"So the reports of atrocities we have received in the United States are true then." He had engaged Claudia's interest at last.



Her tone was sharp as she accused, "Your troops are attacking and wiping out the civilian population in those destruction zones."



"No, Miss Monterro." China's smile was icy. "The fact that we have moved the civilian population out of many of those destruction areas is unavoidably true, but all the atrocities, all the massacres and tortures, have been committed by Frelimo themselves."



"They are the government of Mozambique. Why would they massacre their own people?" Claudia protested.



"I agree with you, Miss Monteffo, sometimes it is difficult to follow the devious workings of the Marxist mind. The reality is that Frelimo is unable to govern. They are unable to provide even basic protection to the civilian population outside the cities, let alone give them services of health and education and transport and communications. To draw world attention away. from the total failure of their economic policies and their lack of popular support, they have provided the international media with a Roman holiday of slaughter and torture which they blame upon Renanio and South Africa. It is easier to kill people than to feed and educate them, and the anti-Renamo propaganda is worth a million lives to a Marxist, that is."



"You're suggesting that a Khmer Rouge-style massacre is being conducted here in Mozambique by the government forces?"



Claudia was aghast, pale and perspiring with the noise and rug of the subterranean mess and with the horror of General China's explanations.



"I am not suggesting, Miss Monterro. I am simply stating the literal truth."



"But-but-surely the world must do something?"



"The world is uncaring, Miss Monterro. It has been left for us, Renamo, to try to bring down the heinous Marxist regime."



"Frehmo is the elected government," Claudia pointed out.



General China shook his head. "No, Miss Monterro, very few governments in Africa are elected. There has never been an election in Mozambique or Angola or Tanzania or any of the other gem s of African socialism. In Africa the trick is to seize power and hang on to it at all costs. The typical African government plunges into the void left by the exodus of the colonial power and entrenches itself behind a barricade of AK-47 assault rifles. It then declares a one-party system of government which further precludes any form of opposition and it nominates a presidential dictator for-life."



"Tell me, General China." Claudia raised her voice above the roar of conversation further down the mess table. "If one day your military efforts succeed and you and the other generals of Renaino vanquish Frelinio and become the new government of this country, will you then allow free elections and a truly democratic system to evolve?"



For a moment General China stared at her in astonishment and then he laughed delightedly. "My very dear Miss Monterro, your childlike belief in the myth of the essential goodness of mankind is really rather touching. I certainly have not fought so hard and so long to gain power simply to hand it over to a bunch of illiterate peasants. No, Miss Monteffo, once we have the power it will remain safely in the right hands." He extended his own elegantly shaped hands, pink palms uppermost, toward her. "These," he said.



"So you're every bit as bad as you say the others are." There were hot red spots of anger on Claudia's cheeks. This was the man who had put chains on her wrists and incarcerated her in that vile pit. She hated him wit INI her strength.



"I think you are attually beginning to understand at last, even through the haze "of your liberal emotions. In Africa there are no good guys and no bad guys, there are simply winners and losers."



He smiled again. "And I assure you, Miss Monterro, that I intend to be one of the winners."



General China turned away from her as one of his signals officers ducked through the low entrance to the bunker and hurried down to the head of the table. With an apologetic salute, he handed the general a yellow message flimsy. China read it without a change of expression and then looked up at his guests.



"Please excuse me for a few minutes." China placed his beret at the correct angle over one eye, then stood and followed the signaler out of the bunker.



The moment he was gone, Claudia leaned across the table to Sean. "Can't we get out of here now I don't think I can bear another moment of it. God, how I hate that man."



"Mess tradition doesn't seem very strict," Sean murmured. "If we leave, I don't think anyone is going to take offense."



As they crossed to the doorway, there was a drunken chorus of suggestive catcalls and whistles, and they went up the steps with relief.



The night air had cooled, and Claudia breathed it in deeply and gratefully. "I don't know which was more suffocating, the smell or the dialectic." She breathed again. "I never expected Africa to be like this. It,s so confused, so illogical, it turns everything I know to be true upside down."



"But it's interesting, isn't it?" Sean asked.



"Like a nightmare is interesting. Let's go to bed. At least that's something I can believe in completely."



They turned toward their dugout shelter, but General China's voice halted them. "You aren't leaving us so soon?" His tall, lithe form came striding toward them out of the darkness. "I'm afraid I have disappointing news for both of you."



I our deal," Sean "You aren't letting us go. You are reneging On said flatly. "I knew this was coming!1 red him



"Circumstances beyond my control," China assu smoothly. "I have just had a radio report from Sergeant Alphonso.



As you know, I was expecting his return this evening, and he and his men would have escorted you and Miss Monterro safely back to the border. However-" angrily.



"All right, let's hear it from you, China," Sean snarled "What new scheme have you cooked up?"



General China ignored the accusation and the tone in which it "Sergeant Alphonso reports that there is a massive was delivered.



it seems that emboldbuildup of enemy to the west of our lines.



ened by their gunships, Frelimo, backed by Zimbabwean continJ gents, is about to launch a full-scale offensive. We are probably already cut off from the Zimbabwean border. The territory we once controlled seems certain to have been overrun by the enemy advance. Within hours it will become a battlefield-even now Sergeant Alphonso is fighting his way through and has taken some casualties. I am afraid you would not last long out there, Colonel.



It would be suicide for you to try to reach the border now. You must remain under my personal protection."



"What the hell do you want from us?" Sean demanded. "You are up to something, I can smell the stink of it from here. What is it?"



"Your lack of confidence in my motives is very distressing."



China smiled coldly. "However, the sooner the Hind gunships are destroyed, the sooner the Frelimo offensive will collapse and you and Miss Monterro will be returned to the civilized world."



"I'm listening," Sean told him.



"You are the only one, you and Captain Job, who understand the Stinger. In this our interests coincide. I want you to train a select contingent of my men to handle the Stingers."



"That's all you want?" Sean stared into his face. "We train your men to use the Stinger, then you let us go?"



"Exactly.



"How do I know you won't move the goalposts again?"



"You pain me, Colonel."



"Not nearly as much as I'd like to."



"It Is agreed, then. You will train my men, and in exchange I will have you escorted across the border at the very first opportunity."



"What option do we have?"



"I'm so pleased that you are being reasonable, Colonel. It makes life much easier for all of us." His voice became crisp and businesslike. "We must begin immediately."



"You'll have to let your staff sober up a little," Sean told him.



"I'll begin first thing tomorrow, and I'll train the Shanganes; under Alphonso and Ferdinand, if Alphonso makes it through the Frelimo offensive intact."



"How long will it take you?" China wanted to know. "From on every hour will be vital to our survival."



now "They are bright lads and willing. I should be able to do something with them in a week."



"You will not have that long."



"I'll have the Stinizers; in action just as soon as I possibly can," i Sean retorted irritablfy-"Please believe me, General, I don't want to hang around herea minute longer than I have to. Now we'll bid you goodnight." H& took Claudia's arm as he turned away.



"Oh, Sean," she whispered. "I have a terrible premonition that we are caught up in something from which we are never going to escape."



Sean squeezed her upper arm to make her stop. "Look up there," he ordered softly, and she raised her face.



"The stars?" she asked. "Is that what you want me to look at?"



"Yes, the stars." They daubed the night as though a gigantic firefly had been crushed to death and its luminous essence smeared across the vault of heaven.



"They calm the soul," Sean explained gently.



She breathed softly and deeply. "Yes, you're right, my darling.



Tonight we have our love. Let's exploit it to the full and let tomorrow take care of itself."



She felt safe and invulnerable under the tented mosquito netting.



The lumpy grass-filled mattress had taken on the shape of their bodies, and she did not notice the harsh touch of the canvas covering against her skin.



"If we made love ten thousand times, it still would not take the edge off my need for you," she whispered as she slipped over the edge of sleep.



She woke suddenly, feeling the tension in his body against hers.



Instantly he touched her lips to caution her to silence. She lay frozen in the darkness, not daring to move or breathe, and then she heard it: a soft scraping at the entrance of the dugout as the netting curtain was pushed aside and an animal passed through.



Her heart raced, and she bit her lip to stop herself gasping aloud as she heard the thing crossing the earth floor toward the bed. Its paws were almost soundless, just the faintest tick of grit compressed by the stealthy weight. Then she smelled it, the wild gamey smell of a meat-eating animal, and she wanted to cry out.



Beside her Sean moved suddenly. Fast as a striking adder, he lunged through the mosquito net. There was a quick scuffle and squeal, and she tried to crawl over Sean's back to escape w was.



it "Got you, you little bugger," Sean said grimly. "You don't sneak up on me twice and get away with it. Now tell me I'm getting old and I'll wring your neck!"



"You'll be young and beautiful forever, my Bwana," Matatu giggled, and wriggled like a puppy caught by the scruff of the neck.



"Where have you been, Matatu?" Sean demanded sternly.



"What took you so long? Did you meet a pretty girl along the wayT, Matatu giggled again. He loved to be accused by Sean of dalHance and amatory exploits. "I found the roosting place of the hen shaw he boasted. "The same way I find where the bees have their hive. I watched their flight against the sun and followed them to their secret place."



Sean drew him closer to the bed and shook his arm gently. "Tell me," he ordered. In the darkness Matatu squatted down, tucked his loincloth between his legs, and made little self-important throat-clearing and humming sounds.



"There is a round hill, shaped like the head of a bald man," he began. "On one side of the hill passes the insimbi, the railway, and on the other side the road."



Sean propped himself on one elbow to listen. With his other arm he encircled Claudia's naked waist and held her close. She snuggled against him, listening to Matatu's piping pixie voice in the darkness.



"There are many ask ari around the hill with big banduki hidden in holes in the ground." Sean formed a vivid mental picture of the heavily garrisoned hilltop as Matatu described it to him. Beyond the outer defensive lines the gunships were laagered in separate sandbagged emplacements. Like battle tanks in hull-down fortifications, they would be impregnable, yet they had only to rise and hover a few feet above ground level to bring into action their devastating Gatling cannons and rocket pods.



"Inside the circle of roosting hen shaw there are many gharries parked and white men in green clothes who climb on the hen shaw and look inside them all the time." Matatu described the mobile workshops and fuel tankers and the squads of Russian mechanics and technicians needed to keep the helicopters flying. The training manuals had pointed up the Hind's excessive requirements of service and maintenance, and those big Isotov turbo engines would guzzle avgas.



"Matatu, did you see railway gharries on the line near the hill?"



Sean asked.



"I saw them," Matatu confirmed. "Those big round gharries full of beer-the men who ride in the hen shaw must be very thirsty."



Once many years ago, on one of his infrequent visits to the city with Sean, Matatu had seen a beer tanker disgorging its load at the main Harare beer hall. He had been so impressed that since that day he had been utterly convinced that all tankers of whatever size or type contained only beer. Sean could not change his mind on this; Matatu would never accept that some of them actually carried less noble fluids such as gasoline, and he always stared wistfully after any tanker they posed on the road.



Now, in the darkness, Sean smiled at the little man's fixation.



Fuel for the gunships' was obviously being railed from Harare in bulk tankers and transshipped into smaller road tankers. It was ironic that the fuel was almost certainly being originally supplied by the South Africans. However, if the helicopter squadron was storing its fuel within the laager itself, they were taking a grave risk. It was something to bear in mind.



Matatu remained at the bedside for almost an hour while Sean patiently drew from him every possible detail he could of the gunship laager. He was certain that there were eleven helicopters in the emplacements, which tallied with Sean's own estimate. Of the original twelve, one had been destroyed in the collision with the Hercules. He was equally certain that only nine of the gunships were actually flying. Hidden on a nearby kopJe, he had watched the helicopters sortie from their laager at dawn, return for refueling during the day, and at nightfall come in to roost. Sean knew that Matatu could count accurately to twenty, but after that he became vague and any greater number was described progressively as "many" or "a great deal" and finally as "like grass on the Serengeti plains."



So Sean was now fairly certain that two of the gunships had broken down and were probably awaiting spares, and he accepted Matatu's figure of nine operational gunships, still a formidable force, quite sufficient to turn the tide of the looming battle against Renamo unless they could swiftly be put out of action.



When at last Matatu had finished his recitation he asked simply, "Now, my Bwana, what do you want me to do?"



Sean considered in silence. There was really no reason why he should not bring Matatu in from wherever he was hiding up in the bush, and allow him openly to join the force of Shangane under his command as a tracker. However, he sensed there might be some future advantage in keeping Matatu hidden from China's cold reptilian gaze.



"You are my wild card, Matatu," he said in English. Then in Swahili, he said, "I want you to keep out of sight. Do not let any of the men here see you, except Job and me."



"I bear you, my Bwana."



"Come to me each night as you have tonight. I will have food for you, and I will tell you what to do. In the meantime, watch and tell me all you see."



Matatu went so silently that they heard only the faint rustle of the netting at the entrance as he passed through.



"Will he be all right?" Claudia asked softly. "I worry about him.



He's so cute."



"Of all of us, he is probably the most likely to survive." In the dark, Sean smiled fondly after the little man.



"I'm not sleepy anymore." Claudia snuggled against him like a cat. Much later she whispered, "I'm so glad Matatu woke us UP... it was still dark when Sean turned Job out of his blanket the next morning. "We've got work to do," he told him. While Job laced on his boots, Sean described his meeting with General China' You mean we are now instructors." Job laughed softly. "All we know about those Stingers is what we have read in the manuals."



"That will have to change," Sean told him. "The sooner we get the Shanganes into action, the sooner we are going to get the hell out of here."



"Is that what China told you?" Job raised an eyebrow at Sean.



"Let's get Ferdinand and his boys cracking," Sean said brusquely to cover his own misgivings. well sort them into teams of two men, one to serve the launcher and the other to carry the extra missiles. Of course, the number two must be able to take over if the leader is put down."



Sean pulled out his notebook and drew the candle stump closer, writing in its guttering yellow light.



o get here?" Job stuffed his "When do you expect Alphonso t shirt into the top of his tiger-striped pants.



sometime today, if at all," Sean replied.



"He's the best of the Wnch," Job grunted.



"Ferdinand is not b ad," Sean pointed out, placing their names at the head of the pagE as his section leaders. "Okay, we need thirty names for our number ones, give me some."



