by Wilbur Smith
"Give them hell, sirp he yelled up at Sean, and Sean waved from the open hatch of the Alouette as they soared away.
Sean swallowed half a dozen codeine tablets for his ribs, which. were beginning to ache, and washed them down with a swig from his spare water-bottle. He and Matatu crouched together in the opening of the hatchway, peering down at the canopy of the forest five hundred feet below.
Only at moments like these, when the hunt was running hot and hard, could Matatu subdue his terror of flying.
Now he leant so far out of the hatch that Sean had an arm around his waist to hold him from the drop. Matatu was positively shivering in his grip, the way a good gun-dog shivers with the scent of the bird in his nostrils.
Suddenly he pointed, and Sean yelled to the flight engineer: 'Turn ten degrees left." Over the intercom the engineer relayed the change of course to the pilot in the high cockpit.
Sean could see no possible reason for Matatu's turn to the west. Below them the forest was amorphous and featureless. The rocky kopies that broke the leafy monotony were miles apart, random and indistinguishable one from the other.
Two minutes later Matatu pointed again, and Sean interpreted for him: "Turn back five degrees right." The Alouette banked obediently. Matatu was performing his special magic. He was actually tracking the fugitives from five hundred feet above the canopy of trees, not by sight or sign, but by a weird intuitive sense that Sean would not have credited if he had not seen it happen on a hundred other chases over the years.
Matatu quivered in Sean's grip and turned his face up at his master. He was grinning wickedly, his lips trembling with excitement. The blast of the slipstream had filled his eyes with tears, and they streamed down his cheeks.
"Down!' he yelped, and pointed again.
"Downp Sean yelled at the flight engineer. As the helicopter dropped, Sean looked across at Roland Ballantyne.
"Hot guns!' he warned, and Roland signalled his men. They straightened up on the hard benches and leant forward like hunting dogs on the leash. As one man they raised their weapons, muzzles high, and with a metallic clatter that carried above the roar of the turbo engines they locked and loaded.
The helicopter checked and hovered six feet above the baked dry earth. Sean and Matatu jumped together, and cleared the drop zone.
As soon as they were clear they went down into cover, facing outward.
Sean's FN was at his shoulder as he scanned the bush around him. The Scouts came boiling out of the hatchway, and scattered to adopt a defensive perimeter. The helicopter climbed away empty.
The second they were in position Roland Ballantyne signalled across to Sean with clenched fist 'Gov Well separated, Sean and Matatu went forward. The Scouts spread out and covered them, eyes glinting and restless trigger-fingers cocked. Matatu had brought them down in a bottle-neck where a series of steep rocky ridges formed a funnel. The apex of the V was cut through by a dry riverbed. Storm water over the millennium had sculpted a natural staircase that climbed the ridge, and the elephant herds that used this natural pass had worn the contours and levelled the gradients.
Would the fleeing band have traded time for stealth? Would they have chosen the elephant highway, rather than toil up the jagged rocky ridge at another, less obvious point?
Matatu flicked his fingers underhand, signalling Sean to cast the eastern approach to the pass. Sean was as good a tracker as any white man alive. To save precious time Matatu would trust him with such a simple cast as this.
Sean moved across the sun, placing it between him and the ground he was searching. It was the old tracker's trick to highlight the spoor. He concentrated all his attention on the earth, trusting the hovering Scouts to cover his back. They were all good men; he had trained them himself.
He felt the little electric thrill of it as he picked it up. It was close in against the cliff-face. One of the round water-worn river-boulders had been displaced. It was sitting a quarter of an inch askew in the natural dish of earth that had held it. He touched it with a fingertip just to check. He would not call Matatu and risk his scorn until he was certain.
"Little bugger will mock me for a week if I make a bum call." The boulder was the size of his head and it moved slightly under his finger. Yes, it had been recently dislodged. Sean whistled, and Matatu appeared at his side like the genie of the lamp. Sean did not have to point it out. Matatu saw it instantly and nodded his approbation.
The file of fugitives was anti-tracking skilfully. They had moved up the water-course in Indian file, keeping in close'under the precipitous rocky side. They had used the river-boulders as stepping-stones to hide their tracks, but this one had been slightly dislodged by the weight of the men passing over it.
Matatu darted forward. A hundred or so paces further on he found the spot where the wounded terrorist's foot had slipped off one of the stepping-stones and touched the soft white sand. The foot had left a brush-mark. Only the highly trained eye would have noticed the faint shade of colour difference between the surface grains and the freshly exposed grains of sand from below.
Matatu knelt over it and studied the faint scuff-mark, then he blew gently on the surrounding sand to gauge its friability. He rocked back on his heels while he pondered the factors that had effected the colour difference in the grains - the moisture content of the sand, the angle of the sun, the strength of the breeze and, most important, the time elapsed since the sand had been disturbed.
"Two hours,' he said with utter finality, and Sean accepted it without question.
