Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  “Mushroom, this is Forest Base,” the voice of Kelly’s male nurse from the Gondola clinic came back immediately. He was a trusted Uhali retainer of many years standing. “This is a relay for Silver Head in Kabali. Message reads, ‘The Sun has Risen.’ I say again, ‘The Sun has Risen.’”

  “Stand by, Mushroom.”

  There was a few minutes silence, then Gondola came back on the air. “Mushroom, Silver Head acknowledges ‘The Sun has Risen.’”

  The revolution was launched. Within the hour Victor Omeru would be on television announcing it to his nation. But Taffari was still alive.

  “Kelly, listen to me.” Daniel took her arm and dragged her up to face him, making sure he had her full attention. “Stay here. Try and keep in contact with Gondola. Don’t go wandering off. Taffari’s storm-troopers will be scattered everywhere. Stay here until I come back for you.”

  She nodded. “Be careful, darling.”

  “Sepoo.” Daniel looked down at the little man. “Stay here. Look after Kara-Ki.”

  “With my life!” Sepoo told him.

  “Kiss me!” Kelly demanded of Daniel.

  “Just a quick one. More to follow,” Daniel promised.

  He left her and ran back towards the UDC buildings. Before he had gone a hundred yards he heard men in the forest ahead.

  “Omeru!” he shouted. It was the password.

  “Omeru!” they shouted back. “The Sun has Risen!”

  “Not yet, it bloody hasn’t,” Daniel muttered, and went forward.

  There were a dozen men of the commando, the blue denim jackets were almost a uniform. “Come on! He gathered them up.

  Before they reached the road that ran down to the mining cut he had thirty men with him. The rain had stopped by now, and Daniel paused on the edge of the forest. Before them stretched the endless plain of churned earth that the MOMU units had devoured. The, line of machines was ahead of them, ranged along the boundary where forest and red mud met. They looked like a line of battleships in a storm.

  Closer still were the four Landrovers, scattered at abandoned angles on the muddy plain. As Daniel watched, the Hita guards were straggling across the open ground towards the nearest MOMU.

  Daniel recognized Ephrem Taffari’s tall uniformed figure leading them. It was clear that he had selected the nearest MOMU as the most readily defensible strong-point available to him, and Daniel conceded grimly that it was a good choice. The steel sides of the gigantic machine would offer almost complete protection from small-arms fire. Even the RPG rockets would make no impression on its massive construction.

  To reach it an attacker would have to cross soft open ground that could be covered by fire from the upper platforms of the MOMU. just as important, the steel fortress was manoeuvrable. Once he was in control of it, Taffari could drive it anywhere.

  Daniel looked about him quickly, by now there were fifty or so Uhali guerrillas congregated around him. They were noisy and over-excited, behaving like green troops after their first taste of fire. Some of them were cheering and firing at the distant figures of Taffari and his guards. They were well out of range, and it was a dangerous waste of their precious stocks of ammunition.

  There was no point in trying to get them under control. He had to attack before they lost their wild spirits, and before Taffari reached the MOMU and organised its defence.

  “Come on!” Daniel shouted. “Omeru! The Sun has Risen.”

  He led them out on to the open ground, and they followed him in a rabble, cheering wildly. “Omeru!” they yelled. Daniel had to keep the momentum going. The mud was ankle-deep in places, knee-deep in others.

  They passed the abandoned Landrovers. Ahead of them Daniel saw Taffari reach the MOMU and haul himself up one of the steel boarding ladders. As they ploughed on through the mud, their progress slowed to a plodding walk.

  Taffari was organising his men as they came aboard the MOMU. They were taking cover behind the massive steel machinery. Bullets started slashing amongst the attackers, plugging into the mud, cracking around their heads. The man beside Daniel was hit. He went down face first in the mud.

  The attack slowed, bogging down in the mud. The Hita on the MOMU were lodging in, hidden behind steel bulkheads. They were shooting accurately, and more of Daniel’s men were falling.

  The attack stalled, some of the Uhali broke and started to stumble back towards the forest. Others crouched behind the stranded Landrovers. They were not soldiers. They were clerks and truck-drivers and university students faced by crack paratroopers in an impregnable steel fortress. Daniel could not blame them for breaking, even though the revolution was dying in the mud with them.

