A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

  Trying to keep low, they kept going at a clumsy run. They reached the culvert and carried Job into the dark concrete tunnel.

  ly a few yards behind them, Claudia was running doubled over on and Sean reached back with his free hand and dragged her in out of the pale moonlight into the blessed darkness of the culvertk They leaned against the concrete wan, stooped below the curved roof, trying to quiet their breathing, all of them panting wildly from the charge through the mud and sand of the stream bottom. K The footsteps and voices above them grew louder and finally stopped almost directly overhead. It sounded like a man and a an. The Frelimo garrison had either brought their own camp worn followers with them or had found lady friends in the refugee camps that had sprung up along the guarded railway fine.

  s There was a spirited argument going on out there, the man" voice slurred with drink and the woman's shrill and shrewish as she protested and haggled. At last they heard the man's voice raised in exasperation. "Dollar shwni, ten dollars," he said. Immediately the woman's voice softened and cooed agreement.

  Then there was the sound of feet sliding in gravel and a few pebbles rattled down the embankment in the streambed. "They are coming down here!" Claudia breathed in horror, and they instinctively drew back deeper into the dark culvert.

  "Quiet!" Sean whispered, and stooped to case Job out of the canvas sling and prop him against the wall of the culvert.

  As he drew the trench knife from the sheath on his webbing, two figures appeared in the mouth of the culvert, silhouetted by the moonlight. They were clinging together and laughing softly, the woman half supporting the man as they staggered forward. Sean gripped the knife underhand, the point of the blade belly high, ready to receive them, but they advanced only a few paces into the intimate darkness of the tunnel, then turned to face each other, still giggling and whispering, both of them outlined against the moonlit exterior.

  The Freffino sentry pushed the woman against the wall and propped his rifle beside her while he fumbled to open his own clothing. The woman leaned back against the wall and with a Practiced gesture lifted the front of her skirt above her waist.

  Laughing and muttering drunkenly, the sentry reeled against her and she used one hand to steady and guide him, the other still holding up her skirt.

  If Claudia had reached out a hand, she could have touched the couple, but they were locked together, oblivious of all around them. The man began to push against her, his voice rising as he exhorted himself to greater effort, his movements becoming more frenzied. The woman clucked like a rider urging a mount forward, and the Frelimo went from a canter to a full gallop, pounding away with abandon.

  Suddenly the man threw his head back, stiffening into rigidity, and crowed like an asthmatic rooster. Slowly he drooped and the woman laughed and pushed him away briskly. Stiff laughing, she smoothed down her skirt and seized the man's arm. The two of them staggered out into the sandy river-bed and disappeared around the corner of the culvert. The sounds of their scrambled ascent up the embankment dwindled, and Sean slid the knife back into its sheath on his belt and said softly, "That's what we call a tumble in the jungle!"

  Claudia giggled with nervous relief. "Two seconds flat. atj t Th us has to be a new world record," she whispered, and Sean hugged her briefly.

  "Shall we also be friends?" he whispered. "Sorry I snarled at you "I was being a dismal Jane. I deserved it. You won't have any more moaning and whining from me."

  "Stay close." He turned back to grope for Job and found he had slid weakly down the wall and was sitting on the sandy floor of the culvert.

  As he stooped to help him to his feet, Sean's fingers touched his shoulder. The bandage Was damp, and his smile faded. "Me bleeding had started again. 4

  "Nothing we can do about it now," he thought, and gently eased Job to his feet.

  "How are you doing, old son?"

  "No worries." Job's whisper was scratchy and faint.

  Sean touched Matatu's shoulder, and he obeyed the unspoken command, instantly creeping out the far side of the culvert and disappearing into the scrub on the stream bank

  A few minutes later the soft whistle of a night bird carried to them as Matatu gave the all clear. Sean sent Claudia ahead and gave her a full five minutes to get across the open ground of the cut line.

  Let's go." Sean looked up from the luminous dial Of his Rolex, d and they lifted Job into the sling seat and started forward into the moonlight. The next hundred paces seemed like the slowest and longest Sean had ever covered, but at last they were into the forest beyond the cut line, and Claudia was waiting for them there.

  "We made it!" she whispered joyfully.

  three hundred "We sure have. The first mile was a romp, only they kept going more to go," he answered grimly, and Counting their paces against the second hand of his wristwatch, Sean estimated they were averaging two miles an hour. Ahead of tu selected the easiest going. He was always out of sight them, Mota them. At interin the forest ahead; only his soft bird calls guided vals Sean checked their heading against the stars, catching glimpses of the Southern Cross and its brilliant pair of Pointers through the forest canopy ahead of them.

  y stopped once again and When the dawn paled the stars, the drink for the first time, two swallows each Sean allowed them to dia carried.

