Elephant Song

by Wilbur Smith

  Bonny sat frozen for a moment, chilled by what she had heard. Then she sprang to her feet and darted across the floor to the light switch and plunged the bathroom into darkness.

  Swiftly she groped her way to the bed and crept under the mosquito net.

  She lay rigid under the sheet, expecting Ephrem Taffari to return at any moment.

  Her mind was racing. She was frightened and confused. She had not expected any of this.

  She had thought that Ephrem might seize the videotape and arrest Daniel, then deport him immediately and declare him an undesirable alien, or something like that. She hadn't been too clear as to what Ephrem would do to Daniel, but she had never dreamed for a moment that he would have him killed, squashed like an insect without pity or remorse. With a jolt she realised just how naive she had been.

  The shock was almost too much to bear. She had never hated Daniel.

  Far from it, she had been as fond of him as she was capable of, until he had begun to bore and irritate her. Of course, after Ephrem had taken over Daniel had insulted and fired her, but she had given him some reason for that and she didn't hate him, not to the point of wanting him killed.

  Keep out of it, she warned herself. It's too late now. Danny has to take his own chances. She lay waiting for Ephrem to come back to bed, but he did not come and she thought of Daniel again. He was one of the few men she had ever genuinely admired and liked. He was decent and good and funny and handsome . . . She broke that chain of thought.

  Don't be a bleeding heart, she thought. It didn't turn out the way you expected but that's tough on Danny. And yet there had been a veiled threat to her in what Ephrem had said. When the tape is safely in my hands I will reconsider the problem of the woman. Ephrem still hadn't come. She sat up in bed and listened. The rain had stopped completely.

  Reluctantly she slipped out from under the mosquito-net and picked her robe from the foot of the bed. She crossed to the door that opened on to the verandah of the bungalow and opened it quietly.

  She crept down the verandah. The light from the sittingroom windows beamed out on to the verandah floor. She moved into a position from where she could see into the sittingroom while remaining in shadow.

  Ephrem Taffari sat at the desk against the far wall. His back was to her. He was dressed in a khaki T-shirt and camouflage trousers. He was smoking a cigarette and studying the papers that were strewn across the desk-top. He seemed to be settled to his work.

  It would take her less than ten minutes to reach the row of guest bungalows at the east side of the compound and get back to the bedroom.

  The wooden catwalks were wet and red with mud. She was barefoot.

  Daniel might not be in his room. She thought of every excuse for not going to warn him.

  I owe him nothing, she thought, and heard Ephrem's voice again in her imagination: Just take Armstrong out into the jungle and get rid of him.

  She backed away from the lighted window, not yet certain what she would do until she found herself running along the catwalk beneath the dark trees that dripped with rain. She slipped and fell on her knees but jumped up and kept running.

  There was red mud on the front of her robe.

  She saw through the trees that there was one light on in the row of guest rooms. The rest of them were in darkness. As she came closer she saw with relief that the light was in Daniel's room.

  She did not go up on to the verandah of the guest house, but jumped down off the catwalk and made her way round the back of the building.

  Daniel's window was curtained. She scratched softly on the mosquito-mesh screen that covered it, and at once heard a chair scrape back on the wooden floor.

  She scratched again and Daniel's voice asked softly, Who is it? For God's sake, Danny, it's me. I have to talk to you. Come inside. I'll open the door. No, no. Come out here. It's desperate.

  They mustn't see me.

  Hurry, man, hurry. Half a minute later his broad-shouldered form loomed out of the darkness, backlit by the lighted bungalow window.

  Danny, Ephrem knows about the Fish Eagle Bay tape. How did he find out? That doesn't matter. You told him, didn't you? Damn you to hell, I have come to warn you. He's issued orders for your immediate execution. Chetti Singh and Kajo are coming for you. They're going to take you into the jungle.

  They don't want any evidence. How do you know this? Don't ask bloody fool questions. Believe me, I know. I can't waste another minute. I've got to get back. He'll find I'm gone.

  She turned away, but he seized her arm. Thanks, Bonny, he said.

  You're a better person than you think you are. Do you want to make a break for it with me? She shook her head. I'll be all right, she said.

  Just get out of here. You've got an hour, tops. Get going! She pulled out of his grip and hurried away through the trees. He caught one last glimpse of her: the lights from the bungalow transformed her tumbled hair into a roseate halo and the long white robe made her look like an angel.

  Some angel, Daniel muttered, and stood for a full minute in the darkness deciding what he could do.

  While there had been only Chetti Singh and Ning Cheng Gong to deal with he had stood a chance. Like him, they had been constrained by the necessity of working in secrecy. None of them had been able to attack the other openly, but now Chetti Singh had open sanction to kill him, a special presidential licence. Daniel grinned as mirthlessly as a wolf.

  He could expect the Sikh to act swiftly and ruthlessly. Bonny was right.

  He had to get out of Sengi-Sengi within the next few minutes, before the executioners arrived.

  From the angle of the building he threw a quick glance down the verandah and around the compound. All was quiet and dark. He slipped back into his room, and lifted his small travel bag down from the cupboard. It contained all his personal documents, passport, airline tickets, credit cards and travellers cheques. Apart from his clothing and toilet bag there was nothing else of value in the room.

