A Time to Die

The nearest island in the chain was three hundred meters away; the channel between was clogged with reeds and water hyacinth and lily pads. The blooms of the water lilies were spots of electric blue against the green water, and even in the treetop Sean could catch wafts of their perfume.

Sean raised his binoculars and meticulously swept the channel and the nearest shore of the island, for even a great elephant could be swallowed up by the sweep and magnitude of this land- and waterscape.

Suddenly his nerves jumped as he saw weighty and ponderous movement in the reeds and the gleam of wet hide in the sunlight.

His excitement was stillborn, followed by the pull of disappointment in his guts, as he recognized the broad, misshapen head of a hippopotamus emerging from the swamps.

In the lens of his binoculars he could see the pink-shot piggy eyes and the bristles in the lisproportionately tiny ears. The hippo fluttered them like the wings of a bird, shaking off the droplets that sparkled like diamond chips, forming a halo above its huge head.

It plodded through the mud, crossing from one lagoon to another, pausing only to loose an explosive jet of liquid dung that it splattered with a violent stirring motion of its stubby tail. The force of this discharge flattened the reeds behind the obese animal.

With relief Sean watched it move on and submerge itself in the further lagoon. The rotten hull of the dugout would have offered no protection from those heavy, curved tusks in the gape of huge jaws.

At last Sean glanced across at Matatu in the fork beside him, and the little Ndorobo shook his head.

"He has moved on. So must we."

They scrambled down to the ground and went back to where they had left Riccardo. The voyage in the mokorro and a good night's sleep had invigorated him. He was on his feet, impatient and eager for the hunt, the way Sean had known him before.

"Anything?" he demanded.

"No." Sean shook his head. "But Matatu reckons we are close.

Absolute silence from now on."

While they loaded the dugout, Sean gulped a mug of the scalding tea and kicked sand over the fire.

They punted and pushed the canoe across the channel to the next island, and once again Sean climbed into a treetop while Matatu scurried into the dense undergrowth to pick up the elephant's spoor again. He was back within fifteen minutes and Sean slid out of the tree to meet him.

"He has moved on," Matatu whispered. "But the wind is bad."

Looking grave, he took the ash bag from his loincloth and shook out a puff of powdery white ash to demonstrate. "See how it turns and changes like the fancy of a Shangane whore."

Sean nodded, and before they crossed to the next island he stripped off his sleeveless bush shirt. Naked from the waist up, he could instantly feel the slightest vagary of the breeze on the sensitive skin of his upper body.

On the next island they found where Tukutela had left the water to go ashore, and the mud he had smeared on the brush as he passed was still slightly damp. Matatu shivered with excitement like a good dog getting his first whiff of a bird.

They left the canoe and crept forward, feeling their way through the heavy bush, thankful for the breeze that clattered the palm fronds overhead to cover the small sounds of their footfalls in the dead leaves and dry twigs. They found where the old elephant had shaken down the nuts from one of the palms and stuffed them down his throat without chewing them with his last worn set of molars, but he had moved on again.

"Run?" Sean whispered, fearful that the bull might have sensed their presence. But Matatu reassured him with a quick shake of his head and pointed to the green twigs the elephant had stripped of bark and left scattered along his tracks. The raw twigs had not completely dried out, but the spoor led them on a meandering beat across the island and then once more plunged into the channel on the far side. They sent Purnula back to bring the dugout around to where they waited and when he arrived piled Riccardo into it and pushed him across, wading waist deep beside him, moving stealthily and silently until they reached the next island.

Here they found a pile of dung, spongy and soft with reeds and hyacinth the bull had eaten, and beside it the splash mark of his urine as though a garden hose had been played upon the earth. It was stiff so wet that Sean scooped up a handful of the dirt and molded it into a ball like a child's mud cake. The pile of dung had a dry crust, but when Matatu thrust his foot into it, it was moist as porridge and he exclaimed with delight at the body heat still trapped within.

"Close, very close!" he whispered excitedly.

Instinctively Sean reached for the cartridges looped on his belt and changed them for those in the double-barreled rifle, careful to mute the click of the rifle's side lock as he closed it. Riccardo recognized the gesture-he had seen it so often before-and he grinned with excitement and clicked the Rigby's safety catch on and off, on and off. They crept forward in single file, but disappointment dragged them down again as the spoor led them across the island and then on the far side once more entered the papyrus beds.

They stood facing the wall of reeds, staring at the point where Tukutela had pushed down the stems as he went through. One of the flattened stems quivered and began slowly to rise into its original position. The elephant must have passed only minutes ahead of them. They stood frozen, straining to listen beyond the susurration of the wind in the papyrus.

Then they heard it, the low rumble like that of summer thunder at a great distance, the sound an elephant makes in his throat when he is content and at peace. It is a sound that carries much farther than its volume would suggest, but nevertheless Sean knew the bull was not more than a hundred yards ahead of them. He laid his hand on Riccardo's arm and drew him gently up alongside him.

"We have to be careful of the wind," he began in a whisper.

Then they heard the swish and rush of water sucked up in the bull's trunk and squirted back over his own shoulders to cool himself and caught a brief glimpse of the black tip of his trunk as he lifted it high above the tops of the papyrus ahead of them.

Their excitement was so intense that Sean felt his throat closed and dry, and his whisper was rough.

"Back off!"

He made a cutout hand signal that Matatu obeyed instantly, and they backed away a stealthy step at a time, Sean leading Riccardo by the arm. As soon as they were into the undergrowth Riccardo demanded in a furious whisper, "What the hell, we were so close."

"Too close," Sean told him grimly. "Without any chance of a shot in the papyrus. If the wind had swung just a few degrees, it would have been over before it began. We have to let him get across to the next island before we can close in."

He led Riccardo back faster, then stopped below the outspread branches of a tall strangler fig.

"Let's take a look," he ordered. They propped their rifles at the base of the trunk. Sean helped Riccardo to reach the first branch, then followed him as he climbed upward from branch to branch.

Near the top of the fig they found a secure stance. Sean steadied Riccardo with a hand on his shoulder, and they stared down into the papyrus beds.

They saw him immediately. Tukutela's back rose above the reeds. It was wet and charcoal black from the spray of his trunk, the spine urved and prominent beneath the rough wrinkled hide.

He was faced away from them, his huge ears flapping lazily, the edges torn and tattered, the thick veins twisted and knotted like a nest of serpents beneath the smoother skin behind their wide spread.

A row of four egrets rode upon his back, perched along his spine, brilliant white in the sunlight with yellow bils, sitting hunched up but attentive, bright-eyed sentinels who would warn the old bull of the first sign of danger.

While he was in the water, there was no way they could come at him, and he was well over three hundred yards away, far beyond effective rifle shot. So they watched him from the treetop as he made his slow, majestic Way across the channel toward the next island.

When Tukutela reached the deepest stretch of open water, he submerged completely; only his trunk rose above the surface, waving and coiling in the air like the head of a sea serpent. He emerged on the far side of the channel with water streaming down his dark mountainous sides.

Standing together on the branch of the fig, Riccardo and Sean were savoring this high point in both their hunting experiences.

Never again would there be another elephant like this. No other man would ever gaze upon such a beast. He was theirs. It seemed they had waited a lifetime for this moment. The hunter's passion eclipsed all other emotion, rendering everything else in their lives effete and tasteless. Here was something primeval, sprung from the very wells of the soul, and it affected them as great music might affect others.

The old bull lifted his head and turned aside for a moment, affording them just a brief glimpse of his dark-stained ivory, and they stirred unconsciously, affected by the sight of those long, perfectly curved shafts as by the creation of a Michelangelo or the body of a beautiful woman. At that moment there was nothing else in their universe. They were perfectly in tune, a bond of companionship and shared endeavor welding them together.

"He's beautiful!" Riccardo whispered.

Sean did not reply, for there was nothing to add.

They watched the old bull reach the far island and heave his body from the water, climb the low bank and stand for a moment, tall and gaunt and shining wet in the sun, before he pushed his way into the undergrowth and it swallowed up even his bulk. The egrets were brushed from his back and rose up like snowy scraps of paper in a whirlwind. Sean tapped Riccardo on the shoulder, and he shook himself as though awaking from a dream.

"We'll cross in the canoe," Sean whispered, and he sent Pumula to bring the craft around the islet.

They sat flat in the bottom of the mokorro so their heads would not show above the tops of the reeds and propelled themselves across the narrow neck of swamp by pulling on the stems of the papyrus. Soundlessly they slid through the reed beds, and the light breeze held true and steady. Sean felt every light touch of it on his bare shoulders.

They reached the shore. Sean helped Riccardo out of the canoe, and they pulled it up onto the bank, careful not to make the faintest sound.

"Check your load," Sean whispered. Riccardo turned the bolt of the Rigby and drew it back just far enough to expose the shining brass cartridge in the chamber. Sean nodded approval and Riccardo closed the bolt silently. They went forward.

They were forced to move in single file, following the path the bull had opened through the otherwise impenetrable growth.

Matatu led them a few paces at a time, and then they all froze to listen.

Suddenly there was4a loud crackling uproar in the bushes just ahead of them, ago they saw the branches sway and toss and shake. Riccardo-swung up the Rigby, but Sean restrained him, grabbing his forearm and pushing the muzzle of the rifle down.

They stood stonily, staring ahead, hearts pounding, and listened to the old bull feeding. Only thirty paces away he was ripping down branches, swinging his ears back and forth to a leisurely rhythm, rumbling contentedly, and they could not catch even the barest glimpse of gray hide.

Sean still had hold of Riccardo's arm, and now he drew him onward.

Step by step they edged through the green press of leaves and vines and drooping branches. Ten paces, and then Sean halted. He eased Riccardo forward, pushing him ahead, and pointed over his shoulder.

For long seconds Riccardo could make out no details in the jumbled growth and confused shadows. Then the bull flapped his ears again, and Riccardo saw his eye through a hole in the vegetation. It was a small, rheumy eye with the slightly opaque blue cast of age, and tears oozed down the wrinkled cheek below, giving it a look of great wisdom and infinite sorrow.

That sorrow was contagious. It engulfed Riccardo in a black wave, weighing down his soul and transforming his ardent predatory passion into a devastating sadness and mourning for this life that was about to end. He did not lift his rifle.

The elephant blinked his eye. The lashes surrounding it were thick and long, and the eye looked deep into Riccardo's own, seemed to pierce his very soul, seemed to mourn for him as he mourned for the old bull. Riccardo did not realize that the evil thing in his brain was once more bending and reshaping reality; he knew only that the sorrow in him was as insupportable as the black oblivion of death.

He felt Sean tap him lightly between the shoulder blades, screening even that tiny movement from the bull. It was the urgent command to fire, but it was as though Riccardo had left his own body and was hovering just above it, looking down on himself, watching both the man and the beast with death in them and death all about them, and the tragedy engrossed him and robbed him of his will and power to move.

Once again Sean tapped him. The elephant was fifteen paces away, standing perfectly still, a looming gray shadow in the undergrowth. Sean knew that Tukutela's sudden stillness was the old bull's response to the premonition of danger. He would stand still for only a few seconds longer and then plunge away into the dense undergrowth.

He wanted to seize Riccardo's shoulder and shake him, he wanted to cry out, "Shoot, man, shoot!" But he was helpless. The slightest movement, the faintest sound would trigger the old bull into flight.

Then it happened as Sean had known and feared it would. It seemed that Tukutela had been snatched away, had disappeared in a puff of gray smoke. It was impossible such a huge beast could move so quickly and so silently in such dense bush, but he was gone.

Sean seized Riccardo's arm and pulled him along with him, dragging him after the vanished bull. Sean's face was contorted with rage and dark rage filled his chest and made it difficult for him to breathe. He wanted to vent that rage on Riccardo. He had risked his very LIFE to put him in the position to take this animal, and the man had not even raised his rifle.

As Sean ran forward, his grip on Riccardo's arm was savage, and he dragged him through dense scrub and thorn, oblivious to his discomfort.

He was certain Tukutela would try to reach the next island in the chain, and he hoped for another chance at him as he crossed the open channel. He would force Riccardo to take even a long shot, hoping to cripple and slow the bull, so he himself could follow and finish him off.

Behind him Matatu screamed something unintelligible, a warning, a cry for help perhaps, and Sean came up short and stood listening. Something was happening that was totally unexpected and for which he was unprepared.

He heard the sudden crash and crackle in the undergrowth and then the wild trumpeting squeal of an enraged elephant, but the sound was from behind him, not the direction in which Tukutela had vanished. For an instant Sean did not understand. Then reality dawned on him and he felt the goose bumps rise on his naked back.

Tukutela had done something no elephant he knew of had ever done before. The old bull had not fled, but instead had circled downwind of them to get their scent. Even as he stood now, Sean felt the wind touch his naked back like the caress of a treacherous lover, bearing his scent down to where the great bull was rushing through the dense bush, hunting for him.

"Matatu!" Sean yelled. "Run! Run across the wind!" He shoved Riccardo roughly against the trunk of a towering teak tree.

"Get up there," he snarled at him. The lower branches were easy to climb, and Sean left him and raced back to protect Matatu.

He charged headlong through the bush, jumping over fallen logs, his rifle held across' his chest, while the forest rang to the elephant's wild and angry squeals.

He was closing swiftly, like an avalanche of gray rock. Tukutela rolled through the forest, splitting and bending the smaller trees that stood in his way, seeking out the evil amid smell of humanity, following it down so that once again he could wreak on them the accumulated hatred of his long lifetime.

Suddenly Matatu darted out of the bush just a few paces ahead of Sean. He would stand to meet any odds with Sean beside him, and now instead of running across the wind as Pumula had done, his instinct had led him directly back to his master's side.

As he saw him, Sean changed direction in midstride, signaling urgently for Matatu to follow him. He ran a hundred swift paces out to one side, across the wind, trying to deny their scent to Tukutela.

He stopped and crouched with Matatu beside him. His tactic had been successful. Pumula also must have got out of Tukutela's wind. For the moment Tukutela had lost their scent. The forest was absolutely still, the silence so intense that Sean could hear his Pulse beating in his own head.

He sensed that the old bull was very close to them, standing as still as they were, listening with ears spread wide, only that long trunk questing for the smell of them. There had never been an elephant like this, he thought, a bull who actively hunted his persecutors. How many times has he been hunted, Sean wondered, how many times has man inflicted hurt upon him that he attacks so fiercely at the first hint of human presence?

Then there was a sound in the forest, one that Sean had not expected, a human voice raised loudly, and it took him a moment to realize that it was Riccardo Monterro. "Tukutela, the Angry One, now I know why they named you. Tukutela, we are brothers!" he was calling to the elephant. "We are all that is left from another age. Our destiny is linked. I cannot kill you!"

The bull heard him and squealed again, a sound so loud and high-pitched it was like an auger driven into their eardrums.

Tukutela charged the sound of the human voice like a gray tank He crashed through the undergrowth, going straight for it, and within fifty yards the scent of man, loathsome and infuriating, filled his head once again and he followed it to its source.

Riccardo Monterro had made no effort to climb the teak tree where Sean had left him, but had simply leaned against the trunk and closed his eyes. The pain in his head had come upon him as suddenly as the blow of an ax and it blinded him, filling his vision with bursting stars of light. But through the pain he heard the old bull elephant squeal, and the sound filled him with remorse and bitter despair.

He let the Rigby slip from his hands and fall into the leafy trash at his feet. He reached out his empty hands and staggered blindly to meet the elephant, wanting in some desperate way to placate and make recompense to the great beast, calling to it. "I mean you no harm, we are brothers." Ahead of him the bush crackled and burst open and Tukutela bore down on him like a collapsing cliff of granite.

Sean raced back to where he had left Riccardo, ducking under branches and bounding over obstacles in his path, hearing the terrifying rush of the bull and the voice of the man just ahead of him.

"Here!" he screamed. "Here, Tukutela! Come! Come this way!"

it was an effort to pull the elephant off Riccardo and onto himself, but he knew it would be to no avail. Tukutela had fixed on his victim, and nothing would deter him. He would carry his charge through to the death.

The center of Riccardo's vision cleared, and he looked through an aperture in his head that was surrounded by shooting white lights and Catherine wheels of spinning fire. He saw Tukutela's vast gray head burst out of the green forest wall above him and the long, stained tusks came over him like the cross ties of a roof about to fall.

In that moment, the elephant came to embody all the thousands of animals and birds that Riccardo had slaughtered in his lifetime as a hunter. He had a confused notion that the tusks and long trunk poised above him were the symbols of some semi-religious benediction that would absolve him and redeem all the blood he destroyed, had and spilled and all the life he had He reached both hands up to them, joyfully thankfully, and he remembered a phrase from his early religious instruction.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," he cried.

Sean saw the bull's head rear out of the thicket ahead of him. It was facing almost directly away from him, the ears cocked and rolled along the top edge. He heard Riccardo's voice though he could not understand the words, and he realized that he must be almost directly beneath the bull's out thrust tusks and reaching trunk.

in a single step Sean plunged from his headlong run to a dead stop and threw up the.577 Express rifle. It was the most difficult angle for the brain shot, with the elephant angled away from him and the bulk of its shoulder covering the spinal column.

The target was no bigger than a ripe apple, and there was no casket of indication of where exacttly in the huge bony skull it lay buried. He had to trust his experience and his instinct. For a moment it seemed as he looked over the open sights of the rifle that he could see into the skull, where the brain seemed to glow like a firefly in the bony depths.

Without conscious effort his trigger finger tightened as the pip of the foresight covered that glowing spot. The bullet bored through the sponge of bone as though it were air. It cleaved the old bull's brain, and he felt nothing. His passage from full enra to death was a fleeting instant as his legs collapsed and folded under him. He dropped on his chest with an impact that jarred the earth and shook loose the dead leaves from the branches above him. A cloud of pale dust swirled around his massive carcass, and his head dropped forward.

His right tusk drove into Riccardo Monterro's body, entering his belly a hand's breadth below the sternum of his rib cage, passing through him at the level of his kidneys, and coming out through his spine just at the point where it merged with his pelvis.

The shaft of ivory Riccardo had coveted and risked both fortune and life to obtain now pinned him to the earth, skewered him as cleanly as a whaler's harpoon. He looked down at the tusk in surprise. There was no pain, no sensation in his lower body, which was twisted up under the bull's coiled trunk, no pain even in his head.

For a moment his vision was clear and bright as though every thing he looked at were lit by brilliant floodlights. Then it began to fade and darkness closed in upon him. Just before the darkness engulfed him completely, he saw Sean Courtney's face floating before him and heard his voice fading as though he were sinking away into an abyss.

"Capo, Capo," it echoed in his ears, and Riccardo Monterro made a huge effort and said, "She loves you. Look after my little girl." Then the darkness swallowed him and he saw and heard nothing more, ever again.

Sean's first impulse was to free Riccardo Monterro's body. He tugged at the tusk that had impaled him, but it was so thick he could not get a fair grip on it. Riccardo's blood was oozing from the terrible wound, and it coated Sean's hands so that he left sticky red prints on the ivory as he strained at it.