  Then he turned from one of the water bottles that Clau his attention to Job's shoulder. The dressing was soaked with fresh blood, and Job's face was as gray as the ashes of a cold camp fire.

  His eyes had sunk into dark sockets and his lips were dry and cracked, his breath whistling softly through them- The pain and king a dreadful toll.

  loss of blood were to.

  nd the bandage. He and Claudia exchanged Gently Sean unwou a quick glance. The destruction of tissue was horrifying, and the field dressing was caked into the wound cavity. Sean realized that would tear the flesh to which it had if he tried to remove it, he adhered and probably restart the bleeding. He leaned forward and grinned at him, a skull-like twitching back sniffed the wound. Job of the lips. "Steak tartare?" he asked weakly.

  him, but he 41All it needs is a little garlic." Sean grinned back at had caught the first sickly whiff of corruption. He squeezed another half tube of iodine paste over the original field dressing, then stripped the plastic packaging from a fresh dressing and placed it over the wound.

  Claudia held it in place as he rewrapped it with a new bandage from the medical pack. He rolled the blood-soaked bandage and stuffed it into a side pocket. He would wash it out at the first water they came to.

  "We must keep going," he told Job. "We've got to get well clear of the railway line. Are you up to it?"

  Job nodded, but Sean could see the dread in his eyes. Every step they moved him was an agony.

  I'm going to give you another shot of antibiotic-I can give you a jolt of morphine at the same time?"

  Job shook his head. "Keep it for when it gets really bad." He grinned again, a grimace that tugged at Sean's heart. He could not meet Job's eyes. "Show us your best side," he said, and made a performance of pulling down the trousers of Job's battle dress and darting the hypodermic needle into one of his glossy black buttocks. Claudia averted her gaze modestly and Job whispered, "It's okay, Claudia, you are allowed to look. Just don't touch, that's am."

  "You're as bad as Sean," she said primly. "Downright vulgar, both of you."

  They lifted Job back into the nylon sling seat and went on. By midmorning mirages shimmered and rose in glassy whirlpools from the rocky kopjes over which they were trekking, and tiny mo pane flies hovered in a fine mist around their heads, crawling into their nostrils and ears and eyes with infuriating persistence.

  With heat came thirst and their sweat dried on their shirts and left irregular outlines in white salt on the cloth.

  When they stopped at noon in the sparse dappled shade of an African teak, Sean knew they had all had enough and the worst heat of the day was still to come. They laid Job on a hastily cut mattress of dried grass, and he
lapsed almost immediately into a state that was more coma than sleep, snoring softly through his dry, swollen lips.

  IMe carrying sling had rubbed the skin from both Sean's shoulders, for he and Alphdnso had changed sides at each of the hourly stops. The harsh nylon straps had galled Alphonso as badly, and he muttered sullenly as he examined his injuries, "Before this I hated the Matabele simply because they are a flea-infested, thieving bunch of venereal apes. Now I have another reason to hate them."

  Sean tossed him the tube of iodine paste. "Smear the muti on your grievous injuries, en stuff the empty tube in your garrulous mouth," he advise&Alphonso went off, still muttering, to find a place to lie downs.

  Sean and Claudia found a hollow screened by a low hook-thorn bush a short distance from where Job lay. Sean spread their blankets to make a nest for them and settled into it thankfully. "I'm hushed."

  "How hushed?" Claudia asked, and knelt over him to nibble his ear.

  "Not that hushed," he qualified, and pulled her down beside him.

  At sunset Sean cooked a pot of maize-meal porridge on a tiny smoker ess fire while Alphonso rigged the aerial and tuned the radio to the Renamo command frequency. There was a clutter of garbled, broken-up traffic on their wavelength, probably Frehmo transmissions, but at last they heard their call sign through the jumble. -Ngulube! Warthog! Come in, Ngulube! This is Banana Tree."

  Alphonso acknowledged and made a fictitious position report that placed them still far north of the railway line, on a march back to the river area. Banana Tree acknowledged and signed off.

  "They fell for it," Sean gave his opinion. "UDoks like the Shangane deserters haven't reached base and blown the whistle on us, not yet anyway."

  In the last of the daylight, they ate the meal of maize porridge and Sean studied his field map and marked in his dead-reckoning position. According to the map, the hilly ground seemed to extend for another thirty miles or so, then descended gently to a more level plain on which a number of small villages and cultivated lands were marked; beyond that was the first natural barrier, an s their route.

  other wide river that ran west to east directly acros He called Alphonso across and asked him, "The southern division of Renamo under General Tippoo Tip-do you know where his area begins, where his main forces are deployed?"

  "Like us, they move all the time to confuse Frelinio. Sometimes they are here, other times down here near the Rio Save." He shrugged. "Renanio is wherever the fighting is."

