Sean's escort saluted him with theatrical flourishes, which he returned by touching the Min of his maroon beret with the tip of his swagger stick.
"Colonel Courtney," he greeted Sean in passable English. "We have been warned to expect you."
For Sean, it was refreshing to notice that Renamo wore conventional badges of rank, based on the Portuguese army conventions.
This man had red field officer flashes and the single crowns of a major on his epaulettes. During the bush war the tells had eschewed the capitalist imperialist traditions and dispensed with the symbols of an elitist officer class.
"You will spend the night with us," the major told him. "And I look forward to having you as our guest in mess tonight."
This was extraordinary treatment, and even Sean's captors were unpressed and in a strange way rather proud of him. The sergeant himself escorted Sean down to the river and even produced a fragment of green soap for him to wash out his bush jacket and shorts.
While they dried on a sun-heated rock, Sean wallowed naked in the pool and then used the last of the soap to wash his hair and rid his face of camouflage cream and ingrained dirt. He had not shaved since he had left Chiwewe camp almost two weeks previously, and his beard felt thick and substantial.
He worked up a lather of suds in his armpits and crotch and looked down at his body. There was not a vestige of fat on him; each individual muscle was outlined clearly beneath the sun darkened skin. He had not been in this extreme condition since the closing days of the war. He was like a thoroughbred racehorse brought up to its peak by a skillful trainer on the eve of a major race.
The sergeant loaned him a steel comb and he brushed his hair out. It fell almost to his shoulders, thick and wavy and sparkling from the wash. He put on his damp clothes and let them dry on his body. He felt good, that charged restless feeling of being at the very pinnacle of physical fitness.
The officers" mess was an underground dugout devoid of ornament or decoration. The furniture was crude and hand-hewn. Ms hosts were the major, a captain, and two young subalterns.
The food made up for its lack of artistic presentation by its abundance. A huge steaming bowl of stew made with sun-dried fish and chilis, the fiery peri-peri that was a relic of the Portuguese onialists, and great mounds of the ubiquitous maize-meal porcol ridge.
It was the best meal Sean had eaten since leaving Chiwewe, but the highlight of the evening was the drink the major provided, unlimited quantities of real civilized beer in metal cans. The labels read "Castle Lager" and in small print at the bottom, "Verwaardig in Suid Afrika, Made in South Africa." It was an indication as to which country was Renaino's good friend.
As the guest in mess, Sean proposed the first toast. He stood and raised his beer can.
"Renamo," he said. "And the people of Mozambique."
The major replied, "President Botha, and the people of South Africa," which settled it conclusively. They knew Sean was from the south and was, therefore, an honored guest.
He felt so secure in their company that he could relax and for the first time in months allow himself to get moderately drunk.
The major had fought for the Rhodesians during the bush war.
He told Sean that like Job Bhekani he had been a subaltern in the Rhodesian African Rifles, the elite black regiment that had fought so effectively and inflicted such slaughter among the ZANLA guerrillas. They soon established the camaraderie of old brothers-in arms Without obviously pumping him, Sean was able to nudge the conversation along and pick up the crumbs of information the major let fall more freely as the cans of beer were consumed.
Sean's estimation had been correct. This was part of the northern perimeter of a Renamo army group. The fortifications were deep and dispersed as a precaution against aerial bombardment.
From this base they marauded southward, hitting the Frelimo garrisons and strafing and raiding the railway line between Beira on the coast and Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe.
While they were still working on the first case of beer, Sean and the major discussed with seriousness the significance of that rail link. Zimbabwe was a completely landlocked nation. Its only arteries to the outside world were the two railway lines. The major one was southward into South Africa, via Johannesburg to the major ports of Durban and Cape Town.
Mugabe's Marxist government bitterly resented being reliant on the nation which, for them, epitomized all that was evil in Africa, the bastion of capitalism and the free-market system, the nation that for the eleven long years of the bush war had propped up the white regime of Ian Smith. Mugabe's hysterical rhetoric against his southern neighbor was incessant, and yet the foul hand of apartheid was curled around his jugular vein. His instinct was to look eastward into Mozambique for salvation. During his struggle for independence Mugabe had been ably assisted by the Frelimo president of Mozambique, Samara Machel, whose own struggle against the Portuguese had only just culminated in freedom from the colonial yoke.
Frelimo, his brother",4arxists, had provided Mugabe with recruits, arms, and rut support for his guerrillas. Without reservation they had offered him the use of bases within their territory from which to launch his attacks on Rhodesia. It was only natural now that he had once more turned to Mozambique to provide an escape from this awful humiliation of being seen by the rest of Africa, by his brothers in the Organization of African Unity, to be dealing with the monster of the south, and not only dealing with it but totally dependent on it for every liter of gasoline, every ounce of the daily stuff of survival.
