Wilbur Smith - C07 A Time To Die

by C07 A Time To Die(Lit)

  Then he was obliterated in a wall of flame.

  "That was a human being," she thought. "A living, breathing person, and I destroyed him. she expected a rush of guilt and remorse.

  How much a part of her was the belief that all life, especially human life, was sacred. The guilt did not come. Instead, she was borne aloft on a wave of savage triumph, the same berserk fury that had overtaken her so unexpectedly- sky for another she looked around her swiftly, searching the target, something else to destroy, anything to wreak her vengeance on. The dawn Sky was empty. The burning carcasses of Hind gunships lay strewn over the slopes of the hill and among the trees of the valley forest. They all down," she thought. "We got them all."

  Stinger sections were From the forest, the Shanganes of the swarming up the hill, breaking into the laager to support Sean's 0 defenders throwing down their weapassault. She saw the Frelim ons and cowering in their dugouts with hands raised pathetically, attempting to surrender. She watched dispassionately as the yelling Shanganes bayoneted and clubbed them like slaughtered chickens.

  At her feet Job groaned, and instantly her rage was gone. She flung the empty missile launcher aside and dropped down on her knees beside him. wound the "I thought you were dead!" she whispered as she un scarf from around her neck with fingers that only now began t tremble. "Don't die, Job. Please don't die." The scarf was stained with sweat and dust, its seams were unraveled and torn, but she balled it up and stuffed it into the terrible wound, pressing down on it with her full weight to try and stanch the flood of his LIFE's blood.

  "Sean will be here soon," she told him. Don die, Job. Fight, please fight. I'll help you."

  Sean and Matatu crouched below the parapet, ducking lower as the storm of cannon fire flew only inches over their heads and filled their eyes and nostrils with dust from the ripped sandbags.

  The instant the firing Ceased, Sean bobbed up, just in time to see the stricken Hind fall tail first against the rocky hillside and tear itself to pieces as it rolled down the slope.

  "Well, blow me down, those damned Stingers actually work!"

  g high on his own fear. Beside him Matatu he laughed, still flyin giggled and clapped his hands. "Like shooting sand grouse with the577 bandukil" he cried in Swahili, then leaped to his feet to follow Sean over the Parapet.

  Three Frelimo troopers bolted out of their dugout as they saw them coming, and Sean fired the AKM from the hip, a short tap that caught one of them low in the back and flung him facedown.

  The other two threw down their rifles and fell to their knees, gibbering with terror, hands held high over their heads. Sean ran on past them, and they collapsed with relief as he ignored them.

  Sean was through the outer defenses and into the laager proper with its service areas and hardened helicopter emplacements. The workshops and fuel dumps were heavily sandbagged and covered with camouflage netting. Stray mortar shells were still falling among them, kicking up geysers of dust and gusts of whistling shrapnel. One of the Hinds had fallen near the far perimeter of the laager and was burning fiercely, oily black smoke billowing back over the workshops.

  In the confusion, human figures scurried about without apparent purpose, unarmed technicians in baggy gray overalls who flung up their arms when they saw Sean, most of them dropping onto their knees to emphasize their surrender. In full camouflage paint and with the bloodlust and elation of battle contorting his features, Sean cut a ferocious and terrifying figure.

  "Down!" Sean gestured at them with the barrel of the AKM and with transparent relief they fell facedown in the dust and clasped their hands behind their heads.

  Just ahead he made out the long, drooping rotors of a Hind protruding above the sandbagged wall of its emplacement.

  "One didn't even get up," he thought as he raced toward it, but at that moment the rotors began to revolve slowly, swiftly building up speed. Somebody was attempting to start the machine.

  Sean darted through the narrow entrance and into the deep circular emplacement. He checked his charge for a moment to survey the interior.

  The Hind in its blotched camouflage towered over him, its rotors whirling over his head as they built up to start speed on the Isotov turbo engine. Three RtIssian ground crew were crowded around the front of the timchine, and incongruously Sean noticed the crimson arrow emblem painted on the Hind's nose that designated them an "Excellent Crew," one of the cherished performance awards of the Soviet air force.

  The ground crew turned their white faces toward Scan and gaped at him. He jerked the muzzle of the AKM at them, and they fell back.

  ckpit of the helicopter was still The canopy of the weapons co open, and one of the flight crew was clambering up into it. Only his plump backside in gray flying overalls protruded. Sean reached up between his legs and seized a handful of the man's genitals. The Russian squealed shrilly as Sean used them as a handle to drag him backward and threw him against the sandbagged side wall of the emplacement.

  The spinning rotors whistled shrilly as the turbo engine caught, and Sean jumped up onto the boarding step of the helicopter. The pilot's canopy was also open, and Sean thrust his AKM forward.

  The pilot at the controls was young and thin, with pale blond hair cut very short. In his haste to get the Hind away he had not even donned his flying helmet. He turned his head to look at Sean.

  His complexion was marred by angry purple and red acne and his eyes were very pale blue. They widened dramatically as Sean touched the tip of his acne-scarred nose with the muzzle of the AKM and said, "Party is over, Ivan. Let's go home."