Then he realized the futility of his efforts and stepped back. The full weight of Tukutela's huge head and body was resting on those tusks. After piercing Riccardo's torso the ivory point had gone on to bury itself deep in the soft sandy earth. It would take half a day's work to free the body.

In death the man and the beast were locked together, and suddenly

Sean realized how appropriate that was. He would leave them like that.

First Matatu and then Pumula appeared from out of the forest and stood beside Sean, staring in awe at the grim spectacle.

"Go!" Sean ordered. "Wait for me at the canoe."

"The ivory?" Pumula asked diffidently.

"Go!" Sean repeated, and at the tone of his voice they crept quietly away.

Riccardo's eyes were wide open. Sean closed them with a gentle stroke of his thumb, then unknotted the cotton scarf from around his neck and bound up his jaw to prevent it sagging into an expression of idiocy. Even in death Riccardo Monterro was still a handsome man. Sean leaned against the elephant's head and studied Riccardo's face.

"it happened at just the right time, Capo. Before the disease turned you into a vegetable, while you still had most of your zest and vigor, and it was a fitting end for a man like you. I'm glad you didn't die between soiled sheets. I only pray I will be as fortunate."

He laid his hand on one of the tusks and stroked it. It had the texture of jade beneath his fingertips. "We'll leave them for you, Capo," he said. "These tusks will be your headstone. God knows, you paid for them in full."

He straightened up and followed Riccardo's tracks back into the forest until he found the Rigby lying in the dead leaves. He brought it back and placed it in the crook of Riccardo's right armA warrior should be buried with his weapons," he murmured.

But there was still something missing. He could not go and leave Riccardo like this. He could not leave him lying exposed to an uncaring sky. He must cover him decently.

Then he remembered the legend of this elephant and how he disposed of the dead. He drew the heavy knife from the sheath on his belt and turned to the nearest green bush. He slashed off a leafy branch and covered Riccardo's face with it.

"Yes," he murmured. "That's right, that's proper."

Working swiftly, he hacked down the branches and covered Riccardo's corpse and the head of the old bull under a mound of green leaves. At last he stood back and picked up the.577. He tucked it under his arm and was ready to leave. "No regrets, Capo," he said. "For you, it was a good life right up to the very end. Go in peace, old friend."

He turned away and went down to where the canoe was moored.

The reeds scraped softly along the hull of the canoe as Pumula poled it along. None of them spoke.

Sean sat amidships, hunched forward with his chin in the cup of one hand. He felt numbed, emptied of all emotion except sadness.

it was like coming back from a raid in the days of the bush war with every man silent and sad.

He looked at his right hand in his lap and saw the little half moons of dark red under his finger mails. "Capo's blood," he thought, and trailed his hand over the side of the canoe, letting the warm Swamp waters wash away the stain.

He let the hunt replay itself through his mind as though it were a silent recording. He saw it all again vividly, from their first sighting of the old bull to the moment he rushed forward to find Riccardo Monterro impaled beneath the huge gray head.

Then for the first time, he heard sound. Riccardo's voice echoed in his head, faint and breathless, fading swiftly.

"She loves you," he had said, and the rest trailed away unintelligibly. "She loves you." The meaningless words of a dying man, the Wanderings of a diseased brain- Riccardo could have been looking back on any one of the hundreds of women who had filled his LIFE.

Sean lifted his hand out of the water. It was clean, the blood washed away.

"She loves you." He could have been trying to tell Sean of one particular woman.

Sean looked up from his wet hand and stared ahead. Her memory had been with him these last few days, always there in the recesses of his conscience Yet coming to the fore at unexpected moments. Often while thinking of the great elephant, he had suddenly smiled at something she had said. This morning, during the final stages of the hunt, he had reached outboard from the canoe and picked the bloom of a water lily. He had held it to his face and smelled the perfume, felt the silky touch of the petals on his lip, and thought of Claudia Monterro.

Now he stared ahead and for the first time admitted to himself how much he looked forward to seeing her again. It seemed she was all that could cancel out his grief for her father. He thought about the sound of her voice and the way she held her head when she was about to challenge him. He smiled at the bright specks of anger he could so readily kindle in her eyes and the way she pursed her lips when she was trying to keep herself from laughing at one of his digs.

He-thought about the way she walked and the way she felt when he had carried her in his arms, and he remembered the texture of her skin, like the petals of a water lily, when he touched her under a pretext of helping or guiding her.

"We are absolutely and completely wrong for each other." He smiled, and the melancholy of a few moments previously loosened its grip. "If Capo was talking about her, he had definitely gone completely round the bend." But his anticipation was honed to a sharper edge.

He looked up at the sky. The sun had set. It would be dark in a short while. Even as he watched, Venus, the evening star, appeared with a miraculous suddenness and twinkled low down in the west. One after another, the fixed stars followed her entrance, popping through the darkening canopy of night in order of their magnitude.

Sean looked up at the stars and he thought of Claudia, wondering why she evoked such contrary feelings in him. He compared her to some of the other women he had known and realized how shallow and fleeting those experiences had been. Even his marriage had been inconsequential, a wild impulse based on simple-minded lust. It had been swiftly consummated, satiated, and terminated, a disastrous mistake he had never repeated. Now he could only vaguely remember what the woman who had been his wife looked like.

He thought about Claudia and realized with a small shock that her image was so clear in his mind he could almost count the individual lashes around those big honey-brown eyes and the tiny laugh lines at the corners of her mouth. Suddenly he very much wanted to be with her again, and as he acknowledged that fact he began to worry.

"I must have been crazy to leave her alone," he thought, and as he stared ahead into the dark swamps a multitude of horrid possibilities that might have befallen her began to plague him.

"Job is with her," he tried to console himself. "But I should have stayed to care for her and sent Job with Capo. "Even though he realized that had been impossible, still he fretted.

He felt the canoe check under him as Pumula rested on his pole, hinting at permission to stop for the night.

"I'll take her for a while," Sean said. "We'll keep going until we get back to the village."

While Pumula and Matatu curled up in the bilges, Sean stood in the stern and swayed to the monotonous thrust and reach of the Punt Pole- He steered by the Southern Cross and the pointers of Centaurus, reckoning true south at the intersection of their extended center lines.

The Papyrus stems hissed softly against the hull in strict rhythm to his thrusts. Soon the work became so repetitive and automatic he could let his mind wander, and all those wanderings seemed to return in the end to Claudia Monterro.

He thought about her bereavement, how although she had been expecting it, it would still devastate her. He composed the words he would use to tell her and then to comfort her. She knew of his own feelings for her father and the companionship that they had shared in the hunting veld. She knew of their mutual regard for each other.

"I am the right person to help her through the first sorrow, I knew him so well. I will help her to remember all that was good about him." He should have dreaded bearing the sad tidings, but instead he found himself looking forward to taking the role of her comforter and protector. "Perhaps we will be able to drop the postures of antagonism that we have both forced upon ourselves. Instead of accentuating our differences, perhaps we'll be able to explore what we have in common." He found himself lengthening and quickening his Stroke with the punt pole, and he had to force himself to slow down.

"You won't last the night at that pace," he thought, but his eagerness to be with her kept him going long after fatigue demanded a halt.

Hour after hour he kept it up. Finally Pumula woke of his own accord and came to spell him, but Sean slept fitfully and was back in the stern as the coming of day turned the eastern sky to murky ruby, then to pale lemon and the waterfowl flighted overhead, their wings whistling softly as they stabbed at the dawn.

Two hours later Sean sent Matatu up the punt pole. He had not reached the top before he pointed gleefully ahead. However, it was early afternoon before the bow of the canoe knifed through the last dense stand of papyrus and ran ashore on the sand below the burnt village.

Sean leaped onto dry land and strode through the ruins of the village, trying not to break into a run. "Job should have kept a better watch," he thought angrily. "If we can arrive unseen.."

He did not finish the thought. Just ahead was the thicket in which they had built Claudia's shelter, and he stopped abruptly.

It was too quiet. His sixth sense of danger warned him. Something was wrong. He went down fast and hard, falling flat and rolling quickly into cover with the.577 held in front of him.

He lay and listened. The silence was a physical weight. He wet his lips and imitated the clucking sound of a francolin, one of the Scouts" assembly calls that Job would recognize. There was no reply. He went forward at a leopard crawl, then stopped again.

Something sparkled in the short grass just in front of his face. He picked it up and felt his stomach chill.

It was the empty brass case of a 7.62-mm. cartridge, and it was head-stamped in Cyrillic script, Soviet military issue for firing in the AK assault rifle. Sean held it, to his nose and smelled the burnt powder. It had been fired very recently. He glanced around him quickly and saw other empty shells lying in the grass, evidence of a fierce firefight.

He rolled to his feet and was running, jinking and twisting as he sprinted toward the thicket to throw off the aim of any hidden gunman.

As he reached the edge of the thicket, he dropped to the earth again, flicking over as he hit the ground. He saw the corpse immediately. It lay facedown under a low Thorn bush only a few yards ahead. It was a black man. The body had been stripped of clothing and boots.

"Job!" The name ripped from his throat. He crawled forward until he lay side by side with the body. A single bullet had plowed out of the man's back and the flies crawled over the wound. The blood had dried to a black crust, and he smelled the whiff of corruption.

"Dead twenty-four hours," he estimated, rising to his knees.

There was no further need for caution now. Gently he lifted the dead head. The corpse's neck was stiff with rigor mortis. He grunted with vast relief and let the head drop with a thud. The man was a stranger.

"Job!" he called. "Claudia!" It was a despairing cry, and he ran forward to the lean-to in which he had left her. It was deserted.

"Job!" He looked around him wildly. "Claudia!"

There was another naked black body lying at the edge of the Clearing, and he ran to it. It was another stranger, a skinny little runt of a man with the top shot off his skull. He was also starting to stink, his belly blowing up like a shiny black balloon.

"Two of the bastards," Sean said bitterly. "Nice shooting, Job."

Matatu had followed Sean and was checking the lean-to. He left it and began to work out in circles, darting back and forth like a gun dog quartering for a sitting grouse. Sean and Pumula stood and watched him, not joining his search so that they would not trample the sign.

Within minutes Matatu scurried back. "They are the same shifts who followed us before. There are fifteen of them, they surrounded the hut and came in at a rush. Job shot these two with the 30/06 banduki. " He offered Sean the empty cartridge cases. much struggling, but they took them." "There was "The memsahib?" Sean dreaded the reply.

ARI "Ndio, " Matatu replied in Swahili. "they took her also.

She is still limping, but they led her away, one on each side. She was fighting them all the way. Job was hurt, and so was Dedan. Perhaps they were beaten, and I think their arms are bound. They walk unsteadily." Matatu pointed toward the corpses. They striPPed their dead of uniforms and boots and banduki and then went back." He pointed along the isthmus.

"When?" Sean asked.

"Yesterday, early. Perhaps they rushed the camp at dawn."

Sean nodded grimly, but inside he cried, "Claudia, oh God, if they touch You, I'll rip their guts out."

"Hot Pursuit," he said aloud. "Let's go!"

Pumula ran back to grab the equipment and water bottles from the canoe, and Sean was still shrugging into the shoulder straps of his Pack when he started to run. The near exhaustion of the long night Of Poling the canoe faded away. He felt strong, angry, and indefatigable.

Within the first mile they settled into the pursuit pace of a Scout raiding party. The spoor was stiff cold, and Sean dispensed with any precautions against ambush. He relied entirely on Matatu to Pick UP any sign of a booby trap or antipersonnel mine that might have been laid on the tracks to hinder pursuit, but apart from that they went in single file at a speed not much below that of an Olympic marathon.

Claudia's image seemed to dance ahead of Sean and winged his feet. Fifteen of them, Matatu had said, and they would be tempted by Claudia's sweet white body. There were no signs yet that they had stopped to have sport with her. He accepted without reservation Matatu's interpretation that they had crept up on the camp in the dawn and taken it at a rush, willing to accept casualties without inflicting them. it seemed they had wanted prisoners rather than kills. Other than a few blows with a rifle butt, it looked as though both Dedan and Job had come through it unscathed, but it was Claudia who had his full concern.

They were forcing her to march on her injured leg. That would only aggravate the knee and perhaps cause permanent damage. If she slowed them down too much, they would start to become impatient and threatening. It all depended on just how much they needed a white prisoner as a hostage, probably as a bargaining chip with Western governments. It depended on who they were, Frelimo or Renamo or free-lance bandits. It depended on how much control there was over them, on who commanded them, and how strong his authority was. But any way he considered it, Sean knew that Claudia was in terrible danger.

Did they realize there was a pursuit? They must have read the sign going into the village and known that three men-no, four with Capo--were missing from the original party. The answer was yes. They probably anticipated a pursuit by this group. That would make them nervous and excitable.

Claudia would be no great advocate for her own safety. He could just imagine her arguing with them, demanding her human and legal rights, refusing to follow their orders. Despite his concern, he grinned humorlessly as he thought about it. They probably believed they had caught a pussycat, but they would soon realize they had a full-grown female tiger on their hands.

His grin faded. He was certain she would deal with them in precisely the fashion best designed to antagonize them and jeopardize her chances of survival. If the leader of the group was a weak man, she would push him to the point where he had to demonstrate his authority to his own men. African society was patriarchal, and he would rescp a woman who refused to bow to his will.

If they were the same group that had wiped out the village, they had amply demo'nstated their brutality.

"Just for once, ducky, button those lovely lips of yours," he pleaded with her silently.

Ahead of him, Matatu checked his run and made a sweeping gesture. Sean pulled up.

"Here they rested." Matatu pointed to where the group had sat in the shade of a grove of young mo pane

There were the crushed butts of black cigarettes in the dust, and Matatu pointed to the raw white slashes on the mo pane where branches had been chopped away. The smaller twigs had been trimmed from them and discarded. The leaves on these were already wilted, confirming Matatu's estimate of time, yesterday morning.

The cutting of branches Puzzled Sean for a moment. Then Matatu explained, "They have built a mushela for the mein." Sean nodded with relief Claudia on her injured leg had been holding up the March, but rather than ridding themselves of her through the simple expedient of a buffet in the back of the head, they had built a litter of mo pane poles on which to carry her. That was a welcome development, and it changed Sean's estimate of Claudia's chance of survival. They had placed a higher value on her than Sean had dreaded they might.

However, the most crucial period would have come yesterday evening, when they stopped to camp for the night. Her captors would have had a full day to study her, to ogle her body and puff up their imagination and their courage. Sean found he could not bear to face the possibility of what might have happened to her if the leader had lost control of his men.

"Come on, Matatu," he growled. "You are wasting time." If it had happened at all, it would have happened last night. He was already too late, but still every second of delay galled him.

The spoor led them back up the isthmus, retracing their own route across the dry flood plains heading toward the south. The trail was broad and easy to follow, fifteen men and their captives making no attempt at anti tracking Matatu read the spoor and reported they were forcing Dedan and Job to carry the litter with Claudia on it. Sean was happy the two of them were able to do so.

Whatever injuries they had sustained in the attack must have been Superficial, and he could be certain that Job would employ every ruse to slow down the march and allow them to catch up.

Even as he thought this, Matatu exclaimed and pointed to ma As in the soft earth where Job had dropped his end of the litter and sprawled theatrically on his hands and knees, crawling up only after he had been surrounded and hectored by his captors.

"Good man," Sean grunted without checking his stride. "But don't push them too far." It was a delicate game Job was playing.

At Pursuit speed they were overhauling the clumsy and slow moving group so rapidly that Sean was beginning to hope they might catch up with them before nightfall.

"That's going to be interesting," he decided. " three of us -with Only the.577 against fifteen thugs armed with AKs."

So far they had found no booby traps set for them. It was usually their tactics to mine their own spoor, and Sean pondered their failure to do so. These could be untrained bandits, or they might lack the light plastic antipersonnel mines, or they could be of the Pursuit. Or, worst thought, they could be Planning unaware some surprises for later.

"We'll deal with that one when we come to it."

Matatu pulled up again. "They cooked here last night." He pointed to the remains of a camp fire, and there were the marks where they had sat while they rested and ate. A few black safari ants were scurrying about the site, foraging for the scraps of food they had spilled, and there were more cigarette butts. search! Sean ordered. "Job will have tried to get a message to us. While Matatu and Pumula went over the area carefully but bee quickly, Sean glanced at his watch: 1600 hours; they had. just over three hours. They still had plenty of daylight and going a good chance to catch them before dark.

"Here is where they put the mein's litter." Matatu pointed out the marks in the earth. "Here she stood."

Sean studied her footprints, smaller, neater, and narrower than the boot prints of her captors. When she walked she had favored her leg, dragging the toe.

"Did you find anything?" he demanded roughly. "Did Job leave a message?"

"Nothing." Matatu shook his head.

"All right. We'll drink now," he ordered, handing out salt tablets and caution them to self-control.

Three swallows each from the bottles, then they screwed the stop from his pack. He didn't have topers tightly closed. They had paused for less than five minutes.

"Let's go," said Sean.

An hour later they found where the raiders had slept. The fact t beside their that they had moved on after eating and not slep cooking fire told Sean that they were trained troops.

"Search again," Sean ordered. Any information Job could have left for them would be valuable.

"Nothing," Matatu said back a few minutes later. Sean felt a prick of disappointment. d. He was about to turn away "M right. Keep going," he ordered when something made him pause. He glanced around the camp site. b sleep?" he demanded.

"Where did the memsahi "There." Matatu pointed. Somebody, probably Job, had cut an of leaves and grass for her mattress. Her body had flattened armful the pile. Sean squatted beside it and carefully sifted through it, searching for any clues.

There was nothing. He lifted away the last few leaves and was beginning to rise to his feet. He was disappointed; the feeling that she had left something for him had been very powerful.

"So much for ESP," he grunted. Then he noticed the button, half buried in the dust under the mattress of straw.

He picked it out and stood up. It was a brass button from the waistband of her denim jeans, engraved "Ralph Button."

"Designer jeans, that's my ducky." He slipped it into his pocket.

"But it doesn't tell me anything," he broke off, unless..." H knelt again and gently brushed aside the dust under where the button had lain. He was right; she had used the button as a marker. he Beneath it she had buried a scrap of cardboard, the flap torn from the lid of a packet of cheap Portuguese cigarillos. It was not more than two inches long and half as wide, very little space for the message she had written with a charcoal stick scavenged fire. from the 15 mAma. That was invaluable intelligence, confirming Matatu's estimate of numbers, and now at least he knew who they were dealing with: Renamo.

CAvE. The next word puzzled him. "Cave?" Suddenly he realized it was the old public schoolboy warning from the Latin caveat beware

He smiled despite himself.

"ere did she ever learn a Limey expression like that?" Then he remembered she was a lawyer and read on.

CAVE.

T1 ExPECT You- She and Job would have overheard them discussing the Pursuit. That information was just as valuable.

ALL OK. And she had signed it, C He stared at the scrap of cardboard, holding it in the palm of his hand as though it were a relic of the true cross.

"You little beauty, you," he whispered. "You've got to be the brightest, gutsiest..." He shook his head in wonder, a choking sensation in his throat. For the very first time he admitted his Ion ng for her, then suppressed it firmly as he came to his fee gi t.