"Two hours behind them,' Sean reported to Roland Ballantyne.
"How does he do it?' Roland shook his head in wonder. 'He brought us straight here, and now he gives us the exact time. He's gained us eight hours in fifteen minutes. How does he do it, Sean?" 'Beats me,' Sean admitted. 'He's just a chocolate-coated miracle." 'Can he spring-hare us again?' Roland demanded. He spoke no Swahili; Sean had to translate.
"Spring-hare, Matatu?" 'Ndio, Bwana,' Matatu nodded happily, and preened under the patent admiration of the colonel.
"Leave four men to follow up on the ground,' Sean advised. 'Tell them to follow the water-course and there's a good chance they will pick up the spoor at the top." Roland gave the orders, and the four Scouts moved away up the funnel in good order. Sean called down the helicopter, and they scrambled aboard.
They flew on into the north. However, they had not been airborne for more than ten minutes before Matatu wriggled in Sean's grip and yelped: "Turn!
Turn backv Under Sean's direction the helicopter made a wide circle, and Matatu was leaning halfway out of the hatch. His head swung quickly from side to side as he peered downwards, and for the first time he seemed uncertain.
"Down,' he cried suddenly, and pointed to a long streak of darker-green vegetation that filled a shallow kidneyshaped depression in the terrain ahead of them.
The Alouette descended gently, warily. Matatu pointed out a landing-zone at the far side of the depression.
The scrub below them was dense and thorny, and the ground was studded with ant-heaps. These were bare towers of concrete, hard red clay each as high as a man's shoulder, like headstones in a cemetery; they would make the landing difficult and dangerous.
Little bugger is taking us into the worst-possible LZ, Sean thought bitterly. Why does he have to choose this particular spot?
The helicopter checked in mid-air, and Sean turned his head and yelled at Roland: 'Hot guns, man!' And then followed Matatu. They landed side by side and scurried forward, dropping into cover behind one of the antheaps.
He did not turn his head to watch the other Scouts come out of the hatch.
He was watching the tangled thorn scrub out ahead, sweeping his flanks with a darting penetrating scrutiny, holding the FN levelled and his thumb on the safety. Although it was a million-to-one chance that there was a terrorist within five miles of the LZ, still the landing drill was second nature to all of them.
"No gooks here,' Sean assured himself. And then
incredibly, stunningly they were under fire.
From the thorn scrub on their left flank AK fire raked them. The sharp distinctive rattle of the fusillades swept over them. Dust and chips of red clay flew from the side of the ant-heap only inches in front of his face.
Sean reacted instantly. He rolled and re-aligned, and as he brought the FN to bear he glimpsed from the corner of his eye a grisly little cameo of death.
One of the Scouts, the last man out of the hatch, was hit. As his feet touched the ground, a burst of AK fire caught him across the belly. It doubled him over and drove him backwards three sharp paces. The bullets exiting from his back pulled his body out of shape. They sucked half his guts out of him, and blew them in a misty pink streak through the stark sunlit air. Then he was down and gone into the scrub.
As Sean returned fire the realization flashed in upon him: Matatu has dropped us into direct contact. He punctuated his thoughts with short measured bursts of the FN. The little bugger has been too bloody good this time. He has dropped us right on their heads.
At the same time he was assessing the contact. Obviously the gang had been taken as unaware as they were. They 43e had not been able to prepare any kind of defence, nor had the time to set up an ambush. Probably they had heard the roar of the approaching helicopter and then only seconds later the Scouts had begun dropping amongst them.
Surprise, Sean thought, and shot at the muzzle-flashes of an AK that were fluttering the leaves of a thorn bush only thirty paces ahead.
From experience he had learnt that the Shona guerrillas facing him were first-class soldiers, doughty and brave and dedicated. They had two weaknesses, however. First, their fire-control was poor; they believed that sheer weight of fire made up for inaccuracy. Their other weakness was the inability to react swiftly to surprise. Sean knew that for another minute or so the terrorists in the scrub in front of him would be disorganized and flustered.
Hit them now, he thought, and snatched a phosphorus grenade from his webbing. As he pulled the pin from the grenade he opened his mouth to yell at Roland Ballantyne: 'Come on, Roland. Sweep line! Charge the sods before they settle down." Roland beat him to it. The same thoughts must have raced through his mind.
"Take them, boys! Sweep line -on the charge!" Sean leapt to his feet and in the same movement hurled the grenade in a high arcing trajectory. It fell thirty yards ahead of him, and the thorn scrub erupted in a blinding white cloud of phosphorus smoke. Flaming fragments, burning with a dazzling white radiance, showered over the area.
Sean raced forward, conscious of the small dark shape that ran at his heels. Matatu was his shadow. Other grenades were exploding across the front, and the thorn scrub was thrashed by the blasts and lashed by the sheets of automatic fire that the Scouts threw down as they charged.
