This killing anger was an emotion she had never experienced before. It heightened all her senses; it rendered her hearing so acute could visualize each movement of her prey; it quickened that she her physical responses so her kicks were fast and powerful, and when one of them landed on the warm furry body, the shrill squeal of pain and fear from the rat inflamed her.
She cornered it against the door of the cell and again stamped on it. She felt the small bones break under her heel, and she stamped again and again, sobbing with the effort, keeping it up until the carcass was soft and mushy under her feet.
When at last she backed away and sank down in her corner, she was still trembling, but no longer with terror.
"I've never )9 killed anything before, she thought, amazed at herself and this secret savage side to her nature that she had never suspected existed.
She waited for a feeling of guilt and disgust to overwhelm her.
Instead she felt as strong as though she had come through some ordeal that had armed her and equipped her to overcome whatever dangers and hardships lay ahead.
"I'm not going to give in, not ever again," she whispered. "I'm.
going to fight and to kill if I have to. I'm going to survive.
In the morning when the wardress came for the billy can Claudia confronted her resolutely, thrusting her face only inches from the black woman's and keeping her voice measured but firm.
"Take this out." She indicated the rat's carcass with her foot.
The woman hesitated and Claudia said, "Do it no w!" The wardress picked up the mangled carcass by the tip of the tail and glanced back at Claudia with a measure of respect in her dark eyes.
Carrying the empty billy and the dead rat, she left the cell. len she returned a few minutes later with the refilled billy can and the bowl of maize meal, Claudia subdued her thirst and maintained her new attitude of calm authority as she indicated the sewage bucket.
"That has to be cleaned, she said. The woman snapped a retort in Portuguese.
"I'll do it." Claudia did not waver but held the other woman's gaze until she broke the eye contact. Only then did she turn her back and offer her manacled hands to the wardress.
"Undo these," she ordered. Obediently the wardress unclipped the key from her webbing belt.
Claudia almost cried out as the handcuffs came away. The blood rushed back to her hands, and she held them to her chest and inst the pain, horrified massaged them tenderly, biting her lips ago by the condition of her swollen hands and torn, bruised wrists.
The wardress prodded her in the small of the back and gave an order in Portuguese. Claudia took up the handle of the sewage bucket and, brushing past the woman, climbed the stairs. The sunlight and warmth and clean dry air were like a benediction.
Claudia looked around the stockade quickly. It was obviously a women s prison, for a few dispirited feminine figurer, lolled in the dust beneath the single ebony tree in the center. They were in ragged loincloths. Their naked upper bodies were so painfully thin the ribs stood out clearly beneath the dusty dark skin, and their breasts, even those of the younger women, were empty and dangled as loosely as the ears of a spaniel. Claudia wondered what their crimes had been or if their mere existence had caused their captors offense.
She saw that her bunker was only one of a row of a dozen or so.
It was obvious these were reserved for the more important or dangerous prisoners.
The gates of the stockade were guarded by a pair of burly black females dressed in the usual tiger stripes and toting AK assault rifles. They peered curiously at Claudia and discussed her with Dilation. Beyond the gates, Claudia had a glimpse of the broad green flow of the Pungwe River and for a moment entertained fanciful visions of plunging into it to bathe her battered body and wash her filthy clothes. But the wardress prodded her painfully in the back and urged her toward the screened latrines at the rear of the stockade.
When they reached them, the wardress made hand signals for Claudia to empty her bucket into the communal pit, then turned away to chat with one of the other war dresses who had sauntered across to join them, AK-47 rifle over her shoulder.
The back wall of the latrine was also the rear wall of the stockade. However, it offered no avenue of escape. The poles were as thick as her leg, lashed securely together with bark rope, and their tops were several feet higher than she could reach.
She abandoned the idea of escape before it was fully formed and tipped the contents of the bucket into the deep pit. Immediately a humming cloud of des rose from the depths and circled her head.
Wrinkling her nose with disgust, Claudia was backing toward the exit when a soft whistle stopped her dead. It was a low-pitched, mournful note, so unobtrusive she would have ignored it completely if she had not heard it so often before. It was one of the clandestine signals Sean and his trackers used. Sean had told her once that it was the call of a bird called a boubou shrike, and because of its associations rather than its pitch it electrified her.
She glanced quickly toward the screened entrance to the latrine, but it was safe. She heard the voices of the wardress and her colleague still chatthig outside, and she pursed her lips and tried a soft, unconvincing imitation of the whistle.
Instantly it was repeated from just beyond the back wall of the latrine, and Claudia's hopes soared. She dropped the bucket and ran to the wall of poles, putting her eye to one of the larger chinks.
She almost screamed when an eye looked back at her from only the thickness of the poles and then a voice, a well-remembered voice, whispered, "Jambo, memsahib."
"Matatu," she gasped.