It was like the old days working together this way, and Sean found he was beginning to enjoy himself.



As soon as it was light enough, they paraded the men who had returned in the Hercules from the Grand Reef raid. With the two casualties missing, there remained eighteen men under Ferdinand Sean immediately gave Ferdinand a field promotion to full sergeant and was rewarded with a huge grin and a flourishing salute that almost swept Ferdinand off his feet with his own vigor.



Sean had to find something to occupy them and keep them out of the way while he and Job gave themselves a crash course on the Stinger missile system.



"Sergeant." Sean addressed Ferdinand by his rank for the first time. "Do you see that hill over there?" It was just visible through the trees, shaded blue with distance. "Take your men for a run around it and get them back here in two hours. Weapons and full field packs."



As they watched the column of men doubling away, Sean said, "If Alphonso and his lads don't arrive by this evening, we'll have to recruit replacements. That's no problem, however. China will be keen to let us have his very best men. At the moment, we are right at the top of his list of favorite flavors."



"In the meantime let's hit those manuals," Job suggested. "I haven't swatted since varsity days. I'm not looking forward to it."



Claudia joined them in the dugout, helping them sort through the thick red plastic-covered looseleaf manuals, picking out the information relevant to their situation and discarding the vast body of technical data they had no need of, as well as the operational reports and instructions that did not apply to deployment in this altitude and terrain. After two hours" work they had reduced the mass of information to one manageable slim volume.



"All right." Sean stood up. "Let's go find a training ground."



They picked out a spot a few hundred meters downriver from the dugout where the side of a low kopJe formed a natural lecture theater. The tall riverine mahogany trees spread their branches overhead to provide cover from a surprise raid by the Hind gunships. When Ferdinand and his men returned bathed in sweat from their little outing, Sean put them to work clearing the amphitheater of thorn and scrub and digging shell scrapes conveniently close at hand for use when air raids interrupted classes.



"Right," Sean told Job and Claudia. "Now we can uncrate the trainer set and one of the launchers. From now on it's "look and learn,"



"show and tell" time."



When they opened the first crate, Sean discovered that the battery power pack was discharged. However, each crate contained a small charger set with appropriate connections and transformers.



Under Job's supervision Ferdinand and his men carried the power packs up to the headquarters communications center, and at General China's order they were given priority use of the portable 220-volt, 15-kilowatt generator. Sean connected up the power packs in batches of five, but it would take twenty-four hours before they had power available for all the missile launchers.



With the batteries on charge they laid out the trainer set and one of the launchers on the makeshift table Ferdinand had built on the floor of the open-air theater under the trees. While Claudia read aloud from the instruction manual, Sean and Job stripped and reassembled the equipment until they were thoroughly familiar with all of it.



Sean was relieved and pleased to discover that with the exception of the IFF, the operation of the equipment was not a great deal more complicated than the conventional RPG-7 rocket launchers. The RPG-7 was so much a part of the guerrilla arsenal that, as Job remarked, every single man in China's division could load and lock it on a pitch dark night in a thunderstorm.



"Anyway, we don't need the IFF," Sean pointed out. "Everything that flies in these skies, apart from the dicky birds, is a foe."



The IFF, "Identification Friend or Foe," was a system that inter rooted the target, determining from the aircraft's on-board transponder whether it was hostile or friendly and preventing missile launches against friendly aircraft.



Claudia found the section on the manual dealing with the IFF, and under her tutelage they disarmed the system, converting the Stinger into a free-fire weapon that would attack any aircraft at which it was aimed. straight Without IFF fit, the attack sequence for the missile is forward. The target is picked up in the small screen of the aiming sight, and the safety device above the pistol grip is disengaged with the right thumb. The actuator is engaged by depressing the button built into the reverse of the pistol grip. This starts the run up of the navigational gyro and releases a flow of freon gas to cool the infrared seekers as they become active. With the sights held on the target, all incoming infrared radiation is magnified and focused on the detector cell of the missile head. As soon as this radiation is of sufficient concentration to allow the mi ssi e to track to its source, the gyro stabilizer un cages and the missile emits a high-pitched tone.



To fire the mi ssi the operator depresses the trigger in the pistol grip with his Torefinger, which starts the electric ejector motor. The missile discharges from the launch tube through the frangible front seal and ejects to a safe distance, approximately eight meters from the operator, to protect him from rocket backblast. At this point the solid-fuel rocket engine fires, the blast of exhaust gas flares out the retractable tail fins, and the missile accelerates to four times the speed of sound. When an inertial force of twenty-eight times gravity is attained, the fuse shutout is thrown open and the missile is armed. It tracks the target on a fire-and-forget trajectory, guided not by the operator but by its own proportional navigational system.



With the specialized "Hind" attack cassette inserted in the launcher's RMP-re programmable microprocessor-the system automatically switches into "two-color" mode when it is a hundred meters from the infrared source. At this point it abandons the infrared radiations emitted by the engine exhaust suppressors and instead focuses on the much weaker ultraviolet emanations from the engine intakes. On tins target the high-explosive warhead hits to kill.



"Even a Shangane could learn how to fire one of these," Job said.



Sean grinned. "Tut-tut, your Matabele tribal racism is showing again.



It's like this-when you are genetically superior, there is simply no point in trying to conceal the fact."



They both glanced expectantly at Claudia, but she did not even look up from the manual as she drawled, "You're wasting your time, you two bigots. You aren't going to get a rise out of me this time."



"Bigot." Job savored the word. "It's the first time anybody has ever called me that. I love it."



"That's enough fooling around." Sean broke it up. "Let's take a look at the trainer."



After they had connected one of the freshly charged battery packs and assembled the trainer equipment, Sean gave his opinion: "With this stuff, we can have the lads ready to go into action within days, not weeks."



Once a microcassette was inserted into the training monitor, the launcher screen simulated the image of a Hind, which the instructor was able to manipulate in various flight patterns, climbing, descending, sideslipping, or hovering. While he did so, he was able to watch the trainee's reactions as he attempted to acquire the ghost ship on his own screen and attack it with a phantom missile.



Sean and Job played with the trainer like a pair of teenagers, flying the image in complicated maneuvers. "It's just like a PacMan game," Job enthused. "But what we need is a durn-durn, a pseudo-Shangane to act as a trainee for us."



Once again both the men looked at Claudia, who was still sitting cross-legged on the table, studying the manual.



She looked up as she felt their eyes on her. "A durn-durn?" she demanded. "I'll show you durn-durn. Give me the launcher."



She stood in the center of the amphitheater floor with the launcher balanced on her shoulder and stared into the sighting screw. The bulky equipment seemed to dwarf her. She had reversed her camouflage cap so the peak stuck out behind her head, and it gave her the ga mine air of a Little League baseball player.



"ReadyT" Sean asked.



"Pull!" she said, concentrating ferociously on the screen. Sean and Job exchanged smug supercilious i grins.



"Incoming!" Sean called sharply. "Twelve o'clock high. Lock and load." He brought the ghost Hind in on a head-on attack at 150 knots.



"Locked and loaded," Claudia affirmed, and in their screen they watched the duplicate sight ring of her missile launcher swing up smoothly and center on the approaching Hind.



"Actuator on," she said calmly, and a second later, they heard the launcher sob and growl in her grip, then settle into a steady insect whine, like an infuriated mosquito.



"Target acquired," Claudia murmured. The Hind was six hundred meters out but coming in fast, swelling dramatically in the sights.



"Fire!" she said. They saw the red light blink and then change to green, signaling that the rocket engine of the fictitious missile was running. Almost instantaneously the image of the Hind disappeared from the screen, to be replaced by the flashing legend: TARGET



DESTROYED! TARGET I)ESTROYM!



A profound silence followed. Job cleared his throat nervously.



"Flukes happen," said Sean. "Shall we try it again?"



"Pull!" said Claudia, and concentrated on her aiming Screen' Incoming Sean called. "Six o'clock high. Lock and load." He brought the next Hind in from behind her at treetop level, attack speed. She had three seconds to react.



"Locked and loaded." Claudia pirouetted like a ballerina and picked up the Hind in the sight ring. "Actuator on." As she said it, Sean flung the Hind into a climbing sideslip, giving her deflection in three planes. it wQAd be like trying to hit a high bird in a gale of crosswind.



in their screen the watched with disbelief as Claudia swung smoothly, keeping the image in the exact center of her aiming ring and the missile sobbed and then settled into its high-pitched tone.



"Target acquired. Fire!"



TARGET DEsTROy mi TARGET DEsTRoYED! The screen blinked at them, and they fidgeted uncomfortably.



Job murmured, "Twice on the trot. That ain't no fluke, man."



Claudia laid the launcher on the table, readjusted the peak of her cap over her eyes, then placed her fists on her hips and smiled at them sweetly.



"I thought you said you didn't know how to shoot," Sean accused her with righteous indignation.



"Would a daughter of Riccardo Enrico Monterro not know how to shoot?"



"But you are stridently opposed to blood sports."



"Sure," she agreW. "I've never shot at a living creature. But I'm death to clay pigeons. Papa taught me."



"I should have guessed when you said "Pull."" Sean groaned softly.



"As a matter of interest"--Claudia examined the fingernails of her right hand modestly---"I was Alaska State women's skeet champion three years running and runner-up at the national championships in 'eighty-six."



The two men exchanged embarrassed glances. "She got you with a sucker punch." Job shook his head. "And you walked straight into it with both eyes closed."



"AD right, Miss Alaska," Sean told her sternly. "You are so damned clever, you've just landed yourself the job of instructor.



From here on you are in charge of this equipment. Job and I will split the Shanganes into two classes and give them the basics. Then we'll pass them on to you for simulation. It'll speed up the whole works."



General China interrupted them as he strode into the amphitheater, beret cocked jauntily, slapping his swagger stick against his thigh and taking in their preparations with quick, inquisitive eyes.



"How soon can you begin training? I expected to be further J



along than this."



Sean recognized the futility of trying to explain to him. "We'll get along better without interference."



"I came to warn you that Frehmo have launched their offensive.



They are coming at us in force from the south and the west, a two-pronged drive, obviously trying to push us out of these hills, away from the river, into more open terrain where they can deploy their armor and their helicopters to better advantage."



"So they are whipping the hell out of you," Sean needled him with a thinly concealed sneer.



"We are falling back." China acknowledged the jibe with just a glitter in his eyes. "As soon as my men attempt to hold up their advance at a natural strongpoint, Frelimo simply calls in the Hinds. The Russian pilots are showing us the close-support skills they learned in the mountains of Afghanistan. They simply obliterate our defenses. It is not a pleasant experience to listen helplessly on the radio while my field commanders plead for help. How soon can I send them the Stingers?"



"Two days," Sean said.



"So lone. Is there no way you can hurry it up?" Impatiently China slapped the swagger stick into the palm of his hand. "I want you to let me have at least one trained team immediately. Anything to be able to hit back at them."



"That, General China, would be crass stupidity," Sean told him.



"With all due respect"-Sean showed none in the tone of his voice-"if you deploy the Stingers piecemeal, you'll be tipping your hand to the Hind crews."



"What do you mean?" China's voice cracked like breaking floe ice.



"Those Russkie pilots have met the Stingers before, in Afghanistan, you can be pretty damn sure of that. They'll know every countermeasure in the book and then a few more. Right now they are blissfully convinced that they are the only things in the sky.



guard is wide open, but you let one Stinger By and all that will change. Okay, you might put one down, but the rest of the squadron will be ready for you."



China's frozen expression thawed and he looked thoughtful.



"So what do you suggest, Colonel?"



"Hit them all at once with everything you've got."



"When? Where?"



"When they are least expecting it, a full-scale surprise attack on their laager-at dawn."



"On their laager?" China shook his head irritably. "We don't know where they laager at night."



"Yes, we do," Sean contradicted. "I have already pinpointed the laager. I'll train Alphonso and Ferdinand and set up the raid for them. Give me two days, and they'll be ready to go."



China thought for a moment, hands clasped behind his back, staring up at the blue African sky as though he expected at any moment to see those dread humpbacked shapes appear.



"Two days," he agretd at last.



"Two days, and when I have your missile crews trained and ready to leave on -the raid, you let me and my party go. That is my condition."



"There is a Frelimo column between here and the Zimbabwean border," China reminded him.



"We'll take our chances," Sean snapped. "That is the bargain.



Do I have your word on it?"



"Very well, Colonel. I agree."



"That's fine. Now, when do you expect Alphonso and his detachment to arrive?"



"They have already reached our lines. I expect Alphonso and his men will be here in another hour or so, but they will be exhausted, they have been in action almost continuously for twenty-four hours."



"They aren't on a Sunday school picnic." Sean was callous.



"Send them to me as soon as they arrive.



They came in at last, moving with the slack, stumbling gait of a boxer at the end of ten hard rounds. Their tiger mission sl gut the Unimog truck and crossed mt4 Mozambique on abandoned foot.



He "The bush is full of Frelimo, and the air is full of hen shaw and wiped Ins face wearily on a grubby, tattered bandanna.



paused hcraft, but the hen shaw can speak from the sky. They



"It is wite;



taunt us in the Shangane language. They tell us they have magic that turns our bullets and rockets to water."



Sean nodded grimly. The Russians must be using sky-shout amplifiers to demoralize the Renamo defenders. That was another trick they had learned in Afghanistan.



"All along the line our men are being shot to Pieces, or are running away. We cannot fight against the hen shaw



"Yes, you bloody well can." Sean seized the front of his tunic.



"I'D show you how. Get your men up. There'll be plenty of time to sleep later, when we have burned those Russian bastards out of the sky.



g Sean and Job had worked and fought with all these men and had come to know them by name and deed, so they had formed a fairly accurate picture of their individual worth and capabilities.



They knew that there were no cowards nor shirkers among those out.



However, there them. Alphonso had long ago sifted were those whom Job classified as "oxen," the strong and stupid, the muscle and cannon fodder. The others were of varying degrees of intelligence and adaptability. At the top of the heap were Alphonso and Ferdinand.



Sean and Job sorted them into two groups and concentrated their efforts on the most promising in each group, quickly picking out those who had the image recognition to translate what they saw on the aiming screen of the launchers into finite terms in shape and space.