The gang broke before them. One of them ducked out of the bush ten paces ahead of Sean, a teenager in tattered blue jeans and a soft camouflage-cap.
Burning globules of phosphorus had adhered to his upper body. They sizzled and flared, leaving smoking black spots on his arms and torso. The smoke smelt like barbecueing meat.
Sean shot hijrn, but the burst was low. It broke his left hip, and the boy dropped. The AK rifle flew from his grip, and he rolled on to his back and held his hands in front of his face.
"No, Mambo!' he screamed in English. 'Don't kill me! I am a Christian - for the love of God, spare me!" 'Matatu,' Sean snapped without checking or looking round. 'Kufa!" He jumped over the maimed guerrilla. The magazine of his FN was half-empty.
He could not afford to waste a single rounds and Matatu had his skinning-knife. He spent hours each day honing the blade. If he had been a section leader, Sean might have saved him for interrogation; but Matatu could cut this one's throat. Cannon-fodder like him was of no use to them, and medical attention was expensive.
The Scouts swept the bush, and it was over in less than two minutes. It was no contest. It was like pitting Pekinese puppies against a pack of wild dogs. The Scouts charged through and then whirled and came back.
"Secure the area,' Roland Ballantyne ordered. He was standing less than twenty yards from Sean. He held the muzzle of his rifle pointed at the sky, and the heated metal distorted the air around it in a watery mirage. 'Well done, Sean. That little black devil of yours is a charm." He glanced across at Matatu.
Matatu was straightening up from the corpse of the hip-shot terrorist. He had slit his throat with a single stroke, across the side of the throat and up under the ear to catch the carotid artery.
He was wiping the blade of his skinning-knife on his thigh as he scurried back to his rightful place at Sean's side, but he grinned an acknowledgement at Roland Ballantyne. Both of them were distracted, still heady with the euphoria of violence and blood.
The corpse of one of the other guerrillas lay in the scrub between them.
The flesh and clothing still smouldered with burnt-out phosphorus, and the man's clothing was splattered with bright blood from his gunshot wounds. Roland Ballantyne walked past him with barely a glance. It was impossible that the terrorist could have survived such terrible injuries.
The terrorist rolled over abruptly. He had been concealing a Tokarev pistol under his shattered chest. With his last flutter of life he lifted the Tokarev and he was close enough to touch Roland with the muzzle.
"Roland!' Sean screamed a warning, and although Roland reacted instantly it was too late. The shot would take him in the spine from a range of three feet.
Sean did not have time to raise the FN to his shoulder. He fired from the hip, pointing and aiming instinctively. The bullet caught the terrorist in the face. His head burst like an over-ripe water-melon hit with a Pick-handle, and he flopped over on his back. The Tokarev slipped unfired from his nerveless fingers.
Roland Ballantyne straightened up slowly, and for a long moment he stared down at the corpse. The man's legs were kicking and trembling convulsively.
Roland contemplated his own mortality and saw the agony of his own death reflected in the man's bulging eyeballs.
He tore his gaze away and looked across at Sean.
"I owe you one,' he said curtly. 'You can collect any time.' And he turned away to shout orders at his Scouts to gather the kill. There were green plastic body-bags in the hovering Alouette.
Le Morne Brabant was a jagged mountain of black volcanic lava that seemed to tower over them threateningly, even though they were almost four miles out on the oceanic stream.
These sapphire currents that eddied around the toe of the island of Mauritius created an enrichment of marine life that big-game anglers around the world recognized as a 'hot spot'. There were other famous grounds such as those off the ribbons of the Great Barrier Reef, at Cabo San Lucas on the Californian peninsula or in the lee of the island of Nova Scotia. At all these points the concentrations of vast shoals of bait-fish attracted the ocean predators -the giant marlin and the tuna species. The sports anglers of the world came to pit their skill and their strength against these sleek monsters.
Shasa Courtney always insisted on chartering the same boat and the same island crew. Each boat sets up its own individual vibration in the water, a combination of engine and propeller and hull configuration which is as unique to that boat as a fingerprint is to the man. That vibration either attracts or repels fish.
Le Bonkeur was a lucky boat. She pulled fish, and her skipper had eyes like a gannet. He could spot the flash of a single sea-bird diving on a school of bait-fish on the horizon, or at a mile's distance pick out the sickle-shaped dorsal fin of a cruising marlin and estimate the fish's weight to within ten kilos.
Today, however, they were desperate for a bait. They had been out for almost two hours without putting a bait on the outriggers.
Everywhere they looked there were shoals of bait-fish. The Indian Ocean seemed to swarm with their multitudes. They darkened the surface of the water like patches of cloud shadow, and dense flocks of sea-birds circled over them, screaming and diving in avaricio
us hysteria. Every few minutes a volley of leaping bonito would burst through the surface and arc in glittering silver parabolas through the brilliant tropical sunshine.
