A Time to Die

"I love you!" he shouted after her, struggling against the sergeant's grip. "It will be all right, darling. Just remember I love you.

I'll do what I have to do to get you out of here."" The promise rang hollowly in his own ears, and her voice was a despairing wail. "Sean!" And then again very faintly, "Sean!"

Then there was silence beyond the curtain.

Sean found he was panting with emotion, but he forced himself to cease struggling and stand quietly. The sergeant relaxed his grip and Sean shrugged him away and turned to General China.

"You bastard!" he said. "You rotten bastard!"

see you are in no mood for sensible discussion," China told him. He glanced at his wristwatch. "And it's well after midnight.

We'll let you cool off." He looked at the sergeant and changed to shangane. "Take them" he indicated Sean and Job-i'feed them, give them dry clothes and a blanket, let them sleep, and bring them to me at dawn tomorrow." The sergeant saluted and pushed them toward the door.

"I have work for them to do," China warned him. "Make sure they are in condition to do it."

Sean and Job slept side by side on the floor of a dugout with a guard sitting over them. The floor was of hard-packed damp earth and the blankets were verminous, but neither the discomfort nor the tickle of insects crawling over Ins skin nor even thoughts of Claudia could keep Sean awake.

The sergeant woke him in the dark of predawn from a profound and dreamless sleep by dumping an armful of clothing on his prostrate body.

"Get dressed," he ordered.

Sean sat up and scratched the bite of a bedbug. "What's your name?" It was a relief to be able to speak Shangane freely.

Aliphonso Henriques Mabasa," the Shangane told him proudly. Sean smiled all he, unlikely combination-the name of a Portuguese emperor ancT the Shangane name for one who strikes with a club.

"A war club ai your enemies and a meat club on their wives?"

Sean asked, and Alphonso guffawed.

Job sat up and grimaced at Sean's ribald sally. "At five in the morning, before breakfast!" he protested. He shook his head sadly, but Sean heard Alphonso delightedly repeating the joke to his men outside the dugout.

"With the Shangane it doesn't take much to establish the reputation of being a wag," Job remarked in Sindebele as they sorted through the bundle of clothing Alphonso had brought them. It was all secondhand but reasonably clean. Sean found a military-style cloth cap and a suit of tiger-striped battle dress, and he discarded his bush jacket and shorts, which were by now in rags. He kept on his comfortable old velskoen.

Breakfast was a stew of kapenta, the fingerling dried fish he thought of as African whitebait, and a porridge of maize meal.

"What about tea?" Sean asked.

Alphonso laughed. "You think this is the Polana Hotel in Maputo?"

Dawn was just breaking when Alphonso escorted them down to the riverbank, where they found General China and his staff inspecting the damage done by the Hind gunships.

"We lost twenty-six men killed and wounded yesterday," China greeted Sean. "And almost as many deserters during the night.

Morale is sinking fast." He spoke in English and it was clear that none of his staff understood. Despite the circumstances he looked dapper and competent in his beret and crisply ironed battle dress, medal ribbons across his chest and general officer's stars on his epaulettes. The ivory-handled pistol hung on his webbing belt and he wore aviator-style mirrored sunglasses with thin gold frames.

"Unless we can stop those gunships, it will be over in three months, before the rains can save us."

The rains were the time of the guerrilla, when head-high grass, impassable roads, and flooded rivers hamstrung the defender and 0 concea men an sane uary "I watched those Hinds in action yesterday," Sean told him cautiously. "Captain Job here borrowed one of your RPG-7 rocket launchers and scored a direct hit with an AP rocket."

China looked at Job with new interest. "Good," he said. "None of my own men have been able to do that yet. What happened?"

"Nothing," Job answered simply.

"No damage," Sean confirmed.

"The entire machine is encased in titanium armor plate." China nodded and looked up at the sky, a nervous gesture, as though he were expecting one of the humpbacked monsters miraculously to appear. "Our friends in the south have offered us one of their new Darter missile systems, but there is the difficulty of bringing in the launch vehicles, heavy trucks, over these roads and through Frelimo-controlled territory." He shook his head. "We need an infantry weapon, one that can be carried and used by foot soldiers."

As far as I know, there is only one effective weapon of that kind.

The Americans developed a technique in Afghanistan. They adapted the original Stinger missile and worked out a way of getting through the armor. I haven't any idea of the details," Sean added hastily. He knew it was unwise to set himself up as an expert, but the problem was intriguing and he had allowed himself to be carried away.

"You are quite correct, Colonel. The modified Stinger is the only weapon that has proved effective against the Hind. That's your task, the price of your freedom. I want you to procure a shipment of Stingers for me."

Sean stopped dead and stared at him. Then he began to smile.

"Certainly," he said. "A piece of cake. Do you have a preference for color and flavor? How about baboon-ball blue and kiwi fruit?"

For the first time that morning China smiled back at him. "The Stingers are here already. It's simply a matter of picking them up."

Sean's grin faded. "I hope, most fervently, that this is a joke. I know Savimbi has been given Stingers by the Yanks, but Angola is on the other side of the continent."

"Our Stingers are much closer than that," China assured him.

"Do you remember the old Rhodesian Air Force base at Grand ReefT" "I should." Sean nodded. "The Scouts operated out of there for almost a year."

"Of course I remember." China touched the lobe of his ear beneath the gaudy beret. "It was from there you launched the attack on my camp at Inhlozane." His expression was suddenly bleak.

"That was in another war," Sean reminded him.

China's expression relaxed. "As I was saying, the Stingers we want are at Grand Reef."

"I don't understand." Sean shook his head. "The Yanks would never give Stingers to Mugabe. He is a Marxist and there i no deep love between Zimbabwe and the U.S. It doesn't make sense.

"Oh yes, it does," China assured him. "In a roundabout African way, it makes good sense" He glanced at his watch. "Teatime," he said.

"I believe you were asking for a brew this morning. No matter what side we were on, the war made us all tea addicts."

China led them back to his command bunker. Immediately an orderly brought in the smoke-blackened kettle.

"The Americans dislike Mugabe, but they dislike the South Africans more," China explained. "Mugabe is harboring and assisting ANC guerrillas operating across his borders into South Africa."

Sean nodded grimly. He had seen photographs of the carnage created by a limpet mine detonated in a South African supermarket; it had happened on the last Friday of the month, payday for monthly workers, when the store was crowded with housewives and their offspring, both black and white.

"The South Africans have vowed to pursue the guerrillas wherever they run. They have already repeatedly made good that threat, hot pursuit across the borders of all their neighbors. The ANC have announced their intention of stepping up their bombing of soft civilian targets. Mugabe knows what the consequences will be, so he wants a weapon to deal with the South African Puma gunships when they cross his border to cull the ANC."

"I still don't believe the Yanks would supply him with Stingers," Sean said flatly.

"Not directly," China agreed. "But the British are training Mugabe's army for him. They are the middlemen. They have got the Stingers from the Americans, and they are training Mugabe's crack Third Brigade to use them at Grand Reef."

"How the hell do you know all this?"

"You must remember that I was once a minister, albeit a junior one, in Mugabe's cabinet. I still have good friends in high places."

Sean thought about it. "You are right." He nodded. "It is all typically African. So the Stingers are at Grand Reef."

"They were delivered by a Royal Air Force Hercules fourteen days ago and are scheduled to be deployed along the South African and Zimbabwean border by the beginning of next month.

They will be aimed at your countrymen, Colonel Courtney."

Sean felt a stirring of patriotic outrage, but he kept his expression neutral.

"The training is being conducted by Royal Artillery personnel, a captain and two NCOs, so you will begin to understand why I require a white face for my plans."

"It certainly begins to sound ominous," Sean muttered. "Tell me what it is exactly that you require."

"I want you to go back to Zimbabwe and bring me those Stinger missiles."

Sean showed no emotion as he asked, "In exchange?"

"Once the missiles are delivered to me, I will remove the manacles from Miss Monterro and transfer her to quarters where you will be able to visit her regularly"-he paused and allowed himself a knowing smile-"and spend some time with her each day or evening in private."

"What about our release?"

"Yes," China agreed. "All three of you will be released after you have performed one additional service for me-after first obtaining the Stingers."

"And what is that service?"

China held up both hands. "One thing at a time, Colonel Courtney.

The missiles first. Once you have delivered them, we will discuss the final part of our bargain."

Sean scowled into his tea mug as he turned it over in his mind, trying to find some vantage point to adopt, but China interrupted him.

"Colonel, every minute you waste merely prolongs Miss Monterro's'-he searched for the correct word-"her discomfort.

Until I have those missiles, she will wear her manacles night and day, waking or sleeping, eating or performing 0 the other essential functions of life. I suggest you begin immediately laying out your plans to procure them for me."

Sean stood up and went to the large-scale wall map behind China's desk. He didn't really need to study it. He could have closed his eyes and visualized every valley and peak, every wrinkle of land along the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

The railway line crossed the border near the little town of Unitali, and twenty kilometers beyond it on the Zimbabwean side a tiny sit ion of the Grand Reef airfield red aircraft symbol marked the Pa and base.

Sean touched the stylized aircraft symbol with his forefinger, and Job came to stand beside him. They both stared at it thoughtfully. How many times had they sortied from that field, shambling out to the rumbling Dakota transports under the burden of parachute and battle packs and weapons? Each of them could picture clearly the position of every building, the hangars and barracks and perimeter defense.

"Twenty Ks from the border post," Job said softly. "Fifteen minutes by truck, but we'll never get there on foot."

"You spoke of a plan, General China. What do you have in mind? Can you provide us with vehicles?" Sean asked without looking around.

"Some time ago my men captured three Unimog trucks with authentic Zimbabwwn Army paintwork and papers. We have them hidden," China answered. Sean breathed a sigh of relief.

"My plan is for you to cross the border disguised as Zimbabwean troops."

,fli bet there is a huge volume of military traffic through the border post."

"There is," China affirmed.

"We'll need Zimbabwean Army uniforms for all the black troops and something for me." Sean tapped his finger on the map.

"We will have to wheedle our way into the base without firing a shot."

"I have a British field officer's uniform for you," China said softly. "It's genuine and I have the papers to go with it."

"How the hell did you get that?"

6611 hree months ago we attacked a Zimbabwean column near Vila da Monica. There was a British observer with the column, and he got caught in the crogsfire. He was a major in one of the guards regiments, seconded to the high commissioner in Harare as a military attacM, according to his papers.

""The uniform has been cleaned of blood and the tears made by fragmentation grenade have been patched most expertly. The tailor who did the work made my own uniform." China smoothed his tunic over his lean flanks, looking pleased with it. "He will alter the captured uniform to fit you, Colonel. The British major was about your height but a great deal larger around the waist and backside."

"A guards regiment." Sean smiled. "I don't know about my accent.

Any Englishman would pick me out as a colonial the instant I open my mouth."

"You will have to deal only with the Third Brigade guards at the base gates. I assure you they will not have such discerning ears."

okay, Sean said. "So we may be able to get in, but how the hell do we get out?" He was beginning to enjoy himself, becoming absorbed with the problem.

"Not so fast, Sean." Job was studying the map. "We can't just pitch up at the gates without an invitation and demand entry. With the Stingers there the security will be at a maximum."

"That is correct," China concurred. "However, I have more good news for you. I actually have a man inside the base. He is a nephew of mine-we are a large family." He looked complacent as he went on. "He is in signals, a warrant officer, second in command of the Grand Reef communications center. He will be able to fake a signal from the Zimbabwe high command authorizing an inspection of the Stinger program by the military attache. So the guards at the base will be expecting you. They won't scrutinize your pass too closely."

"If you have a man inside the base, he'll know exactly where the Stingers are stored," Job suggested eagerly.

"Right." China nodded. "They are in number three hangar.

That's second from the left."

We know exactly where number three hangar is," Sean assured him.

He frowned as he tried to anticipate the other problems they would encounter. "I will want to know the packaging of the missiles, sizes, and weights." China scribbled a note on his pad. "And there must be instruction manuals covering their operation. Those will certainly be in the office of the Royal Artillery captain. I must know exactly where that is." He ticked off each item on his fingers as it occurred to him, and Job added his own ideas.

"We'll need a diversion," he suggested. "A second unit to stage an attack on the base perimeter furthest from the hangar and training center, plenty of tracer and RPG rocks and white phosphorus grenades-we will need another squad for that."

It was like old times. How often had they worked together like this, each stimulating the other, their excitement kept under tight rein but sparkling in their eyes.

Once Job remarked, "I'm glad it's the Third Brigade we'll be going against, that bunch of nun killers and child rapers. They led the purge in Matabeleland." The slaughter and atrocity that had accompanied the brigade's sweep through the tribal areas from which the Matabele political dissidents had been operating was fresh in both their memories.

"Two of my brothers, my grandfather..." Job's voice dropped to a deathly whisper. "The Third Brigade threw their bodies down the old shaft at Antelope Mine."

"This isn't personal vengeance," Sean warned him. "All we want is those Stingers, Job." The intertribal hatred of Africa was as fierce as any Corsican vendetta, and Job had physically to shake himself to break the spell of it.

"You're right, but a few Third Brigade scalps would be a nice little fringe benefit."

Sean grinned. Despite his admonition, the thought of taking on ZANLA again gave him equal satisfaction. How many good men and women, how many dear friends had he lost to them over the eleven long years of the bush war, and how complex were the lines of hatred and loyalty that held together the very fabric of Africa.

Only an African could ever understand it.

"Okay." Sean brought them back to hard reality. "We have got in.

We have the Stingers, say two loaded Unimogs. I have found the manuals. We are Fody to pull out. The diversion has lured most of the guards to the southern perimeter of the base, on the far side of the airfield. Aow we have to get out. They aren't going to be,so happy about letting us go."

"We charge the gates," Job said. "Use one truck to break down the barricades."

"Yes." Sean nodded. "And then? We aren't going to be able to get out of the country through the border post at Umtali. By that time the whole Zimbabwean Army and Frelimo will a be after us." They both turned back to the wall map again. Sean reached up and traced the road that branched northward just before it reached the town of Unitali, then ran parallel with the border as it traversed the rugged eastern highlands toward Inyanga National Park, an area of misty peaks and wet, densely forested valleys. He touched one of the valleys, a green wedge driven deeply into the barrier of mountains.

"Honde Valley," he read the legend. The road crossed the head of it, and the valley itself was a funnel that led down to the border and the Mozambique uplands. It formed a natural reentrance to the highlands, a gateway that had been one of the major infiltration routes of the ZANLA guerrillas from their training bases in Mozambique. Sean and Job had learned all its wants the hard way-the hidden trails and strong points, the false ports and the concealed passes.

"The track down to Saint Mary's Mission," Sean said. They stared at it. "That's as far as we can take the trucks."

there is only six Ks to the border," Job murmured.

"From "Six hard Ks," Sean qualified. "And we won't be clear just because we have crossed into Mozambique. We will still have them after us until we get into Renamo-held ground."

Sean turned back to General China. "I'll want porters waiting for us at Saint Mary's Mission. How far does your control of territory extend?"

"The porters will present no problem." China- came to stand between them and pointed to a speck on the map marked Mavonela. "And I can have trucks waiting at this village. Once u reach Mavonela, I will consider that you have made good yo delivery of the missiles."

"I suggest we don't try and bring out forty Stingers with one column of porters," Job cut in. "It will make a perfect target for Mugabe's MiGs. One load of napalm is all it would take."

"And of course, Frelimo can call in their Hinds," Sean added.

"You are right, Job. Once it is light enough for air attack, we will bombshell." He was referring to the old guerrilla trick of splintering the column and offering numerous small elusive targets, rather than a single large ungainly one. "Can you arrange for a series of RZs rather than a single RZ at Mavonela village?" He used the old Scouts" abbreviation for a rendezvous.

"Yes." China nodded. "We will disperse the transport along the Mavonela road." He traced it out. "One truck every kilometer, hidden under camouflage netting, and we'll move the Stingers out on the last stage under cover of darkness."

"All right, let's draw up a timetable," Sean said. "Let's get it all down on paper. I'll need writing material."

China opened a drawer of his desk and brought out a cheap notebook and ballpoint pen. While they worked, China sent for his quartermaster, a chubby little man who had run a men's outfitters in Beira before economic necessity rather than ideological commitment had forced him to leave the town and seek employment in the deep bush with China's guerrillas.

He arrived carrying the uniform for a staff officer of the Irish Guards in the field, complete with insignia, headgear, webbing, and boots. Sean donned the uniform for a fitting without interrupting their planning session. The tunic and trousers had to be taken in, and the boots were a size too large.

"Better too big than too small," Sean decided. "I'll wear a couple of pairs of socks."

The tailor tucked and pinned and crawled around Sean's feet as he let the trouser bottoms down an inch.

"Fine." Sean examined the guards major's papers China laid out on the desk top. From the photograph, Sean saw that the major had been a fleshy, fair-haired individual in his late forties.

"Gavin Dully," Sean read the dead man's name aloud. "You'll have to alter the ID photograph."

"My propaganda officer will take care of that," China told him.

The propaganda officer was a mulatto, half Portuguese, half Shangane, and he was armed with a Polaroid camera. He took four mug shots of Sean, then spirited away the deceased guards major's ID card to doctor the photograph.

"All right." Sean turned back to China. "Now I want to take command of the men who will make up the raiding party and see them properly kit ted out. You'll have to explain to them that they are to take their orders from me in future."

China smiled and stood up. "Follow me, Colonel. I'll take you to meet your new command."

He led the way out of the bunker, but once they were on the path through the forest that led down to the river, Sean fell in beside him and they continudto discuss the raid.

"Obviously I am going to need more than the original ten men in Sergeant Alpholist's squad, at least another detachment to make the diversionary attack on the base." Sean broke off as the mournful wail of the hand-operated sirens rose from the camp around them. Instantly all around them was turmoil and confusion.

"The Hinds!" shouted China. "Take cover!" He sprinted r a sandbagged emplacement among the trees nearby. There was a twin-barreled 12.7-men antiaircraft weapon mounted in the emplacement. It would be a prime target for the Hind gunners, and Sean looked around quickly for alternative cover.

In the long grass on the opposite ode of the track, he spotted a less conspicuous shell scrape and ran for it. As he tumbled into it he heard the oncoming roar of the Hind gunships and the cacophony of ground fire built up swiftly. Job jumped down into the foxhole and squatted beside him. Then another smaller figure a above them and, nimble as a hare, leaped into the hole.

For a moment Sean did not realize who it was, not until the wrinkled face creased like a used napkin into a wide white smile and the man said happily, "I see you, Bwana "

"I "You! You silly little bugger!" Sean stared at him in disbelief.

sent you back to Chiwewe. What the hell are you doing back bereT"

"I went back to Chiwewe as you commanded , Matatu said "Then I came back to look for you."

virtuously Sean still stared at Matatu in awe as he considered what that statement entailed. Then he shook his head and began to smile.

immediately the little man's answering grin seemed to split his face in two.

0 "Nobody saw your" Sean demanded in Swahili. "You came through the lines into the headquarters of an army, and nobody saw your, "Nobody sees Matatu when Matatu does not want to be seen."

The earth trembled under them, and the sound of rockets and gunfire forced them to put their heads close together and shout into each other's faces.

