Wilbur Smith - B4 The Leopard Hunts In Darkness

by B4 The Leopard Hunts In Darkness(Lit)

  The rest of the equipment he had also purchased in Francistown, Wire-cutters and bolt-cutters, nylon rope, pan gas that Jonas and Aaron sharpened to razor edges, flashlights and extra batteries, canteens and water bottles and a dozen or so other items which might prove useful.

  Sarah had been appointed medical orderly and had made up a first-aid kit with items purchased at the Francistown pharmacy. The food rations were spartan. Raw maize meal packed in five, kilo plastic bags, the best nourishment-to weight ratio available, and a few bags of coarse salt.

  "Okay, that's it," Sally-Anne called a halt to the loading.

  "Another ounce and we won't get off the ground. The rest of it will have to wait for the second trip." When darkness fell, they sat around the campfire and gorged on the steaks and fresh fruit that Sally-Anne had brought with her from Johannesburg.

  "Eat hearty, my children," she encouraged them. "It could be a long time." Afterwards Craig and Sally' Anne carried their blankets away from the fire, out oCearshot of the others, and they lay naked in the war me desert air and made love under the silver sickle of the moon, both of them poignantly aware that it might be for the last time.

  They ate breakfast in the dark, after the moon had set and before the first glimmering of the dawn. They left Jonas and Aaron to guard the Land-Rover and help with loading and refuelling for the second trip and Sally-Anne taxied out to the end of the strip when it was just light enough to make out the tracks.

  Even in the cool of night it took the overloaded Cessna for ever to unstick, and they climbed away slowly towards the glow of the sunrise.

  "Zimbabwe border," Sally-Anne murmured. "And I still can't believe what we are doing." Craig was perched up beside her on the bags of ammuition, while Sarah was curled up likea salted anchovy on n I top of the load behind them.

  Sally-Anne banked slightly as she picked up her landmarks from the map on her lap. She had laid out a course cross the railway line fifteen miles south of the coal, to in ming town of Wankie, and then to cross the main road a few miles beyond, avoiding all human habitation. The " I terrain below them changed swiftly, the desert falling away d with open glades of gold I and becoming densely foreste en grass. There were some high fair-weather cumulus clouds in the north, otherwise the sky was clear. Craig squinted ahead down the track of the rising sun.

  "There is the railway." e closed the throttle and they descended Sally-Ann sharply. Fifty feet above the treetops they roared over the deserted railway tracks, and minutes later crossed the main to ad. They had a glimpse of a truck crawling along the blue, grey tarmac ribbon, but they crossed behind it and were visible to it for only seconds. Sally-Anne pulled a face.

  "Let's hope they make nothing of us there must be quite a bit of light aircraft traffic around here." She glanced at her wristwatch. "Expected time of arrival, forty minutes."

  "All right," Craig said. "Let's go over it one more time.

  You drop Sarah and me, then clear out again as quickly as possible. Back to the pan. Reload and refuel. Two days from now you come back. If there is a smoke-signal, yot, land. No signal and you head back to the pan. Give it tw( more days and then the last trip. If there is no smoke signal on the second trip, that's it. You head out and don't come back." She reached out and took his hand. "Craig, don't even say it. Please, darling, come back to me." They held hands for the rest of the trip, except for the brief moments when she needed both for the controls.

  "There it is!" The Chizarira river was a dark green python across the vast brown land, and there was a glint of water through the trees.

  "Zambezi Waters just up there." They were keeping well clear of the camps that they had built with so much loving labour, but both of them stared longingly upstream to where the dreaming blue hills studded the line of the horizon.

  Sally-Anne dropped lower and still lower until she was shaving the treetops, and then she turned slowly back in a wide circle, keeping the hills between them and the buildings on Zambezi Waters.

  "There it is," Craig called, and pointed out under the par t wingtip, and they had a glimpse of white beads at the edge of the trees.

  "They are still there! The bones of Craig's poached rhinoceros had been picked over by the scavengers and bleached by the sun.

  Sally-Anne, ran her Jnding-check, and then lined tip for the nsrrow strip of grassland along the head of the gorge, where she had landed before, "Just pray the wart hog and ant-bear haven't been digging around, she murmured, and the overloaded Cessna wallowed sluggishly and the stall warning bleeped and flashed intermittently at the reduced power setting.

  Sally-Anne dropped in steeply over the tree-tops and touched down with a jarring thud. The Cessna pitched and bounced over the rough ground, but maximum safe braking and the coarse grass wrapping the undercarriage pulled them up quickly, and Sally-Anne let out her breath.

  Thank you, Lord." They offloaded with frenzied haste, piling everything in a heap and spreading over it the green nylon nets designed for shading young plants from the sun that Craig had found in Francistown.

  Sally' Anne and Craig looked at each other Then miserably.

  "Oh God, I hate this," she said.

  "Me too so go! Go quickly, damn it." They kissed and she broke away and ran back to the cockpit. She taxied to the end of the clearing, flattening the grass, and then came back at full throttle in her own tracks. The lightened aircraft leapt into the air, and the last he saw of her was her pale face in the side windowing back towards him, and then the tree-tops cut them turn off from each other.

