"Pull yourself together, woman."
Sean looked up as she hurried to where he was still working over Job's blanket-wrapped body. "What happened?" he demanded.
"What kept you?"
"General China is here. He made me go with him."
"What did he want? What happened?"
"Nothing, not important. I'll tell you about it later. How is Job?"
"I've got a full liter of plasma into him," Sean replied. He had suspended the drip set from a branch above them. "His pulse is better.
Job is as tough as an old buffalo bull. Help me dress the wound.
"Is he consciousT"
"He comes and goes," Sean warned her.
Beneath the field dressing was such a terrible injury that neither of them could bring themselves to discuss it, especially as Job might be able to hear and understand them.
Sean smothered the entire area with iodine paste, then bound it up again with pressure pads and clean white bandages from the medical pack. The blood and iodine soaked through the white even as he worked.
Between them they had to roll Job on to his side to pass the bandages over his back. Claudia held the half-severed arm in place, bending the elbow across his chest, and Sean strapped it securely.
By the time they finished, Job's entire upper body was swathed in a cocoon of expertly applied bandage from which only his left arm protruded.
"His pulse is going again." Sean looked up from his wrist. "I'm going to give him another liter of plasma."
There was a scattered outbreak of machine-gun and mortar fire from the forest beyond the hill laager, and Claudia looked up apprehensively. "What's that?"
"Frelimo counterattack." Sean was still busy with the drip set.
"But China has three companies in there, and Frelimo are going to be less than enthusiastic now that they have lost their air support. China's lads should be able to hold them off with no trouble."
"Sean, where did China come from? I tho "Yes, Sean cut in. "I also thought he was back on the river. The crafty bastard was right on our heels, ready to rush in and grab the spoils." He finished adjusting the plasma flow in the drip set and squatted down beside Claudia, studying her face.
"AB right," he said. "Tell me what happened."
"Nothing." She smiled brightly.
"Don't bullshit me, beautiful," Sean said gently, and put an arm around her. Despite herself she choked on a sob.
"China," she whispered. "Right on top of what happened to Job. He made me translate for the Russian pilot. Oh, God, I hate him. He's an animal. He made me watch-" She broke off.
"Rough stuff?" Sean asked, and she nodded.
"He killed one of the Russians, in the foulest possible way." "He's a lovely lad, our China, but try and put it out of your mind. We've got enough troubles of our own. Let the Russkies worry about theirs."
"He forced the Russian pilot to agree to fly the helicopter. Sean stood up, lifting her to her feet beside him. Don think of China and the Russian anymore. All we have to worry about is getting out of here." He broke off as he saw Sergeant Alphonso and a half-dozen of his Shanganes trotting down the hill toward them. All of them were laden with loot.
"Nkosi!" Alphonso's broad, handsome face was wreathed in a beatific grin. "What a fight, what a victory!"
"You fought like an impi of lions," Sean agreed. "The battle is won, but now you must help us to get away to the border. Captain Job is badly hurt."
Alphonso's smile faded; despite their natural tribal emnity, both men had developed a grudging respect for each other. "How bad?"
He came to stand beside Sean and looked down at Job.
"There was a fiberglass stretcher in the first aid post," Claudia said.
"We can carry Job on that."
"It is two days" march to the border," Alphonso murmured dubiously. "Through Frelimo territory."
"Frelimo are running like dogs with a hot coal under their tails."
Sean's tone was hard. "Send two of your men to fetch the stretcher."
"General China calls for you. He is leaving in the Russian hen shaw He wants to speak to you before he goes," Alphonso said.
"AB right, but I wantiat stretcher here when I get back," Sean warned him. He glowed at his wristwatch. "We will march for the border in one hour from now."
"Nkosi!" Alphonso agreed cheerfully. "We will be ready."
Sean turned back to Claudia. "I'm going to see China. I'm going to try to talk him into flying Job out in the helicopter, but I don't think my chances are particularly rosy. Please stay with Job and keep an eye on his pulse rate. I've found a disposable syringe of adrenaline in the medic pack. Use it only as a last resort."
"Please don't be long," she whispered. "I'm only brave when you're here."
"Matatu will stay with you."
Sean climbed the hill swiftly, passing the first string of Renamo porters. Obviously China was taking everything he could carry, including boxes of helicopter spares and hundreds of jerry cans of avgas. The lines of porters were heading back into the wilderness toward the river, and Sean paid them scant attention. He had played his role. He was eager to get out, reach the border, get Job to where he could receive professional medical attention and get Claudia to safety. However, over all his urgency lay the nagging uncertainty: Was China really going to stand by his word and let them go? Was he not being just a trifle optimistic?
"We'll. see," he told himself grimly, and shouted at one of the Renamo officers who was supervising the loading of the porters.
"Where is General China?"
He found him with his staff and the captured Russians in the laager's command bunker. China looked up from the map he was consulting and smiled affably as Sean entered. "Colonel Courtney, my felicitations. You were magnificent. A famous victory."