  "And Frelimo? Where are they?"

  "They chase after Renamo and then run like frightened rabbits when they catch them," he guffawed. "To us now, it doesn't matter who is who and where they are. Everybody we meet down here is going to try and kill us."

  "Great intelligence report," Sean thanked him, and folded the map into its plastic wallet.

  Quickly they finished the frugal meal, and Sean stood up. "All right, Alphonso. Let's get Job up and moving."

  Alphonso belched softly, then grinned wickedly. "He's your Matabele dog. If you want him, you carry him, I've had enough."

  Sean hid his dismay behind a neutral expression. "You are wasting time," he said softly. "Get on your feet!" Alphonso only belched again and held his eyes, still grinning.

  Slowly Sean reached down to the trench knife in its sheath. Just as deliberately Alphonso reached and touched the Tokarev pistol tucked into his belt. They stared at each other.

  "Sean, what is it?" Claudia asked anxiously. "What is going on?"

  She had not understood the exchange in Shangane, but the tension was palpable.

  "He's refusing to help me carry Job," he replied.

  "You can't carry him alone, can you?" Claudia said anxiously.

  "Alphonso will help-" ,--or I'll kill him!" Sean replied in Shangane.

  Alphonso laughed out loud. He stood up and shook himself like a dog, turned his back on Sean, and picked up his radio pack, Sean's AKM rifle, and most of the water bottles. "I'll carry these," he chuckled, shaking his head at the joke. "You can carry your Matabele." He ambled away southward along the fine of march.

  Sean dropped his hand from the hilt of the knife and looked across at Job. He was watching quietly from his mattress of grass, and Sean snarled at him, "If you say it, I'll kick your black arse for your "I didn't say nothing." Job tried to smile, but it was a weak, transient grimace.

  "Good," said Sean grimly, and picked up the nylon sling seat and straps. "Claudia, give us a hand here."

  Between them they got Job on his feet. Sean rigged the nylon slings around his waist and under his crotch like a parachute harness and looped them over his shoulders. Then he supported Job with an arm around his waist.

  "One more river, there's one more river to cross," he sang hoarsely and un tunefully and grinned at Job. They moved forward. Although Job's feet touched the ground and he tried to take as much of his own weight as possible, he was mainly supported by the straps that crossed over Sean's shoulders and they were locked together like a pair in a harness.

  Within the first hundred paces they had established some sort of rhythm, but still their progress was unsteady and painfully slow, set by Job's uncertain footsteps. There could be no attempt at stealth or anti tracking fair Sean had to pick the easiest and most obvious route.

  Theystuck to the open game trails, that complex network that like th4Tveins in a dried leaf meshes the African veld.

  Behind them Claudia followed laden with the medical pack and the rest of the water bottles, but even so she carried a leafy branch with which she tried to sweep away their tracks. Her efforts might conceal their passing from a casual observer, but a Frelimo tracker would follow them as though he were on the MI motorway. It was hardly worth the effort, but Sean did not discourage her, for he knew how important it was to her to feel she was pulling her weight and making a useful contribution to their escape.

  Sean counted their paces against the second hand of his wristwatch and estimated that they were down to less than a mile an hour. Eight miles a day was all the progress they could hope for.

  He started to divide that into three hundred but gave up before he reached the depressing answer.

  Both Matatu and Alphonso had disappeared into the cornbreturn forest ahead of them, and Sean glanced at his watch again.

  They had been going only a little over thirty minutes, but already their momentum was winding down. Job's weight was heavier, the straps cutting painfully into the flesh of Sean's shoulders, and Job's footsteps were dragging and catching on every irregularity of the game path.

  I, I'm cutting down to thirty-minute stages," Sean told Job.

  "We'll take five minutes now."

  When Sean lowered him to a sitting position against the hole of a tree, Job leaned his head back against the rough bark and closed his eyes. His breathing sobbed in his chest, and droplets of sweat made slow runners down his cheeks. Like tiny black pearls, the drops reflected the color of his skin.

  Sean let the five minutes run over to ten, then told Job cheerfully, "On your feet, soldier, let's eat some ground."

  Getting Job up on his feet again was torture for both of them, and Sean realized that in trying to be gentle on him, he had allowed Job to rest too long. The wound had begun to stiffen.

  The next thirty-minute stage endured so long that Sean was convinced his watch had stopped. He had to check the sweep of the second hand to reassure himself.

  When at last he lowered him to a sitting position, Job grimaced.

  "Sorry, Sean, cramps. Left calf."

  Sean squatted in front of him and felt the knots of tortured muscle in Job's leg. While he massaged it, he spoke quietly to Claudia. "There are salt tablets in the medic pack, front pocket."