Leopard Hunts in Darkness b-4

by Wilbur A. Smith

  They moved out of sight, directly below the window.

  "Pupho, swing the rope to the left." Craig obeyed, and felt the tug on it as Tungata grabbed the swinging loop.

  "All right, Sarah is in the loop."

  "Explain to her that she must walk up the rock as we pull her." Sally-Anne sat directly behind Craig, the rope running over his shoulder to her. Craig had his feet braced against the side wall.

  "Pull!" he ordered, and quickly she picked up the rhythm of it. Sarah was small and slim, but it was a long haul and Craig's hands were raw. It was five minutes of hard work before they dragged her over the sill and the three of them rested together.

  "All right, Sam. We are ready for you now." He dropped the loop into the shaft.

  There were three of them on the rope now, sitting one behind the other, but Tungata was a big, heavy man. Craig could hear the girls whimpering and sobbing with the effort.

  "Sam, can you jam V6urself into the chimney?" Craig gasped. "Give us a re5tr He felt the weight go off the rope, and the three of them lay in a heap and rested.

  "All right, let's go again." Tungata seemed even heavier now, but finally he came tumbling into the window, and none of them could talk for a while.

  Craig was the first to find his voice. "Oh, shit, we forgot the diamonds! We left the bloody diamonds."

  PP

  There was a click and a yellow glow of light as Tungata switched on the second lantern that he had brought up with him. They all blinked owlishly at each other, and Tungata chuckled hoarsely.

  "Why do you think I was so heavy?" He held the canvas bag in his lap, and as he patted it, the diamonds crunched together with a sound likea squirrel chewing nuts.

  "Hero!" Craig grunted with relief. "But switch off, there are only a few minutes" life left in that battery." They used the lantern in flashes. The first flash showed them that the rock window opened into a low-roofed cave, so wide that they could not make out the side walls. The roof was coated with a furry mass of bats. Their eyes were a myriad pinpricks of reflected light and their naked faces were pink and hideous as they stared down at them, hanging upside down.

  The floor of the cave was carpeted with their droppings.

  The reeking guano had filled every irregularity, and the floor was level and soft underfoot, deadening their footfalls as they went forward in a group, holding hands to keep contact in the darkness.

  Tungata led them, flashing the lantern every few minutes to check the floor ahead and to reorientate himself.

  Craig was in the rear with the coiled rope looped over his shoulder. Gradually the floor started to slope upwards under them and the roof hung lower.

  Voit," said Sally-Anne. "Don't switch on the light again."

  "What is it?"

  "Ahead up the slope. Is it my imagination?" There are degrees of darkness. Craig stared into the blackness ahead, and slowly out of it emerged a faint nimbus, a lessening of the utter blackness.

  "Light," he whispered. "There is light up there." They started forward, bumping into each other in their haste, running and pushing, laughing as the light strengthened and they could make out each other's shapes, the laughter becoming wild hysteria. The light turned to a golden glory ahead and they fought their way up the soft yielding slope of guano towards it.

  Gradually the roof pressed down onto them, forcing them to their knees, and then onto their bellies, and the light was a thin horizontal blade that blinded them with its brilliance. They clawed their way towards the light, stirring the guano dust so that it coated their faces and choked them, but they whooped and shouted hysterically through it.

  Craig saw that Sarah was weeping unashamedly, tears shining on her face. Tungata was bellowing with wild laughter, and Craig flung himself forward and grabbed his ankles just as he reached the low slitted entrance of the cave.

  "Wait, Sam. Be careful." Tungata tried to kick his hands away and crawl on, but Craig held him.

  "Shana! There are Shana out there." That name halted and silenced them. They lay just within the threshold 4 the cavern, and their euphoria evaporated.

  "Craig and I will go ahead to scout the lay of the land." Tungata groped in the guano and passed a rock the size of a baseball back to Craig. "It's the best weapon I have. You two girls will stay here until we call you, okay?" Craig took a double handful of the guano and blackened his face and limbs with it. Then he slipped the coil of rope off his shoulder, and crawled up beside Tungata. He was content to let Tungata take control now. In the cavern, Craig had been the leader, but out there was Tungata's world. In the bush Tungata was a leopard man.

  They crawled up the last few feet to the entrance. It was a low horizontal slit in the rock, less than eighteen inches high and screened by golden elephant grass growing just beyond the threshold. It was facing east for the early morning sunshine was blazing into their faces. They lay for a while, letting their eyes adjust to its glare after those days of darkness.

  Then Tungata slid forward likea black mambal barely moving the tall grass as he went through it.

  Craig gave him a count of fifty and then followed him.

