A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 127

They were moving through light savannah along the riverbank.

The flat-topped acaci# thorn trees were interspersed with clumps of coarse elephant grass. Sean heard the metallic snap of the loading handle being jerked back to cock a machine gun, and before the sound had fully registered in his brain he was diving forward, shouting a warning to his Shanganes. As he hit the sandy earth with his elbows and belly, he saw the muzzle flashes shimmering and dancing like fairy lights in the grass only thirty paces ahead.

A blaze of shot passed over his head, making him blink and flinch.

He rolled left to throw the gunner's aim, holding the AKM with one hand as though it were a pistol, firing blindly to further confuse the attackers and groping for the grenade on his belt.

He was on the point of hurling the grenade when behind him Ferdinand shouted a challenge in Portuguese and the firing from the front shriveled and died away. From the patch of elephant grass just ahead of Sean, a voice replied to the challenge. Then III Ferdinand was shouting urgently in Shangane, "Cease fire! Cease fire! Renamo! Renamo!"

There was a long, suspicious silence during which Sean kept his right arm cocked back ready to throw the grenade. He had seen too many good men called out to die in a false truce.

"Renamo!" a voice from the front reiterated. "Friends!"

"All right!" Sean shouted back in Shangane. "Stand up, Renamo. Let us see your beautiful friendly faces."

Somebody laughed, and a grinning black face under a tiger striped camouflage cap popped up out of the grass and ducked back immediately.

After a few seconds, when there was no more firing, another man stood up cautiously, and then another. Sean's Shanganes came to their feet and moved forward, slowly at first and with weapons cocked, and then they were meeting on open ground, shaking hands and laughing and slapping each other's backs. They had run into the sector held by the battalion under the command of Major Takawira. He recognized Sean immediately, and they shook hands with mutual pleasure.

"Colonel Courtney! What a relief to see you alive! We heard on the news from the BBC and Radio Zimbabwe that your aircraft had been shot down in flames with you and all your men wiped out."

"I need your help, Major," Sean told him. "I've left twenty cases of missiles cached out there in the bush. I want you to send a detachment of a hundred men to fetch them in. One of my men will guide them to the cache."

"I'll send my best men. I'll pick them out personally," Takawira assured him.

"How far are we from General China's HQT" Sean asked.

"The Frelimo helicopters have forced him to pull back. His new HQ is only six miles upstream. I have just spoken to the general on the radio, and he is most anxious to see you."

Their progress was a triumphal march, for news of their success flashed through the Renamo lines ahead of them. Men in tiger stripes turned out to cheer them, shake their hands, and thump their backs as they passed. The porters bore the cases of missiles aloft as though they were the ark of Jehovah and they the priests of an arcane religion. They sang Renamo battle songs as they trotted along proudly under their burdens.

General China was waiting to greet them at the entrance to his newly constructed command bunker, resplendent in crisply laundered battle dress and decorations, his maroon beret cocked jauntily over one eye.

"I knew you would not fail me, Colonel." For the first time in their acquaintance, Sean had the feeling his smile was genuine.

"We lost almost thirty men under Sergeant Alphonso," Sean told him brusquely. "We were forced to abandon them."

"No! No, Colonel!" General China clasped his shoulder in an unparalleled display of goodwill. "Alphonso got out safely. He lost only three men in reaching the mission at Saint Mary's. I have just had radio contact with them. They will be in our fines by tomorrow evening at the latest. The entire operation was a brilliant success, Colonel." He dropped his hand from Sean's shoulder.

"Now let us see what you have brought me."

The porters laid the wooden cases at his feet. A black Caesar receiving the spoils of war, Sean thought ironically.

"Open them!" China beamed. Sean had never expected such childlike excitement from one usually so cold and contained.

China was actually performing an ecstatic little jig and scrubbing his hands together as he watched the junior officers on his staff Iding jimmies and bayonet blades in an attempt to prize up the wie lid of the first crate. The steel strapping frustrated their efforts.

In the end China could no longer control himself. He pushed his officers away, snatched a jimmy bar out of the hands of one of them, and attacked the case himself. He was sweating profusely with excitement and exertion when at last the lid yielded, and there were obsequious cries of congratulation from his staff as the contents were revealed.

The Stinger launcher was fully assembled with loaded missile tube.

The IFF interrogator was packed separately in a transparent glassine envelope, ready to be plugged into the console head by its short coil of cable. The-additional four disposal tubes, each containing a single missile nestled in the molded white polyurethane foam packaging. After firing the missile, the empty tube would be discarded and replaced by a fresh tube containing its own sixteen pound missile.

The laughter and cheering gradually subsided and the general staff crowded forward to examine the contents of the case, albeit with a marked reserve as though they had discovered a nest of poisonous scorpions under a rock and expected a fanged tail to whip out at them at any second.