A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

He saw the small party of Renamo who had cut them off abandon their positions among the deadwood of the cut line and scuttle away in wild disorder with mortar shells bursting among them.

  Sean snatched up the AKM and helped them on their way with a long burst. One of the running men fell and flopped around into the brush like a beached catfish.

  Then he spotted a sweep line of Frehmo infantry coming in from the left at a run. Their camouflage field dress was East German issue, the blotches of green and brown distinctly different from the Renamo tiger stripes.

  Renamo or Frelimo were equally dangerous for them. Sean pulled Claudia down beside him.

  "Don't move. The Frehmo probably don't know we are here.

  They might just chase off the Renamo and overlook us. We've still got a chance."

  Minnie was wailing loudly, terrified by the uproar. Sean called urgently to Miriam, "Keep her quiet. Stop her screaming."

  The Shangane girl pulled the child down beside her and covered her mouth and nose with her hand, cutting off her wails abruptly.

  Sean raised one eye above the lip of the hollow and saw the Frehmo sweep line still bearing down on them, tough-looking troopers, firing from the hip as they came. They would overrun the hollow within seconds. He raised the AKM. Their salvation had been fleeting; the only real change was that now they would be killed by Frehmo rather than by Renamo.

  ie rai tie and aimed at the belly of the nearest of the oncoming Frelimo troopers, the target was blotted out by a tall curtain of flying dust, and from the sky above came the thunderous roll of a 12.7-men cannon. The Frelimo sweep line dissolved before Sean's eyes, blown away by the Hind's concentrated fire, and the dust rolled over the hollow in which they lay, concealing them from the air in those crucial seconds the Hind hovered above them.

  Now all was chaos, two forces inextricably mixed up in the deep forest, mortar and rocket fire crashing through the trees, while over the battlefield the Hind hovered, sending in rockets and bursts of cannon fire to makithe confusion complete.

  Sean slapped Matatu on the shoulder. "Fetch Alphonso," he ordered, and the' little Ndorobo disappeared into the dust and gunfire, to emerge only a minute later with the huge Shangane close behind him.

  "Alphonso, get ready to make another run for it," Sean told him tersely. "Frelimo and Renamo are giving each other a full go out there. We'll try to sneak away before the Hind spots us." Sean broke off and sniffed the air, then raised himself quickly on his knees to look back.

  Already the air around them was turning a dirty gray, and above the din of battle and the whine of turbos, Sean heard the first faint crackle of burning brush.

  "Fire!" he snapped. "And it's upwind of us!"

  One of the exploding rockets had ignited the rows of piled deadwood, and now a dense cloud of smoke rolled down over the hollow where they lay, stinging their eyes and making them cough and choke.

  "Now we have no choice-it's run or cook." The crackle and roar of the flames were already drowning out the din of battle.

  Dimly they heard the shrieks of wounded men caught up in the path of the surging fire.

  "Let's go!" Sean swept Minnie onto his back, and the child locked both arms around his neck and clung to him like a little black flea. Sean pulled Claudia to her feet. Alphonso had Mickey sitting perched on his shoulders, his legs dangling over the bulky radio pack, and Miriam at his side, clinging to the arm that held his rifle.

  The smoke rolled over them, thick as oil, and they ran with the wind, bunched up to keep contact with each other. The smoke filled their lungs and blotted out the sky, screening them from the fighting men in the forest around them and from the helicopter gunship that hovered above them. The fire raged close behind them, driving them on wildly but gaining on them with every second.

  Sean felt the heat fan the back of his neck, and Minnie squeaked as a flying spark touched her cheek. Gasping for breath, Claudia stumbled and sank to her knees, but Sean hauled her to her feet and dragged her onward.

  Sean was suffocating. Each breath burned all the way down into his lungs. They couldn't go much farther. The heat licked their skin, and flying sparks dashed against them. The child on Sean's back screamed in agony and pawed ineffectually at her tortured body as though assailed by a swarm of wasps. She lost her grip and Id have fallen, but Sean snatched her off his back and carried wou her under one arm.

  Suddenly they were into another open cut fine. Only dead stumps surrounded them, standing like tombstones in the dense banks of rolling smoke, and the sandy earth beneath their feet had been plowed up by the teams of loggers.

  "Down!" Sean pushed Claudia flat onto the ground and placed Minnie in her arms.

  The child was struggling wildly. "Hold her still!" Sean shouted, and stripped off his shirt.

  "Lie flat, facedown!" he ordered. Obediently Claudia rolled onto her stomach, holding Minnie under her. Sean wrapped the shirt around both their heads to filter out the smoke and sparks and soot. He tore the stopper out of his water bottle and soaked the shirt, splashing their hair and soaking their clothing.