At the end of almost three hours, they had picked out twenty men who had the potential to assimilate the necessary training swiftly and to act as number ones in the missile teams, and as many again who might be able to fulfill the number two backup role.



The others, who showed no aptitude, were allotted to the assault team, which would be using conventional weapons in the attack Sean was planning. Of the missile trainees, Sean took one group and Job the other, and they began the monotonous task of familiarizing them with the actual weapons. Once again they relied on the technique of repetition and reinforcement. Each trainee had his turn at stripping and reassembling, locking and loading, and aiming the launcher. While he did so, he explained to the class exactly what he was doing, and Sean and Job corrected their mistakes while the rest of the class taunted them.



It was late afternoon before Sean sent the first group of five men, which included both Alphonso and Ferdinand, to Claudia for simulated attacks with the training equipment.



and was immediately Alphonso scored three consecutive hits detailed to act as Claudia's assistant and translator. By nightfall an five members of the first group had scored three consecutive hits, which Claudia had arbitrarily decided was her passing standard, and Sean and Job had another ten men ready to begin simulator training as soon as it was sufficiently light the following morning.



When it was too dark to continue, Sean dismissed Alphonso and his group, and they staggered off wearily into the night, Punchdrunk with fatigue and the effort of learning.



Joyful, the chef, had stolen the tripe from the buffalo carcass ious evening. After the day's that had fed the officers" mess the prey heat they were a little ripe, but he had disguised that fact with a liberal addition of chopped wild onion tubers and peri-peri sauce.



Claudia paled when Joyful proudly placed a steaming bowl of the tripe in front of her. In the end, hunger overcame her fastidiousness. 4.



"Put hair on your chest," Sean comforted her.



"That, my darling man, isn't high on my list of beauty aids."



"Okay, then." He smiled at her. "Put some weight on those skinny little buns of yours."



"You don't like my buns?"



"I love your buns. That's why I want more of them, as much as I can get."



When Matatu came creeping in out of the darkness, Sean fed him, and he gorged on tripes until his naked belly bulged like a shiny black beach ball.



"All right, you greedy little bugger," Sean told him. "Now it's time for you to earn your keep."



They led him up to the dark amphitheater, where they found Job waiting for them. He had already assembled the raw materials for building the scale model of the gunship laager. By the light of two paraffin lanterns, they started to lay it out. Matatu had been a party to these model constructions so many times during the bush war that he understood exactly what was required of him. Like so many who have never acquired the skills of reading and writing, Matatu had a photographic memory.



lilt He strutted about importantly, giving Sean and Job instructions, showing them the topography of the countryside in and surrounding the laager the shape of the hill on which it had been built, the relationship of it to the main road and the railway fine.



Claudia showed a new talent Scan had not suspected. Using the soft white wood of the baobab tree, she whittled eleven tiny scale models of the Hind gunships. They were fully recognizable as what they represented, and when she sat them in their emplacements within the perimeter of the model laager, they added an authentic touch.



It was well after midnight before Claudia and Scan crept naked under the mosquito net in their dugout. They were both weary to their bones, but even after they had made slow, languorous love neither of them could sleep, and they lay close in the darkness and talked. Mention of her father earlier in the day had caused Claudia to hark back to her childhood. Listening to her, Sean was relieved that she was able to speak naturally and easily about her father.



She had conquered the initial shock and sorrow, and she remembered him now with only a nostalgic melancholy that was almost pleasure in comparison to the pain that had preceded it.



She described to Sean how at the age of fourteen, the very year her womanhood had first flowered, the wonderfully secure cocoon of her life had burst asunder in her parents" traumatic divorce. She painted a picture for him of the years that had followed: the droughts of loneliness when she was separated from her father followed by the roaring floods of love and conflict when they came together again.



"You can see why I'm such a crazy mixed-up kid," she told him.



"Why I have to strive to be the best at whatever I do, and why I'm always drawn to try and protect the underdog. Half the time I'm still trying to win Papa's approval, while the other half of the time I'm trying to flout and reject his elitist materialistic view of life."



She snuggled against Sean. "I truly don't know how you are going to handle me."



"Handling you will always be a pleasure," he assured her. "But keeping you in your place looks like a full-time job."



"That's just the sort of thing Papa would have said. You and I. are in for some rip-roaring fights, mister."



"Ah, but just think of the reconciliations, what fun they will be."



In the end they managed a few hours of sleep and awoke surprisingly refreshed and clearheaded to take up the training where they had left off at nightfall the previous day.



While Claudia ran the last of the trainees through the attack sequences on the simulator, Sean and Job squatted beside the model of the gunship laager and Sean explained his plans for the attack. Job listened attentively and made the occasional suggestion, until at last they had it all clear in their own minds--the approach march, the attack, and the withdrawal together with the alternative actions to be taken if there were a hitch anywhere along the line.



"Okay." Sean stood up. "Let,s give it to the lads."



The Shangane troopers watched, totally absorbed, from their perches on the rock slopes of the amphitheater while Sean and Job described the plans for the raid. They used river pebbles to denote the various units of the raiding party, moving them into place around the laager. When the attack began, Claudia manipulated her model Hinds and there were enthusiastic cheers from the watching Shanganes as one by one they were brought crashing to earth by volleys of Stinger missiles.



"Right, Sergeant Alphonso." Sean replaced the counters in their original positions. "Show us the attack again."



Five times they went over it. In turn each of the section leaders described it to them, and the final cheers as the Hinds were destroyed lost none of their gusto for being so often repeated. At the end of the fifth show, Sergeant Alphonso stood up and addressed Sean on behalf of the entire unit.



"Nkosi Kakulu, " he began. He had never before used this form of address to Sean. Wsually this was reserved for very high-ranking tribal chieftains. Sean was aware of the honor, and this proof that he had at last won the full respect and loyalty of these fiercely proud and hard-bitten warriors.



"Great Chief," Alphonso said, "your children are troubled."



There was a murmur of agreement and nodding of heads. "In all that you have told us of the battle, you have not assured us that you will be there to lead us and put fire in our bellies as you did at Grand Reef Tell your children, Nkosi Kakulu, that you will be with us in the midst of the fighting and that we will hear you roaring like a lion as the hen shaw fall burning from the sky and the Frehmo baboons run from us screaming like virgins feeling the prong for the very first time."



Sean spread his hands. "You are not my children," he said.



"You are men of men, just as your fathers were men before you."



There was no higher compliment he could Pay them. "You do not need me to help you to do this thing. I have taught you all I know.



The flames in your bellies burn with the same fury as the fire in the tall dry grass of winter. The time has Come for me to leave you.



This battle is yours alone. I must go, but I win always be proud that we were friends and that we fought side by side as brothers do."



There was a low chorus of dissent, and they shook their heads and spoke together in low rumbling tones.



Sean turned away and saw that while he had been speaking, General China had come up and now stood quietly among the him trees at the riverside, watching There were a dozen officers in all wearing the and men of his personal bodyguard beh d him, same maroon berets, but somehow they seemed insignificant as China stepped forward and instantly commanded the attention of every person in the amphitheater.



"I see your preparations are complete, Colonel Courtney," he greeted Sean.



"Yes, they are ready, General!" ain for my benefit."



"Will you please go over the plans ag Sean singled out Sergeant Alphonso. "Describe the raid for us again," he ordered. General China stood in front of the mock-up laager with the swagger stick clasped behind his back and watched with quick bright eyes, interrupting sharply to ask his questions.



"Why are you using only half the available missiles?"



"The raiding column has to get through the Frelimo lines undetected. The missiles are bulky and heavy. A larger number would be superfluous and make discovery by Frelimo much more likely."



China nodded, and Sean went on, "You also have to take into account the possible failure of the raid. If that happens and you have bet all your Stingers on one throw of the dice Sean shrugged.



"Yes, of course, it's wise to keep half of the missiles in reserve.



Even if the raid fails we will not be left entirely helpless. Carry on."



Alphonso went through the plan step by step, illustrating wi lo red pebbles how the missile teams would move into position and he in readiness five hundred meters from the perimeter of the gunship laager, two teams confronting each sandbagged emplacement.



At the signal of a red flare, the assault team would attack in full force from the south, hitting any fuel tankers that might be on the rail spur with RPS-7 rocket fire, sweeping the interior of the laager with mortar fire, and then launching a frontal assault on the southern perimeter.



"The hen shaw will take fright as soon as the shooting begins," Alphonso explained. "They will try to escape by flying away, but there will be a moment when they rise from the earth that they will still be low down, standing still in the air, the way a falcon hovers before it stoops. That is the moment we will kill them."



Sean and China discussed every aspect of the plan until at last China was satisfied.



"So when will you move out?"



"You keep saying' you Sean pulled him up. "I'm not having anything more to do with it. Sergeant Alphonso will lead the attack. They'll move out this evening two hours before dark to penetrate the Frelimo lines during the night, lay up in cover tomorrow, and launch the attack tomorrow night."



"Very well," China agreed. "I'll address the men now."



He was a compelling orator, Sean admitted to himself, as he listened to China reminding them of the consequences of a Frelimo victory and exhorting them to deeds of valor and self-sacrifice. By the time he ceased speaking, their faces were shining and their eyes sparkled with patriotic fervor. General China raised his voice.



"You are warriors, so let me hear you sing the Renamo battle anthem. 19 The forest echoed and rang to the haunting beauty of their massed voices, and Sean found his vision dissolving into a blur as his eyes filled with emotion. He had not realized how much these men had come to mean to him until now, when he was about to leave them.



"Colonel, I would like to speak to you in private," General China broke into his sentimental reverie. "Please come with me."



With a word to Clauffia and Job, Sean excused himself. "Give them each one more run with the simulator."



He fell in beside General China and as they set out for the headquarters bunker, Sean took no notice of the fact that China's bodyguard did not accompany them but remained at the entrance of the amphitheater in an arrogant manner.



When they reached the command bunker, General China led them through to his underground office. There was tea ready for them, and Sean piled brown sugar into his mug and savored the first steaming mouthful.



"So what did you want to tell me?" he asked.



China was standing with his back to him, studying the wall map Frelimo offensive with on which he had marked the developing colored pins. He did not answer Scan's question, and Sean would not pander to him by asking again. He sipped at the tea and waited.



A signaler came through from the radio room and handed China a message flimsy. As he read it, the General exclaimed with disgust tinged with anxiety and reached up to move a group of colored pins on the map. Frelimo had broken through in the west and were closing in remorselessly.



"We are not containing them," China told Sean without looking around. Another messenger ducked into the bunker. He was one of China's personal bodyguards, wearing the distinctive maroon beret. He whispered something to China, and Sean thought he heard the word "American." It quickened his interest.



China smiled briefly and dismissed the man with a nod before he "t work," he said.



turned to Sean. "It won "What won't work?"



"The attack as you have planned it."



"Nothing is certain in war, as you should know, General. But I disagree. The plan has about a sixty percent chance of total success. That's pretty good odds."



"The odds would be considerably higher, perhaps eighty percent, if you led the attack, Colonel Courtney."



"I'm flattered by your estimate. However, it's hypothetical. I'm not leading it. I'm going home."



"No, Colonel. You are leading the attack."



"We had a bargain."



"Bargain?" China smiled. "Don't be naive. I make bargains and break them as the need arises. The need has arisen, I'm afraid."



Sean sprang to his feet, his face pale as candle wax beneath the deep tan. "I'm going," he said. Despite his fury, he managed to keep his voice thin and tight. "I'm taking my people, and I'm leaving now. Right away. You'll have to kill me to stop me."



China touched his deaf ear and smiled again. "That notion is not without its attractions, I assure you, Colonel. However, I don't think it will come to that."



"We'll see." Sean kicked back the sto al on which he had been sitting, and it hit the wall and crashed over on its side. He turned and ducked out of the low doorway.



"You'll be back," China assured him softly, but Sean gave no sign of having heard him. He came out in the sunlight and strode down toward the river.



He had reached the amphitheater before he realized that something was desperately amiss.



The Shanganes so t rigid at their places upon the slope; they seemed not to have moved since he had last seen them. Alphonso's features were graven in black ironstone, expressionless and dull, the shield of deliberate stupidity behind which the African distances himself from powers and forces against which he has no other defense.



Job was sprawled across the table in the center of the amphitheater. Ms tunic was floury with dust, and his cap lay in the dirt at his feet. He shook his head in a dazed, uncertain fashion, and drops of blood dripped from his nose.



"What happened?" Sean ran to him, and Job stared at him, trying to focus his eyes. He had been brutally beaten. His lips were swollen into purple bruises, his mouth full of blood that stained his teeth like red wine. One eyebrow was cut through, a deep jagged split from which blood trickled down the side of his nose. Blood welled out of both nostrils, swelling into bright pink bubbles as he breathed through it. There were lumps on his forehead like overripe grapes, and the lobe of one ear was torn. Blood dripped onto the front of his dusty tunic.



shoulder.



"Job, what the hell,-?" Sean caught him by the



"WhaT "I tried to stop them"" Job blurted out, his eyes fixed on Sean's face. "I tried!"



"Take it easy."



Sean tried to lead him to a seat, but he shook Scan's hands away and said, "Claudia."



A flash frost of dread chilled Sean's belly. "Claudia!" he repeated, and looked around him wildly. "Where is she, Job? What happened?"



"They took her," Job repeated. "China's goons. I tried to stop them."



Sean reached for the pistol on his webbing belt. "Where is she, Job?" The pistol grip fed his hand.



"I don't know." Job Swiped the palm of his hand down his face and looked at the blood. "I was out cold, I don't know for how long."



"China, you turd-munching bastard, you are going to die." Sean whirled, ready to go charging back to the headquarters bunker.



"Sean, think first!" Job called urgently, and Sean checked. So often Job had saved him with those two words: "Think first!"



It required an enormous effort of will, but for seconds Sean managed to keep his head above the wave of his killing rage. "The manuals, Job!" he gritted out. "Burn them"" Job blinked at him through the blood that spilled from the split eyebrow. "Burn the manuals!" Sean repeated. "Insurance, wan.



We are the only ones who know."



Job's expression cleared. "And the cassettes!" he exclaimed.



"Right!" Sean said. "The cassettes. Give them to me."