"How long have you been herer"

"Since yesterday." Matatu looked apologetic. He pointed to the sky where the Hinds were circling. "Since those machines attacked yesterday. I was watching when you jumped into the river. I followed you along the bank when you used the tree as a boat. I wanted to come to you then, but I saw crocodiles. Then in the night the bad men, the shifts, came in the boat and brought you back here. I waited and watched."

"Did you see where they took the white woman?" Sean demanded.

"I saw them take her away last night." Matatu showed little interest in Claudia. "But I waited for you."

can you find out where they took her?" Sean asked.

"Of "I course." Matatu's grin faded, and he looked indignant.

can follow them anywhere they took her."

note Sean unbuttoned his tunic pocket and pulled out his new book. Crouched in the bottom of the shell scrape with an air raid de ring overhead, he composed the first love letter he had thun Ming the single tiny sheet of cheap notepaper written in years. F with all the assurances and comfort and cheer he could muster, he ended it, "Be strong, it won't be for much longer and remember I love you. Whatever happens, I love you."

He ripped the page out of the notebook and folded it carefWly.

"Take this to her." He handed it to Matatu. "See that she gets it and then come back to me."

Matatu tucked the scrap of paper into his loincloth and waited expectantly'INd you see the hole in which I slept last nightr" Sean asked.

"I saw you come from there this morning." Matatu nodded.

"That will be our meeting place," Sean told him. "Come to me there, when the shifts are asleep." Sean looked up at the sky. 11w raid had been fierce but short-lived. The sound of engines and gunfire was dwindling, but dust and smoke drifted over their shelter.

"Go now," Sean ordered. Matatu jumped to his feet, eager to obey, but Sean took his arm. It was thin as a child's, and Sean shook it affectionately. "Don't let them catch you, old friend," he said in Swahili.

Matatu shook his head and twinkled with amusement at the absurdity of that thought. Then, like a puff of smoke from a genic's lamp, he was gone.

They waited a few minutes to let Matatu. get clear, then climbed out of the shelter. The trees around them were torn and shattered with shell and rocket fire; across the river an ammunition store was burning. RPG rockets, and phosphorus grenades were exploding, sending dense white smoke towering into the sky.

General China came striding down the path to meet them. There was a sooty stain on the sleeve of his uniform and dust on Ins knees and elbows. His expression was furious.

"Our position here is totally compromised," he fumed. "They raid us at will and we have no response."

"You'll have to pulWour main force back out of range of the Hinds." Sean shrugged.

6hI can't do that. 17China shook his head. "It will mean we can no longer maintain our stranglehold on the railway. It will mean conceding control of the main road system to Frelimo and inviting them to come on the offensive."

"Well then." Sean shrugged again. "You are going to take a hammering if you remain here."

"Get me those Stingers," China hissed. "Get them, and get them quickly!" And he strode away down the path.

ex on the river Sean and Job followed him to the bunker com pl bank, where a company of forty guerrillas, obviously forewarned of the general's approach, were drawn up in a makeshift parade ground of beaten earth the size of a tennis court. They seemed oblivious of the air raid damage, the smoke and debris, and the scurrying first aid parties and damage control teams around them.

Sean recognized Sergeant Alphonso and his Shanganes in the first rank. He came forward and saluted General China, then wheeled and gave the order for the detachment to stand easy.

General China wasted few words and little time. He raised his voice and addressed them brusquely in Shangane.

"You men are being given a special task. You win, in future, take your orders from this white officer." He indicated Sean beside him. "You will follow those orders strictly. You all know the consequences of failing to do so." He turned to Sean. "Carry on, Colonel Courtney," he said, then strode away back up the path toward the command bunker. Instinctively Sean almost saluted him. Then he checked himself.

"Screw you, China," he muttered under his breath, and then gave his full attention to his new command.

Of course, he already knew Sergeant Alphonso's squad well, but the additional men China had found for him were as likely looking a bunch as he had seen in the Renamo ranks. China had given of his very best. Sean moved slowly down the front rank, inspecting each of them. They were all equipped with AKM assault rifles, the more modern version of the venerable AK-47. In places the bluing was worn from the metal with long usage, but the weapons were meticulously clean and well maintained. Their webbing was in first-class order, and their uniforms, although again well worn, were neatly patched and repaired.

"Always judge a workman by the state of his tools," Sean thought. These were top soldiers, proud and hard. As he came level with each of them he stared into his eyes and saw it there. Of all the people of Africa, Sean felt the greatest rapport with the Zuluoriginated tribes, the Angonis and Matabeles and Shanganes. Had he been given a choice, these were exactly the type of men he would have chosen for this assignment.

Once he had finished the inspection, he went back to the front and addressed them for the first time in Shangane. "You and I together are going to burst the balls of the dung-eating Frelimo," he said quietly. In the front rank Sergeant Alphonso grinned wolfishly.

Her hands still manacled behind her back, Claudia Monterro was marched through the darkness, over a rough track, by the two female war dresses and an escort of five troopers. Often she stumbled, and when she fell and sprawled full length, she was unable to use her hands to protect herself from the rocky surface. Soon her knees were raw and bleeding, and the march became a torturous nightmare.

It seemed without end, hour after hour it went on and every time she fell the tall sergeant harangued her in a language she could not understand. Each time it required more of an effort to regain her feet, for she was unable to use her hands and arms to balance herself.

She Was So thirsty her Saliva had turned to a sticky paste in her mouth. Her legs ached, and her hands and arms, held so long in such an unnatural position, were numb and cold. Sometimes she heard voices in the darkness around her and once or twice she smelled smoke and saw the glow of a camp fire or a feeble paraffin lantern, so she knew she was still within the Renamo lines.

The march ended abruptly. She guessed they were still near the river; she could feel the "of its waters in the air and see the taller riverine trees silhouqted against the stars. She could smell humanity around her: stale lash of cooking fires and woodsmoke, human sweat in unwashed clothing, and human body wastes and the sour odors of garbage.

At lot they led her through a barbed wire gate into another prison compound and dragged her toward one of a row of dugouts.

The two war dresses took her arms, hustled her down a set of earthen steps, and Pushed her into the darkness so she tripped and fell once more on her injured knees. Behind her she heard a door the darkness was absolute.

being closed and barred, and After a short struggle she regained her feet, but when she tried to stand full height, she bumped her head on the low roof It felt like a roof of undressed wooden poles still in their bark. She shuffled backward, stretching out her fingers behind her, until she touched the door. It was of hand-sawn planks, rough and sharp with splinters. She pressed her weight upon it, but it was solid and unmoving.

Bent over to protect her head, she shuffled around her prison.

The walls were made of damp earth. Her cell was tiny, about six feet square, and in the far corner she stumbled over the only furnishing it contained. It was metal, and she explored it with her foot and found that it was an iron bucket. The ripe stench emanating from it left no doubt of its purpose. She completed the circuit of her cell and came back to the door.

Her thirst was an agony now, and she called through the door.

"Please, I need water." Her voice was a harsh croak and her lips felt tight and dry, ready to split. "Water!" she called. Then she remembered the Spanish word and hoped it was the same in Portuguese: "Agua!"

It was futile. The earthen walls seemed to swallow and deaden the sound of her voice. She shuffled to the far corner and sank down to the dark floor. Only then did she realize just how physically exhausted she was, yet the manacles on her wrists prevented her from lying on her back or side. She tried to find a position in which she could rest comfortably and at last, by wedging herself upright in a corner of the cell, she succeeded.

The cold and something else woke her, and she was confused and disoriented. For a moment she believed she was back in her father's home in Anchorage and she cried out for him.

"Papa! Are you there?"

Then she smelled the damp and the sewage bucket, felt the cold in her joints and her pinioned arms, and she remembered. Despair swept over her like a black wave and she felt herself drowning in it. Then she heard again the sound that had awakened her, and she went rigid and felt the cold sweat burst out on her neck and forehead.

She knew what it was instantly. Claudia had none of the more usual feminine phobias-she had no terror of spiders or snakes, there was just one unnatural terror that afflicted her. She sat rigid and listened to the scampering sounds of a creature moving about her cell. That sound was the stuff of her nightmares, and she stared into the darkness, trying to will it away from herself.

Then suddenly she felt it on her, the sharp little claws pricking her skin, the cold touch of paws on her flesh. It was a rat, and by the weight of it on her, it must have been huge, as big as a rabbit.

She screamed wildly, lunged to her feet, and kicked out blindly at It. when at last she stopped screaming, she shrank into the corner and found she was trembling in wild spasms.

"Stop it!" she told herself. "Pull yourself together!" And by an enormous effort of will she regained control. There was complete silence in the darkness. Her screams had frightened the creature away for the time being, but she still could not bring herself to sit on the dirt floor again, for she was terrified it would return.

Despite her exhaustion she stood propped in the corner and waited out the rest of the night. She dozed, almost fell asleep on her feet, then jerked awake again. That sequence happened many times, and then, as she came awake for the last time, she realized that the darkness was no longer total and she could see.

Light was filtering into the cell, and she blinked and found the source of it. There were slits and gaps between the poles of the low roof. These had been daubed with clay and grass, but in one or two places the dried clay had fallen out of the cracks, allowing chinb of light through. Stems of coarse elephant grass hung down untidily from the cracks.

Fearfully she looked around the cell, but the rat had th pea red it must have squeezed through one of the gaps between the poles.

Claudia stumbled across to the reeking galvanized sewage bucket, and only as she stood over it she did realize her predicament. Her hands were locked behind her back, and with that realization her need became irresistible.

Her fingers were almost devoid of feeling, but in desperate haste she was able to grip her leather belt and gradually work it through the loops of her trousers until the buckle was at the small of her back. Whimpering with the effort of self-control needed to delay her bodily functions, she clumsily unclasped the belt.

She had lost so much weight that as soon as her belt was 1008ened her trousers fell avQ;und her ankles and she was able to hook a thumb under the eWtic of her panties and drag them down as far as her knees.

Always fastidious, Claudia experienced the worst hardship of her captivity when her efforts to cleanse herself properly failed. She found herself sobbing with humiliation as she finally managed to dress again. Her wrists were rubbed raw and her arms ached from the strenuous efforts needed to perform this simple task. She huddled in the corner of her cell and the stench of the bucket seemed to permeate the very depth of her soul.

A single ray of sunlight shot through a chink in the roof Poles and pinned a brilliant silver coin on the far wall. She watched it Tom move infinitely slowly down the earthen wall, and somehow it seemed to warm and cheer her enough to dull the cutting edge of her despair.

Before the coin of light reached the floor of the cell, she heard a scraping at the door as the bars were drawn and the door was forced open on its primitive hinges. The tall sergeant stooped into the cell and Claudia scrambled to her feet.

"Please," she whispered. "You must let me wash," she said in her schoolgirl Spanish, but the wardress showed no sign of having understood. In one hand she carried a metal billy can of water and in the other a bowl of stiff maize cake. She placed the billy can on the floor, then tipped the lump of maize cake into the dirt beside it.

Claudia's thirst, which she had managed temporarily to subdue, returned with even greater agony, and she almost whimpered at the sight of the billy. It contained almost two liters of clear water.

She sank down on her knees before it like a worshiper and looked up at the wardress.

k "Please," she said in Spanish. "I must use my hands, please."

The wardress chuckled, the first animation she had shown, and she nudged the billy dangerously with the toe of her boot; a little water slopped over the rim.

"No," Claudia croaked. "Don't spill it."

On her knees she bent over and tried to reach the water with her tongue. She thrust it out as far as it would reach and felt the blessed wetness on the very tip, but the rim of the metal billy was cutting into her face.

She looked up again. "Please help me."

The wardress laughed again and leaned against the wall, watching Claudia's efforts with amusement.

Claudia stooped again and gripped the rim of the billy between her teeth. Carefully she tilted it, and a few drops trickled between her lips. The pleasure was so intense that her vision clouded. She drank a sip at a time until the level in the billy had fallen to where the liquid could no longer flow into her mouth. However, the vessel was still more than half full and her thirst seemed only to have been aggravated by what she had managed to drink.

Still holding the rim between her teeth, she carefully raised her head and tilted it backward. It was too quick. She choked as the water flooded into her mouth, and the billy slipped from between her teeth and water splashed down her chest and puddled on the floor, to be quickly absorbed into the dirt.

The wardress let out a shrill shriek of laughter, and Claudia felt tears of despair fill her eyes. She only just managed to smother the sob that came up her throat.

The wardress deliberately stepped onto the white maize cake, smearing it into the dirt. Then, with another snort of laughter, she snatched up the empty billy and left the cell. Claudia heard her still giggling as she re barred the door of the cell.

She could judge the passage of time by the angle of the sunlight through the chinks in the roof. The first day seemed interminable.

Despite the discomfort of the manacles, she was able to sleep fitfully, but while she was awake she occupied herself by plan to increase her chances of survival.

Water was her most pressing need. The little she had drunk might just see her through this day, but she knew she was already suffering from dehydration.

"I have to find some method of drinking from that billy," she told herself, and spent most of that afternoon wrestling with the problem. When the solution came to her, she lurched to her feet so hastily she bumped the back of her head on the log roof. She ignored the hurt and examined the untidy tufts of elephant grass that hung down from between the chinks of the roof. She selected one of the grass stems and took it carefully between her teeth, worried it loose, and let it drop to the floor. She knelt over it and, by straining backward, managed to get a hand to it. Fortunately it was dry and brittle and snapped readily between her fingers. She broke it into four equal lengths each about nine inches long and, once again by backward contortions, planted them upright in the loose earth of the floor. She turned round, knelt, and picked up the first of them between her lips. She tried to blow through it, but it was blocked with pith and dirt. She discarded it and went on to the next.

When she blew through this one, a tiny cork of dirt flew out of the end like a bl e and then it was hollow and clear. She flopped onto herobUZe and sat in the middle of the dirt floor with the straw still stuck in her mouth, laughing around it in triumph. Her sense of elation and achievement dispelled the Corroding sense of despair that had almost destroyed her will to keep on living.

She crawled to the corner and carefully hid the precious straw.

Then, for the rest of that day, she planned how she would use it.

The rays of sun no longer penetrated to her cell, and the heavy gloom of evening was on her before she heard the wardress at the door. She huddled in her corner when the sergeant stooped into the cell, carelessly dumped the stodgy lump of boiled maize meal into the dirt, and stood the metal billy beside it.

She leaned expectantly against the doorjamb and waited for Claudia to scramble for the food and drink like an animal on all fours. Claudia crouched motionlessly in the furthest corner of the cell and tried to show no expression, but her throat contracted in an involuntary swallowing reflex and her thirst was a raging beast within her.

After she had not moved for a few minutes, the sergeant said something irritable in Portuguese and gestured to the hilly. With an immense effort Claudia prevented herself from looking down at it. The woman shrugged. Once again she stepped onto the maize cake and ground it into the dirt. She gave a snort of unconvincing laughter and backed out through the door, dragging it shut behind her, but left the billy can standing at the threshold.

Claudia forced herself to wait until she was certain the wardress had truly left and was not watching her through a spy hole. Once she was sure she was not observed, Claudia crawled in frantic haste to the corner where she had hidden the straw and picked it up between her lips.

Still on her knees, she crossed to the billy can and stooped over it.

She drew the first mouthful through the straw and let it trickle down her throat, closing her eyes with pleasure. It was as though she were drinking down a magic potion. She felt new strength and resolve flow through her veins.

She drank most of the contents of the billy can drawing out the pleasure of it until it was almost totally dark in the cell, but she could not bring herself to eat the sticky mess of maize cake smeared into the dirt.

She hoarded the remains of the water, taking the wire handle of the billy can between her teeth and carefully moving it to the far corner of the cell where she could ration herself to small sips during the long hours ahead. She settled down for the night feeling almost cheerful and a little light-headed, as though she had been drinking champagne rather than plain unbolted river water.

I can endure anything they do to me she whispered to herself. They aren't going to break me. I won't let them. I won't."

Her mood did not last. Almost as soon as it was fully dark in the cell, she realized her terrible mistake in leaving the uneaten maize cake on the floor. Last night there had been only one rat, and it had fled when she screamed at it. This night the odor of food brought them pouring through the gaps in the roof. To her frenzied imagination, it seemed as though the floor of the cell was swarming with furry bodies. The smell of them clogged her nostrils, the nauseating ratty smell like boiling horns and hooves in a glue pot. She cowered in her corner, shivering with cold and horror, and they brushed against her legs and scurried over her feet, squeaking and squealing as they fought for the scraps of spilled porridge.

At last Claudia succumbed to panic. Screaming, on the edge of hysteria, she kicked out at them wildly; one of them whipped around and bit her naked ankle; the sharp little teeth were like a razor cut. She screamed again and kicked, trying to dislodge it, but for a few dreadful seconds its curved teeth were buried in her flesh.

At last she sent it flying into the darkness.

The rat hit the billy can containing her treasured water, and she heard the metal clank against the wall and the liquid splash onto the earthen floor. She crawled to the overturned container and wept with despair.

After long hours of horror and dark terror, the rats consumed the last of the maize and disappeared back through the roof.

Claudia sank to her knees, exhausted both physically and emotionally.

"Please God, let it end. I can't go on."

She toppled over on her side and lay in the dirt, shivering and sobbing softly to herself, and at last dropped into the dark void of oblivion.

She woke with something tugging at her hair and a strange grinding sound very close to her ear. Still groggy with sleep, it took her long seconds to realize what was happening to her. She had slumped over sideways, and one cheek was pressed to the dirt floor. She lay for a moment, enduring the sharp pulls on her hair and the grinding crunching in her uppermost ear, and then the terror came back to her in full force.

A rat was chewing off her hair, cutting it with those sharp curved incisors, gathering it for nesting material. So great was her horror that it paralyzed her. She could not move. Her whole body tingled, her stomach knotted with cramps, and her toes and fingers curled with the strength of revulsion.

Suddenly she w4 no longer terrified. Her fear changed to anger.

In one lithe movement she rolled to her feet and began to hunt the loathsome creature.

Relentlessly she pursued it around the cell, following it only by sound, the tiny scratch and patter of its feet. She no longer kicked out wildly but deliberately aimed each blow at the sound. Twice the creature tried to climb to safety, but each time Claudia heard it and used her whole body to sweep it from the wall and knock it back to the floor.

This killing anger was an emotion she had never experienced before. It heightened all her senses; it rendered her hearing so acute could visualize each movement of her prey; it quickened that she her physical responses so her kicks were fast and powerful, and when one of them landed on the warm furry body, the shrill squeal of pain and fear from the rat inflamed her.

She cornered it against the door of the cell and again stamped on it. She felt the small bones break under her heel, and she stamped again and again, sobbing with the effort, keeping it up until the carcass was soft and mushy under her feet.

When at last she backed away and sank down in her corner, she was still trembling, but no longer with terror.

"I've never )9 killed anything before, she thought, amazed at herself and this secret savage side to her nature that she had never suspected existed.

She waited for a feeling of guilt and disgust to overwhelm her.

Instead she felt as strong as though she had come through some ordeal that had armed her and equipped her to overcome whatever dangers and hardships lay ahead.

"I'm not going to give in, not ever again," she whispered. "I'm.

going to fight and to kill if I have to. I'm going to survive.

In the morning when the wardress came for the billy can Claudia confronted her resolutely, thrusting her face only inches from the black woman's and keeping her voice measured but firm.