  He came out on a hillside with the stratum of limestone forming buttresses across it, over which grew the stunted desiccated brush and wiry elephant grass. They were just below the summit, and the slope dropped away steeply below them into the heavily forested valley. Already the morning sun was hot and Craig revelled in it.

  Tungata was lying below him, and he gave Craig the hand-signal, "Cover my left side." Craig moved carefully into position, walking on his elbows and dragging his legs.

  "Search!" Tungata gave him the peremptory signal, and they lay for fully ten minutes scrutinizing the ground below, above and on both sides, covering every inch, every bush and rock and field.

  "All clear," Craig signalled, and Tungata began to move along the contour of the slope towards the shoulder of the hill. Craig kept behind and above him, covering him.

  A bird came towards them, a black and white bird with a disproportionately large yellow beak, a huge, semitically curved yellow bill that gave it its common name of hornbill, and its nickname of Yiddish canary. Its flight was characteristically erratic and swooping, and it settled on a low bush just ahead and below Tungata but almost immediately it let out a harsh squawk of alarm and hurled itself into the air again, swooping away down the hillside.

  "Danger!" Tungata made the urgent hand-signal, and they froze.

  Craig stared at the clump of rock and grass and bush from which the hornbill had fled, trying to discover what had alarmed it.

  Something moved, a tiny stirring, and it was so close that Craig clearly heard the flare of a match being struck and lit. A feather of ethereal smoke drifted from the clump of brush and prickled his nostrils with the stink of tobacco burning. Then he made out the shape of a steel battle helmet covered with camouflage net. It moved away as the man wearing it drew again on his cigarette.

  Now Craig saw the whole picture. In his camouflage smock, the man was lying behind a light machine-gun on a tripod, the barrel of the weapon was bound with streamers of hessian to disguise its stark outline.

  "How many?" Tungata signalled the question, and then Craig saw the second man. He was sitting with his back to the base of the low Thorn tree. The shadow of the branches over his head blended perfectly with the tiger stripes of his camouflage. He was a big man, bare-headed, with a sergeant's chevrons on his arm, and an Uzi machine-gun laid beside him.

  Craig was about to signal, "Two," when the man slipped a soft pack of cigarettes out of his breast-pocket and held it out. A third man who had been lying flat on his back in the shade, sat up and accepted the pack. He tapped out a cigarette and then tossed the pack to a fourth man, who rolled onto his elbow to catch it, revealing himself for the first time.

  Tour!" Craig signalled.

  It was a machine-gun post, perfectly sited on the shoulder of the hill to cover the slopes below. Peter Fungabera had obviously anticipated the existence of
bolt holes from the main cavern. The hills must all be staked out with nests of machine guns It was mere fortune that had brought them out above this post. "Me gunner was facing downhill, his mates were stretched out, relaxed and bored from days of unrewarded vigil.

  "Move into attack position,"Tungata signalled.

  "Query?" Craig flicked his thumb. "Four! Query?" Craig questioned the odds.

  "Go right!" Tungata signalled, and then enforced the order with the clenched fist. "Imperative!" Craig felt his blood charging with adrenaline the heat of it spreading down his limbs, his mouth drying out. He clutched the round stone in his right hand.

  They were so close that he could see the wet spit on the tip of the cigarette as the machinegunner took it from his lips. The nest was littered with their rubbish: paper wrappers and empty food cans and cigarette butts. Their weapons were laid carelessly aside. The man lying on his back had covered his eyes with his elbow and the burning cigarette stuck up likea candle from his lips. The sergeant against the tree was whittling a piece of wood with his trench-knife. The third had unbuttoned his smock and was minutely searching his own chest hair for body vermin.

  Only the man behind the gun was alert.

  Tungata was sliding into position beside Craig.

  "Ready?" He raised his hand and glanced at Craig.

  "Affirmative." Tungata's hand came down, the order to execute.

  Craig went in, rolling over the edge of the nest, and he hit the man with the trench-knife. He hit him in the temple with the stone, and he knew instantly that it was too hard. He felt bone break in the man's head.

  The sergeant sagged forward without a sound, and at the same instant Craig heard a soft scuffle and grunt be-hind him as Tungata took on the machine-gunner. Craig did not even glance around. He snatched up the Uzi machine, gun and cocked it.

  The searcher after body vermin looked up and his jaw sagged open as Craig thrust the muzzle into his face, pressing the circle of steel against his cheek and glaring into his eyes, dominating him, compelling silence.

  Tungata had picked up the sergeant's fallen trench knife and now he dropped onto the reclining trooper, driving one knee into his diaphragm, forcing all the air from his lungs in a single explosive sigh, and then pressing the point of the knife into the soft flesh below his ear. Still on his back, the man's face swelled and contorted, as he struggled to refill his lungs.

