Wilbur Smith - C07 A Time To Die

by C07 A Time To Die(Lit)

  "That one is yours, Tendela." He reinforced the target allocations. "See how he stands in the sky. You will shoot from that clump of dark trees at the edge of the vlei. Have you marked it well?"

  I have marked it, Nkosi Kakulu," he affirmed. The sky was washed by the blood of the dying day, and as he watched the red orb sink away beneath the trees, Sean wondered how much more blood the dawn would bring.

  There was that short period of African twilight during which it was not yet dark enough to move off the ridge. There was nothing further to discuss, and Sean and Alphonso sat close together. The feeling was so familiar. No matter how many times Sean waited like this, he would never be able to control or ignore the tension that pulled like rubber bands across his guts. It was the heady anticipation of the draft of terror that soon he would drink to the dregs. He longed for it as the addict does for the needle, and dreaded it to the limits of his soul.

  "We will make a good kill," Alphonso said quietly. "It will be a fight for men who are truly men."

  Sean nodded. "Yes, my friend, it will be a good fight, and if we fail, then you must try to kill me. That also will be a good fight."

  "We will see," Alphonso growled, his eyes reflecting the smoky red glare of the sunset. "Yes, we will see."

  The crisp silhouette of the hill on which the Hinds were laagered dissolved with the onset of night. Then Venus, the evening star, appeared, and its cold unwavering light burned directly above the hilltop, seeming to single it out for them.

  Within the first hour of darkness, the leading troopers of the raiding column emerged from the trees behind them. Job was at the head of the column with Matatu guiding him and Claudia beside him. Sean met them with a quiet word and immediately began to marshal the troopers into their various units. The section leaders took charge of their missile teams, and the Stinger launchers were unpacked and assembled; the spare missiles in their sealed, frangible tubes were checked and readied.

  Sean and Job and Claudia went from team to team, running the final checks on the missile launchers, making certain the battery packs were fully charged and correctly connected, the cylinders of freon gas were open-yak;,ed, and the sighting screens lit up when the actuator was engaged.

  At last Sean was ready to deploy the missile teams. But before he did so, he called the section leaders together and for the last time made each repeat his orders. Satisfied at last, he began to dispatch them to their attack positions. He allowed a five-minute interval after each team leaving the ridge.

  Alphonso was in charge of the missile teams attacking the eastern perimeter of the laager, and because he had farther to go to get into position, he left first.

  When it was time for Job, who would lead the missile attack on the western perimeter, to go, he and Sean shook hands briefly.

  There was no exchange of good wishes; they were both superstitious about that. Instead Job asked facetiously, "Listen, Sean, about that four thousand dollars in bonus and back pay, don't you want to pay me out now?"

  "Will you take a check?" Sean grinned at him through the dark mask of his camouflage cream. Job answered his grin, punched his shoulder, and moved away out of earshot so Sean could speak to Claudia in private.

  "I don't want to leave you," she whispered.

  Sean hugged her fiercely. "Stay close to Job," he ordered.

  "Come back to me safely."

  "Yes.

  "Promise me.

  "I promise," he said, and she pulled out of his embrace and turned away, disappearing into the darkness after Job.

  As Sean stared after her, he found that his hands were trembling. He thrust them into his pockets and clenched his fists. "Love doesn't do much for one's fighting instincts," he thought, and tried to dismiss her from his mind. "She'll be all right with Job."

  The assault party was waiting for him patiently, squatting at the edge of the tree line. Twenty-four men, the cannon fodder, the meat bombs, he thought ruefully, those who had failed the aptitude tests for operating the Stingers. While the missile crews would fire from standoff positions five hundred meters outside the perimeter of the laager, the assault party would attack it head on and frontal, deliberately drawing fire while trying to flush the Hinds up into the air for the missile gunners to get a fair shot at them. It was this unit that would meet the 12.7-men cannons in their fortified positions, as well as all the other dangers and obstacles that certainly guarded the laager. Theirs was the most dangerous task, and for that reason alone Sean could not delegate the command of them to another. He himself would lead them in.

  "Come on, Matatu," he said quietly. When there was real danger at hand, wounded game in thick cover or an enemy position to attack, Matatu's self-chosen place was always at Sean's side. Nothing could dislodge him from it.

  As a mark of his esteem, Alphonso had presented Sean with an AKM assault rifle, the improved and updated version of the ubiquitous AK-47 that was much prized and sought after by the Renamo guerrillas. Sean carried this weapon now as he led the assault team down off the ridge. With Matatu guiding them through the night, they circled out to get in between the main railway line and the laager, as close as was prudent to the spur of line on which the railway fuel tankers stood.

  There was no urgency-they had an night to get into position so they went with a stealth that increased the closer they came to the enemy positions.

  It was after two in the morning, and the small slice of the moon had set before Sean had them in their jump-off positions, spread out at precise intervals so that at his command, they could sweep forward in skirmishing formation.

