A Time to Die, page 61
‘Two!’ Alphonso shouted across at Sean. ‘I put two of them down.’ But Matatu was tugging at Sean’s arm and pointing out to the left flank. Sean was just able to get a glimpse of another group of Renamo cutting across the cut line and reaching cover on this side. The attacks on the right and centre had been diversions. Now there were a dozen or so Renamo coming in behind them, within minutes they would be surrounded, pinned down helplessly.
‘Alphonso, they have got in our rear,’ Sean called across.
‘There was nothing we could do to stop them,’ Alphonso answered. ‘There are too many, we are too few.’
‘I am going back to hold the rear, I’ll be with the women.’
‘They won’t attack again,’ Alphonso told him flatly. ‘Now that they have us surrounded they will wait for the henshaw to come.’
A burst of automatic fire raked the pile of deadwood, and they ducked instinctively.
‘They are only shooting to hold us,’ Alphonso called. ‘They don’t have to risk losing more men.’
‘How long until the helicopter arrives?’ Sean wanted his own estimate confirmed.
‘Not more than an hour,’ Alphonso told him with finality. ‘Then it will all be over very quickly.’
Alphonso was right. Against the Hind, there was no defence, no more tricks to play.
‘I’m leaving you here,’ Sean repeated, and crawled back to the hollow in which the women were concealed.
Claudia had Minnie on her lap, but she looked up expectantly as Sean slid down the shallow side of the hollow.
‘They’ve got in behind us,’ Sean told her shortly. ‘We are surrounded.’ He dumped the empty AK magazines in front of her. ‘There are boxes of spare ammo in Alphonso’s pack. You know how to fill these.’
It would keep her busy. The next hour was going to be difficult to live through. Sean crawled to the back lip of the hollow and peered over the edge.
He saw something move in the dried brown leaves fifty paces ahead of him and he fired a quick burst into the brush. His fire was returned from three or four positions in their rear. AK bullets cracked overhead and behind him Minnie wailed with fright. The minutes dragged past slowly, the silence broken every few seconds by sporadic bursts of holding fire from the Renamo positions.
Claudia crawled up beside Sean and stacked the replenished magazines at his right elbow.
‘How many boxes left?’ he asked.
‘Ten,’ she told him, and pressed a little closer to him.
It didn’t really matter that there were only two hundred rounds remaining in Alphonso’s pack. Sean looked up at the sky, any moment now they would hear the whistle of the Hind’s turbos.
Claudia read his thoughts, and she groped for his hand. Lying in the hot African sun, they held hands and waited. There was nothing left to say, nothing more that they could do. No defence, however feeble. All that remained was to wait for the inevitable.
Matatu touched Sean’s leg. It wasn’t necessary to say anything. Sean cocked his head and picked up the sound. It was higher and steadier than the soughing of the afternoon breeze in the forest-tops.
Claudia squeezed his hand very hard, digging her fingernails into his palm. She had heard it also.
‘Kiss me,’ she whispered. ‘One last time.’ And he laid the rifle down and rolled onto his side to take her in his arms. They strained together, holding with all their strength.
‘If I have to die,’ Claudia whispered, ‘I’m glad it will be like this.’ And Sean felt her press the loaded Tokarev into his hand.
‘Goodbye, my darling,’ she said.
He knew that he had to do it, but he did not know where he would find the courage.
The sound of the Hind’s engines was rising into a high penetrating shriek.
He slid the safety-catch to the ‘off’ position and lifted the Tokarev gently. Claudia’s eyes were tightly closed and she had turned her head half away. A little sweat-damp tendril of dark hair hung down in front of her ear, and he could see the artery beating under the creamy skin of her temple that the curl had protected from the sun. It was the most difficult task he had ever set himself, but he raised the muzzle of the Tokarev towards her temple.
There was a shattering explosion of a shell-burst on the lip of their shelter. Instinctively Sean pulled Claudia down to protect her. He thought for a moment that the Hind had opened fire, but that was impossible, it was still out of sight and range.