While Job hastily repacked the attack cassettes into their carrying case, Sean walked across to where Alphonso sat at the front of the amphitheater and unhooked a phosphorus grenade from his belt.



Working swiftly, he used his pistol lanyard and the phosphorus grenade to rig a makeshift self-destruction device in the interior of the case of attack cassettes. He hooked the clip of his pistol lanyard through the pin of the grenade and laid the grenade itself in the middle of the case. Using the point of a bayonet, he drilled a hole through the rid of the carrying case and threaded the end of the lanyard through it. When he locked the case, he looped the free end of the lanyard securely around his own wrist.



"Let China try and get them away from me now," he said grimly. If the case were jerked out of his grip, or if he let it fall, the lanyard would pull the pin of the grenade, destroying not only the contents but anybody standing nearby. He waited just long enough to watch Job set a match to the pile of instruction manuals.



Once they were fully ablaze he ordered Job, "Stay here, make certain they are burned to ashes."



Then, lugging the case of cassettes, he started back to the headquarters bunker.



"I said you would be back," China greeted him, but that icy sardonic smile faded swiftly as he saw the case Sean carried and the lanyard looped around his wrist.



Sean lifted the case in front of him and flaunted it in China's face. "There is the Hind squadron, China," he said, keeping his voice level with an effort. "Without this your Stingers are useless to YOU."



China's eyes flicked toward the entrance of the dugout.



"Don't even think about it," Sean warned him. "There is a grenade inside the case, a phosphorus grenade. This lanyard is attached to the firing pin. If I drop it, like if I was to die suddenly or someone were to pull it out of my hand, the whole lot goes up in a nice little bonfire, happy fifth of November."



They stared at each other across the desk.



"So this is a pretty little stalemate, Colonel." China's smile was reborn, colder and more deadly than Sean had ever seen it before.



"Where is Claudia Monterro?" Sean asked. China raised his voice, summoning an orderly from the radio room.



"Bring the woman!" he ordered, and they waited, both of them poised and alert, watching each other's eyes.



"I should have thought of the cassettes," China said in conversational tones. "That was good, Colonel. Very good. You can see why I want you to lead the attack."



"While we are on the subject," Sean replied, "I have also burned the instruction manuals. There are only three of us-Job, Claudia, and me-who understand the Stingers."



"What about the Shanganes-Alphonso, Ferdinand?" China challenged.



Sean grinned at him like a death 9s head. "Not on, China. They know how to shoot them, but they don't have any idea how to program the microprocessors. You need us, China. Without us the Hinds are coming after you, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it. So don't fool with me. I have your survival in my hands."



There was a scuffle in the outer room, and both of them looked to the entrance as Claudia was pushed through from the radio room. Her hands were once more manacled behind her back, she tumbled into her face and down had lost her cap, and her hair had her neck.



"Sean!" she blurted when she saw him. She pulled against the hands of the two bodyguards who held her, trying to reach him.



They jerked her back and threw her against the side wall of the dugout.



"Tell your baboons to knock that off," Sean snarled. When they glowered at him, China restrained them with a sharp order.



"]?ut that woman in the chair!"



They forced her into the solid mahogany seat and at another order from China used the manacles to chain her wrists securely to the heavy arms of the chair.



"I have something of yours, Colonel, and you have something of mine. Shall we workout a deal?" General China suggested.



text us go, Sean aid promptly. "At the border, I'll hand over the cassettes." China shook his head regretfully.



"Not acceptable. Here is my counteroffer. You lead the attack on the Hind laager. When it is completed successfully, Alphonso will escort you to the border."



Sean raised the booby-trapped case head high, and China smiled. In retaliation he drew the trench knife from its sheath on his belt. It was ivory-handled with a five-inch blade.



Still smiling, he lifted a single hair from Claudia's scalp and with a sharp jerk pulled it out. He held it up between thumb and forefinger and touched the hair with the blade. Half of the dark strand fell away and floated down to the earthen floor of the dugout. mat is how sharp it is," China said softly.



"If you kill her you haven't got anything to bargain with."



Sean's voice was harsh with strain, and he was sweating.



"I have this to bargain with," China replied. He nodded to his j guards at the doorway.



They led in someone Sean had never seen before, an apparition with an ancient skull-like head. The hair had fallen out in tufts, A leaving shiny black patches on the scalp. The lips had shrunk and peeled back to expose teeth that were too large and white for that ruined head.



At a word from China the guards stripped away the single filthy ragged shift that covered the body, leaving it entirely naked, and for the first time Sean realized that it was a woman.



Her body reminded him of the horror pictures he had seen of the survivors of Dachau and Belsen. She was a skeleton covered with baggy skin, her empty dugs dangled over the rack of her ribs, her stomach was drawn in so her pelvic girdle was an empty bony basin. Her arms and legs were fleshless, the bony elbows and knees grotesquely enlarged.



Sean and Claudia stared at her with horror, unable to speak with the shock of it.



"Look at the lesions on her abdomen," China invited in a pleasant voice. Numbly they obeyed.



They were blind boils, hard and shiny as ripe black grapes beneath the skin, covering her lower belly and disappearing into the wiry mop of pubic hair.



While their attention was on this pathetic figure, China reached down quickly with the knife and touched the back of Claudia's hand with the point of the blade. Claudia gasped and tried to jerk her hand away, but it came up short against the manacle chain and she stared down as a thin snake of bright blood trickled down her forefinger and dripped onto the floor.



"What did you do that for, you snot-gobbling bastard?" Sean demanded.



China smiled. "It's only a scratch."



Slowly he reached out toward the naked skeletal figure of the black woman, pointing with the knife at her shrunken belly.



"The extreme emaciation and those characteristic lesions are diagnostic," he explained. "The woman is suffering from what we in Africa call the "slim sickness.""



"AIDS," Claudia whispered, and her voice was filled with the dread that single word conjured up.



Despite himself, Sean took a step back from the dreadful figure before him.



"Yes, Miss Monterro," China agreed. "AIDS in its terminal stage."



He touched one of the marble-hard chancres on the woman's belly with the point of the blade, and she gave no reaction as it split open and a mixture of pus and dark tarry blood oozed from the wound and trickled down into the matted bush of her pubic hair.



"Blood," whispered China, and gently scooped it up onto the bright silver blade. "Warm, living blood, swarming with the virus."



He proffered the blade for Sean's inspection. Involuntarily Sean pulled back further as blood dripped from the point.



"Yes," China nodded. "Something that even the bravest have reason to fear, the most certain, the most lingering, the most loathsome death of all the ages."



With his free hand he took hold of Claudia's wrist. "Consider this other blood. The sweet bright blood of a vibrant, beautiful young woman." The scratch on the back of Claudia's hand was vivid, but the tiny flow of blood from it almost quenched it.



"Blood to blood," China whispered. "Sick blood to healthy blood."



He brought the filthy blade closer to Claudia's hand, and she stiffened in the chair, straining silently against the manacle, her the knife.



face white with horror as she stared at "Blood to blood," China repeated. "Shall we let them mingle?"



Sean found he could not speak. He shook his head dumbly, staring at the knife.



"Shall we do it, Colonel?" China asked. "It's all up to you now."



He brought the blade closer to the open wound in Claudia's smooth, creamily tanned skin.



"Just another inch, Colonel," China whispered. Suddenly Claudia screamed. It was a wild ringing release of horror and terror, but China did not flinch. He did not look at her face, and his knife hand was steady and tremor less



"What shall we. dc, Colonel Courtney?" he asked.



He lowered the knife and touched her wrist with the flat of the blade, leaving a smear of diseased blood on the unblemished skin, only inches from the scratch on Claudia's hand. Then, slowly, he moved the knife downward.



"Speak quickly, Colonel. In seconds it will be too late." The knife left a shiny track of blood like the shine trail of some disgusting snail across her skin. Inexorably it moved down toward the open wound.



"Stop it!" Sean screamed. "Stop it!"



China lifted the blade away and looked at him inquiringly.



"Does that mean we have reached an agreement?"



"Yes, damn you to hell! I'll do it!"



China tossed the contaminated knife into a corner of the dugout, then opened one of the drawers in his desk and brought out a bottle of Dettol antiseptic. He soaked his handkerchief in the undiluted fluid, then carefully wiped the smear of diseased blood from Claudia's skin.



The tension went out of her rigid body and she slumped in the chair. She was panting softly and trembling like a kitten left out in the rain.



"Turn her loose," Sean croaked.



China shook his head. "Not until we have made our terms of agreement clear."



"All right," Sean snarled. "And the first of those terms is that my woman comes with me on the mission. No more dugouts filled with rats."



China pretended to ponder that. Then he nodded. "Very well, but the second term is that if you fail me in any way, Alphonso WM kill her immediately."



"Get Alphonso in here," Sean demanded. The sweat had not yet dried on his forehead, and his voice was still rough and unsteady.



"I want to hear you give him his orders."



Alphonso stood to attention and listened expressionlessly as China told him, "However, if the attack fails, if you are intercepted by Frelimo before you reach the laager, or if any of the hen shaw are allowed to escape-" Sean interrupted. "No, General, a hundred percent success is too high to hope for. Let us be reasonable and realistic. If I can destroy all but six of the Hinds, then it must be counted that I have fulfilled my part of the bargain."



China frowned and shook his head. "Even six Hinds will be sufficient to ensure our defeat. I'll allow you two. If more than two Hinds escape from the laager, your mission will be a failure, and you must pay the price." He turned back to Alphonso and went on with his instructions. "And so, Sergeant, you win obey all orders from the Colonel, carrying out the attack exactly the way he has planned it. But if the raid fails, if more than two hen shaw escape, you are to take full command, and your very first duty will be to shoot the two whites and their black servant-you will shoot them immediately."



Alphonso blinked almost sleepily at the order. He did not turn his head to look at Sean, and Sean found himself wondering if, despite their relationship, the friendship that had grown up between them, despite the fact that Alphonso had Caw bun Nkosi Kakulu and Babo and had exhorted him to lead the mission, if despite all of this he would carry out the execution order.



Alphonso was a Shangane and a warrior with a deep sense of tribal loyalty and a tradition of absolute obedience to his chief and tribal elders.



"Yes," Sean thought. "He'd probably have a few regrets, but without question or hesitation, he would do it."



He raised his voice. "All right, China, we all know exactly where we stand. Let Miss Monterro come to me now."



The bodyguard removed her handcuffs, and politely General China helped her out of the chair. "I apologize for the unpleasantness, Miss Monterro, but I'm sure you will understand the necessity for it."



Claudia was unsteady on her feet, and she staggered. When she reached Sean, she clung to him.



"And so I'll wish you farewell and good hunting." China gave them a small, mocking salute. "One way or the other, we will not meet again, I'm afraid."



Sean did not deign to reply. With the case of cassettes in one hand and his other arm around Claudia's shoulders, Sean led her to the doorway.



They moved out two hours before darkness. It was an unwieldy column, and the missile launchers and the backup missiles made awkward burdens; apart from their weight, the length of the packs made them cumbersome. They hooked up in thick bush when the path narrowed and slowed down the column's ability to react to threat and danger.



At first Sean kept the column bunched up in a close, cohesive whole. They were still some miles from the tenuous front line of the Renanio army and would not be seriously menaced until much later in the march.



However, taking no chances, Sean kept the assault troops of the vanguard and rear vigilant and at the utmost degree of readiness to repel any attacks and to give the missile bearers a chance to escape. To ensure this, Sean sent Job to the head of the column while he stayed in the center, from which he could reach any trouble spot quickly and where he could be near Claudia.



"Where's Matatu?" she asked Sean. "We've just gone off and left him. I'm so worried about him."



"Don't worry about leaving him behind. He's like one of those puppies you can't send him home. He'll follow me anywhere. In fact, the little bugger is probably watching us out of the bush at t s very moment."



And so it proved, for as darkness descended on the column, a small shadow appeared miraculously at Sean's side.



"I see you, my Bwana," Matatu twinkled.



"I see you also, little friend." Sean touched his woolly head as he would his favorite gun dog. "I've been waiting for you to find a way for us through the Frelimo lines, and so lead us to the roosting place of the ugly falcons."



Matatu swelled with self-importance. "Follow me, my Bwana, he said.



Now, with Matatu to guide them, Sean could rearrange the column into a more streamlined formation for passing through the Frelimo advance and getting into their rear.



To his advantage was the size of the battle being fought ahead of him. There were six thousand Frelimo and Zimbabwean troops advancing against less than half that number of Renamo defenders, and the area of the battlefield was tens of thousands of square miles in extent. The fighting was taking place in small, isolated pockets, while most of the ground was wild, rugged, and drafted.



Sean sent Job and Matatu ahead with a small party of assault troops to find any wide gaps in the line and steer them through.



The rest of the column followed at a discreet interval, protected by the conventionally armed assault division of Shanganes.



They kept going steadily through the night, runners coming back from the vanguard to guide them whenever it was necessary to make a detour or change direction.



At intervals during the long, cold march, they heard distant gunfire and the sound of mortars and heavy machine guns as elements of the Frelimo advance ran into the Renamo defense.



Occasionally they saw the twinkle of signal flares soaring above the dark forest, but there was no sound of Isotov turbos and helicopter rotors in the night. It was clear the Hinds were limiting their depredations to the daylight hours, when they could distinguish friend from foe and make their close-support operations more effective.



An hour before dawn Job came back down the column to find Sean. "We aren't going to reach our first objective until an hour or so after first light," he reported. "The pace has been slower than we expected.



What do you want us to do? Shall we take a chance on the Hinds finding us?"



Sean looked up at the sky before he replied. The first lemon colored flush of dawnlyas paling out the stars.



, "The forest roof isn't dense enough to hide so many men and so much equipment, "he decided. "We have to keep going and get them into hiding" Tell Matatu to quicken the pace."



"What about the Hinds?"



"The main fighting is well behind us now, that is where they will be headed. We have to take the chance but move fast."