"Take this out." She indicated the rat's carcass with her foot.

The woman hesitated and Claudia said, "Do it no w!" The wardress picked up the mangled carcass by the tip of the tail and glanced back at Claudia with a measure of respect in her dark eyes.

Carrying the empty billy and the dead rat, she left the cell. len she returned a few minutes later with the refilled billy can and the bowl of maize meal, Claudia subdued her thirst and maintained her new attitude of calm authority as she indicated the sewage bucket.

"That has to be cleaned, she said. The woman snapped a retort in Portuguese.

"I'll do it." Claudia did not waver but held the other woman's gaze until she broke the eye contact. Only then did she turn her back and offer her manacled hands to the wardress.

"Undo these," she ordered. Obediently the wardress unclipped the key from her webbing belt.

Claudia almost cried out as the handcuffs came away. The blood rushed back to her hands, and she held them to her chest and inst the pain, horrified massaged them tenderly, biting her lips ago by the condition of her swollen hands and torn, bruised wrists.

The wardress prodded her in the small of the back and gave an order in Portuguese. Claudia took up the handle of the sewage bucket and, brushing past the woman, climbed the stairs. The sunlight and warmth and clean dry air were like a benediction.

Claudia looked around the stockade quickly. It was obviously a women s prison, for a few dispirited feminine figurer, lolled in the dust beneath the single ebony tree in the center. They were in ragged loincloths. Their naked upper bodies were so painfully thin the ribs stood out clearly beneath the dusty dark skin, and their breasts, even those of the younger women, were empty and dangled as loosely as the ears of a spaniel. Claudia wondered what their crimes had been or if their mere existence had caused their captors offense.

She saw that her bunker was only one of a row of a dozen or so.

It was obvious these were reserved for the more important or dangerous prisoners.

The gates of the stockade were guarded by a pair of burly black females dressed in the usual tiger stripes and toting AK assault rifles. They peered curiously at Claudia and discussed her with Dilation. Beyond the gates, Claudia had a glimpse of the broad green flow of the Pungwe River and for a moment entertained fanciful visions of plunging into it to bathe her battered body and wash her filthy clothes. But the wardress prodded her painfully in the back and urged her toward the screened latrines at the rear of the stockade.

When they reached them, the wardress made hand signals for Claudia to empty her bucket into the communal pit, then turned away to chat with one of the other war dresses who had sauntered across to join them, AK-47 rifle over her shoulder.

The back wall of the latrine was also the rear wall of the stockade. However, it offered no avenue of escape. The poles were as thick as her leg, lashed securely together with bark rope, and their tops were several feet higher than she could reach.

She abandoned the idea of escape before it was fully formed and tipped the contents of the bucket into the deep pit. Immediately a humming cloud of des rose from the depths and circled her head.

Wrinkling her nose with disgust, Claudia was backing toward the exit when a soft whistle stopped her dead. It was a low-pitched, mournful note, so unobtrusive she would have ignored it completely if she had not heard it so often before. It was one of the clandestine signals Sean and his trackers used. Sean had told her once that it was the call of a bird called a boubou shrike, and because of its associations rather than its pitch it electrified her.

She glanced quickly toward the screened entrance to the latrine, but it was safe. She heard the voices of the wardress and her colleague still chatthig outside, and she pursed her lips and tried a soft, unconvincing imitation of the whistle.

Instantly it was repeated from just beyond the back wall of the latrine, and Claudia's hopes soared. She dropped the bucket and ran to the wall of poles, putting her eye to one of the larger chinks.

She almost screamed when an eye looked back at her from only the thickness of the poles and then a voice, a well-remembered voice, whispered, "Jambo, memsahib."

"Matatu," she gasped.

"Silly little bugger." Matatu gave her the only words of English he knew, and she had to fight to prevent herself bursting out in laughter of relief and hope and amusement at the incongruity of that greeting.

"Oh Matatu, I love you," she blurted out, and a folded scrap of paper was thrust through the chink into her face. The instant her fingers closed on it, Matatu's eye was snatched away from the peephole as though on a fishing line.

"Matatul" she whispered desperately, but he was gone. She had spoken too loudly, and she heard the wardress call out and her footsteps at the entrance.

Claudia spun around and with the same movement crouched over the reeking pit. The wardress looked around the thatched screen and Claudia mapped at her furiously, "Get out, can't you see I'm busyr" The woman jerked her head back. Claudia was trembling with excitement as she unfolded the note and recognized the handwriting, and at the same time she was stricken with terror that it would be taken from her before she could read it. She refolded it quickly and slipped it deeply into the back pocket of her trousers, where she would be able to retrieve it even with her hands cuffed behind her.

Now she was eager to return to the privacy of her cell. The wardress pushed her down the stairs, but without the viciousness of before.

Claudia replaced the sewage bucket in the corner, and when the wardress pointed at her wrists, she held them out obediently. TIM touch of the metal on her abraded and bruised skin seemed even more galling than it had been before. The muscles and tendons of her upper arms and shoulders knotted in protest.

Once Claudia was manacled the wardress seemed to recapture her harsh mood of authority. She tipped the contents of the maize bowl onto the 1loor and lifted her boot to grind it into the dirL Claudia flew at her. "Don't you dare!" she hissed, thrusting her face close to the woman's and glaring into her eyes so viciously that she recoiled involuntarily.

"Get out!" Claudia told her. "Allez! Vamoose!" The wardress backed out of the cell with a muttered but unconvincing show of defiance and dragged the door closed behind her.

Claudia was amazed at her own courage. She leaned against the door, trembling with the effort that the contest of wills had cost her, only then realizing the risk she had taken-she could have been brutally beaten or deprived altogether of her precious supply of water.

It was Sean's letter that had given her the strength and bravado to defy the wardress. Leaning against the door, she reached back into her pocket and touched the scrap of folded notepaper, merely to reassure herself that it was safe. She would not read it yet. She wanted to delay and savor that pleasure. Instead she retrieved her drinking straw from its biding place.

After she had drunk from the billy, she ate the maize cake, delicately picking it out of the dirt with her teeth and trying to shake loose the earth and dirt that clung to the sticky lumps of porridge. She was determined not to leave a scrap of it, not only because she was hungry but because she knew she would have need of all her strength in the days ahead, and also because she had learned that food scraps attracted the rats. Only when she had eaten and drunk did she allow herself the luxurious pleasure of reading Sean's note.

She took it out of her pocket and carefully smoothed it between her swollen fingers. Then she squatted and placed it in the beam of sunlight that fell in a corner of the cell. At last she turned and knelt over it.

She read slowly, moving her lips like a semiliterate, forming every word he had written as though she could taste it on her tongue.

"Be strong, it won,"I-be for much longer and remember I love u. Whatever happeds, I love you." Her vision swam with tears YO as she read his la,stVords. Then she sat back and whispered softly, "I'll be strong. I promise you I'll be strong for you, and I love you too. With my very existence, I love you."

"They may fight like women," said Sergeant Alphonso as he surveyed the piles of captured Zimbabwean Army equipment, "but at least they dress like warriors."

The uniforms had been supplied by Britain as part of its aid commitment to Mugabe after the capitulation of Ian Smith's white regime. They were of the finest quality, and Alphonso and his men stripped off their old faded and patched tiger-striped battle dress with alacrity. In particular they were delighted with the gleaming black leather paratrooper boots with which they replaced their eclectic collection of tattered joggers and grubby tennis shoes.

Once they had decked themselves out in this captured finery and fallen in on the beaten-earth parade ground, Se aiD and Job went down their ranks, checking and instructing them on the correct way to wear each item of uniform. The quartermaster tailor followed behind them, correcting any gross discrepancy in size and fit.

"They don't have to be perfect," Sean said. "They won't be on parade, just good enough to pass a casual glance. We haven't got time to waste on the niceties of dress."

After the men were fully kit ted out, Sean and Job worked on their plan of Grand Reef base for the rest of that day and most of the night.

First they sat on opposite sides of a desk in the headquarters communications room and brainstormed for every detail of the base layout they could dredge from their memories. By nightfall they were satisfied they had the most accurate picture that they could hope for. However, Sean had learned from experience that it was difficult for an illiterate to visualize physical reality from a two-dimensional drawing, and discreet inquiry had revealed that almost all his new command, though battle-tried warriors, could neither read nor write.

Most of the rest of that night they worked on building a scale model of the base, setting it out on the beaten surface of the parade ground, working by lantern light. Job, who had an artistic Barr, whittled model buildings from the soft balsa like wood of the baobab tree and used water-washed pebbles of various colors from the sandbanks of the river to lay out the airstrip, roads, and perimeter fences of the base.

The following morning the raiding party was paraded and inspected by Captain Job and Sergeant Alphonso and then seated around the model in a ring. The model proved to be a major success, provoking lively comment and query.

First Sean described the raid, moving =tchboxes; down the pebble roadways to represent the column of Unimogs, illustrating the diversionary attack on the perimeter, the withdrawal of the loaded trucks, and the rendezvous on the Umtah road. Once he had finished he handed his pointer to Sergeant Alphonso.

"All right, Sergeant, explain it to us again." The ring of attentive troopers delighted in correcting the occasional mistakes and omissions Alphonso made. When he was finished, he handed the pointer to his senior corporal to repeat the lecture. After five repetitions they all had it perfectly memorized, and even General China was impressed.

"It only remains to see if you can do it as well as you explain it," he told Sean.

"Just give me the trucks," Sean promised.

"Sergeant Alphonso was with the unit that originally Captured them. He knows where they are hidden. Incidentally the guards major whose uniform you will use was killed in the same action."

"How long ago was that?" Sean asked.

"About two months ago."

"Beauty!" said Sean bitterly. "That means those trucks have been lying in the bush all that time. What makes you think they am still there, or that they are still in running order?"

"Colonel." China give that thin, cold smile Sean was coming to know and loathe so well. "For Miss Monterro's sake, You had ile better pray they-are." The smile vanished. "Now, wh the draw their rations and ammunition, you and I will have a final discussion. Come with me, Colonel."

Once they were in the communications room of the command bunker, China turned to Sean, his expression bleak. "During the night I received a radio message from my agent at Grand Reef base. He only transmits in an emergency, otherwise the risk is too high. This is an emergency. Training on the Stinger systems is complete. They have orders to move the missiles out of Grand r Reef within the next seventy-two hours, depending on availability of transport aircraft."

Sean whistled softly. "Seventy-two hours-in that case we won't make it."

"Colonel, all I can tell you is that you had better make it. If you don't, you will have no further value to me and I win begin thinking of old times." He touched his damaged ear significantly. Sean stared him out silently until China went on, "However, not all the news is bad, Colonel. My agent will meet you in Umtah and give full intelligence on the buildings where the Stingers are being YOU held, the room used as a lecture theater, and the training manuals.

He will accompany you to the base. He is well known to the guards at the gates. He will assist your entry and guide you to the training center.

"That's something," Sean growled. "Where will I meet him?"

"There is a nightclub in Unitali-the Stardust, a gathering place for pimps and whores. He will be there every evening from eight until midnight. Alphonso knows the club. He will take you to it."

"How will I recognize your agent?"

"He will wear a T-shirt with a large portrait of the comic book hero Superman on the chest," China said. Sean closed his eyes as though in pain while China went on, "The man's name is Cuth Sean shook his head and whispered, "I don't believe this is happening to me. Superman and Cuthbert!" He shook his head again as if to clear it. "What about the RZ with the porters at Saint Mary's Mission?"

"That is arranged," China assured him. "The porters will cross the border tomorrow night as soon as it is dark and conceal themselves in the caves in the mountains above the mission station to await your arrival."

Sean nodded and changed the thread of the discussion. 611f we leave now, how long will it take for us to reach the spot where the Unimogs are hidden?"

"You should be there before noon tomorrow."

"Is there anything else we should discuss?" Sean asked. When China shook his head, Sean stood up, slung his AKM assault rifle on one shoulder, and with his free hand lifted the small canvas duffel bag that contained the dead guards major's uniform and his personal kit.

"Until we meet again, General China."

"Until we meet again, I will take good care of Miss Monterro.

Never fear, Colonel."

The column was heavily laden. Each man carried food and water for two days together with ammuration, the extra belts for the RpD machine guns, grenades, and rockets for the RPG-7 launchers.

Though they could not run under that weight, Sergeant Alphonso, who was driving the van, set a cracking pace. Before jightfall they passed through the Renanio lines into the "destruction area," a Eree-fire zone where there was a possibility of encountering Frehino patrols, and Sean ordered a change of formation.

They opened up to intervals of ten meters between the men in the angle file of the men column, and he posted flankers at the head and tail to guard against surprise attack.

They kept going hard during the night with ten-minute breaks every two hours, and by dawn they had covered almost forty miles.

During the dawn break, Sean moved up to the head of the column and squatted between Alphonso and Job.

"How much further to the trucks?" Sean demanded.

"We have done well," Alphonso, replied, and Pointed ahead.

"The trucks are there in that valley."

They were on the foreslope of another area of hilly, forested ground, and below them the terram, was broken and bad. Sean appreciated why General China had chosen this area of the Serra da Gorongosa to defend. There were no roads in this wilderness, and an attacking army would have to fight its way past an endless series of natural strong points and fortresses.

The valley Alphonso pointed out was some miles ahead of them and beyond it the country changed from its savage mood and Battened into a broad gentle plain. Down there the dark forest was broken up and blotched with paler grasslands.

Alphonso pointed to the horizon. "Over there are the railway line and the road to the coast..." He was about to speak again when Sean caught ins arm to silence him and cocked his head in a listening attitude.

It was some ;minds%efbre the sound separated itself from the gentle susurration of the dawn wind in the forest below them and hardened into the whine of turboshaft engines and spinning ratam "There!" Job's eyesight was phenomenal and he picked out the approaching specks even against the dark background of hills and forests.

"Hinds." Sean spotted them just as Alphonso shouted, "Take cover!" The column scattered into cover and they watched the gunships come on, rising and dropping as they kept low over the hills, sailing northward toward the Renamo lines in an extended formation. 263 Sean watched them through the Russian-made binoculars he had acquired from the Renamo stores. It was the first opportunity he had had to study a Hind at leisure. There were four of them, and Sean surmised that there would be three flights of four machines to make up a full squadron of twelve.

"My God, they are grotesque," he murmured. It seemed impossible that anything so heavy and misshapen could ever break the ties of gravity. The engines were housed in the top of the fuselage below the main rotor and formed the humpback that gave the machine its nickname. The air intakes to the turbos were situated above the cockpit canopy. The belly drooped like that of a pregnant sow. The nose was deformed by the hanging turret that housed the Gatling cannon, and from the stubby wings and bloated belly were suspended an untidy array of rocket systems, ordnance stations, and radar aerials.

At the rear of the engine mountings the ungainly lines of the machine were further disturbed by another extraneous structure that seemed to have been tacked onto it as an afterthought.

"Exhaust suppressor boxes." Sean remembered an article he had read in one of the flying magazines to which he subscribed.

These structures masked the exhaust emissions of the twin turboshaft engines and shielded them from the infrared sensors of hostile missiles. The author of the article had lauded their efficacy, but although they made the machines almost invulnerable to heat seekers, the weight of the devices combined with that of the titanium armor to reduce the Hind's speed and range severely. Sean wished he had read the article with more attention, for he could not recall the figures for air speed and range the author had quoted.

The flight of gunships passed a mile or so to the east of them, boring steadily northward.

"General China is in for a breakfast show," Job remarked as he rose from cover to reassemble the column and continue the march.

Although they had been going all night, the pace never slackened, and even Sean was impressed by the condition and training of Alphonso's company. "Almost as good as the Scouts," he decided. Then he grinned to himself. "Nobody could be that good."

More than once Sean dropped back to check that the men he had in the drag were anti tracking and covering spoor, for now there was real danger a Frelimo patrol might find them. He had fallen only a few hundred meters behind the rear of the column and was down on one knee, studying the earth intently, when suddenly he knew that he was not alone, that he was being watched.

instantly Sean threw himself forward, the rifle coming off his shoulder as he rolled over twice into the cover of a fallen log beside the path and froze, his finger on the trigger, his gaze raking the bush where he thought he had seen the flirt of movement.

It was closer than he had imagined. From the clump of grass right beside him came a mischievous giggle. Sean raised his head and whispered furiously, "I've warned you not to sneak up on me like that."

Matatu's head popped out of the grass, and he grinned merrily.

"You are getting old, my Bwana. I could have stolen your socks and boots without you knowing."

"And I could have shot your brown backside full of holes. Did you find the memT" Matatu nodded, and his smile slipped.

"Where is she?"

"Half a day's march upstream, in a stockade with many other women.

"Is she well?"

Matatu hesitated, torn between telling the truth and telling Sean what would please him. Then he sighed and shook his head. "They keep her in a hole in the ground, and there are marks on her arms and legs. They force her to work with the shit-buckets-" He broke off as he saw Sean's expression and went on hurriedly, "But she laughed when she saw me."

"Did you give her the paper?"

"Ndio. She hid it in her clothing."

"Nobody saw you?"

The reply was beneath Matatu's dignity, and Sean smiled. "I know, nobody sees Matatu unless Matatu wants them to..." He broke off, and both of them looked upward.

Faintly, from far away, came the now familiar whistle of turboprop engines and rotors.

"The Hinds, return iQ from clobbering the Renamo lines," Sean murmured. The machines were out of sight beyond the canopy of the forest trees, but he sound passed swiftly southward.

"With their limited range, their base can't be too far," Sean thought. He looked at Matatu thoughtfully. "Matatu, those indeki, could you find the place where they come from, and where they return to?"

Matatu's gaze flickered with a moment's doubt. Then he grinned, once again brimming with bravado. "Matatu can follow anything, man or animal or indeki, anywhere it goes," he boasted confidently.

"Go!" Sean ordered. "Find the place. There will be trucks and Iwo many white men. It will be well guarded. Don't let them catch you.

Matatu looked affronted, and Sean clasped Ins shoulder with affection. "When you have found the place, come back to General China's camp at the Pungwe River. I will meet you there."

As unquestioningly as a gun dog sent to retrieve a downed pheasant, Matatu bounded to his feet and tucked up the folds of his loincloth.

"Until we meet again, go in peace, my Bwana.

"Go in peace, Matatu," Sean called softly after him as the little man trotted away into the south. Sean watched him out of sight and then hurried to catch up with Alphonso's column.

"They keep her in a hole in the ground, and there are marks on her arms and legs." Matatu's words echoed in his head, fueling his imagination and anger and determination.

"Hold on, my love. Stick it out. I'll come to get you... soon," he promised her-and himself.

They crossed the rim of another line of rocky kopjes, using a screen of jesse bush to conceal their movements against the skyline, and from good cover on the foreslope Alphonso pointed down into the valley below.

"That is how we brought the trucks in," he explained, and Sean saw that the dry river course would be the only access for a vehicle into this bad country. Even then it must have been a laborious task negotiating the rocky chutes and barriers that broke up the stretches of smooth river sand in the depths of the gorge.

"Where did you hide the trucks?" Sean asked without lowering his binoculars.

Alphonso chuckled. "Unless Frehmo is cleverer than I think they are, I will show you."

