Leopard Hunts in Darkness b-4

by Wilbur A. Smith

  Timon Nbebi swung the Land-Rover in front of the Mercedes, blocking it. Then he jumped down and ran to the open window and pointed his Uzi submachine-gun into the interior.

  "Oud'he shouted. "Everybody oud" Behind them the two trucks came to a squealing halt, clouds of dust boiling out from under their double rear wheels. Armed troopers swarmed out of them, rushing forward to club down the two unarmed men onto the gravel of the road. They surrounded the Mercedes, tearing open the doors and dragging out the driver and another man from the back seat.

  There was no mistaking the tall, wide-shouldered figure.

  The headlights floodlit his dark, craggy features and exaggerated the rocky strength of his lantern jaw. Tungata Zebiwe shrugged off the grip of his captors, and glared about him, forcing them to fall back involuntarily.

  "Back, you yapping jackals! Do you dare touch me?" He was dressed in dark slacks and a white shirt. His cropped head was round and black as a cannon ball.

  "Do you know who I am?" he demanded. "You'll wish your twenty-five fathers had taught you better mariners." His arrogant assurance drove them back another pace, and they looked towards the Land' Rover Peter Fungabera stepped out of the darkness behind the headlights, and Tungata Zebiwe recognized him instantly.

  "You!" he growled. "Of course, the chief butcher."

  "Open the truck," Peter Fungabera ordered, without taking his eyes off the other man. They stared at each other with such terrible hatred, that it rendered insignificant everything else around them. It was an elemental confrontation, seeming to embody all the savagery of a continent, two powerful men stripped of any vestige of civilized restraint, their antagonism so strong as to be barely supportable to them.

  Craig had jumped dbwn from the Land' Rover and started forward, but Itow he stopped beside the Mercedes in astonishment. He had not expected anything remotely like this. This almost tangible hatred was not a thing of that moment, it seemed that the two of them would launch themselves at each other like embattled animals, tearing with bare hands at each other's throats. This was a passion of deep roots, a mutual rage based on a monumental foundation of long-standing hostility.

  From the back of the captured truck the troopers were hurling out bales and crates. One of the crates burst open as it hit the road, and long yellow shafts of ivory glowed like amber in the headlights. A trooper hooked open one of the bales and pulled out handfuls of precious fur, the golden dappled skin of leopard, the thick red pelts of lynx.

  "That's it! Peter Fungabera's voice was choking with triumph and loathing and vindictive gloating. "Seize the Matabele dog!" "WI-iatever this is will rebound on your own head," Tungata growled at him, "you son of a Shana whore! "Take him!" Peter urged his men, but they hesitated, held at bay by the invisible aura of power that emanated from this tall imperial figure.

  In the pause, Sally-Anne jumped down from the Land Rover, and started towards the treasure of fur and ivory lying in the road. For a second she screened Tungata Zebiwe from his captors, and he moved with a blur of speed, like the strike of an adder, almost too fast to follow with the eye.

  He seized Sally-Arme's arm, twisted and lifted her off her feet, holding her as a shield in front of him as he ducked low and scooped up the discarded rifle from the dust at his feet. He had chosen the moment perfectly.

  They were all crowded in upon each other. The troopers pressed so closely that none of them could fire without hitting one of their own.

  Tungata's back was protected by the Land-Rover, his front by Sally-Anne's body.

  "Don't shood" Peter Fungabera bellowed at his men. "I want the Matabele bastard for myself." Tungata swung the barrel of the rifle up under Sally Anne armpit, holding it by the pistol grip singlehanded, and he aimed at Peter Fungabera, as he fell back towards the Land-Rover, dragging Sally' Anne with him. The Land Rover's engine was still running.

  "You'll not escape," Peter Fungabera gloated. "The road is blocked, I have a hundred men. I've got you, at last." Tungata slipped the rate-of-fire selector across with his thumb and dropped his aim to Peter Fungabera's belly.

  Craig was standing diagonally behind his left shoulder, he saw the slight deflection of the rifle barrel at the instant before Tungata fired. Craig realized that he had deliberately aimed an inch to one side of Peter's hip. The clattering roar of automatic fire was deafening, and the group of men leapt apart as they went for cover.

  The rifle rode up high in Tungata's singlehanded grip.

  Bullets smashed into the parked truck, leaving dark rents through the body work, each surrounded by a halo of bright bare metal. Peter Fungabera hurled himself aside, spinning away along the truck body to fall flat in the road and wriggle frantically behind the truck wheels.

  Gunsmoke and dust shrouded the blazing headlights, and troopers scattered, blanketing each other's field of fire, while in the chaos, Tungata lifted Sally-Anne bodily and threw her into the passenger, seat of the Land-Rover. In the same movement, he" vaulted up into the driver's seat, threw the vehicle into gear and the engine roared as it leapt forward.

  "Don't shoot!" Peter Fungabera shouted again, there was a desperate urgency in his voice. "I want him alive!" A trooper jumped in fk6nt of the Land-Rover, "in a futile attempt to stop it. "he impact sounded likea lump of bread-dough dropped "on the kneading board, as the bonnet hit him squarely in the chest and he fell. There was a series of jolting bumps as he was dragged under the chassis, then, he rolled out into the road and the Land-Rover was boring away up the dark hill.