As the light strengthened, the faces of the men in the long column turned more frequently and fretfully to the sky. The pace was fast, almost a run. Although they had been going all night, the Shanganes bore their heavy burdens with all the hardiness and fortitude of the African, burdens that would have broken the heart and back of even a strong white man.



it was light enough to define the treetops against the orange blossom of dawn when Sean heard the dread whistle of turbos, faint and distant, passing to the east. The Hinds were flying their fast sortie of the day, and the alarm was shouted down the length of the column. The porters dived off the path, seeking the nearest cover, and the section leaders crouched ready to wave the captured Frehmo colors Sean had provided for each of them should the Hinds spot them and come in to strafe them.



The deception was not necessary, for the pair of Hinds passed two miles east of their position. Sean saw their silhouettes, like deformed pats, black against the oncoming dawn, and minutes later heard the thunder of their Gatling cannons and the boom of their assault rockets as they pounded another Renamo stronghold among the ironstone hills far behind them.



Sean got the column moving again, and the glimpse they had been given of the "flying death" sped their feet. An hour later, the tail end of the column clambered swiftly down the almost sheer side of the gorge at the bottom of which lay the dry river-bed and the caves where the captured Unimogs had been hidden.



It was almost a homecoming, and the men crept thankfully into the gloom of the caverns and laid down the heavy packs.



"No fires," Sean ordered. "No smoking."



They ate their rations of cold stodgy maize cakes and dried fish and then curled on the cavern floor and slept like a pack of hounds exhausted at the end of a day's hunting.



Sean found a private place for Claudia at the back of the cavern, behind a natural screen of tumbled sandstone blocks. He spread a blanket on the rocky floor, and she sat cross-legged upon it and munched the unappetizing rations. But before she had half finished, she slumped sideways, asleep before her head touched the floor. Sean spread the other blanket over her, for it was chilly in the depths of the cavern, and then went back to the entrance.



Alphonso had rigged the antenna of the small portable two-way VHF radio. He was crouched beside the set with the volume turned com low listening to the situation reports of the Renamo field manders as they reported in to General China's headquarters.



"It goes very badly," he told Sean glumly. "Frelimp will be on the riverbank by noon tomorrow, and unless the general pulls back he will be overrun." Alphonso broke off as he recognized their call sign in the jumbled static of the wave band.



"Banana Bush, this is Warthog," he replied into the hand Mike and then gave the "primary objective established" code: Coca Cola Sean smiled at this subtle commentary on modern Africa, and Banana Bush acknowledged and signed off. Their next report scheduled for dawn tomorrow, by which time the fate of the his.



mission would be decided one way or the other.



Sean left Alphonso rolling up the antenna and packing the radio into its carrying case and from the entrance of the cavern watched the party of five men who under Job's supervision were sweeping the sandy river-bed with thorn branches to obliterate the last traces of their passing.



Job climbed back to the mouth of the cave and Sean asked, "Sentries?"



"On each of the peaks." Job pointed to the heights above them.



"I have covered every approach."



"All right." Sean led him back into the cavern. "It's time to arm and program the Stingers."



It took almost a full hour to assemble the launchers, connect the battery packs, and feed the cassettes into the microcomputers in the consoles. Finally each of the launchers was fully armed and programmed for the "two-color" attack sequence on the Hind gunships, and they handed them back to the Shangane section leaders.



Sean glanced at his wristwatch, mildly surprised that it was still keeping time after all the abuse he had given it recently.



"We can grab a few hours" shut-eye," he told Job, but neither of them made a move to do so.



Instead, as if by consent, they moved back to the entrance of the cavern, away from the others, and leaned against the rock wall with their shoulders almost touching, staring thoughtfully out into the river-bed where the early sunlight was sparkling the crystalline sand like powder snow.



"If you had taken my advice, you could be living high in the fleshpots of Harare now," Sean murmured.



"And never have the chance to bag a Hind?" Job smiled carefully; his damaged lip was crusted with a fragile scab, and a drop of blood like a tiny ruby appeared as it split open again. He dabbed at it with the corner. of his bandanna as he went on, "We have hunted all the dangerous game together, Sean, in all the worst places. Buffalo in the jesse bush, elephant in the Kasagasaga. This will be another trophy, the best and biggest."



Sean turned to study his face. It was typical of their friendship that their feelings should be so perfectly in tune. During the long night march, Sean's fury and hatred of General China had abated and given way to this emotion Job had just articulated, the excitement of the hunter. They were both hunters; the chase was a fire and a passion in their blood that they had never attempted to suppress. They understood each other, recognized and accepted this bond between them that had grown stronger over the twenty years of their friendship. Yet, Sean realized, they had seldom spoken of their feelings for each other.



"Perhaps now is the time to do so," he thought, and said aloud, "We are more than brothers, you and me."



"Yes," Job replied simply. "We are beyond the love of brothers."



They were silent then, not embarrassed by what had passed between them, but rather fulfilled and fortified by it.



"As a brother," Sean broke the silence, "may I ask a favor of you?"



Job nodded, and Sean went on softly. "There will be hard fighting at the laager. I would not want Claudia to fall into the hands of Frelimo if I were not there to prevent it. That is the favor I ask."



A shadow passed behind Job's eyes. "I do not like to think about that possibility."



"If I am not there, will you do it for me?"



Job nodded. "I give you my word."



"If you have to do it, do not warn her, do not speak, do it unexpectedly. "She will not know it is coming," Job promised. "It will be quick.



"Thank you," Sean said, and clasped his shoulder. "Now we must rest."



Claudia was still asleep, her breathing so gentle and silent that for a moment Sean was alarmed. He put his face close to hers and felt the warmth of her breath on his cheek. He kissed her, and she murmured in her sleep and reached out, fumbling for him and sighing contentedly as he crept into the circle of her arms.



He seemed only to have closed his eyes for a moment before a light touch on his cheek woke him again and he looked up to see Job squatting over him.



"It's time." Job's lips formed the words, and Sean gently disentangled Claudia's arms.



"Sleep sweetly, my love," he murmured, and left her lying on the blanket.



The others were already waiting for him at the entrance of the cave, Matatu and Alphonso and the section leaders, only lightly armed so that they could move swiftly and steathily.



"Four o'clock," Job told Sean, and he saw that the light in the river-bed had mellowed, the shadows were lengthening.



There was nothing more to say. They had both done this half a hundred times before.



"See you around," Job said, and Sean nodded as he strapped on his pack.



With Matatu dancing ahead of them like a forest sprite, they slipped out of the cavern and into the trees, immediately turning south and settling into their running formation.



Twice they heard the Hind gunships passing at a distance, and once they were forced into cover as one of the helicopters came directly overhead.



However, it was high-over four thousand feet, Sean estimated-and flying at the top of its speed. Studying the aircraft through his binoculars, Sean guessed it had completed a mission and was racing back to the laager to refuel and rearm. Confirming this, the racks for the Swatter assault missiles below the fuselage were empty, and the nozzles of the rocket pods were scorched with the backblast of discharged rockets.



The Hind was heading on exactly the same bearing as Matatu was leading them, and even as Sean held it in the field of his binoculars, the Hind reduced power on its turbos and commenced its descent, homing in on its laager.



"Not more than five miles ahead," Sean guessed. He glanced across at Matatu, who was waiting expectantly for Sean's approbation.



"Like a bee to its hive." Matatu grinned.



"Your eyes are like those of the vulture," Sean agreed. "They see all." Matatu hugged himself with pleasure and rocked on his haunches. Sean's praise was all the reward he ever asked for.



Half an hour later they leopard-crawled up onto the crest of a low, rocky kopje and slid over the skyline into the dead ground below. Sean raised his binoculars, using his cap to shade the lens; a reflected ray of sunlight would telegraph their position like a heliograph.



He picked up the raiNvay line immediately, less than two miles distant; the ballast was of blue granite and the single set of tracks gleamed dully in the late sunshine, polished by the steel wheels of rolling stock.



He followed the tracks for a mile and found the spur onto which two railway tankers had been shunted. They were partially hidden by scraggly trees and rank bush, but minutes later a feather of dust rose out of the forest and a fuel bowser came down a dirt track and pulled in beside the leading tanker. Sean watched though the binoculars as overall-clad workers connected the delivery hose and began to pump fuel between the two vehicles.



While this was happening, a Hind gunship rose with dramatic suddenness from the foreslope of the hill just beyond the railway spur.



At last Sean had a positive fix on the laager.



The Hind rose to three hundred feet above the hill, then turned and bore away, humpbacked and nose-heavy, for one more mission over the battlefield in the north before the light failed and fighting was suspended for the night.



Now that he knew exactly where to look, Sean was able to make out other heavily camouflaged emplacements on the slopes of the hill. He counted six of them and said so to Matatu.



"There are two more." Matatu grinned patronizingly as he pointed out the hidden emplacements Sean had overlooked. "And there are three more on the far side of the hill, you cannot see them from here."



The wisdom of making this reconnaissance in daylight became as Sean was able to pick out the discrepancies between the clearer model with which they had planned the raid and the actual tapa 9raphy of the laager and its surroundings.



Sean jotted the amendments in his notebook, making new estimates of the ranges and fields of fire his missiles could command.



One by one, he called over each of the section leaders and pointed out exactly what positions he wanted them to occupy as soon as their teams arrived and darkness fell to cover them.



Satisfied that Matatu could supply no further information, Sean dispatched him. "Go back to Job. As soon as it is dark, guide him and all the other soldiers up here." of daylight When Matatu was gone, Sean devoted the last hour to watching the gunships return out of the north. There were eleven of them, ample proof of the efficiency of the Russian maintenance crews, who must have repaired the two Hinds that Matatu had reported were not flying. The entire squadron, less the single It gunship that Sean had knocked out of the sky, was once again operational and doing dreadful execution among the Renamo guerrillas.



As each gunship hovered above the hillock, then settled into its emplacement, Sean pointed out the flying characteristics to his section leaders and urged them to mark well the exact position of each emplacement.



"That one is yours, Tendela." He reinforced the target allocations. "See how he stands in the sky. You will shoot from that clump of dark trees at the edge of the vlei. Have you marked it well?"



I have marked it, Nkosi Kakulu," he affirmed. The sky was washed by the blood of the dying day, and as he watched the red orb sink away beneath the trees, Sean wondered how much more blood the dawn would bring.



There was that short period of African twilight during which it was not yet dark enough to move off the ridge. There was nothing further to discuss, and Sean and Alphonso sat close together. The feeling was so familiar. No matter how many times Sean waited like this, he would never be able to control or ignore the tension that pulled like rubber bands across his guts. It was the heady anticipation of the draft of terror that soon he would drink to the dregs. He longed for it as the addict does for the needle, and dreaded it to the limits of his soul.



"We will make a good kill," Alphonso said quietly. "It will be a fight for men who are truly men."



Sean nodded. "Yes, my friend, it will be a good fight, and if we fail, then you must try to kill me. That also will be a good fight."



"We will see," Alphonso growled, his eyes reflecting the smoky red glare of the sunset. "Yes, we will see."



The crisp silhouette of the hill on which the Hinds were laagered dissolved with the onset of night. Then Venus, the evening star, appeared, and its cold unwavering light burned directly above the hilltop, seeming to single it out for them.



Within the first hour of darkness, the leading troopers of the raiding column emerged from the trees behind them. Job was at the head of the column with Matatu guiding him and Claudia beside him. Sean met them with a quiet word and immediately began to marshal the troopers into their various units. The section leaders took charge of their missile teams, and the Stinger launchers were unpacked and assembled; the spare missiles in their sealed, frangible tubes were checked and readied.



Sean and Job and Claudia went from team to team, running the final checks on the missile launchers, making certain the battery packs were fully charged and correctly connected, the cylinders of freon gas were open-yak;,ed, and the sighting screens lit up when the actuator was engaged.



At last Sean was ready to deploy the missile teams. But before he did so, he called the section leaders together and for the last time made each repeat his orders. Satisfied at last, he began to dispatch them to their attack positions. He allowed a five-minute interval after each team leaving the ridge.



Alphonso was in charge of the missile teams attacking the eastern perimeter of the laager, and because he had farther to go to get into position, he left first.



When it was time for Job, who would lead the missile attack on the western perimeter, to go, he and Sean shook hands briefly.



There was no exchange of good wishes; they were both superstitious about that. Instead Job asked facetiously, "Listen, Sean, about that four thousand dollars in bonus and back pay, don't you want to pay me out now?"



"Will you take a check?" Sean grinned at him through the dark mask of his camouflage cream. Job answered his grin, punched his shoulder, and moved away out of earshot so Sean could speak to Claudia in private.



"I don't want to leave you," she whispered.



Sean hugged her fiercely. "Stay close to Job," he ordered.



"Come back to me safely."



"Yes.



"Promise me.



"I promise," he said, and she pulled out of his embrace and turned away, disappearing into the darkness after Job.



As Sean stared after her, he found that his hands were trembling. He thrust them into his pockets and clenched his fists. "Love doesn't do much for one's fighting instincts," he thought, and tried to dismiss her from his mind. "She'll be all right with Job."



The assault party was waiting for him patiently, squatting at the edge of the tree line. Twenty-four men, the cannon fodder, the meat bombs, he thought ruefully, those who had failed the aptitude tests for operating the Stingers. While the missile crews would fire from standoff positions five hundred meters outside the perimeter of the laager, the assault party would attack it head on and frontal, deliberately drawing fire while trying to flush the Hinds up into the air for the missile gunners to get a fair shot at them. It was this unit that would meet the 12.7-men cannons in their fortified positions, as well as all the other dangers and obstacles that certainly guarded the laager. Theirs was the most dangerous task, and for that reason alone Sean could not delegate the command of them to another. He himself would lead them in.



"Come on, Matatu," he said quietly. When there was real danger at hand, wounded game in thick cover or an enemy position to attack, Matatu's self-chosen place was always at Sean's side. Nothing could dislodge him from it.



As a mark of his esteem, Alphonso had presented Sean with an AKM assault rifle, the improved and updated version of the ubiquitous AK-47 that was much prized and sought after by the Renamo guerrillas. Sean carried this weapon now as he led the assault team down off the ridge. With Matatu guiding them through the night, they circled out to get in between the main railway line and the laager, as close as was prudent to the spur of line on which the railway fuel tankers stood.



There was no urgency-they had an night to get into position so they went with a stealth that increased the closer they came to the enemy positions.



It was after two in the morning, and the small slice of the moon had set before Sean had them in their jump-off positions, spread out at precise intervals so that at his command, they could sweep forward in skirmishing formation.