A further series of explosions crashed out in rapid succession, and Sean lowered the pistol and released Claudia. He rolled to the lip of the hollow, and saw that a heavy barrage of fire was sweeping the Renamo positions. Mortar fire, Sean recognized the characteristic bursts of three-inch mortar shells and then the rushing smoke trails of RPG rockets amongst the trees of the forest. The rattling din of small arms drowned out even the sound of the approaching Hind. The entire situation had changed.
Suddenly they were in the midst of a battle, and Sean saw figures running wildly amongst the windrows and stumps, firing as they ran.
‘Frelimo!’ Matatu was tugging at Sean’s arm and screeching with excitement. ‘Frelimo!’
Only then Sean understood. Their desultory exchange of fire with the Renamo pursuers must have called up a large force of Frelimo troops who had been massed in the immediate vicinity, probably preparing to attack the Save river line.
Now the fifty Renamo guerrillas suddenly found themselves attacked by a vastly superior Frelimo force. Judging by the intensity of fire, Sean estimated that there were several hundred Frelimo out there in the forest, front-line regular troops in battalion strength.
He saw the small party of Renamo who had cut them off abandon their positions amongst the dead wood of the cut line, and scuttle away in wild disorder with mortar shells bursting amongst them. Sean snatched up the AKM and helped them on their way with a long burst. One of the running men fell and flopped around into the brush like a beached catfish.
Then he spotted a sweep line of Frelimo infantry coming in from the left at a run. Their camouflage field dress was East German issue, the blotches of green and brown distinctly different from the Renamo tiger-stripes.
Renamo or Frelimo were equally dangerous for them. Sean pulled Claudia down beside him.
‘Don’t move. The Frelimo probably don’t know we are here. They might just chase off the Renamo and overlook us. We’ve still got a chance.’
Minnie was wailing loudly, terrified by the uproar. Sean called urgently to Miriam, ‘Keep her quiet. Stop her screaming.’
The Shangane girl pulled the child down beside her and covered her mouth and nose with her hand, cutting off her wails abruptly.
Sean raised one eye above the lip of the hollow and saw the Frelimo sweep line still bearing down on them, tough-looking troopers, firing from the hip as they came. They would overrun the hollow within seconds. He raised the AKM. Their salvation had been fleeting, the only real change was that now they would be killed by Frelimo rather than by Renamo.
As he raised the AKM and aimed at the belly of the nearest of the oncoming Frelimo troopers, the target was blotted out by a tall curtain of flying dust and from the sky above came the thunderous roll of the heavy 12.7mm cannon. The Frelimo sweep line dissolved before Sean’s eyes, blown away by the Hind’s concentrated fire, and the dust rolled over the hollow in which they lay, concealing them from the air in those crucial seconds that the Hind hovered above them.
Now all was chaos, two forces inextricably mixed up in the deep forest, mortar and rocket fire crashing through the trees, while over the battlefield the Hind hovered, sending in rockets and bursts of cannonfire to make the confusion complete.
Sean slapped Matatu on the shoulder. ‘Fetch Alphonso,’ he ordered, and the little Ndorobo disappeared into the dust and gunfire, to emerge only a minute later with the huge Shangane close behind him.
‘Alphonso, get ready to make another run for it,’ Sean told him tersely. ‘Frelimo and Renamo are giving each other a full go out there. We’ll try to sneak away before the Hind spots us.’ Sean broke off and sniffed the air, and then raised himself quickly on his knees to look back.
Already the air around them was turning a dirty grey, and above the din of battle and the whine of turbos, Sean heard the first faint crackle of burning brush.
‘Fire!’ he snapped. ‘And it’s upwind of us!’
One of the exploding rockets had ignited the rows of piled deadwood, and now a dense cloud of smoke rolled down over the hollow where they lay, stinging their eyes and making them cough and choke.
‘Now, we have no choice, it’s run or cook.’ The crackle and roar of the flames was already drowning out the din of battle. Dimly they heard the shrieks of wounded men caught up in the path of the surging fire.
