The Angels Weep

by Wilbur Smith

  The pace was too hard, even for superbly trained athletes such as they were. If they ran into contact now, they would be blown, almost helpless during the long minutes it would take to recover – but they reached the Kazungula road unchallenged.

  There had been no security patrol over the gravel surface for at least four hours. They found where the chase had taken the precaution of reconnoitring the road and sweeping away the signs of their crossing. That had cost them precious minutes, and the Scouts were within an ace of contact. The patch of earth where one of the terrorists had urinated was still muddy wet. The sandy earth had not had time to absorb it, nor the sun to evaporate it. They were minutes behind. It was folly to go in at the run, but as they crossed the road, Roland repeated, ‘All out!’ And when he saw the flicker of Esau Gondele’s eyes as he looked back, Roland went on, ‘Take number two, I will lead.’

  He led at full run, hurdling the low thorn scrub in his path, relying only on his own speed to survive the first volley when they made the contact, knowing that even if the terrs took him out he could leave Esau Gondele and his men to finish it for him. Survival no longer was important to Roland, all that mattered was to make the contact and destroy them, as they had destroyed Janine.

  Yet when he saw the flash of movement and colour in the scrub ahead of him, he went belly-down from full run and made two quick rolls to the side, to spoil the aim. He was onto the target an instant later, and fired a short burst, one light touch on the trigger and the FN hammered into his shoulder. Then as the echoes fled there was complete silence. No return fire, and his Scouts were down in cover behind him, not firing until they had a target.

  He signalled Esau Gondele. ‘Stay and cover me!’ and went up on his feet, keeping low, rushing forward, jinking and twisting.

  He dropped to the ground again beside a thornbush. In the thorny branches above his head was the thing that had drawn his fire. It flapped again on the hot little breeze off the river. It was a woman’s skirt, soft fine cotton, bright buttercup yellow, but stained with dried blood and dirt.

  Roland reached up and tore the skirt off the thorns, he bundled it in his fist and pressed his face into the cloth. Her perfume still lingered, very faintly but unmistakably. Roland found himself on his feet running forward with all his strength, with all his hatred, driven on by a madness that was at last out of control.

  Ahead of him through the trees he saw the warning markers along the edge of the cordon sanitaire. The little red-painted skulls seemed to taunt him, to goad him on. He did not check as he passed them, nothing was going to stop him now, ahead of him stretched the minefield. Something smashed into the back of Roland’s knees, and he was thrown to earth, the wind driven from his lungs, but immediately he was trying to struggle up. Esau Gondele tackled him again, dragged him back from the edge, and they swayed together, straining chest to chest.

  ‘Let me go!’ Roland panted. ‘I have to—’

  Esau Gondele got his right arm free and crashed his fist into Roland’s face, into his cheek, knocking his head across, half-stunning him, then taking instant advantage of his shock by twisting his arm up between his shoulder-blades and dragging him back. Clear of the minefield, he threw Roland to earth again, and dropped down beside him, pinning him with one massive black arm.

  ‘You crazy bastard, you’ll get us all killed,’ he snarled into Roland’s face. ‘You were into it already – just one more step—’

  Roland stared at him uncomprehendingly, like a sleeper waking from a nightmare.

  ‘They have gone through the cordon,’ Esau hissed at him. ‘They have got clear. It’s finished. They have gone.’

  ‘No,’ Roland shook his head. ‘They haven’t got away. Get the radio up here. We can’t let them get away.’

  Roland used the security network, the calling channel was 129.7 megahertz.

  ‘All units, this is Cheetah One – come in, any station,’ he called quietly, but with the edge of desperation in his voice. The power on the set was only four watts, and Victoria Falls was thirty miles or so downriver. The only reply was the hum and burr of static.

  He switched to the aviation frequencies, and tried Vic Falls approach on 126.9. Still no reply, he clicked over to tower and keyed the microphone.

  ‘Tower, this is Cheetah One. Come in, please.’

  There was a whisper, scratchy and faint.

  ‘Cheetah One, this is Victoria Falls tower, you are transmitting on a restricted frequency.’

  ‘Tower, we are a unit of Ballantyne’s Scouts, we are in hot pursuit.’

  ‘Cheetah One, is your chase the gang that Sammed the Viscount?’

