Leopard Hunts in Darkness b-4

by Wilbur A. Smith

  They were coming on foot, trotting steadily across the plain. Craig had worked with crack black troops before, he knew that they could keep up that pace for a day and a night.

  He jumped down and found Timon's binoculars in the cubby beside the driver's seat.

  "There is a foot patrol following us," he told them.

  "How many?"Timon asked.

  On the roof he focused the binoculars. "Eight of them they took casualties when the truck overturned." He looked back at the sun. It was reddening and losing heat, sinking into the ground haze. Two hours to sunset, Its he guessed.

  "If you move me into a good place, I'll give you delaying fire," Timon told him. And as Craig hesitated, "Don't waste time arguing, Mr. Mellow."

  Sally' Anne refill the canteen," Craig ordered. "Take the chocolate and high-Protein slabs from the emergency rations. Take the map and the compass and these binoculars." re around the stranded He was surveying the fields of ri m that flat terrain.

  vehicle. No advantage to be wrung fro The only strong point was the Land' Rover itself. He knocked the drain plug out of the bottom of the gasoline tank and let the remaining fuel run into the sandy soil, to prevent a lucky shot torching the vehicle and Timon with een around the back it. Swiftly he built a rudimentary scr wheels, placing the spare wheels and the steel toolbox to cover Timon's flanks when they started to enfilade him.

  He helped Timon out of the back seat and laid him belly down behind the rear wheels. The bleeding started 4 again, soaking the dressing, and Timon was grey as ash and sweating in bright little bubbles across his upper lip. Craig placed one of the AK 47S in his hands and arranged a seat cushion as an aiming rest in front of him. The box of spare magazines he set at Timon's right hand, five hundred rounds.

  "I'll last until dark," Timon promised in a croak. "But leave me one grenade." They all knew what that was for. Timon did not want to be taken alive. At the very end he would hold the grenade to his own chest and blow it away.

  Craig took the remaining five grenades and packed them into one of the rucksacks. He placed the British Airways bag that contained his papers and the book manuscript on top of them. From the toolbox he took a roll of light gauze wire and a pair of side cutters; from the ammunition box, six spare magazines for the AK 47. He divided the contents of the first-aid box, leaving two field dressings, a blister pack of pain-killers and a disposable syringe of morphine for Timon. The rest he tipped into his rucksack.

  He glanced quickly around the interior of the Land Rover. Was there anything else he might need? A rolled plastic ground sheet in camouflage design lay on the door boards He stuffed that into the bag, and hefted it. That was all he could afford to carry. He looked across at Sally Anne She had the canteen slung on one shoulder, and the second rucksack op the other. She had rolled the portfolio of photographs and crammed them into the rucksack. She was very pale and the lump on her forehead seemed to have swelled even larger.

  "Right?" Craig asked.

  "Okay." He squatted beside Tiffton. "Goodbye, Captain,"he said.

  "Goodbye, Mr. Mellow." Craig took his hand and looked into his eyes. He saw no fear there, and he wondered again at the equanimity with which the African can accept death. He had seen it often.

  "Thank you, Timon for everything," he said.

  "Hamba gashle," said Timon gently. "Go in peace."

  "Shala ease," Craig returned the traditional response.

  "Stay in peace." He stood up and Sally' Anne knelt in his place.

  "You are a good man, Timon," she said, "and a brave one." Timon unfastened the flap of his holster and drew the pistol. It was a Chinese copy of the Tokarev type 51. He reversed it, and handed it to her, butt first. He said nothing, and after a moment she took it from him.

  "Thank you, Timon." kc the grenade, it was for the very They all knew that, Ii nne pushed the weapon end the easier way out. Sally-A into the belt of her jeans, and then impulsively stooped and kissed Timon.

  "Thank you," she said again, and stood up quickly and turned away.

  Craig led her away at a trot. He looked back every few yards, keeping the vehicle directly between them and the approaching patrol. If they suspected that two of them had left the vehicle, they would simply leave half their men to attack it, and circle back onto the spoor again with the rest of the force.

  Thirty-five minutes later they heard the first burst of automatic fire. Craig stopped to listen. The Land-Rover was just a little black pimple in the distance, with the dusk darkening and drooping down over it. The first burst was d answered by a storm of gunfire, many weapons firing together furiously.

  "He's a good soldier," Craig said. "He would have made sure of that first shot. There aren't eight of them any more.

  I'd bet on that." With surprise he saw that the tears were running down her cheeks, turning to muddy brown in the dust that coated her skin.

