A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

  In China's gloved hand, the tip of the rod turned slowly to incandescent crimson and then to translucent white heat. China smiled and turned off the flame of the welding torch. He wove the glowing tip of the rod in a gentle flourish, like a conductor's baton, and smiled at the pilot. It was the humorless, reptilian smile of a cobra.

  "I repeat my reqwest. Ask him if he will fly for me."

  "Nyet. " Even ihough his voice cracked, the pilot's reply was decisive. In Russian he added, "Obezyana-monkey!"

  China stood in front of him and made a slow pass with the tip of the rod a few inches in front of the Russian's eyes.

  "Tell him, signora," the pilot whispered, "that without my eyes I cannot fly."

  "Very true." China nodded as Claudia translated, and he left the pilot and walked on down the line of white prisoners, waving the glowing tip of the rod in each of their faces in a slow, mesmeric gesture, studying their reactions carefully. The plump mechanic in oil-stained overalls at the end of the line gave China his most satisfying response. He shrank away from the rod until the wall of the dugout stopped him, and sweat ran down his fat rosy cheeks and dripped from the end of his chin. In a squeaky voice he said something in Russian. The pilot answered him with a sharp, mono syllabic order."

  "You don't like it, do you? My fat little white slug. China smiled thinly at him and let him feel the radiated heat on his cheek.

  The back of the flight engineer's head was pressed against the wall, and he swiveled his eyes in their sockets to watch the rod.

  The metal was cooling, and with a small frown of annoyance China left him, and turned back to the workbench, and relit the welding torch. While he carefully reheated the tip of the rod, the mechanic sagged against the sandbags. The sweat showed in dark patches through the cotton of his greasy overalls.

  The pilot spoke softly to him in an encouraging tone, and the nodded and straightened up. He glanced at his superior engineer with an expression of patent gratitude, and watching this brief exchange between the two men, China smiled again, this time with satisfaction.

  When Claudia saw that smile, she suddenly realized that China had just run a selection test. He had chosen his victim. The mechanic was the least courageous of the five Russians, and the pilot had inadvertently disclosed his concern and friendship for the man.

  "Please," she whispered in Italian, "Your friend is in terrible danger.

  You must do what this man asks if you wish to save him.

  The pilot looked at her, and from his expression Claudia saw he was beginning to waver.

  "Please, for my sake. I cannot bear to watch." With despair she saw the Russian's expression change as his resolve firmed once again. He shook his head. China saw that gesture.

  He switched off the welding torch and blew softly on the white tip of the metal rod. He let the moment draw out agonizingly; every eye in the bunker was fixed on the point of glowing steel.

  Abruptly he gave an order in Portuguese, and two of his men sprang forward and seized the mechanic by his arms. He gave a little squeal of protest, but they hustled him to the workbench and threw him facedown across its top. One of them jumped up and sat between his shoulder blades, pinning him down. He struggled ineffectually, kicking his legs. Swiftly and expertly, they strapped his ankles to the legs of the workbench, and he lay helplessly sprawled face downwards with his backside sticking up in the air, stretching the cotton seat of his overalls.

  The Russian pilot shouted a protest and stepped forward, but one of the Renamo officers thrust a pistol into his belly and forced him back against the wall.

  "I ask You again," China said, "will you fly for me?"

  The pilot shouted at him in Russian. It was clearly an insult. His face was flushed now, the acne purple and shiny as buttons on his chin and cheeks.

  China nodded at his men. One of them drew the trench knife from its sheath on his webbing belt and slit the waistband of the mechanic's overalls. Then he seized the severed edges of cotton and ripped them downward, tearing the cloth loose so it hung in tatters around the pinioned man's knees. Under the overalls, the engineer wore a pair of elasticized blue underpants. The Renamo pulled these down as far as they would go.

  Claudia stared in fascinated horror at the mechanic's exposed buttocks. They were very white and fat and round, covered with a scraggle of dark curly reddish hair. From between his thighs, his wrinkled hairy scrotum protruded backward like that of a dog.

  The pilot was shouting in Russian, and Claudia found herself pleading weakly. "Please, General China, please let me leave. I cannot bear this." She tried to turn her head away and cover her eyes, but the dreadful fascination of it compelled her to watch through her fingers despite herself.

  China ignored both the pilot's and Claudia's pleas and spoke crisply to the officer who sat between the Russian's shoulder blades. Still pinning him to the bench, the Renarno reached over and seized one of his buttocks in each of his hands and drew them sharply apart. Claudia's protests dried in her throat, and she found herself staring dry-mouthed at the Russian's puckered rosy-brown anus as it nestled like a blind man's eye between his hairy cheeks.