  He could not go on alone. Already the Hita had singled him out. Their fire was concentrating on him. He stumbled back to the nearest Landrover and crouched behind its chassis. He saw the crew of the MOMU desert their stations and huddle helplessly on the lower platform. One of the Hita paratroopers gestured to them imperiously and with obvious relief they swarmed down the steel ladder and dropped into the mud like sailors abandoning a sinking ocean liner.

  The engine of the MOMU was still running. The excavators were chewing into the earth, but now with no direction the gigantic rig was wandering out of its formation. The crews of the other rigs in the line saw what was happening and they too abandoned their posts and streamed overboard, trying to escape the bursts of gunfire that rattled and clanged against the steel plating.

  It was a stand-off. Taffari’s men had command of the MOMU and Daniel’s commando were stalled in the mud unable to advance or retreat.

  He tried to think of some way to break the impasse. He could not expect his shattered and demoralised survivors to mount another charge. Taffari had fifteen or twenty men up there, more than enough to hold them off.

  At that moment he became aware of another eerie sound, like the mewling of seagulls or the cry of lost souls. He looked back and at first saw nothing. Then something moved at the edge of the forest. At first he could not make it out. It was not human, surely? Then he saw other movement. The forest was coming alive.

  Thousands of strange creatures, as numerous as insects, like a column of safari ants on the march. They were red in their myriads, and the wild plaintive cry rose louder and more urgently from them as they swarmed out of the forest into the open.

  Suddenly he realised what he was seeing. The gates of the labour camps were open. The guards had been overwhelmed and the Uhali slaves had risen out of the mud. They were red with it, coated with it, naked as corpses exhumed from the grave, starved to stick-like emaciation.

  They swarmed forward in their legions, in their thousands, women and men and children, sexless in their coating of mud, only their white and angry eyes glaring in the muddy red masks of their faces. “Omeru!” they cried, and the sound was like a stormy sea on a rocky headland.

  The fire of the Hita paratroopers was blanketed by the roar of their voices. The bullets of the AK 47 assault rifles made no impression on the densely packed ranks, where one man fell a dozen more swarmed forward to replace him. On the MOMU fortress the Hita guards were running out of ammunition. Even at this distance Daniel could sense their panic. They threw aside their empty rifles, the barrels hot as though from the furnace.

  Unarmed they climbed the steel ladders to the highest platform of the ungainly yellow rig. Helplessly they stood at the railing and watched the naked red horde reach the machine and climb up towards them.

  Daniel recognized Ephrem Taffari amongst the Hita on the upper deck. He was trying to speak to the slaves, spreading his arms in an oratorical gesture, trying to reason with them. In the end, when the front rank was almost upon him Taffari drew his pistol and fired down into them. He kept firing as they engulfed him.

  For a time Daniel lost him in the struggling red mass of naked humanity.

  He was like a fly absorbed by a gigantic jelly fish. Then he saw Taffari again, lifted high above the heads of the mob by hundreds of upraised arms. They passed him f
orward struggling wildly.

  Then they hurled him from the top of the MOMU.

  Ephrem Taffari turned in the air, ungainly as a bird trying to fly with a broken wing. He dropped seventy feet, into the spinning silver blades of the excavator head. The blades sucked him in and in a single instant chopped him to a paste so fine that his blood did not leave so much as a stain on the wet earth.

  Daniel stood up slowly.

  On the MOMU they were killing the Hita paratroopers, tearing them to pieces with their bare hands, swarming over them screaming and exulting.

  Daniel turned away. He started back towards where he had left Kelly. His progress was slow. Men of the commando clustered around him, shaking his hand, thumping him on the back, laughing and shouting and singing.

  There was still some desultory small-arms fire in the forest. The administrative offices were on fire. Flames leapt high, crackling and pouring out black smoke. A roof collapsed.

