Leopard Hunts in Darkness b-4

by Wilbur A. Smith

  He lay in the hole and hugged his injured fingers to his chest, whimpering into his mask, half drowning in the water that flooded in when he screamed.

  "I'm going up now," he decided. "That's it. I've had enough." He began to wriggle out of the aperture, gingerly putting out one hand to push himself backwards. He felt nothing. In front of him, his hand was waving around in the open. He lay still, the water sloshing in his mask, trying to make a decision. Somehow he knew that if he pulled out now and surfaced, he would not be able to force himself to enter the pool again.

  Once again he groped ahead, and when he touched nothing, he inched forward and reached out again. His anchor-line held him and he slipped the knot, crept forward a little further and the pack on his back jammed u p under the stone roof He rolled half onto his side, and was able to free it. Still he could touch nothing ahead of him. He was through the wall, and a sudden superstitious dread seized him.

  He pulled back and the pack hit the roof again, and this time it jammed solidly. He was stuck fast, and immediately he began to fight to be free. His breathing hunted, beating the mechanical efficiency of the valves in his mask so that he could get no more oxygen and as he starved, his heart began to race and the pulse in his ears deafened him.

  He could not go backwards, and he kicked with his one good leg, and with his stump got a purchase against smooth rock. He pushed forward with both legs and, in a sudden rush similar to the moment of childbirth, he slid forward through the hole in the wall of the tomb into the space beyond.

  He groped wildly about him and one hand hit the smooth wall of the shaft at his side, but now he was free of his anchor and the buoyancy of the bag on his chest bore him helplessly upwards. He threw up both hands to prevent his head striking the roof of the shaft, and to grab a handhold. Under his numb fingertips the rock was slippery as soaped glass, and as he ascended, so the oxygen in the bag expanded with the release of pressure and he went up more swiftly, only the signal rope at his waist slowing his headlong upward rush. As he struggled to stabilize himself, the excess oxygen poured. out of the sides of the mask, and panic a t last rode him 66mpletely. He was swirled aloft in total terrifying darknAs.

  rfac Suddenly he burst out through the s,u e and lay on his back bobbing around likea cork. He tore the mask off his face and took a lungful of air. It was clean, but faintly tainted with the smell of bat guano. He lay on the surface and sucked it down gratefully.

  The rope tugged rapidly at his waist. Six tugs repeated.

  It was the code question from Tungata. "Are you all right?" His uncontrolled ascent must have ripped rope off the coil Emma-_

  that lay between Tungata's feet and thoroughly alarmed him. Craig signalled back to reassure him and fumbled with the switch of his lamp.

  The dim glow of light was dazzling to his eyes that had been blinded so long and they smarted from the irritation of the muddied waters. He blinked around him.

  The passage had come up at a sharply increased angle from the masonry wall, until it was now a vertical shaft.

  The old witch-doctors had been forced to chip niches in the walls and build in a ladder of rough-hewn timber to enable them to make the ascent. The poles of the ladder were secured with bark rope and were latticed up the open shaft above Craig's head, but the light of his lantern was too feeble to illuminate the top of the steep shaft. The ladder disappeared into the gloom.

  Craig paddled to the side and steadied himself with a iandhold on the primitive wooden ladder while he ass em led his thoughts and figured out the lay of the shaft and its probable shape. He realized that by returning to water level, he must have ascended forty feet after his access through the wall. He must have travelled an approximately U-shaped journey the first leg was down the grand gallery, the bottom of the U was along the shaft to the wall, and the last leg was up the steeper branch of the shaft to return to water level again.

  He tested the timber ladder work and though it creaked and sagged a little, it bore his weight. He would have to jettison the diving-gear and leave it floating in the shaft while he climbed up the rickety ladder, but first he must rest and regain full control of himself. He put both hands to his head and squeezed his temples, the pain was scarcely bearable.

  At that moment, the rope at his waist jerked taut three tugs, repeated. The urgent recall the signal for mortal danger something was desperately wrong, and Tungata was sending a warning and a plea for help.

  Craig crammed the mask back onto his face and signalled, "Pull me up!" The rope came taut and he was drawn swiftly below the surface.

  he young Matabele mother was allowed to keep her infant strapped to her back, but she was manacled by her wrist to the wrist of the Third Brigade sergeant.

  Peter Fungabera was tempted to use the helicopter to speed the pursuit and recapture of the fugitives, but finally he made the decision to go in on foot, silently. He knew the quality of the men he was hunting. The beat of a helicopter would alert them and give them a chance to slip away into the bush once again. For the same reasons of stealth, he kept the advance party small and manageable twenty picked men, and he briefed each of them individually.

