needs this stuff, or he'll die."

  "One of my men will take it to him," China replied. "You are coming with me, please. Or I'll have you carried. Not very dignified, Miss Monterro."

  Claudia was still protesting as one of the Renamo officers relieved her of her load of medical supplies, but at last she shrugged with resignation.

  "Go with him, Matatu." She pointed down the hill. The little man nodded brightly, and Claudia allowed China to escort her back into the laager.

  They picked their way through the shambles of the battle, and Claudia shuddered as she stepped over the charred corpse of one of the Frehmo garrison.

  "Colonel Courtney's attack has succeeded beyond even my wildest expectations." General China was affable and clearly delighted with what he saw around him. "He even managed to capture a Hind gunship completely intact, together with the Russian air crew and ground crew."

  "I hope you won't keep me long. I have to get back."

  "Captain Job will live or die without you, Miss Monterro. I need your services as a translator in talking to the pilot."

  "I don't speak Russian," Claudia told him flatly.

  "Fortunately the pilot seems to speak Italian. How he learned the language I cannot guess, but he keeps repeating, "Italiano, Italiano. "" China took her arm and led her down the steps of the sandbagged, camouflaged dugout.

  Claudia glanced around the dugout and saw instantly that it was an engineering workshop. A long workbench ran down each wall.

  Set up on one of these were a metal lathe and drill press. A wide selection of hand tools was racked in cupboards above the benches, and she recognized the electric and gas welding sets at the far end of the worksh4. Her father had had his own workshop in the cellar of their Dome in Anchorage, and she had spent many evenings watchinglim pottering around down there.

  were at the far end of the The Russian prisoners, five of them underground room.

  "Which one of you speaks Italian?" she asked.

  A tall, thin man stepped forward. He wore gray flying overalls and his face was scarred with acne. His pale blue eyes were shifty and nervous.

  "I do, signora.

  "Where did you learn?" Claudia asked.

  "My wife is a graduate student from Milan. I met her while she was doing her doctorate at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow." His Italian was heavily accented and his grammar uncertain, but she understood him without difliculty.

  "I am translating for General China," she told him, "but I must warn you that he is a savage and cruel man. I am neither his ally nor his friend. I cannot protect you."

  "Thank you, signora. I understand, but I do not need protection. I am a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention. I have certain rights. So do my men."

  "What does he say?" China demanded.

  "He says he is a prisoner of war, and he and his men are protected by the Geneva Convention."

  "Tell him that Geneva is far away. This is Africa, and I was no signatory to any agreement in Switzerland. Here he has only such rights as I decide he should have. Tell him he will fly the helicopter under my command and that his ground crew will service and maintain the machine in flying condition."

  As Claudia translated, she watched the pilot's jaw set and his pale blue eyes harden. He turned his head slightly and spoke to his men in Russian. Immediately they began to mutter and shake their heads.

  "Tell this black monkey that we insist on our rights," the pilot spoke scornfully. Claudia had heard that many Russians were racists, and the derogatory term the pilot used suggested that for him at least this was true. "We refuse to fly or fight for him. That would be a traitorous act."

  Ms refusal was so obvious that China did not wait for Claudia's translation.

  "Tell him," he cut in brusquely, "that I have no time for argument or for subtle persuasion. I ask once more for his cooperation.

  If he refuses, I will be forced to demonstrate my serious intentions."

  "Signore, this man is very dangerous," Claudia told the Russian officer. "I have seen him commit the most unspeakable atrocities.

  I myself have suffered torture by him."

  "I am a Russian officer and a prisoner of war." The pilot drew himself to attention, his tone stern. "I know my duty."

  China was watching the pilot's face as he replied. He smiled coldly as Claudia translated. "Another brave man," he murmured.

  "We must now determine just how brave he is."

  Without looking at his staff officers he gave them a quiet order in Shangane, and while they trundled forward the chariot that held the oxyacetylene gas cylinders, China smiled steadily at the Russian officer. The man returned his regard with a cold, pale stare as they matched wills.

  China was the one who turned away. He went to the workbench and swiftly examined the tools and objects scattered on it. He gave a grunt of approval as he selected a thin steel rod and weighed it in his hand. It was the length and thickness of a rifle ramrod and was pierced at each end for a connecting screw, probably a control fink from the Hind helicopter.

  "This will do very nicely," he said aloud. Then he picked up a discarded woven asbestos welding glove. He pulled it onto his right hand and turned his attention to the gas welding set. Claudia, who had watched her father work, realized that China was well versed in the use of the apparatus. He lit the welding flame on the torch and swiftly adjusted the flow of oxygen and acetylene from their separate cylinders until the flame was a brilliant blue feather, hot and unwavering. Then he took up the metal rod in his gloved hand and began to heat the tip of it in the blue flame.

  All the Russians watched him uneasily. Claudia saw the pilot's hard stare flicker uncertainly as the shine of nervous sweat de wed on his upper lip.

  "This man is an animal," Claudia said softly in Italian. "You must believe me when I tell you he is capable of the vilest acts.

  Please, signore, I do not want to watch this."

  The pilot shook his head, dismissing her appeal, but he was staring at the tip of the metal rod as it began to glow cherry red.

  "I will not be intimidated by brutish threats," he said, but she detected the slightest catch and crack in his voice.