He made one final inspection of their dispositions, crawling silently from man to man, personally sighting in the 60-men M4 command o mortars for them, checking their equipment by sense of touch alone, making absolutely certain each of them clearly understood his objective, then leaving them with a whisper of encouragement and a brief but firm clasp of the shoulder. At last, with everything done that could be done, he settled down to wait.



This was always both the worst and the best part of the hunt. As he lay in the silence, he wondered how much of his life he had spent like this, waiting for it to began waiting for shooting light, waiting in the blind for that breath-stopping moment when a leopard would appear with magical suddenness in the bait tree, an elegant silhouette against the pale backdrop of the dawn.



His mind went back over the years to those other adventures and wild endeavors, to the terrible risks and almost unbearable thrills, and suddenly it dawned on him that this was probably the last time it would happen. He was over forty years of age and Claudia Monterro had entered his life; it was time for it to change.



There was sadness and, at the same time, satisfaction in that thought.



"Let the last be the best of all the game," he thought, and in the utter darkness of predawn he heard a sound at once thrilling and terrifying, the shrill high whine of a mighty turbo engine, howling like a man-eating wolf in the night. Almost at once it was joined by another and then another. The Hind squadron was starting their engines, warming up for their first sortie in the dawn.



Sean checked his watch. The luminous dial showed eleven minutes before five. It was almost time. Without thinking, he unclipped the curved banana magazine from under the AKM rifle and replaced it with another from the pouch of spare magazines on his webbing. That habitual gesture gave him the comfort of long familiarity. Beside him Matatu, seeing him do it, stirred expectantly. The dawn wind came as softly as a lover and stroked Sean's cheek.



He turned his head toward the east and held up his hand with fingers spread. He could just make out the silhouette of his fingers against the coming dawn. It was what the Matabele called "the time of the horns," when a herdsman could first see the horns of his cattle against the sky.



"Shooting light in ten minutes," Sean reminded himself, and knew how long it would take those minutes to pass.



One after another the Hinds shut down their engines to an idle.



The ground crews would be completing the refueling and rearming, and the flying crews would be going aboard.



Sean had to judge it exactly; the light must be just right. The Hinds would probably not use landing lights, and the missile gunners must be able to see them clearly against the dawn.



The light bloomed swiftly. Sean closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten before he opened them again. Now he could make out the stark outline of the crest of the hill, like a cutout in black cardboard. The lacework of the msasa trees stood out against the purple sky, swaying gracefully in the dawn breeze.



"Shoot!" he said, and tapped the shoulder of the mortar man beside him. The trooper leaned forward, holding the mortar bomb in both hands, and dropped it into the mouth of the mortar tube.



The charge in the tail ignited and with a polite pop hurled the signal bomb five hundred feet into the sky above the hilltop. It exploded in a twinkling red flare of lights.



Claudia Monterro followed Job down off the ridge, keeping close enough behind him she need only reach out her hand to touch him.



Job carried one of the missile launchers across his shoulders, and behind Claudia the number two of their team was bowed beneath the weight of the spare rocket tubes.



The footing was loose and dangerous, while quartz pebbles as treacherous as hall bearings rolled under foot. It pleased her that she was as steady and surefooted as any of them over this difficult ground.



Nevertheless she was sweating in the night chill as they reached the bottom of the slope and crept forward toward the perimeter of the laager. Only a few short weeks ago she would have felt inept and awkward in these circumstances, but now she oriented herself by the beacon of the evening star above the hilltop and responded instantly to Job's signals, picking her footfalls and anti tracking almost instinctively.



They reached the dense copse of trees that was their attack position and crept in among them. Claudia helped Job set up the Stinger ready for firing, then found herself a comfortable perch at the base of one of the trees to wait out the night.



Job left her there with just the Shangane number two loader for company and disappeared into the darkness like a hunting leopard. She was unhappy to see him go, but not long ago she would have been panic-stricken. She realized how much self-reliance and to learn in these last few weeks.



fortitude she had been forced "Papa will be proud of me," she smiled to herself, using the future tense as though her father still existed. "Of course he does," she assured herself. "He's still out there somewhere, looking out for me. How else would I have made it this far9l" His memory was a comfort, and as she thought about him he became confused in her mind with Sean, so that they seemed to merge into a single entity as though her father had somehow achieved a new existence in her lover. It was a good feeling that alleviated her loneliness, until suddenly Job returned as silently and abruptly as he had left.



"All the other sections are in position," he whispered, settling down beside her. "But it's going to be a long night. Try and get some sleep."



"I'll never be able to sleep," she answered, keeping her voice so low he had to lean close to her to catch the words. "Tell me about Sean Courtney. I want to know everything you know about him."



has' Sometimes he's a hero, and sometimes he's a complete tard." Job thought about it. "But most of the time he's something in between."



"Then why have you stayed with him so lone."



"He's my friend," Job answered simply. Then, slowly and haltingly, he began to tell her about Sean, and they talked the night away.



Claudia listened avidly, encouraging him with quiet questions.



"He was married, wasn't he, Job?"



"Why did he leave his home?



I have heard that his family is enormously wealthy. Why did he choose this life?"



So the night passed, and in those hours they became friends. He was the first true friend she had found in Africa, and in the end he autiful deep African voice, "I shall miss him said to her in that be I can tell."



more than the two of you are parting, and that isn't



"You speak as thoMgh so. It will be the same."



"No," Job denied. "It will never be the same. He will go with you now. Our time together has ended. Yours is begkming."



"Don't hate me for it, Job." She reached out to touch his arm in appeal. good together," he said. "I think your journey



"You two will be with him win be as good as mine has been. My thoughts will go with you, and I wish you both great joy in each other."



"Thank you, Job," she whispered. "You will always our friend."



Job lifted his arm and with fingers spread held his open hand against the dawn.



"The time of the horns," he murmured softly. "Soon now." And as he said it, a flower of bright crimson fire burst open in the sky above the hill.



As the signal flare burst in the dawn sky, the battle was born. Sean always thought of it as the birth of a living thing, a monster that he could only try to direct but that had a life and a will of its own, a terrible thing that swept them all up and carried them along willy-nilly.



He had placed the RPG-7 rocket launchers in the hands of his two best remaining gunners, but the expert marksmen had all gone to man the Stingers. The first rocket flew low, striking the earth twenty feet in front of the nearest fuel tanker; it burst in a vivid yellow flash, and Sean saw one of the Frefirno sentries cartwheel into the air. The second rocket was high, missing the tanker by six feet, reaching the top of its trajectory five hundred yards out, then dropping into the forest beyond, its detonation screened by trees and scrub.



"Aim, you Shangane oxen!" Sean bellowed at them. He was up and running as he realized his mistake in not taking the first, crucial shot himself.



The Frelimo sentries were screaming and scattering around the fuel tankers, and from the perimeter of the laager a 12.7-men cannon opened up, sluicing gaudy strings of fiery tracer across the sky.



The rocketeer war fumbling to reload the RPG-7, but he was panicky and unsure in the dark. Sean snatched the launcher off his shoulder and with two deft movements removed the protecting nose cap of the missile and cleared the safety pin. He swung the launcher over his shoulder and dropped on one knee, aiming at the nearest tanker.



"All the time in the world," he reminded himself, and waited for the puff of the morning breeze on his cheek to abate. The RPG-7 was wildly inaccurate in a crosswind, for the push of the wind on its tail fins would turn its nose into the wind.



The breeze dropped, and Sean centered the sights on the fuel tanker. The range was just on three hundred meters, the limit of the rocket's accuracy, and he fired. The missile sped true, and the side of the tanker erupted in a tall sheet of volatile avgas. The sky filled with flames.



Sean snarled at the rocketeer beside him, and the man fumbled another missile out of his pack, the cardboard propellant tube already attached to it.



Burning avgas illuminated the southern slope of the hill like noonday. Sean was kneeling in the open, and the gunner on the 12.7-men swung his aim onto him.



The earth around Sean dissolved into billowing clouds of dust and flying clods, and the rocketeer ducked.



"Come on, you yellow bastard!" Sean completed the loading sequence unaided, making no effort to avoid the aim of the 12.7men gunner.



He lifted the launcher onto his shoulder and aimed at the second fuel tanker. It was fit up by the flames as though it were a stage effect, but as he was on the point of firing, the tanker was obscured by a dancing curtain of yellow dust and the volley of cannon fire passed so close to Sean's head that his eardrums creaked and popped as though he were in a decompression chamber.



He held his fire for three seconds. Then as the curtains of dust blew open, he fired through them. The second tanker burst, blown clear of the railway lines by the explosion of its lethal cargo.



Burning avgas flowed down the slope like the lava of a miniature Vesuvius, and Sean threw the launcher at the rocketeer's chest.



"Hit them on the head with the bloody thing!" he yelled at him.



"That's the only damage you are going to do with it!"



The mortar men were doing better. Sean had sighted their weapons for them, and they bobbed and weaved over the short mortar tubes as they dropped the finned projectiles into the open mouths.



A steady stream of bombs lobbed high into the dawn sky and rained down into the hilltop laager.



Sean watched the effect of the bursts with a dispassionate, professional eye. "Good," he murmured. "Good." But they had only been capable of carrying thirty bombs for each of the mortars; they he'd almost two kilos each, and they would be expended in a weig few short minutes. They must rush the perimeter while the exploding bombs distracted the Frelimo gunners. He hefted the AKM rifle and slipped the safety catch.



"Go!" Sean yelled, and blew a short series of blasts on his whistle, "Go!"



The Shanganes came to their feet in a single cohesive movement and swept down the hill, but there were only twenty of them, a puny line of running men brightly lit by the flames. The 12.7-men gunners on the hill fastened on them, and tracer flew in clouds about them, thick as a locust plague.



"Shit!" Sean laughed aloud in terror. "What a way to gal 99 One of the Frelimo gunners had picked Sean out of the sweep line and was concentrating his fire on him, but Sean was M



downhill with long, flying strides and the gunner was s;11;9 1; and a little behind. Shot flashed past Sean so close he could feel the wind of it tugging at his tunic. Impossibly, he lengthened his stride, and beside him Matatu giggled shrilly, keeping pace with him down the hill.



"What's so goddamned funny, you silly little bugger?" Sean yelled at him furiously, and they hit the level ground beside the burning fuel tankers. The Frehmo gunner's field of fire was blanketed by the rolling screen of black smoke, and in the respite Sean marshaled his sweep line of racing Shanganes, pivoting them on the center and directing them at the perimeter of the laager, pump to urge them on. They used the smoke ing his right fist overhead to cover themselves for the next two hundred meters of their charge. The dawn breeze was spreading it, sooty black, dense, and low along the ground.



A Frefimo sentry staggered out of the smoke ahead of Sean. He ubby tennis shoes, he had wore faded, tattered denim jeans and gr lost his weapon, and a rocket splinter must have hit him in the eye.



The eye was dislodged from its socket and hung out on his cheek like a huge wet grape, dangling and bouncing on the thick cord of the optic nerve as the man jerked his head.



Without breaking his stride, Sean hit him in the belly with a tap of three from the AKM, firing from the hip. He jumped over the body as it hit the ground.



They came out of the smoke, still in sweep line. Sean glanced along the line and reaW incredulously that they had not yet taken a single casualty; the twenty Shanganes were spread out and going hard, offering 5my fleeting targets through the smoke and flame to the disoriented Frelimo machine guns.



At that moment he saw the single strand of wire and the line of round metal discs on short steel droppers only a dozen paces ahead of him. Each disc was emblazoned with a stylized skull and crossbones in scarlet that caught the ruddy glow of the flames, and almost before he realized it they were into the mine field that guarded the perimeter of the laager.



Two seconds later, the Shangane running on Sean's right-hand side triggered an antipersonnel mine. From the waist down his body was obscured by the dust and flash of the explosion and he dropped to the earth with both of his legs blown to bloody stumps below the knees.



"Keep going!" Sean screamed. "We are nearly through!" Now his fear was a grotesque black beast upon his back that weighed him down and choked his breathing. To be maimed was a terror far beyond that of death, and the ground beneath his feet was sown with the steel capsules of terrible mutilation.



Matatu ducked in front of Sean, forcing him to check his stride.



"Follow me, my Bwana!" he piped in Swahili. "Tread where I have trodden." And Sean obeyed, shortening his stride to that of the little manikin.



So Matatu ran him through the last fifty paces of the mine field, and Sean knew he had never witnessed such a display of raw courage and devotion of one human being to another. Two more Shanganes went down before they were through, their legs blown away beneath them. They left them lying in puddles of their own blood and minced flesh and jumped over the single strand of wire that marked the far side of the mine field.



Even in the terror and exhilaration of the moment, Sean felt his eyelids scalding with the strength of his gratitude and love for the little Ndorobo. He wanted to pick him up like a child's toy and hug him. Instead he gasped at him, "You're so damned skinny it wouldn't have gone off even if you had stepped on one." Matatu twinkled with delight and ran at Sean's side as he charged the 12.7-men machine gun in the sandbagged emplacement that lay dead ahead of them.



Sean was firing the AKM from the hip, short, raking bursts, and he could see the head of the Frefirno gunner in the embrasure of the parapet of sandbags.



The gunner swiveled the barrel of the heavy machine gun onto him, aiming for his belly. He was so close Sean could see his eyes reflecting the red light of the fires as he sighted over it. The instant before he fired, Sean hurled himself forward, dropping under the shot like a runner sliding for the base plate; bullets whipped over his head and the muzzle blast beat in his eardrums, but he rolled forward and came up hard against the parapet, flattening himself against it, so close that he could have reached out and touched the muzzle of the machine gun.



Sean unhooked the fragmentation grenade from his belt, drew the pin, and popped it into the embrasure beside him as though he were posting a letter.



He smiled ashe heard the Frelimo gunner scream something unintelligible in Portuguese.



"Happy birthday!" he said, and the grenade exploded, blowing out through the opening in an exhalation of flame and fumes.



Sean jumped up and rolled over the top of the parapet. There were two men in the emplacement, writhing and wriggling on the floor, and half a dozen others had abandoned the position and were sprinting away up the hill, unarmed and screaming with panic.



