A Time to Die, page 45
‘The manuals, Job!’ he gritted out. ‘Burn them!’
Job blinked at him through the blood that spilled from the split eyebrow. ‘Burn the manuals!’ Sean repeated. ‘Insurance, man. We are the only ones who know.’
Job’s expression cleared. ‘And the cassettes,’ he exclaimed.
‘Right!’ Sean said. ‘The cassettes. Give them to me.’
While Job hastily repacked the attack cassettes into their carrying case, Sean walked across to where Alphonso sat at the front of the amphitheatre and unhooked a phosphorus grenade from his belt.
Working swiftly, he used his pistol lanyard and the phosphorus grenade to rig a makeshift self-destruction device in the interior of the case of attack cassettes. He hooked the clip of his pistol lanyard through the pin of the grenade, and laid the grenade itself in the middle of the case. Using the point of a bayonet, he drilled a hole through the lid of the carrying case and threaded the end of the lanyard through it. When he locked the case, he looped the free end of the lanyard securely around his own wrist.
‘Let China try and get them away from me now,’ he said grimly. If the case were jerked out of his grip, or if he let it fall the lanyard would pull the pin of the grenade, destroying not only the contents but anybody standing nearby. He waited just long enough to watch Job set a match to the pile of instruction manuals.
Once they were fully ablaze he ordered Job, ‘Stay here, make certain they are burned to ashes.’
Then lugging the case of cassettes, he started back to the headquarters bunker.
‘I said that you would be back,’ China greeted him, with that icy sardonic smile which faded swiftly as he saw the case that Sean carried and the lanyard looped around his wrist.
Sean lifted the case in front of him and flaunted it in China’s face.
‘There is the Hind Squadron, China,’ he said, with an effort keeping his voice level. ‘Without this your Stingers are useless to you.’
China’s eyes flicked towards the entrance of the dugout.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Sean warned him. ‘There is a grenade inside the case, a phosphorus grenade. This lanyard is attached to the firing-pin. If I drop it, like if I was to die suddenly or someone were to pull it out of my hand, the whole lot goes up in a nice little bonfire, happy fifth of November.’
They stared at each other across the desk.
‘So this is a pretty little stalemate, Colonel,’ China’s smile was reborn, even colder and more deadly than Sean had seen it before.
‘Where is Claudia Monterro?’ Sean asked, and China raised his voice, summoning an orderly from the radio room.
‘Bring the woman!’ he ordered, and they waited, both of them poised and alert, watching each other’s eyes.
‘I should have thought of the cassettes,’ China said in conversational tones. ‘That was good, Colonel. Very good. You can see why I want you to lead the attack.’
‘While we are on the subject,’ Sean replied, ‘I have also burned the instruction manuals. There are only the three of us – Job, Claudia and me – who understand the Stingers.’
‘What about the Shanganes, Alphonso, Ferdinand?’ China challenged, and Sean grinned at him like a death’s head.
‘Not on, China. They know how to shoot them, but they don’t have any idea how to program the micro processors. You need us. China. Without us the Hinds are coming after you, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. So don’t fool with me. I have your survival in my hands.’
There was a scuffle in the outer room, and both of them looked to the entrance as Claudia was pushed through from the radio room.
Her hands were once more manacled behind her back, she had lost her cap and her hair tumbled into her face and down her neck.
‘Sean!’ she blurted when she saw him, and she pulled against the hands of the two bodyguards who held her, trying to reach him. They jerked her back and threw her against the side wall of the dugout.
‘Tell your baboons to knock that off,’ Sean snarled, and when they glowered at him, China restrained them with a sharp order.
‘Put that woman in the chair!’
They forced her into the solid mahogany seat and at another order from China used the manacles to chain her wrists securely to the heavy arms of the chair.
‘I have something of yours, Colonel, and you have something of mine. Shall we work out a deal?’ General China suggested.
‘Let us go,’ Sean said promptly. ‘At the border, I’ll hand over the cassettes.’ And China shook his head regretfully.