"Silly little bugger." Matatu gave her the only words of English he knew, and she had to fight to prevent herself bursting out in laughter of relief and hope and amusement at the incongruity of that greeting.
"Oh Matatu, I love you," she blurted out, and a folded scrap of paper was thrust through the chink into her face. The instant her fingers closed on it, Matatu's eye was snatched away from the peephole as though on a fishing line.
"Matatul" she whispered desperately, but he was gone. She had spoken too loudly, and she heard the wardress call out and her footsteps at the entrance.
Claudia spun around and with the same movement crouched over the reeking pit. The wardress looked around the thatched screen and Claudia mapped at her furiously, "Get out, can't you see I'm busyr" The woman jerked her head back. Claudia was trembling with excitement as she unfolded the note and recognized the handwriting, and at the same time she was stricken with terror that it would be taken from her before she could read it. She refolded it quickly and slipped it deeply into the back pocket of her trousers, where she would be able to retrieve it even with her hands cuffed behind her.
Now she was eager to return to the privacy of her cell. The wardress pushed her down the stairs, but without the viciousness of before.
Claudia replaced the sewage bucket in the corner, and when the wardress pointed at her wrists, she held them out obediently. TIM touch of the metal on her abraded and bruised skin seemed even more galling than it had been before. The muscles and tendons of her upper arms and shoulders knotted in protest.
Once Claudia was manacled the wardress seemed to recapture her harsh mood of authority. She tipped the contents of the maize bowl onto the 1loor and lifted her boot to grind it into the dirL Claudia flew at her. "Don't you dare!" she hissed, thrusting her face close to the woman's and glaring into her eyes so viciously that she recoiled involuntarily.
"Get out!" Claudia told her. "Allez! Vamoose!" The wardress backed out of the cell with a muttered but unconvincing show of defiance and dragged the door closed behind her.
Claudia was amazed at her own courage. She leaned against the door, trembling with the effort that the contest of wills had cost her, only then realizing the risk she had taken-she could have been brutally beaten or deprived altogether of her precious supply of water.
It was Sean's letter that had given her the strength and bravado to defy th
e wardress. Leaning against the door, she reached back into her pocket and touched the scrap of folded notepaper, merely to reassure herself that it was safe. She would not read it yet. She wanted to delay and savor that pleasure. Instead she retrieved her drinking straw from its biding place.
After she had drunk from the billy, she ate the maize cake, delicately picking it out of the dirt with her teeth and trying to shake loose the earth and dirt that clung to the sticky lumps of porridge. She was determined not to leave a scrap of it, not only because she was hungry but because she knew she would have need of all her strength in the days ahead, and also because she had learned that food scraps attracted the rats. Only when she had eaten and drunk did she allow herself the luxurious pleasure of reading Sean's note.
She took it out of her pocket and carefully smoothed it between her swollen fingers. Then she squatted and placed it in the beam of sunlight that fell in a corner of the cell. At last she turned and knelt over it.
She read slowly, moving her lips like a semiliterate, forming every word he had written as though she could taste it on her tongue.
"Be strong, it won,"I-be for much longer and remember I love u. Whatever happeds, I love you." Her vision swam with tears YO as she read his la,stVords. Then she sat back and whispered softly, "I'll be strong. I promise you I'll be strong for you, and I love you too. With my very existence, I love you."
"They may fight like women," said Sergeant Alphonso as he surveyed the piles of captured Zimbabwean Army equipment, "but at least they dress like warriors."
The uniforms had been supplied by Britain as part of its aid commitment to Mugabe after the capitulation of Ian Smith's white regime. They were of the finest quality, and Alphonso and his men stripped off their old faded and patched tiger-striped battle dress with alacrity. In particular they were delighted with the gleaming black leather paratrooper boots with which they replaced their eclectic collection of tattered joggers and grubby tennis shoes.
Once they had decked themselves out in this captured finery and fallen in on the beaten-earth parade ground, Se aiD and Job went down their ranks, checking and instructing them on the correct way to wear each item of uniform. The quartermaster tailor followed behind them, correcting any gross discrepancy in size and fit.
"They don't have to be perfect," Sean said. "They won't be on parade, just good enough to pass a casual glance. We haven't got time to waste on the niceties of dress."
After the men were fully kit ted out, Sean and Job worked on their plan of Grand Reef base for the rest of that day and most of the night.
First they sat on opposite sides of a desk in the headquarters communications room and brainstormed for every detail of the base layout they could dredge from their memories. By nightfall they were satisfied they had the most accurate picture that they could hope for. However, Sean had learned from experience that it was difficult for an illiterate to visualize physical reality from a two-dimensional drawing, and discreet inquiry had revealed that almost all his new command, though battle-tried warriors, could neither read nor write.