  He made one final inspection of their dispositions, crawling silently from man to man, personally sighting in the 60-men M4 command o mortars for them, checking their equipment by sense of touch alone, making absolutely certain each of them clearly understood his objective, then leaving them with a whisper of encouragement and a brief but firm clasp of the shoulder. At last, with everything done that could be done, he settled down to wait.

  This was always both the worst and the best part of the hunt. As he lay in the silence, he wondered how much of his life he had spent like this, waiting for it to began waiting for shooting light, waiting in the blind for that breath-stopping moment when a leopard would appear with magical suddenness in the bait tree, an elegant silhouette against the pale backdrop of the dawn.

  His mind went back over the years to those other adventures and wild endeavors, to the terrible risks and almost unbearable thrills, and suddenly it dawned on him that this was probably the last time it would happen. He was over forty years of age and Claudia Monterro had entered his life; it was time for it to change.

  There was sadness and, at the same time, satisfaction in that thought.

  "Let the last be the best of all the game," he thought, and in the utter darkness of predawn he heard a sound at once thrilling and terrifying, the shrill high whine of a mighty turbo engine, howling like a man-eating wolf in the night. Almost at once it was joined by another and then another. The Hind squadron was starting their engines, warming up for their first sortie in the dawn.

  Sean checked his watch. The luminous dial showed eleven minutes before five. It was almost time. Without thinking, he unclipped the curved banana magazine from under the AKM rifle and replaced it with another from the pouch of spare magazines on his webbing. That habitual gesture gave him the comfort of long familiarity. Beside him Matatu, seeing him do it, stirred expectantly. The dawn wind came as softly as a lover and stroked Sean's cheek.

  He turned his head toward the east and held up his hand with fingers spread. He could just make out the silhouette of his fingers against the coming dawn. It was what the Matabele called "the time of the horns," when a herdsman could first see the horns of his cattle against the sky.

  "Shooting light in ten minutes," Sean reminded himself, and knew how long it would take those minutes to pass.

  One after another the Hinds shut down their engines to an idle.

  The ground crews would
be completing the refueling and rearming, and the flying crews would be going aboard.

  Sean had to judge it exactly; the light must be just right. The Hinds would probably not use landing lights, and the missile gunners must be able to see them clearly against the dawn.

  The light bloomed swiftly. Sean closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten before he opened them again. Now he could make out the stark outline of the crest of the hill, like a cutout in black cardboard. The lacework of the msasa trees stood out against the purple sky, swaying gracefully in the dawn breeze.

  "Shoot!" he said, and tapped the shoulder of the mortar man beside him. The trooper leaned forward, holding the mortar bomb in both hands, and dropped it into the mouth of the mortar tube.

  The charge in the tail ignited and with a polite pop hurled the signal bomb five hundred feet into the sky above the hilltop. It exploded in a twinkling red flare of lights.

  Claudia Monterro followed Job down off the ridge, keeping close enough behind him she need only reach out her hand to touch him.

  Job carried one of the missile launchers across his shoulders, and behind Claudia the number two of their team was bowed beneath the weight of the spare rocket tubes.

  The footing was loose and dangerous, while quartz pebbles as treacherous as hall bearings rolled under foot. It pleased her that she was as steady and surefooted as any of them over this difficult ground.

  Nevertheless she was sweating in the night chill as they reached the bottom of the slope and crept forward toward the perimeter of the laager. Only a few short weeks ago she would have felt inept and awkward in these circumstances, but now she oriented herself by the beacon of the evening star above the hilltop and responded instantly to Job's signals, picking her footfalls and anti tracking almost instinctively.

  They reached the dense copse of trees that was their attack position and crept in among them. Claudia helped Job set up the Stinger ready for firing, then found herself a comfortable perch at the base of one of the trees to wait out the night.

  Job left her there with just the Shangane number two loader for company and disappeared into the darkness like a hunting leopard. She was unhappy to see him go, but not long ago she would have been panic-stricken. She realized how much self-reliance and to learn in these last few weeks.

  fortitude she had been forced "Papa will be proud of me," she smiled to herself, using the future tense as though her father still existed. "Of course he does," she assured herself. "He's still out there somewhere, looking out for me. How else would I have made it this far9l" His memory was a comfort, and as she thought about him he became confused in her mind with Sean, so that they seemed to merge into a single entity as though her father had somehow achieved a new existence in her lover. It was a good feeling that alleviated her loneliness, until suddenly Job returned as silently and abruptly as he had left.

  "All the other sections are in position," he whispered, settling down beside her. "But it's going to be a long night. Try and get some sleep."

  "I'll never be able to sleep," she answered, keeping her voice so low he had to lean close to her to catch the words. "Tell me about Sean Courtney. I want to know everything you know about him."

  has' Sometimes he's a hero, and sometimes he's a complete tard." Job thought about it. "But most of the time he's something in between."

  "Then why have you stayed with him so lone."

