Wilbur Smith - C07 A Time To Die

by C07 A Time To Die(Lit)

"The trucks are there in that valley."

  They were on the foreslope of another area of hilly, forested ground, and below them the terram, was broken and bad. Sean appreciated why General China had chosen this area of the Serra da Gorongosa to defend. There were no roads in this wilderness, and an attacking army would have to fight its way past an endless series of natural strong points and fortresses.

  The valley Alphonso pointed out was some miles ahead of them and beyond it the country changed from its savage mood and Battened into a broad gentle plain. Down there the dark forest was broken up and blotched with paler grasslands.

  Alphonso pointed to the horizon. "Over there are the railway line and the road to the coast..." He was about to speak again when Sean caught ins arm to silence him and cocked his head in a listening attitude.

  It was some ;minds%efbre the sound separated itself from the gentle susurration of the dawn wind in the forest below them and hardened into the whine of turboshaft engines and spinning ratam "There!" Job's eyesight was phenomenal and he picked out the approaching specks even against the dark background of hills and forests.

  "Hinds." Sean spotted them just as Alphonso shouted, "Take cover!" The column scattered into cover and they watched the gunships come on, rising and dropping as they kept low over the hills, sailing northward toward the Renamo lines in an extended formation. 263 Sean watched them through the Russian-made binoculars he had acquired from the Renamo stores. It was the first opportunity he had had to study a Hind at leisure. There were four of them, and Sean surmised that there would be three flights of four machines to make up a full squadron of twelve.

  "My God, they are grotesque," he murmured. It seemed impossible that anything so heavy and misshapen could ever break the ties of gravity. The engines were housed in the top of the fuselage below the main rotor and formed the humpback that gave the machine its nickname. The air intakes to the turbos were situated above the cockpit canopy. The belly drooped like that of a pregnant sow. The nose was deformed by the hanging turret that housed the Gatling cannon, and from the stubby wings and bloated belly were suspended an untidy array of rocket systems, ordnance stations, and radar aerials.

  At the rear of the engine mountings the ungainly lines of the machine were further disturbed by another extraneous structure that seemed to have been tacked onto it as an afterthought.

  "Exhaust suppressor boxes." Sean remembered an article he had read in one of the flying magazines to which he subscribed.

  These structures masked the exhaust emissions of the twin turboshaft engines and shielded them from the infrared sensors of hostile missiles. The author of the article had lauded their efficacy, but although they made the machines almost invulnerable to heat seekers, the weight of the devices combined with that of the titanium armor to reduce the Hind's speed and range severely. Sean wished he had read the article with more attention, for he could not recall the figures for air speed and range the author had quoted.

  The flight of gunships passed a mile or so to the east of them, boring steadily northward.

  "General China is in for a breakfast show," Job remarked as he rose from cover to reassemble the column and continue the march.

  Although they had been going all night, the pace never slackened, and even Sean was impressed by the condition and training of Alphonso's company. "Almost as good as the Scouts," he decided. Then he grinned to himself. "Nobody could be that good."

  More than once Sean dropped back to check that the men he had in the drag were anti tracking and covering spoor, for now there was real danger a Frelimo patrol might find them. He had fallen only a few hundred meters behind the rear of the column and was down on one knee, studying the earth intently, when suddenly he knew that he was not alone, that he was being watched.

  instantly Sean threw himself forward, the rifle coming off his shoulder as he rolled over twice into the cover of a fallen log beside the path and froze, his finger on the trigger, his gaze raking the bush where he thought he had seen the flirt of movement.

  It was closer than he had imagined. From the clump of grass right beside him came a mischievous giggle. Sean raised his head and whispered furiously, "I've warned you not to sneak up on me like that."

  Matatu's head popped out of the grass, and he grinned merrily.

  "You are getting old, my Bwana. I could have stolen your socks and boots without you knowing."

  "And I could have shot your brown backside full of holes. Did you find the memT" Matatu nodded, and his smile slipped.

  "Where is she?"

  "Half a day's march upstream, in a stockade with many other women.

  "Is she well?"

  Matatu hesitated, torn between telling the truth and telling Sean what would please him. Then he sighed and shook his head. "They keep her in a hole in the ground, and there are marks on her arms and legs. They force her to work with the shit-buckets-" He broke off as he saw Sean's expression and went on hurriedly, "But she laughed when she saw me."

  "Did you give her the paper?"

  "Ndio. She hid it in her clothing."

  "Nobody saw you?"

  The reply was beneath Matatu's dignity, and Sean smiled. "I know, nobody sees Matatu unless Matatu wants them to..." He broke off, and both of them looked upward.

  Faintly, from far away, came the now familiar whistle of turboprop engines and rotors.

  "The Hinds, return iQ from clobbering the Renamo lines," Sean murmured. The machines were out of sight beyond the canopy of the forest trees, but he sound passed swiftly southward.

  "With their limited range, their base can't be too far," Sean thought. He looked at Matatu thoughtfully. "Matatu, those indeki, could you find the place where they come from, and where they return to?"

