A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 143

"Don't worry about leaving him behind. He's like one of those puppies you can't send him home. He'll follow me anywhere. In fact, the little bugger is probably watching us out of the bush at t s 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 favorite 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."

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 was taking place in small, isolated pockets, while most of the ground was wild, rugged, and drafted.

Sean sent Job and Matatu ahead with a small party of assault troops to find any 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 the vanguard to guide them whenever it was necessary to make a detour or 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 defense.

Occasionally they saw the twinkle of signal flares soaring above the dark forest, but there was no sound of Isotov turbos and helicopter rotors in the night. It was clear 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 colored flush of dawnlyas 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, 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, the Shanganes bore their heavy burdens with all the hardiness and fortitude of the African, burdens that would have broken the heart and back of even a strong white man.

it was light enough to define the treetops 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 fast 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 Frehmo colors Sean had provided for each of them should the Hinds spot them and come in to strafe them.

The deception was not necessary, for the pair of Hinds passed two miles east of their position. Sean saw their silhouettes, like deformed pats, black against the oncoming dawn, and minutes later heard the thunder of their Gatling cannons and the boom of their assault rockets as they pounded another Renamo stronghold among the ironstone hills far behind them.

Sean got the column moving again, and the glimpse they had been given of the "flying death" sped their feet. An hour later, the tail end of the column clambered swiftly down the almost sheer side of the gorge at the bottom of which lay the dry river-bed and the caves where the captured Unimogs had been hidden.

It was almost a homecoming, and the men crept thankfully into the gloom of the caverns and laid down the heavy packs.

"No fires," Sean ordered. "No smoking."

They ate their rations of cold stodgy maize cakes and dried fish and then curled on the cavern floor and slept like a pack of hounds exhausted at the end of a day's hunting.

Sean found a private place for Claudia at the back of the cavern, behind a natural screen of tumbled sandstone blocks. He spread a blanket on the rocky floor, and she sat cross-legged upon it and munched the unappetizing rations. But before she had half finished, she slumped sideways, asleep before her head touched the floor. Sean spread the other blanket over her, for it was chilly in the depths of the cavern, and then went back to the entrance.

Alphonso had rigged the antenna of the small portable two-way VHF radio. He was crouched beside the set with the volume turned com low listening to the situation reports of the Renamo field manders as they reported in to General China's headquarters.

"It goes very badly," he told Sean glumly. "Frelimp will be on the riverbank by noon tomorrow, and unless the general pulls back he will be overrun." Alphonso broke off as he recognized their call sign in the jumbled static of the wave band.

"Banana Bush, this is Warthog," he replied into the hand Mike and then gave the "primary objective established" code: Coca Cola Sean smiled at this subtle commentary on modern Africa, and Banana Bush acknowledged and signed off. Their next report scheduled for dawn tomorrow, by which time the fate of the his.