"Unless one of the girls will come up and help me." There was silence in the darkness below him.
"I'll come,"Tungata broke the silence.
"No good. You are too heavy. I couldn't hold you." Silence again, and then Sally' Anne said, "Tell me what to do."
"Tie on to the end of the rope. Use a bowline knot."
"Okay."
"All right, come out across the pole. I'll be holding you." Peering down he could see her silhouetted against the glow of the fire, as she worked her way across.
He took up the slack in the rope carefully, ready to jam it if she fell.
"I'm across."
"Can you find the crack?"
"Yes.
"I'm going to pull you up. You must help me by pushing with your toes in the crck." Okay.
"Go!" He felt her full weight come on the rope, and it bit into his shoulder.
"Push up!" he ordered, and as he felt the load lighten, he grabbed the slack.
"Push!" She came up another four inches.
"Push!" It seemed to go on and on, and then she screamed and the rope burned out in a hard, heavy run across his shoulder. He was almost jerked out of his niche.
He fought it, jamming hard, feeling the skin smear off his palms on the harsh nylon until he stopped it. Sally Anne was still screaming, and the rope pendulumed back and forth as she swung sideways along the wall.
"Shut up!" he roared at her. "Get a hold of yourself." She stopped screaming, and gradually her swings became shorter.
"I lost my footing." Her voice was almost a sob.
"Can you find the crack again?"
"Yes."
"All right, tell me when you are ready."
"Ready!"
"Push up!" He thought it would never end, and then he felt her hand touch his leg.
"You made it," he whispered. "You marvelous bloody female." He made a space for her in the chimney below him and he helped her into it. He showed her how to wedge herself securely, and then he held her shoulder, squeezing hard.
I can't go any further." Her first words after she recovered.
"That was the worst, the rest is easy." He wouldn't tell her about the window not yet.
"Listen to the bats," he cheered her instead. "The surface must be close, very close. Think of that first glimpse of sunlight, that first breath of sweet dry air."
"I'm ready to go on," she said at last, and he led her up the chimney.
As soon as it was wide enough to cross over, he made her climb ahead of him so that he could place her feet with his hands, and help her to push upwards when the chimney became too wide for her to be able to exert her full strength.
"Craig. Craig! It's closed. It has pinched in. It's a dead end." Her panic was just below the surface and he could feel she was shaking as she choked down her sobs.
"Stop it," he snapped. "Just one more effort. just one, I promise you." He waited for her to quieten, then he went on, "There is a window in the wall just above your head, just around the corner of the chimney. Only a foot or two-" I won't be able to reach it."
"Yes! Yes, you will. I'm going to make a bridge for you with my body. You will stand on my stomach, you'll reach it easily. Do you hear me? Sally-Anne, answer me."
"No." Very small and faint. "I can't do it." "Then none of us are going anywhere," he said sharply.
"It's the only way out. You do it or we rot here. Do you hear me?" He worked up close beneath her, so that her sagging buttocks were pressed into his belly. Then he braced with all his strength, pressing with both legs into one side of the chimney and with his shoulders into the other, forming a human bridge beneath her.
"Slowly let go," he whispered. "Sit on my stomach."
"Craig, I'm too heavy."
"Do it, damn you. Do id" Her weight came onto him, and the pain was too much to bear. His sinews and muscles were tearing, his vision filled with flashing lights.
"Now straighten up,"he blurted.
She came up onto her -knees; her kneecaps bit into his flesh like crucifixion n.41s.
"Stand!"he groaned. Quickly!" She tottered on the unsteady platform of his body as she came upright.
"Reach up! High as you can!"
"Craig, there is a hole up here!" "Can you get into it?" No reply. She shifted her stance on him, and he cried aloud with the effort of holding her.
She bounced, and then her weight was gone. He heard her feet scrabbling against the shaft and the brush of the rope as she drained herself upwards and it followed her likea monkey's tail.
"Craig, it's a shelf a cave!"
"Find somewhere to tie your end of the rope." A minute, and another he couldn't hold out, his limbs were numb, his shoulders were'I've tied it! It's safe." He tugged on the rope and it came up firm and secure.
He took a loop around his wrist and let his feet go. He swung out of the chimney and dangled into the open shaft.
He pulled himself up the rope, hand over hand, and then he tumbled over the sill into the stone window, and Sally-Anne hugged him to her bosom. Too far gone to speak, he clung to her likea child to its mother.
"What is happening up there?" Tungata could not contain his impatience.
"We have found another lead," Craig called back. "It must be open to the surface somewhere there are bats."
"What must we do?"
"I am going to drop the rope. There will be a loop in it.
Sarah first. She will have to cross the pole and get into the loop. The two of us will be able to pull her up." It was a long message to shout. "Do you understand?"
"Yes. I'll make her do it." Craig tied a loop in the end of the rope, and then, in complete darkness, crawled back to the anchor point that Sally' Anne had chosen. He ran his hands over it. It was a pinnacle of rock, twelve feet back from the ledge and her knot was good. He went back and dropped the looped end down into the shaft. He lay on his stomach and peered down into the echoing darkness. The fire glow was far below, a dull furnace redness. He could hear the whisper of their voices.
"What's keeping you?" he demanded.
Then he saw the dark shape, only just visible in the firelight, moving out across the pole bridge. It was too big to be one person, and then he realized that both Tungata and Sarah were on the pole together. Tungata was coaxing her across, riding out backwards and drawing her after him.
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 togethe
r 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 sa
me 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.
Wilbur Smith - B4 The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Page 54
