by Wilbur Smith
She crawled closer to the fire. She had been able to gather only a few handfuls of twigs. It would not last long, but the cheerful yellow and orange flames gave her a brief warmth and a moment of comfort in which to regain control. She gave one last choking gasping sob and bit down upon it. She closed her eyes and counted slowly to ten, and felt herself steadying.
She opened her eyes, and across the fire from her, at the level of her own eyes, she saw a pair of canvas jungle boots. Slowly, she lifted her eyes and shaded them from the fire with one hand. She made out the form of a man, a tall man, and the flickering light of the fire lit his face. He was looking down at her with an expression she could not fathom, perhaps it was compassion.
"Oh, thank you, God,"Janine whispered. "Oh, thank you." She began to drag herself towards the man. "Help me," she croaked. "My leg is broken please help me." Standing on the peak of the kopje, Tungata Zebiwe watched the stricken aircraft tumble down the sky like a high-flying duck hit by shot. He threw the empty rocket-launcher aside, and he lifted both hands above his head, fists clenched, and shook them in triumph to the heavens. " "It is done," he roared, "they are dead!" His face was swollen with the raging blood of the berserker, and his eyes were smoky like the glow of slag upon the tip, when it comes red-hot from the blast furnace.
Behind him his men shook their weapons above their heads, caught up like Tungata in the divine killing madness of the victors, the atavistic instinct come down from their forefathers who had formed the fighting bull, and raced in on the horns to the stabbing.
As they watched, the Viscount fell towards the forest top, and then at the very last moment it seemed to check. The nose of the tiny silver machine came up out of its death dive, and for a fleeting few seconds it seemed to fly parallel with the earth, but still sinking fast. Then it touched the tree-tops, and was instantly snatched from view, but the crash site was so close that Tungata had been able to hear, if only very faintly, the shattering impact of metal against trees and earth.
"Mark it!" Tungata sobered. "Comrade, the hand-bearing compass!
Get a fix on it!" He re-measured the distance with his eye. "About six miles, we can be there by dark." They moved out from the base of the kopje in their running formation, in the haft and spearhead, the flanks covering the bearers of the heavy equipment and the point breaking trail and clearing for ambush. They moved fast, at a pace just below a jog-trot that would carry them seven kilometres, to the hour. Tungata was running the point himself, and every fifteen minutes he halted and went down on one knee to check the bearing on the hand-compass. Then he was up, and with an overhead pump of his -fist signalled the advance. They went on, swiftly and relentlessly.
As the light started to fade, they heard the helicopter, and Tungata gave the sidearm cut-out signal that dropped them into cover. The helicopter passed a mile to the east, and he got them up and took them on for ten minutes more, before stopping again.
He brought in his wing-men, and told them quietly, "We are here, the machine is lying within a few hundred metres of us." They looked around them at the forest, the tall twisted columns of tree trunks seemed to reach as high as the darkening heaven. Through a chink in the leafy roof of the forest the evening star was a bright white prick of light.
"We will go into extended line," Tungata told them, "and sweep along the line of bearing." "Comrade Commissar, if we stay too late, we will not be able to reach the river tomorrow. The kanka will be here at first light," one of his men pointed out diffidently.
"We will find the wreck," Tungata said. "Do not even" think otherwise. That is why we have done this. To lay a trail for the kanka to follow. Now let us begin the search." They moved like grey wolves through the forest, Tungata keeping them in line and on direction with a code of bird whistles like those of a nightjar. They went southwards for twenty minutes by his watch, and then he pivoted his line, and they went back, moving silently, bowed under their packs, but with the AK 47 rifles held at high port across their chests.
Twice more Tungata pivoted his line, and they searched back and forth, and the minutes drained away. It was past nine O'clock, there was a limit to how much longer he dared remain in the area of the wreck. His man had been right. First light would bring the avengers swarming out of the skies.
"One hour more," he told himself aloud. "We will search one hour more." Yet he knew that to leave without laying a hot scent for the jackals to follow was to abandon the most important part of the operation. He had to entice Ballantyne and his kanka to the killing ground that he had chosen so carefully. He had to find the wreck, and leave something there for the kanka that would madden them, that would bring them rushing after him without regard to any of the consequences.
He heard the helicopter then, still far off, but coming back swiftly. Then he saw the glow of its landing-lights on the tree-tops, and he gave the signal to put his line into cover. The helicopter passed within half a kilo metre of where they lay. Its glaring eye confused and jumbled up the shadows beneath the trees, making them run across the forest floor like ghostly fugitives.
Abruptly the light was quenched, but the memory of it left a hot red spot on the retina of Tungata's eyeballs. They listened to the engine beat dwindle, and then Tungata whistled his men to their feet, and they went forward once more. Within two hundred paces Tungata stopped again, and sniffed the dank cold air of the forest.
