Wilbur Smith - B4 The Leopard Hunts In Darkness

by B4 The Leopard Hunts In Darkness(Lit)

  The strong, over sweetened tea warmed away the last of Craig's chills and heartened them all.

  must return to the village," Vusamanzi told them. "If the Shana soldiers come and do not find me, they will become suspicious they will begin to bully and torture my women. I must be there to protect them, for even the Shana fear my magic." He gathered up his pouch and cloak and his ornately carved staff. "You must remain in the cavern at all times. To leave it is to risk discovery by the soldiers. You have food and water and firewood and blankets and paraffin for the lanterns, there is no need for you to go out. My women will come to you the day after tomorrow with food and news of the Shana." He went to kneel before Tungata. "Stay in peace, great prince of Kumalo. My heart tells me that you are the leopard-cub of the prophecy, and that you will find a way to free the spirit of Lobengula."

  "Perhaps I will return here one day with the special machines that are necestry to reach the king's resting place."

  "Perhaps," Vusamanz'iagreed. "I will make sacrifice and consult the spirits, They might condescend to show me the way." At the entrance of the cave he paused and saluted them. "When it is safe, I shall return. Stay in peace, my children." And then he was gone.

  "Something tells me it's going to be a long, hard time," said Craig, "and not the most attractive place to pass it." They were all active and restlessly intelligent people, and the confinement began to irk almost immediately.

  Tacitly they divided the cavern, a communal area around either end for each couple.

  the hearth and a private area at The seepage of water down the rock face when collected in a clay pot was sufficient for all their needs, including ablutions, and there was a vertical pothole shaft in one of the passages which served as a natural latrine. But there was nothing to read and a lack that Craig felt keenly no writing material. To alleviate the boredom, Sarah began teaching Sally-Anne Sindebele, and her progress was so rapid that she could soon follow ordinary conversation and respond to it fairly fluently.

  Tungata recovered rapidly during those days of enforced inactivity. His gaunt frame filled out, the scabs on his face and body healed rapidly, and he regained his vitality. It was often Tungata who led the long rambling discussions at the fireside, and that irrepressible sense of humour that Craig remembered so well from the old days began to break through the sombre moods that had at first overwhelmed him.

  When Sally-Anne made a disparaging remark about the neighbouring South African state and its apartheid polities, Tungata contradicted her with mock severity.

  "No, no, Pendula-" Tungata had given her the Matabele name of "the one who always answers back" no, Pendula, rather than condemning them, we black Africans should give thanks for them every time we pray! For they can bring a hundred tribes together with a single rallying cry. It is only necessary for one of us to stand up and shout, "Racist Apartheid Boers!" and all the others stop beating each other over the head and for a moment we become a band of brothers." Sally-Anne clapped her hands. "I'd love to hear you make that speech at the next meeting of the Organization for African Unity!" Tungata chuckled at her, they were becoming good friends. "Another thing we have to be grateful for-" he went on.

  "Tell me more, "she incited him.

  "Those tribes down there are some of the fight ingest niggers in Africa," Tungata obeyed. "Zulus and Xhosas and Tswanas. We have got our hands full with the Shana.

  Imagine if that lot were turned loose on us also. No, from now on my motto is going to be "Kiss an Afrikaner every day'T "Don't encourage him," Sarah pleaded with Sally-Anne.

  "One day he is going to talk like this in front of people who will take him seriously." At other times Tungata relapsed back into those intense and dark moods. "It is like Northern Ireland or Palestine, only a hundred times bigger and more complex. This conflict between ourselves and the Shana is a microcosm of the entire problem of Africa."

  "Do you see a solution?" Sally-Anne demanded.

  "Only a radical and difficult one," he told her. "You see, the European powers in their nineteenth-century scramble for Africa divided the continent up amongst themselves with no thought for tribal boundaries, and it is an entrenched article of the Organization for African Unity that these boundaries are sacrosanct. One possible solution would be to overturn the article and repartition the continent along tribal b(*;ndaries, but after the terrible experience of partitior*ig India and Pakistan, no rational person would support that view. The only other solution seems to me to be a form of federal government, based loosely on the American system, with the state divided into tribal provinces possessing autonomy in their own affairs." Their talk ranged across time, and for the entertainment and instruction of the two girls, both Craig and Tungata related the history of this land between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers, with each of them concentrating on the role played by their own nations and families in the discovery and occupation and the strife that had torn it.

  Twice on successive days their talk at the hearth was interrupted by sounds from the world outside the cavern the unmistakable whistling, clattering roar of a helicopter rotor hammering through the air in coarse pitch setting, and they fell silent and looked up at the roof of stone above them until the sound faded. Then the talk would turn to their chances of escape from the forces that pursued and hunted them so relentlessly.

  Every second day the women came from Vusamanzi's village, travelling in the darkness of predawn to elude the es in the sky above them. They brought food and news.

  ey The Third Brigade troopers had come to the village, surrounding it first and then storming in and ransacking the huts. They had cuffed one of the young girls and they had shouted threats and badgered the old man, but Vusamanzi had faced them down with dignity and in the end his formidable reputation for magic had protected them.