  ‘Tower, that’s affirmative!’

  ‘Cheetah One, you have our full co-operation.’

  ‘I need a chopper to lift us over the cordon sanitaire. Do you have one on the plot?’

  ‘Negative, Cheetah One. One fixed-wing aircraft available.’

  ‘Stand by.’

  Roland lowered the microphone, and stared out across the minefield. It was so narrow. It would take twenty seconds to cross it, but it might have been the Sahara.

  ‘If they send a vehicle to pick us up – we can fly from Vic Falls and make a para-jump on the far bank,’ Esau Gondele muttered beside his ear.

  ‘No good. It will take two hours—’ Roland broke off. ‘By God, that’s it!’ He thumbed the key of the microphone.

  ‘Tower, this is Cheetah One.’

  ‘Go ahead, Cheetah One.’

  ‘There is a police armourer at Victoria Falls Hotel. Name, Sergeant Craig Mellow. I want him dropped on my position soonest possible to open the minefield. Telephone the hotel.’

  ‘Stand by, Cheetah One.’ Tower’s thin whisper faded and they lay in the sun and sweated, burned up by the heat and their hatred.

  ‘Cheetah One, we have Mellow. He is already en route to the field. We will make the delivery with a silver Beechcraft Baron. RUAC markings. Give us a position and a recognition.’

  ‘Tower, we are on the cordon sanitaire, estimate thirty miles upstream from the falls. We will give you a white phosphorous grenade.’

  ‘Roger, Cheetah One. I understand white smoke marker. In view of SAM danger, we can only make one pass at low level. Expect delivery in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Tower, we are running out of daylight, tell them to hurry it up, for God’s sake, those bastards are going to get clean away.’

  Esau Gondele had the grenade-launcher fitted to the muzzle of his FN rifle. They heard the faint beat of twin aircraft engines coming from downstream, and Roland touched Esau’s arm.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  The sound of the engines built up swiftly. Roland raised himself into a kneeling position and stared into the east. He saw the flash of silver just on the tree-tops and he tapped Esau’s shoulder.

  ‘Now!’

  There was the crack of the blank cartridge and the grenade lobbed up and over in a lazy parabola, fired away from the minefield towards the Kazungula road. The grenade exploded, and a column of white smoke leaped above the brown sun-seared bush. The small twin-engine aircraft banked gently towards the marker, and then steadied again.

  The passenger door had been removed, leaving a square opening above the wing root. In the opening crouched a familiar lanky figure with the cross-webbing of the parachute harness coming out of his crotch over his chest and shoulders. The bulky chute package dangled low against the back of his legs. He wore a paratrooper’s helmet and goggles, but his legs were brown and bare and his feet were thrust into plain suede velskoen.

  The Beechcraft was very low – perhaps too low. Roland felt a stab of anxiety, Sonny was no Scout. He had done his eight jumps for his paratrooper wings, but they were standard jumps from four thousand feet. The Beechcraft was barely two hundred feet above the bush. The pilot was taking no chances with incoming SAM fire.

  ‘Make another pass,’ Roland shouted. ‘You are too low.’

  He crossed his arms overhead, waving them off, but as he
did it the wind-battered figure in the hatch of the Beechcraft dropped head-first over the trailing edge of the silver wing. The tail seemed to slash at him like an executioner’s axe, skimming his back, and the long ribbon of the rip-cord flirted out behind him, still attached to the speeding machine like an umbilical cord.

  Craig dropped like a stone towards the earth, and watching him Roland felt his breath jam in his throat. Abruptly the silk streamed from the chute pack, flared open with an audible snap like a whiplash and Craig was plucked violently erect, his legs rodding out stiffly under him, almost touching the earth. For a long second he seemed to be suspended there like a man on the gallows, and then he dropped and rolled on his back with his feet together but high above him. Another roll and he was on his feet, sawing the parachute cords to collapse the blooming silk mushroom.

  Roland let his breath out. ‘Bring him in,’ he ordered.

  Two of the Scouts hustled Craig forward, with a grip on each arm, forcing him to crouch and run. He dropped beside Roland who greeted him harshly. ‘You have to get us through, Sonny, as quick as you can.’

  ‘Roly, was Janine on the Viscount?’