Wood smoke! His heart jumped against his ribs, and he gave the soft warbling bird-call that presaged danger. He slipped out of the shoulder-straps of his heavy backpack and lowered it gently to earth.
Then the line went forward again, moving lightly and silently. Ahead of Tungata something large and pale loomed from the darkness. He flicked his flashlight on. It was the nose-section of the Viscount, the wings sheared off it, the fuselage shattered. It lay on its side, so that he could flash his beam through the windscreen into the cockpit. The dead crew were still strapped into their seats. Their faces were bloodless pale, their eyes staring and glassy.
The line of guerrillas moved on quickly down the swath that the machine had hacked from the forest for itself. It was strewn with wreckage and debris, with clothing from the burst luggage-hold, with books and newspapers that fluttered aimlessly in the small night breeze. In the litter, the corpses seemed strangely peaceful and relaxed. Tungata turned his flashlight into the face of a grey-haired middleaged woman. She lay on her back with no visible injury.
Her skirts were' tucked modestly down below her knees, and her hands relaxed at her sides. However, her false teeth had been flung from her mouth and it gave her the look of an ancient crone.
He passed her and went on. His men were stopping every few paces to hunt swiftly through the clothing of the dead, or to examine an abandoned handbag or briefcase. Tungata wanted a live one. He needed a live one, and the dead were scattered all about him.
"The smoke, "he whispered. "I smelled smoke." And then ahead of him, at the very edge of the forest line, he saw a pretty little flower of flame, flickering and wavering in the gentle movement of-air. He changed his grip on the rifle and slipped the selector onto semi-automatic fire. From the shadows he searched the area around the fire carefully and then stepped up to it. His jungle boots made no sound.
There was a woman lying beside the fire. She wore a thin yellow skirt, but it was stained with blood and dirt. The woman lay with her face in her arm. Her whole body was racked with gasping sobs. Her one leg below the skirt was roughly bound up with wooden splints and field bandages. Slowly she raised her head. In the feeble firelight her eyes were dark as those of a skull, and the pale skin, like her clothing, was smeared with blood and dirt. She raised her head very slowly until she was looking up at him, and then words came tumbling out of her swollen lips.
"Oh, thank you, God," she blurted, and began to crawl towards Tungata, the leg slithering along behind her. "Oh, thank you. Help me!" Her voice was so hoarse and broken that he could barely understand the words. "My leg is broken please help me!" She
reached out and clasped his ankle.
"Please," she blubbered, and he squatted down beside her. "What is your name?" he asked very gently, and his tone touched her, but she could not think could not even remember her own name.
He started to stand, but she reached out in dreadful fear of being left alone again. She seized his hand.
"Don't go, please! My name, - I'm Janine Ballantyne." He patted her hand, almost tenderly, and he smiled. The quality of that smile warned her. It was savagely, joyfully triumphant. She snatched her hand away and pushed herself to her knees. She looked wildly about her. Then she saw the other dark figures that crowded out of the night around her. She saw their faces, the white gleam of teeth as they grinned down at her. She saw the guns in their-hands and the glittering stare in their eyes.
"You," she gasped. "It's you!" "Yes, Mrs. Ballantyne,"Tungata said softly. "it is us He stood up and spoke to the men about him. "I give her to you. She is yours. Use her but do not kill her. On your own lives, do not kill her I want to leave her here alive." Two of the men stepped forward and seized Janine's wrists. They dragged her away from the fire, behind the tail-section of the wreckage. The other comrades laid down their rifles and followed them. They were laughing and bickering quietly over the order of preference and beginning to loosen their clothing.
At first the screams from the darkness were so shrill and harrowing that Tungata turned away and squatted over the fire, feeding it with twigs to distract himself, but very soon there were no more screams, only the soft sound of sobbing, and the occasional sharper cry immediately muffled.
It went on for a long time, and Tungata's early disquiet was submerged and controlled. There was no passion or lust in this thing.
It was an act of violence, of extreme provocation to a deadly enemy, an act Of war, without guilt or compassion, and Tungata was a warrior.
One by one his men came back to the fire, adjusting their clothing. Strangely, they were subdued and stony-faced.
"Is it over?" Tungata looked up, and one of them stiffed and half rose," looking enquiringly at Tungata. Tungata nodded.
"Be quick then," he said. "It is only seven hours to first light." Not all of them went back behind the wreckage, but when they were ready to move out, Tungata did so. Ballantyne's woman's naked white body was curled in the foetal position. She had chewed her lips until they were raw meat, and she blubbered softly and monotonously through them.
Tungata squatted beside her and took her face in his hands and twisted it up until he could look into her eyes. He shone his flashlight into them. They were the eyes of a wounded and terrified animal, perhaps she had already crossed over the line between sanity and madness. He could not be certain, so he spoke slowly as though to a retarded child.