‘Not acceptable. Here is my counter offer. You lead the attack on the Hind laager. When it is completed successfully, Alphonso will escort you to the border.’
Sean raised the booby-trapped case head high, and China smiled. In retaliation he drew the trench knife from its sheath on his belt. It was ivory-handled with a five-inch blade.
Still smiling he lifted a single hair from Claudia’s scalp, and with a sharp jerk pulled it out. He held it up between thumb and forefinger and touched the hair with the blade. Half of the dark strand fell away and floated down to the earthen floor of the dugout.
‘That is how sharp it is,’ China said softly.
‘If you kill her you haven’t got anything to bargain with.’ Sean’s voice was harsh with strain and he was sweating.
‘I have this to bargain with,’ China replied, and he nodded to his guards at the doorway.
They led in someone whom Sean had never seen before. An apparition with an ancient skull-like head. The hair had fallen out in tufts, leaving shiny black patches on the scalp. The lips had shrunk and peeled back to expose teeth that were too large and white for that ruined head.
At a word from China the guards stripped away the single filthy ragged shift that covered the body, leaving it entirely naked, and for the first time, Sean realized that it was a woman.
Her body reminded him of the horror pictures he had seen of the survivors of Dachau and Belsen. She was a skeleton covered with baggy skin, her empty dugs dangled over the rack of her ribs, her stomach was drawn in so that her pelvic girdle was an empty bony basin. Her arms and legs were fleshless, the bony elbows and knees grotesquely enlarged.
Sean and Claudia stared at her with horror, unable to speak with the shock of it.
‘Look at the lesions on her abdomen,’ China invited in a pleasant voice, and numbly they obeyed.
They were blind boils, hard and shiny as ripe black grapes beneath the skin, covering her lower belly and disappearing into the wiry mop of her pubic hair.
While all their attention was on this pathetic figure, China reached down quickly with the knife and touched the back of Claudia’s hand with the point of the blade. Claudia gasped and tried to jerk her hand away, but it came up short against the manacle chain and she stared down as a thin snake of bright blood trickled down her forefinger and dripped onto the floor.
‘What did you do that for, you snot-gobbling bastard?’ Sean demanded.
China smiled. ‘It’s only a scratch.’
Slowly he reached out towards the naked skeletal figure of the black woman, pointing with the knife at her shrunken belly.
‘The extreme emaciation, and those characteristic lesions are diagnostic,’ he explained. ‘The woman is suffering from what we, in Africa, call the “Slim Sickness”.’
‘Aids,’ Claudia whispered, and her voice was filled with the dread that single word conjured up.
Despite himself Sean took a step back from the dreadful figure before him.
‘Yes, Miss Monterro,’ China agreed. ‘Aids in its terminal stage.’
He touched one of the marble-hard chancres on the woman’s belly with the point of the blade, and she gave no reaction as it split open and a mixture of pus and dark tarry blood oozed from the wound and trickled down into the matted bush of her pubic hair.
‘Blood,’ whispered China, and gently scooped it up onto the bright silver blade. ‘Warm living blood, swarming with the virus.’
He proffered the blade for Sean’s inspection and involuntarily Sean pulled back further as blood dripped from the point.
‘Yes,’ China nodded. ‘Something that even the bravest have reason to fear, the most certain, the most lingering, the most loathsome death of all the ages.’
With his free hand he took hold of Claudia’s wrist.
‘Consider this other blood. The sweet bright blood of a vibrant, beautiful, young woman.’
The scratch on the back of Claudia’s hand was vivid, but the tiny flow of blood from it almost quenched it.
‘Blood to blood,’ China whispered. ‘Sick blood to healthy blood.’
He brought the filthy blade closer to Claudia’s hand and she stiffened in the chair, straining silently against the manacle, her face white with horror as she stared at the knife.
‘Blood to blood,’ China repeated. ‘Shall we let them mingle?’
Sean found he could not speak, he shook his head dumbly, staring at the knife.