  China reached out toward it with the tip of the rod, then stopped three inches short of it. T4e mechanic felt the heat of it on his most intimate flesh and begani-to struggle so violently that two more of the Renamo officers bad to throw their combined weight onto his back to keep him -pinned down.

  "Yes?" China looked across at the Russian pilot. He was raving like a madman, his face contorted with outrage, shouting threats and accusations.

  "I regret the necessity," China said, and thrust the metal rod forward, his wrist cocked like that of a fencing master going on attack, a fl&he.

  As the glowing metal touched the sensitive skin the Russian screamed, a shattering high-pitched shriek that made Claudia cry out pitifully in sympathy.

  rotated The metal smoked and siuled and spluttered as China his wrist, twstmg the rod deeW and deqw into the Russian's body. Now his screams were great explosive gusts Of sound.

  Claudia clapped her hands over her ears to shut them out and turned away, running into the corner of the dugout and pressing her face against the rough sandbags.

  The smoke filled her nostrils, ha throat, and her hings, and the obscene odor of burning flesh, of charring fat, coated her tongue, and her gorge rose. She tried to contain it, but vomit shot up her throat and in a projectile stream splashed onto the earthen floor between her feet.

  Behind her the screams dropped gradually in volume and became ghastly rattling groans. However, all the Russians were yenmg their protest and fury, and the din was confusing.

  Another whiff of burned flesh and spilled feces made her retch again. Then she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and leaned her forehead against the sandbagged wall. She was trembring wildly, and wan and sweat streamed down her cheeks.

  Slowly the uproar behind her subsided, and the only sounds in mechanic's groans and gurgles. They were the bunker were the weaker now but nonetheless harrowing. Claudia could tell without looking at him that the Russian was dying.

  Miss Monterro." China's voice was level and calm. "Please get a grip on yourself. We still have work to do."

  all" she blurted. "I hate you! Oh, God, how You are an animI hate you!"

  "Your feelings are not of the slightest interest to me," China said. "Now you will tell the pilot that I await his full cooperation."

  The flight engineer's groans distracted her. As she turned to face China, she saw they had released the stricken Man and allowed him to slump to the floor. China had made no effort to withdraw the metal rod from his body, and he was still transfixed. As he rolled weakly about on the earthen floor, he plucked ineffectually at the protruding end of the rod. The heated metal had adhered to his bowels as it cooled and was firmly rooted in his flesh. Every time he tugged at it, a trickle of liquid feces bubbled from the terrible wound.

  "Speak to the pilot," China commanded.

  Claudia dra
gged her eyes from the dying man and addressed the pilot. "Please do what he wants."

  "I cannot, my duty!" the pilot cried.

  "The devil with your duty!" Claudia shouted back furiously.

  "You and all your men will end up like this!" She gestured to the floor without looking down again. "That's what will happen to you!" She turned to the other Russians, who were shaken and appalled, pale with horror and terror.

  "Look at him!" she screamed in English. "Is that what you want?"

  They did not understand the words, but her meaning was clear to all of them. They turned their faces toward the pilot.

  The pilot resisted their entreaties for a minute. Then, at a word from China, the Renamo officers seized another one of the ground crew and threw him screaming and kicking facedown across the bench.

  The Russian pilot threw up both hands in a gesture of resignation.

  "Tell him to stop," he said wearily to Claudia. "We will do as he orders."

  "Thank you, Miss Monterro." China smiled at her charmingly.

  "You are now free to rejoin Colonel Courtney."

  "How will you communicate with the pilot?" she asked uncertainly.

  "Already he understands me." China transferred the benevolence of his smile to the Russian. "I assure you that he will learn to speak my language with the utmost fluency in a very short time indeed." He turned back to Claudia. "Please convey my respects to Colonel Courtney and ask him to join me at his earliest convenience. I would like to take my leave of him, to thank him and wish him lion voyage." He gave her a mocking bow. "So Godspeed, Miss Monterro. I hope you will remember all of us, your friends in Africa, with affection."

  Claudia could find no words to reply. She turned to the door of the bunker, and her legs were shaky and rubbery beneath her. In a daze of horror she stumbled down the hill. The sights around her, which at another time might have sickened and appalled her, she hardly noticed.

  At the foot of the hill, she paused and tried to get a grip on herself. She breathed dci$ly, trying to quell the intermittent sobs that still caught her.usawares, and she combed her hair back from her face with her flingers and retied the strip of cloth she was using as a headband. With the tail of her shirt she wiped the tears and sweat from her face, shocked at the grimy smear they left on the cloth.