There was neither time nor opportunity for such self-indulgence now.

"Renamo," he told Matatu and Purnula. "You were right, the are fifteen of them. They know we are following. We can expect an re ambush."

They both looked grave. Sean anced at his wristwatch. "We can catch them before dark." 91 Within an hour they came upon the first ambush the Renarno had set for them. Four men had lain beside the trail at the point where the causeway across the flood plains joined the main forest on the higher ground. The ambush had been cunningly sited on the far edge of a narrow vlei, across open ground with a good field of I T ; 178 fire. it had been abandoned only a short time before they came up to it.

"They are putting down a rolling rear guard." Sean felt queasy at the risk he had taken with such a reckless pursuit.

in the dust were the distinctive double marks left by the bipod of an RPD light machine gun, one of the simplest and yet the most deadly effective of all guerrilla weapons. If he had led his men into the vlei while that gun was still in position, it would all have been over in a few hellish seconds. He had been pushing too hard, not taking even elementary precautions. His concern for Claudia had unbalanced his judgment.

Renamo had pulled out just before they reached the vlei. They had judged the time of his arrival with disconcerting accuracy, the margin had been far too narrow. The crew of the RPD would have moved back and re sited the ambush farther along the trail in order not to fall too far behind their main party.

"Flankers out," Sean ordered reluctantly. "Ambush precautions." It would slow them to half their previous speed. Now it would be impossible to catch up with Renamo before nightfall.

Three men were too few. It left only Matatu on the spoor and Sean and Pumula on the Banks. They had a single weapon between them, the big-bore, slow-firing double. They were going in against trained bush fighters armed with automatic weapons, and they were expected.

"Just another name for suicide," Sean told himself. But despite the odds he had to restrain himself from quickening the pace.

In the center, Matatu whistled. At that moment he was out of Sean's line of sight. Even though it was not a warning signal, Sean fell flat and carefully checked his front and both flanks before he stood up again and went to join him.

Matatu was squatting beside the trail with his loincloth drawn up modestly between his legs, but his expression was worried. He stabbed a finger at the' spoor without speaking. Sean saw immediately what was trdtibling him.

"Where the hell did they come from?" It was a protest more than a question. The original band of Renarno had been reinforced by an even larger group; at a glance it looked like a full company of infantry. The odds against them had just been multiplied many times, and for the first time Sean felt the lead weight of despair on his shoulders.

"How many" he demanded of Matatu. This time, even he could not give an exact figure. The tracks were overlapped and confused.

Matatu took a little snuff, using the ritual to disguise his uncertainty. He sneezed, and his eyes ran with tears that he wiped away with his thumbs. Then he held up the spread fingers of both hands and shut them four times.

"Forty?"

Matatu grimaced apologetically and showed another set of fingers.

"Between forty and fifty." Sean unscrewed his water bottle and took a mouthful. The water was hot as soup, but he gargled with it before he swallowed.

I will count them later," Matatu promised, "when I have learned them all, but now. He spat on the trampled earth, mortified by his failure.

"How far behind are we?" Sean demanded, and Matatu used his forefinger like the hour hand of a clock to indicate a segment of the sky.

"Three hours," Sean translated. "We'll never catch them before nightfall."

When it was dark Sean said, "We'll eat while we wait for the moon." But when it rose, it was only a sliver of silver, soon blotted out by cloud, and there was not enough light to follow even that broad clear spoor. Sean thought of keeping going blindly through the night, trying to get ahead of them and then shadowing them, hoping for some fortuitous opportunity to reach Claudia and Job and release them.

"That's dreaming in Technicolor," he told himself They had been going hard for days now and were all tottering on the edge of exhaustion. Blunderin around in the dark, they would either run on top of the Renamo night guards or miss them completely.

"We'll sleep now." He was forced to give up at last. As Renarno knew they were being followed, they might send a detachment back to try and surprise them.

Sean went into laager for the night well off the trail, in a thicket of thorn that would snag an attacker attempting to sneak up on them. They all desperately needed rest, and he would rely on the thorn rather than postin sentries. The night was icy cold, and they lay in a huddle, sharing each other's body warmth. Sean was already sliding into the black hole of exhaustion when Matatu's whisper called him back.

"There is one of them," Matatu began, then broke off.

Sean opened his eyes with resignation. "Tell me," he invited drowsily.

"There is one of these Renamo I have seen before."

"You know one of them?" Sean came fully awake.

"I think so, but it was long ago, and I cannot remember where."

Sean was silent as he considered that simple statement and what it really entailed. Sean would have had difficulty remembering the face of every person he had met in, say, the last ten years. Here was Matatu bemoaning the fact that he could not instantly recognize a single set of footprints, which he had last seen years previously, out of a jumble of other tracks.

Even though he had seen Matatu Perform similar feats so many aim times before, he felt a creep of doubt at Matatu's el mil darkn "Go to sleep, you silly little bugger." He s ed in the ess, by the scruff of the neck, and shook his woolly took the little man head with rough affection. "Perhaps You'll dream his name in your sleep. she was running naked through a Sean dreamed of Claudia.

dark forest. The trees were black and leafless, with crooked limbs.

A pack of wolves pursued her. They also were black as night but glistening white fangs and red lolling tongues. Claudia called with his name as she ran, and her skin was pale and luminous as the moon. He tried to go to her, but his legs dragged as though he waded through a pool of treacle. He tried to call her name, but his tongue was lead in his mouth and no sound came from his throat.

He awoke with a hand roughly shaking his shoulder. He tried to shout again, but it came out in a garbled slur. t6wake up!" Matatu shook him. "You were crying and moaning. Renamo will hear You!"

He sat up quickly. The cold seemed to have frozen the muscles n him. it took in his legs, and the terror of the dream was still upO him seconds to focus on reality and remember where he was.

"You're getting past it, boyo." He was humiliated. A Scout slept ess or had his throat soundlessly and awoke to immediate aw aren cut while he was grunting and snoring- whispered. Already the "It win be light enough soon," Matatu dawn chorus of bird cab tinkled and chirruped through the forest and he could make gut the latticework of thorn branches against the sky.

"Let's go." Sean stood up.

While the sun was still low and the dew was on the grass, they up to the dry river-bed in which Renarno had bivouacked for came the night.

The band had moved on again at first light but could not be far ahead.

matatu picked Claudia's footprints Out Of the ruck in the soft sand of the river-bed. she moves with less pain," he told Sean-The leg is healing, but Job and Dedan are still carrying her. Here she climbed into the litter."

Matatu left the distinctive feminine prints and hovered over another set of larger male tracks that to Scan were indistinguishable from all the others, except that whoever had made them wore boots with a double herringbone pattern on the sole. " Im him"

aw Matatu whispered. "I know the way this one walks." He shook his head in frustration and turned away.

They went forward with extreme caution now. e trail led them T'h directly toward the higher ground along the escarpment of the valley, and soon they entered the foothills. Whoever was commanding the Renamo column knew exactly where he was headed.

Sean was expecting at any moment to make contact with the rear guard of the column. He dreaded the thought that the first warning they might receive could be the wicked crackle of an RPD light mi'e gun, filing at a rate of six hundred rounds a minute.

Here in the hills every boulder, every fold of ground was a possible enemy redoubt and had to be minutely inspected before W they could move on. Sean fretted with impatience but forced himself to gear his advance to the difficult terrain.

i They turned the corner of another low hill and through a frieze Of graceful lusm trees an open vista stretched ahead to where the massif of the central escarpment rose above its foothills.

"There it is," Sean murmured. "That's where they'll be laying for us."

The spoor was pointed directly at a pass through the escarpment. The entrance was guarded by chffi of red stone. The gut of the pass was almost devoid of trees or cover and yet the sides were heavily hushed. It was a natural trap, a perfect killing ground.

Matatu whistled in the center. Sean doubled over, keeping Off the crest as he ran down to join him. From the center, there was an Unimpeded view up the gut of the valley and Sean saw movement against the scree and yellow grass. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes, and the line of dark moving specks resolved through the lens into a column of men.

They were toiling up the incline in single file. Most of them wore tiger-striped camouflage and jungle hats, although a few were dressed in a motley of denim and khaki. The front of the column was already into the bush at the head of the valley at least three miles distant, but through his binoculars Sean counted twelve men The litter was in the center. Four of them were carrying it t I was men on the front poles and two on the back. Sean tried to pick out Claudia's form, but before he could refocus his binoculars the litter and the bearers had reached the tree fine and disappeared.

Sean lowered his binoculars and polished the lens with his handkerchief. Pumula had come in from the other flank, and now he and Matatu crouched in the junibolme of rock and coarse bush and

_"J

studied the lie of the land in gloomy silence. Again Sean raised the rfec glasses and studied the steep bushy sides. It was ape t site for an ambush; they could catch Sean's party in enfilade and crossfire as they tried to climb the valley.

"How many did you see?" Sean asked without lowering his binoculars. "Have they all gone to the trees at the head of the in valley?"

"I saw only a few," Pumula murmured.

"Masesh, " Matatu spat unhappily. He was referring to the lees of millet beer that, after fermentation, the Batonka fishermen use as a ground bait to lure the shoals of bream into Lake Kariba's shallows.

He spat again. "That valley is the mouth of the crocodile. They want us to put our heads into it."

Sean studied the sides of the valley, taking his time, every few minutes lowering the binoculars to rest his eyes and then lifting them again. He began at the top of the slope and swept gradually downward. when he reached the bottom, he began at the top again, going over the same ground time and again. He tried not to think of that sighting of the litter or the tiny figure he thought he had seen upon it. He concentrated entirely on his search, and ten minutes later he was rewarded.

It was a single flash of sunlight reflected from the lens of a wristwatch or the lens of a pair of field glasses' Yes Matatu, "There they are." He lowered his own glasses.

you are right. They have put out the bait, now they are waiting for US. 99 He sat down behind the boulder and tried to think it through logically, but Claudia's memory kept intruding and deflecting his reasoning. There was only one certain conclusion, and that was that it was hopeless to continue the pursuit. He looked up. Matatu and Pumula were watcl&g him with expressions of blind faith. In almost twenty years he had never seen him at a loss. They waited patiently for himtdperform the miracle yet again.

Sean found it "infuriating. He jumped up and went back down upon him. He found the hill to think without those trusting eyes a spot that was well concealed and yet had a good all-around view so that nobody could sneak up on him. He settled down with the.577 across his lap to consider his options.

The first one he crossed from his mental list was an attack on the Renamo column. Even leaving aside the puny forces he had available, he had to consider the hostages they had in their hands. Even with a company of fully armed Scouts, he would still have been unable to attack.

"SO what can I hope to achieve by following them?" he asked himself "Apart from gratifying this new and mawkish desire to be as close as possible to Claudia Monteffo."

Probably the best chance of release of the captives from Renarno clutches was not his own intervention but diplomatic negotiations through Renarno's reputed allies, the South African vernment in Pretoria However, even the South Africans would not be able to achieve anything if they were unaware an American citizen had been captured by Renamo.

"Okay." Sean made his first firm decision. 161 have to get a message back to the American embassy in Harare, immediately he realized that this took care of his other major worry. Matatu and Pumula were his re risibility. Up to n SPO aw he had been leading them into a suicidal situation. They had been more and more on his conscience the closer they drew to the Renamo column. This was the excuse he had been looking for.

"I'll send both of them back to Chiwewe with a message for Reerna." He opened the flap of his backpack and found his small leather-covered notepad. He began to compose the message.

Reema had all Riacardo,s and Claudia's personal details on the safari files, everything from their physical descriptions to their passport numbers. Riccardo was an important and influential man. Sean did not tell her he was dead, but implied in his message that both father and daughter were captives of Renamo. The U.S.

embassy could be relied on to react swiftly, and it would be in contact with Pretoria within hours of receiving the news.

Of course, since the imposition of U.S. sanctions on that country the relations between Washington and Pretoria were at a historically low ebb, and the influence Of the United States in southern Africa was no longer the overriding factor it had once been. Nonetheless, the South Africans could be relied on to intercede with Renamo on the simplest humanitarian unds.

"Okay, that takes care of Matatu gro and Pumula. " Sean signed the message, tore the Pages out of his notepad, and folded them. As an afterthought he filled another Page of instructions for Reerna covering the $500,000 that Riccudo's estate owed them. She was to Pass these on to Sean's lawyer.

At last he had to make his own decision. He could run back across the border, carrying the message himself, and within two or three days he could be drinking Castle lager in the Meikles Hotel and working out how to spend Capo's half-million bucks. That was the sensible and logical thing to do, but he had already dismissed the idea before he considered it.

"So I'll follow the column and wait for an opportunity." He grinned at the absurdity of his decision. "What opportunity?" he wondered. "A chance to shoot my way into an encampment of fifty-plus tells with the old.577, free the three prisoners, and with one mighty bound whip them a hundred miles to the border, carrying Claudia with her injured leg on my back!"

He stood up, resettled his pack between his shoulders, and crept back up to the slope where Matatu and Pumula were lying watching the escarpment. He dropped down beside Matatu.

"Anything?" he asked. Matatu shook his head. They were silent for many minutes while Sean plucked up his courage to tell the little man he was sending him back.

While he did so, he scowled through the binoculars at the spot up the long valley where he knew Renamo, had set their ambush.

Matatu seemed to sense that something unpleasant was brewing.

He kept glancing at Sean with a troubled expression, but when Sean finally turned to him, he burst into a sunny, ingratiating grin and wriggled his entire body in his eagerness to please and to stave off whatever was coming.

"I remember," he said eagerly. "I remember who he is."

Sidetracked for the moment, Sean frowned at him in Puzzlement. "Who? Who are you talking about?"

"The leader of the Renamo," Matatu told him happily. "I told you yesterday I knew his footprints. Now I remember who he is."

"Who is he, then?" Sean asked suspiciously, ready to reject the information.

"Do you remember when we jumped from the bideki to attack the training camp at the fork of the rivers?" Matatu twinkled at him and Sean nodded guardedly. "Do you remember how we killed them in the river-bed?" Matatu chuckled with the delightful memory of it. "Do you remember the one we caught while he was trying to burn the books? The one who refused to march, and you blew his ear in?" Now he giggled at that fine joke. "The blood came out of his earhole4and he squeaked like a virgin."

"Comrade China?"

"China." Matatu had a little difficulty with the pronunciation.

"Yes, that is the one."

"No!" Sean shook his head. "It isn't China. That's not possible!"

Now Matatu had to cover his mouth to muffle his delighted squeals of laughter. He loved it when he was able to confound and astound his master. There was no better joke than that.

"China!" He spluttered with mirth and stuck his forefinger in his own ear. "Pow!" he said, and it was so funny he almost choked.

"Comrade China."

Sean stared at him unseeingly while he adjusted his mind to this extraordinary intelligence. All his instincts were to reject it out of hand, but Matatu didn't make mistakes of that nature.

"Comrade China!" Sean breathed softly. "That changes the odds a little."

He cast his mind back to that distant day. The man had made such an impression on him that even from the crowded and confused events of that bloody little war he retrieved a clear image of Comrade China. He remembered his fine Nilotic head and the dark intelligent eyes, but his physical features were hazy compared to Sean's memory of the sense of confidence and purpose the man exuded. He had been a dangerous man then, and Sean expected that by now he would be even more experienced and formidable.

Sea shook his head. At one time his nickname in the Scouts had been "Lucky Courtney"; it looked as though he had used up his ration of that commodity. He couldn't have chosen anybody he would have wanted less to command the column of Renamo than Comrade China.

Matatu had almost exhausted his mirth and was now battling with the hiccoughs that followed, clutching at his naked belly and throat to hold them down, while occasional spasms of laughter interspersed the loud hiccoughs.

"I'm sending you back to Chiwewe," Sean told him harshly, and the laughter and hiccoughs were instantly extinguished. Matatu stared at him in disbelief and utter despair. Sean could not face those eyes and their tragic accusation.

He turned to Pumula and brusquely called him across to where he lay. "This note is for the chef at camp. Tell him to radio the message to Miss Reema in Harare. Matatu will guide you back.

Don't stop to pick your nose on the way, do you understand me?"

"Mwnbo. " Pumula was an old Scout. He would obey without argument or question.

"All right, go," Sean ordered. "Go now." And Pumula held out his right hand. They shook hands the African way, gripping palms and then thumbs and then palms again. Pumula crawled down off the ridge and, once he was clear, jumped to his feet and trotted away. He did not look back.

At last Sean forced himself to look at Matatu, who was crouchk ing low to the ground, trying to make his small frame smaller still to escape Sean's notice.

"Go!" Sean ordered brusquely. "Show Pumula the way back to Chiwewe Matatu hung his head and shivered like a whipped puppy.

ISO

NINE,

"Get the hell out of here!" Sean growled at him. "Before I kick your black butt!"

Matatu lifted his head. His eyes were tragic, his expression abject. Sean wanted to pick him up and hug him.

"Get out of here, you silly little bugger!" Sean made a face of terrifying ferocity. Matatu crept away a few paces and then paused and looked back imploringly.

"Go!" Sean lifted his right hand threateningly. At last the little man accepted the inevitable and slunk away down the slope. Just before he disappeared into the coarse scrub at the foot of the slope, he paused and looked back one more time, seeking the faintest sign of encouragement or weakness. He was the epitome of dejection.

Deliberately Sean turned his back on him and raised the binoculars to study the terrain ahead, but after a few seconds the image bluffed. He blinked his eyes to clear them and despite himself glanced quickly over his shoulder. Matatu had vanished. It was a strange feeling not to have him there. After a few minutes Sean lifted the binoculars again and resumed his study of the escarpment fine, pushing Matatu out of his mind.

On either side of the mouth of the long valley, the red rock cliffs stretched away unbroken as far as he could see. They were not particularly y high; at the lowest points they were only a few hundred feet, but they were vertical and some stretches were even overhanging where softer strata of rock had been eroded from under the harder superimposed upper layers, and formed a shallow horizontal cave.

The entrance of the valley was as inviting as the mouth of a carnivorous plant to an insect, and the cliffs were forbidding and inaccessible, but Sean concentrated upon them. He swept them with the binoculars in both directions as far as he co d Of course, it might be necessary to move some miles along the cliff to find a route that was Scalable, but that would burn up precious time. He kept swinging the binoculars back to the same point.

A quarter of a-mile to the right-hand side of the nearest rock portal of the valley, there was a route that looked as though it might just go, but it wouldn't be easy without a companion and lacking even basic rock-climbing equipment. He would be burdened by the rifle and his pack, and he would have to make the attempt in the dark. To go out on that exposed cliff in daylight would be to invite a little AK target practice.

Through the binocular lens he picked out a rocky buttress that was faulted like a fire escape. It seemed to offer a way around the overhanging section of cliff, and above that it led to a narrow horizontal ledge running several hundred feet in either direction.

ir From that ledge there appeared to be two possible routes to the top of the cliff, one a narrow crack or chimney and the other an open face down which grew the exposed serpentine roots of a huge ficus tree that stood tall and massive against the skyline. The roots crawled and twined against the sheer red rock like a nest of mating pythons, forming a ladder to the top of the cliff.