  Craig waited until the last vibration of the engine died away and the silence of the bush closed in again. Then he picked up the rifle and haversack and slung them over his shoulders. He looked at Sarah. She wore denims and blue canvas shoes. She carried the food bag and water bottles, with a Tokarev bolstered on her belt.

  "Ready?" She nodded, fell in behind him, and stayed with the forcing pace he set. They reached the kopie in the early part of the afternoon, and from the summit Craig looked towards the camps of Zambezi Waters on the river.

  This would be the dangerous part now, but he lit the then, taking Sarah with him, moved out signal fire and and set up an ambush on the approach path, just in case the smoke signal brought unwanted visitors.

  He and Sarah lay up in good cover, and neither of them moved nor spoke for three hours. Only their eyes were sweeping the slopes below and above and the bush busy, all around.

  Even so, they were taken unawares. The voice was a harsh, raw whisper in Sindebele, close very close by.

  "Ha! Kuphela. So you have brought my money." Comrade Lookout's scarred visage peered at them. He had crept up to within ten paces without alerting them. "I thought you had forgotten us." but hard and dangerous work,"

  "No money for you Craig told him.

  here were three men with Comrade Lookout, lean, wolflike men. They extinguished the signal fire and then spread back into the bush in an extended scouting order, that would cover their march.

  "We must go," Comrade Lookout explained. "Here in the open the Shana kanka press us like hunting dogs. Since we last met, we have lost many good men. Comrade Dollar has been taken by them.."

  "Yes." Craig remembered him, beaten and bedraggled, giving evidence against him on that terrible night at King's Lynn.

  They marched until two hours after darkness, northwards into the bad and broken land along the escarpment of the great river. The*way was cleared for them and u guarded by the sco & who were always invisible in the forest ahead. Only their bird calls guided and reassured them.

  They came at last to the guerrilla camp. There were women at the small smokeless cooking-fires and one of them ran to embrace Sarah as soon as she recognized her.

  "She is my aunt's youngest daughter," Sarah explained.

  She and Craig spoke only Sindebele to each other now.

  The camp was an uncomfo series of rude caves, hacked out rtable and joyless place, a of the steep bank of a dried water-course and screened by the
overhang of the trees. It had a temporary air about it. There were no luxuries and no items of equipment that could not be packed within minutes and carried on a man's back. The guerrilla women z were as unsmiling as their men.

  "We do not stay at one place," Comrade Lookout kanka see the signs from the air if we do.

  explained. "The Even though we never walk the same way, not even to the latrines, in a short time our feet form pathways and that is what they look for. We must move again soon.

  The women brought them food and Craig realized how hungry and tired he was, but before he ate he opened his pack and gave them the cartons of cigarettes he had carried se embittered men smile as in. For the first time he saw the they passed a single butt around the circle.

  "How many men in your group?"

  "Twenty-six. Comrade Lookout puffed on the cigarette and passed it on. "But there is another group nearby.

  Twenty-six was enough, Craig brooded. If they could exploit the element of surprise, it would be just enough.

  They ate with their fingers from the communal pot and then Comrade Lookout allowed them to share another cigarette.

  "Now, Kuphela, you said you had work for us." Comrade Minister Tungata Zebiwe is the prisoner

  4the of the Shana."

  "This is a terrible thing. It is a stab in the heart of the Matabele people but even here in the bush we have known of this for many months. Did you come to tell us something that all the world knows?"

  "They are holding him alive at Tuti."

  "Tuti. Haul" Comrade Lookout exclaimed violently and every man spoke at once.

  "How do you know this?"

  "We heard he was killed-"

  "This is old women's talk--2 Craig called across to where the women sat apart.

  "Sarah!" She came to them.

  "You know this woman? "Craig asked.

  "She is my wife's cousin."

  "She is the teacher at the mission." "She is one of us."

  "Tell them," Craig ordered her.

  They listened in attentive silence, while Sarah related her last meeting with Tungata, their eyes glittering in the firelight, and when she had finished, they were silent.

  Sarah rose quietly and went back to the other women, and Comrade Lookout turned to one of his men.

  "Speak" he invited.

  e Th one chosen to give his opinion first was the youngest, the most junior. The others would speak in their ascending order of seniority. It was the ancient order of council and it would take time.

  Craig composed himself to patience, this was the tmpo of Africa.

  After midnight Comrade Lookout summed up for them.

  "We know the woman. She is trustworthy and we believe what she tells us. Comrade Tungata is our father. His blood is the blood of kings, and the stinking Shana hold him.