They left sentries posted along the ridge to warn of the approach of an enemy patrol. Then Alphonso led the rest of the column down into the gorge. The lower they descended, the steeper became the sides, until there were sheer cliffs on each side and they were forced to take a narrow game trail to the river bottom. It was suffocatingly hot in the narrow gorge; no breeze reached down here, and the rocks absorbed the sun's heat and threw it back at them.

"The trucks?" Sean demanded impatiently.

Alphonso pointed to the cliffs opposite. "In there," he said.

Sean was about to snarl irritably at him when he realized that the cliffs had been carved by wind and flood water over the ages.

"Caves?" he asked, and Alphonso led him through the ankle-deep river sand to the cliff face.

Some of the cave entrances were merely scooped shallowly into the red rock, others had collapsed or were clogged with debris brought down by the summer floods. Alphonso indicated one of these and gave an order to his men. They stacked their weapons and began to clear the debris from the mouth of the cavern.

Within an hour they had opened it sufficiently for Alphonso and Sean to scramble through into the cave. Deep in the gloomy gut, Sean made out the shape of the first truck. His eyes accustomed themselves to the poor light as he moved toward it, and he saw others parked beyond it.

"How the hell did you get them in here?" he asked incredulously.

"We pushed and carried them," Alphonso explained.

"I hope to hell we'll be able to get them out again," Sean muttered, and climbed onto the running board of the nearest vehicle.

It was coated with a thick layer of red dust. He yanked open the door on the driver's side and sneezed in the dust, but saw with relief that the key was still in the ignition.

He reached in and turned it. Nothing happened. The ignition light stayed dark and the needles on the dashboard instruments never flickered.

"I disconnected the batteries," Alphonso told him.

Sean grunted. "Bright lad, but how the hell did you know to do that?"

"Before the war I was a bus driver in Vila da Monica," Alphonso explained. It was odd to think' he had ever had such a prosaic occupation.

"All right," Sean said. "Then you can help me get this one started. Is there a toolbox?"

Each of the trucks w.& equipped with two spare tires, a hand pump, a toolbox, a to aulin, and a long-range fuel tank. Once rp Sean had reconnect8d the battery of the first truck, there was sufficient charge to produce a dull red glow in the ignition lamp on the dashboard and to raise the needle of the fuel gauge to the "half" position but insufficient to kick the engine over.

"Find the crank handle," Sean ordered. It was secured behind the passenger seat in the cab. Two hefty Shanganes swung the engine over with such gusto that it fired and stuttered, then burst into a steady roar. Thick blue exhaust smoke filled the cavern, and Sean lifted his foot off the accelerator pedal. Two of the tires were flat and had to be pumped by hand. While this was being done, the troopers cleared the last of the rocks and tree trunks from the mouth of the cave and with the transmission in four-wheel drive Sean reversed sharply down the incline and bounced and jolted over the rough ground.

When the truck hung up on the boulders of the riverbank and the wheels spun without purchase, twenty men flung their combined weight on it and by brute force shoved it through. The Unimog crashed over the lip of the bank and into the river-bed.

Sean drove it clear and parked under the opposite cliffs. He left the engine running to charge the depleted battery, and they climbed back to the cavern and started work on the second truck.

Apart from flat tires and batteries, they found no serious defects in any of the vehicles. One after the other, they coaxed the engines to life, then manhandled them down into the river-bed. It was the middle of the afternoon by the time all three trucks were lined up on the white river sand.

"Get the men to change uniforms now," Sean ordered. "Tell them to leave their other gear in the cave."

Joking and laughing, they stripped off their Renarno tiger stripes and donned the British-pattern battle dress of the Zimbabwean Army. While they were busy, Sean went over the vehicles again. He found the army registration papers in a plastic wallet in the cubbyholes of each of the Unimogs.

"Hope we never have to show them," he grumbled to Job.

"They are probably listed as stolen or destroyed."

He opened the caps on the fuel tanks and physically checked the contents of each. "Enough to get us to Grand Reef and back to Saint Mary's," he estimated, "with not much to spare."

He ordered the windscreen and side windows of the cabs to be cleaned but the body work to be left as it was, caked with mud and dust.

It gave them the appearance of a patrol returning from a sortie into the deep bush and, more important, partially obscured the military markings and registration numbers.

Once the men had changed into disguise and cached their Renamo uniforms, Sean and Job inspected each man and his equipment minutely before allowing him to board one of the Unimogs.

It was almost five o'clock before they were ready to leave. Both Job and Alphonso had heavy-vehicle driver's licenses, and one of the Renamo troopers, who gloried in the name of Ferdinand da Costa, claimed driving experience. Sean took the passenger seat beside him to check his performance.

Job drove the leading truck, while Alphonso was in the middle and Sean and the learner driver in the rear. Apart from a heavy foot on the accelerator pedal, Ferdinand da Costa proved himself an adequate driver, but Sean took the wheel from him at the difficult places.

In line astern, they churned through the heavy sand, following in the wheel ruts of Job's Unimog, winding up the river course for half a mile before they reached the first obstacle.

It required the combined efforts of all forty men to heave and shove the trucks up the first rocky chute in the river-bed, and even then they had to cut twenty-foot-long mo pane poles and use them as levers to prize the wheels up over the larger boulders.

The powerful truck motors bellowed in high revolutions, blue diesel smoke billowed from the exhausts, and Sean remarked to Job, "An open invitation to every Frelimo within twenty miles to join the party." Then he checked his wristwatch. "We are failing behind our schedule."

They tried to make up time along the easier stretches of the river course, but the sunset and darkness caught them still almost twenty kilometers from the main east-to-west road between the sea and the border post at Urntah.

Nightfall made the journey more arduous. Sean dared not use the trucks" headlights, and they had to proceed in darkness alleviated only by starlight and a moon in its last quarter.

It was after midnight before they could at last leave the river-bed by negotiating a low spot in the bank. With four men walking ahead of the lead truck to guide it around ant bear holes and other concealed obstacles, they struck out directly southward and within two hours had intersected the overgrown disused track Alphonso had told Sean about.

Sean called a halt. They spread the field map on the hood of the lead truck and by flashlight studied it anxiously.

"We are here," Alphonso told him. "This track runs up to an old asbestos mine; it was abandoned by the Portuguese in 1963 at the start of the Frelir& war."

"We'll rest up hWe," Sean decided. "Get the trucks off the road and covered with branches. We must expect the Hinds to overfly us sometime tomorrow. No cooking fires, no smoking."

At four that afternoon, they woke those still asleep and ate a hasty meal of cold rations. Sean ordered the journey to be resumed, and they stripped the camouflage from the trucks. They boarded the entire raiding party except for the four men who walked ahead of the leading truck, examining the ancient overgrown wheel ruts of the track for Frehmo anti vehicle land mines, probing any suspicious lump or hollow with a bayonet before waving the column forward.

The sun was just setting when at last they came in sight of the main road, its macadamized surface snaking through the open forest and winding around the scattered kopJes. Scan halted the column well back out of sight of the road and went forward with Job, leaving Alphonso in command.

From the top of a commanding hillock they kept the road under observation until it was fully dark. During that time two patrols passed, both heading eastward, each comprised of three or four battered and dusty Unimogs packed with armed men in Zimbabwean combat gear and with an RPD light machine gun mounted above the cab.

They rumbled along with strict intervals of a hundred meters between vehicles, and watching them through the binoculars Sean remarked, "Well, at least we look like the real thing."

"Except for your pale face," Job pointed out.

"A birth defect," Sean apologized. "But I'll keep it out of sight until it's needed."

They scrambled down from the hilltop and trudged back along the track to the hidden trucks.

"From here you are on your own," Sean told Ferdinand, the driver. "Do try to remember to put the clutch in before you change into bottom gear, you'll find it a great help."

Dressed in the uniform of the deceased guards major, Sean climbed into the back of the cab behind Job's driving seat. The space was barely sufficient to contain him; he had to twist his shoulders at an angle from his hips and sit flat on the metal floorboards. It was uncomfortable to begin with, but Sean knew that within a few hours it would become agony. However, he was out of sight yet able to communicate with Job merely by raising his voice.

Without headlights, the column drove the last mile to the juncture with the main road. The scouts they had sent ahead whistled that the road was clear, and they raced forward and swung onto the meta led surface, heading westward toward the border.

As soon as they were safely onto the highway, they switched on the headlights, dropped their speed to fifty kilometers an hour, andadjuste( t spacing to tie ter in erva S. To an observer they were just another Zimbabwean mechanized patrol.

"So far, so good," Job called over the back of the seat to where Sean was hiding.

"What's the time?"

"Seven minutes past eight."

"Perfect. We'll hit the border post just after ten, when the guards are thinking of going off duty."

The hundred kilometers to the border seemed much further. The metal floorboards of the cab were corrugated and cut into Sean's buttocks, transferring the impact of every pothole in the neglected highway up his spine into his skull.

"Get under the tarp! Border post ahead!" Job called at last.

"Not too bloody soon," Scan assured him as the truck slowed and overhead floodlights flooded the cab. Sean pulled the tarpaulin over his head and sank down as low as he could below the seat back.

He felt the truck brake and trundle to a halt. Job switched off the engine and opened the door of the cab. "Wish me luck," he muttered as he stepped down from the cab.

Neither of them knew what to expect. The border formalities must surely be relaxed to accommodate the interchange of troops guarding the railway line. Job was dressed for the part and in possession of a genuine army pay book and ID. The truck's registration papers were likewise genuine. Yet they could be compromised by some small, unforeseen detail or by an alert border guard.

If anything went wrong, Job would give a single long blast on his whistle and they would shoot their way out. All the rifles and rocket launchers were loaded, and the RPD machine guns on the cabs were manned.

As the minutes drew out, Sean's nerves stretched tighter. He expected at any moment to hear the shrilling of Job's whistle and shouting and gunfire.

At last there was the crunch of footsteps on gravel and the voices of Job and a stranger approaching the truck. Both doors of the cab opened, and Sean tried to shrink himself as the truck tipped slightly under the weight of more than one man climbing aboard.

"Where do you want me to drop you of!?" Job asked casually in Shana, and a voi&. Sean had never heard before replied, "At the edge of town.

III tell you where."

Sean turned his head a stealthy inch and through the gap between the seats saw the blue serge cloth of a customs inspector's uniform. With horror he realized that Job was giving an off-duty inspector a lift into Umtali.

The truck pulled forward, and the inspector lowered the side window and shouted to the guards on the barrier.

"It's all right, open!" As they accelerated ahead, Sean had a glimpse of the raised barrier through the window. He had to cover his mouth to prevent himself laughing aloud with relief and triumph.

On the back of the Unimog, the troopers seemed infected by the same reckless spirit of abandon. They were singing as the column wound down the hill to the town of Umtali. Job was casually discussing with the customs inspector the merits of the Stardust Night Club and the price of a short time with one of the bar girls.

"Tell Bodo, the Barman at the Stardust, that you are a friend of mine," the inspector advised Job when they dropped him off on the outskirts of the town. "He'll get a special price for you and tell you which of the girls have the clap and which ones are clean."

As they pulled away, Sean could at last crawl out behind the seat and slump gratefully into the passenger seat. "What the hell kind of trick was that?" he complained. "You damn near gave me a hernia."

"What better way to get V.I.P treatment," Job chuckled, "than to have the head of the customs service as a pal? You should have seen the guards at the border saluting us!"

"Where is this nightclub?"

"Not far. We'll be there before eleven."

They drove in silence for a few minutes while Sean rehearsed the next order he had to give. He waited until Job turned the truck into a dimly lit side street and switched off the engine. In the side mirror, Sean watched the other two Unimogs pull in behind them, cut their engines, and switch off their headlights.

"Back home again," Job chuckled. "Nothing to it."

Back home," Sean agreed. "And back home is where you are going to stay."

T" here was a long silence. Then Job turned his head and looked at Sean thoughtfully.

"What do you mean by that?"

"This is the end of the road for us, Job. You aren't coming to Grand Reef, you aren't hijacking any Stingers, and you sure as hell aren't coming back to Mozambique with me."

You're firing me?" Job asked.

"That's it, pal. I've got no more use for you."

Sean took a small wad of Zimbabwean dollars, part of the oney General China prov an o to "Get rid of that uniform as soon as you can.

If they catch you in it, they'll shoot you. Take the next train back to Harare and go see Reerna at the office. She's holding about four thousand dollars in back pay and bonus for you. That will be enough to tide you over until Capo Monterro's estate pays out the money it owes us. My Job ignored the proffered money. "You remember that day on Hill Thirty-oneT"

"Shit, Job, don't pull that sob stuff on me."

"You came back for me," Job said.

"Because sometimes I'm just a bloody fool."

"Me too." Job smiled. "Sometimes I'm just a bloody fool."

"Listen, Job, this is not your shauri anymore. There is nothing in it for you. Get out. Go back to your village, buy yourself another couple of pretty young wives with Capo's dollars. Sit in the sun and drink a few pots of beer."

"Nice try, Sean. Pity it didn't work. I'm coming back with you."

"I'm giving you a direct order."

"I'm refusing to obey it. So convene a court-martial."

Sean laughed and shook his head. "She's my woman, so it's okay for me to risk my life."

"I've been nursemaiding you for almost twenty years, and I'm not giving up now," Job said. He opened the cab door. "Let's go and find Cuthbert in his Superman suit."

Sean left his cap and tunic on the seat; the insignia of a famous regiment would be out of place in a cheap nightclub. The Stardust was at the end of the lane in a converted furniture factory, a barnlike building with all its windows blacked out. They could bear the music from a hundred paces out, the hypnotic repetitive beat of new wave African jazz.

Women were clustered around the entrance. In the overhead light their dresses were as colorful as butterfly wings. Their hairstyles were flocculent Afros or the intricate beaded dreadlocks of the Rastafarians, their faces were painted into death masks of ds like iguana rouge and purple lipstick with iridescent green eyeli lizards.

They swarmed around Sean and Job, rubbing themselves against them like cats.

"Hey man, get me in!" they lDleaded. "Give me five dollars to get in, darling, I'll dance with Y'O and jig-jig, man. Everything."

"Come on, whitqyj" A child with a tender, immature body in a shiny dress of cheap nylon, the face of a black Madonna, and ancient weary eyes, seized Sean's arm. "Take me with you and I'll give you something you've never had before." S re the front of Sean's body and cupped her hand to fondle him. Sean took her wrist and restrained her.

"What have you got that I've never had before, sweetheart?

AID ST They pushed their Way through the rustling nylon skirts and lawyers will handle that. You will be entitled to half of that... clouds of cheap perfume and at the door paid their five dollars.

The doorman stamped their wrists with an indelible dye in lieu of an entrance ticket and they ducked through the black curtain.

The music was a stunning, painful assault, the lights were revolving strobes and ultraviolet. The dance floor pulsated with humanity transformed into a single primitive organism, like some gigantic amoeba.

"Where's the bar?" Sean bellowed into Job's ear.

"I'm a stranger here myself." Job seized his arm and they struggled through the engulfing sea of light and sound and gyrating bodies.

The faces around them were transported as if in a religious fervor, eyeballs rolled glaring white in the rays of the ultraviolet $ V, lamps, sweat glistened on upraised arms and streamed in rivulets down jet black cheeks.

They reached the bar. "Don't risk the whisky!" Job yelled. "And make them open the beer in front of you."

They drank directly from the cans, besieged in a corner of the bar with the ocean of humanity pressing hard against them.

There were a few white faces, all male, tourists and Peace Corps and military advisors, but most of the clientele were black soldiers still in uniform so that Sean and Job blended into their surroundings.

"Where are you, Cuthbert, in your Superman shirt?" Sean pushed away one of the more persistent bar girls and peered over the heads of the dancers. "We'll never find him in here."

"Ask one of the harm en Job suggested.

"Good thinking." Sean reached across and grabbed the front of the Barman's shirt to get his attention, then stuck a five-dollar bank note into his top pocket and shouted the question in his ear.

The Barman grinned and yelled back, "Wait! I find him."

Ten minutes later they saw Cuthbert working his way down the bar toward them, a skinny little man wearing a Superman T-shirt at least two sizes too large for him.

"Hey, Cuthbert, anybody ever tell you that you look like Sammy Davis Junior?" Sean greeted him.

"All the time, man." Cuthbert looked pleased. Sean had obviously picked out his pet vanity.

"Your uncle sends his love. Can we go somewhere to talk?"

Sean suggested as they shook hands.

"Best place to talk is here," Cuthbert answered. "Nobody else going to hear a thing you say. Get me a beer, can't talk with a dry throat."

Cuthbert downed half his beer at a draft and then asked, breathless from the effort, "You were supposed to be here last night.

Where you been, man?"

"We were delayed."

you should have been here last night. Would have been easy, man.

Tonight, well, tonight is different." - "What has changed?" Sean asked with a sink of dread in his chest.

"Everything changed." Cuthbert said. "The Hercules arrived seventeen hundred hours. Come to pick up the goods."

"Has it left yet?" Sean demanded anxiously.

Don't know for sure. She was still there when I left the base at twenty hundred hours. Sitting out there in front of number three hangar. Perhaps she still there now, perhaps she long gone. Who knows?"

"Thanks a lot," Sean said. "That's a great help."

"That's not all, man." Cuthbert clearly enjoyed being the bearer of evil tidings.

"Hit us with it, Cuthbert."

He finished the beer in another long swallow and held up the empty can. Sean ordered another and Cuthbert waited for it, drawing out the suspense masterfully.

"Two full para commandos of the Fifth Brigade came down from Harare in the Hercules. They real cool, those Fifth Brigade cats," Cuthbert said with relish. "They real mean dudes, no shit."

"Cuthbert, you've been watching too much Miami Vice on television," Sean accused, but he was worried. The Fifth Brigade were the elite of the Zimbabwean Army, converted by their North Korean instructors into ruthlessly efficient killing machines. Two full para commandos of a hundred men each, added to the standing garrison of Third Brigade troops-almost a thousand crack veterans on base.

"Your uncle says you are going to take us in, Cuthbert. Pass us through the gates."

"No way, man!" C#thbert was vehement. "Not with those Fifth Brigade cats in there."

"Your uncle will be pissed off with you, Cuthbert. He's a pretty al cat himself, man, Uncle China is." Sean imitated Cuthbert's co hip jargon.

Cuthbert looked worried. "Man, I've fixed your pass," he explained hurriedly. "You'll have no trouble getting in. The guards are expecting you. You don't need me, man. No sense I should compromise myself, no sense at all."

"You've got the pass here?"

"Right on. The password too. You'll have no trouble."

"Let's go." Sean took Job's arm and steered him toward the door. "That Hercules could take off any time."

Cuthbert hurried between them down the lane to where the three Unitnogs were parked.

"Here's the pass." He handed the plastic-covered card to Sean.

It was slashed with a scarlet "Top Priority" cross.

"The password is a number, "fifty-seven," and your reply is "Samara Machel." Then you show the pass and sign the book.

Simple as a pimple, man. You in like Flynn."

"I'll tell your uncle you couldn't bring yourself to come with US.

"Hey, give me a break, will you? No sense me getting culled, man.

I'm more use to my uncle alive and kicking than dead meat."

"Cuthbert, you are wasted in signals. You definitely should be on television." Sean shook hands with him and watched him scurry back into the Stardust Club.