  People were trapped in there, burning to death. The mob raged everywhere, chasing the guards and officials and engineers and clerks of the company, black and Taiwanese, anybody connected with the hated oppressor. They caught them and killed them, kicking and beating them as they writhed on the earth, hacking at them with spades or machetes, throwing their dismembered bodies into the flames. It was savage. It was Africa.

  Daniel turned away from the horror. One man could not stop the orgy. They had suffered too long; their hatred was too fierce. He left the track and went into the forest to find Kelly.

  He had not gone a hundred yards before he saw a small figure running towards him through the trees. “Sepoo!” he called, and the pygmy darted to his side and seized his arm and shook it.

  “Kara-Ki!” he screeched incoherently, there was a gash in his scalp and he was bleeding heavily.

  “Where is she?” Daniel demanded. “What has happened to her?”

  “Kara-Ki! He has taken her. He has taken her into the forest.”

  Kelly knelt in front of the radio set, gently manipulating the fine-tuning knob of, the receiver. Although her transmitter did not have the range to reach the capital of Kahali on the lakeshore, Sepoo had climbed into the silk-cotton tree above her and strung the aerial wire from the top branches. She was picking up the transmission of Radio Ubomo on the twenty-five metre band with very little atmospheric disturbance.

  “This next request is for Miriam Seboki of Kabute who is eighteen years old today, from your boy friend, Abdullah, who wishes you many happy returns and says he loves you very much. He has requested, ‘Like a Virgin’ by Madonna, so here it is just for you, Miriam.”

  The harsh cacophony of the music was aberrant in the forest silences and Kelly turned down the volume. immediately she was aware of other sounds even more obscene, the distant fusillade of gunfire and the wild screams of fighting and dying men. She tried to blot the sounds from her mind, tried to calm her anxiety and fear for the progress of the rising. She waited, powerless and afraid, for something to happen.

  Suddenly the music was cut off, and the only sound from the speaker was the whistle and crackle of static. Then abruptly a new voice came on the air. “People of Ubomo. This station is now under the control of the Freedom Army of Ubomo. We bring you the President of Ubomo, Victor Omeru, speaking to you in person from the radio studio in Kahali.” There was a burst of martial music, the old national anthem, that Ephrem Taffari had banned when he seized power. Then the music ended.

  There was a pause and at last the thrilling voice that Kelly loved so well reverberated from the speaker. “My beloved people of Ubomo, you who have suffered so much beneath the yoke of the oppressor, this is Victor Omeru. I know that most of you believed that I was dead. But this is not a voice from the grave. It is indeed I, Victor Omeru, who call upon you now.”

  Victor was speaking in Swahili, and he went on, “I bring you tidings of hope and of great joy. Ephrem Taffari, the bloody tyrant, is dead. A loyal and true band of patriots has overthrown his cruel and brutal regime and given him the punishment he so justly deserves. Come forth, my people, a new sun rises over Ubomo.”

  His voice was so compelling, so sincere, that for a moment Kelly almost believed what he was saying, that Taffari was already dead and the revolution was secure. Then she heard the sound of gunfire and she glanced over her shoulder.

  There was a man standing close to her. He had come up soundlessly behind her. He was an Asian, almost certainly Chinese. He wore a blue safari suit damp with rain or sweat and stained with mud and blood. His long straight black hair hung down over his forehead. There was a shallow cut in his cheek from which the blood had dripped to stain the front of his jacket.

  He carried a Tokarev pistol in one hand, and there was a wild and hunted look in his eyes, eyes so dark that there was no division between iris and pupil, black eyes like a mako shark. His mouth was contorted with fear or anger, and the hand that held the pistol twitched and trembled.

  Although she had never seen him before, Kelly knew who he was. She had heard Daniel speak of him so often. She had seen his photograph in the out-of-date copies of the Ubomo Herald newspaper that occasionally reached Gondola. She knew that he was the Taiwanese managing-director of UDC, the man who had murdered Daniel’s friend, Johnny Nzou.

  “Ning,” she said, and scrambled to her feet trying to back away from him, but he sprang forward and seized her wrist. She was shocked by his strength. He twisted her arm up behind her back.