  "He's my friend," Job answered simply. Then, slowly and haltingly, he began to tell her about Sean, and they talked the night away.

  Claudia listened avidly, encouraging him with quiet questions.

  "He was married, wasn't he, Job?"

  "Why did he leave his home?

  I have heard that his family is enormously wealthy. Why did he choose this life?"

  So the night passed, and in those hours they became friends. He was the first true friend she had found in Africa, and in the end he autiful deep African voice, "I shall miss him said to her in that be I can tell."

  more than the two of you are parting, and that isn't

  "You speak as thoMgh so. It will be the same."

  "No," Job denied. "It will never be the same. He will go with you now. Our time together has ended. Yours is begkming."

  "Don't hate me for it, Job." She reached out to touch his arm in appeal. good together," he said. "I think your journey

  "You two will be with him win be as good as mine has been. My thoughts will go with you, and I wish you both great joy in each other."

  "Thank you, Job," she whispered. "You will always our friend."

  Job lifted his arm and with fingers spread held his open hand against the dawn.

  "The time of the horns," he murmured softly. "Soon now." And as he said it, a flower of bright crimson fire burst open in the sky above the hill.

  As the signal flare burst in the dawn sky, the battle was born. Sean always thought of it as the birth of a living thing, a monster that he could only try to direct but that had a life and a will of its own, a terrible thing that swept them all up and carried them along willy-nilly.

  He had placed the RPG-7 rocket launchers in the hands of his two best remaining gunners, but the expert marksmen had all gone to man the Stingers. The first rocket flew low, striking the earth twenty feet in front of the nearest fuel tanker; it burst in a vivid yellow flash, and Sean saw one of the Frefirno sentries cartwheel into the air. The second rocket was high, missing the tanker by six feet, reaching the top of its trajectory five hundred yards out, then dropping into the forest beyond, its detonation screened by trees and scrub.

  "Aim, you Shangane oxen!" Sean bellowed at them. He was up and running as he realized his mistake in not taking the first, crucial shot himself.

  The Frelimo sentries were screaming and scattering around the fuel tankers, and from the perimeter of the laager a 12.7-men cannon opened up, sluicing gaudy strings of fiery tracer across the sky.

  The rocketeer war fumbling to reload the RPG-7, but he was panicky and unsure in the dark. Sean snatched the launcher off his shoulder and with two deft movements removed the protecting nose cap of the missile and cleared the safety pin. He swung the launcher over his shoulder and dropped on one knee, aiming at the nearest tanker.

  "All the time in the world," he reminded himself, and waited for the puff of the morning breeze on his cheek to abate. The RPG-7 was wildly inaccurate in a crosswind, for the push of the wind on its tail fins would turn its nose into the wind.

  The breeze dropped, and Sean centered the sights on the fuel tanker. The range was just on three hundred meters, the limit of the rocket's accuracy, and he fired. The missile sped true, and the side of the tanker erupted in a tall sheet of volatile avgas. The sky filled with flames.

  Sean snarled at the rocketeer beside him, and the man fumbled another missile out of his pack, the cardboard propellant tube already attached to it.

  Burning avgas illuminated the southern slope of the hill like noonday. Sean was kneeling in the open, and the gunner on the 12.7-men swung his aim onto him.

  The earth around Sean dissolved into billowing clouds of dust and flying clods, and the rocketeer ducked.

  "Come on, you yellow bastard!" Sean completed the loading sequence unaided, making no effort to avoid the aim of the 12.7men gunner.

  He lifted the launcher onto his shoulder and aimed at the second fuel tanker. It was fit up by the flames as though it were a stage effect, but as he was on the point of firing, the tanker was obscured by a dancing curtain of yellow dust and the volley of cannon fire passed so close to Sean's head that his eardrums creaked and popped as though he were in a decompression chamber.

  He held his fire for three seconds. Then as the curtains of dust blew open, he fired through them. The second tanker burst, blown clear of the railway lines by the explosion of its lethal cargo.

  Burning avgas flowed down the slope like the lava of a miniature Vesuvius, and Sean threw the launcher at the rocketeer's chest.

  "Hit them on the head with the blo
ody thing!" he yelled at him.

  "That's the only damage you are going to do with it!"

  The mortar men were doing better. Sean had sighted their weapons for them, and they bobbed and weaved over the short mortar tubes as they dropped the finned projectiles into the open mouths.

  A steady stream of bombs lobbed high into the dawn sky and rained down into the hilltop laager.

  Sean watched the effect of the bursts with a dispassionate, professional eye. "Good," he murmured. "Good." But they had only been capable of carrying thirty bombs for each of the mortars; they he'd almost two kilos each, and they would be expended in a weig few short minutes. They must rush the perimeter while the exploding bombs distracted the Frelimo gunners. He hefted the AKM rifle and slipped the safety catch.

  "Go!" Sean yelled, and blew a short series of blasts on his whistle, "Go!"