There were clusters of women around the back of each of the three trucks, giggling and joking with the troopers who hung out over the tailgates. One of the girls was climbing aboard, boosted by eager hands, her miniskirt tucked up high on her long thin black legs.

"Get those whores out of there, Sergeant," Job snapped at Alphonso. The women around the tailgates scattered and three or four others descended hastily from the backs of the Uniniogs with their skimpy clothing in varying states of disarray.

Sean and Job climbed into the cab of the lead truck, and as they drove off Sean buttoned on his tunic and tipped his cap over one eye at a rakish angle.

"What are we going to do?" Job asked.

"Number three hangar at Grand Reef is in full view of the main road. We will drive up the highway. If the Hercules is still there, we go in. If not, well, we'll go back the way we came."

"What about the Fifth Brigade?"

"They're just a bunch of ex-gooks," said Sean. "You weren't afraid of them before, so what's changed?"

"Just asking to pass the time." Job grinned at him sideways.

"You want to tell Alphonso about them?"

"What Alphonso doesn't know won't hurt him," Sean said.

"Just keep going."

The column of three trucks drove sedately through the sleeping town of Unitali. The streets were deserted but Job obeyed the traffic fights punctiliously, and then they were out on the open highway.

"Twelve minutes past eleven." Sean checked his watch, then read the road sign in the beam of the headlights. "Grand Reef Military Base, fifteen kilometers."

tightness in his stomach muscles, the short He felt the familiarness in his breath, and consciously slowed and regulated his breathing.

It was always like this before a scene.

"There she is," Job said softly as they topped a rise in the highway.

The airfield was fully lit, the beacon lights glowing orange and the blue and green dotted lines of the taxiways and runway beyond them.

In the stark white light of the floods, even at a distance of almost two miles, the Hercules looked gigantic. its forty-foot-high tail fin towered above the roof of number three hangar.

The Royal Air Force rounders were painted on the monstrous silver fuselage and on the high tail fin, and Sean immediately that it was one of the Marshall stretched-out converrecognized of Lockheed's Hercules original C-MK3 transports made for sions the R.A.F.

Pun over," Sean ordered. Job flicked his taillight indicators and pulled into the side of the road. He switched off his headlights, and one after the other the following Unimogs did the same.

In the silence Sean said softly, "So the Hercules is still here. We are going in."

"Let's do it," Job agreed.

and ran back to the second Sean jumped down from the cab truck just as Alphonso climbed down to the roadside.

"Sergeant, you knoW" what to do. I'll give you forty-five minutes to get into position. Then I want exactly ten minutes of diversionary fire, everything you've got."

"The first plan was twenty minutes of diversion."

"That's changed," Sean told him. "We expect a much stronger response than we first thought possible. Ten minutes and then pull out fast. Head straight -back for Saint Mary's Mission, we are abandoning the RZ ;nlthe Umtali pass. Hit them hard and then get out. Understoo&"

"Yehbo.

"Go!" Sean said, and Alphonso jumped up into the cab.

Through the open window he saluted Sean and gave him a cheery grin.

"Break a leg," Sean said softly, and the Uniniog pulled out and headed down the highway toward the brightly lit base.

Sean watched the headlights turn off the main highway onto the secondary road that bypassed the perimeter fence of the airfield.

Then he lost them among the trees. Sean marked the time with the bevel ring on his Rolex and walked back to join Job in the leading truck.

He lay back in the passenger seat, pushed his cap to the back of his head, and focused his binoculars through the open window at the huge aircraft that squatted on the tarmac under the floodlights.

The tail ramp at the rear of the fuselage was lowered like a drawbridge, and he could see into the cavernous cargo hold. There were four or five human figures moving about inside the hold and two more at the foot of the ramp. As he watched, a forklift truck trundled out of the open doors of number three hangar. Its fork arms were loaded with a stack of long wooden cases, four of them, one on top of the other. The cases were of raw white wood, and stenciled on them in black paint were letters and numerals he could not decipher. He did not need to-the shape and size of the crates were unmistakable.

"They are loading the Stingers," Sean said, and Job sat up straight in the driver's seat.

The forklift truck wheeled around the stern of the Hercules, then climbed the open ramp and disappeared into the cargo hold. Minutes later it reappeared, drove down the ramp, and wheeled into the hangar. Sean glanced at his watch. Only five minutes had passed since Alphonso had driven ahead to set up the mock attack.

"Come on," Sean muttered, and shook the Rolex on his wrist as if to speed up the mechanism.

Twice more they watched the loaded forklift truck make the journey from out of the hangar and up into the belly of the Hercules and return empty.

Then it turned aside and parked at the far end of the hangar. The driver in blaze orange overalls climbed down from his seat and sauntered back to stand with the two other stevedores at the tail ramp.

"Loading completed," Sean whispered again, and checked his watch. "Seven minutes to go."

Job unbuttoned the flap of his holster and drew the Tokarev 7.62-men pistol. He withdrew the magazine and checked the load, then slapped the magazine back into its recess in the pistol grip and returned the pistol to its holster.

Through the binoculars, Sean saw the men who had been working in the cargo hold come down the ramp in a group. Three of them were white men, two in flying overalls and the other in British regulation battle dress. Two pilots and one of the Royal Artillery instructors, Sean guessed.

"Start up!" he said, and Job kicked the engine to life.

We should try to knock out those floodlights," Sean muttered. We can't load the truck in the full glare, not with the Fifth Brigade breathing down our necks."

He was looking at his watch, tilting the dial to catch the glow of the instrument panel. "Okay, Job. Here we go!" he said, and the unimog pulled forward. In the rearview mirror, Sean watched the second truck, driven by Ferdinand, fall in behind them.

As they drove parallel to the main runway of the airfield, Sean was assailed with a thousand memories. It all seemed exactly as it had been ten years before. No hangars or buildings had been added. He picked out the windows of his old office in the main admin block beyond the control tower, and as Job slowed the truck and turned onto the short driveway that led from the highway to the base gates Sean almost expected to see the insignia Of the Ballantyne scouts between that of the Rhodesian Light Infanthe Rhodesian African Rifles on the arch above the gates.

try and the wire mesh gates, Job halted the truck under the lights facing and two guards came to each of the side windows of the cab. They carried their AK rifles at the trail and peered in at Job and Sean.

Job lowered the side window, exchanged the Passwords with the commander of the guard, and handed him the plastic-covered pass. The man took it to the guardhouse and made an entry in the register, then two of his men opened the main gates and he waved the convoy through.

Casually Sean returned the salute the guards threw him as he passed, and he told Job quietly, "Just like Cuthbert said, simple as a pimple. Now head straight down toward the admin block, but turn behind the control tower as you reach it."

Job drove slowly, obeying the on-base fifteen mph. speed limit, and Sean unbuttoned the flap of his webbing holster and drew his pistol. He withdrew the magazine, pressed two cartridges out into the palm of his hand, then reloaded them in reverse order and slapped the magazine back into its recess in the Pistol grip' Why do you alwaysjo that?" Job asked.

"Just for luck," lit said, as he saw Job watching.

"Does it work?7 Job wanted to know.

"Well, I'm still alive, aren't IT" Sean grinned tightly. He pulled back the slide to pump a round into the chamber of the pistol, engaged the safety, and slipped the weapon back into its holster.

"Pull in behind the number three hangar," he told Job, who swung the truck across the hard stand in the full glare of the overhead floodlights into the shadowy area at the back of the hangar, where they were screened from the control tower and the admin block.

As the truck stopped Sean jumped down and glanced around him quickly. The second Unimog pulled in beside the first, and armed men in battle dress swarmed out over the tailgates of both.

With three quick strides Sean reached the back door of the corrugated metal wall of the hangar. It was unlocked and he stepped through. Job followed him immediately.

The hangar was empty except for a single light aircraft parked in the far corner. The bleak concrete floor half the size of a football field was stained with old oil spills, and the steel girders of the roof arched high overhead. It was brightly lit.

The forklift driver and the stevedores in their blaze orange overalls were halfway across the floor, coming directly toward Sean in a group, chatting and smoking cigarettes in direct defiance of the huge prohibition notices in red letters on the hangar walls. They stopped in confusion as they saw Sean come through the door with the armed men behind him.

"Secure them," Sean ordered. As Job rounded them up swiftly, Sean looked beyond them.

Along the opposite wall of the hangar was a line of office cubicles with side walls of painted chip board and glass windows.

Through a lighted window, Sean saw the head and shoulders of one of the pilots wearing blue R.A.F overalls. He had his back toward Sean, and he was gesticulating as he spoke to somebody out of sight.

By now the stevedores were lying spreadeagled on the concrete r, each with a man standing over him and the muzzle of an AKM pressed into the back of his neck. It had been done swiftly and silently.

Pistol in hand, Sean ran to the door of the office cubicle and jerked it open. Two men, one of the pilots and the Royal Artillery captain, were lolling in a pair of dilapidated armchairs under a wall which was covered with a collection of ancient girlie pinups Sean guessed were relics of the bush war. The senior pilot sat on a cluttered desk in front of the lit window. All three of them stared at Sean in amazement.

"This is a commando raid," Sean told them quietly. "Stay exactly where you are."

On the floor between the Royal Artillery captain's feet stood a square black bag with substantial locks and a Royal Artillery decal stuck on the side.

The gunner dropped a hand on it protectively, and Sean knew immediately what the bag contained. The gunner was in his mid-twenties, well built and competent-looking. The name tag on his breast read "Carlyle." He had blue eyes and thick sandy-colored hair.

The senior pilot was a flight lieutenant, but he was middle-aged and overweight. His flight engineer was balding and nondescript, and there was real fear in his eyes as he stared at the pistol in Sean's hand. Sean anticipated no trouble from either of them, and he transferred his attention back to the gunner. He knew instinctively that this was the main man. He had the shoulders of a boxer, and he hunched them aggressively and scowled at Sean. He was young enough to be foolhardy, and Sean held his gaze and warned him.

"Forget it, Carlyle. Heroes are out of fashion."

"You are a South African," Carlyle growled as he recognized the accent.

"Whose side are you on?"

"My own," Sean told him. "Strictly self-employed." He glanced down at the black bag, and Carlyle pulled it an inch closer to him.

"Captain Carlyle, you are guilty of gross dereliction of duty," Sean told him coldly. The gunner reacted to the accusation with the indignation of a professional soldier. "What do you mean?"

"You should have posted guards while you were loading the missiles. You let us swan in here... " It distracted Carlyle as Sean had intended and gave Job the few seconds he needed to get his men into the office.

"Stand up," he ordered the airmen. They obeyed quickly, raising their hands, and Job hustled them out of the office.

Carlyle remained in the armchair with the bag between his legs.

"Stand up!" Sean repeated the order.

"Screw you, Boer."

Sean stepped up to him and seized the handle of the bag. Carlyle grabbed at it to prevent him and Sean brought the barrel of the pistol down across his knuckles. The skin split and Sean heard one of his fingers snap. He had misjudged it, he had not intended to inflict that kind of injury, but he kept his expression fierce.

"You have had your warning," he said. "My next offer is a bullet in the head."

Carlyle was holdinglis; injured hand to his chest, but his face was set and dark witk fury as he watched Sean place the bag on the desk.

"Keys!" Sean said.

"Get stuffed," said Carlyle. His voice was tight and hoarse with pain, and Sean saw that his broken finger was standing out at an odd angle and swelling like a purple balloon.

Job reappeared in the door of the office cubicle. "All secure," he said, and glanced at his wristwatch. "Four minutes to diversion."

"Give me your knife," Sean told him, and Job slid the trench knife from its sheath and passed it to Sean, hilt first.

Sean slashed the leather along the edge of the bag's steel frame, then pulled open the concertina hinge. There were half a dozen large looseleaf folders filling the interior of the bag, and Sean selected one. The file was covered in War Office red plastic and marked Top sEcRn. He glanced at the title page.

FWLD MAMAL FOR INFANMY USE OF TM SnNC&R mom GU

SURFACE-TO-AIR bUSS WE

"Jackpot." Sean turned the file so that Job could read it. It was a stupid thing to do. They were both distracted, turned toward the desk, studying the Me.

Carlyle launched himself out of the chair. He was young and fast.

The injury to his hand did not hamper him in the least, and he was across the narrow floor space before either of them could move to stop him. He dived headfirst into the frosted window "in the middle of the far wall. It exploded in a sparkling shower of glass, and Carlyle flipped over in midair like an acrobat.

Sean leaped to the empty window. Outside on the brightly fit tarmac of the hard stand, Carlyle rolled to his feet and ran. Job pushed Sean aside and stepped up to the window; lifting his AKM and taking deliberate care, he aimed at Carlyle's broad back as he sprinted across open ground toward the base of the control tower.

Sean grabbed the rifle and jerked the barrel down before Job could fire.

"What the bell are you doing?" Job snarled at him.

"You can't shoot him!"

"Why not?"

"He's an Englishman," Sean explained lamely. For a moment Job stared at him uncomprehendingly while Carlyle covered the last few yards and dived into the doorway at the base of the control tower.

"Englishman or Eskimo, we are going to have the whole Fifth Brigade down our throats in about ten seconds from now." Job was obviously trying to control his anger. "So what do we do now?19

"How long to diversion?" Sean asked to buy time. He had no answer to Job's question.

"Still four minutes," Job answered. "And it might as well be four hours."

As he said it, the sirens began to howl like wolves, bringing the base to full alert. Obviously Carlyle had reached the op room in the control tower. Sean stuck his head out of the shattered window and saw the guard turning out of the main gatehouse on the far side of the runway. They were dragging spike boards across the approaches to the gates to cut the tires of any escaping vehicle to ribbons, and Sean saw the barrels of the 12.7-men heavy machine guns depressing and traversing to cover the approaches. They were never going to get the trucks out that way.

"You should have let me sort him out," Job fumed. How could Sean explain it to him? Carlyle had been a brave man doing his duty, and although Sean's lines of loyalty to the old country had become blurred, he had the same blood in his veins. It would have been worse than murder to allow Job to shoot him down; it would have been a kind of fratricide.

Outside the hangar, the perimeter lights went on abruptly, flooding the high security fence around the runway and taxiway.

The entire base area was lit like daylight.

If the commandos of the Fifth Brigade were in barracks and asleep when the alarm sounded, how long would it take them to come into action? Sean tried to make an estimate and then, with self-disgust, realized he was simply avoiding facing up to his own indecision and lack of any plan. He had lost control, and it was all blowing up in his face.

In a few minutes from now, he and Job and the twenty Shanganes of his commando were going to be overwhelmed. The lucky ones among them would be killed outright and so avoid interrogation by the Zimbabwe Central Intelligence Organization.

"Think," he told himself desperately. Job was expectantly watching his face, waiting for orders. He had never seen Sean at a loss before. Ms unquestioning trust irritated Sean and made it even more difficult for him to reach any decision.

"What shall I tell the men?" Job prodded him.

"Get them-" Sean broke off as heavy gunfire broke out on the southern perimeter of the base on the opposite side to the hangar and out of their field of vision. Alphonso had been bright enough to realize that the plan lid been derailed, and he had started his attack a few minutes early

They heard the whoosh-boom! of RPG-7 rockets coming in through the perimeter wire and the duller thud-thud of mortar shells dropping in the base area. The 12.7-mm machine gun at the gates opened up, sluicing green tracer in pretty parabolas high into the darkness.

"How are we going to get out of here?" Job demanded.

Sean stared at him stupidly. He felt confused and uncertain.

anic welled up from deep inside him from a source he had never suspected existed. He didn't know what order to give next.

"Forget the bloody Stingers, just get us out of here." Job grabbed his arm and shook it. "Come on, Sean, snap out of it! Tell me what to do!"

"Forget the Stingers!" The words were like a slap across his face with an open hand. Sean blinked and shook his head. Forget the Stingers and forget Claudia Monterro. Without the missiles, Claudia would stay in the hole in the ground where Matatu had last seen her.

Sean glanced out of the open window again. He could see the gigantic tailplane of the Hercules and part of the fuselage; the rest of the aircraft was obscured by the angle of the hangar wall. The metallic silver skin of the Hercules glittered in the arc lights.

Sean clamped down hard on the hot effervescence of panic that threatened to swamp him and felt it subside. "The lights," he said.

He glanced around him quickly and spotted the fuse box on the office wall beside the door. He reached it in two strides and jerked open the cover.

The hangar had been built during Hitler's war, when the R.A.F had used Rhodesia as one of its overseas training centers. The electrical wiring dated from that era and utilized the old-fashioned ceramic type fuse holders.

"Give me an AK round," Sean snapped at Job. His voice was crisp and decisive, and Job obeyed instantly. He flicked one of the brass 7.62-men cartridges from the spare magazine in the pouch on his webbing.

Sean identified the main phase in the fuse box. The incoming current would be distributed directly from the transformer at the gates; if he could overload that, he would blow the flying fuse on the transformer box.

He puffed out the ceramic fuse holder and the hangar was plunged into darkness, but the light of the floods through the open window gave him sufficient light to see what he was doing. He jammed the AK cartridge into the lugs of the ceramic fuse holder and snapped at Job.

"Stand back!"

The last vestiges of his panic were gone. He felt cold and resilient as a knife blade. His mind was clear and he knew exactly what he was going to do.

He thrust the loaded fuse holder back into its slot. A blinding blue explosion of light like a photographer's flashbulb lit the darkened room, and Sean was sent flying backward. He crashed against the office wall, half stunned, shaking his head, his vision starred with memories of the blue flash.

It took him a few moments to realize that the floodlights beyond the windows were extinguished and except for the fiery bead necklaces of tracer flying across the dark sky and the brief glare of exploding grenades and rockets, the base was in darkness.

"Get the men into the Hercules," he shouted.

Job was just a dark shadow behind the whirling Catherine wheels of fire that still disturbed his vision. "What? I don't understand," he stammered.

"We are getting out in the aircraft." Sean grabbed his shoulder and thrust him toward the door. "Get Ferdinand and his boys on board and move your arse."

Job ran, and Sean blundered blindly after him. His vision was returning swiftly. He turned toward the paler square of light that was the hangar doors.

"What about the prisoners?" Job called from the dark depths of the hangar.

"Turn them loose," Sean yelled back, and ran for the doors.

He was trying to recall everything he knew about the Hercules.

Although Sean had almost five thousand hours of flying time on multi engine types, he had never flown a Hercules or any other four-engined aircraft. He had, however, spent days on the flight deck of one while acting as an advisor to the South African Defense Force on antiterrorist opsin Angola and Namibia back in 1983. With a pilot's interest and keen eye, he had studied the pilot's procedures and discussed them with him in detail. He remembered what the man had told him: "She's a lamb. I wish my wife was so docile."

At the hangar door, Sean stopped suddenly. "Matatu is right, you're getting old, Courtney," he castigated himself, and spun around. He charged back into the dark hangar and almost collided with Job.

"Where you going?"

"I forgot the bag!" Sean yelled. "Get the men on board! "of The gunner's bag was on the desk where Sean had left it. He stuffed it under his arm and ran back to where Job was waiting for him at the foot of the Hercules" loading ramp.

"All the men are on board," he greeted Sean. "You should have let me keep the pilot."

"We didn't have time to convince him to cooperate," Sean snapped. "The poor bastard was in a blue funk."

"Are you going to fly?"

"Sure, unless you want a shot at it."