‘Let’s go!’ Sean swept Minnie onto his back and the child locked both arms around his neck and clung to him like a little black flea. Sean pulled Claudia to her feet. Alphonso had Mickey sitting perched on his shoulders, his legs dangling over the bulky radio pack. Miriam was at his side clinging to the arm which held his rifle.
The smoke rolled over them, thick as oil, and they ran with the wind, bunched up to keep contact with each other. The smoke filled their lungs and blotted out the sky, screening them from the fighting men in the forest around them and from the helicopter gunship that hovered above them, and the fire raged close behind them driving them on wildly, but gaining on them with every second.
Sean felt the heat fan the back of his neck, and Minnie squeaked as a flying spark touched her cheek. Gasping for breath, Claudia stumbled and sank to her knees, but Sean hauled her to her feet and dragged her onwards.
Sean was suffocating, each breath burned all the way down into his lungs. They couldn’t go much farther. The heat licked their skin and flying sparks dashed against them and the child on Sean’s back screamed in agony and pawed ineffectually at her tortured body as though assailed by a swarm of wasps. She lost her grip and would have fallen, but Sean snatched her off his back and carried her under one arm.
Suddenly, they were into another open cut line. Only dead stumps surrounded them, standing like tombstones in the dense banks of rolling smoke, and the sandy earth beneath their feet had been ploughed up by the teams of loggers.
‘Down!’ Sean pushed Claudia flat on the ground and placed Minnie in her arms.
The child was struggling wildly. ‘Hold her still!’ Sean shouted and stripped off his shirt.
‘Lie flat, face down!’ he ordered and obediently Claudia rolled on her stomach, holding Minnie under her. Sean wrapped the shirt around both their heads to filter out the smoke and sparks and soot. He tore the stopper out of his water-bottle and soaked the shirt, splashing their hair and soaking their clothing.
Minnie was still shrieking and struggling, but Claudia held her down firmly. Sean knelt beside them and scooped loose sand over them, burying them under a mound of earth, like one of those beach games that children play. The smoke was thinner closer to the earth, they could still breathe. Alphonso had seen what he was doing and followed his example, burying Miriam and her little brother in the sand nearby.
Live sparks swirled through the blinding clouds of smoke and settled on Sean’s bare skin. They stung like the poisonous bites of safari ants. Sean felt his beard begin to frizzle and his eyeballs drying out in the heat. He emptied his pack on to the ground and pulled the empty canvas bag over his head, poured the contents of the second water-bottle over his torso, and then fell on his back and scooped the loose sand over himself and lay still.
With his head low to the ground the air was breathable, just sufficient oxygen in it to keep him conscious, but his head buzzed and swirled dizzily and the heat came at him in crushing blasts. He smelled the canvas bag over his head begin to smoulder and the thin layer of sand that covered his body scalded him like a pot fresh from the furnace. He heard the roar of the flames rise to a crescendo, the dry branches crackled like rifle fire in the inferno. The fire was in the windrows all around them, but the wind, generated by its own heat, drove it swiftly onwards.
It swept past them, the roaring subsided, and for an instant the smoke clouds opened allowing them a fleeting gasp of sweet air, but the heat around them was still so fierce that Sean dared not shake off the protective layer of sand that covered his body.
Gradually the heat dissipated, and the gusts of cooler sweeter air became more frequent. Sean sat up and lifted the canvas pack from his head. His skin burned as though acid had been splattered upon it, and the bright red spots where sparks had touched him would soon be blisters.
He crawled to the mound of earth that covered Claudia and the child and scraped it away from their heads. The shirt had kept their mouths and noses clear, and when they sat up and shook off the sand, he saw that they had come off much better than either he or Alphonso had. The fire had run past them, but the air around them was still so thick with smoke that the sky was blotted out.
Sean hauled them to their feet. ‘We have to get well away before the smoke clears,’ he croaked hoarsely. His throat felt as though he had swallowed a handful of crushed glass, and tears spilled down his sooty scorched cheeks.
Clinging together, picking their way through the blackened, smouldering landscape, like a party of bedraggled soot-covered phantoms, they limped through the swirling fog of smoke. The earth was hot as a flow of volcanic lava, scorching the soles of their boots, but they carried the children, and avoided the piles of glowing ash.