  It was apparent that this helicopter had not been scheduled for the dawn sortie that morning and the pilot and his crew had only begun their attempt to get the machine airborne once the attack had begun. It was less than ten minutes since the first mortar shells had fallen into the laager, not enough time, though they had almost made it.

  "Kill the engine," Sean told the pilot. He enforced the order by jamming the muzzle of the AKM into the pilot's nose with sufficient force to bring a smear of blood from one nostril and tears from both of the pale eyes. Reluctantly the pilot pushed the fuel mixture control to fully lean and cut both master switches. The whistle of the turbo died away.

  "Out!" said Sean. The pilot understood the gesture and tone, if not the word. He unclasped his safety belt and climbed down into the laager.

  Sean lined up the pilot, the flight engineer, and the three members of the ground crew against the sandbagged wall. "Welcome to the capitalist world, comrades," he greeted them, then looked back at the helicopter. "Jackpot!" He grinned, still euphoric with the adrenaline in his blood. "We've got ourselves a real live, working Hind, Matatu!"

  Matatu was having a grand time. "Let's kill them now," he suggested merrily. "Give me the banduki. Let me shoot them for you." Sean had seen Matatu fire only one shot in his entire life, when as a joke Sean had let him fire the double.577. it had lifted Matatu clear off his feet and deposited him ten feet away.

  You couldn't hit one of them even at this range, you bloodthirsty little bugger." Sean grinned down at him, then once more concentrated all his attention on the Hind. The magnitude of the prize he had taken began to dawn upon him.

  The Hind would be a magnificent escape vehicle. He, Claudia, Job, and Matatu could get out of here with first-class tickets. Then reality overtook him, and his spirits dropped. He had never flown a helicopter, did not even have the vaguest notion of how to do so.

  All he knew was that it required a delicate and expert touch on the controls and was entirely different from piloting a fixed-wing aircraft.

  He looked back calculatingly at the Russian pilot. Despite the acne and his unprepossessing appearance, he thought he detected a stubborn, proud streak in the man's pale eyes, and he knew that the air force officers were among the elite of the Soviet armed forces. The Russian was almost certainly a fanatical patriot.

  "Not much chance of getting you to act as ferry pilot," he guessed. Then he spoke aloud: "all right, ge
ntlemen, let's get out of here." He indicated the exit from the emplacement, and under the barrel of the AKM they trooped toward it obediently. As the Russian pilot passed, Sean stopped him and lifted the Tokarev pistol from the holster at his hip. "You won't need that, Ivan," he said, and tucked the pistol into his own belt.

  There was a fortified workshop almost abutting the Hind's emplacement. It had been excavated into the hillside and roofed with poles and sandbags. Sean herded the Russians down into it, then looked around him.

  The battle had fizzled out, though a few desultory shots and the pop and bang of burning ammunition could still be heard.

  Through the drifts of smoke and dust, he saw the Shanganes of the Renamo force rounding up the prisoners and searching for loot and booty. He recognized some of the missile crews. Once the Hinds had been destroyed, they must have abandoned their Stingers and rushed up the hill to join the sack of the laager.

  He saw one of themWayoneting a Frelimo prisoner in the buttocks and legs and roaring with laughter as the man squirmed in the dirt, kic0big aridocontorting his body in an attempt to avoid the point of the blade. Other Renamo were emerging from the dugouts, rifles slung over their shoulders and arms full of booty.

  Sean was accustomed to the ethics of irregular troops in Africa, but this blatant in discipline annoyed him. He snarled at them, and it was a measure of the force of his personality and the authority he wielded over them that even in the heady moments of victory they obeyed him with alacrity. The Renamo who had been torturing his prisoner paused only to dispatch the maimed victim with a bullet in the back of the neck before hurrying t o Sean's bidding.

  "Guard these white prisoners," Sean ordered them. "If harm comes to them, General China will roast your testicles on a slow fire and make you eat them," he warned.

  Without looking back he strode through the laager, reasserting his command, getting his triumphant howling shrieking Shanganes back to sanity. He saw Sergeant Alphonso ahead of him.

  "We can't carry much loot away. Let the men take their pick, and then I want limpet mines in the storerooms after everything has been drenched with avgas from the drums," he ordered Sergeant Alphonso. He glanced at his wristwatch. "We can expect Frelimo to counterattack the laager within the hour. I want to be gone by then."

  "No!" Alphonso shook his head. "General China has moved three companies in between us to hold the Frelimo counterattack.

  He has ordered you to hold this position until he arrives."

  Sean pulled up short and stared at Alphonso. "What the hell are you talking about? China is two days" march away on the river!"

  Alphonso grinned and shook his head. "General China will be here in an hour. He followed us with five companies of his best troovs. He has never been more than an hour behind us, not since we lit the river."

  "How do you know this?" Sean demanded.

  Alphonso grinned again and patted the radio on the back of the trooper who stood beside him. "I spoke to the general ten minutes ago, as soon as we killed the last of the Russian hen shaw

  "Why didn't you tell me before this, you bastard?" Sean growled.