‘Shall we do it, Colonel?’ China asked. ‘It’s all up to you now.’ He brought the blade closer to the open wound in Claudia’s smooth creamily tanned skin.
‘Just another inch, Colonel,’ China whispered, and suddenly Claudia screamed; it was a wild ringing release of horror and terror, but China did not flinch. He did not look at her face and his knife hand was steady and tremorless.
‘What shall we do, Colonel Courtney?’ he asked.
He lowered the knife and touched her wrist with the flat of the blade, leaving a smear of diseased blood on the unblemished skin, only inches from the scratch on Claudia’s hand, then slowly he moved the knife downwards.
‘Speak quickly, Colonel. In seconds it will be too late.’ The knife left a shiny track of blood like the slime trail of some disgusting snail across her skin. Inexorably it moved down towards the open wound.
‘Stop it!’ Sean screamed. ‘Stop it!’
China lifted the blade away, and looked at him enquiringly. ‘Does that mean we have reached an agreement?’
‘Yes, damn you to hell! I’ll do it!’
China tossed the contaminated knife into a corner of the dugout, and then opened one of the drawers in his desk and brought out a bottle of Dettol antiseptic. He soaked his handkerchief in the undiluted fluid, and then carefully wiped the smear of diseased blood from Claudia’s skin.
The tension went out of her rigid body and she slumped in the chair. She was panting softly and trembling like a kitten left out in the rain.
‘Turn her loose,’ Sean croaked, but China shook his head.
‘Not until we have made our terms of agreement clear.’
‘All right,’ Sean snarled. ‘And the first of those terms is that my woman comes with me on the mission. No more dugouts filled with rats.’
China pretended to ponder that and then nodded. ‘Very well, but the second term is that if you fail me in any way, then Alphonso will kill her immediately.’
‘Get Alphonso in here,’ Sean demanded. The sweat had not yet dried on his forehead and his voice was still rough and unsteady. ‘I want to hear you give him his orders.’
Alphonso stood to attention and listened expressionlessly as China told him, ‘However, if the attack fails, if you are intercepted by Frelimo before you reach the laager, or if any of the henshaw are allowed to escape . . .’
Sean interrupted. ‘No, General, a hundred per cent success is too high to hope for. Let us be reasonable and realistic. If I can destroy all but six of the Hinds, then it must be counted that I have fulfilled my part of the bargain.’
China frowned and shook his head. ‘Even six Hinds will be sufficient to ensure our defeat. I’ll allow you two. If more than two Hinds escape from the laager your mission will be a failure, and you must pay the price.’ He turned back to Alphonso and went on with his instructions. ‘And so, Sergeant, you will obey all orders from the Colonel, carrying out the attack exactly the way he has planned it, but if the raid fails, if more than two henshaw escape, then you are to take full command, and your very first duty will be to shoot the two whites, and their black servant – you will shoot them immediately.’
Alphonso blinked almost sleepily at the order. He did not turn his head to look at Sean, and Sean found himself wondering if, despite their relationship, the friendship that had grown up between them, despite the fact that Alphonso had called him Nkosi Kakulu and Baba, and had exhorted him to lead the mission, despite all of this, he would carry out the execution order.
Alphonso was an African Shangane and a warrior with a deep sense of tribal loyalty and a tradition of absolute obedience to his chief and tribal elders.
‘Yes,’ Sean thought. ‘He’d probably have a few regrets, but without question or hesitation, he would do it.’
He raised his voice. ‘All right, China, we all know exactly where we stand. Let Miss Monterro come to me now.’
The bodyguard removed her handcuffs and politely General China helped her out of the chair. ‘I apologize for the unpleasantness, Miss Monterro, but I’m sure you will understand the necessity for it.’
Claudia was unsteady on her feet, and staggered before she reached Sean and clung to him.
‘And so I’ll wish you farewell and good hunting.’ China gave them a small mocking salute. ‘One way or the other, we will not meet again, I’m afraid.’
Sean did not deign to reply. With the case of cassettes in one hand and his other arm around Claudia’s shoulders, Sean led her to the doorway.