"And now you owe me a favor."
"You and your party wish to leave," China agreed. "AD debts between us have been paid in full. You are free to go."
"No," Sean shook his head. "By my calculation you still owe me one. Captain Job has been badly wounded. Ms condition is crit iI want him flown out to Zimbabwe in the captured Hind."
cal.
"You jest, of course." China laughed lightly. "I cannot risk sending such a valuable asset on a nonproductive mission. No, Colonel, all debts are paid. Please don't persist in extravagant demands. With my defective hearing, it only annoys me, and I may be tempted to review my generous offer to allow you and yours to depart unhindered." He smiled and held out his hand. "Come now, Colonel. Let us part as friends. You have the services of Sergeant Alphonso and his men. You are a man of infinite resourcefulness. I am sure you will contrive to get yourself and all your party to safety without any further assistance from me."
Sean ignored the outstretched hand. China glanced at it and then lowered it to his side. "So we part, Colonel. Me to my little war and, who knows, perhaps one day a country of my very own.
You to the tender embraces of your very rich, very beautiful young American." His smile had a sly, foxy slant to it. "I wish YOU JOY, and I am sure you do the same for me." He turned back to his map, leaving Sean for an instant nonplussed and taken off balance. It was incomplete, it couldn't end like this. Sean wondered if there was more to come, but General China began dictating orders to one of his officers in Portuguese, leaving Sean standing uncertainly at the door of the bunker.
Sean waited a few moments longer, then turned abruptly and ducked out through the entrance. Only after he was gone did China lift his head and smile after him, a gloating little smile which, if Sean had seen it, would have answered his question.
Alphonso's men had worked quickly. The fiberglass stretcher was one of those lightweight body-molded types used by mountain rescue teams. Nonetheless it would require four men to carry it over rough ground, and they had a long, hard path to the border.
"Less than a hundred kilometers and not that hard," Sean reassured himself. "Two days, if we push it."
Claudia greeted him with rel
ief. "Job seems stronger. He was conscious, asking for you. He said something about a hill. Hill Thirty-one?"
Sean flickered a smile. "That's where we met. He's wandering a little. Help me to get him onto the stretcher."
Between them they lifted Job gently and settled him onto the stretcher. Sean rigged the drip set on a wire frame above his head and tucked looted gray woolen blankets around him.
"Matatu," he said as he stood up. "Take us home." And he gestured to the first team of stretcher bearers to take their positions.
It was less than two hours since sunrise, but they seemed to have lived an entire lifetime in that short period, Sean thought as he glanced back at the hilltop laager. Streamers of smoke drifted from its crest, and the last column of General China's porters was disappearing into the forest below it, all heavily laden with booty.
The distant sounds of battle had finally dwindled into silence.
The halfhearted Frefirno counterattack had long since fizzled out, and China was withdrawing his forces into the bad ground below the Pungwe River.
As Sean watched, the captured Hind helicopter rose slowly out ng above the hill on its glistening rotor;
0 1 em , then abrul i [y it dipped toward them, the sound of its engine crescendoc 1, and suddenly Sean was staring into the multiple mouths of the Gatling cannon in its nose.
As it raced toward him, he recognized China's face behind the armored glass canopy. He was perched in the flight engineer's seat, at the controls of the 12.7-men cannon. Sean saw the barrels of the cannon swing slightly, coming on to aim. The Hind was only fifty feet above them, so close he could see China's teeth flash in his dark face as he smiled.
Their little column had not reached the edge of the forest. There was no cover, no protection from the blast of that terrible weapon, and instinctively Sean reached out and drew Claudia to him, trying to shield her with his own body.
Above them General China lifted his right hand in an ironic salute, and the Hind banked steeply away into the northwest, dwindled swiftly to a speck, and was gone. They all stared after it silently, seized by a sense of anticlimax, until Sean broke the spell.
"Let's go, brethren!" And once again the stretcher bearers started forward at an easy jog trot, very softly singing one of the ancient marching songs.
Scouting ahead of them, Matatu came across a few scattered parties of Frehmo assault troops, but they were all in headlong retreat from the river wilderness. After the loss of their air support the Frefirno offensive seemed to have collapsed completely and the situation was fluid and confused. Although they were forced to detour further northward than Sean had planned, Matatu steered them out of contact with any Frelimo and the stretcher bearers were rotated regularly so they made swift progress.
At nightfall they stopped to cat and rest. Alphonso made the scheduled radio contact with Renamo headquarters and gave them a position report. He received only a laconic acknowledgement without change of orders. They feasted on canned goods looted from the Russian stores and smoked the perfumed Balkan tobacco in yellow cigarette paper with hollow cardboard filters.
Job was conscious again and complained in a husky whisper, "There is a lion gnawing on my shoulder." Sean injected an ampule of morphine into Rob's drip set, and it eased him so he was even able to eat a fe mouthfuls of the bland-tasting tinned meat.