Sean glanced at his wristwatch. He had three hours to rest before it was dark enough to make the attempt, and suddenly he felt exhausted.

He realized that it was not only the physical exertion of the chase but also the emotional drain of having glimpsed Claudia and Job in the Renarno column and the parting with Matatu.

He anti tracked meticulously back off the ridge and searched for a secure place to hole up during what was left of daylight. When he found a hidey-hole among rock and scrub with a safe line of retreat, he loosened his bootlaces to rest his feet but kept the rifle in his lap and slumped down over it. He munched a maize cake and protein bar from his emergency pack and drank a few careful mouthfuls from his water bottle.

He knew he would wake when the sun touched the horizon. He closed his eyes and almost instantly fell asleep.

On the journey back to Chiwewe camp, Matatu led Pumula at a steady trot. They kept going through the night and the next afternoon stopped to refill their water bottles in the marsh where they had spotted Tukutela from the air.

Pumula wanted to rest. Matatu did not bother to argue with him. He faced toward the west and went away at his swaying trot on his skinny knob-kneed legs so Pumula was forced to follow.

They crossed the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe during t dark hours of the night and ran into the safari camp in the middle of the following afternoon.

The consternation caused by their arrival was tremendous. In his agitation, the chef even forgot to don his tall cap and snowy apron before rushing out of his hut to greet them and demand the news of the mambo.

Matatu left Pumula to hand over Sean's written message and answer the barrage of questions. He went to his hut and curled up like a puppy on his bed, an ancient iron frame with a lumpy coir mattress, a gift from Sean and his most treasured possession. He slept through all the subsequent excitement, even the chef bellowing into the microphone of the VHF radio, attempting by volume alone to reach Reema in Harare, almost three hundred miles distant.

ISO

April, When Matatu awoke, he had slept five hours. The camp was dark and silent. He repacked the small leather pouch that was his only luggage, retrieved his remaining store of precious snuff from under his mattress, and refilled the horn that hung around his neck.

He crept quietly from the sleeping camp. When he was well clear, he straightened up and faced toward the east.

"Silly little bugger," he said happily and began to run, going back to his rightful place beside the man he loved more than a father.

Sean woke with the first chill of evening in the air. Ahead the cliffs of the escarpment were fading into the smoky purple dusk. Sean stretched and looked around for Matatu. When he remembered he was gone, it gave him a physical jolt in the pit of his stomach. He tied his bootlaces and drank again. When he stoppered the water bottle, he held it to his ear and shook it. Still half full.

He opened the breech of the.577, slipped the cartridges out of the twin chambers, and exchanged them for two others from the loops on his bush jacket. He squeezed an inch of black camouflage cream from the crumpled tube and rubbed it over his face and the backs of his hands. That completed his preparation and he stood up and moved quietly up the slope.

He spent the last twenty minutes of daylight glassing the entrance to the valley and the top of the cliffs through his binoculars.

As far as he could see, nothing had changed. Then he studied and memorized the route up the cliff face.

As the night spread its cloak over the escarpment, he slipped quietly over the ridge and crept tip toward the base of the cliff. The bush grew dense and tangled there, and it took him much longer than he had anticipated to reach the rocky wall. It was almost completely dark by then, but he was able to identify the starting point of the climb by a small bush growing in a crack of the cliff that he had marked through the binoculars.

Sean had never used a carrying sling on his rifle. It could be mortally dangerous in thick bush when the sling caught on a branch just as a buffalo or wounded elephant began its charge. He lashed the short-barreled weapon under the flap of his backpack with his sleeping bag. The butt stuck out on one side of his shoulders and the muzzles on the other, making an awkward unbalanced load. He went to the cliff face and laid his hands on it, getting the feel of it. The stone was still hot from the sun and the texture was smooth, almost soapy, under his fingers.

Before the war, rock climbing had been one of his passions. He loved the risk, the terror of the open face and drop sucking at his heels. He had climbed in South America and Europe as well as on the Drakensberg and Mount Kenya. He had the requisite sense of balance and the strength in his fingers and arms. He could have been one of the top international climbers but for the intervention of the bush war. However, he had never attempted a climb like this before.

His boots were soft velskoen without reinforced toes. He had no ropes, no anchorman, no pitons or carabiner, and he would be opening this route in darkness, barely able to see the next hold above, following a pitch he had studied from a mile distant, going blind on red sandstone, the most treacherous of rock.

He stepped up onto the face and began to climb. He used his toes and his fingers, leaning back from the rock, keeping in fine balance, never stopping, never jerking or fighting the holds, flowing upward as smoothly as molten chocolate.

At first the holds were solid, the kind he called "jug handles"; then the face leaned out slowly and the holds were mere flakes and indentations. He used them lightly and briefly. A touch of his fingers, a nudge of his toes and he was past, putting the minimum of weight on each but even then feeling the frailer flakes of stone grate and creak threateningly under his fingers-but he was gone before the hold could fail.

In places he could not see above his head and he climbed by instinct, reaching up in the darkness, his fingertips as sensitive as those of a pianist as they brushed the rock and then locked into it.

Without check or pause, he covered the first pitch and reached the ledge a hundred feet up from the base.

The ledge was narr*er than it had appeared through the binoculars, no more than nine inches wide. With the pack strapped on his back and the Afle protruding on each side of his shoulders, it was impossible for him to turn his back to the rock and use the ledge as a bench to sit upon.

He was forced to stand facing the cliff, his heels hanging over the edge and the weight of pack and rifle pulling on his shoulders, trying to drag him backward. He was less comfortable on the ledge than he had been on the face. He began to shuffle along it, spreading his arms like a crucifix to steady himself, his fingers groping for irregularities in the rock face, the sandstone an inch from the tip of his nose.

He went left along the ledge, seeking the vertical crack he had spotted through the binoculars. It had been his first choice of the M I two possible routes. Sean had the rock climber's instinctive distrust of roots and branches and tufts of grass. They were always unreliable, too treacherous to risk life on.

He counted his shuffling crablike paces along the ledge, and by the time he reached a hundred the ledge under his toes had narrowed dangerously and the muscles in his thighs were burning and qwv ering from the unnatural strain of counterbalancing the rifle and pack.

Twenty paces more and the cliff face was beginning to bulge out toward him, forcing him further backward. He had to thrust his hips forward to keep himself from toppling out over the sheer drop. It was only a hundred feet to the bottom, but it would crush and kill just as surely as a fall from the top of Eiger north face.

The strain on his legs was intolerable now. He thought of going back and trying the roots of the ficus, but he doubted he still had that choice. He wanted to stop, just to rest his legs a moment and gather himself, but he knew that would be the end of it. To stop on a pitch like this was defeat and certain death.

He made himself take another pace and then another. Now he was forced backward so his back was arched and his legs were numb to the ankles; he could feel them juddering under him, knew they were going. Then suddenly the fingers of his left hand touched the crack, and it was as though a syringeful of adrenaline had been squirted into one of his arteries.

His legs steadied under him, and he managed another pace. His fingers danced over the crack, exploring it swiftly. It was not wide enough to get his shoulder into it, and it narrowed quickly.

Sean thrust his hand into it as deep as it would go, then bunched his fist, jamming it securely into the crack. Now he could hang back on his arm and rest his back and his aching legs. His breathing hissed and sawed in his chest and the sweat was streaming down his body, soaking his shirt. Sweat melted the camouflage cream from his face and burned his eyes, blurring his vision.

He blinked rapidly and lifted his head. He was surprised to see that the cliff face above him was visible against the night sky and that he could make out the crack running vertically up its side.

He turned his head and saw that while he had been climbing the moon had cleared the horizon in the east. Its beams had turned the forest below to a frosty silver.

He could not wait any longer. He had to keep moving. He reached up with his free hand, thrust it into the rock crack above the other, and made another jam-hold. Then he twisted his foot and pressed the toe into the crack three feet up from the ledge; b( straightened his foot and it wedged securely. He put his weight on it and, with the other foot, stepped up and repeated the action.

Hand over hand, foot over foot, he walked up the crack, hanging back from the rock face, once more in balance, the strain removed from his legs and back and his weight evenly distributed.

He could see the top of the cliff now, only a hundred feet above his head. Then he felt the crack begin to open wider; his fists and feet were no longer finding secure jams. One of his feet slipped under him, rasping harshly over the rock until it caught again.

He turned his body, trying to wedge his shoulder into the crack, but the barrel of the rifle clanged against the face, blocking his turn. He hung there for a few seconds before he could force himself back into balance on his legs and then groped above his head, searching the depth of the crack for another secure hold. He found only smooth sandstone, and he knew he was stuck.

He had about fifteen seconds before his legs gave way under him. He understood clearly what he had to do, but it went contrary to all his instincts.

"Do it," his voice grated in his own ears. "Do it or die."

He reached down and opened the quick-release buckle on the waistband of his backpack. Then he straightened one arm and reached backward and downward; the carrying strap slid off his shoulder and down his arm, catching in the crook of his elbow.

The altered weight of the pack and the rifle slewed his whole body around, and he had to fight to stay on the cliff face.

He thrust his head into the crack, trying to hook onto the rock with his chin and the back of his head, the strap of the backpack locking his arm behind him. His head jammed in the crack, he gathered all his strength, braced his neck muscles, and let go. Now he was held only by his head and feet, and he straightened both arms behind him. For an aching moment the strap caught on a fold of his bush jacket, thevlt slipped down over his arm.

The pack dropped4 off his back and fell away into the darkness.

Relieved of the weight, Sean tottered and swayed. Then, with both arms free, he grabbed wildly at the edges of the rock crack and managed to keep himself from plunging after his pack into the abyss.

He clung to the rock and listened to the pack striking the cliff as it fell, the steel of his rifle barrel ringing like a bronze bell off the rock, waking the echoes and sending them bounding from kopJe to cliff, a terrifing sound in the night. Long after the pack and rifle had come to rest at the base of the Cliff, the echoes still reverberated against the hills.

Sean swung himself sideways and was able at last to wedge his shoulder into the crack. He rested like that, panting wildly, the terror of death for the moment unnerving him. Then slowly his breathing eased and his terror was replaced by the familiar glow of adrenaline in his blood. Suddenly it felt very good still to be alive.

"Right to the very edge," he whispered hoarsely. "You have been there again, boyo." The greater the terror, the more intense the thrill. He no longer amazed himself, but here he was again gloating at just how close he could get without going over the edge.

The thrill was too fleeting. Within seconds it began to fade, replaced by a realization of his position. His pack was gone. The rifle, water bottles, sleeping bag, food, all gone, All that remained were the contents of his pockets and the tiny emergency pack and hunting knife looped to his belt.

He whispered, "We'll worry about that when we get to the top."

He began to climb again. With one shoulder wedged into the crack, he was able to push and drag himself upward an inch at a time, paying for it with skin from his knuckles and bare knees.

Gradually the crack continued to open wider, until it became a full chimney and he could get his whole body into it and double one leg under him to propel himself upward more swiftly At the op the chimney had eroded and crumbled. One side wall of the chimney had broken away, but it had left a narrow buttress with a flat top. Sean was able to transfer his weight across the chimney utntil he was standing on this precarious pinnacle.

The top of the cliff was still ten feet above his head. When he reached up to the full stretch of his arms, standing on the tips of Ms toes, the ledge was stiff just out of reach. The chimney wall had broken away clearly, leaving a smooth, almost polished surface without even the minutest hold or purchase. A good, safe climber moved from hold to hold with never a single moment when he was totally insecure. In a situation such as this that hypothetical climber would have driven an iron piton into the rock to give him the hold he needed.

"Look, Mummy, no pitons," Sean said grimly. "We'll have to jump for it." He would have only one chance at it. If he missed his hold on the ledge once he had launched himself, the next stop would be the base of the cliff.

He set both feet firmly and sank down at the knees, but he was so cramped on the tip of the buttress that he could not get low enough before his face touched the rock and his backside stuck far out over the drop. He took a breath and used both arms and legs to propel himself straight upward. It was an awkward, hampered jump, but he got high enough to hook both hands over the edge.

For a moment they began to slide back, then his fingers gripped and held.

He kicked both legs and drew himself upward by the main strength of his arms. His chin came level with the ledge, and in the moonlight he saw in front of him a false crest, simply another ledge below the true top of the cliff.

The ledge was obviously occupied by a colony of rock hyrax.

The stink of their droppings, sharp and ammoniac al filled Sean's lungs as he gasped from the effort of holding himself. The hyrax is a plump, fluffy animal. Although it is only the size of a rabbit, it is a remote relative of the elephant and as endearing in appearance as an infant's soft toy. These hyrax were deep in their rocky burrows now, and the ledge seemed deserted. Sean hoisted himself up smoothly and hooked one elbow over the edge; he kicked again, gathering himself for the final effort. Then he froze.

The silence of the night was cut by a loud high-pitched hiss, like the leaking valve of a truck tire. In the moonlight what he had taken for a pile of rock lying directly in front of his face altered shape, seeming to melt and flow. In an instant Sean realized it was a snake. Only one of the adders would hiss as loudly, and only one adder was that large.

It was coiled upon itself, loop after loop of its thick scaly body glistening softly, and as it cocked its neck into a menacing "S" the moon and winked at him shape, its eye caught the light of sardonically.

The huge flat head was the distinctive spade shape of the ga boon adder, the largest of all the adders and one of the deadliest of all of Africa's venomous snakes.

Sean could drop back and try to regain his stance on the narrow pinnacle of rock, but that was a slim chance and if he missed it, he e ul would plunge down the cliff face. A much better chanc would be to try and brave it out.

He hung with legs free, trying to control his breathing, staring in horror at the loathgbme creature- It was cocked to strike less than two feet from 4is face, and he knew it could lunge out almost its full body length," seven feet or more The slightest movement would trigger it.

He hung on his arms, every muscle of his body rigid, staring at the adder, trying to dominate it by the force of his will. The seconds drew out as slowly as spilled molasses, and he thought he detected the first relaxation in the taut "S" of its neck.

At that moment his left hand slipped, his fingernails rasped on the rock, and the adder struck with the force Of a blacksmith's hammer.

Sean rolled his head to the side like a boxer avoiding a punch.

The adder's cold, scaly nose jarred against his jawbone and there was a fierce tug against his neck and shoulder, so powerful it jerked one hand loose from its hold on the rock and spun him half around. He was sideways to the ledge, holding on with only his left arm.

He knew the adder had hooked its fangs into his shoulder or the side of his throat, and he expected the exquisite fire of its venom to kindle in his flesh. The serpent was locked onto him, dangling down the front of his body, thick as a salami sausage; it squirmed and thrashed, hissing explosively in his ear. The cold touch of its slippery scales brushed against his bare flesh.

Sean almost screamed with the sheer horror of it. The adder's weight threw him about as it lashed from side to side, and its loud hisses deafened him. He felt his single-handed grip on the ledge slipping, but the prospect of the drop below him was suddenly insignificant when compared to this foul creature fastened to his neck.

He felt an icy spray of liquid on the side of his throat and his jaw; it dribbled down the opening of his bush jacket, and with a rush of relief he knew the adder had missed his throat and fastened onto the collar of his jacket. Its fangs were fully two inches long and viciously curved, designed to penetrate and hang on to its prey.

Hooked into the khaki cotton material of his collar, its violent struggles were forcing the venom out of the hollow bony needles, and it was squirting onto his throat and bare skin.

The realization that the fangs had not penetrated his flesh rallied him, firmed his grip on the ledge, and arrested his slow slide into the drop. His right hand was still free. He reached up and seized the adder's neck just at the back of its flat diamond-shaped head.

Ms fingers could barely span the massive body, and he felt the enormous power of its muscles beneath the glassy scales.

He tried to pull it free, but the fangs were like fishhooks in the heavy cloth. The serpent hissed more viciously, and its grotesque body, patterned like a patchwork quilt, coiled around his forearm.

Holding on to the ledge with his left arm, heaving at the adder with his right, and using all his strength, he tore the fangs from the roof of its gaping mouth so that its dark blood mingled with the copious flow of its venom, and flung the twisting coiling body far out over the drop. Then he swung back and grabbed with his right hand at the rock of the ledge.

He was sobbing softly with horror and exertion, and it was fully half a minute before he could gather himself sufficiently to pull himself up and crawl onto the ledge.

He knelt on the rock floor and shrugged out of his bush jacket.

The front of it was wet with venom , and one of the adder's broken off fangs was still buried in the cloth of the collar. He worked it loose and, careful to avoid the needle point, flicked it out over the cliff. Then with his handkerchief he wiped his skin dry.

He considered the danger of wearing the jacket again. The venom might be absorbed through the pores of the sensitive skin under his jaw, it could cause ulcers or worse, but to discard the jacket would expose his body to tomorrow's tropical sun. He hesitated, then rolled the jacket and fastened it onto his belt. He would wash it out at the first opportunity.

The thought of water made him aware of his thirst. The climb was with his pack at the had dehydrated him, and his water bottle bottom of the cliff. He had to find water before tomorrow noon, but now his first concern must be to get off the exposed face of the cliff and into cover.

He stood up and felt the night breeze cold on the sweat of his bare upper body. From the ledge on which he stood it was an easy pitch to the crest, more a scramble than a climb. However, he took it carefully, and when he reached the top he lay for a few minutes with just his head peering over the crest.

A haze of light cloud had veiled the moon, and he could see very little. The bush that grew so densely up the sides of the valley had spread across the tops of the cliff and formed a dark wall just ahead. There were probably forty yards of rocky ground, open except for coarse knee-high grass, and then he would be into the cover of the bush.

He rose to his feet and ran forward, crouching as low as possible as he crossed the skyline. He was halfway to the edge of the bush when the light hit him.

It stopped him dead as though he had run into the rock cliff.

Instinctively he flung up his hands to protect his eyes, for his vision had been shattered and. staffed by the brilliance of the light beamed full into his face. Then he flung himself face forward into the grass and flat tepee his body against the stony earth.

The beam of light threw long black shadows behind each boulder and cast a bright, reflective glow from the pale winter grass.

Sean dared not raise his head. He pressed his face to the earth, exposed, vulnerable, and helpless in that fierce white beam He waited for something to happen, but the silence was unbroken. Even the usual night sounds of nocturnal birds and insects were quenched, so that when at last the voice boomed out of the trees, magnified and distorted by an electronic bullhorn, it was as shocking as a blow in the face.

"Good evening, Colonel Courtney.it was spoken in good English, barely touched by an African accent. "You made excellent time. Twenty-seven minutes fifteen seconds from the base of the cliff to the top."

Sean did not move. He lay and absorbed the bitter humiliation of it. They had been toying with him.

"But I cannot give you high marks for stealth. What was it you threw down the rock? It sounded like a bunch of old tin pots." The speaker chuckled derisively and then went on. "And now, Colonel, if you are sufficiently rested, would you be gracious enough to stand up and raise both hands above your head?"

Sean did not move.

"I beg of you, sir. Don't waste your time and mine."

Sean lay still, wildly considering the possibility of dashing back over the crest behind him.

"Very well, I see you have to be convinced," There was a brief pause, and Sean heard a soft order given in dialect.