The railway line to the port of Beira on the Mozambique Channel was the natural solution to his predicament. Of course, the port facilities and the main-line system had been allowed to fall into almost total disrepair under African socialist management. The solution to that was simple and well tried: massive aid from the developed nations of the West. As every good African Marxist knew, they were fully entitled to this, and any attempt to withhold it could be countered by the equally simple and well-tried expedient of dubbing it blatant racism. That dread accusation would force immediate compliance. The estimate of the cost of work needed to restore the port and main line to full efficiency was four billion American dollars. However, as actual costs in Africa usu ay exceeded estimates by a hundred percent, the sum of eight billion dollars was more realistic. A mere bagatelle, nothing more than their due, a fair price for the West to pay for the pleasure and prestige Mugabe would derive from being able to thumb his nose at the monster of the south.
There was only one small obstacle in his way, the Renanio army.
It sat astride that vital rail fink, attacking it almost daily, blowing up bridges and culverts, ripping out the tracks and shooting up rolling stock.
The actual damage they caused was minor compared to the fact that their depredations gave the Western governments a fine excuse to withhold the funds needed to restore the main line to the condition in which it would be able to carry all of Zimbabwe's imports and exports.
The Frelimo government's efforts to protect the line were so fumbling and inept that the Zimbabweans themselves were forced to assist them. Over ten thousand of M s own troops were tied up with trying to fend off Renamo attacks on the line. Sean had heard estimates of the cost of these operations to Zimbabwe's economy, already one of the shakiest in sub-Saharan Africa, as high as a million dollars a day.
It was ironic that Mugabe, once the guerrilla, was now forced into the role of passive defender of fixed hardware and permanent positions.
He was experiencing the stings of the flea that he had once so merrily dispensed.
Sean and the Renamo major laughed at the joke and began on the second case of good apartheid lager. This marked the passing of the time for serious conversation.
Now they reminisced happily about the days of the bush war and soon discovered that they had both been at the same contact in the Mavuradonha Mountains on the day when they had killed forty-six guerrillas, a "good kill" as a successful action was always referred to. Sean's Scouts had
lain in wait in the gulleys and reentrances to the hills, acting in the role of stop group, while the Pa RAR had dropped on the far side by parachute and formed the sweep line to drive the terrorists onto the Scouts.
"You drove out as many bushbuck as gooks," Sean remembered. "I didn't know which to shoot first." And they laughed and talked of other dangerous sorties, of crazy ops and wild chases and "good kills."
They drank to Ian Smith, the Banantyne scouts, and the Rhodesian African Rifles. There was still plenty of beer remaining, so they drank to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. When they "Damnaran out of conservative leaders to toast, Sean suggested, tion to Gorbachev!"
This was enthusiastically adopted, and the major countered immediately with, "Damnation to Frelinio and Joaquim Chissano."
The list of left-wingers was longer than that of conservatives, but they worked their way steadily down it, damning them all from Neil Kinnock to Teddy Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.
When they finally parted, Sean and the major embraced like brothers. Sean had filled all his pockets with cans of beer, so that when he returned to his Shangane guards they too greeted him affectionately as he distributed the cans among them.
In the morning the Shangane sergeant shook him awake while it was still dark. Sean's headache was terrifying and his mouth tasted as though a hyena had slept in it. It was one of the penances of being superbly physically fit: the body's reaction to the abuse of rtionately violent, the hangovers more fierce alcohol was propo aspirin for solace.
and he had not a single ming Sean had sweated out However, by the middle of the MO the last drops of stale beer. Their route was still south and west, and as they ran they saw many more fortifications and strong points. As the major had told him, they were cunningly dispersed and hidden. He saw light field artillery in sandbagged em placed detachments, together with mortars in their redoubts an armed with RPG sockets, the mobile hand-held stalwarts of the guerrilla arsenal: All the troops he saw seemed to be cheerful and of high morale, well fed and equipped. Nearly all of them wore the tiger-striped camouflage and combat boots with rubber soles and canvas uppers.
His escort had replenished their packs from the garrison stores.
aize meal was in two-kilo paper When they stopped to eat, the inch they lit the sacks marked "Premier Mills," the matches with whi fire were "Lion Matches," and the new bars of soap "Sunlight," all with the familiar double legend beneath the name: "Verwaardig in Suid Afrika, Made in South Africa."
"It's almost like being home again," Sean chuckled.
The Renaino defensive lines were in concentric rings like the ripples on a pond, and soon Sean realized they were approaching the center. They passed what were obviously training areas, where fresh-faced black recruits, both male and female, some of them in their early teens, sat in rows under thatched sun shelters like schoolchildren in a classroom, studying the makeshift blackboard so attentively that they barely glanced up as Sean's detachment trotted by.
From the blackboards, Sean saw the subjects they were being taught ranged from the infantry field manual to politic theory.
al Beyond the rear training areas they entered what appeared to be a series of low, sparsely manned kopjes. It was only when they were within a few meters of the side of one of these hills that Sean spotted the entrances to the dugouts.