Sean left Matatu to finish off the two wounded men on the floor with his skinning knife, while he seized the abandoned 12.7-men machine gun and manhandled it to the rear wall of the emplacement. He aimed it up the hill at the fleeing Frelimo and fired a long, traversing burst. Two of the runners dropped in their tracks. Grinning happily, crooning to himself with the fun of it, Matatu dragged a steel box of spare ammunition belts across the bloody floor and helped Sean reload.



With a fresh belt of 250 rounds loaded, Sean made a sweep with the heavy machine gun. His fire lashed the hillside above him, tracer swirling through the groups of running Frelimo and scatter them



Ing It seemed to Sean as though more than half the Shanganes had survived the mine field and the bloody charge and assault. Roaring wildly with triumph, they were pursuing and harrying the routed defenders.



The barrel of the heavy machine gun was so hot it crackled like a horseshoe fresh from the blacksmith's forge.



"Come on!" Sean abandoned it and jumped onto the rear parapet, ready to follow his Shanganes deeper into the laager and to begin wrecking the Russian service installations.



As he stood poised on the parapet, backlit by the burning fuel tankers, a monstrous apparition appeared in the dawn sky ahead of him. Rising on its glittering rotor, turbos shrieking, a Hind gunship lifted out of its,-4nd bagged emplacement not two hundred meters from where Sein stood. It looked like some prehistoric behemoth. SupernAral and otherworldly it rotated ponderously until the mirrored eyes of the canopy si@5 at Sean and the multiple cannon barrel in the turret below its nose pointed at him like an accuser's finger.



Sean reached down, seized Matatu by the scruff of his neck, hurled him to the floor of the emplacement, then threw himself full length on top of him, knocking the breath out of the little man, just as a gale of cannon fire dissolved the parapet wall and turned it to clouds of driving dust and gravel.



The suddenness of it all was what shocked Claudia most. One moment there was the stillness and tranquil darkness of dawn and the next the glare and cacophony of battle, the sky lit by the brilliance of leaping flame and glittering floods of tracers, her ears pounded by bursting mortars, shells and grenades and the blasts of machine gun fire.



it took long moments to adjust her eyes to the intensity of light orient herself to the swift kaleidoscope of the battle. Job and to had pointed out to her the point on the perimeter of the laager through which Sean would lead the assault, and she searched it anxiously. The tiny figures of running men on the exposed slope of the hill were lit by the flames of burning avgas, which cast dark spiderlike shadows that scampered ahead of each man. There were so many of them, little black ants scurrying about, and with a jolt of them fall and lie very still in the of horror she watched some sound.



confusion of movement and light and 4: "Where is Sean?" she whispered anxiously. "Can you see him?"



411N the left, at the edge of the smoke," Job told her, and she an ahead of him like a picked him out by the tiny figure that r hunting dog.



"I see him and Matatu."



Just in front of the pair the earth seemed suddenly to bloom with dust and flame, and they were gone.



"Oh, God. No!" she cried aloud, but as the dust blew aside on the morning breeze she saw the two of them running On, tracer bullets flickering about them like hellish fireflies.



"Please, please protect him," she breathed, and lost sight of him as he reached the first emplacement.



"Where is he?" She found she had seized Job's arm and was it wildly. "Where is he, can you see him?"



shaking Suddenly Sean was there again, and even at that distance he appeared a heroic figure, balancing easily on the sandbagged parapet in the ruddy glow of the flames. She cried aloud with relief.



Then she saw him cower, and from out of the very earth, only of a Hind a short distance ahead of him, the monstrous shape gunship reared into the air and swung its monstrous head toward him, lowering like a charging bull. She heard the roar of its cannon, and leaping fountains of dust and flying earth obscured Sean's distant figure as cannon shell raked across the hillside.



"Job!" she screamed. "They have killed him!" She reached out for him again, but Job shook off her hand.



He was down on one knee, the launch tube of the Stinger across his right shoulder, his face in the reflected firelight fixed in a mask of concentration as he stared into the sight screen.



"Quickly!" Claudia whispered. "Shoot quickly!"



The missile leaped from its long tube, and hot air and stinging Particles Of dust and dead grass were blown back into Claudia's face as the rocket motor ignited. She slitted her eyes and held her breath as she watched it dart away on its tail of smoke and flame, leaving a trail of dazzling smoke behind it as it flew toward the crest of the hill where the Hind hovered against the dark sky.



She saw the slight kick in its trajectory as the missile changed to the ultraviolet seeker and lifted its nose fractionally, aiming no longer at the armored exhaust ports but at the open mouth of the turbo intakes, just below the humped gearbox of the rotor.



She thought she saw the missile fly squarely into the intake, but the resulting explosion was deceptively mild, contained within the shell of titanium armor plate so that none of its fury was dissipated. The Hind reeled wildly, throwing its nose high, falling backward so its tail rotor caught the rocky hillside and flipped it over sideways. It tumbled and bounced down the slope, rolling end over end, flames billowing from the throat of the air intake, its huge main rotor thrashing the earth and tearing itself to pieces, fragments hurtling into the night sky.



Claudia sought desperately for Sean and gasped as she recognized him through the dust and smoke, leaping back onto the parapet and then plunging on up the hillside with Matatu close behind him.



"Reload!" Job snapped at her. With a guilty start she reached for the spare missile tube beside her and helped him clip it into the launcher.



The moment the Stinger was reloaded she glanced back at the laager. Sean was gone, but three more of the Hind gunships were airborne, soaring across the dawn, backlit by the flames. They were firing their cannon, some of them seeking targets within the laager, where the attackers were in desperate hand-to-hand combat with the Frehmo garrison, others flailing the dark forest beyond the perimeter with their gales of tracer, trying to extinguish the hail of missiles that flew at them from out of the darkness.



Another Hind "was hit and fell on its back, bursting into violent flame as it crashed into the rocky crest of the hill, and then another staggered in flight and curved down, mortally wounded, to hit the treetops and cartwheel through them to the earth.



As fast as they fell, others rose from their hidden emplacements with cannons blazing, sweeping down on the attackers. Job leaped to his feet as a gunship tried to break away, climbing steeply over their heads. He arched his back, pointing the missile almost vertically upward, like a gun taking on a high-driven pheasant.



The Hind was a thousand feet up and climbing away. It seemed to be safely beyond the Stinger's effective range, presenting a difficult angle and impossible trajectory, but the missile darted up, overhauling it effortlessly, and the great machine seemed to wince and tremble to the shot, for a moment standing stationary in the air, before it fell back with its damaged turbos screaming in mortal agony and dived into the valley, hitting in a storm of breaking trunks.



branches and torn tree "Reload." Job did not even watch the Hind's death agony, and Claudia leaped to help him fit another missile tube to the launcher.



She tapped his shoulder as she finished.



"Go!" she said.



Another Hind came out of the forest directly in front of them.



The Russian pilot was flying so low he seemed to be earthbound.



He was dodging and ducking the huge machine behind the scattered trees, weaving like a boxer, the downdraft of the rotor flatw feet below the Hind's belly.



tening the tall elephant grass only a fe Job turned to face the oncoming machine, standing out in the open and lit by the flames. He braced himself, Picking up the image of the Hind in the sight screen.



The Hind seemed to steady itself for an instant, and the blast of like a hurricane wind.



its Gatling cannon swept around them her feet by the force Standing beside Job, Claudia was blown off with the supersonic shock of passing of it, and her ears buzzed cannon shells.



e wind from Job was thrown on top of her, his weight driving th her lungs, but they had fallen between two round boulders that deflected the rest of the volley of cannon fire. The Hind passed over them, only feet above where they lay, and the blast of its rotors slashed at them, whipping Claudia's hair into her face so it stung her eyes like a scourge.



sing tiger shark. Claudia was Then the Hind slid away like a crui suffocating with Job's weight on top of her and half-blinded by to free herself and was dust and her own hair. She struggled wet and that hot liquid was suddenly aware that her hands were spilling over her and soaking her shirt "Job!" she blurted. "Get up! Get off me!" Only when he neither replied nor moved but lay on her with a heavy, loose weight did she realize that the wetness that was dousing her was Job's blood. That knowledge gave her wild strength, and she rolled his body aside and dragged herself out from under him She crawled to her knees and looked down at him. A cannon shell had hit him high in the upper body, and the damage was though he had been savaged and mauled by horrific. It looked as some ferocious beast; his right arm was almost torn from the shoulder and was thrown above his head in a ghastly parody of surrender.



She stared at him numbly and tried to say his name. No sound came from her throat. She reached out and caressed his face, not daring to touch that terribly mutilated body. She felt a terrible sense of loss and opened her mouth again to give vent to her grief with a wail of despair. It came out in a wild shriek of rage. The force of her rage stunned her and seemed to impel her out of her own body so that she watched herself from afar, amazed by the actions of this savage stranger who had usurped her body and who now lunged for the missile launcher where it lay beside Job's body.



She found herself on her feet with the missile launcher on her right shoulder, searching the sky for the Hind gunship. It was four hundred meters away, cruising the foot of the hill, sweeping over the forest, picking out its targets from among the trees and destroying them with short but terrible blasts of its forward cannon.



As she turned to face it, standing fully upright in the daylight glare of the fires, the pilot must have spotted her, for he swiveled the gunship on its axis, bringing the cannon in the pod below his cockpit to bear upon her.



"Locked and loaded," she said, and the voice was strange in her ears as she repeated the litany of death.



"Actuator on." She saw the image of the Hind appear in the tiny screen before her eyes, and she centered it in the cross hair on the amung ring. The missile sobbed, then steadied into its high-pitched electronic tone.



"Target acquired," she whispered, feeling no fear as the silhouette of the Hind altered in her sight screen. Now it was facing her head-on, its cannon almost bearing, the gunner traversing fractionally to pick up her tiny figure in his own sights.



"Fire!" she said quie4ly, and squeezed the pistol grip. The shoulder pad "olted her 4s the Stinger launched, and she slitted her eyes i V



against the backblast of the missile as it sped away at four times the speed of sound, running straight and true at , the hovering machine.



The cannon in the Hind's nose blazed, but Claudia felt only the disrupted air of shot passing close over her head before the missile jerked almost imperceptibly and arrowed unerringly into the open throat of the machine's turbo intakes. The Hind had only a few feet to drop before it hit the earth and rolled over onto its side. In the moments before it was totally engulfed by burning fuel from the punctured belly tank, Claudia saw the panicky contortions of the pilot trapped under the armored canopy.



Then he was obliterated in a wall of flame.



"That was a human being," she thought. "A living, breathing person, and I destroyed him. she expected a rush of guilt and remorse.



How much a part of her was the belief that all life, especially human life, was sacred. The guilt did not come. Instead, she was borne aloft on a wave of savage triumph, the same berserk fury that had overtaken her so unexpectedly- sky for another she looked around her swiftly, searching the target, something else to destroy, anything to wreak her vengeance on. The dawn Sky was empty. The burning carcasses of Hind gunships lay strewn over the slopes of the hill and among the trees of the valley forest. They all down," she thought. "We got them all."



Stinger sections were From the forest, the Shanganes of the swarming up the hill, breaking into the laager to support Sean's 0 defenders throwing down their weapassault. She saw the Frelim ons and cowering in their dugouts with hands raised pathetically, attempting to surrender. She watched dispassionately as the yelling Shanganes bayoneted and clubbed them like slaughtered chickens.



At her feet Job groaned, and instantly her rage was gone. She flung the empty missile launcher aside and dropped down on her knees beside him. wound the "I thought you were dead!" she whispered as she un scarf from around her neck with fingers that only now began t tremble. "Don't die, Job. Please don't die." The scarf was stained with sweat and dust, its seams were unraveled and torn, but she balled it up and stuffed it into the terrible wound, pressing down on it with her full weight to try and stanch the flood of his LIFE's blood.



"Sean will be here soon," she told him. Don die, Job. Fight, please fight. I'll help you."



Sean and Matatu crouched below the parapet, ducking lower as the storm of cannon fire flew only inches over their heads and filled their eyes and nostrils with dust from the ripped sandbags.



The instant the firing Ceased, Sean bobbed up, just in time to see the stricken Hind fall tail first against the rocky hillside and tear itself to pieces as it rolled down the slope.



"Well, blow me down, those damned Stingers actually work!"



g high on his own fear. Beside him Matatu he laughed, still flyin giggled and clapped his hands. "Like shooting sand grouse with the577 bandukil" he cried in Swahili, then leaped to his feet to follow Sean over the Parapet.



Three Frelimo troopers bolted out of their dugout as they saw them coming, and Sean fired the AKM from the hip, a short tap that caught one of them low in the back and flung him facedown.



The other two threw down their rifles and fell to their knees, gibbering with terror, hands held high over their heads. Sean ran on past them, and they collapsed with relief as he ignored them.



Sean was through the outer defenses and into the laager proper with its service areas and hardened helicopter emplacements. The workshops and fuel dumps were heavily sandbagged and covered with camouflage netting. Stray mortar shells were still falling among them, kicking up geysers of dust and gusts of whistling shrapnel. One of the Hinds had fallen near the far perimeter of the laager and was burning fiercely, oily black smoke billowing back over the workshops.



In the confusion, human figures scurried about without apparent purpose, unarmed technicians in baggy gray overalls who flung up their arms when they saw Sean, most of them dropping onto their knees to emphasize their surrender. In full camouflage paint and with the bloodlust and elation of battle contorting his features, Sean cut a ferocious and terrifying figure.



"Down!" Sean gestured at them with the barrel of the AKM and with transparent relief they fell facedown in the dust and clasped their hands behind their heads.



Just ahead he made out the long, drooping rotors of a Hind protruding above the sandbagged wall of its emplacement.



"One didn't even get up," he thought as he raced toward it, but at that moment the rotors began to revolve slowly, swiftly building up speed. Somebody was attempting to start the machine.



Sean darted through the narrow entrance and into the deep circular emplacement. He checked his charge for a moment to survey the interior.



The Hind in its blotched camouflage towered over him, its rotors whirling over his head as they built up to start speed on the Isotov turbo engine. Three RtIssian ground crew were crowded around the front of the timchine, and incongruously Sean noticed the crimson arrow emblem painted on the Hind's nose that designated them an "Excellent Crew," one of the cherished performance awards of the Soviet air force.