"Hey, Sean, have you ever flown one of these things?"

"There is a first time for everything." Sean pointed forward.

"Come on, help me clear the chocks."

They ran forward and dragged the wheel chocks clear. Then Sean led the way up the steep angle of the ramp and stopped at the top.

"Here is the control for the ramp." He showed Job the rocker switch in the side wall of the fuselage. "Move it to the "up" position when I have got the first engine started and the red light goes on in that panel. It will switch to green when the ramp is up and locked."

Sean left him and ran down the length of the Hercules" body.

The Shanganes were milling about uncertainly in the darkness.

"Ferdinand!" Sean shouted. "Get them to sit in the side benches and show them how to strap in."

Sean groped his way toward the flight deck. He found the wooden missile cases loaded over the Hercules" center of gravity between the wings. They were piled against the fuselage on wooden pallets and covered with heavy cargo netting. He eased past them and reached the door to the flight deck. It was unlocked, and he burst through it and dumped the heavy gunner's bag into the map bin under the flight engineer's steel table. Through the cockpit windows, he saw that the mock attack on the south perimeter was still in full swing, but that the volume of fire from within the base was now much heavier than from the raiders out in the bush beyond the wire.

"The Fifth Brigade has woken up," Sean muttered. He climbed into the left-hand seat and switched on the lights of the Hercules" instrument panel. The vast array of glowing dials and switches was intimidating and confusing, but Sean would not allow himself to be daunted.

It was a lot simpler than starting the old Baron. He merely switched on and ran a finger along the rows of circuit breakers to ensure that they were all in.

"The hell with start-up checks," he said and hit the start switch for the number one engine. The starter motor whined and he watched the needle creep around the rev counter.

"Come on!" he pleaded. As revolutions touched 10 percent the aircraft automatically primed her cornbusion chamber with fuel and the engine ignited. He wound her up to 70 percent of power while he adjusted the earphones of the radio set on his head.

"Job, do you read?"

"Loud and clear, man."

"Get the ramp up."

"It's on its way."

Sean waited impatiently for the ramp warning lamp on the panel to switch from red to green. The moment it did so, he kicked off the wheel brakes and the Hercules rolled ponderously forward.

He was taxiing on one engine and had to use gross opposite rudder to meet the asymmetrical thrust. However, as he followed the pale strip of the taxiway, he worked on the other three engines and one after the other coaxed them to life, adjusting the controls as the power thrust altered.

"No wind," he muttered. "Makes no difference which direction for takeoff."

The main runway lad been extended to accommodate the excessive takeoff and landing requirements of modern jet fighters. However, the Hercules was STOL-short, takeoff and landing. It required only a fraction of the available distance, and Sean steered her for the main intersection directly in front of the control tower.

So far the Hercules had drawn no fire. The heavy machine guns at the gates were still firing wildly into the night sky. Poor fire control was always one of the problems with African troops, who in all other respects made excellent soldiers.

On the other hand, at the southern perimeter the crack veterans of the Fifth and Third Brigades were showing what well-trained African troops were capable of Their fire was going in deadly professional sheets, and already they had almost entirely extinguished Alphonso's initial onslaught. Apart from a few desultory mortar shells, there was no longer any return fire from the dark sea of bush and forest beyond the base security fence.

It would only be a short time before Carlyle managed fully to alert the garrison to the enemy within and the flight controllers in the blacked-out tower realized there was an unauthorized takeoff in progress.

Sean was taxiing the Hercules at a reckless speed, so fast she was already developing lift and wanting to fly. He knew that if he came off the concrete taxiway onto the grass, there was a chance of bellying her or getting her stuck, but not as good a chance as having her shot up by the 12.7-men if he delayed the takeoff a moment longer than was necessary.

"Job," he said over the intercom, "I'm going to give you cabin lights so you can make sure the lads are seated and strapped in.

Takeoff in forty seconds."

He switched on the cabin lights to prevent chaos in the dark belly of the fuselage, and then flicked his headset to the control tower frequency of 118.6 megahertz.

They were calling him stridently. "Air Force Hercules Victor Sierra Whisky. State your intentions. I say again, Air Force Hercules-"

"This is Air Force Hercules Victor Sierra Whisky," Sean replied. "Request taxi clearance to avoid hostile ground fire."

"Sierra Whisky, say again. What are your intentions?"

"Tower, this is Sierra Whisky. Request..." Sean mumbled and slurred his transmission deliberately, forcing the tower to ask for a further repetition. He was watching his engine temperature gauges anxiously as the needles crept up infinitely slowly toward the green.

"Tower, I am having difficulty reading your transmission," he stalled them. "Please repeat your clearance."

Behind him Job barged open the door to the flight deck. "The men are strapped in ready for takeoff," he called.

"Get into the right-hand seat and strap in," Sean ordered without looking around. The engine temperature gauge needles were touching the bottom of the green. The main runway was coming up fast. Sean toed the wheel brakes, slowing for the turn and lineup.

"Air Force Hercules. You are not cleared to taxi or line UP.

Repeat, you have no clearance from tower. Discontinue immediately and take first left. Return to your holding area. I repeat, return to your holding area. "Up yours, mate!" Sean muttered as he pulled on ten degrees of flap and revolved the trim wheel to slightly tail heavy.

"Air Force Hercules. Stop immediately or we will fire upon you. and swung the monstrous Sean switched on the landing lights onto the main runway. She handled as lightly as his little aircraft twin Beechcraft.

"You are a pussycat, darling." He'knew that, like a woman, an aircraft always responded to loving flattery. He advanced the bank of throttle controls smoothly, and at that moment the heavy machine gun beyond the tower opened up on them.

However, the Hercules was accelerating strongly and the gunner had not learned the art of forward allowance. He was shooting at the place where the aircraft had been seconds before, and perhaps nd.

his nerves were still rattling for his fire was high as well as behi The first long burst of tracer curved away over the high tail fin.

"That cat needs shooting lessons," Job remarked calmly. Sean always wondered if Job's cool and phlegmatic behavior under fire was put on.

The next burst was low and ahead; the tracer splashed across the concrete runway just under the Hercules" nose. "But he learns fast," Job grunted a reluctant admission.

Sean was leaning forward slightly in the seat, his right hand holding the bank of quadruple throttles fully open, his left feeling the control wheel for signs of life, watching the airspeed needle revolve sedately around the dial.

"Here comes your friend," Job said, and pointed out of the side panel of the canopy. Sean glanced around swiftly.

An open Land-Rover was tearing wildly across the grass verge alongside the main runway, its headlights cutting crazy patterns in the darkness as it bounced over the uneven ground. It was attempt. to cut them off, 4Pd Sean could just make out the features of mg ood in the back of the speeding vehicle.

the man who st "He doesn't give up easily, does he?" Sean remarked, and gave his attention back to the Hercules.

Carlyle must have commandeered one of the guard Landits black driver. He was standing in the open back, Rovers and clinging to the mounting of the RPD machine gun, and his face was pale and contorted in the reflection of the Hercules" landing lights as he egged on the driver to greater speed. He really taking it to heart." Job leaned forward to watch with interest as Carlyle swung the machine gun in its mountings, aiming up at the cockpit of the Hercules.

The driver swung the Land-Rover over on two wheels until it was tearing along beside the huge rolling aircraft only fifty yards away, almost level with the wingtip.

"Hey, man." Job shook his head. "He's aiming at us personally." Carlyle braced himself behind the gun, and the muzzle flashes blinked rapidly at them. Bullets raked the Perspex canopy, starring it with silver dollars, and both of them ducked instinctively as shot flew past their heads.

"He's a better shot than the other cat," Job murmured. With the tip of his finger he touched the drop of blood on his cheek where a splinter had cut him.

Sean felt the controls come to life in his hand as the Hercules approached flying speed and the wings developed lift. "Come on, pussycat," he murmured. Carlyle fired another burst at the same moment the Land-Rover hit a concrete culvert and bounced wildly, throwing his fire high and wild. He steadied himself and lined up to fire again.

"He's fast becoming my least favorite cartoon character." Without flinching Job watched him take aim. "Okay, here it comes!"

From the off side the heavy machine gun at the gates fired again, and a stream of 12.7-men bullets skimmed the belly of the Hercules, then flew on to pour into the racing Land-Rover beyond.

They tore the front wheels off her and she somersaulted forward, rolling end over end in a cloud of dust. From the corner of his eye, Sean saw Carlyle's body thrown high and clear.

"And so we say farewell to one of the last authentic heroes," he intoned gravely, and eased back the control column of the Hercures.

The great aircraft responded willingly, pointing her nose upward. He switched off the landing and cabin fights, plunging the machine into darkness so she no longer offered a target to the ground gunners. He hit the toggle to raise the landing gear and dumped flap. Immediately the airspeed mounted, and he put down one wing and went into a tight climbing turn.

Another burst of tracer followed them, floating up slowly, accelerating as it approached, until it sped past their wingtip. Sean met the turn and banked the opposite way, weaving out of range.

"You want to make me seasick?" Job asked. Sean ignored him as he checked the engine dials for possible damage.

It seemed impossible that the enormous target offered by the Hercules had received only a single burst of fire out of all the hundreds of rounds fired at it, but the needles on the dials all registered normal and responded instantly as he eased back On the boost and set revolutions for climb at five hundred feet a minute.

However, the slipstream was whistling through the bullet holes in the canopy, ruffling Sean's hair and making conversation difficult, so that he had to raise his voice as he told Job, "Go back and see if anyone was hit, then do a visual check for damage in the hold."

The lights of Umtali town were off to the south, and beyond them Sean could just make out the loom Of mountains- He knew that the highest peak in the chain was 8,5oo feet above sea level, s I o he allowed a wide separation and leveled out at 10,000 feet, then checked his heading.

Up to now, he had not thought about his navigation and was unsure of the bearings for a return to the Serra de Gorongosa fines.

wont find them marked on any map." He grinned. "But we'll try 030 magnetic." And he banked the Hercules onto that heading.

The adrenaline was still thick in his blood, the rapture of fear swirling him aloft on eagles" wings. He laughed again, just a little shakily, and savored the glorious thrill of it while it lasted.

The dark mountaintops slid away beneath him, just visible in the starlight like the shape of whales deep in an Arctic sea. He picked out the occasional pinprick of light in the valleys, an isolated farm or mission station or peasant hut, and then, as he crossed the frontier into Mozambique, there was nothing but darkness ahead.

and it seemed symbolic "Nothing but darkness," he repeated, and prophetic. They were going back into the wasteland.

Sean eased back on power and began a gradual descent toward the lowland forests. Now that the mountain peaks were behind them, he didn't want to stay up high, offering an easy target for the attack radar of a pursuing MiG fighter or an intercepting Hind gunship.

Job came back and lo*ed the door of the flight deck.

"Any (image?" Sean Aked.

Job chuckled. "Tht floor of the cargo hold is ankle-deep in puke.

Those Shanianes don't fancy your flying, man, they are upchucking in all directions."

"Charming." Sean groped in the side packet of the pilot's seat and came up with a packet of Dutch cigars, property of the R.A.F pilot.

"Well, look what we have here." He tossed one to Job and they lit up and smoked contentedly for a few minutes before Job asked, "How long before the MiGs catch up with us?"

Sean shook his head. "They are based in Harare. I don't think they can catch us even if they scramble immediately. No, I'm not worried about the MiGs, but the Hinds are another story."

They were silent again, watching the ripe celestial fruit of the stars that from the dark flight deck seemed close enough to pluck.

"Are you ready to answer an embarrassing question?" Job broke the silence.

"Fire away-"

"You got us up here. How the hell are you going to get us down again.

Sean blew a smoke ring that was instantly obliterated by the slipstream through the bullet holes in the canopy.

"Interesting question," he conceded. "I'll let you know when I have an answer myself. In the meantime, just worry about finding the Renamo lines in general and China's headquarters in particular.

Five hundred feet above the tops of the forest trees, Sean leveled the Hercules and, reading the throttle and pitch settings from the instructions engraved on the instrument panel, set her up for endurance flying.

"Another two hours before it will be light enough to even start looking for an emergency landing field," he told Job. "In the meantime, we can try to find the Pungwe River." An hour later they spotted a gleam of water in the black carpet of forest ahead, and seconds later the stars were reflected from a large body of dark water directly below them.

"I'm going back to check it," Sean warned Job. He put the Hercules into an easy turn and watched the gyro compass on the panel in front of him rotate through 180 degrees before leveling out again.

"Landing lights on," he murmured and flipped the switch. The tops of the trees below them were fit by the powerful lamps, and they saw the river, a dark serpent winding away into the night.

Sean threw the Hercules into a hard right-hand turn and then leveled out, flying directly along the course of the river.

"Looks like it," he grunted, and switched off the landing fights.

"But even if it is the right river, we won't be able to judge whether we are upstream or downstream of the fines until sunrise."

"So what do we do?"

"We fly a holding pattern," Sean explained, and banked the Hercules into the first of a monotonous series of figure eights.

Around and around they cruised, five hundred feet above the treetops, crossing and recrossing the dark river at the same point, marking time, waiting for the dawn.

"Sitting duck for a Hind," Job remarked once.

"Don't wish it on us." Sean frowned at him. "If you have nothing else useful to do, get the gunner's bag. It's in the map bin."

Job lugged the bag to the front of the cabin and set it beside his seat, then settled himself comfortably.

"Read to me," Sean instructed. "Find something in there to amuse me and pass the time."

Job brought out the red plastic-covered top-secret folders one at time and thumbed through them, reading out the titles and a chapter headings from each index page.

The first three files were all field manuals for the Stinger SAM Systems, covering their deployment in every conceivable situation I I from the decks of ships at sea to their use by infantry in every he 1[i missile's performance figures in all conditions from tropical jungle climatic zone on the globe, setting out in tables and graphs t to high Arctic.

"All you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask," Job observed, and picked out the fourth manual from the bag.

STINGER GUIDED MISSILE SYSTEM TARGET SELECTION AND RULES OF

ENGAGEMENT OPERATIONAL REPORTS

Job read aloud, then turned to the index and chapter headings.

I. Falkland Islands 2. Arabian Gulf. "Sea of Hormuz" 3. Grenada landings 4. Angola Unita 5. Afghanistan Job read it out, and Sean exclaimed, "Afghanistan! See if they give us anything about the l*nd."

Job set the bulky foe on his lap and adjusted the beam of the reading lamp fromiti recess in the cabin roof above his head. He paged through the manual.

"Here we go! "Afghanistan,"" he read. ""Helicopter Types."

"Find the Hind!" Sean ordered impatiently.

"Soviet Mil Design Bureau Types, NATO Designation "H.""

"That's it," Sean encouraged him. "Look for the Hind."

aplite. Hound. Hook. Hip. Haze. Havoc "Hare," said Job. "H here it is. Hind."

"Give me the gen," Sean ordered, and Job read aloud.

This flying piece of artillery ordnance, nicknamed by the Soviets Sturmovich (or hunchback), known to NATO as Hind and to the Afghan rebels and many others who have encountered it in the field as the "flying death," has gained a formidable reputation which is perhaps not fully justified.

Sean interrupted fervently, "Brother, I hope you know what you're talking about."

Job went on.

1. Impaired maneuverability, hovering, and rate-of-climb characteristics as a consequence of the mass of its armor plating.

2. A limited range of 240 nautical miles fully loaded, again as a consequence of its armor weight.

3. A low max. speed of 157 knots and cruise speed of 147 knots.

4. Very high service and ground maintenance requirements.

"That's interesting," Sean cut in. "Even this big baby"-he patted the Hercules" control column-"is faster than a Hind. I'll remember that if we meet one."

"Do you want me to read to you?" Job asked. "If so, then shut up and listen."

"My apologies, go ahead."

It is estimated that several hundred machines of this type have been employed in Afghanistan. Generally they have met with great success against the rebels, although in excess of 150 have been destroyed by rebel troops armed with the Stinger SAM.

These figures alone prove that the Hind can be effectively engaged by the Stinger SAM System, employing the tactics set out in the following chapters.

Job read on, giving the engine type and performance, the weapons, and other statistics until at last Sean stopped him.

"Hold on, Job!" Sean pointed toward the east. "It is getting light."

The sky was pale enough to form a distinct horizon where it met the black landmass.

"Put the book away and go call Ferdinand up here. See if he can recognize where we are and show us the way home."

A strong odor of vomit surrounded Ferdinand as he stumbled onto the flight deck, and the front of his tunic was stained. He leaned on the back of the pilot's seat for support, and Sean moved to put as much distance between them as possible.

"Look out there, Ferdinand." Sean gesticulated through the bullet-punctured canopy. "Do you see anything you recognize The Shangane peered dubiously around him, muttering 9100mfly. Suddenly his expression cleared and lightened. "Those hills."

He pointed out the side window. "Yes, I know them. The river comes out between them at a waterfall."

"Which way is the camp?"

"That way, far that way."

"How far?"

"Two full days" march."

"Seventy nautical miles, Sean translated time into distance.

We aren't too far out. Thank you, Ferdinand." Sean broke out of the monotonous figure-eight pattern and leveled the Hercules" gigantic wings.

Still low against the forest, he flew westward, the direction in which Ferdinand had pointed, while behind them the dawn came on apace, turning the eastern sky a hazy carmine. They chased the shades of night as they fled across the dark hills.

Sean aimed the nose of the Hercules at the gap Ferdinand had pointed out and checked his wristwatch against the panel clock.

"Time for News Desk on the Africa Service of the BBC," he said, and fiddled with the radio controls. He picked up the familiar signature tune on 15,400 megahertz.

"This is the BBC. Here again are the news headlines. In the United States, Governor Michael Dukakis has convincingly carried the state of New York against Jesse Jackson in his bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Israeli troops have shot dead two more protesters in the occupied Gaza Strip. One hundred and twenty passengers have died in an airline crash in the Philippines. Renamo rebels have high jacked an R.A.F Hercules transport from a ZimbabFean Air Force base near the town of Umtali. They have flown' it into Mozambique, where it is being pursued by aircraft " oF the Zimbabwean and Mozambican air forces. A spokesman said that both President Mugabe and President Chissano have given orders that the aircraft, which has no hostages on board but which contains sophisticated modern weapons intended for use against the rebels, is to be destroyed at all costs."

Sean switched off the set and smiled across at Job. "You never thought you'd make the news headlines, did you?"

"I can do without the fame," Job admitted. "Did you get the bit about being pursued and destroyed at all costs?"

The Hercules was fast approaching the gap in the fine of hills The light had strengthened so that Sean could make out the pearly gleam in the throat of the pass where the river tumbled down over wet black rock.

"Incoming!" Job yelled suddenly. "One o'clock low!"

With his extraordinary eyesight, he had picked it up an instant before Sean did. The Hind had been lying in ambush, squatting like some monstrous insect in a hidden clearing in the forest, guarding the entrance to the river pass.

As Sean saw it, he clearly understood the tactics Frelimo had used to cut him off from the Renamo lines. They would have sent the full squadron of Hinds in during the night, as soon as they guessed where he was headed.

Operating at the limits of their range, the Hinds would have settled in a defensive line, landing to conserve fuel, hiding in the forest and sweeping with their pulse radars, listening in the silence for the sound of the Hercules" engines.