  He pulled on a light wind-cheater and checked that the key of the Landrover was in his pocket. He extinguished the lights and went out.

  The Landrover was parked at the far end of the verandah. He opened the door quietly and threw his bag on to the passenger seat. All the hired VTR equipment was packed into the rear compartment and there was a selection of basic camping and first-aid equipment in the lockers, but there was no weapon of any kind, apart from his old hunting-knife.

  He started the Landrover. The engine noise seemed excessively loud in the darkness. He did not switch on the headlights and he let in the clutch gently, keeping the engine revs down.

  He drove slowly through the darkened compound towards the main gates.

  He knew that the gates were never closed at night, and that a single guard was on duty there.

  Daniel was under no illusion as to just how far he was going to get in the Landrover. There was only one road from SengiSengi to the Ubomo river ferry, and there was a road-block every five miles.

  A radio call from Sengi-Sengi would alert every one of them.

  The guards would be waiting for him with their fingers on the triggers of their AK 47s. No, he would be lucky to make it through the first block, and then he would have to take to the jungle. He didn't relish that prospect. He had been trained for survival and warfare in the drier bushveld of Rhodesia, a long way further south. He would not be nearly as adept in the rain forest, but there was no other way open to him.

  The first thing was to get clear of Sengi-Sengi. After that he would face each problem as it arose.

  And this is number one, he thought grimly as suddenly the floodlights at the main gates switched on in a bright halogen dawn. The entire compound was brightly lit.

  There were half a dozen figures running from the barrack area where guards were quartered. It was obvious they had dressed hastily; some were in undervests and shorts. Daniel recognized both Captain Kajo and Chetti Singh.

  Kajo was brandishing an automatic pistol and Chetti Singh was trotting
along behind him, shouting and waving at the approaching Landrover, his white turban very visible in the glare of the floodlights. One of the guards was trying to shut the gates. He already had one wing of the steel-framed mesh gate half across the roadway.

  Daniel switched on his headlights, put his hand flat on the horn and drove hard at him, the hooter blaring. The guard dived nimbly aside, and the Landrover slammed into the unlocked leaf of the gate and whipped it aside. He roared through.

  Behind him he heard the rattling clamour of automatic riflefire. He felt half a dozen bullets slam into the aluminium bodywork of the Landrover, but he crouched low over the wheel and kept his foot hard down on the accelerator.

  The first bend in the roadway rushed towards him in the headlights.

  Another burst of automatic fire splattered against the rear of the vehicle. The rear window exploded in a storm of glass splinters and something struck him high in the back within an inch of his spine. He had been hit by a bullet before, in that long-ago war, and he recognized the sensation. From the position of the wound, high and close to the spine, it had to be a lung shot, a mortal wound. He expected to feel the choking flood of arterial blood into his lungs.

  Keep going as long as you can, he thought, and swung the Landrover into the bend at full throttle. She went up on two wheels but didn't roll.

  When he glanced in the rear-view mirror the camp lights were obscured by forest trails, a dwindling glow in the darkness behind.

  He could feel hot blood, running down his back, but there was no choking, no weakness, not yet anyway. The wound was numb. He could think clearly, He could keep going.

  He knew exactly where the first road-block was situated.

  Approximately five miles ahead, he reminded himself. On the first river crossing. He tried to remember how the road ran to reach it. He had driven over it half a dozen times during the last three days filming.

  He could remember almost every twist, every track that led off it.

  He made his decision. He leaned back against the seat. The wound stabbed him like a knife in the back, but he wasn't losing much blood.

  Internal bleeding, he thought. You aren't going to walk away from this one, Danny boy. But he kept going, waiting for the weakness to overcome him.

  There were five logging roads branching off from the main highway before it reached the first road-block. Some of them were disused and overgrown, but at least two were still being subjected to heavy daily traffic. He chose the first of these, two miles from Sengi-Sengi and turned on to it, heading westwards.

  The Zaire border was ninety miles in that direction, but the logging track only ran five miles through the forest before it intersected the MOMU excavation.

  He would have to dump the Landrover and try to make the remaining eighty miles on foot through uncharted forest. The last part of the journey would be over high mountains, glaciers and alpine snowfields.

  Then he thought about the bullet wound in his back and knew he was dreaming. He wasn't going to get that far.

  The logging track he was on had been deeply rutted and chopped up by the gigantic treaded tyres of the trucks and heavy trailers. It was a morass of mud the consistency and colour of faeces, and the Landrover churned through it in fourwheel drive, pounding through the knee-deep ruts.

  Flying mud stuck to the glass of the headlights and dimmed the beams to a murky glow that barely lit the roadway twenty paces ahead.

  The wound in his back was beginning to ache, but his head was still clear. He touched the end of his own nose with his forefinger to check his coordination. No sign of losing it yet.

  Suddenly he-was aware of lights far ahead of him on the track. One of the logging trucks was coming towards him, and instantly he realised the possibility it offered. He slowed the Landrover and searched the verge of unbroken jungle that pressed in upon the track. He sensed rather than saw a break in the foliage and swung the Landrover boldly into-it.