  Minnie was still shrieking and struggling, but Claudia held her down firmly. Sean knelt beside them and scooped loose sand over them, burying them under a mound of earth, like one of those beach games children play. The smoke was thinner closer to the earth, and they could still breathe. Alphonso had seen what he was doing and followed his example, burying Miriam and her little brother in the sand nearby.

  Live sparks swirled through the blinding clouds of smoke and settled on Sean's bare skin. They stung like the poisonous bites of safari ants. Sean felt his beard begin to frizzle and his eyeballs drying out in the heat. He emptied his pack onto the ground and pulled the empty canvas bag over his head, poured the contents of the second water bottle over his torso, then fell on his back, scooped the loose sand over himself, and lay still.

  With his head low to the ground the air was breathable, there was just sufficient oxygen in it to keep him conscious, but his head buzzed and swirled dizzily and the heat came at him in crushing blasts. He smelled the canvas bag over his head begin to smolder, and the thin layer of sand that covered his body scalded him like a pot fresh from the furnace. He heard the roar of the flames rise to a crescendo, and dry branches crackled like rifle fire in the inferno. The fire was in the windrows all around them, but the wind, generated by its own heat, drove it swiftly onward.

  It swept past them, the roaring subsided, and for an instant the smoke clouds opened, allowing them a fleeting gasp of sweet air.

  But the heat around them was still so fierce that Sean dared not shake off the protective layer of sand that covered his body.

  Gradually the heat dissipated, and the gusts of cooler, sweeter air became more frequeot. Sean sat up and lifted the canvas pack from his head. His skin 15urned as though acid had been splattered upon it, and the brit red spots where sparks had touched him would soon be blisters.

  He crawled to the mound of earth that covered Claudia and the child and scraped it away from their heads. The shirt had kept their mouths and noses clear, and when they sat up and shook off the sand, he saw that they had come off much better than either he or Alphonso had. The fire had run past them, but the air around them was still so thick with smoke the sky was tte out.

  Sean hauled them to their feet. "We have to get well away before the smoke clears," he croaked. His throat felt as though he had swallowed a handful of crushed glass, and tears spilled down his sooty scorched cheeks.

  Clinging together, picking their way through the blackened, smoldering landscape like a party of bedraggled soot-covered phantoms, they limped through the swirling fog of smoke. The earth was as hot as a flow of volcanic lava and scorched the soles of their boots, but they carried the children and avoided the piles of glowing ash.

  Twice they heard the Hind above them. But although they peered up with red, weeping eyes, they caught not a glimpse of it through the drifting blue clouds, and there was no sign of pursuit by either Renamo or Fre
limo. The opposing forces had been scattered and swept away by the flames.

  "The little bugger has asbestos-lined feet," Sean muttered as he watched Matatu dance ahead of them through the thinning smoke.

  On Sean's back, Minnie whimpered fretfully with the pain of her blisters, and at their first rest stop Sean gave her half an aspirin and a swallow from their one remaining bottle of water.

  The sunset that evening filled the heavens with flaming crimsons and somber purples. They lay huddled together in the darkness, too exhausted and weakened by the smoke to post sentries, and their sleep was interrupted by bouts of painful, lung-tearing coughing.

  In the dawn the wind veered into the south, but the smoke still hung over the land like a heavy river mist, reducing visibility to a few hundred feet.

  Sean and Claudia treated the children first, smearing their blisters and burns with yellow iodine paste, and though Mickey bore it with the stoicism of a Shangane warrior, the little girl whined with the sting of the iodine and Sean had to take her on his lap and blow on her injuries to cool them.

  Once the children were taken care of, the women tended their men. The burns on Sean's chest and back were all superficial, but Claudia treated them with a gentleness that reflected her gratitude and complete love.

  Neither of them spoke of the moment when he had lifted the 110karev pistol to her temple. They probably never would, but both of them would be conscious of it forever more. It would always be there between them: for Sean the most horrific moment of his life, worse even than that of Job's death; for Claudia, an affirmation of his devotion to her. She knew he would have found the strength to do it, but she knew also that it would have cost him dearer than the sacrifice of his own life. She needed no more proof of his love.

  The children needed water desperately; they were desiccated by the heat of the flames and the smoke. Sean gave half the remaining water to them and shared the remainder disproportionately among the adults, most of it to the two women and a bare taste to the men.

  "Matatu," he said in a harsh, gravelly whisper, "if you don't find us water before nightfall, then we are as dead as if the hen shaw had blown us into dust with its cannons."

  They limped on through the blackened, smoldering forest, and in the late afternoon Matatu led them to a shallow clay pan surrounded by the smoking stumps of burned-out trees. In the center of the pan, thick with black ash and the charred bodies of small creatures, snakes and rats and civet cats that had fled there for protection from the flames, was a puddle of filthy water.