  Matatu's gaze flickered with a moment's doubt. Then he grinned, once again brimming with bravado. "Matatu can follow anything, man or animal or indeki, anywhere it goes," he boasted confidently.

  "Go!" Sean ordered. "Find the place. There will be trucks and Iwo many white men. It will be well guarded. Don't let them catch you.

  Matatu looked affronted, and Sean clasped Ins shoulder with affection. "When you have found the place, come back to General China's camp at the Pungwe River. I will meet you there."

  As unquestioningly as a gun dog sent to retrieve a downed pheasant, Matatu bounded to his feet and tucked up the folds of his loincloth.

  "Until we meet again, go in peace, my Bwana.

  "Go in peace, Matatu," Sean called softly after him as the little man trotted away into the south. Sean watched him out of sight and then hurried to catch up with Alphonso's column.

  "They keep her in a hole in the ground, and there are marks on her arms and legs." Matatu's words echoed in his head, fueling his imagination and anger and determination.

  "Hold on, my love. Stick it out. I'll come to get you... soon," he promised her-and himself.

  They crossed the rim of another line of rocky kopjes, using a screen of jesse bush to conceal their movements against the skyline, and from good cover on the foreslope Alphonso pointed down into the valley below.

  "That is how we brought the trucks in," he explained, and Sean saw that the dry river course would be the only access for a vehicle into this bad country. Even then it must have been a laborious task negotiating the rocky chutes and barriers that broke up the stretches of smooth river sand in the depths of the gorge.

  "Where did you hide the trucks?" Sean asked without lowering his binoculars.

  Alphonso chuckled. "Unless Frehmo is cleverer than I think they are, I will show you."

  They left sentries posted along the ridge to warn of the approach of an enemy patrol. Then Alphonso led the rest of the column down into the gorge. The lower they descended, the steeper became the sides, until there were sheer cliffs on each side and they were forced to take a narrow game trail to the river bottom. It was suffocatingly hot in the narrow gorge; no breeze reached down here, and the rocks absorbed the sun's heat and threw it back at them.

&n
bsp; "The trucks?" Sean demanded impatiently.

  Alphonso pointed to the cliffs opposite. "In there," he said.

  Sean was about to snarl irritably at him when he realized that the cliffs had been carved by wind and flood water over the ages.

  "Caves?" he asked, and Alphonso led him through the ankle-deep river sand to the cliff face.

  Some of the cave entrances were merely scooped shallowly into the red rock, others had collapsed or were clogged with debris brought down by the summer floods. Alphonso indicated one of these and gave an order to his men. They stacked their weapons and began to clear the debris from the mouth of the cavern.

  Within an hour they had opened it sufficiently for Alphonso and Sean to scramble through into the cave. Deep in the gloomy gut, Sean made out the shape of the first truck. His eyes accustomed themselves to the poor light as he moved toward it, and he saw others parked beyond it.

  "How the hell did you get them in here?" he asked incredulously.

  "We pushed and carried them," Alphonso explained.

  "I hope to hell we'll be able to get them out again," Sean muttered, and climbed onto the running board of the nearest vehicle.

  It was coated with a thick layer of red dust. He yanked open the door on the driver's side and sneezed in the dust, but saw with relief that the key was still in the ignition.

  He reached in and turned it. Nothing happened. The ignition light stayed dark and the needles on the dashboard instruments never flickered.

  "I disconnected the batteries," Alphonso told him.

  Sean grunted. "Bright lad, but how the hell did you know to do that?"

  "Before the war I was a bus driver in Vila da Monica," Alphonso explained. It was odd to think' he had ever had such a prosaic occupation.

  "All right," Sean said. "Then you can help me get this one started. Is there a toolbox?"

  Each of the trucks w.& equipped with two spare tires, a hand pump, a toolbox, a to aulin, and a long-range fuel tank. Once rp Sean had reconnect8d the battery of the first truck, there was sufficient charge to produce a dull red glow in the ignition lamp on the dashboard and to raise the needle of the fuel gauge to the "half" position but insufficient to kick the engine over.

  "Find the crank handle," Sean ordered. It was secured behind the passenger seat in the cab. Two hefty Shanganes swung the engine over with such gusto that it fired and stuttered, then burst into a steady roar. Thick blue exhaust smoke filled the cavern, and Sean lifted his foot off the accelerator pedal. Two of the tires were flat and had to be pumped by hand. While this was being done, the troopers cleared the last of the rocks and tree trunks from the mouth of the cave and with the transmission in four-wheel drive Sean reversed sharply down the incline and bounced and jolted over the rough ground.

  When the truck hung up on the boulders of the riverbank and the wheels spun without purchase, twenty men flung their combined weight on it and by brute force shoved it through. The Unimog crashed over the lip of the bank and into the river-bed.

  Sean drove it clear and parked under the opposite cliffs. He left the engine running to charge the depleted battery, and they climbed back to the cavern and started work on the second truck.