Twice they heard the Hind above them, but although they peered up with red and weeping eyes, they caught not a glimpse of it through the drifting blue clouds and there was no sign of pursuit by either Renamo or Frelimo. The opposing forces had been scattered and swept away by the flames.
‘The little bugger has asbestos-lined feet,’ Sean muttered, as he watched Matatu dance ahead of them through the thinning smoke. On Sean’s back, Minnie whimpered fretfully with the pain of her blisters and at their first rest stop Sean gave her half an aspirin and a swallow from their one remaining bottle of water.
The sunset that evening filled the heavens with flaming crimsons and sombre purples. In the darkness, they lay huddled together, too exhausted and weakened by the smoke to post sentries, and their sleep was interrupted by bouts of painful lung-tearing coughing.
In the dawn, the wind veered into the south but the smoke still hung over the land like a heavy river-mist, reducing visibility to a few hundred feet.
Sean and Claudia treated the children first, smearing their blisters and burns with yellow iodine paste, and though Mickey bore it with the stoicism of a Shangane warrior, the little girl whined with the sting of the iodine and Sean had to take her on his lap and blow on her injuries to cool them.
Once the children were taken care of, the women tended their men. The burns on Sean’s chest and back were all superficial, but Claudia treated them with a gentleness that reflected her gratitude and her complete love.
Neither of them spoke of that moment when he had lifted the Tokarev pistol to her temple. They probably never would, but both of them would be conscious of it for ever more. It would always be there between them: for Sean the most horrific moment of his life, worse even than that of Job’s death; for Claudia, an affirmation of his devotion to her. She knew that he would have found the strength to do it, but she knew also that it would have cost him dearer than the sacrifice of his own life. She needed no more proof of his love.
The children needed water desperately, they were desiccated by the heat of the flames and the smoke. Sean gave half the remaining water to them, and shared the remainder disproportionately amongst the adults, most of it to the two women and a bare taste to the men.
‘Matatu,’ he said in a harsh gravelly whisper, ‘if you don’t find us water before nightfall, then we are as dead as if the henshaw had blown us into dust with its cannons.’
They limped on through the blackened and smouldering forest, and in the late afternoon Matatu led them to a shallow clay pan, surrounded by the smoking stumps of burned-out trees. In the centre of the pan, thick with black ash and the charred bodies of small creatures, of snakes and rats and civet cats that had fled there for protection from the flames, was a puddle of filthy water.
Sean strained it through his shirt and they drank it as though it were nectar, groaning with the pleasure through their scorched and smoke-abraded throats. When they had drunk until their bellies ached, they scooped the water over their heads and let it soak their clothing, and they laughed weakly with the joy of it.
A mile beyond the waterhole, they reached the line at which the wind had changed and held the fire, driving it back upon itself. They left behind them the devastation of black ash and smouldering stumps and camped that night amongst the confusion of withered dead branches where the logging gangs had wrought almost as much destruction as the flames had done.
For the first time since the fire, Alphonso rigged the radio aerial, and they gathered round the set and listened for General China’s taunts and threats. They all stiffened instinctively as they recognized his voice, but he was talking in Shangane and they could hear the sound of the helicopter’s engines in the background. His transmissions were terse and enigmatic, and the replies from his subordinates were equally abrupt and business-like.
‘What do you think he is up to?’ Sean asked Alphonso, and the Shangane shook his head.
‘It sounds like he is moving troops into fresh positions.’ But there was no conviction in his tone.
‘He hasn’t given up?’ Sean said. ‘He may have lost our spoor in the burn, but I don’t think he has given up.’
‘No,’ Alphonso agreed. ‘I know him well. He has not given up. He will follow us all the way. General China is a man who hates very well. He will not let us go.’
‘We are in Frelimo-held territory now. Do you think he will follow us in here?’
Alphonso shrugged. ‘He has the henshaw, he does not have to worry too much about Frelimo. I think he will follow us wherever we go.’