Most of the rest of that night they worked on building a scale model of the base, setting it out on the beaten surface of the parade ground, working by lantern light. Job, who had an artistic Barr, whittled model buildings from the soft balsa like wood of the baobab tree and used water-washed pebbles of various colors from the sandbanks of the river to lay out the airstrip, roads, and perimeter fences of the base.
The following morning the raiding party was paraded and inspected by Captain Job and Sergeant Alphonso and then seated around the model in a ring. The model proved to be a major success, provoking lively comment and query.
First Sean described the raid, moving =tchboxes; down the pebble roadways to represent the column of Unimogs, illustrating the diversionary attack on the perimeter, the withdrawal of the loaded trucks, and the rendezvous on the Umtah road. Once he had finished he handed his pointer to Sergeant Alphonso.
"All right, Sergeant, explain it to us again." The ring of attentive troopers delighted in correcting the occasional mistakes and omissions Alphonso made. When he was finished, he handed the pointer to his senior corporal to repeat the lecture. After five repetitions they all had it perfectly memorized, and even General China was impressed.
"It only remains to see if you can do it as well as you explain it," he told Sean.
"Just give me the trucks," Sean promised.
"Sergeant Alphonso was with the unit that originally Captured them. He knows where they are hidden. Incidentally the guards major whose uniform you will use was killed in the same action."
"How long ago was that?" Sean asked.
"About two months ago."
"Beauty!" said Sean bitterly. "That means those trucks have been lying in the bush all that time. What makes you think they am still there, or that they are still in running order?"
"Colonel." China give that thin, cold smile Sean was coming to know and loathe so well. "For Miss Monterro's sake, You had ile better pray they-are." The smile vanished. "Now, wh the draw their rations and ammunition, you and I will have a final discussion. Come with me, Colonel."
Once they were in the communications room of the command bunker, China turned to Sean, his expression bleak. "During the night I received a radio message from my agent at Grand Reef base. He only transmits in an emergency, otherwise the risk is too high. This is an emergency. Training on the Stinger systems is complete. They have orders to move the missiles out of Grand r Reef within the next seventy-two hours, depending on availability of transport aircraft."
Sean whistled softly. "Seventy-two hours-in that case we won't make it."
"Colonel, all I can tell you is that you had better make it. If you don't, you will have no further value to me and I win begin thinking of old times." He touched his damaged ear significantly. Sean stared him out silently until China went on, "However, not all the news is bad, Colonel. My agent will meet you in Umtah and give full intelligence on the buildings where the Stingers are being YOU held, the room used as a lecture theater, and the training manuals.
He will accompany you to the base. He is well known to the guards at the gates. He will assist your entry and guide you to the training center.
"That's something," Sean growled. "Where will I meet him?"
"There is a nightclub in Unitali-the Stardust, a gathering place for pimps and whores. He will be there every evening from eight until midnight. Alphonso knows the club. He will take you to it."
"How will I recognize your agent?"
"He will wear a T-shirt with a large portrait of the comic book hero Superman on the chest," China said. Sean closed his eyes as though in pain while China went on, "The man's name is Cuth Sean shook his head and whispered, "I don't believe this is happening to me. Superman and Cuthbert!" He shook his head again as if to clear it. "What about the RZ with the porters at Saint Mary's Mission?"
"That is arranged," China assured him. "The porters will cross the border tomorrow night as soon as it is dark and conceal themselves in the caves in the mountains above the mission station to await your arrival."
Sean nodded and changed the thread of the discussion. 611f we leave now, how long will it take for us to reach the spot where the Unimogs are hidden?"
"You should be there before noon tomorrow."
"Is there anything else we should discuss?" Sean asked. When China shook his head, Sean stood up, slung his AKM assault rifle on one shoulder, and with his free hand lifted the small canvas duffel bag that contained the dead guards major's uniform and his personal kit.
"Until we meet again, General China."
"Until we meet again, I will take good care of Miss Monterro.
Never fear, Colonel."
The column was heavily laden. Each man carried food and water for two days together with ammuration, the extra belts for the RpD machine guns, grenades, and rockets for the RPG-7 launchers.
Though they could not run under that weight, Sergeant Alphonso, wh
o was driving the van, set a cracking pace. Before jightfall they passed through the Renanio lines into the "destruction area," a Eree-fire zone where there was a possibility of encountering Frehino patrols, and Sean ordered a change of formation.
They opened up to intervals of ten meters between the men in the angle file of the men column, and he posted flankers at the head and tail to guard against surprise attack.
They kept going hard during the night with ten-minute breaks every two hours, and by dawn they had covered almost forty miles.
During the dawn break, Sean moved up to the head of the column and squatted between Alphonso and Job.
"How much further to the trucks?" Sean demanded.
"We have done well," Alphonso, replied, and Pointed ahead.
Wilbur Smith - C07 A Time To Die Page 36
