Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur - Страница 86

"I got himP he bellowed exultantly.

"Way to go!" Sally-Anne shouted back. "Geronimo!"

"Well done, Mr. Mellow,jolly well done." The truck stood mass iNly immobile while the wreaths of dust subsided arounf it.

"Eat thad" Craig howled. "Stick that up your rear end, you sons of porcupines!" And he emptied the rifle at the distant vehicle.

Men were swarming around the cab of the truck like black ants around the carcass of a beetle, and the Land Rover limped away from them gamely.

"Oh, no," Craig groaned.

The silhouette of the truck altered as it turned back towards them, once again dust rose in a feathery tail behind it.

"They are coming on!" Perhaps he had fluked a hit on the driver, but whatever damage he had inflicted, it was not permanent. It had stopped them for less than two minutes and now, if anything, the truck was coming on faster than before. As if to emphasize that fact, another burst of heavy machinegun fire hit the Land-Rover with a crash.

In the cab, somebody screamed, and the sound was ask, shrill and feminine. Craig went cold, not daring to clinging to the roof tack frozen with dread.

and Craig's "Timon's been hit." Sally-Anne's voice heart raced with relief.

"How bad?"

"Bad. He's bleeding all over."

"We can't stop. Keep going." Craig looked desperately ahead, and there was a great nothingness stretched before him. Even the stunted trees had disappeared. It was flat and featureless, the reflection from the white pans turned the sky milky pale and smudged the horizon so that there was no clear dividing line between earth and air, nothing to hold the eye.

Craig dropped his gaze, and shouted, "Stop!" To enforce the order he stamped on the roof of the cab with all his strength. Sally' Anne reacted instantly, and locked the brakes. The crippled Land-Rover skidded broadside, and came up short.

The cause of Craig's urgency was an apparently innocuous little yellow ball of fur, not as big as a football. It hopped in front of the vehicle, on long kangaroo back legs, totally out of proportion to the rest of its body, and then abruptly disappeared into the earth.

"Spring hare! Craig called. "A huge colony, right across our front."

AA

"Kangaroo rats!" Sally-Anne leaned out of the window, the engine idling, turning her face up to his for guidance.

They had been fortunate. The spring hare was almost entirely nocturnal, the single animal outside the burrows was an exceptional warning in daylight. Only now, under close scrutiny, could Craig make out the extent of the colony. There were tens of thousands of burrows, the entrances inconspicuous little mounds of loose earth, but Craig knew that the sandy soil beneath them would be honeycombed with the inter linking burrows, the entire area undermined to a depth of four feet or so.

That ground would not bear the weight of a mounted man, let alone the Land' Rover With the engine idling, Craig could clearly hear the roar of the truck behind them, and machine-gun fire whiplashed over them, so close that Craig ducked instinctively.

"Turn left! "he shouted. "Back towards the pan: They turned at right, angles across the front of the approaching truck, machinegun fire goading them on, Timon's groans reachirg Craig above the engine beat. He closed his ears to them.

"There is no way through" Sally-Anne called. The spring-hare burrows were everywhere.

"Keep going," Craig answered her. The truck had swung to cut them off, closing very swiftly now.

"There!" Craig cried with relief. As he had guessed, the spring, bare colony mopped short of the salt, pan edge, avoiding the brackish seepage from the pan. There was a narrow bridge through, and Craig guided Sally-Anne into it. Within five hundred paces they were over the bridge with the ground firm ahead. Sally-Anne pushed the Land Rover to its limit, directly away from the pursuit.

"No! No!" Craig called. "Turn right, hard right." She hesitated.

"Do it, damn you!" And suddenly she saw what he intended, and she spun the steering-wheel, running ite direction across the front Of the back in the OPPOS approaching truck.

Immediately the truck turned to head them off again, turning away from the pan, and from the bridge of firm ground through the subterranean maze of burrows. It was so close that they could see the heads of the troopers in the open back, catch the colour of a burgundy-red ge, hear the beret and the bright spark of a silver cap-bad fierce, bloodthirsty yells, see an AK 47 rifle brandished triumphantly.

feet ahead Machine,gun fire ploughed up the earth ten the standing dust.

of the Land-Rover and they tore into Craig was blazing away with the AK 47, trying to keep the driver's attention off the ground ahead of the truck.

as he changed "Please! Please, let it happen," he pleaded gods were listening.

the magazine on the hot rifle. And the full bore.

The truck went into the undermined ground at ing into a pitfall. The earth it was like an elephant running opened and swallowed her down, and as she went in she men out of toppled to one side hurling the load of armed the back. When the dust rolled aside, she was half buried, around her, lying on her side. Human bodies were strewn upright, others me of them beginning to drag themselves so lying where they had been thrown.

y'll need a bull' That it! Craig shouted down. "The dozer to get out of that."