Almost certainly they had guessed he would use the river as a navigational landmark. There would probably be other gunships waiting further upstream, forming an intercepting ring around the Renamo lines, but, erring too far south, Sean had run headlong into this one.

It leaped out of the forest, rising vertically on the silver blur of its rotor, the deformed nose drooping like a minotaur lowering its head to charge, blotched with leprous camouflage, obscenely ugly and deadly.

It was still below them but coming up swiftly, swelling in size as they converged. Within moments its Gatling cannon would bear; already it was training upward. Sean reacted without thought.

He rammed all four throttle controls fully open, and the great turbos screeched as he thrust the nose down, diving straight at the helicopter.

He saw the rockets leaving the weapon pods under the Hind's wings, each one a black dot in the center of a white wreath of smoke as it dropped clear. He remembered the statistics Job had read him only minutes before. The Hind carried two AT-2 Swatter imssiles and four 57-men rocket pods.

He dived the Hercules through the barrage of rockets. They flashed past his head, a storm of smoke and death, and the Hind was only two hundred meters ahead, still rising to meet him, firing rockets at point-blank range but not allowing for his violent maneuver.

"Hold on!" Sean shouted at Job. "I'm going to ram the bastard."

The killing rage was on him, sweet and hot in his blood. There was no fear at all, just the marvelous urge to destroy.

At the last moment, the pilot of the Hind guessed his intention.

They were so close that through the canopy Sean could clearly make out his features below the helmet. The Russian's face was doughy white and his mouth a shocking red slash like an open wound. He flicked the Hind over on its side, almost inverting it completely, closing down his collective so the gunship fell like a lead weight, trying to duck under the Hercules" outspread pinions. Got you, you son of a bitch!" Sean exulted, and the Hercules" wing hit the tail of the gunship. The shock of impact threw Sean against his shoulder straps, and the Hercules shuddered and lurched. The airspeed was knocked off her and she quivered on the edge of the stall, only two hundred feet above the forest top.

"Come on, pussycat," Sean whispered like a lover. He was babying the controls, coaxing her with gentle fingers. Her damaged wing was down, tatters of torn metal hanging from it, whipping and banging in the slipstream, and the forest tops reached up like the talons of a predator to claw them out of the sky.

"Fly for me, darling," Sean whispered, and the four engines, howling with the effort, held her up, then gradually lifted her clear.

The needle of the rate-of-climb indicator rose jerkily; they were climbing at two hundred feet a minute.

"Where's the Hind?" Sean yelled at Job.

"She must be down," Job called back, both of them screaming at each other with terror and excitement and the triumph of it.

"Nothing could take a hit like that." Then his voice changed.

"No, there she is, she's still flying. My God, will you look at that mother?"

The Hind was hard hit, skittering out to one side, the tail rotor and rudder torn, almost completely gone. Obviously her pilot was fighting for her life as she lurched and rolled and wallowed about the sky.

"I don't believe ill She's still shooting at us!" Job cried, and a smoking rocket trail blazed across their nose.

"She's steadying." Job was watching her through the side window. "She's coming round, she's after us again."

Sean met the Hercules'climb and aimed for the pass through the hills. The rocky cliffs seemed to brush their wingtips, and the foaming white waterfall flashed beneath them.

"He has fired a missile." As Job called the warning, the pass through the hills opened up ahead of them, and Sean lifted the Hercules" maimed wing high in a maximum-rate turn.

The huge aircraft hugged the cliff face, turning the corner just as the Swatter missile locked onto the infrared emissions of her exhausts and sped down the gut of the pass. The Hercules cut the turn so finely that Sean had to use full power to hold the nose level, j; and looking upward through the skylight of the canopy, he felt as ! though he could have reached out and touched the rock face as the Hercules stood on one wmgt1p. The missile tried to follow her around, but at the critical instant the Hercules disappeared from its line of sight and the rocky corner blocked the infrared emissions of her exhausts.

The missile crashed into the cliff face, gouging out a great fall of rock and filling the pass behind the Hercules with dust and smoke.

Sean brought the Hercules back on an even keel once again, gentling her, favoring her damaged wing.

"Any sign of the Hind?"

"No-" Job broke off as he saw the dread shape materialize through the dust and smoke. "She's there, she's still coming!"

The entire rear section of the Hind's fuselage was twisted askew, and half her rudder was missing. She staggered and lurched through the air, only barely under control and falling rapidly behind the fleeing Hercules. The pilot was a brave man, serving her, keeping her in action to the end.

"WS-fired again!" Job cried as he saw the missile drop from under the stubby wing roots and boost toward them on a tail of smoke.

"She's down!" Job watched the tail rotor of the gunship break away and spiral upward while the body dropped like a spine-shot buffalo bull and hit the trees, breaking up in a tall burst of flame and smoke.

"Break right!" Job called desperately. Although the Hind was dead, her terrible offspring blazed across the sky, bearing down on them mercilessly.

Sean put the Hercules over as hard as she would go. The missile almost missed the turn and went skid din2 wide in overshoot, but it corrected itself and came around hard, spinning out a long billow of silver smoke behind it, and fastened on the starboard number two motor.

For a moment, they were blinded as the smoke of the explosion swept over the canopy and was as suddenly swept away. The Hercules convulsed as though in agony. The missile blast threw her wing up, miraculously knocking her back onto an even keel, and adroitly Sean held her there.

He looked across in horror at the damage. The number two engine was gone, blown out of its mountings, leaving a terrible gaping wound in the leading edge of the wing. It was a mortal blow. In her death throes, the Hercules careered across the sky, dragged around by the asymmetrical thrust of her five engines, the damaged wing flexing and beginning to fold backward.

Sean eased back the throttles, trying to relieve the strain and balance the thrust. He looked ahead, and there was the river, wide and shallow and tranquil above the turmoil of the falls. The first rays of the sun were buttering the tops of the trees on either bank and the crocodiles lay black on the white sandbanks.

Sean flipped on the intercom and spoke over the loudspeakers into the cargo hold. "Hold on! We are going to hit hard!" he said in Shangane, and pulled his own harness adjustment in tighter.

The Hercules lumbered down heavily, both wings so ( am aged that Sean was amazed that she was still airborne. "Too fast," he muttered. She was dropping like an express elevator. They would hit the trees short of the river. He braced himself for losing a wing and the accompanying disruption of air flow, and gingerly pulled on full flap to slow her down.

Far from destroying herself, the Hercules responded gratefully to the additional lift and floated in with a semblance of her old elegance. She skimmed the treetops on the riverbank and Sean switched off the fuel pumps, mains, and magnetos to prevent a fire.

He held the nose high, bleeding off speed, and the needle on the airspeed indicator wound back sharply. The stall warning buzzer sounded, then the deafening klaxon of the landing gear chimed in, trying to warn him that his wheels were stiff up.

The controls went sloppy as the Hercules approached a stall, but they were out in the center of the river, twenty feet up and dropping fast. The crocodiles slid off the sandbar directly ahead, chummg the green water in panic, and Sean kept feeling the control column back and back, fending her off until the last possible moment.

He felt the tail touch the water. The airspeed indicator was right down to forty knots. Mie Hercules stalled and belly-flopped into the river. A solid green wave broke over the nose and washed the canopy, spurting in1hrough the bullet holes.

Both Sean and Job were flung violently forward against their shoulder harnesses, then the Hercules bobbed up and surfed on her belly, slowing down and turning to stop broadside to the current.

"Are you all right?" Sean barked at Job. In reply, Job unbuckled his harness and leaped out of the copilot's seat.

The deck was canted under Sean's feet as he stood up. Through the canopy he saw that the Hercules was floating aimlessly down on the current. Her empty fuel tanks and the air trapped in the fuselage were keeping her afloat.

"Come on!" He led Job back into the main hold and saw at a glance that the cases of missiles were still secured in their heavy cargo nets.

The Shanganes were in a panic, at least two of them injured, writhing and moaning in the puddles of drying vomit on the deck, one with a sharp, jagged end of bone protruding through the flesh of his broken arm.

Sean spun the locking wheel on the emergency hatch and kicked it outward. Immediately the nylon escape chute inflated and popped out like a drunkard's yellow tongue to flop onto the surface of the water below.

Sean leaned out of the open hatch. They were drifting toward another sandbar, and he judged that the water under their keel was only shoulder deep, for he could see the bottom clearly.

"Ferdinand." Sean picked him out of the mob of mflhng Shanganes. "This way, get them out!" He saw Ferdinand sober and lash out at the panic-stricken troopers around him, driving them toward the hatch.

"Show them how it's done," Sean ordered Job. "And once you are down, get them to haul the hull onto the sandbar."

Job folded his arms over his chest and jumped feet first onto the chute. He shot down into the water, then floundered to his feet.

The water came up to his armpits. immediately he waded to the Hercules" side and threw his whole weight against it.

One at a time, the uninjured Shanganes followed him down the chute, and at the bottom Job took charge of them. Sean shoved the last trooper through the hatch, then leaped out himself.

low blood warm. As soon as The water was just a few degrees be he surfaced he saw that all the men were straining against the Hercules'floating carcass and slowly moving her across the flow of the river. He added his own weight to theirs, and gradually the bottom shelved beneath their feet and the water dropped to the level of their waists.

The belly of the Hercules ran aground, and she settled heavily as the fuselage flooded. The men dragged themselves onto the sandbar and collapsed in sodden heaps, their expressions dull and bovine from the aftereffects of terror and exertion.

Sean looked around him, trying to assess their position and plan his priorities. The Hercules was stranded high enough to ensure that only the lower part of the fuselage was flooded and that the iles would not be submerged and have their delicate electronic circuitry ruined.

The current had swept them in under the sheer riverbank, against which the summer floods had piled dead trees and drift wood high. The sandbar was merely a narrow strip below the bank.

"We must move fast," Sean told Job. "We can expect that the Hind was able to transmit a signal to the rest of the squadron, and they'll come looking for us."

"What do you want to do first?"

"Unload the Stingers," Sean answered promptly. "Get them busy." Once Sean climbed aboard again, he found that the hydraulic rams on the cargo door were still operating off the batteries and he lowered the ramp.

The weight of each wooden case was stenciled on it, 152 pounds.

"They are light, two men to a case," Sean ordered, and he and Job rifted them onto the shoulders of each pair as they stepped forward soon as they received it, they trotted down the ramp onto the sandbar and up the bank into the trees. Ferdinand showed them where to stash them and cover them with driftwood.

It took less than twenty minutes to unload the cargo, but every minute Sean was in a ferment of impatience and anxiety. As the last case was carried ashore, he hurried out onto the ramp and peered up at the sky, expecting to hear the approaching whine of rotors and Isotov turbos.

"Our luck isn't going to last," he told Job. "We must get rid of the Hercules."

"What are you going to do, swallow it or bury it?" Job asked sarcastically.

Against the forward bulkhead of the Hercules" hold was a 120ton loading winch, used to drag cargo aboard. Under Sean's instruction four Shanganes ran out the winch cable and used the Hercules" inflatable life raft to take the end of it across the river and shackle it to a tree on the far bank.

While they were doing this, Sean and Job searched the Hercules and stripped it of everykitern of useful equipment, from the first aid kit to the stores of coffee and sugar in the tiny forward galley. With satisfaction, Semi saw that the tropical first aid box was substantial and contained a good supply of malarial prophylactics and antibiotics. He sent it ashore with one of the Shanganes and ran back to the loading ramp.

The dinghy was returning, and still there was no sound or sight of marauding Hind gunships. It was too good to bear thinking about.

"Get everybody ashore," Sean told Job, and went to the winch controls. As he engaged the clutch, the steel cable came up taut and the Hercules" hull, which was heavily beached on the sandbar, if lurched and began to swing. He kept the winch running, and the sand gritted and scraped under her belly as she was dragged into deeper water.

As soon as she was afloat, Sean half closed the ramp to prevent her flooding too rapidly and winched her into the middle of the river, where the current was swiftest. As soon as she took the current and began to drift downstream, Sean grabbed the bolt cutters from their rack on the bulkhead and sheared the cable. The Hercules floated free.

On impulse Sean cut a four-foot length from the end of the severed winch cable. The stainless steel strands immediately began to unravel of their own accord. He rolled three of the separate strands into a tight loop and slipped the roll into his back pocket.

Job would fit hardwood buttons to the strands. The garroting wire was one of the Scouts" favorite clandestine weapons, and Sean had felt half naked since he had lost his in the pack he had dropped down the cliff. He transferred his full attention back to the Hercures.

"The fuel tanks are almost empty," he murmured as he watched her progress downstream. "She should float until she reaches the falls." He stayed on board while at least two miles of riverbank went by.

In the meantime he used the bolt cutters to sever the hydraulic pipes and fuel leads that ran along the roof of the cargo hold. A mixture of hydraulic fluid and Avtur dribbled and spurted and puddled onto the floor of the hold. Satisfied at last that he had done everything possible to throw off the pursuit, he balanced in the open escape hatch and pulled the pin from the phosphorus grenade he had commandeered from Ferdinand.

"Thanks, old girl," he spoke aloud to the Hercules. "You have been a darling. The least I can offer you is a Viking's funeral." He rolled the grenade down the deck of the hold, then leaped out of the hatch and hit the water. He came up swimming, reaching out in a full overarm crawl with the image in his mind of those fat black crocodiles he had seen on the sandbar.

Behind him he heard the muffled bump of the exploding grenade, but he never paused or looked back until he felt ground under his feet. By then the Hercules was a quarter of a mile downstream, burning furiously but still afloat. Black, oily smoke boiled up into the clear morning sky.

Sean waded the last few yards to the steep bank and crawled up it on hands and knees. While he sat there panting and gulping for breath, he heard the familiar and by now well -hated sound of rotors and Isotov turbo engines coming in fast. The smoke of the burning Hercules was a beacon the Hinds would have spotted from fifty miles out.

Sean took a handful of mud from the bank on which he sat and smeared his bare arms and face. He crawled under a dense bush on the bank and watched the Hind come sweeping in over the treetops, banking in a wide circle around the burning hulk of the Hercules and then hovering like an evil vampire two hundred feet above it.

The flames reached one of the fuel tanks and the Hercules exploded in a dragon's breath, scattering pieces of itself across the river, the flames hissing into steam as they hit the water. The Hind hung over the river for almost five minutes, perhaps searching for survivors. Then abruptly it rose high, turned its nose southward, and dwindled to a speck against the blue.

"Limited range and endurance, like the man said." Sean stood up from his hiding place. "Now go home like a good little Russkie and report the target destroyed. Go tell Bobby Mugabe he doesn't have to worry about his precious Stingers falling into the wrong hands."

He reached into his top pocket and brought out the packet of Dutch cigars. The cardboard disintegrated in his hands, and the leaf had dissolved into a soggy porridge. He tossed it into the river.

"Time I gave up anyway," he sighed, and trudged along the bank, heading upstream.

Job was working on the two injured troopers. "This one has got a nice set of cracked ribs and a broken collarbone." Job finished the strapping and then indicated the other patient. "I left this one for you."

"Appreciate it," Sean grunted, and examined the broken arm.

"It's a bloody mess."

"Nice adjective," Job agreed. Two inches of the shattered humerus protruded from dark bruises and blood clots. A buzzing swarm of metallic blij- flies were circling the clots, and Sean brushed them away.

What have you "done so far?"

"Given him a handful of painkillers from the med box."

"That should stun an ox." Sean nodded. "Get me a piece of nylon fine and two of the strongest Shanganes."

The arm had shortened dramatically, and Sean had to get the ends of the broken bone to meet again. He looped the nylon rope around the trooper's wrist and gave the ends to the Shangane strongmen.

"When I say pull, you pull, understand?" he ordered. "Okay, Job, hold him."

They had done this before, Often. Job took up a position sitting behind the patient, slipped his arms under his armpits, and locked them around his chest.

In going to hurt you," Sean promised the patient. The man stared back at him impassively "Ready?" Job nodded, and Sean glanced up at the rope They laid back with a will.

The"

" d man's eyes snapped wide open, and a rash of sweat injure his skin.

droplets like blisters burst out on "Pull harder!" Sean snarled at Ferdinand, and the arm began to owly into elongate. The sharp point of protruding bone withdrew SI the flesh.

The Shangane ground his teeth together with the effort of rening himself from screaming- The sound was like two pieces of strai being rubbed together forcibly, and it grated along Sean's glass The point of bone popped back into the swollen purple nerve ends. asp together deep in the wound, and Sean heard the two ends r flesh. told Ferdinand, and deftly placed a "That's it! Hold it!" he side of the arm. He it up as firmly an then nodded at Ferdinand.

it go." Ferdinand released the pressure, and the "Slowly. Let straight.

splints held the arm science," Job murmured.

"Another breakthrough for medical -An elegant and sophisticated procedure, Doc."

"Can you walk?" Sean asked. "Or do we have to carry You home?"

"of course I can walk." The trooper was indignant. "Do you think I am a womanT"

"If you were, we would ask a top bridal price for YOU-Sean grinned at him and stood up.

"Let's inspect the loot," he suggested to Job. It was their first crates from the Hercules.

opportunity to examine the There were thirty-five of them piled haphazardly under the spreading branches of an African mahogany. With Ferdinand and r of his men assisting, they sorted through them, stacking them fou neatly after noting the lettering on each. Thirty-three cases, each weighing 152 pounds, were marked: STINGER

GUIDED MISSILE SYSTEM I X GRIP STOCK AND ANTENNA I X INTERROGATOR 5 X

LOADED LAUNCH TUBES and sixty-five shots, and there are "That gives China a hundred out of eleven Hinds left in the squadron after the one you knocked the sky," Job calculated. "Sounds good to me-" n with the way some of these beauties shoot, they are go" 9 to need every one of them," Sean grunted. Then his expression of deliberate Pessimism lightened. "Well well! Here is one for the link!"

of the two remaining odd-sized cases was stenciled: One STINGER GUIDED MISSELE SYSTEM TRAINING SET M. 134 TRACKING BEAD TRAINER "That will make somebody's life a lot easier," Job agreed. The captured manuals had discussed this training system, which allowed an instructor to monitor a trainee's tracking technique during a simulated missile launch. It would be invaluable equipment for whoever was given the job of teaching the RenamO troops to use the system.

However, it was not until Sean examined the last and smallest of the prize dawned on him. The small case that the full value wooden crate was stenciled:

GM GUIDED MISSILE SYSTEM

POSTMODUZICATION SOIFIWAU "Sweet Trinity," he whistled. "It's a post, not a common or her ell garden system, but a ruddy post that we have got Ourselves "Let's take a look!" Job was as excited as he was.

Sean hesitated, likeg-child tempted to onen his gift before the dawn of his birthday. He glanced up at the sky, looking for Hinds.

Strange how he bag picked up that nervous habit from his Shanganes.

we daren,t move until dark. Plenty of time to kill," he caPitulated, and leaned over to draw the bayonet from the sheath of Ferdinand's webbing.

Gently he prized open the lid of the crate and lifted away the slabs of white polyurethane packing. The software was contained in a heavy-duty plastic carry pack. He sprang the catches on the lid and opened the case. The dozens of software cassettes were each color-coded, sealed in transparent glassine envelopes and fitted into tailored slots in the interior. This was what they had read about in the manuals they had borrowed from Carlyle, the British gunnery officer.

"Get the manuals," Sean told Job. When he brought them over, they squatted beside the open case and pored through the heavy volume that described the post system.