The burst of automatic fire tore into the earth three paces from where he lay. He saw the fiery blur of the muzzle flashes among the dark trees and heard the distinctive rush of the RPD light machine gun, like a strip of heavy-duty canvas being ripped. The stream of bullets scythed the grass and raised a mist of yellow dust in the bright light.

Sean came slowly to his feet. The beam of light fastened on his face, but he refused to turn his head away or shield his eyes.

"Hands at full stretch above the head please, Colonel."

He obeyed. His naked upper body was very white in the light.

"I am delighted to see you have kept yourself in good shape, Colonel."

Two dark figures detached themselves from the tree line. Keeping well clear of the light beam, they circled out on either side of him and came up at Sean's rear. From the corner of his eyes, Sean saw that they wore tiger-striped battle dress and their AK rifles were aimed at him. He ignored them until suddenly the steel butt plate of one of the rifles crashed into his spine between the shoulder blades and he fell to his knees.

The voice on the bullhorn gave a sharp order in dialect to prevent them striking him again, and they closed on either side of him and forced him to his feet. One of them searched him swiftly, stripping him of his knife, belt, and emergency pack and patting his pockets. Then they backed off, leaving him naked except for his khaki shorts and velskoen but keeping their AKs aimed at his belly.

The light bobbed as the man carrying it advanced out of the w all of bush. Sean saw it was one of those portable battle lights powered by a heavy rechargeable battery pack the man carried on his back. Slightly behind him, keeping back in the shadow, Came the man with the bullhorn.

Even through the dazzling beam of the battle light Sean saw he was tall and lean, and that he moved with a catlike grace.

"It's been a long time, Colonel Courtney." He was close enough now not to have to use the bullhorn, and Sean recognized his voice.

"Many years," Sean agreed.

"You'll have to speak up." The man stopped a few paces in front of Sean and jokingly cupped one hand to the side of his head.

"I am deaf in one ear, you know," he said. Sean grinned sardonically at him through his black camouflage cream.

"I should have done a better job and blown your other ear out while I was about it, Comrade China."

"Yes," China agreed. "We really must discuss old times together."

He smiled, and he was even more handsome than Sean remembered, relaxed, charming, and debonair. "However, I'm afraid you have delayed me a little, Colonel. Pleasant though it is to renew acquaintance, I cannot afford more time away from my headquarters. There will be an opportunity to talk later, but now I must leave you. My men will take good care of you."

He turned and disappeared into the darkness beyond the beam of light. Sean wanted to call after him, "My men, the girl, are they safe?" but restrained himself. With a man like this it was best to show no weakness, to give him nothing he could use to his advantage later. Sean forced himself to remain silent when the guards urged him forward with practiced use of their gun butts.

We'll join the main column soon, Sean comforted himself. And I'll see for myself how Claudia and Job are doing.

The thought of Claudia was a refreshing draft that he craved even more than sweet cool water.

There were ten men in his guard detail under the co o a sergeant.

d lean as the Obviously they were picked troops, Powerful an pack of wolves of his nightmare. Soon they intercepted a well to a beaten footpath. They closed up around him and urged him jog trot, heading southward into the night.

None of his captors spoke. It was an eerie experience, just the sound of their light footfalls and quick shallow breathing, the creak of equipment and the hot feral smell of their bodies close around him in the night.

After an hour the sergeant signaled a pause, and they stopped beside the track. Sean reached across to the nearest guerrilla and tapped the water bottle on his belt.

The man spoke to the sergeant, the first words since they had started, and Sean understood him. He was speaking Shangane.

The Shanganes were the remnants of one of the tiny Zulu tribes that had been defeated by King Chaka's imp is at the battle of Mhlatuze River in 1818. Unlike so many of the other lesser chieftains, Soshangane had resisted incorporation into Chaka's empire and fled northward with his shattered imp is to found his own kingdom along the borders of present-day Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

So the Shangane language was Zulu-based. Over the years many of Sean's camp staff had been Shangane for, like their Zulu ancestors, they were a fine and noble people. Sean spoke their language fluently, for it contained many similarities to Sindebele.

He did not, however, make the mistake of letting his captors know this and gave no indication of having understood as the trooper said, "The mabunu wants to drink."

"Give it to him," the sergeant replied. "You know the ink osi wants him alive."

The man handed Sean the bottle, and though the water was brackish and tainted by swamp mud, to Sean it tasted like chilled Veuve Chcquot served in a crystal glass.

"The ink osi wants him alive," the sergeant had said. Sean pondered this as he handed the bottle back. The ink osi or chief, was obviously Comrade China, and they had orders to care for him.

That gave him a little comfort, but he did not have long to savor it. After only a few minutes, the sergeant gave the order and they resumed that mile-eating jog trot toward the south.

They ran up the dawn. At any moment Sean expected them to overhaul the main column that was holding Claudia and Job captive, but mile succeeded mile without any sign of them. Now that it was light, Sean could look for the tracks of the column on the footpath ahead, but there were none. They must have taken a different route.

The sergeant in charge was a veteran. He had flankers out sweeping the verges of the footpath ahead for an ambush by Frelimo, but what seemed to concern him more than attack from the forest was the menace from the sky. At all times they attempted to keep under the canopy of the forest, and whenever they were forced to cross open ground they stopped and searched the sky, listened for the sound of engines before venturing out, then crossed to the next line of trees at a full run.

Once during the first morning they heard the sound of a turboprop engine, faint and very far off, but instantly the sergeant gave an order and they all dived into cover. A trooper lay on each side V

of Sean and forced him to keep his head down and his face to the ground until the last murmur of the aircraft engine faded.

This preoccupation with aerial attack puzzled Sean; all he had heard and read indicated that Frelimo's air force was so weak and scattered as to be almost nonexistent. The types of aircraft they possessed were obsolete and unsuited to ground attack, and a shortage of skilled technicians and spares only compounded their ineffectuality.

These men, however, were taking the threat very seriously indeed.

At midday the sergeant ordered a halt. One of the troopers prepared food on a small fire, which he doused as soon as it was cooked. They moved on a few miles before stopping once more to eat the meal. Sean was given an equal share. The maize meal was cooked stiff and fluffy and was well salted, but the meat was rancid and on the point of putrefying. In the average white man it would have caused an immediate attack of enteritis, but Sean's stomach was as conditioned as any African's. He ate it without relish, but without trepidation either.

"The food is good," the sergeant told Sean in Shangane as he sat beside him. "Do you want more?" Sean made a pantomime of incomprehension and said in English, "I'm sorry, I don't know what you are saying." The sergeant shrugged and went on eating.

A few minutes later he turned back to Sean and said sharply, "Look behind you, there's a snake!" Sean resisted the natural impulse to jump to his feet. Instead he grinned ingratiatingly and repeated, "I'm sorry, I don't understand."

The sergeant relaxed, and one of his men remarked. "He does not understand Shangane. It is all right to speak in front of him."

They ignored him for the remainder of the meal and chatted among themselves, but as soon as they had finished the sergeant produced a pair of light manacles from his pack and locked one side on to Sean's wrist and the other onto his own. He delegated sentry duty to two of his men, and the rest of them settled down to sleep. Despite Sean's'exhaustion-he had been going for days now on only brief snatches of sleep-he lay awake and pondered all he had learned and the missing pieces of the puzzle. He was still not certain that he was in Renamo hands; he had only Claudia's brief note to suggest that. Comrade China had been a commissar in Robert Mugabe's Marxist ZANLA army, but Renamo was a rabidly anticommunist organization committed to the overthrow of the Marxist Frefimo government. It didn't add up correctly.

Furthermore, China had fought the Rhodesian army of Ian Smith. What was he doing here across the border, involved in another struggle in a foreign country? Was China a soldier of fortune, a turncoat, or an independent warlord taking advantage f the Mozambican chaos for his own private ends? It would be interesting to find out.

With all this to think about, his last thought before sleep finally overcame him was of Claudia Monterro. If China wanted him alive, it was highly probable that he wanted the girl alive as well.

With that thought, he fell into a deep, dark sleep with a faint smile on his lips.

He woke to the ache of abused muscles and the bruises left by gun butts, but the sergeant had him up and running immediately southward again into the cool shades of evening. Within a mile his muscles warmed and the stiffness evaporated. He settled into the run, matching his escorts easily. Always he looked ahead, hoping at any moment to see the tail of the main column emerge from the darkness ahead, and to see Job and Dedan carrying Claudia's litter.

They ran through the night, and when they stopped again to eat, his captors began to discuss him through their mouthfuls of maize and high-smelling meat.

"They say in the other war he was a lion, an eater of men," the sergeant told them. "It was he that led the attack at Inhlozane, the training camp at the Hills of the Maiden's Breasts."

The troopers looked at him with interest and dawning respect.

"They say that it was veritably he, in person, who destroyed one ear of General China."

They chuckled and shook their heads; that was a fine joke.

"He has the body of a warrior," said one of them, and they considered him frankly, discussing his physique as though he were an in ammate object.

"Why has General China ordered this?" another asked. The sergeant grinned and picked a shred of meat from his back teeth with a fingernail.

"We must run the pride and anger out of him," he grinned.

"General China wants us to change him from a lion into a dog who will wag his tail and do his bidding."

"He has the body of a warrior," the first man repeated. "Now we must discover if he has the heart of a warrior." And they all laughed again.

"So it's a contest, then." Sean kept his face impassive. "All right, you bastards, let's see which dog wags its tail first."

In a perverse fashion Sean began to enjoy himself The challenge was much to his taste. There were ten of them, all in their twenties.

He was just over forty years of age, but that handicap made it even sweeter and helped him to endure the monotony and hardship of the days that followed.

He was careful not to let them know that he understood it was a contest. He knew it would be dangerous to antagonize or humiliate them. Their goodwill and respect would be more valuable than their hatred and resentment.

Sean had spent his entire adult life in the close company of black men. He knew them as servants and as equals, as hunters and as soldiers, as good and loyal friends and as bitter cruel enemies. He knew their strengths and weaknesses and how to exploit them. He understood their tribal customs and their social etiquette, he knew how to flatter and please and impress them, how to gain their respect and make himself agreeable to them.

He showed them just the right degree of respect, but not enough to make them contemptuous. He took special care not to challenge the sergeant's authority or force him to lose face in front of his men. He made the most of their sense of humor and fun. With sign language and a little clowning he made them laugh, and once they had laughed with him their relationship altered subtly. He became more a companion than a captive, and they no longer used the steel-edged gun butts as instruments of casual persuasion. Most important, he every day was picking up little snippets of information.

Twice they passed burned-out villages. The cultivated lands around them had gone back to weeds, the black ashes blowing in the wind.

Sean pointed at the ruins. "Renamo?" he asked.

His captors were outraged. "Not Not" the sergeant told him.

"Frehmo! Frehmo!" He tapped his own chest. "Me Renamo," he boasted, then pointed at his men. "Renamo! Renamo!"

"Renarno!" they agreed proudly.

"Well, that settles that." Sean laughed. "Frelimo. Bang! Bang!"

He made the gestqire of shooting a Frelimo and they were delighted, joining'in the pantomime of slaughter enthusiastically.

Their attitude toward him improved even further, and at their next meal the sergeant handed him an extra-large cut of rotten meat.

While he ate it, they openly discussed his performance to date, agreeing that he was acquitting himself admirably.

"But," the sergeant asked, "he can run and we know he can kill men, but can he kill a hen shaw

Henshaw was the Shangane word for a falcon. Sean had heard them use it many times over the last five days of their trek. Each time they had said the word, they had looked up at the sky with a troubled expression. Now once again at the mention of that bird, they looked unhappy and reflexively glanced upward, "General China thinks so," the sergeant went on. "But who knows, who knows?"

By now Sean was confident that his position was fairly secure.

His relationship with the band would allow him to take the first liberty and force a resolution of this trial by attrition.

On the next stage he began to force the pace. Instead of keeping his station in the file of trotting men two paces behind the Shangane sergeant who led the column, he closed up until he was running on his heels, not quite touching him with each stride, exaggerating his breathing so the sergeant could feel it on the back of his thick sweaty back. Instinctively the sergeant lengthened his own stride and Sean matched him, keeping close, too close, and pushing him.

The sergeant glanced over his shoulder irritably. Sean grinned at him, breathing into his face. The sergeant's eyes narrowed slightly as he realized what was happening. Then he grinned back at Sean and extended his stride into a full run.

"That's it, my friend," Sean said in English. "Now let's see whose tail wags."

The rest of the column had fallen behind. The sergeant called a sharp order to close up, and they went away at a killing pace.

Within an hour there were only three of them left, the others straggled back over a mile of the forest floor. Ahead of them the path climbed a steep incline to the crest of another tableland.

Sean moved up slightly until he was running shou to shoulder with the tall sergeant, but when he tried to pull ahead the man kept up with him. The hillside was so steep that the path went up it in a series of hairpins. The sergeant forged ahead of Sean at the first bend, but Sean caught him and passed him on the straight.

They ran at the top of their speed now, the lead changing back and forth between them, and the third man dropped out before they were halfway up the hillside. They ran grimly in a wash of sweat, their breathing harsh as the exhaust of a steam engine.

Suddenly Sean darted off the path, scrambling straight upward, cutting across the bend and coming out fifty feet ahead of the Shangane. The sergeant shouted angrily at this ruse and cut the next bend himself. Now both of them abandoned the pathway and ran straight up the steep slope, jumping over boulders and roots like a pair of blue kudu bulls in flight.

Sean came out on the crest three feet in front of the sergeant, threw himself down on the hard earth, and rolled onto his back, moaning for breath. The sergeant dropped down beside him with his breath sobbing in his chest. After a minute Sean sat up uncertainly, and they stared at each other in awe.

Then Sean began to laugh. It was a harsh painful cackle, but after a few seconds the Shangane laughed with him, though clearly each gust of laughter was an agony. Their laughter grew stronger as their lungs regained function, and when the rest of the party struggled to the crest of the hill they found them still sitting in the grass beside the track, roaring at each other like a pair of lunatics.

When the march resumed an hour later, the sergeant left the endless footpath and struck off cross-country toward the west. At last there was direction and purpose in the way he led the column.

Sean realized the trial was over.

Before dark they ran into a Renamo fine of permanent defenses.

They were entrenched along the bank of a wide but sluggish river that flowed green between sandbars and around water polished boulders. The dugouts and trenches were reverted with logs and sandbags and meticulously camouflaged against aerial discovery. There were mortars and heavy machine guns dug in, with commanding fields of fire across the river and sweeping the northern bank.

Sean had the impression these fortifications were extensive, and he guessed this was the perimeter of a large military area, certainly battalion and possibly even division strength. Once they had crossed the river and been passed through the defenses, Sean's appearance in the ranks of his escort created a stir of interest.

Off-duty troopers turned out of their dugouts and crowded around them, and his captors clearly enjoyed the elevated status a white prisoner bestowed upon them.

The crowd of interested and jocular onlookers abruptly thinned and parted as a tubby, bespectacled officer strode through them.

Sean's escort saluted him with theatrical flourishes, which he returned by touching the Min of his maroon beret with the tip of his swagger stick.

"Colonel Courtney," he greeted Sean in passable English. "We have been warned to expect you."

For Sean, it was refreshing to notice that Renamo wore conventional badges of rank, based on the Portuguese army conventions.

This man had red field officer flashes and the single crowns of a major on his epaulettes. During the bush war the tells had eschewed the capitalist imperialist traditions and dispensed with the symbols of an elitist officer class.

"You will spend the night with us," the major told him. "And I look forward to having you as our guest in mess tonight."

This was extraordinary treatment, and even Sean's captors were unpressed and in a strange way rather proud of him. The sergeant himself escorted Sean down to the river and even produced a fragment of green soap for him to wash out his bush jacket and shorts.

While they dried on a sun-heated rock, Sean wallowed naked in the pool and then used the last of the soap to wash his hair and rid his face of camouflage cream and ingrained dirt. He had not shaved since he had left Chiwewe camp almost two weeks previously, and his beard felt thick and substantial.

He worked up a lather of suds in his armpits and crotch and looked down at his body. There was not a vestige of fat on him; each individual muscle was outlined clearly beneath the sun darkened skin. He had not been in this extreme condition since the closing days of the war. He was like a thoroughbred racehorse brought up to its peak by a skillful trainer on the eve of a major race.

The sergeant loaned him a steel comb and he brushed his hair out. It fell almost to his shoulders, thick and wavy and sparkling from the wash. He put on his damp clothes and let them dry on his body. He felt good, that charged restless feeling of being at the very pinnacle of physical fitness.

The officers" mess was an underground dugout devoid of ornament or decoration. The furniture was crude and hand-hewn. Ms hosts were the major, a captain, and two young subalterns.

The food made up for its lack of artistic presentation by its abundance. A huge steaming bowl of stew made with sun-dried fish and chilis, the fiery peri-peri that was a relic of the Portuguese onialists, and great mounds of the ubiquitous maize-meal porcol ridge.

It was the best meal Sean had eaten since leaving Chiwewe, but the highlight of the evening was the drink the major provided, unlimited quantities of real civilized beer in metal cans. The labels read "Castle Lager" and in small print at the bottom, "Verwaardig in Suid Afrika, Made in South Africa." It was an indication as to which country was Renaino's good friend.

As the guest in mess, Sean proposed the first toast. He stood and raised his beer can.

"Renamo," he said. "And the people of Mozambique."

The major replied, "President Botha, and the people of South Africa," which settled it conclusively. They knew Sean was from the south and was, therefore, an honored guest.

He felt so secure in their company that he could relax and for the first time in months allow himself to get moderately drunk.

The major had fought for the Rhodesians during the bush war.

He told Sean that like Job Bhekani he had been a subaltern in the Rhodesian African Rifles, the elite black regiment that had fought so effectively and inflicted such slaughter among the ZANLA guerrillas. They soon established the camaraderie of old brothers-in arms Without obviously pumping him, Sean was able to nudge the conversation along and pick up the crumbs of information the major let fall more freely as the cans of beer were consumed.

Sean's estimation had been correct. This was part of the northern perimeter of a Renamo army group. The fortifications were deep and dispersed as a precaution against aerial bombardment.

From this base they marauded southward, hitting the Frelimo garrisons and strafing and raiding the railway line between Beira on the coast and Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe.

While they were still working on the first case of beer, Sean and the major discussed with seriousness the significance of that rail link. Zimbabwe was a completely landlocked nation. Its only arteries to the outside world were the two railway lines. The major one was southward into South Africa, via Johannesburg to the major ports of Durban and Cape Town.

Mugabe's Marxist government bitterly resented being reliant on the nation which, for them, epitomized all that was evil in Africa, the bastion of capitalism and the free-market system, the nation that for the eleven long years of the bush war had propped up the white regime of Ian Smith. Mugabe's hysterical rhetoric against his southern neighbor was incessant, and yet the foul hand of apartheid was curled around his jugular vein. His instinct was to look eastward into Mozambique for salvation. During his struggle for independence Mugabe had been ably assisted by the Frelimo president of Mozambique, Samara Machel, whose own struggle against the Portuguese had only just culminated in freedom from the colonial yoke.