They were more elaborately constructed and cunningly concealed than the others they had been passing all day. These would be invisible from the air and impervious to aerial bombardment, and Sean could tell, by the changed deportment of his guards and their more severe posture toward him, that they had reached the headquarters area of the Renamo army group.
Still, he was taken by surprise when without ceremony they turned aside and drew up at the entrance to one of the underground bunkers. There was a brief exchange while the Shangane sergeant handed Sean over to the guards at the entrance. Then Sean was hustled down the steps into the subterranean maze of corridors and caverns hacked out of the earth. The bunker was lit by bare electric bulbs, and somewhere far off he heard the hum of a generator. The side walls were reverted with sandbags that had been dressed neatly, and the roof was reinforced with hewn logs.
They entered a communications room. Sean saw at a glance that the radio equipment was sophisticated and well maintained. A
large-scale map of the whole northern and central Mozambican provinces of Zambia and Monica covered one wall.
Sean studied the map surreptitiously. He saw at once that the broken, mountainous ground in which this Renamo army group was ensconced was the Serra de Gorongosa, the Gorongosa Mountains, and that the river they had crossed, which formed the Renamo defensive fine, was the Pungwe River. The main railway line ran only thirty or forty miles further south of this position.
Before he could glean more information from the map he was hurried down another short passageway at the end of which there was a curtained-off doorway.
His escort called a respectful request to enter. The reply was sharp and authoritative. One of the guards prodded Sean, and he pushed the curtain aside and stepped into the room beyond.
"Comrade China." Sean smiled. "What a pleasant surprise."
"That form of address is no longer appropriate, Colonel Courtney. In future please address me as General China, or simply as "Sir." He sat at a desk in the center of the dugout. He was dressed in the ubiquitous tiger-striped battle dress, but it was adorned with silver paratrooper wings and four rows of gaudy ribbons across his left breast. A yellow silk scarf was knotted at his throat and his maroon beret and webbing belt hung on a peg behind him The butt of the automatic pistol in the webbing holster was ivory handled General China was obviously taking his conversion from Marxism to capitalism very seriously.
"I understand you have acquitted yourself well during the last few days and that you are sympathetic toward Renamo, its allies, and its objectives." His attitude toward Sean was benign, and it made him uneasy.
"How do you know that?" he demon "We do have radio you know, Colonel. We aren't total barbarians." China indicated The VHF set on the bench along the side wall of the dugout. "Tau passed a pleasant evening with Major Takawira, at my suggestion."
"Now would you like to tell me what the hell this is all about, General? You have abducted citizens of two friendly and powerful nations, South Africa and America."
General China held up his hands to stop him. "Please spare me your outrage, Colonel. Our people in Lisbon and elsewhere have already received complaints from both the Americans and the South Africans. Of course, we have denied abducting anybody and adopted an attitude of injured innocence. He paused and studied Sean for a moment. "Very enterprising of you to have got a message to the American embassy so soon, but then I wouldn't have expected anything less of you."
Before Sean could reply he lifted the handset of the field telephone on his desk and spoke quietly in a language Sean recognized as Portuguese but could not understand. He hung up and glanced expectantly toward the screen doorway. Instinctively Sean did the same.
The canvas curtain was drawn aside, and three persons ducked through the dugout. There were two uniformed black women carrying side arms and AK rifles. Between them, escorted closely, dressed in sun-bleached but freshly laundered khaki shirt and loose -fitting shorts, nearly the same clothes she had worn when last he saw her, was Claudia Monterro.
She was thin. That was the first thing that struck Sean. Her hair was drawn back and tied in a plait at the back of her head, and she was tanned to the color of melba toast.
Her eyes were huge in her thin face, and he had never before truly noticed the fine structure of her cheeks and jawbone. At the sight of her his heart seemed to stop and swell against his ribs, then race away again.
"Claudia!" he said. Her head jerked toward him. The blood drained from her face, leaving a cafe all lait color beneath her tan.
"Oh my God," she whispered. "I was so afraid-" She broke off, and they stared at each other, neither of them moving for a dozen b
eats of his heart. Then she said his name: "Sean." And it sounded like a sob.
She swayed toward him and lifted her hands, palms upward in a gesture of supplication, and her eyes were filled with all the suffering and hardship and longing of these last days.
With two long strides he reached her, and she threw herself against him, closed her eyes, and pressed her face against him. She had both arms locked around his chest, and the strength of her grip hampered his breathing.
"Darling," he whispered, and stroked her hair; it felt thick and springing under his fingers. "My darling, it's all right now."
She lifted her face to him, and her lips quivered and parted.
Blood had flowed back under the smooth brown skin. She seemed to glow, and the light in her eyes had changed to the sparkle of dark yellow topaz.
"You called me darling," she whispered.
He lowered his head over her and kissed her. Her lips opened under his, and the inside of her mouth was hot and lubricious. He probed it deeply with his tongue, and it tasted like the sap of sweet young grass.
Wilbur Smith - C07 A Time To Die Page 29