  “A white woman, he said in English. A hostage…”

  Sepoo rushed at him, trying to help her, but Cheng swung the pistol in a short vicious arc and the barrel struck the little man above the ear, splitting open his scalp. He dropped at Cheng’s feet. Still holding Kelly with the other hand, Cheng stretched down and aimed the pistol at Sepoo’s temple.

  “No,” screamed Kelly, and threw herself back against Cheng’s chest. It spoiled his aim, and the bullet ploughed into the earth six inches from Sepoo’s face. the shot roused him, and Sepoo rolled to his feet and darted away. Cheng fired another shot at him as he ran, but Sepoo vanished into the undergrowth.

  Cheng twisted her arm savagely, pulling her up on to her toes with the agony in her shoulder-blade.

  “You’re hurting me, she cried.”

  “Yes,” Cheng agreed. “And I will kill you if you resist me again. Walk!” he ordered. “Yes, like that. Keep going if you don’t want me to hurt you again.”

  “Where are we going?” Kelly asked, trying to keep the pain out of her voice, trying to be calm and persuasive. “There is no escape into the forest.”

  “With you there is,” Cheng said. “Don’t talk. Be quiet! Keep going.” He pushed and dragged her onwards, and she dared not resist. She sensed that he was desperate enough to do anything.

  She remembered what Daniel had told her about him, about the murdered Matabele family in Zimbabwe, about the rumours of children and young girls tortured for his perverted pleasure. She realised that her best chance, perhaps her only chance, was to comply with anything he ordered her to do.

  They covered half a mile, staggering and stumbling, made clumsy by the wrist-lock that Cheng had on her, and by his wild haste. When they came out suddenly on to the bank of a narrow stream she realised that it was the Wengu, the small river that gave the area its name. It was one of the tributaries of the main Ubomo River. It was also one of the bleeding rivers, clogged with the poison effluent from the MOMU vehicles. It was stinking and treacherous. Even Cheng seemed to realize the danger of trying to wade across it.

  He forced Kelly to her knees, and stood over her, panting and looking about him uncertainly.

  “Please…” she whispered.

  “Be silent he ranted at her. I told you not to speak!” he screwed her wrist to enforce the order, and despite herself she whimpered aloud.

  After another few moments, he asked suddenly, “Is this the Wengu River? Which direction does it run? Does it go southwards towards the main road?”

  Instantly she real
ised which way his mind was working. Of course, he would have an intimate knowledge of the area. It was his concession. He would have studied the maps. He would certainly know that the Wengu made a circle to the south, an ox-bow that intersected the main road. He would know that there was a Hita military post at the bridge.

  “Is it the Wengu?” he repeated, twisting her wrist until she screamed, and she almost answered truthfully before she caught herself. “I don’t know.” she shook her head. “I don’t know anything about the forest.”

  “You lie,” he accused, but he was obviously uncertain. “Who are you? he demanded.”

  “I’m just a nurse with the World Health Organization. I don’t know about the forest.”

  “All right.” He hauled her to her feet. “Get going!” He shoved her forward, but now they turned southwards following the bank of the Wengu River. Cheng had made up his mind.

  Kelly deliberately kicked and scuffed the soft earth as he pushed her along. She put all her weight on her heels, trying to lay as good a spoor as possible for Sepoo to follow. She knew Sepoo would be coming, and with him must come Daniel.

  She tried to snap any green twig that came within reach as Cheng forced her through the undergrowth. She managed to tear a button off her shirt and drop it, an identification for Sepoo to pick up. At every opportunity she tripped over a dead branch or fell into a hole and dropped to her knees, holding him up as much as possible, slowing down their progress, giving Sepoo and Daniel a chance to catch up.

  She began whining and whimpering loudly and when Cheng raised the pistol threateningly, she screamed, “No, please! Please don’t hit me!”

  She knew her cries would carry, that Sepoo with his sensitive, forest-trained ears would hear her at a distance of quarter of a mile and pin-point her position.

  Sepoo picked the shirt button out of the leaf trash of the forest floor, and showed it to Daniel. “See, Kuokoa, Kara-Ki is laying sign for us to follow,” he whispered. “She is clever as the colobus, and brave as the forest buffalo.”