  "It's not the dying," Craig told her quietly, "but the manner of it." She flared at him angrily. "Keep that literary Hemingway crap to yourself, buster! It's not you that's doing the dying." And then, contrite immediately, "I'm sorry, darling, my head hurts and I liked him so much." The sound of gunfire became fainter as they trotted on, until it was just a whisper like footsteps in dry brush far behind them.

  "Craig!" Sally-Anne called, and he turned. She had fallen back twenty paces behind him and her distress was apparent. As soon as he stopped, she sank down and put her head between her knees.

  "I'll be all right in a moment. It's just my head." Craig split open a blister pack of pain-killers from the first-aid box. He made her take two of them and swallow them with a mouthful of water from the canteen. The lump on her forehead frightened him. He put his arm around her and held her tightly.

  "Oh, that feels good." She stumped against him.

  On the silence of the desert dusk came the distant woof of an explosion, muted by distance, and Sally-Anne stiffened.

  "What's that?"

  "Hand grenade," he told her, and checked his wrist, watch. "It's over, but he gave us a start of fifty, five minutes.

  Bless you, Timon, and God speed you."

  "We mustn't waste it, "she told him determinedly and pulled herself to her feet. She looked back.

  "Poor Timon, she said, and then set off again.

  It would take them onTy minutes to discover that there was but one man defending the Land-Rover. They would the outgoing tracks almost immediately, and they would follow. Craig wondered how many Timon had taken out and how many there were left.

  "We'll find out soon enough," he told himself, and the night came down with the swiftness of a theatre firecurtain.

  New moon three days past, and the only light was from the stars. Orion stood tall on one hand, and the great cross blazed on the other. Through the dry desert air their brilliance was marvelous, and the milky way smeared the heavens like the phosphorescence from a firefly crushed between a child's fingers. The sky was magnificent, but when Craig looked back he saw that it gave enough light to pick out their footprints.

  "Rest!" he told Sally-Anne, and she stretched out full length on the ground. With the bayonet from the AK 47 he chopped a bunch of scrub, wired it together and fastened the wire to the back of his belt.

  "Lead!" he told her, saving energy with economy of words. She went ahead of him, no longer at a trot, and he dragged the bunch of dry scrub behind him. It swept the earth, and when he checked again, their footprints had dissolved.

  Within the first mile the weight of the scrub dragging like an anchor from his belt was beginning to take its toll on his strength. He leaned forward against it. Three times in the next hour Sally-Anne asked for water. He grudged it to her. Never drink on the first thirst, one of the first survival laws. If you do, it will become insatiable, but she was sick and hurting from the head injury, and he did not have the heart to deny her. He did not drink himself.

  Tomorrow, if they lived through it, would be a burning hell of thirst. He took the canteen from her, to remove temptation
.

  A little before midnight, he untied the wire from his belt; the dragging weight of the scrub thorn brush was too much for him, and if the Shana were still on their spoor, it would not serve much further purpose. Instead, he lifted the rucksack from Sally-Anne's back and slung it over his own shoulder.

  J can manage it," she protested, although she was reeling likea drunkard. she had not complained once, although her face in the starlight was silver as the salt pan they were crossing.

  He tried to think of something to comfort her.

  "We must have crossed the border hours ago," he said.

  "Does that mean we are saleP she whispered, and he could not bring himself to lie. She shivered.

  The night wind cut through their thin clothing. He unfolded the nylon ground sheet and spread it over her shoulders, then he took her weight on his arm and led her on.

  A mile further on they reached the far edge of the salt pan and he knew she could go no further that night.

  There was a crusty bank eighteen inches high, and then firm ground again.

  "We'll stop here." She sagged to the ground and he covered her with the ground sheet.

  "Can I have a drink?"

  "No. Not until morning." The water canteen was light, sloshing more than half, empty as he lowered the pack.

  He cut a pile of scrub to break the wind and keep it off her head, and then pulled off her jogging shoes, massaging her feet and examining them by touch, "Oh, that stings." Her left heel was rubbed raw. He lifted it to his mouth and licked the abrasion clean, saving water. Then he dripped Mercurochrome on it and strapped it with a band-aid from the first, aid kit. He changed her socks from foot to foot, and then laced up her shoes again.

  "You're so gentle, "she murmured, as he slipped under the ground sheet and took her in his arms, "and so warm."

  "I love you," he said. "Go to sleep." She sighed and snuggled, and he thought she was asleep until she said softly, "Craig, I'm so sorry about King's Lynn." Then, at last, she did sleep, her breathing swelling deeply and evenly against his chest. He eased out from under the ground sheet and left her undisturbed. He went to sit on the low bank with the AK 47 across his knees, keeping the open pan under surveillance, waiting for them to come.

  While he kept the watch, he thought about what Sally Anne had said.