Frelimo, his brother",4arxists, had provided Mugabe with recruits, arms, and rut support for his guerrillas. Without reservation they had offered him the use of bases within their territory from which to launch his attacks on Rhodesia. It was only natural now that he had once more turned to Mozambique to provide an escape from this awful humiliation of being seen by the rest of Africa, by his brothers in the Organization of African Unity, to be dealing with the monster of the south, and not only dealing with it but totally dependent on it for every liter of gasoline, every ounce of the daily stuff of survival.

The railway line to the port of Beira on the Mozambique Channel was the natural solution to his predicament. Of course, the port facilities and the main-line system had been allowed to fall into almost total disrepair under African socialist management. The solution to that was simple and well tried: massive aid from the developed nations of the West. As every good African Marxist knew, they were fully entitled to this, and any attempt to withhold it could be countered by the equally simple and well-tried expedient of dubbing it blatant racism. That dread accusation would force immediate compliance. The estimate of the cost of work needed to restore the port and main line to full efficiency was four billion American dollars. However, as actual costs in Africa usu ay exceeded estimates by a hundred percent, the sum of eight billion dollars was more realistic. A mere bagatelle, nothing more than their due, a fair price for the West to pay for the pleasure and prestige Mugabe would derive from being able to thumb his nose at the monster of the south.

There was only one small obstacle in his way, the Renanio army.

It sat astride that vital rail fink, attacking it almost daily, blowing up bridges and culverts, ripping out the tracks and shooting up rolling stock.

The actual damage they caused was minor compared to the fact that their depredations gave the Western governments a fine excuse to withhold the funds needed to restore the main line to the condition in which it would be able to carry all of Zimbabwe's imports and exports.

The Frelimo government's efforts to protect the line were so fumbling and inept that the Zimbabweans themselves were forced to assist them. Over ten thousand of M s own troops were tied up with trying to fend off Renamo attacks on the line. Sean had heard estimates of the cost of these operations to Zimbabwe's economy, already one of the shakiest in sub-Saharan Africa, as high as a million dollars a day.

It was ironic that Mugabe, once the guerrilla, was now forced into the role of passive defender of fixed hardware and permanent positions.

He was experiencing the stings of the flea that he had once so merrily dispensed.

Sean and the Renamo major laughed at the joke and began on the second case of good apartheid lager. This marked the passing of the time for serious conversation.

Now they reminisced happily about the days of the bush war and soon discovered that they had both been at the same contact in the Mavuradonha Mountains on the day when they had killed forty-six guerrillas, a "good kill" as a successful action was always referred to. Sean's Scouts had lain in wait in the gulleys and reentrances to the hills, acting in the role of stop group, while the Pa RAR had dropped on the far side by parachute and formed the sweep line to drive the terrorists onto the Scouts.

"You drove out as many bushbuck as gooks," Sean remembered. "I didn't know which to shoot first." And they laughed and talked of other dangerous sorties, of crazy ops and wild chases and "good kills."

They drank to Ian Smith, the Banantyne scouts, and the Rhodesian African Rifles. There was still plenty of beer remaining, so they drank to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. When they "Damnaran out of conservative leaders to toast, Sean suggested, tion to Gorbachev!"

This was enthusiastically adopted, and the major countered immediately with, "Damnation to Frelinio and Joaquim Chissano."

The list of left-wingers was longer than that of conservatives, but they worked their way steadily down it, damning them all from Neil Kinnock to Teddy Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.

When they finally parted, Sean and the major embraced like brothers. Sean had filled all his pockets with cans of beer, so that when he returned to his Shangane guards they too greeted him affectionately as he distributed the cans among them.

In the morning the Shangane sergeant shook him awake while it was still dark. Sean's headache was terrifying and his mouth tasted as though a hyena had slept in it. It was one of the penances of being superbly physically fit: the body's reaction to the abuse of rtionately violent, the hangovers more fierce alcohol was propo aspirin for solace.

and he had not a single ming Sean had sweated out However, by the middle of the MO the last drops of stale beer. Their route was still south and west, and as they ran they saw many more fortifications and strong points. As the major had told him, they were cunningly dispersed and hidden. He saw light field artillery in sandbagged em placed detachments, together with mortars in their redoubts an armed with RPG sockets, the mobile hand-held stalwarts of the guerrilla arsenal: All the troops he saw seemed to be cheerful and of high morale, well fed and equipped. Nearly all of them wore the tiger-striped camouflage and combat boots with rubber soles and canvas uppers.

His escort had replenished their packs from the garrison stores.

aize meal was in two-kilo paper When they stopped to eat, the inch they lit the sacks marked "Premier Mills," the matches with whi fire were "Lion Matches," and the new bars of soap "Sunlight," all with the familiar double legend beneath the name: "Verwaardig in Suid Afrika, Made in South Africa."

"It's almost like being home again," Sean chuckled.

The Renaino defensive lines were in concentric rings like the ripples on a pond, and soon Sean realized they were approaching the center. They passed what were obviously training areas, where fresh-faced black recruits, both male and female, some of them in their early teens, sat in rows under thatched sun shelters like schoolchildren in a classroom, studying the makeshift blackboard so attentively that they barely glanced up as Sean's detachment trotted by.

From the blackboards, Sean saw the subjects they were being taught ranged from the infantry field manual to politic theory.

al Beyond the rear training areas they entered what appeared to be a series of low, sparsely manned kopjes. It was only when they were within a few meters of the side of one of these hills that Sean spotted the entrances to the dugouts.

They were more elaborately constructed and cunningly concealed than the others they had been passing all day. These would be invisible from the air and impervious to aerial bombardment, and Sean could tell, by the changed deportment of his guards and their more severe posture toward him, that they had reached the headquarters area of the Renamo army group.

Still, he was taken by surprise when without ceremony they turned aside and drew up at the entrance to one of the underground bunkers. There was a brief exchange while the Shangane sergeant handed Sean over to the guards at the entrance. Then Sean was hustled down the steps into the subterranean maze of corridors and caverns hacked out of the earth. The bunker was lit by bare electric bulbs, and somewhere far off he heard the hum of a generator. The side walls were reverted with sandbags that had been dressed neatly, and the roof was reinforced with hewn logs.

They entered a communications room. Sean saw at a glance that the radio equipment was sophisticated and well maintained. A

large-scale map of the whole northern and central Mozambican provinces of Zambia and Monica covered one wall.

Sean studied the map surreptitiously. He saw at once that the broken, mountainous ground in which this Renamo army group was ensconced was the Serra de Gorongosa, the Gorongosa Mountains, and that the river they had crossed, which formed the Renamo defensive fine, was the Pungwe River. The main railway line ran only thirty or forty miles further south of this position.

Before he could glean more information from the map he was hurried down another short passageway at the end of which there was a curtained-off doorway.

His escort called a respectful request to enter. The reply was sharp and authoritative. One of the guards prodded Sean, and he pushed the curtain aside and stepped into the room beyond.

"Comrade China." Sean smiled. "What a pleasant surprise."

"That form of address is no longer appropriate, Colonel Courtney. In future please address me as General China, or simply as "Sir." He sat at a desk in the center of the dugout. He was dressed in the ubiquitous tiger-striped battle dress, but it was adorned with silver paratrooper wings and four rows of gaudy ribbons across his left breast. A yellow silk scarf was knotted at his throat and his maroon beret and webbing belt hung on a peg behind him The butt of the automatic pistol in the webbing holster was ivory handled General China was obviously taking his conversion from Marxism to capitalism very seriously.

"I understand you have acquitted yourself well during the last few days and that you are sympathetic toward Renamo, its allies, and its objectives." His attitude toward Sean was benign, and it made him uneasy.

"How do you know that?" he demon "We do have radio you know, Colonel. We aren't total barbarians." China indicated The VHF set on the bench along the side wall of the dugout. "Tau passed a pleasant evening with Major Takawira, at my suggestion."

"Now would you like to tell me what the hell this is all about, General? You have abducted citizens of two friendly and powerful nations, South Africa and America."

General China held up his hands to stop him. "Please spare me your outrage, Colonel. Our people in Lisbon and elsewhere have already received complaints from both the Americans and the South Africans. Of course, we have denied abducting anybody and adopted an attitude of injured innocence. He paused and studied Sean for a moment. "Very enterprising of you to have got a message to the American embassy so soon, but then I wouldn't have expected anything less of you."

Before Sean could reply he lifted the handset of the field telephone on his desk and spoke quietly in a language Sean recognized as Portuguese but could not understand. He hung up and glanced expectantly toward the screen doorway. Instinctively Sean did the same.

The canvas curtain was drawn aside, and three persons ducked through the dugout. There were two uniformed black women carrying side arms and AK rifles. Between them, escorted closely, dressed in sun-bleached but freshly laundered khaki shirt and loose -fitting shorts, nearly the same clothes she had worn when last he saw her, was Claudia Monterro.

She was thin. That was the first thing that struck Sean. Her hair was drawn back and tied in a plait at the back of her head, and she was tanned to the color of melba toast.

Her eyes were huge in her thin face, and he had never before truly noticed the fine structure of her cheeks and jawbone. At the sight of her his heart seemed to stop and swell against his ribs, then race away again.

"Claudia!" he said. Her head jerked toward him. The blood drained from her face, leaving a cafe all lait color beneath her tan.

"Oh my God," she whispered. "I was so afraid-" She broke off, and they stared at each other, neither of them moving for a dozen beats of his heart. Then she said his name: "Sean." And it sounded like a sob.

She swayed toward him and lifted her hands, palms upward in a gesture of supplication, and her eyes were filled with all the suffering and hardship and longing of these last days.

With two long strides he reached her, and she threw herself against him, closed her eyes, and pressed her face against him. She had both arms locked around his chest, and the strength of her grip hampered his breathing.

"Darling," he whispered, and stroked her hair; it felt thick and springing under his fingers. "My darling, it's all right now."

She lifted her face to him, and her lips quivered and parted.

Blood had flowed back under the smooth brown skin. She seemed to glow, and the light in her eyes had changed to the sparkle of dark yellow topaz.

"You called me darling," she whispered.

He lowered his head over her and kissed her. Her lips opened under his, and the inside of her mouth was hot and lubricious. He probed it deeply with his tongue, and it tasted like the sap of sweet young grass.

From the desk, General China said quietly in Shangane, "Very well, now take the woman away."

Claudia's guards seized her and Plucked her Out Of his embrace She gave a small despairing wail and tried to resist, but they were powerful, heavily built women, and between them they lifted her feet off the ground and hustled her back through the screen doorway.

one of Sean shouted' Leave her," and started after them, but the guards drew the pistol from her webbing holster and pointed it at his belly. The canvas screen dropped between them and Claudia's cries of protest dwindled as she was dragged away. In the silence Sean turned slowly back to the man at the desk.

"You bastard," he whispered furiously. "You set that up."

"It went better than I could possibly have hoped for," General China agreed, "although some previous conversation I had with Miss Monterro concerning you gave me the idea she was more hunter."

interested in you as a man than as a professional "I'd like to twist your head off your shoulders. if you hurt her -Come, come, Colonel Courtney. I'm not going to hurt her. She is far too valuable.

She is a bargaining chip. Surely You realize that."

Slowly Sean's fury abated and he nodded stiffly. "Okay, China, what do you want?"

"Good." General China nodded. "I was waiting for you to ask that question. Sit down." He indicated one of the stools facing his desk. "I'll order a pot of tea and we can talk."

While they waited for the tea, General China busied himself with the papers on his desk, reading and signing a batch of orders t gave Sean a chance to recover himself When an orderly brought the tea, General China gestured for him to clear the papers from the desk.

When they were alone again, China sipped at his mug and want. Well, I regarded Sean over Se rim. "You ask what it is I confess that at first it was nothing more complicated than must simple retribution. After all, Colonel, it was you that destroyed my command that day at the camp at Inhlozane. You put the only manent blemish on my professional career, and you inflicted Pc "Reason physical damage on my person." He touched his ear.

I'm sure you will agree."

enough for me to want revenge, Sean remained silent. Although he had not tasted tea in days and craved it, he had not touched the mug, which stood on the edge of the desk in front of him. Of course, I knew that you were operating the Chiwewe hunting concession. In fact, as a junior minister of Mugabe's government, I was one of those who gave approval to the grant. I thought even then that it might be useful to have you so close to the border."

Sean forced himself to relax. He realized that he might learn more, achieve more, by a show of cooperation rather than defiance. It was difficult to do, for he could still taste Claudia's mouth.

He picked up the tea mug and took a mouthful.

"You certainly get around." He smiled. "Comrade one day, general the next. Marxist government minister one day, Renamo warlord the next."

China waved a hand deprecatingly. "The dialectics of Marxism never truly interested me. Looking back now, I realize I enlisted in the guerrilla army for a very good capitalistic reason. At the time it was the best way to get on in LIFE--does that make any sense to you, Colonel?"

"Perfect sense," Sean agreed. This time his smile was genumie.

"It's a well-known fact that the only way communism can be made to work is if you have capitalists to pay the bill and manage the show' You phrased that very well." China nodded his appreciation.

"I only found that out later, once ZANLA had ousted Smith and taken over the government in Harare. I discovered that as a former guerrilla I was feared and mistrusted by the soft fat cats who had avoided the actual fighting but now had taken control of the show.

I saw that far from receiving my just rewards, I was more likely to end up in Chikarubi prison, so I allowed my capitalistic instinct to guide me. With a few other like-minded citizens, we were arranging another change of government, and we were able to convince some of my old comrades-in-arms, who occupied senior positions in the Zimbabwean Army, that I would make a suitable replacement for Robert Mugabe."

"The good old African game of coup and counter coup Sean suggested.

"It is refreshing to talk to someone who follows the reasoning so readily." China nodded approval. "But then you are an African, albeit of the less fashionable hue."

"I'm flattered to be recognized as one," Sean told him. "But to return to your altruistic desire to put the best man in charge--"

"All, yes... well, somebody boasted to a woman, and she told her other lover, who just happened to be Mugabe's chief of intelligence, and I was forced to cross the border in some haste, and here I fell in with yet others of my former comrades who now had joined Renaino."

"But why Renamo?" Sean asked.

"It is my natural political home. I am good at what I do, and Renamo welcomed me. You see, I am part Shangane- As you know, our tribe sprawls over both sides of the artificial line imposed by surveyors of the colonial era, who took no consideration of demographic realities when they agreed on borders."

"If you are now a capitalist, General China, as you claim to be, then there must be more in it than that. Some future reward in store for you?"

"You do not disappoint Me," China said. "You are as perceptive and devious as any African. Naturally there is something in it for me.

When I have assisted Renamo to form the new government frica as its ally, between them they of Mozambique, with South A. They will will be able to apply irresistible pressure on Zimbabwe be able to force a change of government in Harare... a new president to replace Mugabe." in one mighty

"From General China to President China bound," Sean cut in. "I'll give you one thing, General, you don't think small."

"I'm touched by your appreciation of my aspirations."

"But where does all this leave me? You talked earlier of revenge for your impaired hearing-what made you so forgiving?"

China frowned and touched his ear. "To tell the truth, I would have enjoyed that. In fact, I had already planned a nocturnal raid on your camp at Chiwewe. I had moved up a unit of my men to the border opposite your concession and was awaiting only an opportunity to escape from my duties here for a few days personally to pay you a visit, when a change of plan was forced upon me.

Sean raised an eyebrow to signal his interest and attention.

"Very recently there has been a drastic alteration in the balance of power here in the celAral province. We of Renamo had fought ourselves into a domiAlant position. In fact, We control all the country except the thajor towns, we have reduced food production to the point where Frelimo must rely almost entirely on foreign aid, we have virtually strangled their transport system. We raid the roads and railways at will, and our forces move freely about the countryside, recruiting from the villages. We have, in fact, set up t changed our own alternative administration. However, all that very recently-"

"What happened?"

lately but stood up from the desk China did not answer immedi and went to stand in front of the wall map. "As a distinguished counter guerrilla fighter, Colonel Courtney, I do not have to explain our strategy to you nor do I have to lecture you on the weapons that we employ in the war of the flea. We don't fear nuclear bombs, heavy artillery, or modern pursuit planes. We chuckled when Robert Mugabe purchased two squadrons of fighters from his Soviet friends, obsolete MiGs, Floggers the Russians were pleased to be rid of and which Mugabe cannot afford to keep in the air. There are few, very few modern weapons we fear except"--China paused and turned to face Sean again' but you are the expert, Colonel. You know as much as any man alive about anti guerrilla operations. What do we fear most?"

Sean did not hesitate. "Helicopter gunships," he said.

China sat down heavily in his seat again. "Three weeks ago the Soviets delivered a full squadron of Hind helicopters to the Frehmo air force."

Sean whistled softly. "Hinds!" he said. "In Afghanistan they call them the "flying death.""

"Here we call them hen shaw-the falcons."

"There is no air force in Africa that could keep a squadron of Hinds in the air for more than a few days-they simply don't have the backup. Sean shook his head, but China contradicted him quietly.

"The Russians have supplied technicians and mumitions and tio spares, as well as pilots. They aim to smash Renamo in Six months."

"Will they succeed? Can they succeed?"

"Yes," China said firmly. "Already they have severely limited our mobility. Without mobility, a guerrilla army is defeated." He made a gesture that took in the dugout. "Here we cower underground like moles, not warriors. Our morale, which was so high just a month ago, is crumbling away. Instead of looking proudly ahead, my men cringe and look to the skies."

"It's not an easy life, General," Sean commiserated with him.

"I'm sure You'll come up with something."

"I already have." China nodded. "You."

"Me against a squadron of Hinds?" Sean chuckled. "I am flattered, but include me out."

"That is not possible, Colonel. As the Americans say, you owe me one."

He touched his ear. "And I owe you one-Miss Monterro."

"All right." Sean nodded with resignation. "Spell it out for me."

"The plan I have in mind requires a white face, a trained officer who understands black troops and speaks their language."

"Surely, General China, you don't subscribe to old General von Lettow-Vorbeck's theory that the best bush troops in the world are

2,16 black soldiers with white officers. Why the hell don't you do whatever this is yourselr"

"I know my own limitations," China said. "I am a better administrator than a soldier. Besides, I have explained, I need a white face." He held up one hand to prevent Sean interrupting again.

"Initially you'll be working with a small group. Ten men."

"My Shangane escort." Sean was ahead of him. "That's the real reason you sent me off on that little jaunt with them."

"Perceptive, Colonel. Yes, your reputation seems to be well founded. In just a few days you have gained their respect and, dare I say it, loyalty. I think they'll follow you on the most hazardous assignment."

"I'll need more than ten Shanganes. There are two others I want with me."

"Of course, your Matabeles," China agreed readily. "They are definitely part of my calculations."

This was the opportunity to inquire about Job and Dedan that Sean had been waiting for. "Are they both safe?" he demanded "Quite safe and well, I assure you."

"I won't even discuss anything further until I have seen them and spoken to them," he said flatly.

China's eyes narrowed. "I beg you not to adopt that attitude, Colonel.

It will only make our future relationship difficult and unpleasant."

"I mean it," Sean repeated stubbornly. "I want to speak to my men General China glanced at his wristwatch, then sighed theatrically.