  ‘Yes, damn you, now get us through.’

  Craig had opened his light pack, and was assembling his tools, probe and side-cutters and rolls of coloured tape, steel tape-measure and hand-compass.

  ‘Is she alive?’ Craig could not look at Roland’s face for the answer, but he started to tremble as he heard it.

  ‘She’s alive, but only just—’

  ‘Thank God, oh thank God,’ Craig whispered, and Roland studied his face thoughtfully.

  ‘I didn’t realize that you felt that way, Sonny.’

  ‘You never were very perceptive.’ At last Craig looked up at him defiantly. ‘I loved her from the first moment I saw her.’

  ‘All right, then you will want to get these bastards as much as I do. Open that field, and hurry.’ Roland signalled and his Scouts moved up quickly and lay along the edge of the minefield, their weapons pointing forward. Roland turned back to Craig.

  ‘Ready?’

  Craig nodded.

  ‘You know the pattern?’

  ‘You’d better pray I do.’

  ‘Get in there, Sonny,’ Roland ordered, and Craig stood up and walked into the minefield and started to work with the probe and the tape-measure.

  Roland contained his impatience for less than five minutes, then he called, ‘Christ, Sonny, we have two hours of daylight – how long is this going to take?’

  Craig did not even look around. He was stooped like a potato harvester, probing the earth gently, and the sweat had soaked through the back of his khaki shirt in a long dark stain.

  ‘Can’t you hurry it up?’

  With all the concentration of a surgeon clamping off an artery, Craig snipped the piano-wire trip of a Claymore mine, and then laid the coloured tape on the earth behind him, as he moved forward a pace. It was their thread through the labyrinth that Craig was laying.

  Craig probed again. He had chosen an unfortunate point to enter the pattern on an overlap of two separate systems. Ordinarily he would have retraced his steps along the coloured tape, and begun again at another point on the perimeter, but that could cost him precious time, perhaps as much as twenty minutes.

  ‘Craig, you are bloody standing still,’ Roland called. ‘Christ, man, have you lost your nerve?’

  Craig flinched at the accusation. He should have checked the pattern to his left, there should be an AP at a 30-degree angle from the last one he had found, and a twenty-four-inch gap between them, if he had correctly read the pattern. To check it would mean two minutes’ work.

  ‘Move, damn you, Mellow!’ Roland’s voice lashed him. ‘Don’t just stand there. Move!’

  Craig steeled himself, the chance was three-to-one in his favour. He stepped forward one pace, and gingerly put his weight onto his left foot. It was firm. He took another pace, placing his right foot with the delicacy of a cat stalking a bird, firm again. Now the left foot, a droplet of sweat fell from his brow into his eye, flooding it and half-blinding him. He blinked it away and completed the step. Safe again.

  There must be a Claymore mine on his right now. His legs were trembling, but he lowered himself into a squat. The wire, it wasn’t there! He had mis-read the pattern. He was blind in the middle of the field, living on chance. He blinked his eyes rapidly, and then with a surge of relief he picked up the almost invisible wire exactly where it should have been. It seemed to quiver with tension like his own nerves. He reached out with the side-cutters, and had almost touched the wire when Roland’s voice spoke just at his shoulder.

  ‘Don’t waste time—’

  Craig started violently and jerked his hand away from the deadly wire. He looked back. Roland had followed the coloured tape marker; he had come out into the minefield, and he was down on one knee with his FN rifle across his thigh only a pace behind Craig. His face was masked with a thick layer of camouflage paint, like some primitive warrior from another time, savage and monstrous.

  ‘I am going as fast as I dare.’ Craig used his thumb to squeeze the heavy drops of nervous sweat from his eyebrows.

  ‘You aren’t,’ Roland told him flatly. ‘You have been in here almost twenty minutes, and you haven’t moved twenty paces. It will be dark before we get through if you chicken it.’

  ‘Damn you!’ Craig whispered hoarsely.

  ‘Yes,’ Roland encouraged. ‘Get mad. Get fighting mad.’

  Craig reached forward and snipped the trip-wire. It made a tiny quivering spring like a guitar string lightly plucked with a fingernail.

  ‘That’s it, Sonny. Move!’ Roland’s voice was at his back, a low monotonous litany.