  Without conscious thought, Craig jerked open the driver's door of the abandoned ministerial Mercedes and slipped into the seat. He locked the wheel into a hard 180-degree turn and gunned her into it. The Mercedes" tail crabbed around, tyres spinning and he hit the high earth bank a glancing blow with the right front wing that swung her nose through the last few degrees of the turn. Craig lifted his foot off the accelerator, met the skid, centred the wheel, and then trod down hard. The Mercedes shot forward, and through the open window he heard Peter Fungabera shout, "Craig! Wait!" He ignored the call, and concentrated on the first sharp bend of the escarpment road as it flashed up at him. The Mercedes" steering was deceptively light, he almost over steered and the off-wheels hammered over the rough verge.

  Then he was through the bend and ahead the red taillights of the Land-Rover were almost obscured in their own boiling white dust cloud.

  Craig dropped the automatic transmission to sports mode, the engine shrieked and the needle of the rev the red sector above 5000, and she counter spun up into arrowed up the hill, gaining swiftly on the Land-Rover.

  It was swallowed by the next turn, and the dust blinded Craig so that he was forced to lift his right foot and grope through the turn, again he almost missed it and his rear wheels tore at the steep drop, inches from disaster before he took her through.

  He was getting the feel of the machine, and four hundred yards ahead he had a brief glimpse of the Land Rover through the dust. His headlights spotlit Sally-Anne.

  She was half-twisted over the side, trying to climb out and m the fleeing vehicle, but Tungata shot throw herself fro out a long arm and caught her shoulder, plucking her back and forcing her down into the seat.

  The scarf flew off her head, winging up likea night bird to be lost in the darkness, and her thick dark hair broke out and tangled about her head and face. Then dust obscured the Land-Rover again and Craig felt his anger hit him in the chest with a force that made him choke. In that moment, he hated Tungata Zebiwe as he had never hated another human being in his life before. He took the next bend cleanly, tracking neatly through and pouring on full power again at the moment he was clear.

  The Land-Rover was three hundred yards ahead, the gap shrinking at the rush of the Mercedes, then Craig was braking for the next twist of the road and when he came out the Land-Rover was much closer. Sally-Anne was craning around, looking back at him. Her face was white, almost luminous, in the headlights, her hair danced in a glossy tide around it, seeming at moment
s almost to smother her, and then the next bend snatched her away.

  Craig followed them into it, meeting the brake of the tail as she floated in the floury dust and then as he came through he saw the road-block ahead.

  There was a three-ton army truck parked squarely across the road, and the gaps between it and the bank had been filled with recently felled thorn trees. The entwined branches formed a solid mattress and the heavy trunks had been chained together. Craig saw the steel links glinting in the headlights. That barrier would stop a bulldozer.

  Five troopers stood before the barrier, waving their rifles in an urgent command to the LanRover to halt. That they hadn't already opened fire made Craig hope that Peter Fungabera had reached them on the radio, yet he felt a nauseating rush of anxiety when he saw how vulnerable Sally-Anne was in the opbn vehicle. He imagined a volley of automatic fire tearing into that lovely young body and face.

  "Please don't shoot," he whispered, and pressed so hard on the accelerator that the cup of his artificial leg bit painfully into his stump. The nose of the Mercedes was fifty feet from the Land-Rover's tail and gaining.

  A hundred yards from the solid barrier across the road was a low place in the right-hand bank. Tungata swerved into it and the ugly blunt-nosed vehicle flew up it, all four wheels clawing as it went over the top and tore likea combine-harvester into the high yellow stand of elephant grass beyond.

  Craig knew he could not follow him. The low-slung Mercedes would tear her guts out on the bank. He raced past it, and then hit the brakes as the road-block loomed up and filled his windshield. The Mercedes broadsided to a dead stop in a storm of its own dust and Craig threw hi.

  weight on the door and tumbled out into the road.

  He caught his balance and scrambled up the right, hand bank. The Land-Rover was twenty yards away, engine roaring in low gear, crashing and bouncing over the broken ground , mowing down the dense yellow grass whose stems were thick as a man's little finger and taller than his head, weaving between the forest trees, its speed reduced by the terrain to that of a running man. Craig saw that Tungata would succeed in detouring around the road-block, and he ran to head off the Land-Rover. Anger and fear for Sally Anne seemed to guide his feet, he stumbled only once on the rough footing.

  Tungata Zebiwe saw him coming and lifted the rifle one-handed, aiming over the bonnet of the jolting, roaring Land-Rover, but Sally' Anne threw herself across the weapon, clinging to it with both arms, her weight forcing the barrel down and Tungata could not take his other hand from the wheel as it kicked and whipped in his grip.

  They were past the road-block now, and Craig was losing round to them; realizing with a slide in his chest that he could not catch them, he floundered along behind the roaring vehicle.