  "We must take this -Matabele alive. Even if your own life is the exchange, I want him alive!" The helicopter would be called in by radio as soon as they had good contact, and another three hundred men could be rushed up to seal off the area.

  The small force moved swiftly. The girl was dragged along by the big Shana Argeant, and, weeping with shame at her own treachelryloshe pointed out the twists and forks of the barely distinguishable path.

  "The villagers have been feeding and supplying them," Peter murmured to the Russian. "This path has been used regularly."

  "Bad place for an ambush." Bukharin glanced up at the slopes of the valley that overlooked the path. "They may have elements of the escapees with them."

  "An ambush will mean a contact I pray for it," Peter told him softly. And once again the Russian felt satisfaction at his choice of man. This one had the heart for the task. Now it needed only a small change in the fortunes of war and his masters in Moscow would have their foothold in central Africa.

  Once they had it, of course, this man Fungabera would need careful watching. He was not just another gorilla to be manipulated with a heavy pressure on the puppet strings. This one had depths which had not yet been fathomed, and it would be Bukharin's task to undertake this exploration. It would require subtlety and finesse. He looked forward to the work, he would enjoy it just as he was enjoying the present chase.

  He swung easily along the track behind Peter Fungabera, pacing him without having to exert himself fully, and there was that delicious tightness in his guts and the stretching of the nerves, the heightening of all the senses that special rapture of the manhunt.

  Only he knew that the hunt would not end with the taking of the Matabele. After that there would be other quarry, as elusive and as prized. He studied the back of the man who strode ahead of him, delighting in the way he moved, in the long elastic strides, in the way he held his head upon the corded neck, in the staining of sweat through the camouflage cloth yes, even in the odour of him, the feral smell of Africa.

  Bukharin smiled. What a set of trophies to crown his long and distinguished career, the Matabele, the Shana and the land.

  These mental preoccupations had in no way distracted Bukharin's physical senses. He was fully aware that the valley was narrowing down upon them, of the increased steepness of the slopes above and the peculiar stunted and deformed nature of the forest. He reached forward to touch Peter's shoulder, to draw his attention to the change in the geological formation of the cliff beside them, the contact of dolomite on country rock, when abruptly the Matabele woman began to shriek. Her voice echoed shrilly off the cliffs and repeated through the surrounding forest, shattering the hot and brooding silences of this strangely haunted valley. Her screams were unintelligible, but the warning they carried was unmistakable.

  Peter Fungabera. took two swift stride
s up behind her, reached over her shoulder and cupped his hand under her chin; he placed his other forearm at the base of her neck and with a clean jerk pulled her head back against it. The girl's neck broke with an audible snap, and her screams were cut off as abruptly as they had begun.

  As her lifeless body dropped, Peter spun and urgently signalled his troopers. "They reacted instantly, diving off the path and circling swiftly out ahead in the hooking MOvement of encirclement.

  When they were in position, Peter glanced back at the Russian and nodded. Bukharin moved up silently beside him, and they went forward together, weapons held ready, quickly and warily.

  The faint track led them to the base of the Cliff, and then disappeared into a narrow vertical cleft in the rock.

  Peter and Bukharin darted forward and flattened themselves against the cliff on each side of the opening.

  "The burrow of the Matabele fox," Peter gloated quietly.

  "I have him now!" he Shana are here!" The scream came from the entrance of the cavern, muted by the fold of the rock and the screening brush. "The Shana have come for you! Run! The Shana-" a woman's voice cut off suddenly.

  Sarah sprang up from the fire, overturning the three legged iron cooking-pot, and she fled across the cavern, snatching up the lantern as she went, racing into the maze of passages.

  From the head of the steep natural staircase into the grand gallery she screamed her warning down towards the pool, "The Shana are here, my lord! They have discovered usP And the echoes magnified the terror and urgency of her voice.

  "I am coming to yaup Tungata boomed back up the gallery, and he came bounding up the shaft into the light of her lantern. He climbed the stone staircase, swinging himself up on the rope, and placed an arm around her shoulders.

  "Where are they?"

  "At the entrance there was a voice, one of our women calling a warning I could hear the fear in her and then it was cut off. I think she has been killed."

  "Go down to the pool. Help Pendula to bring Pupho up."

  "My lord, there is no escape for us, is there?"

  "We will fight," he said. "And in fighting we may find a Hill way. Go now, Pupho will tell you what to do." Carrying the AK 47 at the trail, Turigata disappeared into the passage leading upwards towards the main cavern.

  Sarah scrambled down the rock ramp way in her haste failing the last few feet, barking her knees.