"Here it is! "Hind attack system. Color code red. Numerical code S.42.A." Under the post system the Stinger missiles could be programmed to attack various targets by employing tactics and search frequencies specific to that type of aircraft. Simply by inserting one of the micro cassettes into the console of the launcher, the missile could be instructed to alter its attack technique.

"System software cassette. S.42.A."

"-Job followed the text with his forefinger as he read aloud from the manual-"

"is targeted on the Hind helicopter gunship. The system employs a two color seeker that registers both infrared and ultraviolet emissions in two stages. The initial stage will lock to infrared from the engine exhaust system.

"The Hind's exhaust suppressors divert and emit those infrared rays through heavily armored outlets below the main fuselage.

Missile strikes on this section of the Hind have proved ineffective.

"The S.42.A. modification automatically switches the guidance system of the Stinger into ultraviolet seeker mode when range to target is reduced to a hundred meters. Ultraviolet is emitted principally from the air intake ports of the Isotov TV3-117 turboshaft engines. This area is the only section of the fuselage not encased in titanium armor plate, and missile strikes through the engine intake posts have resulted in hundred percent kills.

"To achieve effective ultraviolet acquisition, the initial launch of the missile must be made from below and dead ahead of the aircraft, at a range not exceeding 1,000 meters or less than 150 meters." Job closed the manual with a snap. "Big casino!" he said.

"China is getting more than he ever hoped for."

There were thirty-three heavy cam to carry and only twenty uninjured men, including Sean and Job. Sean cached the boxes they were forced to leave. He would send a detail back to fetch them once they reached the Renamo lines.

Carrying what they could, including the trainer and the position equipment, they set out along the bank of the modi fica Pungwe River at nightfall, groping for a contact with the Renaino front line. They marched all that night.

The extended column, slowed down by the heavy cases of missiles, covered only twelve miles before sunrise. However, the weather had changed and the wind had backed into the east, bringing in low clouds and a cold drizzle of rain that would hide them from the searching Hinds. They kept going all that day.

At dusk Sean let them rest for a few hours. They huddled miserably in the rain until Sean roused them once again and they stumbled on, slipping and sliding in the mud and cursing the loads upon their backs. An hour after sunrise the clouds rolled away, and their sodden battle dress steamed as it dried On their backs Two hours later they ran into the ambush.

They were moving through light savannah along the riverbank.

The flat-topped acaci# thorn trees were interspersed with clumps of coarse elephant grass. Sean heard the metallic snap of the loading handle being jerked back to cock a machine gun, and before the sound had fully registered in his brain he was diving forward, shouting a warning to his Shanganes. As he hit the sandy earth with his elbows and belly, he saw the muzzle flashes shimmering and dancing like fairy lights in the grass only thirty paces ahead.

A blaze of shot passed over his head, making him blink and flinch.

He rolled left to throw the gunner's aim, holding the AKM with one hand as though it were a pistol, firing blindly to further confuse the attackers and groping for the grenade on his belt.

He was on the point of hurling the grenade when behind him Ferdinand shouted a challenge in Portuguese and the firing from the front shriveled and died away. From the patch of elephant grass just ahead of Sean, a voice replied to the challenge. Then III Ferdinand was shouting urgently in Shangane, "Cease fire! Cease fire! Renamo! Renamo!"

There was a long, suspicious silence during which Sean kept his right arm cocked back ready to throw the grenade. He had seen too many good men called out to die in a false truce.

"Renamo!" a voice from the front reiterated. "Friends!"

"All right!" Sean shouted back in Shangane. "Stand up, Renamo. Let us see your beautiful friendly faces."

Somebody laughed, and a grinning black face under a tiger striped camouflage cap popped up out of the grass and ducked back immediately.

After a few seconds, when there was no more firing, another man stood up cautiously, and then another. Sean's Shanganes came to their feet and moved forward, slowly at first and with weapons cocked, and then they were meeting on open ground, shaking hands and laughing and slapping each other's backs. They had run into the sector held by the battalion under the command of Major Takawira. He recognized Sean immediately, and they shook hands with mutual pleasure.

"Colonel Courtney! What a relief to see you alive! We heard on the news from the BBC and Radio Zimbabwe that your aircraft had been shot down in flames with you and all your men wiped out."

"I need your help, Major," Sean told him. "I've left twenty cases of missiles cached out there in the bush. I want you to send a detachment of a hundred men to fetch them in. One of my men will guide them to the cache."

"I'll send my best men. I'll pick them out personally," Takawira assured him.

"How far are we from General China's HQT" Sean asked.

"The Frelimo helicopters have forced him to pull back. His new HQ is only six miles upstream. I have just spoken to the general on the radio, and he is most anxious to see you."

Their progress was a triumphal march, for news of their success flashed through the Renamo lines ahead of them. Men in tiger stripes turned out to cheer them, shake their hands, and thump their backs as they passed. The porters bore the cases of missiles aloft as though they were the ark of Jehovah and they the priests of an arcane religion. They sang Renamo battle songs as they trotted along proudly under their burdens.

General China was waiting to greet them at the entrance to his newly constructed command bunker, resplendent in crisply laundered battle dress and decorations, his maroon beret cocked jauntily over one eye.

"I knew you would not fail me, Colonel." For the first time in their acquaintance, Sean had the feeling his smile was genuine.

"We lost almost thirty men under Sergeant Alphonso," Sean told him brusquely. "We were forced to abandon them."

"No! No, Colonel!" General China clasped his shoulder in an unparalleled display of goodwill. "Alphonso got out safely. He lost only three men in reaching the mission at Saint Mary's. I have just had radio contact with them. They will be in our fines by tomorrow evening at the latest. The entire operation was a brilliant success, Colonel." He dropped his hand from Sean's shoulder.

"Now let us see what you have brought me."

The porters laid the wooden cases at his feet. A black Caesar receiving the spoils of war, Sean thought ironically.

"Open them!" China beamed. Sean had never expected such childlike excitement from one usually so cold and contained.

China was actually performing an ecstatic little jig and scrubbing his hands together as he watched the junior officers on his staff Iding jimmies and bayonet blades in an attempt to prize up the wie lid of the first crate. The steel strapping frustrated their efforts.

In the end China could no longer control himself. He pushed his officers away, snatched a jimmy bar out of the hands of one of them, and attacked the case himself. He was sweating profusely with excitement and exertion when at last the lid yielded, and there were obsequious cries of congratulation from his staff as the contents were revealed.

The Stinger launcher was fully assembled with loaded missile tube.

The IFF interrogator was packed separately in a transparent glassine envelope, ready to be plugged into the console head by its short coil of cable. The-additional four disposal tubes, each containing a single missile nestled in the molded white polyurethane foam packaging. After firing the missile, the empty tube would be discarded and replaced by a fresh tube containing its own sixteen pound missile.

The laughter and cheering gradually subsided and the general staff crowded forward to examine the contents of the case, albeit with a marked reserve as though they had discovered a nest of poisonous scorpions under a rock and expected a fanged tail to whip out at them at any second.

General China slowly went down on one knee and reverently lifted the assembled launcher out of its foam nest. His staff watched in awe as he settled the clumsy weapon on his shoulder.

The missile tube extended behind him and the console with its antenna, looking as mundane as a plastic milk crate, almost totally obscured General China's features. He peered studiously into the aiming screen of the console and gripped the triggered pistol stock.

He aimed the Stinger skyward, and his staff uttered small sounds of encouragement and admiration.

"Let the Frelimo hen shaw come now," China boasted. "We will see them burn." And he began to make helicopter and machine gun noises like a small boy at play, pointing the missile at flocks of imaginary Hind gunships that circled overhead.

"Pow! Pow!" he cried. "Vroom! Swish! Boom!"

"Kapow!" With a straight face, Sean joined in, and the general's staff howled with delight and tried to outdo each other with the sounds of exploding and crashing helicopters.

Somebody began to sing and they all picked up the refrain, clapping their hands to the rhythm of the Renamo, battle anthem, swaying and stamping their feet. Now there were two hundred men singing, their voices blending and rising into the beautiful melodious sound of Africa that made the goose pimples rise on Sean's forearms and the hair on the back of his neck prickle. General China stood in the midst of them with the missile on his shoulders, leading the chorus. His voice soared above the rest, amazing Sean with its range and clarity, a magnificent tenor that would not have disgraced any of the world's great opera houses.

The song ended with a great shout of defiance, "Renamo!" and the men's dark faces were lit by a fierce patriotic ardor.

4"In this mood, they'll be hard men to beat," Sean thought.

General China handed the launcher to one of his men and came to shake Sean's hand. "Congratulations, Colonel." He was earnest and happy at the same time. "I think you have saved the cause. I am grateful."

"That's fine, China. f9 Sean was ironic. "But don't just tell me how grateful, show me."

"Of course. Forgive me." China put on a little show of repentance. "In the excitement I almost forgot. There is somebody very anxious to see you."

Sean felt his breathing shorten and his chest constrict. "Where is she?"

"in my bunker, Colonel." General China indicated the carefully concealed entrance to the dugout among the trees.

Sean elbowed his way roughly through the ranks of excited soldiers. When he reached the entrance to the bunker, he could restrain himself no longer, and he went down the rough stop three at a time.

Claudia was in the radio dugout, sitting on a bench along the far wall with her two war dresses flanking her. He spoke her name when he saw her and she came to her feet slowly, staring at him, white-faced with disbelief. The bones of her cheeks threatened to burst through the almost translucent skin, and her eyes were huge and dark as midnight.

As he crossed to her, Sean saw the marks on her wrists, livid weals crusted with fresh scab, and his anger matched his joy. He swept her into his arms, and she was as thin and frail as a child.

For a moment she stood quiescent in his embrace, then fiercely she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. He was surprised by her strength, and she shivered in convulsive spasms as she pressed her face into the hollow of his neck.

They stood locked together, neither moving nor speaking for a long time, until Sean felt the wetness soaking through his shirt front.

"Please don't cry, my darling."

Gently he lifted her face between his hands and with his thumbs wiped the tears away.

"It Is just that I'm so happy now." She smiled through the last of her tears. "Nothing else matters anymore, now that you're back."

He took her hands and lifted them to his lips, kissing the broken, scabbed skin on her wrists.

"They can't hurt me anymore, not now," she said. Sean turned his head and looked at the two uniformed war dresses who still sat on the bench. "Your mothers rutted with the stinking dung-eating hyena," he said softly in Shangane, and they flinched at the insult.

"Get out! Go! Before I ri out your ovaries and feed them to the p vultures!"

They glowered apd hung their heads until Sean dropped his hand onto the butfof his pistol. Then they moved with alacrity, jumping up from the bench and sidling to the dugout steps.

Sean turned back to Claudia and for the first time kissed her mouth. That kiss lasted a long time, and when they drew unwillingly apart Claudia whispered, "When they took off the handcuffs and let me wash, I knew you were coming back."

pict of the degradation and brutal Her words conjured up a ure ity she had come through, and Sean's reply was bitter.

"The bastard. Somehow I'm going to make him suffer for what he has done to you. I swear that to you."

"No, Scan. It doesn't matter anymore. It's over. We're together again. That's all that matters."

They had only a few more minutes alone before General China came bustling into the radio dugout at the head of his staff, still smiling and elated. He ushered Sean and Claudia through into his private office and seemed not to notice that they both treated his affable hospitality with icy reserve. They sat close together in front of his desk, quietly holding hands, not responding to his pleasantries.

"I have prepared quarters for you," General China told them.

"In fact, I have evicted one of my senior commanders and given you his dugout. I hope you will find it adequate for your needs."

"We aren't planning on a long stay, General," Sean told him. "I want to be on my way back to the border with Miss Monterro tomorrow morning at the very latest."

"Ah, Colonel, of course I want to accommodate you. From now on, you are an honored and privileged guest. You have certainly earned your release. However, for operational reasons that happy moment must be delayed for a few days. Frelimo are moving in large concentrations of troops."

Reluctantly Sean conceded. "Fair enough. But in the meantime we expect five-star treatment. Miss Monterro needs new clothes to replace these rags."

"I shall have a selection of the best we have sent to your dugout from our stores. However, I cannot promise either Calvin Klein or Gucci."

"While we are at it, we'll need a team of servants to do our laundry and cleaning and cooking."

"I haven't forgotten your colonial origins, Colonel," China answered slyly. "One of my men was an under chef at the President Hotel in Johannesburg. He understands European tastes."

Sean stood up. "We'll inspect our quarters now."

"One of my junior officers will escort you," General China suggested. "If there is anything further you need, please let him know. He has my personal orders to give you whatever he can to make you comfortable. As I have said before, you are honored guests." "He gives me the creeps," Claudia whispered as the subaltern ushered them out of the dugout. "I don't know when he frighten more, when he's being charming or menacing."

M!" It won't be for much longer." Sean put his arm around her shoulders and led her into the open air, but somehow the sunlight lacked warmth and despite his assurances to Claudia, the chill of General China's presence persisted.

The dugout to which the subaltern led them was in the bush above the riverbank, not more than three hundred yards from the general's HQ.

The entrance was screened with a piece of tattered camouflage net and the interior was freshly dug out of the hard red clay of the riverbank.

"It's so new that it probably hasn't yet acquired a permanent population of bedbugs and lice and other wild game," Sean remarked.

The clay walls were damp and cool, and there was ventilation through the spaces between the roof poles. The only furnishings were a table and two stools of mo pane poles against one wall, and opposite that a raised bedstead, also of mo pane poles, and a mattress of combed elephant grass covered with a sheet of faded canvas. There was, however, one extraordinary luxury, a mosquito net hung above the bed.

The subaltern who was escorting them summoned the domestic staff, and the three of them lined up in front of Sean and Claudia.

The two camp boys would take care of their laundry and cleaning under the supervision of the chef.

The chef was an elderly Shangane with a pleasant lined face and silver-frosted hair and beard. He reminded Claudia of a black Santa Claus. They both liked him immediately.

"My name is Joyful, sir."

"So you speak English, Joyful?"

"And Afrikaans and Portuguese and Shana and-"

"Enough already." Sean held up a hand to stop him. "Can you cook?"

"I'm the best damned cook in Mozambique."

"Joyful and modest." Claudia laughed.

Okay, Joyful, tonight we will have Chateaubriand," Sean tealsed him.

Joyful looked doleful "Sorry, sir, no filet steak."

"All right, Joyful@" Sean relented. "You just make us the best dinner you can.""

"I'll tell you when it's ready, sir and madam."

"Don't hurry," said Claudia. She lowered the netting across the doorway, summarily dismissing all of them.

They stood hand in hand and studied the bed thoughtfully.

Claudia broke the silence. "Are you thinking what I am thinking?"

"Before or after dinner?" Sean asked.

"Both," she replied, and led him by the hand.

They undressed each other with aching deliberation, drawing out the pleasure of truly discovering each other's bodies. Though they were already lovers he had only had one Rating glimpse of her, and she had never well ban naked. She studied him ynth big, solemn eyes, not smilin& taking her time until he was forced to ask, "Well, do I get the Monterro seal of approval.P"

"Oh, boy!" she breathed, still deadly sen ious and he lifted her onto the bed.

it was darkening outside the dugout when Joyful coughed politely beyond the screen doorway. "Dinner is ready, sir and madam."

They ate at the table of mo pane poles by the light of a paraffin lantern that Joyful had scavenged from somewhere.

"Oh, MY God!" Claudia cried when she saw what Joyful had provided for them. "I didn't realize how hungry I was."

It was a casserole of plump green pigeons and wild mushrooms, with side dishes of steamed yellow yams, cassava cakes, and banana fritters.

"General China sent this for you," Joyful explained, and set cans of South African beer on the crowded table.

"Joyful, you are a paragon." le at each They ate in dedicated silence, smiling across the tab other between mouthfuls. At last Claudia groaned softly.

"I think I can just waddle as far as the bed, but definitely no further.

"Suits me fine," he said, and reached across to take her hand.

The mosquito net was a tent over them, creating an intimate and secret temple for their loving. The light from the lantern was soft and golden. It washed subtle tones and shadings across the planes of her face and the rounds and hollows of her body. The texture of her skin fascinated him. It was so fine-pored as to seem glossed like warm wax. He stroked her shoulders and arms and belly, marveling at the feel of her.

She rasped her fingernails through his short crisp beard and her face into the springing curls that covered his chest.

pressed "You're as hairy and hard as a wild animal," she whispered. "And as dangerous. I should be terrified of you."

I "Aren't you? "A little, yes. That's what makes it such fun."

She was starved to the point where her ribs showed clearly through her pale skin. Her limbs were slender and childlike, and the marks of her suffering upon them threatened to break his heart.

Even her breasts seemed smaller, but it was as though their diminution had merely emphasized the sweet and tender shape. She watched him take the nipple of one between his bps, and she stroked the thick curls at the back of his neck.

"That feels so good," she whispered. "But there are two." And she took a handful of his hair to direct his mouth across to the other side.

Once while she sat astride him, he looked up at her, reached high to stroke the soft skin of her throat and shoulders, and said, "In this light, you look like a little girl."

"And me trying so hard to prove to you what a big girl I am," she pouted down at him, then leaned forward to kiss his mouth.

They slept so intricately entwined that their hearts beat against each other and their breath mingled and they woke to find that they had begun again while they still slept.

"He's so clever," she murmured drowsily. "Already he can find his way all on his own."

"Do you want to go back to sleep?"

"Do I, hell!"

Much later she asked him, "Do you think we could make this last forever?"

"We can try."

But at last the dawn sent orange-gold fingers of light through the slats above them, and Claudia cried softly. "No. I don't want it to end. I want to keep you inside me for ever and ever."

When Joyful brought their tea to their bedside, on the tray with the mugs was an invitation from General China to dine in the mess that evening.

For Claudia and Sean General China's mess night was less than an unqualified success, despite the general's continued efforts to charm them.

The buffalo meat he served was tough and rank, and the beer made the officers of the general's staff loud and argumentative.

The weather had changed and was close and sweltering even after dark, and the bunker the4t served as a mess was thick with the smoke of cheap native tobacco and the odor of masculine sweat.

General China drank none of the beer. He sat at the head of the table, ignoring the shouted conversation and hearty eating habits of his staff. Instead he played the gallant to Claudia, engaging her in a discussion that at first she attempted to evade.

Claudia was unaccustomed to the table manners of Africa. She watched with an awful fascination as the stiff maize porridge was scooped from the communal pot in the center of the table by many hands, molded into balls between the fingers and then dipped into buffalo-meat gravy. Greasy gravy ran down the diners" chins, and no attempt was made to moderate the conversation during mastication, so that small particles of food were sprayed across the table when one of them laughed or exclaimed loudly.

Despite the fact that she was still half starved, Claudia had no appetite for the meal, and it took an effort to concentrate on General China's dissertation.

"We have divided the entire country into three war zones," he explained. "General Takawira Dos Alves is the commander of the north. He commands the provinces of Niassa and Cabo Delgado.

In the south the commander is General Tippoo Tip, and of course I command the army of the central provinces of Monica and Sofala. Between us we control almost fifty percent of the total ground area of Mozambique, and another forty percent of the country is a destruction zone over which we are forced to maintain a scorched-earth policy to prevent Frelinio growing either food for their troops or cash crops to finance their war effort against us."