  The soldiers had left without stealing much of value, without burning a single hut or killing more than a few chickens but they had promised to return.

  However, a massive manhunt was still in progress over the entire area. On foot and from the helicopters the Shana scoured the forest and hills during the hours of daylight and hundreds of the escapees from the camp had already been recaptured. "The girls had seen them being transp reported in heavy trucks, naked and chained together.

  As far as vusamanzi knew, the Shana had not yet discovered the wrecked Cessna, but it was still extremely dangerous, and Vusamanzi had ordered the girls to impress upon them they must remain in the cavern. He would come to them in person when he judged it safe to do so.

  This news depressed them all and it took all Craig's best storytelling and clowning to lighten the mood in the cavern. He turned their attention back to their perennially favourite topic, the tomb of Lobengula and the vast fortune they liked to believe it contained. They had already discussed in detail the equipment that would be needed to enable a team of divers to open the tomb and reach the burial area, and now Sally-Anne asked Tungata, "Tell us, Sam, if there were a treasure, and if you could reach it, and if it were as rich as we hope, how would you use it?" 11 think it would have to be treated as belonging to the Matabele people. It would have to be placed in trust and used for their benefit, firstly to procure for them a better political dispensation. To be pragmatic, a negotiator with that sort of financial clout behind him would find it easier to get the attention of the British Foreign Office and the American State Department. He could prevail upon them to intervene. The government in Harare would have to take them seriously, options which are at present closed to us would become accessible."

  "After that, it would finance all sorts of social programmes education, health, the forwarding of women's rights," Sarah said, for the moment her timidity put aside.

  "You would use it to make land-purchases to add to the existing tribal trust lands Craig added, "financial assistance to the peasant farmers, aid for tractors and machinery, blood, stock improvement programmes."

  "Craig," Sally-Anne laid her hand on his good leg, "isn't there any way at all to Ach the buria
l chamber? Couldn't YOU try another dive?"O "My precious girl, for the hundredth time, let me explain that I could probably move a single rock with each dive, and twenty dives would kill me." oh God, it's so frustrating!" Sally-Anne jumped up and began pacing up and down between them and the fire. "I feel so helpless. If we don't do something, I'm going to go mad. I feel as though I am suffocating I need a good breath of oxygen. Can't we just go outside for a few minutes?" And then immediately, she answered herself.

  "That just isn't on, I know. Forgive me. I'm being silly." She looked at her wristwatch. "My God, I've lost all track of time, do you realize it's after midnight already?" Craig and Sally-Anne lay on their mattress of cut grass and tanned skins, holding each other close and whispering with their lips touching each other's ears so as not to disturb the other pair at their end of the cavern.

  "I am ashamed of my part in having him imprisoned. He is such a marvelous man, darling, sometimes I feel so humble when I listen to him." "He might just make it to greatness," Craig agreed.

  Coming back here to free him may be the most important thing that you and I ever do in our lives."

  "If we get away with it," Craig qualified.

  "There must be some justice in this naughty world."

  "It's a nice thought."

  "Kiss me goodnight, Craig." Craig loved to listen to her sleeping, the gentle sound of her breathing, and to feel the total relaxation of her body against his, with only the occasional little snuggling movement in his arms, but tonight he could not follow her into sleep.

  Something was snagged in his subconscious likea burr in his sock, and the longer he lay, the fiercer became its irritation. Something somebody had said that evening, he figured it that far, but every time it started to rise to the he tried too hard and it sank away surface of his mind, again. At last he resorted to the old trick of emptying his mind, imagining a wastepaper-basket, and as each unbidden thought came, he tore it in half, crumpled it, and dropped it into the imaginary basket.

  "Christ!" he said loudly, and sat bolt upright. Sally-Anne came up beside him, pushing the hair was jolted awake and out of her eyes, and mumbling drowsily.

  "What is it?"Tungata called across the cavern.

  "Oxygen!" cried Craig. Sally-Anne had said, "I am suffocating I need a good breath of oxygen."

  "I don't understand," Sally' Anne mumbled, still more asleep than awake.

  "Darling, wake up! Come on!" He shook her gently.

  "Oxygen! The Cessna is equipped for high-altitude flight, isn't it?"

  "Oh sweet heavens," she stared at him. "Why didn't we think of it before?"

  "Life-jackets do you have them?"

  "Yes. When I was doing the flamingo survey over Lake Tanganyika, I had to have them installed. They are under the seat cushions."

  "And the oxygen system, is it a recycling circuit?"

  "Yes."

  "Pupho!" Tungata had lit the lantern and carried it across to them with Sarah naked and unsteady on her feet trailing behind him likea sleepy puppy. "Tell us, Pupho, what is happening?"

  "Sam, you beauty," Craig grinned at him, as he reached for his pants. "You and rare going for a little walk."

  "Now?"

