A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 137

Sean nodded grimly. The Russians must be using sky-shout amplifiers to demoralize the Renamo defenders. That was another trick they had learned in Afghanistan.

"All along the line our men are being shot to Pieces, or are running away. We cannot fight against the hen shaw

"Yes, you bloody well can." Sean seized the front of his tunic.

"I'D show you how. Get your men up. There'll be plenty of time to sleep later, when we have burned those Russian bastards out of the sky.

g Sean and Job had worked and fought with all these men and had come to know them by name and deed, so they had formed a fairly accurate picture of their individual worth and capabilities.

They knew that there were no cowards nor shirkers among those out.

However, there them. Alphonso had long ago sifted were those whom Job classified as "oxen," the strong and stupid, the muscle and cannon fodder. The others were of varying degrees of intelligence and adaptability. At the top of the heap were Alphonso and Ferdinand.

Sean and Job sorted them into two groups and concentrated their efforts on the most promising in each group, quickly picking out those who had the image recognition to translate what they saw on the aiming screen of the launchers into finite terms in shape and space.

At the end of almost three hours, they had picked out twenty men who had the potential to assimilate the necessary training swiftly and to act as number ones in the missile teams, and as many again who might be able to fulfill the number two backup role.

The others, who showed no aptitude, were allotted to the assault team, which would be using conventional weapons in the attack Sean was planning. Of the missile trainees, Sean took one group and Job the other, and they began the monotonous task of familiarizing them with the actual weapons. Once again they relied on the technique of repetition and reinforcement. Each trainee had his turn at stripping and reassembling, locking and loading, and aiming the launcher. While he did so, he explained to the class exactly what he was doing, and Sean and Job corrected their mistakes while the rest of the class taunted them.

It was late afternoon before Sean sent the first group of five men, which included both Alphonso and Ferdinand, to Claudia for simulated attacks with the training equipment.

and was immediately Alphonso scored three consecutive hits detailed to act as Claudia's assistant and translator. By nightfall an five members of the first group had scored three consecutive hits, which Claudia had arbitrarily decided was her passing standard, and Sean and Job had another ten men ready to begin simulator training as soon as it was sufficiently light the following morning.

When it was too dark to continue, Sean dismissed Alphonso and his group, and they staggered off wearily into the night, Punchdrunk with fatigue and the effort of learning.

Joyful, the chef, had stolen the tripe from the buffalo carcass ious evening. After the day's that had fed the officers" mess the prey heat they were a little ripe, but he had disguised that fact with a liberal addition of chopped wild onion tubers and peri-peri sauce.

Claudia paled when Joyful proudly placed a steaming bowl of the tripe in front of her. In the end, hunger overcame her fastidiousness. 4.

"Put hair on your chest," Sean comforted her.

"That, my darling man, isn't high on my list of beauty aids."

"Okay, then." He smiled at her. "Put some weight on those skinny little buns of yours."

"You don't like my buns?"

"I love your buns. That's why I want more of them, as much as I can get."

When Matatu came creeping in out of the darkness, Sean fed him, and he gorged on tripes until his naked belly bulged like a shiny black beach ball.

"All right, you greedy little bugger," Sean told him. "Now it's time for you to earn your keep."

They led him up to the dark amphitheater, where they found Job waiting for them. He had already assembled the raw materials for building the scale model of the gunship laager. By the light of two paraffin lanterns, they started to lay it out. Matatu had been a party to these model constructions so many times during the bush war that he understood exactly what was required of him. Like so many who have never acquired the skills of reading and writing, Matatu had a photographic memory.

lilt He strutted about importantly, giving Sean and Job instructions, showing them the topography of the countryside in and surrounding the laager the shape of the hill on which it had been built, the relationship of it to the main road and the railway fine.

Claudia showed a new talent Scan had not suspected. Using the soft white wood of the baobab tree, she whittled eleven tiny scale models of the Hind gunships. They were fully recognizable as what they represented, and when she sat them in their emplacements within the perimeter of the model laager, they added an authentic touch.

It was well after midnight before Claudia and Scan crept naked under the mosquito net in their dugout. They were both weary to their bones, but even after they had made slow, languorous love neither of them could sleep, and they lay close in the darkness and talked. Mention of her father earlier in the day had caused Claudia to hark back to her childhood. Listening to her, Sean was relieved that she was able to speak naturally and easily about her father.

She had conquered the initial shock and sorrow, and she remembered him now with only a nostalgic melancholy that was almost pleasure in comparison to the pain that had preceded it.

She described to Sean how at the age of fourteen, the very year her womanhood had first flowered, the wonderfully secure cocoon of her life had burst asunder in her parents" traumatic divorce. She painted a picture for him of the years that had followed: the droughts of loneliness when she was separated from her father followed by the roaring floods of love and conflict when they came together again.