  On this we are all agreqJ." He paused. "But there are some who would try to wrest him from the Shana child, rapers and others who say we are too few, and that we have only one rifle between two men, and only five bullets for each rifle. So we are divided." He looked at Craig. "What do you say, Kuphela?" 41 say that I have brought you eight thousand rounds of ammunition and twenty-five rifles and fifty grenades," said Craig. "I say that Comrade Tungata is my friend and my brother. I say that if there are only women and cowards alone with here and no men to go with me, then I will go this woman, Sarah, who has the heart of a warrior,-and I I will find men somewhere else." Comrade Lookout's face puckered up with affront, uIled out of true by the scar, and his tone was reproachful.

  p "Let there be no more talk of women and cowards, Kuphela. Let there be no more talking at all. Let us rather go to Tuti and do this thing that must be done. That is what I say." hey lit the smoke signal as soon as they heard the ished it immediately Sally Cessna, and extingu to acknowledge.

  Anne flashed her landing lights Comrade Lookout's guerrillas had cut the grass in the clearing with pan gas and filled in the holes and rough spots, so Sally-Anne's landing was confident and neat.

  Eli The guerrillas unloaded the rest of the ammunition and the weapons in disciplined silence, but they could not conceal their grins of delight as they handed down the bags of ammunition and the haversacks of grenades, for these were the tools of their trade. The loads disappeared swiftly into the forest. Within fifteen minutes Craig and the empty Sally-Anne were left alone under the wing of Cessna.

  "Do you know what I prayed for?" Sally-Anne asked. "I able to find the gang, and if prayed that you wouldn't be you did, that they would refuse to go with you, and that you had been forced to abort and had to come back with me."

  "You aren't very good at praying, are you?" "I don't know. I'm going to get in a lot of practice in the next few days."

  "Five days," Craig corrected her. "You come in again on Tuesday morning."

  "Yes," she nodded. "I will take off in the dark, and be over Tuti airfield at sunrise that's at 05.22 hours."

  "But you are not to land until I signal that we have secured the strip. Now, for the love of God, don't run yourself short of fuel to get back to the pan. If we don't show up, don't stay on hoping."

  "I will have three hours" safe endurance over Tuti. That means you will have until 08-30 hours to get there."

  "If we don't make it by then, we aren't going to make it.

  It's time for you to go now, my love." I know, Sally-Anne said, and made no move.

  "I have to go," he said.

  "I don't know how I'm going to live through the next few days, sitting out there in the desert, not knowing a thing, just living with my fears and imagination." He took her in his arms and found she was trembling.

  "I'm so very afraid for you," she whispered against his throat.

  4see you Tuesday morning, "he told her. "Without fail."

  "Without faffl" she agreed, and then her voice quavered.

  "Come back to me, Craig. I don't want to live without you.

  Promise me you'll come back."

  "I promise." He kissed her.

  "There now, I feel much better." She gave him that cheeky grin of hers, but it was all soft around the edges.

  She climbed up into the cockpit and started the engine.

  "I love you." Her lipiformed the words that the engine drowned, and she svAng the Cessna round with a burst of throttle and did not look back.

  m the front t was only sixty miles on the map and fro seat of an aircraft it had not looked like hard going.

  On the ground it was different.

  They were crossing the grain of the land; the watershed dropped away from their right to their left, towards the escarpment of the Zambezi valley. They were forced to ack of hills and the intervening valleys follow the switchb so they were never on level ground.

  The guerrillas had hidden their own women in a sate place, and only reluctantly consented to Sarah accompanying the raiding pare, but she carried a full load and kept up with the hard pace that Comrade Lookout set for them.

  The ironstone hills soaked up the heat of the sun and at them, as they toiled up the steep bounced it back hillsides and dropped again into the next valley. The descents were as taxing as the climbs, the heavy load-, the backs of their legs jarring their spines and straining and their Achilles tendons. The old elephant trails that pebbles they were following were littered with round rolled under foot like hall washed out by the rains that bearings and made each pace fraught with danger.

  One of the guerrillas fell, and his ankle swelled up so that they could not get his boot back on his foot. The m and left him to find his distributed his load amongst the own way back to where they had left the women.

  i bees plagued them dit ring the day, The tiny mo pan clouding around their mouths and nostrils and eyes in their persistent search for moisture and in the nights the mosquitoes from the stagnant pools in the valleys took over from them. At one stage of the trek they passed fly-belt, and the silent, light through the edge of the -ie torment, settling so softh footed tsetse-flies joined ri that the, victim was unaware u
ntil a red-hot needle stabbeJ

  7 into the soft flesh at the back of the, ear, or under the armpit.

  Always there was danger of attack. Every few miles either the scouts out ahead or the rear-guard dragging the trail behind them would signal an alert, and they would be forced to dive into cover and wait with finger on trigger until the all-clear signal was passed down the line.

  it was slow and gruelling and nerve-racking two full days" marching from freezing dawn through burning noon into darkness again, to reach Sarah's father's village.

  Vusamanzi was his name and he was a senior magician, soothsayer and rainmaker of the Matabele tribe. Likeall his kind, he lived in isolation, with only his wives and immediate family around him. However great their respect for them, ordinary mortals avoided the practitioners of the dark arts; they came to them only for divination or treatment, paid the goat or beast that was the fee, and hurried thankfully away again.