  For fifty paces or so he forced his way through almost impenetrable undergrowth. It scraped along both sides of the bodywork, and small trees and branches thumped along beneath the chassis. The soft forest floor sucked at the wheels and the Landrover's speed bled off until at last she was high-centred and stranded.

  Daniel cut the engine and switched off the headlights. He sat in the darkness and listened to the logging truck rumble past, headed eastwards towards Sengi-Sengi along the road he had come. When the sound of the huge diesel engine had dwindled into silence, he leaned forward in the seat and steeled himself to examine the bullet wound in his back.

  Reluctantly he twisted one arm up behind him and groped towards the centre of pain.

  Suddenly he exclaimed and jerked his hand away. He switched on the interior lights and examined the razor scratch on his forefinger. Then quickly he reached behind himself again, and cautiously fingered the wound. He laughed aloud with relief. A shard of flying glass from the rear window had sliced open his back, and lodged against his ribs. It was a long superficial wound with the sharp glass still buried in it.

  He worked it loose and examined it in the overhead light. It was bloody and jagged, and the bleeding had started again. But you aren't going to die from it, he reassured himself, and tossed the splinter out of the side window and reached for the first-aid kit which was under the VTR equipment in the back of the vehicle.

  It was difficult to treat the wound in his own back, but he managed to smear it liberally with Betadine ointment and strap an untidy dressing over it and knot the ends of the bandage in front of his chest. All the time he was listening for other vehicles on the logging road, but he heard only the small jungle sounds of bird and insect and beast.

  He found the Maglite in his kit and went back on foot to the road.

  From the verge he examined the muddy rutted tracks. As he had hoped, the logging truck had completely obliterated the Landrover's tracks with its own massive multiple wheels. Only the spot where he had driven over the verge still carried the Landrover's prints. He picked up a dead branch and swept them away carefully. Then he turned his attention to the foliage that the Landrover had damaged as it crashed into the forest.

  He rearranged it as naturally as possible and smeared mud on the raw broken ends of branches and twigs so they would not catch the eye.

  After half an hour's work he was certain that nobody would suspect that a vehicle had left the road here and was hidden only fifty feet away in the dense undergrowth.

  Almost immediately his work was put to the test. He saw headlights approaching from the direction of Sengi-Sengi. He drew back a little way into the forest and dropped flat. He smeared his face with a handful of mud and then covered the backs of his hands. His wind-cheater was dark forest green in colour; it would not show up in the lights.

  He watched the vehicle approaching along the logging track.

  It was moving slowly an as it drew level with his hiding-place he saw that it was an army transport painted in brown and green camouflage.

  The rear was crowded with Hita. soldiers and he thought he glimpsed Chetti Singh's white turban in the driver's cab, but he couldn't be certain. One of the soldiers in the rear was flashing a spotlight along the verges of the road.

  They were obviously searching for him.

  Daniel dropped his face into the crook of his arm as the beam of the spotlight played over where he lay. The truck passed on without slowing and was soon out of sight.

  Daniel stood up and hurried back to the stranded Landrover.

  Swiftly he made a selection of items from the lockers, most importantly the hand-bearing compass. He packed them into the small day pack. From the first-aid kit he took field dressings and antiseptic and anti-malarial tablets. There was no food in the truck.

  He'd have to live off the forest. He could not carry the pack the normal way without restarting the bleeding so he slung it over the other shoulder. He guessed that the wound really required stitching, but there was no way in which he could even attempt that.

/>   I have to get across the MOMU track before first light, he thought.

  That's the one place I'll be in the open and vulnerable.

  He left the Landrover and struck out westwards. It was difficult to orientate in darkness and the dense forest. He was forced to flash the torch and study the compass every few hundred yards. The going was soft and uneven and his progress was slow as he found his way between the trees. When he reached the MOMU excavation the open sky above it was flushing with dawn's first light.

  He could make out the trees on the far side of the clearing, but the MOMU itself had passed on weeks before and was already working six or seven miles further north. This part of the forest should be deserted, unless Kajo and Chetti Singh had sent a patrol down the strip to cut him off.

  It was a chance he had to take. He left the shelter of the forest and started across. He sank to his ankles in the red mud and it sucked at his boots. Every second he expected to hear a shout or a shot, and he was panting with exertion when at last he reached the far tree-line.

  He kept going for another hour before he took his first rest.

  Already it was hot and the humidity was like a Turkish bath.

  He stripped off all his clothing, except for shorts and boots, rolled it into a ball and buried it in the thick soft loam of the forest floor. His skin was toughened by sun and weather and he had a natural resistance to insect stings. In the Zambezi valley he had been able to tolerate even the bite of the swarming tsetse fly. As long as he kept the wound on his back covered he should be all right, he decided.

  He stood up and went on. He navigated by compass and wristwatch, timing his average stride to give him an estimate of distance covered.

  Every two hours he rested for ten minutes. By nightfall he calculated he had covered ten miles. At that rate it would take eight days to.