  ‘Think of those bastards, Sonny. They are out there, running like rabid jackals. Think of them getting away.’

  Craig moved forward, taking each pace more firmly.

  ‘They killed everybody on that Viscount, Craig. Everybody, men and women and children. Everybody except her.’ Roland did not use her name. ‘They left her alive. But when I found her, she couldn’t speak, Sonny. She could only scream and struggle like a wild animal.’

  Craig stopped dead, and looked back. His face was icy pale.

  ‘Don’t stop, Sonny. Keep going.’

  Craig stooped and probed quickly. The AP was there, exactly where it should be. He went forward into the corridor with quick short steps and Roland’s dry cold whisper was in his ear.

  ‘They had raped her, Sonny, all of them. Her leg was broken in the crash, but that didn’t stop them. They got on top of her, like rutting animals one after the other.’

  Craig found himself running forward up the invisible corridor, merely counting his paces, not using the tape-measure to check the length of it, not using the compass to measure the angle of the turn.

  At the end he fell flat and stabbed frantically into the earth with the probe, but Roland’s voice was there behind him.

  ‘When they had all finished, they started again,’ he whispered. ‘But this time they rolled her over and sodomized her, Sonny—’

  Craig heard himself sob with each stroke of the probe. He hit the casing of a mine lying just under the surface, and the force of the blow jarred his arm. He dropped the probe and scratched with his fingers into the earth, exposing the circular top of the AP mine. It was the size of one of those old-fashioned tins of fifty Players Navy Cut cigarettes. Craig lifted it out of its cavity, set it aside and went forward, but Roland’s whisper followed relentlessly.

  ‘One after the other they did it to her, Sonny, all except the last one. He couldn’t manage it twice, so he took his bayonet and pushed that up her instead.’

  ‘Stop it, Roly! For Chrissake, stop it!’

  ‘You say you love her, Sonny – then hurry, for her sake, hurry!’

  Craig found the second AP mine and plucked it from the earth, he hurled it away from him down the length of the minefield and it bounced and rolled like a rubber ball before d
isappearing into a clump of grass. It did not explode. Craig clawed his way forward, stabbing the probe ferociously as though into the heart of one of them, and he found the third mine, the last one in the ninety-degree corner of the corridor.

  It was open all the way to the opposite perimeter of the minefield, where there would be two Claymore trip-wires. Craig jumped to his feet and ran down the corridor, with violent death only inches on each side of his flying feet. He was almost blinded by his own tears, and he sobbed in time to his run. He reached the end of the corridor and stopped. Only the trip-wires now, only the trip-wires of the Claymores and they would be through the cordon sanitaire.

  ‘Well done, Sonny,’ Roland’s voice close behind, ‘well done, you’ve got us through.’

  Craig changed the side-cutters into his right hand and took one step more. He felt it move under the sole of his right foot, the almost infinitesimal give, as though he had stepped on a subterranean mole-run and it had collapsed.

  ‘It shouldn’t have been there,’ he thought despairingly, and time seemed to be suspended.

  He heard the click of the primer. It sounded like the release of a camera-shutter, but muted by the thin layer of sand over it.

  ‘The wild one,’ he thought, and still time was frozen. He had time to think. ‘It’s the wild one in the pattern.’ And nothing happened, just that click. He felt a spring of hope. ‘It’s dud, it’s a misfire.’ He was going to get away with it.

  Then the mine exploded under his right foot. It felt as though someone had hit him with a full swing of a crow-bar under the sole. There was no pain, just that stunning slam of shock into his foot, driven up his spine until his jaws clashed and he felt his tongue split between his teeth, bitten clean through.

  No pain, just the deafening implosion of the shockwave into his eardrums, as though somebody had held a double-barrelled shotgun close to his head and fired both barrels together.

  No pain, just the blinding rush of dust and smoke past his face, and then he was flung into the air as though he were the plaything of a callous giant, and he came down again on his belly. The wind driven from his lungs, so he wheezed for breath, his mouth filled with blood from his bitten tongue. His eyes were stinging from flying grit and smoke. He wiped them clear and Roland’s face was in front of his, hazy and wavering like a heat mirage. Roland’s lips were moving, but Craig could not hear the words. His ears buzzed viciously from the blast.