However, his thirst was far greater than his hunger, and Sean held his head and helped him get down two full mugs of the surprisingly good Russian coffee.
Sean and Claudia sat beside the fitter and waited for the moon in through the Honde Valley again." Sean to rise. "We are going told Job. "Once we get you to Saint Mary's Mission you'll be fine.
One of the Catholic fathers is a doctor, and I'll be able to sen a message to my brother Garry in Johannesburg. I'll ask him to send the company jet to Urntafi. We'll fly you into Johannesburg General Hospital before you know what's hit you, mate. There you'll get the best medical attention in the world."
When the moon rose, they went on. It was almost midnight before Sean called a halt for the night. He made a mattress of cut grass beside Job's litter, and as Claudia drifted off to sleep in his arms, he whispered to her, "Tomorrow night I'll give you a hot bath and put you between clean sheets."
Promise?" she sighed.
"Cross my heart."
From deeply ingrained habit, he woke an hour before first light and went to rouse the sentries for dawn standby. Alphonso threw aside his blanket, stood up, and fell in beside him. When they had made the sentry round, they paused on the edge of the camp and Alphonso offered him one of the Russian cigarettes. They smoked from cupped hands, shielding the glow of burning tobacco.
"What you told me about South Africa, is it true?" Alphonso asked unexpectedly.
J "What did I tell you?"
"That men, even black men, eat meat every day?"
Sean smiled in the darkness, amused by Alphonso's concept of paradise, a place where a man could eat meat every day. "Sometimes they get so sick of eating beef," he teased, "that they try chicken and lamb just for a change."
Alphonso shook his head. That was beyond belief-, no African could ever tire of beef.
"How much does a black man earn in South Africa?" he demanded.
About five hundred rand a month if he is an ordinary unskilled laborer, but there are many black millionaires,." Five hundred rand was more than a man earned in Mozambique in a year, even if he were lucky enough to find employment. A million was a figure beyond Alphonso's powers of imagination.
"Five hundred?" He shook his head in wonder. "And paid in rands, not paper escudos or Zimbabwe dollars?" he demanded earnestly.
"Rands," Sean confirmed. Compared to other African currencies, the rand was as good as a gold sovereign.
"And there are things in the stores, things for a man to buy with his rands?" Alphonso demanded suspiciously. It was difficult lo r him to visualize shelves laden with goods for sale, other than a few pathetic bottles of locally produced carbonated soft drinks and packets of cheap cigarettes.
"Whatever you want," Sean assured him. "Soap and sugar, cooking oil, and maize meal." Half-forgotten luxuries in Alphonso's mind.
"As much as I want?" he asked. "No rationing?"
"As much as you can pay for," Sean assured him. "And when sistor your belly is full, you can buy shoes and suits and ties, transister radios and dark glasses-"
"A bicycle?" Alphonso demanded eagerly.
"Only the very lowest men ride bicycles." Sean grinned, enjoying himself. "The others have their own motorcars."
"Black men own their own motorcars?" Alphonso thought about that for a long time. "Would there be work for a man like me?" he asked with a diffidence that was completely out of character.
You?" Sean pretended to consider it, and Alphonso waited apprehensively for his judgment. "You?" Sean repeated. "My brother owns a gold mine. You could be a supervisor on his mine within a year, a shift boss in two years. I could get you a job the same day you arrived at the mine."
"How much does a supervisor earn?"
"thousand, two thousand," Sean assured him. Alphonso was A stunned. His Renamo pay was the equivalent of a rand a day, paid in Mozambican escudos.
"I would like to be a boss supervisor," he murmured thoughtfully.
ant?" Sean teased. Alphonso char' Better than a Renamo serge tied derisively.
"Of course, in South Africa you would not have the vote," Sean efaces get to vote."
ribbed him. "Only pal Vote, what is a vote?" Alphonso demanded, then answered t have the himself. "I don't have a vote in Mozambique. They don" vote in Zambia or Zimbabwe or Angola or Tanzania. Nobody has the vote in Africa, except. perhaps once in a man's life to elect a president-for-life and a one-party government." He shook his head and snorted. "Vote? You can't eat a vote. You can't dress in a or ride to work on it. F or two thousand rand a month and vote, a full belly you can have my vote."
"Anytime you come to South Africa, You come and see me."<
br />
d see the trees against Sean stretched and looked at the sky. He could it. Dawn was only a short time away. He crushed out the butt of the cigarette and began to get to his feet.
"There is something I must tell you," Alphonso whispered. His altered tone caught Sean's full attention.
"Yes?" He squatted down again and leaned closer to the Shangane.
Alphonso cleared his throat in embarrassment. "We have traveled a long road together," he murmured.
"A long, hard road," Sean agreed. "But the end is in sight. This time tomorrow-" He did not have to go on, and Alphonso did not reply immediately.
Wilbur Smith - C07 A Time To Die Page 53