  Sean strained it through his shirt, and they drank it as though it were nectar, groaning with pleasure through their scorched and smoke-abraded throats. When they had drunk until their bellies ached, they scooped the water over their heads and let it soak their clothing, and they laughed weakly with the joy of it.

  A mile beyond the water hole, they reached the fine at which the wind had changed and held the fire, driving it back on itself. They left behind them the devastation of black ash and smoldering stumps and camped that night among the confusion of withered dead branches, where the logging gangs had wrought almost as much destruction as the flames had.

  For the first time since the fire Alphonso rigged the radio aerial, and they gathered around the set and listened for General China's taunts and threats. They all stiffened instinctively as they recognized his voice, but he was talking in Shangane and they could hear the sound of the helicopter's engines in the background. His trans missions were terse and enigmatic, and the replies from his subordinates were equally abrupt and businesslike.

  "What do you think he is up to?" Sean asked Alphonso.

  The Shangane shook his head. "It sounds like he is moving troops into fresh positions." But there was no conviction in his tone.

  "He hasn't given up?" Sean said. "He may have lost our spoor in the burn, but I don't think he has given up."

  "No," Alphonso agreed. "I know him well. He has not given up.

  He will follow us all the way. General China is a man who hates well. He will not let us go."

  very "We are in Frelimo-held territory now. Do you think he will follow us in here?"

  Alphonso shrugged. "He has the hen shaw he does not have to worry too much about Frelimo. I think he will follow us wherever we go." General China made his last transmission, and it was obvious he was arranging for refueling. He had changed to Portuguese, and the reply seemed to be from a ground engineer in the same language. Alphonso translated.

  "The porters have arrived. We now have reserves of two thousand liters."

  China's voice: "What about the spare booster pump?"

  (1 t's here, my General." The engineer again. "I can change it tonight."

  "We must be airworthy again by first light tomorrow."

  "I will have it ready by then. I guarantee it, General."

  Very well, I'll be landing in a few minutes. Be ready to begin work immediately," China ordered. Then he signed off.

  They listened for another ten minutes, until it was fully dark, but there were no further transmissions and Alphonso reached across to turn off the radio. On impulse Sean prevented him doing so and instead switched frequencies. almost at once he picked up the South African military traffic. It was much stronger now. They were that much closer to the border on the Limpopo River, and to Sean the sound of Afrikaans was a comfort and a promise.

  After a few minutes Sean sighed and switched off the set. "Alphonso, you take the first sentry. Go!" he ordered.

  With the threat of aerial surveillance reduced, Sean decided to resume daylight travel. Every mile they covered toward the south, the signs left by the logging gangs were fresher and more numerous.

  On the third day after the fire, Matatu led them on a wide detour.

  The hardwood stumps had been cut very recently and were still weeping sap. The leaves on the discarded branches piled in tall windrows had not dried out and were still green and pliant.

  Matatu cautioned them to silence, and as they trudged on between the piled rows of trash, they heard, not far off, the whine of chain saws and the doleful work chant of the labor gangs.

  The forest around them was full of human activity, and the soft soil carried the prints of thousands of bare feet and the skid marks of heavy logs being dragged and manhandled toward the rough logging roads.

  However, so skillfully did Matatu shepherd them through the torn and despoiled forests that it wasn't until the fourth day of travel that they actually caught sight of any other human beings.

  Leaving the others to eat and rest well concealed under a shaggy pile of newly cut branches, Sean and Matatu sneaked forward to the edge of a natur#l open glade in the forest, and through the binoculars Sean lay and watched the Frelimo logging gangs at work on the far side of the opening. Hundreds of black men and women, some of them no more than children, were toiling in teams, supervised by guards in Frelimo camouflage battle dress.

  The guards all carried AK rifles slung on their shoulders, but they wielded the long hippo-hide whips, the savage African sjambok, which they plied on the naked backs and legs of their charges.

  The snap of the lash on bare flesh and the agonized yelps carried across five hundred yards of open ground to where Sean and Matatu lay.

  The labor gangs were piling the roughly trimmed logs into tall pyramid-shaped stacks, half of them straining and heaving on the heavy ropes while the others pushed against the huge timber baulks from the lower side. The guards urged them to greater effort, calling out the verses of the work chant to which the gangs responded with a deep melancholy chorus and a concerted heave on the heavy manila ropes.

  While Sean watched through his binoculars, one of the huge logs was laboriously hoisted toward the pinnacle of the stack. But before it could be rolled securely into place, one of the ropes parted and the log slewed sideways and went bouncing and rumbling down the side of the pyramid. Wailing with terror, the labor gang broke and fled before it, but some of the weaker ones were not fast enough and the
log steam rolled over them. Sean heard their shrill shrieks snuffed out and the crackle of their bones like dried twigs being fed through a clothes mangle.