  "I must look like hell," she whispered, clenching her hands to hide her broken fingernails. But she braced her shoulders and lifted her chin. "Sean mustn't see me like this," she told herself fiercely.

  "Pull yourself together, woman."

  Sean looked up as she hurried to where he was still working over Job's blanket-wrapped body. "What happened?" he demanded.

  "What kept you?"

  "General China is here. He made me go with him."

  "What did he want? What happened?"

  "Nothing, not important. I'll tell you about it later. How is Job?"

  "I've got a full liter of plasma into him," Sean replied. He had suspended the drip set from a branch above them. "His pulse is better.

  Job is as tough as an old buffalo bull. Help me dress the wound.

  "Is he consciousT"

  "He comes and goes," Sean warned her.

  Beneath the field dressing was such a terrible injury that neither of them could bring themselves to discuss it, especially as Job might be able to hear and understand them.

  Sean smothered the entire area with iodine paste, then bound it up again with pressure pads and clean white bandages from the medical pack. The blood and iodine soaked through the white even as he worked.

  Between them they had to roll Job on to his side to pass the bandages over his back. Claudia held the half-severed arm in place, bending the elbow across his chest, and Sean strapped it securely.

  By the time they finished, Job's entire upper body was swathed in a cocoon of expertly applied bandage from which only his left arm protruded.

  "His pulse is going again." Sean looked up from his wrist. "I'm going to give him another liter of plasma."

  There was a scattered outbreak of machine-gun and mortar fire from the forest beyond the hill laager, and Claudia looked up apprehensively. "What's that?"

  "Frelimo counterattack." Sean was still busy with the drip set.

  "But China has three companies in there, and Frelimo are going to be less than enthusiastic now that they have lost their air support. China's lads should be able to hold them off with no trouble."

  "Sean, where did China come from? I tho "Yes, Sean cut in. "I also thought he was back on the river. The crafty bastard was right on our heels, ready to rush in and grab the spoils." He finished adjusting the plasma flow in the drip set and squatted down beside Claudia, studying her face.

  "AB right," he said. "Tell me what happened."

  "Nothing." She smiled brightly.

  "Don't bullshit me, beautiful," Sean said gently, and put an arm around her. Despite herself she choked on a sob.

  "China," she whispered. "Right on top of what happened to Job. He made me translate for the Russian pilot. Oh, God, I hate him. He's an animal. He made me watch-" She broke off.

  "Rough stuff?" Sean asked, and she nodded.

  "He killed one of the Russians, in the foulest possible way." "He's a lovely lad, our China, but try and put it out of your mind. We've got enough troubles of our own. Let the Russkies worry about theirs."

  "He forced the Russian pilot to agree to fly the helicopter. Sean stood up, lifting her to her feet beside him. Don think of China and the Russian anymore. All we have to worry about is getting out of here." He broke off as he saw Sergeant Alphonso and a half-dozen of his Shanganes trotting down the hill toward them. All of them were laden with loot.

  "Nkosi!" Alphonso's broad, handsome face was wreathed in a beatific grin. "What a fight, what a victory!"

  "You fought like an impi of lions," Sean agreed. "The battle is won, but now you must help us to get away to the border. Captain Job is badly hurt."

  Alphonso's smile faded; despite their natural tribal emnity, both men had developed a grudging respect for each other. "How bad?"

  He came to stand beside Sean and looked down at Job.

  "There was a fiberglass stretcher in the first aid post," Claudia said.

  "We can carry Job on that."

  "It is two days" march to the border," Alphonso murmured dubiously. "Through Frelimo territory."

  "Frelimo are running like dogs with a hot coal under their tails."

  Sean's tone was hard. "Send two of your men to fetch the stretcher."

  "General China calls for you. He is leaving in the Russian hen shaw He wants to speak to you before he goes," Alphonso said.

  "AB right, but I wantiat stretcher here when I get back," Sean warned him. He glowed at his wristwatch. "We will march for the border in one hour from now."

  "Nkosi!" Alphonso agreed cheerfully. "We will be ready."

  Sean turned back to Claudia. "I'm going to see China. I'm going to try to talk him into flying Job out in the helicopter, but I don't think my chances are particularly rosy. Please stay with Job and keep an eye on his pulse rate. I've found a disposable syringe of adrenaline in the medic pack. Use it only as a last resort."

  "Please don't be long," she whispered. "I'm only brave when you're here."

  "Matatu will stay with you."