  "Pendula!" she called, desperate for the comfort of human contact.

  "Here, Sarah. Help me." When she reached the slab at the bottom of the gallery, Sally-Anne was waist-deep at the edge of the pool, straining on the rope.

  "Help me, it's stuck!" Sarah jumped down beside her, and grabbed the tail of the rope.

  "The Shana have found us." She heaved on the rope.

  "Yes. We heard you."

  "What shall we do, Pendula?"

  "Let's get Craig out of here first. He will think of something." Suddenly the rope gave, as forty feet below Craig managed to force himself through the narrow opening in the wall) and the two girls hauled him upwards hand over hand.

  Oxygen bubbles burst in a seething rash on the surface of the pool, and they saw Craig coming up through the gin-clear water, the masking transforming him into some grotesque sea monster. He reached the surface and ripped the mask off his head, snorting and coughing at the fresh air.

  "What is it?" he choked as he splashed to the edge of the rock slab.

  "The Shana are here." Both girls together, in English and Sindebele.

  "Oh GaR Craig collapsed weakly onto the slab. "Oh GaR "What shall we do, Craig?" They were both staring at him piteously, and the cold and the pain in his head seemed to paralyse him.

  Abruptly the air around their heads reverberated as d-lough they were within the sounding body of a kettledrum beaten at a furious tempo.

  "Gunfire!" Craig whispered, covering his ears to protect them. "Sam has made contact."

  "How long can he hold them

  "Depends if they use grenades, or gas-" he left it hanging and straightened up, shivering violently. He stared back at them. They seemed to sense his despair, and looked away.

  "Where is the pistol?" Sarah asked fearfully, glancing up at the twist of goat-skin in the crack of the rock wall.

  "No," Craig snapped. "Not that." He reached out and caught her arm. He pulled hi mse If together, shaking off despair as he shook the water from his hair.

  "Have you ever used an aqualung?" he demanded of Sally-Anne. She shook her head.

  "Well, now is as good a time-"

  "I couldn't go in the reP Fearfully Sally' Anne stared into the pool.

  "You can do anything you have to do," he snarled at her.

  "Listen, I have found another branch of the shaft that comes up above surface. It will take three or four minutes-"

  No, "Sally-Anne cringed away from him.

  "I'll take you through first," he said. "Then I will come back for Sarah."

  "I would rather die here, Pupho," the black girl whispered.

  "Then you'll get your wish." Craig was already changing the oxygen bottle, screwing on one of the fresh cylinders, and he turned his attention back to Sally-Anne.

  "You put your arms around me and breathe slowly and easily. Hold each breath as long as you can, then let it out carefully. The hole in the wall is narrow, but you are smaller than I am, you'll make it easily." He lifted the oxygen set over her head and lowered it onto her shoulders. "I will go through first, and pull you behind me. Once we are through it is straight up. As we go up just remember to exhale as the oxygen in your lungs expands again or you will pop likea paper bag. Come on.

  "Craig, I'm afraid."

  "Never thought I'd hear you say that." Waist-deep in the pool he fitted the mask over the lower half of her face.

  "Don't fight it," he told her. "Keep your eyes closed and relax. I will tow you. Don't struggle, for God's sake, don't struggle." She nodded at him, gagged by the mask, and again the gallery echoed to the deafening roar of automatic rifle-fire from above.

  "Closer, Craig muttered. "Sam is being driven back." Then he called to Sarah on the slab above them.

  "Give me my leg!" Sarah handed it down to him. He strapped it to his belt. "While I'm away, pack all the food you can find into the canvas bags. The spare lamps and batteries also I'll be back for you inside ten minutes." He began to hyperventilate, holding to his chest the boulder that would weigh them down. He gestured to Sally-Anne and she waded up behind him and put her arms around him under his armpits.

  "Take a good breath and play dead," he ordered, and filled his own lungs for the last time. He fell forward with ally-Anne clinging to his back and they dropped together down towards the tomb entrance.

  Halfway down Craig heard the click of the valves in her mask, and felt Sally-Anne's chest subside and swell as she breathed, and he tensed for her coughing fit. There wasn't one.

  They reached the entrance and he dropped the stone and drew her up to the wall. Gently he disentangled her hands, trying to make his movements calm and unhurried.

  He backed into the aperture, holding both her hands, and pulled her in after him. Unencumbered by the oxygen gear he slid through easily.

  He heard her hr e again. "Good girlP he applauded th silently. "Good brave girl!" For a moment her gear jammed in the aperture, but he reached forward and freed it, then eased her towards him.

  She was through. Thank you, God, she was through.