"Very well." He lifted the handset of the telephone and spoke into it again, then looked up at Sean. "The two of them will be required to work with you, you can explain that to them. There is an excellent chance that, with all your cooperation, I will be persuaded to give you yot* freedom. Of course, that offer of freedom includes the nubileeMiss Monterro."

"You are very generous." Sean was ironic.

"Wait until you hear my full terms. You might think I drive a hard bargain." General China turned to the lieutenant who came through the doorway in response to his summons and said in Shangane, "Take this man to visit the two Matabele prisoners," he ordered. "You may allow them to talk for"-again he glanced at his wristwatch-"ten minutes. Then bring him back here."

There were three men in the escort that marched Sean down the underground passages and out into the dazzling sunshine.

The prison barracks consisted of a single hut of mud daub and thatch surrounded by a stockade of poles and barbed wire, the whole covered by a spread of camouflage net. A warder unlocked the gate to the stockade, and Sean went in. He walked to the door of the hut.

Over an open fireplace in the center of the floor stood a black three-legged pot. Two thin mattresses of split reeds on each side of it were the only other furnishings. Dedan was asleep on one mattress, while on the other Job sat cross-legged and stared into the smoldering coals.

"I see you, old friend," Sean said softly in Sindebele.

Job came slowly to his feet and just as slowly began to smile. "I see you also," he said, and then they laughed and embraced, clapping each other on the back. Dedan jumped up from the other mattress, grin rung with delight, and seized Sean's hand, pumping it brutally.

"What took you so long, Sean?" Job asked. "Did you find Tukutela? Where is the American? How did they catch you?"

"I'll tell you all that later," Sean cut him off. "There are more important things now. Have you spoken to China, did you recognize him as the one we caught at Inhlozane?"

"Yes, the one with the ear. What are our chances with him, Sean?"

"Too early to be sure," Sean warned. "But he is talking about some sort of deal."

"What?" Job broke off, and they both spun to face the door of the hut. Outside there was an abrupt shrilling of alarm whistles and wild shouts.

4What s going on?" Sean demanded, and strode to the doorway.

The gate to the stockade was still wide open, but the guards were scattering, unslinging their weapons and peering up at the sky. The lieutenant was blowing shrill hysterical blasts on his whistle as he ran.

"Air raid," said Job at Sean's shoulder. "Frelimo gunships.

There was one two days ago."

Sean heard the engines now, very faint and distant, and the whistling whine of the rotors, growing swiftly shriller and more penetrating.

"Job!" Sean grabbed his arm. "Do you know where they are holding Claudia?"

"Over there." Job pointed through the doorway. "A stockade like this one."

"How far?"

"Five hundred meters. "The gates are open, and the guards are gone.

We are going to make a bolt for it."

"We are in the middle of an army. And what about the gunships?" Job protested. "Where can we go?"

"Don't argue, let's go."

Sean raced through the doorway and out of the stockade gates.

Job and Dedan were close behind him.

Which way?" Sean grunted.

"Over there, beyond that clump of trees."

The three of them ran in a bunch. The camp was almost deserted as Renamo took to their dugouts and bunkers, but Sean saw that there were crews manning the light antiaircraft guns in the fixed emplacements, and they passed a small detachment armed with the portable RPG rocket launchers heading for the nearest kopJe.

Elevation would give them a good field of fire from which to launch. However, the RPG was not an infrared seeker and had very limited surface-to-air capability.

The Renamo were so preoccupied that not one of them even glanced at Sean's white face as they scurried to take up their positions. Now the whistle of approaching rotors was punctuated by the crackle and rap of ground fire.

Sean did not even look around. Ahead he saw the glint of barbed wire. The women's stockade was also well camouflaged under brush and netting, and it too seemed deserted by the female wardens.

"Claudia!" he shouted as he came up to the fence and gripped the wire.

"Where are you?"

"Here, Sean, here!" she yelled back. There were two buts inside the stockade wire. The doors were locked and there were no windows. Claudia's voice came from the nearest building, almost drowned out by the thunder of engines, the shriek of rotors, and the roar of ground fire.

"Give me a boost, "jean ordered, and backed away from the wire. The fence was seven feet high, he judged. Job and Dedan ran forward and crouched below it. Sean sprinted straight at them and, as he leaped up, he drove his feet into the cupped hands they had formed for him with interlocking fingers. In unison they bobbed up and flung their arms high, flipping Sean forward and over. He cleared the wire easily, somersaulted in the air, and landed on his feet. He cushioned the shock, tumbling like a paratrooper, and rolled smoothly back onto his feet, using his momentum to hurl himself forward.

"Clear the door!" he yelled at Claudia as he built up speed and crashed into the crude hand-hewn panel. It was too solid and heavy to shatter under the drive of his shoulder, but the hinges ripped clean out of the daubed wall and crashed inward in a cloud of dust and flying fragments of dried mud.

Claudia was crouched against the far wall, but as he burst into the hut behind the falling door panel, she rushed forward to meet him. He caught her in his arms, but when she tried to kiss him he whirled her around by one arm and ran with her to the door.

"What's happenings" she gasped.

"We are making a break." As they ran out into the sunlight again he saw that Job and Dedan had a hold on the bottom strand of the fence.

With all the strength of their arms and legs, they were dragging it upward, opening a narrow gap between the wire and the sun-baked earth. Sean stooped to the same strand from the inside, settling his grip between the clusters of spikes, and heaved upward. Under the combined strength of the three of them the ground at the foot of the nearest fence pole cracked and gave, the pole was lifted a few inches out of the hole in which it was planted, and the strand of wire came up in their hands.

"Down on your belly!" Sean grunted at Claudia. "Get under it!"

She was lean and nimble as a ferret, and the barbs cleared her back with inches to spare as she wriggled through.

"Hold it!" Sean barked at Job, and they strained up, black muscles knotting, faces contorted with the effort.

Sean dropped flat and pushed himself under the wire. Halfway through he felt one of the steel spikes snag in his flesh and stop him dead. "Pull me through," he ordered, and while Dedan continued to hold up the wire, Job stooped and they linked hands in a fireman's grip.

"Pull!" Sean ordered, and Job heaved. Sean felt his flesh tear and the blood spurt down his back, then he was free.

As he rolled to his feet, Claudia gasped, "Your back!" But he seized her arm again and demanded of Job, "Which way?" He knew Job would have studied the camp during the days he had been imprisoned here. He could rely on his judgment.

"The river," Job responded immediately. "If we can float down clear of the camp."

"TAad the way," Sean ordered. He had to shout to make himself heard. All around them rose the stutter of automatic small-arms fire. There was the deeper clatter of heavy machine guns, sounding like a stick drawn sharply across a sheet of corrupted iron, and then even that din was drowned out by a thunder like Victoria Falls in flood. Sean knew exactly what it was, although he had never heard it before-the sound of the Gatling-type, multi barreled cannon mounted in the nose of a Hind helicopter, firing 12.7-men bullets like the jet of a fire hose.

He felt Claudia falter beside him at the gut-melting terror of that sound, and he jerked her arm. "Come on!" he snarled at her.

"Run!" She was still limping slightly from her injured knee ligament as they followed Job and Dedan down toward the river.

Though they were still under the spread branches of the forest, just ahead of them was open ground.

A small -party of Renamo were doubling across this opening, coming up the track toward them, eight or nine men in Indian file.

Each of them carried an RPG mobile rocket launcher. As they ran, their faces were turned up toward the sky, seeking a target for their rockets.

The detachment of racketeers was still two hundred meters from them when suddenly the earth around them erupted. Sean had never in all his war experience seen anything like it. The ground dissolved, seemed to turn to a liquid that boiled into a fog of dust under the jet of 12.7-men cannon shells.

Along a wide swathe of cannon fire all was destroyed. Even the trees disappeared in a whirlwind of wood fragments and shredded leaves; only the shattered stumps still stood as the storm of fire passed on. The ground was left like the furrows of a freshly plowed field, and on it was scattered the remains of the party of RPG rocket men. They were hacked and minced as though they had been fed through the cogs of some fearsome machinery.

Sean still had a grip on Claudia's arm, and he pulled her down into the grass beside the track just as a shadow swept over them.

However, the canopy of branches overhead must have screened them from the eyes of the gunner in the helicopter. Job and Dedan had also dived for cover in the grass verge beside the path and avoided detection.

The Hind cruised overhead, barely fifty feet above the tops of the trees, and abruptly they had a full view of the machine as it crossed over the open ground where the torn corpses of the rocket men lay scattered. Sean felt a physical shock at the sight of it. He had not expected it to be so large and so grotesquely ugly.

It was fifty feet long. The Russians themselves called it "Sturmovich," the humpback. It was a deformed monster: aberrant and ungainly, the green and brown splotches of tropical camouflage giving it the appearance of disease and leprous decay. The bulging double canopies of armored glass looked like malevolent eyes, and so fierce was their gaze that Sean instinctively flattened himself in the grass and flung a protective arm over Claudia's back.

Below the gross body of the gunship hung an assembly of rocket s, and as they stared at it in awe the machine hovered and PM rotated on its own axis, lowered its blunt unlovely nose, and fired a spread of rockets. They launched with fiery sibilance on plumes of white smoke, streaking across the river and bursting on the ant's nests of sandbagged bunkers in fountains of flame and smoke and dust. The noise was deafening, and the shrill whine of the gunship's rotors was like an awl screwing into their eardrums.

Claudia covered both her ears and sobbed. "Oh God! Oh God!"

The Hind revolved slowly, seeking fresh targets and again they cowered away from it. It moved away from them, hunting along the bank of the river. The Gatling cannon in its remote-controlled turret in the nose fired blasts of solid metal into the forest, destroying all in its path.

"Let's go"" Sean shouted above the uproar, dragging Claudia to her feet. Job and Dedan ran ahead of them, and the earth plowed by the gunship's cannons was soft and spongy under their feet.

As they passed the dead men, Job stooped without breaking his run and snatched up one of the undamaged RPG launchers. At the next stride he stooped again and grabbed a fiberglass backpack that contained three of the finned projectiles for the RPG, then went bounding away, on toward the riverbank. With her injured knee Claudia could not match that pace, and even with Sean pulling her along they fell almost a hundred yards behind.

Job and Dedan reached the riverbank. It was steep and rocky, fractured cliffs of water-polished black stone. A gallery of tall riverine trees spread their branches out over the swiftly flowing apple-green waters.

Job looked back at them anxiously, for they were still out in the open. His face contorted as he screamed a warning, dropped the fiberglass pack at his feet, and swung the short squat barrel of the RPG up to his shoulder, pointing it at the sky above Sean's head.

Sean did not look up; he knew there was no time for that. He had not isolated the shrieking rotors of the second incoming Hind from the deafening uproar caused by the first machine, but now the din was escalating to the point of pain.

Running beside them was a narrow don ga eroded by the storm waters of the rainy season but now dry and sheer-sided. Sean swept Claudia off her feet and jumped with her in his arms. The earthen gulley was six feet deep, and they hit the bottom with an impact that clashed Sean's teeth together just as the lip of the gulley dissolved under a jet of cannon fire. The earth on which they lay shuddered like a live thing beneath them, as though they were insects being shaken from the flanks of a gigantic horse. Earth, ripped from the lip of the gulley by the sheets of cannon fire, fell

4it on them in clouds, heavy clods raining on their backs, knocking the breath out of them, dust choking them, burying them alive.

Claudia screamed and tried to fight herself out from under the layer of dust and dry earth, but Sean held her down.

ll "Lie still," he hissed at her. "Don't move, you dilly bird." The Hind swiveled and cruised back, now directly over the gulley, searching for them, the gunner traversing the thick stack of multi barrels of the Gatling cannon in its remote turret.

Sean turned his head slightly, looking up from the corner of one eye. His vision was obscured by dust, but as it cleared he saw the i great splotched nose of the ffind hanging in the air only fifty feet above them. The gunner must have picked out their white skins, which made them targets of preference. Only the thin layer of fresh earth protected them from his scrutiny through the gunsight of his cannon.

""Hit him, Job," Sean pleaded aloud. "Iffit the bastard."

on the ciff above the river, job dropped on one knee The RPG-7 was one of his favorite weapons. The huge gunship was hovering over the gulley only fifty yards away.

He aimed twelve inches below the edge of the pilot's canopy.

The RpG was highly inaccurate, and even at point-blank range he gave himself latitude should the missile By off track. He held the cross wire steady for a beat of his pumping heart, then Pressed the trigger. The exhaust of white smoke blew back over his shoulder and the rocket streaked away, flying fair and true, to strike only inches higher than he -had aimed on the run where the armored tai use Se glass canopy joined the camouflaged me f la The rocket burst with a force that would blow the engine block out of a Mack truck or burst the boiler of a railway locomotive.

For an instant the front of the Hind was obliterated by flame and smoke, and Job whooped triumphantly, jumping to his feet, expecting the hideous monster to crash out of the Sky in a sheet of its own smoke and fire:4 Instead the huge helicopter jumped higher, as though the pilot had flinched at the rocket burst close beside him, but when the smoke blew away, Job realized with disbelief that the fuselage was unscathed. There was only a sooty black smear on the painted metal to mark the spot where the rocket had struck.

him As he stared, the ugly nose of the Hind swiveled toward and the many-eyed muzzles of the cannon sought him out. Job hurled the RPG launcher away and jumped out from the cliff top, dropping twenty feet to hit the water, just as the cannon tore the great branches from the tree under which he had stood. Cannon fire chewed through the Mink as cleanly as a lumberjack's cross ad saw. The entire tree leaned outward, then toppled down the cliff and hit the surface of the river in a cloud of spray.

The Hind pulled away, lifting and banking, cruising on down the riverbank. Unharmed by the rocket hit and as deadly as before, it sought its next target.

Sean crawled to his knees coughing and gasping. "Are you all right?" he croaked, but for "a moment Claudia could not answer him. Her eyes were blinded with sand, and her tears cut wet runners through the dust that caked her cheeks.

"We've got to get into the water." Sean pulled her to her feet and half pushed, half pulled her up the side of the gully.

They ran together to the top of the cliff and looked down. The felled tree was floating away on the current, a huge raft of leafy branches.

"Jump!" Sean ordered. Claudia did not hesitate. She threw herself far out and dropped away to strike the water feet first. Sean followed while she was still in the air.

He surfaced with Claudia's head bobbing beside him. The dust was washed off her face, and her hair was slicked over her eyes, shiny with streaming water. Together they struck out for the floating mass of branches and leaves. She was a strong swimmer, and even with boots on her feet and fully dressed she kicked out powerfully and dragged herself through the water with a full overarm crawl.

As she reached the floating tree trunk, Job stretched out a long arm and drew her in beneath the branches. Dedan was already there, and Sean ducked in a second later. Each of them clung to a branch and the leaves formed a low green bower over their heads.

"I hit him," Job complained angrily. "I hit him right on the nose with a rocket. It was like hitting a bull buffalo with a slingshot. He just turned and came straight at me."

Sean wiped the water from his eyes and face with the palm of his hand. "Titanium armor plate," he explained quietly. "They are almost invulnerable to conventional fire, both the pilot's cockpit and the engine compartment are tight and solid. The only thing you can do when one of those bastards comes at you is run and hide."

4 He flicked his sodden hair back out of his eyes. "Anyway, you pulled him off us. He was just about to blast us with that dirty great A cannon." He swam across to Claudia.

"You shouted at me," she accused. "You were quite rude. You called me a dilly bird."

"Better abused than dead." He grinned at her, and she smiled back. Is that an invitation, sir? I would let mind a little abuse--from YOU.

underwater, he slipped an arm around her waist and hugged her. My God, how I have missed your cheek and sauce."

She pressed herself against him. 641 (WY VC111i2W after you were gone she whispered.

"Me too," he confessed. "Up to then, i thought I couldn't stand you. Then I realized I just couldn't do without you "I feel weak when you say that. Tell me you really mean it."

"Later." He hugged her. First lets just try and get out of here alive." He left her and paddled across to Job's Side Of the leafy cavern.

can you see the bank?"

job nodded. Looks like the raid is over. They are coming Out of the bunkers."

from under the concealing branches. He saw Sean peered out about on the near bank. "They'll be troops moving cautiously picking up the pieces for a while before they realiZe we've scarP end but keep an eye on them."

He paddled across to Dedan, who was watching the far bank.

"What do you see? "They are busy with themselves." Dedan pointed- A stretcher party was working along the bank, picking up the dead and the wounded, while work details had already begun repairing the damaged fortifications and replacing destroyed camouflage- Nobody looked out moss the' river

Them was other debris floating downstream with them, severed branches and damaged equipment, empty oil drums, enough to draw attention away from their flimsy refuge.

"If we can avoid discovery until nightfall, we should have floated down beyond the army. Just keep both eyes wide open, Dedan."

"Mambo, " he acknowledged, and concentrated his attention on the bank.

Sean swam quietly back to Claudia and hung on to the branch beside her.

She reached out for him, immediately.

"I don't like you to be away for even a moment," she whispered.

"Did you really mean what you saidr" He kissed her, and she kissed him back 80 fiercely her teeth bruised his lower lip. He enjoyed the mild pain She broke the embrace at last and immediately demanded "Did you mean chI can't do you," he answered. you can do better than that."

"You are the most magnificent woman I've ever known."

"That's not bad, but it's still not what I want to hear.

"I love you," he admitted.

"That's it, oh Sean, that's it. And I love you too." She kissed him again, and they were oblivious to all else, their mouths blending and their bodies clinging wetly together below the surface.

Sean did not know how long it was until Job disturbed them.

"We are going ashore," he called.

t The push of the current had forced the floating tree to the outside of the next river bend, and it was already dragging on the submerged sandbar. When Sean lowered his feet, he touched bottom.

"Walk it into deeper water," Sean ordered. Still concealed beneath its leafy bulk, they heaved and pushed it out until they felt it come free of the sandbar. The current picked it up again and drifted it into the next stretch of the river.

Sean was panting from the effort as he hung on to a branch above his head, only his head above the surface. Claudia paddled across to him and hung on to the same branch.

"Sean," she said. Her mood had changed. "I haven't been able to ask you, mostly because I don't want to hear the answer." She broke off and drew a deep breath. "My father?" she asked.

Sean was silent as he sought the words to tell her, but it was Claudia who spoke again.

"He didn't come back with you, did he?"

Sean shook his head, and his sodden locks dangled into his face.

"Did he find his elephant?" she asked softly.

"Yes," Sean answered simply.

"I'm glad," she said. "I wanted that to be my last gift to him."

Now she let go of the branch and slipped both her arms around Sean's neck, laying her cheek against his so she did not have to watch his face as she asked the next question.

"Is my father dead, Sean? I must hear you say it before I will believe it."

With his free arm he held her tightly and gathered himself to reply.

"Yes, my darling. Capo is dead, but he died a man's death-the kind he would have wanted-and Tukutela, his elephant, went with him. Do you want to hear the details?"

"No!" She shook her head, holding him tightly. "Not now, perhaps not ever. He is dead, and a part of me and my life dies with him."