  Sally-Anne and Tungata were struggling confusedly together, until the big black man tore his arm free and, using the hand as a blade, chopped her brutally under the ear. She slumped face forward onto the dashboard, and Tungata swung the wheel over. The vehicle swerved, giving Craig a few precious yards" advantage, and then it seemed to hover for an instant on the high bank beyond the road-block before it leapt over the edge and dropped into the roadway with a clangour of metal and spinning tyres.

  Craig used the last of his reserves of strength and determination and raced forward to reach the place on the bank an instant after it had disappeared.

  Ten feet below him, the Land' Rover was miraculously still the right way up, and Tungata, badly shaken, his mouth bleeding from impact with the steering, wheel was struggling for control.

  Craig did not hesitate. He launched himself out over the bank, and the drop sucked his breath away. The Land, Rover was accelerating away, and he dropped half over the tail-gate. He felt his ribs crunch on metal, his breath whistled in his throat as it was driven from his lungs, and his vision starred for an instant but he found a " the radio set and hung on blindly. grip on He felt the Land-Rover surging forward under him, and heard Sally-Anne whimpering with pain and terror. The sound steeled him, his vision cleared. He was hanging over the back of the tail-gate, his feet dangling and dragging.

  Behind him the army truck was swinging out of the road-block, engine thundering and headlights glaring in pursuit, while just ahead the main-road T-junction was coming up with a rush as the Land-Rover built up to her top speed again.

  Craig braced himself for the turn, but even so when it came his upper arms were almost torn from their shoulder sockets, as Tungata took the left fork on two wheels. Now he was heading north. Of course, the Zambian border was only a hundred miles ahead. The road went down into the great escarpment, and there was no human settlement in that tsetse-fly-infested, heat, baked wilderness before the border post and the bridge over the Zambezi at Chirundu.

  With a hostage it was just possible he could reach it. If Craig gave up, he could reach it or get himself and Sally Anne killed in the attempt.

  By inches Craig dragged himself back into the Land Rover. Sally-Anne was crumpled down in the seat, her head lolling from side to side with each jerk and sway of the vehicle, and Tungata was tall and heavy-shouldered beside her, his white shirt gleaming in the reflected glare of the headlights.

  Craig released his grip with one hand and made a grab for the back of the seat to pull himself on board. Instantly the Land-Rover swerved violently and in that same instant he saw the glint of Tungata's eyes in the rear-view mirror.

  He had been watching Craig, waiting to catch him off balance and throw him.

  The centrifugal force rolled Craig over and out over the side of the vehicle. He had a hold with his left hand only, and the muscles and tendons crackled with the strain as his full weight was thrown on it. He gasped with the agony as it tore up his arm into his chest, but he held on, hanging injured overboard with the steel edge catching him in his ribs again.

  Tungata swerved a second time, running his wheels over the verge, and Craig saw the bank rushing at him in the headlights. Tungata was attempting to wipe him off the Land-Rover on the bank, trying to shred him to pieces between shaly rock and sharp metal. Craig screamed involuntarily with the effort as he jack-knifed his knees up and over. There was a rushing din of metal and stone as the Land-Rover brushed the bank. Something struck his leg a blow that jarred him to his hip and he heard -the straps part as his leg was torn. away. If it had been flesh and bone he would have been fatally maimed. Instead, as the Land' Rover swung back onto the road he used the momentum to roll across the back seat and whip his free arm around Tungata's neck from behind.

  it was a strangle-hold and as he threw all his strength into it, he felt the give of Tungata's larynx in the crook of his elbow, and the loaded feel of the vertebrae, like the tension of a dry twig on the point of snapping. He wanted to kill him, he wanted to tear his head off his body, but he could not anchor himself to apply those last few ounces of pressure.

  Tungata lifted both hands off the wheel, tearing at Craig's wrist and elbow, making a glottal, cawing sound, and the untended steering-wheel spun wildly. The Land, Rover charged off the road, plunged over the unprotected verge onto the steep rocky slope, and with a rending screech of metal crashed end over end.

  Craig's grip was torn open and he was flung clear. He hit hard earth, cartwheeled, and lay for a second, his ears humming and his body crushed and helpless until he rallied and pulled himself to his knees.

  The Land' Rover lay on its back. The headlights still blazed, and thirty paces down the slope, full in their beam, lay Sally-Anne. She looked likea little girl asleep. Her eyes closed and he mouth relaxed, the lips very red against her pallor, but from her hairline a thin dark serpent of blood crawled down across her pale brow.

  He started to crawl towards her, when another figure rose out of the intervening darkness, a great, dark, wideshouldered figure. Tungata was clearly stunned, staggering in a half-circle, clutching his injured throat. At the sight of him Craig went hers&k with grief. and rage.

  He hurled himself at Tungata and they came together, chest to
chest. Long ago, as friends, they had often wrestled, but Craig had forgotten the sheer bull strength of the man. His muscles were hard and resilient and black as the cured rubber of a transcontinental truck tyre, and, one legged Craig was unbalanced. Dazed as he was, Tungata heaved him off his foot.

  As he went down, Craig kept his grip and despite his own strength, Tungata could not break it. They went down together, and Craig used his stump, driving up with the hard rubbery pad at the end of it, using the swing of it and Tungata's own falling weight to slog into Tungata's lower body.