"Tell them my name is Tungata Zebiwe, the Seeker after what has been Stolen the Seeker after Justice, after Vengeance," he said, and he stood up.
She tried to roll away from him, but pain stopped her and as she covered her groin with both hands he saw the thin spurt of fresh blood from between her fingers. He turned from her and picked up her stained yellow skirt from where it had been tossed over a bush. As he strode back to the fire, he stuffed the skirt into his pocket.
Eungela!" he said. "All right, it is done. Move out!" t midnight the pilot yelled across at Roland Ballantyne. "We are almost out of fuel, we must go back. They have a tanker waiting for us on the apron." For a few moments Roland did not seem to understand. In the greenish reflection of the instrument panel his face was expressionless, but his mouth was a thin cruel slash and his eyes were terrible.
"Go quickly, "he said. "And get back here quickly." On the tarmac the Scouts" own doctor, Paul Henderson, was waiting to take over from the GP that Roland had picked up at Victoria Falls. Once he was aboard, Roland led Sergeant-Major Gondele a little apart from the other troopers.
"If only we could know which way the bastards are headed," he murmured. "Are they going south, or are they heading back for the river? Are they going to try the drifts and if so, which one?" Esau Gondele recognized in him the need to talk, to say something merely to take his mind off the horror of what awaited them out there in the dark forest.
"We won't be able to follow them with the bird, "he said. "The forest is too thick. They would hear us from five miles and disappear." "We canyt follow with the chopper," Roland agreed. "They have got a SAM-7 with them. They would chop us out of the sky. The helicopter could be suicide only way is to cut their spoor and go after them on foot." "They will have a night's start, a full night."
Esau Gondele shook the great black cannonball of his head doubtfully.
"The cat cannot resist mauling the dead bird," Roland said. "Perhaps they have not yet started to run, perhaps they are drunk with blood, perhaps we can still take them." "Ready to go!" the pilot shouted as the fuel-tanker started up and backed away from the Super Frelon, and they ran back to the open port in the fuselage and scrambled aboard.
The helicopter lifted swiftly, not wasting time in climbing, and roared away low over the dark bush.
At ten minutes to five o'clock the following morning, long before the sun had pushed up above the horizon, but when the light was already strong enough to make out shapes and colours, Roland slapped the pilot's shoulder and pointed to port. The pilot banked the Super Frelon sharply in that direction. It was a broken branch, the underside of the leaves were lighter in colour than those around it, it had been a flag to catch Roland's eye. Then there was another fleck of white, the raw stump of freshly broken branch sticking into the morning light. The pilot checked the Frelon, and they hovered fifty feet above it. They were staring down through the leafy canopy, and something white fluttered in the down-draught of the rotors.
"Go down!" Roland shouted, and as they sank lower, suddenly it was all there, broken wreckage and the debris of the dead, blowing aimlessly about in the windstorm of the rotors.
"There is a clearing!" Roland pointed, and as the helicopter settled towards it, the Scouts spilled out of her, jumping from fifteen feet to the earth and immediately spreading out into a defensive perimeter. Then Roland deployed them into a line of skirmishers and they went forward into the swath-line in quick rushes, ready to meet enemy fire. Within minutes they had cleared the area.
"Survivors!" Roland snapped. "Search for survivors!" They went back down the swath, and in the dawn light the carnage was horrific.
Beside each corpse a Scout paused briefly, but they were cold and stiff and the men went on. Roland reached the nose-section, and glanced through the windscreen. There was nothing to do for the crew until the long green plastic body-bags arrived. He turned back, searching frantically, looking for a scrap of bright yellow, the colour of Janine's skirt.
"Colonel!" There was a faint shout from the forest edge. Roland sprinted towards it. Sergeant-Major Gondele was standing by the shattered tail-section of the aircraft.
"What is it?" Roland demanded harshly, and then saw her.
EsauGondele had covered Janine's naked body with a blue airways blanket from the wreck. She lay curled under it like a sleeping child with just her tousled head showing. Roland dropped on his knee and gently lifted the corner of the blanket. Her eyes were closed with swollen purple bruises and her lips were raw chewed flesh. For seconds he did not recognize her, and when he did, he believed that she was dead. He laid his open palm upon her cheek, and the skin was moist and warm.
She opened her eyes. They were mere slits in the abused flesh.
She looked up at him, and the dull lifeless eyes were more frightening than her torn and battered flesh. Then the eyes came alive with terror. Janine screamed, and there was the ring of madness in the sound.
"Darling." Roland caught her up in his arms, but she fought him wildly, still screaming. Her eyes were mad and staring. Fresh blood oozed from the cracked scabs on her lips.