  "Now, while it is still dark." here was e oug moon to light their way as far as 'i Vusaman s "Village. They bypassed the hilltop, not wanting to alarm the old man. A village dog yapped at them, but they found the footpath and hurried along it.

  Morning found them still on the footpath.

  Twice they were forced to take cover. The first time was when they almost ran head-on into a patrol of camouflage clad Shana troopers.

  Tungata, who was on point, warned Craig with the hand-signal for dire danger. They lay in arM

  Ir F

  thick yellow stand of elephant grass beside the path and watched them go padding silently past. Afterwards, Craig found that his heart was racing and his hands shaking.

  "I'm getting too old for this, "he whispered.

  "Me too," Tungata agreed.

  The second time they were warned by the whacking beat of helicopter rotors, and they dived into the ravine beside the path. The ungainly machine dragon-flyed down the far crest of the valley, with a machine-gunner in the fuselage port and the helmeted heads of an assault squad popping up behind him like poisonous green toadstools.

  The helicopter passed swiftly and did not return.

  They overran the spot where they had originally intersected the footpath, and had to back-track for almost a mile, so it was late afternoon when they approached the wreck site.

  They closed in with elaborate caution, circling the area and casting for in going spoor, checking with infinite patience that the wreck had not been discovered and staked, out Finally, when they walked up, they discovered that it was undisturbed and exactly as they had left it.

  Tungata climbed back up the side of the valley, and stood guard with the AK 47, while Craig began stripping the equipment they had come for. The four inflatable lifejackets were under the seats, as Sally-Anne had told him.

  They were of excellent quality, impregnated nylon, each with a carbon dioxide cartridge for inflation and a non return valve on the mouthpiece for topping up. Attached to the bosom cushions were a whistle and blessings upon the manufacturer a light globe powered by a long-life battery. Under the pilot seat was a thousand more blessings a repair kit for the jackets, with scissors and scraper and two tubes of epoxy cement.

  The steel oxygen bottles were bolted into a rack behind the rear bulkhead of the passenger compartment. There were three of them, each of two-litre capacity. From them flexible plastic tubing carried along behind the panelling to each seat, and terminated in a face-mask with two builtin valves. The user inhaled pure oxygen and exhaled a mixture of unused oxygen, water vapour and carbon dioxide. This was passed through the exit valve and ran through the two metal canisters under the floorboards. The first canister contained silica gel which removed the water vapour, the second canister was packed with soda lime which removed the carbon dioxide, and the purified oxygen was cycled back to the face-masks. When the pressure of pure oxygen in the system fell to that of ambient atmosphere, it was automatically supplemented from the three steel bottles. The flexible tubing was fitted with top-quality aluminium couplings, T-pieces and bends, all of the bayonet-fitting type.

  Working as carefully as time would permit, Craig stripped out the system and d-len converted the heavy duty canvas seat-covers into carry bags. He packed the salvaged equipment into them, making up two heavy bundles.

  It was dark by the time that he whistled Tungata down from the hillside. Each, of them shouldered a bundle and they started back.

  When they intersected the footpath, they spent nearly half an hour sweeping their tracks, and hiding any sign of their detour from the path.

  "You think it will hold good in daylight?" Craig said doubtfully. "We don't want to signpost the wreck."

  "It's the best we c.aA do." They stepped it out on the path, pushing hard, and despite their heavy, uncomfortable packs, they shaved an hour off their return time and reached the cavern just after dawn.

  Sally-Anne said nothing when Craig stepped into the cavern. She merely stood up from the fire, came to him and pressed her face against his chest. Sarah bobbed the traditional curtsey to Tungata and brought him the beer-pot, letting him refresh himself before bothering him with greetings. Only after he had drunk did she kneel beside him, clap her hands softly and whisper in Sindebele, see you, my lord, but dimly, for my eyes are filled with tears of joyP he Shana sergeant had been on foot patrol for t lirty-t Aree. Iours wit-lout rest. previous morning they had made a brief and indecisive contact with a small band of the escapees they were hunting, an exchange of fire that had lasted less than three minutes, then the Matabele guerrillas had pulled out and splintered into four groups. The sergeant had gone after one group with five men, followed them until dark and then lost them on the rocky rim of the Zambezi valley. He was bringing in his patrol now for resupply a
nd new orders.

  Despite the long patrol and the trauma of a good contact and hot pursuit, the sergeant was still vigilant and alert.

  There was an elastic spring in his stride, his head turned restlessly from side to side as he moved down the footpath, and the whites of his eyes under the brim of his jungle hat showed clear and sharp.

  Suddenly he gave the urgent hand signal for deployment, and as he changed the AK 47 from one hip to the other to cover his left flank and dropped into cover, he heard his men spread and go down behind, covering him and backing him. They lay in the elephant grass beside the track, searching and waiting while the sergeant examined the small sign that had alerted him. It was a bunch of long grass on the opposite side of the path: the stems had been broken and then lifted carefully to try to disguise the break, but they had sagged slightly again. It was the type of sign a man might make when leaving the path to set up an ambush beside it.