  He thought about King's Lynn. He thought of his herds of great red beasts, and the homestead on the hill. He thought about the men and the women who had lived there and bred their families there. He thought about the dreams he had fashioned from their lives and how he had planned to do with this woman what they had done.

  My woman. He went back to where she lay and knelt over her to listen to her breathing, and he thought about her spread naked and open on the long table under the cruel scrutiny of many eyes.

  He went back to wait at the edge of the pan and he thought about Tungata Zebiwe, and remembered the laughter and comradeship they had shared. He saw again the hand-signal from the dock as they led Tungata away.

  "We are equal the score is levelled," and he shook his head.

  He thought about once being a millionaire, and the millions he now owed. From a man of substance he had been reduced in a single stroke to something worse than a pauper. He did not even own the bundle of paper in the British Airways bag. The manuscript would be forfeit, his creditors would take that also. He had nothing, nothing except this woman and his rage.

  Then the image of General Peter Fungabera's face filled his imagination smooth as hot chocolate, handsome as mortal sin, as powerful and as evil as Lucifer and his rage grew within him, until it threatened to consume him.

  He sat through the long night without sleep, hating with all the strength of his being. Every hour he went back to where Sally-Anne slept and squatted beside her. Once he adjusted the ground sheet over her, another time he touched the lump on her forehead lightly with his fingertips and she whimpered in her sleep, then he went back to his vigil.

  Once he saw dark shapes out on the pan, and his stomach turned over queasily, but when he put Timon's binoculars on them, he saw they were pale-coloured gemsbok, huge desert gazelle, large as horses, the diamond-patterned face masks that gave them their name showing c or in the starlight. They passed silently up, wind of where he sat and merged into the night.

  Orion hunted down the sky and faded at dawn's first glimmering. It was time to go on, but he lingered, reluctant to put Sally-Anne to the terrors and the trials that day wou Id bring, giving her just those last few minutes of oblivion.

  Then he saw them and his guts and his loins filled with the molten lead of despair. They were still far out across the pan, a darkness too large to be one of the desert animals, a darkness that moved steadily towards him. The scrub brush that he had dragged must have been effective to delay them so long. But once he had abandoned it, they would have come on swiftly down the deeply trodden spoor.

  Then his despair changed shape. If it had to come, it might as well be now, he thought, this was as good a place as any to make their last stand. The Shana must come across the open pan, he he had the slight advantage afforded by the batbk and the sparse cover of knee-high scrub, but little time in which to exploit them.

  He ran back to where he had left his rucksack, keeping doubled over so as to show no silhouette against the lightening sky. He stuffed the five grenades down the front of his shirt, snatched up the roll of wire and the side cutters, and hurried back to the edge of the bank.

  He peered out at the advancing patrol. They were in single file because the pan was so open, but he guessed they r would spread out into a skirmishing line as soon as they reached the bank, adopting the classic arrowhead running formation that would give them overlapping cover, and prevent them being enfiladed by ambush.

  Craig began to place his fragmentation grenades on that assumption. He sited them along the top of the bank, that slight elevation would spread the blast out a little more.

  He wired each grenade securely to the stem of a bush, twenty paces apart, and then used a haywire twist to secure a single strand to each of the split pins that held down the ands back one at a time firing-handles. "Then he led the str ere Sally-Anne slept and secured them to to A the flap of his rucksack.

  He was down on his knees now, for the light was coming up strongly and the patrol was closer each minute.

  He readied the fifth and last grenade, and this time wriggled back on his belly. The strands of wire were spread out fanlike from where he lay behind the screen of cut brush. He checked the load of the AK 47 and placed the spare magazines at his right hand.

  it was time to wake her. He kissed her softly on the lips, and she wrinkled her nose and made little mewing sounds, then she opened her eyes and love dawned green in them for an instant, to be replaced by dismay as she remembered their circumstances. She started to sit up, but he held her down with an arm over her chest.

  "They are here, "he warned her. "I'm going to fight." She nodded.

  "Have you got Timon's pistol?" She nodded again, groping for it in the waistband of her jeans.

  "You do know how to use it?"

  "Yes."

  "Keep one bullet for the end." She stared at him.

  "Promise you won't hesitate."

  "I promise, "she whispered.

  He lifted his head slowly. The patrol was four hundred yards out from the edge of the pan, and as he had guessed, they were already spreading into the arrowhead hunting formation.

  As they separated from a single amorphous blot in the poor light, he was able to count them. Five! His spirits dropped again sharply. Timon had not done as well as he had hoped for. He had culled out only three of the original pursuit. Five was too many for Craig. Even with all the advantages of surprise and concealment, it was just too many.