They moved out two hours before darkness. It was an unwieldy column and the missile-launchers and the back-up missiles made awkward burdens; apart from their weight, the length of the packs made them cumbersome. They hooked up in thick bush when the path narrowed and slowed down the column’s ability to react to threat and danger.
At first, Sean kept the column bunched up in a close cohesive whole. They were still some miles from the tenuous front line of the Renamo army, and would not be seriously menaced until much later in the march.
However, taking no chances, Sean kept the assault troops of the vanguard and rear vigilant and at the utmost degree of readiness to repel any attacks and to give the missile-bearers a chance to escape. To ensure this, Sean sent Job to the head of the column while he stayed in the centre where he could reach any trouble spot quickly and where he could be near to Claudia.
‘Where is Matatu?’ she asked Sean. ‘We’ve just gone off and left him. I’m so worried about him.’
‘Don’t worry about leaving him behind. He’s like one of those puppies which you can’t send home. He’ll follow me anywhere, in fact the little bugger is probably watching us out of the bush at this very moment.’
And so it proved, for as darkness descended on the column, a small shadow appeared miraculously at Sean’s side.
‘I see you, my Bwana,’ Matatu twinkled.
‘I see you also, little friend.’ Sean touched his woolly head as he would his favourite gun dog. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to find a way for us through the Frelimo lines, and so lead us to the roosting place of the ugly falcons.’ And Matatu swelled with self-importance.
‘Follow me, my Bwana,’ he said.
Now with Matatu to guide them, Sean could rearrange the column into a more streamlined formation for passing through the Frelimo advance and getting into their rear.
To his advantage was the size of the battle being fought ahead of him. There were six thousand Frelimo and Zimbabwean troops advancing against less than half that number of Renamo defenders, and the area of the battlefield was tens of thousands of square miles in extent. The fighting ahead of them was taking place in small isolated pockets, while most of the ground was wild and rugged and deserted.
Sean sent Job and Matatu ahead with a small party of assault troops to find the wide gaps in the line and steer them through. The rest of the column followed at a discreet interval, protected by the conventionally armed assault division of Shanganes.
They kept going steadily through the night, runners coming back from Job and Matatu in the vanguard to guide them whenever it was necessary to make a detour or to change direction.
At intervals during the long cold march, they heard distant gunfire and the sound of mortars and heavy machine-guns as elements of the Frelimo advance ran into the Renamo defence. Occasionally they saw the twinkle of signal flares soar above the dark forest, but there was no sound of Isotov turbos and helicopter rotors in the night. It was clear that the Hinds were limiting their depredations to the daylight hours when they could distinguish friend from foe and make their close-support operations more effective.
An hour before dawn Job came back down the column to find Sean.
‘We aren’t going to reach our first objective until an hour or so after first light,’ he reported. ‘The pace has been slower than we expected, what do you want us to do? Shall we take a chance on the Hinds finding us?’
Sean looked up at the sky before he replied. The first lemon-coloured flush of dawn was paling out the stars.
‘The forest roof isn’t dense enough to hide so many men and so much equipment,’ he decided. ‘We have to keep going and get them into hiding. Tell Matatu to quicken the pace.’
‘What about the Hinds?’
‘The main fighting is well behind us now, that is where they will be headed, we have to take the chance, but move fast.’
As the light strengthened so the faces of the men in the long column turned more frequently and fretfully to the sky. The pace was fast, almost a run. Although they had been going all night, still the Shanganes bore their heavy burdens with all the hardiness and fortitude of the African, burdens that would have broken the heart and the back of even a strong white man.
It was light enough to define the tree-tops against the orange blossom of dawn when Sean heard the dread whistle of turbos, faint and distant, passing to the east. The Hinds were flying their first sortie of the day, and the alarm was shouted down the length of the column. The porters dived off the path, seeking the nearest cover, and the section leaders crouched ready to wave the captured Frelimo colours that Sean had provided for each of them should the Hinds spot them and come in to strafe them.