  "The general ordered me not to. But now he has ordered me to tell you that he is very pleased with the killing of the hen shaw and he says that you are like a son to him. When he arrives he will reward you."

  "AB right." Sean changed his orders. "If we have to hold the laager, get your men into the perimeter defenses. We win use the 12.7-men heavy machine guns."

  Sean broke off as a Shangane trooper came running up the hill toward him.

  "Nkosi!" The man panted. As soon as he saw his face, Sean knew it was bad news.

  "The woman?" he demanded, seizing the messenger's arm. "Is the white woman hurt?"

  The Shangane shook his head. "She is safe. She sent me to you.

  It's the Matabele, Captain Job. He is 4it."

  "How bad?" Sean was already starting to run, and he shouted the question over his shoulder.

  "He's dying," the Shangane called after him. "The Matabele is dying."

  Sean knew where to look; he himself had selected the copse of knob-thorn acacia as Job's attack position. The first rays of the morning sun were turning the tops of the knob-thorns to gold as Sean ran down the hill. With the help of two Shanganes, Claudia had moved Job onto soft level ground beneath one of the trees. She had propped his head on one of the backpacks and had a field dressing over the wound.

  She looked up and cried, "Oh, Sean, thank God!" Her shirt was drenched with drying blood, and she saw Sean's expression. "Not my blood," she assured him. "I'm all right."

  Sean transferred all his attention to Job. His face was a sickly blue-gray color, and the flesh seemed to have melted from his skull like hot tar.

  Sean touched his check, and his skin was cold as death. Frantically he searched for a pulse in the wrist of Job's good arm.

  Although it was faint and rapid, his relief was intense.

  "He's lost huge quantities of blood," Claudia whispered. "But I've contained the bleeding now."

  "He's in shock," Sean muttered. "Let me have a look."

  "Don't lift that dressing," Claudia warned him quickly. "It's ghastly.

  He was hit on the point of the shoulder by a cannon shell.

  It's just mangled flesh and bone chips. His arm is hanging by a shred of muscle and sinew."

  "Take Matatu with you," Sean cut in brusquely. "Go up to the laager. Find where they had their first aid post. The Russians will have a decent stock. Find it. I want plasma and a drip set. Dressings and bandages, those are the most urgent. But if you can find antiseptic and painkillers-" Claudia scrambled to her feet. "Sean, I was so worried about you! I saw-" A

  "You don't get ri4 of me that easy." He did not look up from Job's face. "Now off you go, and get back here as quick as you can.

  Matatu, go with Donna, look after her."

  The two of them went at a run. Until they returned with medical supplies, Sean was helpless. But for something to keep himself occupied he wet his bandanna from the water bottle and began to sponge the blood and dirt from Job's face. Job's eyelids fluttered open, and Sean saw that he was conscious.

  "Okay, Job, I'm here. Don't try and talk."

  Job closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he swiveled them downward. He was too weak to move his head, yet he was trying to look down at his body, trying to check the extent of his injuries. It was always the first reaction.

  "Is it lung blood I'm losing? Are both my feet still here, both my hands-?"

  "Right arm and shoulder," Sean told him. "Twelve-point-seven millimeter cannon nicked you. Just a little bitty scratch. You are going to make it, lad, written guarantee. Would I lie to you?"

  A faint smile tugged up the corners of Job's mouth, and he lowered one eyelid in a conspiratorial wink. Sean felt his heart begin to break. He knew he had lied. Job wasn't going to make it.

  "Relax," he ordered cheerfully. "Lie back and enjoy it, as the bishop said to the actress. I'm in charge here now."

  And Job closed his eyes.

  Claudia picked out the medical dugout by the Red Cross insignia at the entrance. There were two Shangane Renamo looting the interior, ransacking it for booty, but Claudia shrieked at them so violently that they slunk away guiltily.

  The labels on the cartons of medical supplies were all in Russian Cyrillic script. Claudia had to rip the lids open and check the contents of each. She found boxes that contained a dozen plastic bags of clear plasma each and gave two of them to Matatu. The drip sets were on the shelf below. Field dressings and bandages were easy, but she was flummoxed by the tubes of ointments and pill bottles. However, the contents of one tube were yellow-brown and had the characteristic iodine aroma; she selected those, and then she found that some of the labels also had notations in French and Arabic. She had a smattering of both languages, enough to identify which were antibiotics and painkillers.

  She found two field packs, obviously prepared for use by the Russian f
irst aid teams, and included these in her selection; then she and Matatu, heavily laden, hurried out of the first aid post.

  Before she reached the perimeter of the laager again, a dreadfully familiar figure loomed out of the banks of drifting smoke ahead of her-the very last person she had expected to see here.

  "Miss Monterro," General China called. "What a fortunate encounter. I need your assistance." China was accompanied by half a dozen officers of his staff.

  Claudia recovered swiftly from the shock of the unexpected meeting. "I'm busy," she snapped, trying to step around him. "Job is badly wounded. I have to get back to him."

  "My need is greater than anybody else's, I'm afraid." China put out an arm.