  "If any man cries out," Tungata. whispered, "I will cut off his testicles and stick them in his mouth." It had all taken less than five seconds.

  Tungata knelt beside the sergeant whom Craig had stoned, and felt for the pulse in his throat. After a few seconds he shook his head, and began stripping the corpse of its battle-smock. He shrugged into it. It was too sma for him, binding across the chest.

  "Take the gunner's uniform," he ordered, while he took the Uzi from Craig and covered the two prisoners with it.

  The machine-gunner's neck was broken. Tungata had jerked back his helmet and the strap had caught under his chin. The dead man's camouflage smock stank of rancid stale sweat and tobacco smoke, but it fitted Craig well enough. The steel helmet was too big, it came down to his eyes, but covered his long straight hair.

  Tungata thrust his face close to those of the prisoners.

  "Drag the bodies of these Shana dogs with you." Craig and Tungata covered them while they pulled the two naked dead men, fAt first, through the grass to the cave entrance and then rolled them down the slope into the dark interior.

  The two girls were shocked and silenced.

  "StripP Tungata ordered the prisoners. when they were in their army issue shorts, Tungata ordered Craig, "Tie them! Craig gestured them to lie on their stomachs, and using the nylon rope bound their wrists at the small of the back, then pulled up their legs and bound wrists to ankles. It was a hogtie that left them helpless. Then he -pulled the stockings off their feet and stuffed them into their mouths and tied the gags in place.

  While he was working, Tungata was dressing the girls in the discarded battle-dress. It was many sizes too large, but they folded back the cuffs at wrists and ankles and belted the trousers in a bunch around their waists.

  "Black your face, Pendula," Tungata ordered, and she smeared herself. "Hands also. Now cover your hair." He pulled a beret out of a pocket of his purloined smock, and tossed it to her.

  "Come on." Tungata picked up the canvas bag of diamonds and started back up the slope. He led them back to the abandoned machinegun nest.

  Tungata tipped up a field pack, emptying it out onto the ground, and then shoved the bag of diamonds into the pack and rebuckled it. He slung the pack onto his back.

  Craig had been ransacking the other equipment. He passed two grenades to Tungata and stuffed two more into his own pockets. He found a Tokarev pistol for Sarah, and gave another Uzi to Sally-Anne. There was an AK 47 for himself, with five spare magazines. Tungata kept the second Uzi. Craig added a water bottle to his load. He broke open an emergency pack of chocolate and they all stuffed their mouths as they prepared to leave. It tasted so good that Craig's eyes watered.

  "I'll take the point." Tungata spoke through a sticky mouthful of chocolate. "We'll try and get down into the valley, under cover of the trees." They kept just under the shoulder of the hill, going directly down the slope, taking the chance that the open slope to their right was clear.

  They were just above the tree line when they heard the helicopter.

  It was coming up the valley. It was still behind the shoulder of the hill, but coming on fast.

  "Hit the groundP Craig ordered, and slammed Sally Anne between the shoulder-blades with the flat of his hand. They went down and pushed their faces to the earth, but the beat of the rotors changed, altering to coarse pitch and now the sound was stationary, just out of their line of sight behind the fold of rocky hillside.

  "It's landing," Sally-Anne said, and the engine noise died away.

  "She's down." Sally-Anne cocked her head. "She's landed. There! He has cut the motor." Into the silence they could hear, very faintly, orders being shouted.

  Tupho, come up here," Tungata ordered. "You two, wait." Craig and Tungata crawled up to the shoulder of the hill and very slowly raised their heads to look over the crest.

  Below them, a quarter of a mile down the valley, there was a small level clearing at the edge of the forest. The grass had been flattened and there was an open-sided canvas sun shelter at the edge of the trees on the far side of the clearing. The helicopter stood in the centre of the clearing, and the pilot was climbing down from the fuselage port. There were uniformed troopers of the Third Brigade under the trees near the tent, and in the tent they could make out three or four other men sitting at a table.

  "Advanced headquarters," Craig murmured.

  "This is the valley thae'we entered, the main cave is just below us."

  "You are right." Craig had not recognized the ground from this direction and height.

  "Looks as though they are pulling out," Tungata pointed into the trees. A platoon of camouflaged troopers was moving back down the valley in Indian file.

  "They probably waited for forty-eight hours or so after dynamiting the grand gallery, now they must have given us up for dead and buried." "How many?"Tungata asked.

  "I can see," Craig screwed up his eyes, "twenty at least, not counting those in the tent. There will be others staking out the hills, of course." Tungata drew back from the skyline and beckoned to Sally' Anne She crawled up beside him.

  "What do you make of that machine?" He pointed at the helicopter.

  "It's a Super Frelon," she replied without hesitation.

  "Can you fly it?" 11 can fly anything."