He could find no word of comfort, and he held her as she began to weep for her father. She wept silently, clinging to him, the grief Hill r i er er shaking her. Her tears mingled with the droplets Of r v wat On her face, but he tasted their diluted salt on his lips as he kissed her again and his heart went out to her.

wide green river, the smoke and the So they floated down on the smell of battle drifting over them from the bombarded banks and the faint cries and groans of the wounded carrying to them across the water. Sean let her expend her silent grief, and slowly the sobs that rocked her abated. At last she whispered throatily, "I don't you to help me. You were know how I could have borne it without so much alike, the two of you. I think that's what attracted me to you in the first place." VP "I take that as a comp limen "It was meant as one. He gave me a taste for men of power and strength." within touching distance, was a Floating beside them, almost -striped camouflage battle corpse. Trapped air ballooned the tiger jacket and the body floated on its bark. The face was very young, perhaps His wounds were washed almost a boy of fifteen years discharge like smoke in the green bloodless, just a faint pinky water drifted from them, but it was enough. the bark of an Sean saw the gnarled saurian heads, scaled like ancient oak, coming swiftly down the current, following the taint of blood. Ripples spreading from the hideous snouts, long tails each other for the prize.

fanning--4wa big crocodiles, racing reared out of the One of the reptiles reached the corpse and , gaped wide, water; its jaws lined with uneven rows of yellow fangs then closed over the corpse's arm. The fangs met through dead flesh with a grinding sound that carried clearly to them, and Claudia gasped and turned her head away the d pull the body below the surface Before the crocodile could ts into the second reptile, even larger than the first, fitst=W jaws dead belly and began agruesome tug-of-war.

are not designed to shear clearly The fangs of the cmcodile on with locked jaws and used through meat and h9the, so they held twisting viciously in their t combed tails to spin in the water, a latbrerof white foam, rending the corpse between them, dismembering It so the onlookers could hear the sinews tear and the joints of shoulder and groin separate.

In fascinated horror, Claudia looked back. She gagged as one of reptiles rose high out of the water with an arm in its jaws the giant yellow scales of its and gulped at it convulsively. The creamy back to tear throat bulged as the limb slid down. Then it lunged another morsel from the body.

Tugging and fighting over the Pathetic human fragments, they war ked away from the floating tree. Sean, remembering the long tear in his back from the barbed wire, felt a lift of relief, for his own blood must be scenting the green waters.

"Oh God, it's all so horrible," Claudia whispered. "It's becoming a terrible nightmare,"

"This is Africa." Sean held her, trying to give her courage. "But I'm here with you now, it's going to be all right."

"Will it, Sean? Do you think we'll get out of this alive?

"There is no money-back guarantee," he admitted, "if that's what you are asking for."

She gave one last sob, then leaned back in his arms and looked steadily into his eyes. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm acting like a baby. I nearly let go there, but it won't happen again, I promise you that. At least I've found you, before it's too late." She smiled at him with forced gaiety, bobbing with water up to her chin.

"We'll live for today, or what is left of it."

"That's my girl." He grinned back at her. "Whatever happens, I'll be able to say I loved Claudia Monterro."

"And was loved by her in turn," she assured him. She kissed him again, a long lingering kiss, warm and spiced with her tears, an expression not of lust but of longing, for both of them a pledge and an assurance, something true and certain in a world of dangerous uncertainty.

Sean was not even aware of his own pervading physical arousal until she broke the kiss and demanded breathlessly, "I want you now, this minute. I won't... I dare not wait. Oh God, Sean, my darling, now we are alive and in love, but by tonight we could both be dead. Take me now."

He glanced quickly around their leafy arbor. Through the chinks he could see the banks. They seemed to have drifted below the Renamo fortifications. There was no further sign of life below the galleries of tall riverine trees, and the silence of the African noon was heavy and somnolent. Closer to them, just beyond arm's length, floated Job and Dedan, but only the backs of their bare heads were visible as they surveyed the riverbanks.

Sean looked back at Claudia, looked into her honey-gold e yes, and he wanted her. He knew he had never wanted anything in his life so desperately.

"Just say it one more time," she breathed huskily.

"I love you," he said, and they kissed again, but a different type of kiss, hard where the first had been soft, hot where it had been warm, savagely urgent where it had been gentle and lingering.

Quickly," she said into his mouth. "Every second is precious."

Her hands below the surface of the water were tearing at their Mom clothing. He had to use one hand to keep them from slipping under the green water, but with the other he helped her as best he could.

She opened the front of his bush jacket and then her own shirt to the waist and pressed herself to him. Her breasts were lubricated by the cool water. Her nipples were hard with wanting him; he could feel them distinctly sliding over his chest, they felt as big as ripe grapes.

He tugged the tongue of the leather belt that held her khaki shorts. She lifted herself to make it easier for him to unzip the fly, then kicked to free her legs as he worked the clinging wet cloth down over her buttocks. He slipped the garment over his arm to prevent it floating away and she was naked from the waist down.

In frantic haste she opened the front of his trousers and thrust in both hands to scoop him out.

"Oh Sean," she blurted. "Oh God, my darling. You're so big, so hard. Oh please, quickly, quickly!"

In the water they were both weightless and lithe as mating otters.

Her long legs closed around his body, wrapping him, her knees up under his armpits, her ankles locked across the small of his back as she searched for him blindly. He angled his hips to meet her thrusts and they almost succeeded, but it slipped away harmlessly between their tense naked bellies.

She groaned softly with frustration, then reached down and seized him again. Then with a lewd and beautiful arching of her back she took in just, the tip of him. They strained against each other, and suddenly her body went rigid and her golden eyes opened so wide they seemed to fill her face as he went sliding full length into her. After the cold green water she was so hot it was almost unbearable, and he cried out involuntarily.

Both Job and Dedan glanced around in surprise, then looked away in embarrassment,. but Sean and Claudia were oblivious to all the world It was over very swiftly and she hung around his neck, exhausted as a marathon runner at the end of a grueling race.

Sean recovered his voice first. "I'm sorry," he said. "It was so quick. I couldn't wait. Did you-?"

"I was there long before you." She grinned up at him, a lopsided and uncertain grin. "It was like being in an auto accident, quick but devastating!"

They remained locked together by the embrace of her legs and arms for a long time, quiet and resting, until she felt him shrivel and slip away. Only then did she release the grip of her legs and reach up with her mouth to kiss him tenderly.

F "Now you belong to me, and I to you. Even if I die today, it won't matter so much. I have had you in me."

"Let's try for a little more than one day." He smiled gently down at her. "Get dressed now, my love." He handed her back her clothing. "While I check on what's happening in the real world out there. He swam away from her and went to Job. "What do you see?" he asked.

"I think we are clear of the lines," Job answered, avoiding Sean's eyes tactfully. Strangely, it did not embarrass Sean that Job what had happened between Claudia and himself. He still knew felt elated and triumphant at the consummation of their love, and nothing could degrade it.

"As soon as it's dark enough, well swim the tree in toward the bank and get ashore." Sean glanced at his Rolex. Not more than two hours to sunset. "Keep your eyes open," he said, and swam across to Dedan to repeat the warning.

He tried to estimate the rate of the current by watching the bank and decided it was not more than two miles an hour. They would still be dangerously close to the Renamo lines when the sun set, and the river was flowing eastward toward the sea, so they would have to work their way around or through General China's forces to reach the Zimbabwean border in the west. It was a formidable task, but Sean felt optimistic and invulnerable. He e S side and swam back to Claudia.

"You make me feel good," he said.

"That's going to be my job in the future," she assured him. "But what do we do now?"

"Nothing until dark, except steer this liner down the river."

She cuddled against him under the water, and they held each other and watched the riverbanks drift slowly by After a while she said, "I'm getting cold."

They had been in the water for almost two hours, Sean realized, and though it was only a few degrees below their body temperature it was gradually chilling them through.

She slanted her eyes at him and gave him a naughty grin. "Can't you think of something to prevent hypothermia?" she asked. "Or do I have to make a suggestion? "Well he pretended to reflect, "we can't light a fire."

"Can't we?" she asked. "Do you want to bet?" She reached down, and after a few seconds she whispered, "See, nothing to it, and I didn't even use matches "It's a miracle!" he agreed, and began to unbuckle her belt again.

"This time let's see if we can make the miracle last longer than ten seconds," she suggested.

As the sun set, it turned the surface of the river to a luminous serpent with scales of furnace orange and glowing crimson.

"Now we can begin working in toward the bank," Sean ordered, and they began to swim the floating tree across the current. It was heavy and ungainly, most of its bulk below the surface, and it resisted their efforts to move it closer to the bank. All four of them kept at it, kicking out strongly, and ponderously it began to swing across the wide waters.

The sun slipped below the horizon and the waters turned black as crude oil. The trees along them were dark cutout silhouettes against the last glow of the sunset, but they were still thirty meters from the southern bank.

"We'll swim from here," Sean decided. "Keep close together.

Don't get separated in the dark. Is everybody ready?"

They bunched up, clinging to the same branch. Sean reached for Claudia's hand and opened his mouth to give the order, then closed it again and cocked his head to listen.

He was surprised he had not heard it before. Perhaps the sound had been muffled by the high banks of the river and the tall trees that lined its winding course. However, it was suddenly loud and unmistakable, the sound of an outboard motor running at high speed.

"Oh, shit," he whispered bitterly, and looked toward the near bank. Only thirty meters away, it could just as well have been thirty miles.

The whine of the motor rose and fell as the acoustics of water and trees played tricks, but it was clearly coming downstream fast, running down from the direction of the Renamo lines. Sean ducked his head to gaze through a chink in the vegetation, and he saw a glow in the darlilless, a beam of light that shafted briefly across the night skye then bounced from the dark trees along the bank, glinted from the water, and swept boldly along the banks.

"Renamo patrol boat," Sean said. "And they are looking for US.

Claudia tightened her grip on his hand, and no one else spoke.

"We'll try to hide in here," Sean said, "though I don't see how they can miss us. Get ready to duck under when the light hits us."

The sound of the motor changed, slowing down. Then the craft swept around the upstream bend of the river, a few hundred yards distant but coming down swiftly on the current toward them.

The beam of the spotlight played alternately along each bank, fighting them like day. It was an enormously powerful beam, probably one of the portable battle lights simiW to the one that had trapped Sean at the top of the cliffs.

As the beam switched from bank to bank it briefly illuminated the craft and its crew. Sean recognized it as an eighteen-foot inflatable Zodiac driven by a fifty-five-horsepower Yamaha outboard, and though he could not count the occupants, there were at least eight or nine of them and they had a light machine gun mounted in the bow. The man with the battle light was standing amidships.

The beam of light glanced over their refuge, dazzling them for an instant with its malevolent white eye, passing on and leaving them blinded by its brilliance, then coming back remorselessly and holding them captive. Sean heard someone give an indistinct order in Shangane, and the Zodiac altered course toward them, the beam of the battle light still fastened on them.

AM four of them sank low in the water until only their nostrils were exposed, and they cowered behind the branch to winch they were clinging.

The helmsman of the Zodiac throttled back and slipped the engine into neutral. The black rubber craft drifted on the current, but twenty feet off, the battle light darted and level with them

"Turn P"

"yourfaime "away, Sean told Claudia in a tight whisper, and took her in his arms below the surface. Even their tanned faces would shine in the light, and he Screened her and turned the back of his head toward the Zodiac.

"There is nobody there," somebody aid in Shangane. Although spoken at conversational level, the voice carried clearly across the water to where they were hiding.

r voice ordered in a tone of command.

"Go around!" anothe oozed the shangane sergeant who had been his escort.

Sean rec A white wake spread out behind the Zodiac as it began to circle the floating tree.

The light beam cast stark black shadows from the tangled branches and struck dazzling reflections when it touched the water.

As the Zodiac circled, they padded quietly to the further side of their leafy refuge, and when the beam fastened on them, they slid softly below the surface, trying not to gasp for breath as they came up again The deadly game of hide-and-seek lasted all of eternity before said again. "There is nobody there. We are the voice in the Zodiac wasting time."

"Keep circling," the sergeant's voice answered, and then after another minute, "Gunner, fire a burst into the tree."

In the bow of the Zodiac, the muzzle flashes of the RPD light machine gun twinkled like fairy lights, but a storm of shot tore into the floating tree with brutal and stunning savagery. It cracked in their eardrums and thumped into the branches over their heads, cutting loose a shower of leaves and twigs. It ripped away slabs of bark and kicked spray from the surface of the water, odd shots ricocheting into the night, wailing like demented spirits.

Sean pulled Claudia below the surface but still could hear the bullets plunging into the water above them and striking the trunk of the tree. He kept down until his lungs burned as though they were filled with acid and only then pulled himself to the surface to catch another breath.

The gunner in the Zodiac was firing taps, not a single continuous burst. Like a Morse operator on the key, an expert gunner has his own distinctive style that others can recognize. This one fired double taps, five rounds each; it needed a concert pianist's touch on the trigger to achieve such precision.

As Sean and Claudia came back to the surface, straining for the sweet taste of air, Dedan also came up only three feet in front of in. The reflection of the battle light lit his head clearly. His short the woolly beard streamed water, his eyes were like balls of ivory in his ebony face, and his mouth was open, drinking in air.

A bullet touched his temple just above the ear. His head flinched to the shot, and it opened his scalp as cleanly as a saber cut.

Involuntarily he cried out, a glottal bellow like that of a heart-shot bull buffalo, then his head fell forward and he sank facedown into the dark waters.

Sean lunged out and caught his upper arm, pulling him back to the surface before he drifted away, but his head lolled and his eyes had rolled back in their sockets, exposing only the whites. The men in the Zodiac had heard his cry, and the Shangane sergeant shouted to one of himnen, "Get ready to throw in a grenade," then to them, "Come out of there. I'll give you ten seconds."

"Job, answer him," Sean ordered with resignation. "Tell him we are coming out."

Matabele and Shangane could understand each other, and Job shouted to them not to fire again.

Claudia helped Sean keep Dedans head above the surface, and between them they pulled him toward the Zodiac. The battle light dazzled them, but hands reached down from out of the glare and one at a time dragged them on board.

Shivering like half-drowned puppies, they huddled in the center of the boat. They had Dedans body stretched out between them, and Sean lifted his head gently into his lap. He was unconscious, barely breathing, and gently Sean twisted his head to examine the bullet wound across his temple.

For a moment he did not recognize what he was seeing. From the long shallow wound bulged something that was white and glistening in the lamplight.

Beside him Claudia shuddered violently and whispered, "Sean, it's his, it's his..." She could not bring herself to say it, and only then did Sean realize that Dedans brain, still contained in the tough white membrane of the dura mater, was bulging out through the rent in his skull like an inner tube through a hole in an auto tire.

The Shangane sergeant gave an order, and the helmsman gunned the outboard motor and swung the Zodiac upstream. They ran at full throttle back toward the Renamo lines.

Sean sat on the floorboards with Dedans head in his lap. There was nothing he could do except chip his wrist and feel his pulse weaker and more erratic, then finally fade away altogether.

grow T

"He s dead," he said quietly. Job said nothing and Claudia turned her face away.

Sean held the dead head in his lap all the long return. Only when the helmsman cut the engine and coasted in to the bank did he look up. There were lighted lanterns and dark shapes awaiting them at the landing.

The Shangane sergeant gave a brusque order. Two of his men lifted Dedans corpse off Sean's lap and dumped him facedown on the muddy bank. Another trooper grabbed Claudia's arm and dragged her to her feet. He shoved her roughly ashore, and when she whirled on him furiously to protest, he lifted his AK butt to strike her in the center of her chest.

Sean, close beside him, caught the man s arm and siifled the blow.

"Do that again, you son of a syphilitic hyena," he said softly in Shangane, "and I'll hack off your mtondo with a blunt ax and make you eat it without salt."

The trooper stared at him, amazed more by his perfect Shangane than by the threat itself. On the bank the Shangane sergeant let out a bellow of delighted laughter.

"Better do what he says," he warned his trooper, "unless you are very hungry. This one means what he says." Then he grinned at Sean. "So you talk Shangane like one of us, and you understood everything we said!" He shook his head ruefully. "I won't let you fool me again!"

Wet, cold, and disheveled, they were dragged unceremoniously into General China's bunker and paraded before Ins desk. One glance at Ins face and Sean saw that the man was in a cold fury.

sin hEr to his seat. Then he said, "The woman is being moved to another For almost a full minute he stared at sin without r" g 0 camp well away from here. You will have no further opportunity to see her until I order it Sean kept his expression neutral, but Claudia gave a little cry of as though she could prevent the at The two female jailers were standing against the wall us desk, and he glanced at them and nodded. The taller of the two wore sergeant's stripes on her sleeve. She gave an order to the squat toad faced trooper beside her, and the woman came forward.

Stainless steel manaeleLdangled from her hand.

Claudia tightened her'gripon Sean's arm and shrank away from another sharp her. The woman lies ted and the tall sergeant gave command. The jailer grabbed Claudia's wrist and without apparent effort plucked her away from Sean's side.

With the expertise of long practice, she spun Claudia around and thrust her face hard against the sandbagged wall of the bunker, snapping the manacles on one wrist as she did so, then pulling both claudia,s arms behind her back and locking the second cuff on her other wrist.

She stepped back. The tall female sergeant stepped up, took Claudia's hands, and lifted them high between her shoulder blades.

Claudia gasped with pain as she was forced onto her toes. The base sergeant inspected the manacles; they were closed snugly around Claudia's wrists, but she was not satisfied. Deliberately the sergeant tightened them two more notches.

Claudia gasped again. "That's too tight, they're cutting into me."

"Tell that bitch to loosen them," Sean snapped at General China, who smiled for the first time that evening and leaned back in his chair.

"Colonel Courtney, I have given orders that the woman is not to be allowed another chance to escape. Sergeant Cara is only doing her duty."

"She is cutting off the circulation. Miss Monterro could lose her hands to gangrene."

"That would be unfortunate," General China agreed. "However, I will not interfere, unless-" He paused.

"Unless?" Sean demanded savagely.

"Unless I am assured of your complete cooperation and unless I have your parole that you will not attempt another escape."

Sean looked down at Claudia's hands. Already they were beginning to swell and change color, darkening to a leaden hue, the bright steel bands cutting into her wrists, the veins puffing up into dark blue cords below the manacles.

"Gangrene is a dangerous condition, and unfortunately our facilities for amputation of limbs are very primitive," General China remarked.

"All right," Sean said heavily. "I give you my parole."

"And your cooperation," prompted China.

"And I promise cooperation," Sean agreed.

General China gave an order, and the sergeant used the key on the manacles, letting them out two notches each. Immediately the swelling of Claudia's hands dissipated and her skin coloring began to return to its normal creamy tan as the blood drained away.

"Take her away!" China ordered in English, and the serge an nodded to her assistant gaoler. They each seized one of Claudia's arms and dragged her to the door.

"Wait!" Sean shouted. But they ignored him, and when he tried to follow her, the big Shangane sergeant seized his arms from behind in a hammerlock.

"Sean!" Claudia's voice had a note of hysteria. "Don't let them take me!" But they pushed her out of the bunker and the canvas curtain fell between them.

"Sean!" Her voice came back to him.