  Apart from flat tires and batteries, they found no serious defects in any of the vehicles. One after the other, they coaxed the engines to life, then manhandled them down into the river-bed. It was the middle of the afternoon by the time all three trucks were lined up on the white river sand.

  "Get the men to change uniforms now," Sean ordered. "Tell them to leave their other gear in the cave."

  Joking and laughing, they stripped off their Renarno tiger stripes and donned the British-pattern battle dress of the Zimbabwean Army. While they were busy, Sean went over the vehicles again. He found the army registration papers in a plastic wallet in the cubbyholes of each of the Unimogs.

  "Hope we never have to show them," he grumbled to Job.

  "They are probably listed as stolen or destroyed."

  He opened the caps on the fuel tanks and physically checked the contents of each. "Enough to get us to Grand Reef and back to Saint Mary's," he estimated, "with not much to spare."

  He ordered the windscreen and side windows of the cabs to be cleaned but the body work to be left as it was, caked with mud and dust.

  It gave them the appearance of a patrol returning from a sortie into the deep bush and, more important, partially obscured the military markings and registration numbers.

  Once the men had changed into disguise and cached their Renamo uniforms, Sean and Job inspected each man and his equipment minutely before allowing him to board one of the Unimogs.

  It was almost five o'clock before they were ready to leave. Both Job and Alphonso had heavy-vehicle driver's licenses, and one of the Renamo troopers, who gloried in the name of Ferdinand da Costa, claimed driving experience. Sean took the passenger seat beside him to check his performance.

  Job drove the leading truck, while Alphonso was in the middle and Sean and the learner driver in the rear. Apart from a heavy foot on the accelerator pedal, Ferdinand da Costa proved himself an adequate driver, but Sean took the wheel from him at the difficult places.

  In line astern, they churned through the heavy sand, following in the wheel ruts of Job's Unimog, winding up the river course for half a mile before they reached the first obstacle.

  It required the combined efforts of all forty men to heave and shove the trucks up the first rocky chute in the river-bed, and even then they had to cut twenty-foot-long mo pane poles and use them as levers to prize the wheels up over the larger boulders.

  The powerful truck motors bellowed in high revolutions, blue diesel smoke billowed from the exhausts, and Sean remarked to Job, "An open invitation to every Frelimo within twenty miles to join the party." Then he checked his wristwatch. "We are failing behind our schedule."

  They tried to make up time along the easier stretches of the river course, but the sunset and darkness caught them still almost twenty kilometers from the main east-to-west road between the sea and the border post at Urntah.

  Nightfall made the journey more arduous. Sean dared not use the trucks" headlights, and they had to proceed in darkness alleviated only by starlight and a moon in its last quarter.

  It was after midnight before they could at last leave the river-bed by negotiating a low spot in the bank. With four men walking ahead of the lead truck to guide it around ant bear holes and other concealed obstacles, they struck out directly southward and within two hours had intersected the overgrown disused track Alphonso had told Sean about.

  Sean called a halt. They spread the field map on the hood of the lead truck and by flashlight studied it anxiously.

  "We are here," Alphonso told him. "This track runs up to an old asbestos mine; it was abandoned by the Portuguese in 1963 at the start of the Frelir& war."

  "We'll rest up hWe," Sean decided. "Get the trucks off the road and covered with branches. We must expect the Hinds to overfly us sometime tomorrow. No cooking fires, no smoking."

  At four that afternoon, they woke those still asleep and ate a hasty meal of cold rations. Sean ordered the journey to be resumed, and they stripped the camouflage from the trucks. They boarded the entire raiding party except for the four men who walked ahead of the leading truck, examining the ancient overgrown wheel ruts of the track for Frehmo anti vehicle land mines, probing any suspicious lump or hollow with a bayonet before waving the column forward.

  The sun was just setting when at last they came in sight of the main road, its macadamized surface snaking through the open forest and winding around the scattered kopJes. Scan halted the column well back out of sight of the road and went forward with Job, leaving Alphonso in command.

  From the top of a commanding hillock they kept the road under observation until it was fully dark. During that time two patrols passed, both heading eastward, each comprised of three or four battered and dusty Unimogs packed with armed men in Zimbabwean combat gear and with an RPD l
ight machine gun mounted above the cab.

  They rumbled along with strict intervals of a hundred meters between vehicles, and watching them through the binoculars Sean remarked, "Well, at least we look like the real thing."

  "Except for your pale face," Job pointed out.

  "A birth defect," Sean apologized. "But I'll keep it out of sight until it's needed."

  They scrambled down from the hilltop and trudged back along the track to the hidden trucks.

  "From here you are on your own," Sean told Ferdinand, the driver. "Do try to remember to put the clutch in before you change into bottom gear, you'll find it a great help."

  Dressed in the uniform of the deceased guards major, Sean climbed into the back of the cab behind Job's driving seat. The space was barely sufficient to contain him; he had to twist his shoulders at an angle from his hips and sit flat on the metal floorboards. It was uncomfortable to begin with, but Sean knew that within a few hours it would become agony. However, he was out of sight yet able to communicate with Job merely by raising his voice.