The ground crew turned their white faces toward Scan and gaped at him. He jerked the muzzle of the AKM at them, and they fell back.



ckpit of the helicopter was still The canopy of the weapons co open, and one of the flight crew was clambering up into it. Only his plump backside in gray flying overalls protruded. Sean reached up between his legs and seized a handful of the man's genitals. The Russian squealed shrilly as Sean used them as a handle to drag him backward and threw him against the sandbagged side wall of the emplacement.



The spinning rotors whistled shrilly as the turbo engine caught, and Sean jumped up onto the boarding step of the helicopter. The pilot's canopy was also open, and Sean thrust his AKM forward.



The pilot at the controls was young and thin, with pale blond hair cut very short. In his haste to get the Hind away he had not even donned his flying helmet. He turned his head to look at Sean.



His complexion was marred by angry purple and red acne and his eyes were very pale blue. They widened dramatically as Sean touched the tip of his acne-scarred nose with the muzzle of the AKM and said, "Party is over, Ivan. Let's go home."



It was apparent that this helicopter had not been scheduled for the dawn sortie that morning and the pilot and his crew had only begun their attempt to get the machine airborne once the attack had begun. It was less than ten minutes since the first mortar shells had fallen into the laager, not enough time, though they had almost made it.



"Kill the engine," Sean told the pilot. He enforced the order by jamming the muzzle of the AKM into the pilot's nose with sufficient force to bring a smear of blood from one nostril and tears from both of the pale eyes. Reluctantly the pilot pushed the fuel mixture control to fully lean and cut both master switches. The whistle of the turbo died away.



"Out!" said Sean. The pilot understood the gesture and tone, if not the word. He unclasped his safety belt and climbed down into the laager.



Sean lined up the pilot, the flight engineer, and the three members of the ground crew against the sandbagged wall. "Welcome to the capitalist world, comrades," he greeted them, then looked back at the helicopter. "Jackpot!" He grinned, still euphoric with the adrenaline in his blood. "We've got ourselves a real live, working Hind, Matatu!"



Matatu was having a grand time. "Let's kill them now," he suggested merrily. "Give me the banduki. Let me shoot them for you." Sean had seen Matatu fire only one shot in his entire life, when as a joke Sean had let him fire the double.577. it had lifted Matatu clear off his feet and deposited him ten feet away.



You couldn't hit one of them even at this range, you bloodthirsty little bugger." Sean grinned down at him, then once more concentrated all his attention on the Hind. The magnitude of the prize he had taken began to dawn upon him.



The Hind would be a magnificent escape vehicle. He, Claudia, Job, and Matatu could get out of here with first-class tickets. Then reality overtook him, and his spirits dropped. He had never flown a helicopter, did not even have the vaguest notion of how to do so.



All he knew was that it required a delicate and expert touch on the controls and was entirely different from piloting a fixed-wing aircraft.



He looked back calculatingly at the Russian pilot. Despite the acne and his unprepossessing appearance, he thought he detected a stubborn, proud streak in the man's pale eyes, and he knew that the air force officers were among the elite of the Soviet armed forces. The Russian was almost certainly a fanatical patriot.



"Not much chance of getting you to act as ferry pilot," he guessed. Then he spoke aloud: "all right, gentlemen, let's get out of here." He indicated the exit from the emplacement, and under the barrel of the AKM they trooped toward it obediently. As the Russian pilot passed, Sean stopped him and lifted the Tokarev pistol from the holster at his hip. "You won't need that, Ivan," he said, and tucked the pistol into his own belt.



There was a fortified workshop almost abutting the Hind's emplacement. It had been excavated into the hillside and roofed with poles and sandbags. Sean herded the Russians down into it, then looked around him.



The battle had fizzled out, though a few desultory shots and the pop and bang of burning ammunition could still be heard.



Through the drifts of smoke and dust, he saw the Shanganes of the Renamo force rounding up the prisoners and searching for loot and booty. He recognized some of the missile crews. Once the Hinds had been destroyed, they must have abandoned their Stingers and rushed up the hill to join the sack of the laager.



He saw one of themWayoneting a Frelimo prisoner in the buttocks and legs and roaring with laughter as the man squirmed in the dirt, kic0big aridocontorting his body in an attempt to avoid the point of the blade. Other Renamo were emerging from the dugouts, rifles slung over their shoulders and arms full of booty.



Sean was accustomed to the ethics of irregular troops in Africa, but this blatant in discipline annoyed him. He snarled at them, and it was a measure of the force of his personality and the authority he wielded over them that even in the heady moments of victory they obeyed him with alacrity. The Renamo who had been torturing his prisoner paused only to dispatch the maimed victim with a bullet in the back of the neck before hurrying t o Sean's bidding.



"Guard these white prisoners," Sean ordered them. "If harm comes to them, General China will roast your testicles on a slow fire and make you eat them," he warned.



Without looking back he strode through the laager, reasserting his command, getting his triumphant howling shrieking Shanganes back to sanity. He saw Sergeant Alphonso ahead of him.



"We can't carry much loot away. Let the men take their pick, and then I want limpet mines in the storerooms after everything has been drenched with avgas from the drums," he ordered Sergeant Alphonso. He glanced at his wristwatch. "We can expect Frelimo to counterattack the laager within the hour. I want to be gone by then."



"No!" Alphonso shook his head. "General China has moved three companies in between us to hold the Frelimo counterattack.



He has ordered you to hold this position until he arrives."



Sean pulled up short and stared at Alphonso. "What the hell are you talking about? China is two days" march away on the river!"



Alphonso grinned and shook his head. "General China will be here in an hour. He followed us with five companies of his best troovs. He has never been more than an hour behind us, not since we lit the river."



"How do you know this?" Sean demanded.



Alphonso grinned again and patted the radio on the back of the trooper who stood beside him. "I spoke to the general ten minutes ago, as soon as we killed the last of the Russian hen shaw



"Why didn't you tell me before this, you bastard?" Sean growled.



"The general ordered me not to. But now he has ordered me to tell you that he is very pleased with the killing of the hen shaw and he says that you are like a son to him. When he arrives he will reward you."



"AB right." Sean changed his orders. "If we have to hold the laager, get your men into the perimeter defenses. We win use the 12.7-men heavy machine guns."



Sean broke off as a Shangane trooper came running up the hill toward him.



"Nkosi!" The man panted. As soon as he saw his face, Sean knew it was bad news.



"The woman?" he demanded, seizing the messenger's arm. "Is the white woman hurt?"



The Shangane shook his head. "She is safe. She sent me to you.



It's the Matabele, Captain Job. He is 4it."



"How bad?" Sean was already starting to run, and he shouted the question over his shoulder.



"He's dying," the Shangane called after him. "The Matabele is dying."



Sean knew where to look; he himself had selected the copse of knob-thorn acacia as Job's attack position. The first rays of the morning sun were turning the tops of the knob-thorns to gold as Sean ran down the hill. With the help of two Shanganes, Claudia had moved Job onto soft level ground beneath one of the trees. She had propped his head on one of the backpacks and had a field dressing over the wound.



She looked up and cried, "Oh, Sean, thank God!" Her shirt was drenched with drying blood, and she saw Sean's expression. "Not my blood," she assured him. "I'm all right."



Sean transferred all his attention to Job. His face was a sickly blue-gray color, and the flesh seemed to have melted from his skull like hot tar.



Sean touched his check, and his skin was cold as death. Frantically he searched for a pulse in the wrist of Job's good arm.



Although it was faint and rapid, his relief was intense.



"He's lost huge quantities of blood," Claudia whispered. "But I've contained the bleeding now."



"He's in shock," Sean muttered. "Let me have a look."



"Don't lift that dressing," Claudia warned him quickly. "It's ghastly.



He was hit on the point of the shoulder by a cannon shell.



It's just mangled flesh and bone chips. His arm is hanging by a shred of muscle and sinew."



"Take Matatu with you," Sean cut in brusquely. "Go up to the laager. Find where they had their first aid post. The Russians will have a decent stock. Find it. I want plasma and a drip set. Dressings and bandages, those are the most urgent. But if you can find antiseptic and painkillers-" Claudia scrambled to her feet. "Sean, I was so worried about you! I saw-" A



"You don't get ri4 of me that easy." He did not look up from Job's face. "Now off you go, and get back here as quick as you can.



Matatu, go with Donna, look after her."



The two of them went at a run. Until they returned with medical supplies, Sean was helpless. But for something to keep himself occupied he wet his bandanna from the water bottle and began to sponge the blood and dirt from Job's face. Job's eyelids fluttered open, and Sean saw that he was conscious.



"Okay, Job, I'm here. Don't try and talk."



Job closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he swiveled them downward. He was too weak to move his head, yet he was trying to look down at his body, trying to check the extent of his injuries. It was always the first reaction.



"Is it lung blood I'm losing? Are both my feet still here, both my hands-?"



"Right arm and shoulder," Sean told him. "Twelve-point-seven millimeter cannon nicked you. Just a little bitty scratch. You are going to make it, lad, written guarantee. Would I lie to you?"



A faint smile tugged up the corners of Job's mouth, and he lowered one eyelid in a conspiratorial wink. Sean felt his heart begin to break. He knew he had lied. Job wasn't going to make it.



"Relax," he ordered cheerfully. "Lie back and enjoy it, as the bishop said to the actress. I'm in charge here now."



And Job closed his eyes.



Claudia picked out the medical dugout by the Red Cross insignia at the entrance. There were two Shangane Renamo looting the interior, ransacking it for booty, but Claudia shrieked at them so violently that they slunk away guiltily.



The labels on the cartons of medical supplies were all in Russian Cyrillic script. Claudia had to rip the lids open and check the contents of each. She found boxes that contained a dozen plastic bags of clear plasma each and gave two of them to Matatu. The drip sets were on the shelf below. Field dressings and bandages were easy, but she was flummoxed by the tubes of ointments and pill bottles. However, the contents of one tube were yellow-brown and had the characteristic iodine aroma; she selected those, and then she found that some of the labels also had notations in French and Arabic. She had a smattering of both languages, enough to identify which were antibiotics and painkillers.



She found two field packs, obviously prepared for use by the Russian first aid teams, and included these in her selection; then she and Matatu, heavily laden, hurried out of the first aid post.



Before she reached the perimeter of the laager again, a dreadfully familiar figure loomed out of the banks of drifting smoke ahead of her-the very last person she had expected to see here.



"Miss Monterro," General China called. "What a fortunate encounter. I need your assistance." China was accompanied by half a dozen officers of his staff.



Claudia recovered swiftly from the shock of the unexpected meeting. "I'm busy," she snapped, trying to step around him. "Job is badly wounded. I have to get back to him."



"My need is greater than anybody else's, I'm afraid." China put out an arm.



"Forget it," Claudia flared at him. "Job needs this stuff, or he'll die."



"One of my men will take it to him," China replied. "You are coming with me, please. Or I'll have you carried. Not very dignified, Miss Monterro."



Claudia was still protesting as one of the Renamo officers relieved her of her load of medical supplies, but at last she shrugged with resignation.



"Go with him, Matatu." She pointed down the hill. The little man nodded brightly, and Claudia allowed China to escort her back into the laager.



They picked their way through the shambles of the battle, and Claudia shuddered as she stepped over the charred corpse of one of the Frehmo garrison.



"Colonel Courtney's attack has succeeded beyond even my wildest expectations." General China was affable and clearly delighted with what he saw around him. "He even managed to capture a Hind gunship completely intact, together with the Russian air crew and ground crew."



"I hope you won't keep me long. I have to get back."



"Captain Job will live or die without you, Miss Monterro. I need your services as a translator in talking to the pilot."



"I don't speak Russian," Claudia told him flatly.



"Fortunately the pilot seems to speak Italian. How he learned the language I cannot guess, but he keeps repeating, "Italiano, Italiano. "" China took her arm and led her down the steps of the sandbagged, camouflaged dugout.



Claudia glanced around the dugout and saw instantly that it was an engineering workshop. A long workbench ran down each wall.



Set up on one of these were a metal lathe and drill press. A wide selection of hand tools was racked in cupboards above the benches, and she recognized the electric and gas welding sets at the far end of the worksh4. Her father had had his own workshop in the cellar of their Dome in Anchorage, and she had spent many evenings watchinglim pottering around down there.



were at the far end of the The Russian prisoners, five of them underground room.



"Which one of you speaks Italian?" she asked.



A tall, thin man stepped forward. He wore gray flying overalls and his face was scarred with acne. His pale blue eyes were shifty and nervous.



"I do, signora.



"Where did you learn?" Claudia asked.



"My wife is a graduate student from Milan. I met her while she was doing her doctorate at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow." His Italian was heavily accented and his grammar uncertain, but she understood him without difliculty.



"I am translating for General China," she told him, "but I must warn you that he is a savage and cruel man. I am neither his ally nor his friend. I cannot protect you."



"Thank you, signora. I understand, but I do not need protection. I am a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention. I have certain rights. So do my men."



"What does he say?" China demanded.



"He says he is a prisoner of war, and he and his men are protected by the Geneva Convention."



"Tell him that Geneva is far away. This is Africa, and I was no signatory to any agreement in Switzerland. Here he has only such rights as I decide he should have. Tell him he will fly the helicopter under my command and that his ground crew will service and maintain the machine in flying condition."



As Claudia translated, she watched the pilot's jaw set and his pale blue eyes harden. He turned his head slightly and spoke to his men in Russian. Immediately they began to mutter and shake their heads.



"Tell this black monkey that we insist on our rights," the pilot spoke scornfully. Claudia had heard that many Russians were racists, and the derogatory term the pilot used suggested that for him at least this was true. "We refuse to fly or fight for him. That would be a traitorous act."



Ms refusal was so obvious that China did not wait for Claudia's translation.



"Tell him," he cut in brusquely, "that I have no time for argument or for subtle persuasion. I ask once more for his cooperation.



If he refuses, I will be forced to demonstrate my serious intentions."



"Signore, this man is very dangerous," Claudia told the Russian officer. "I have seen him commit the most unspeakable atrocities.



I myself have suffered torture by him."



"I am a Russian officer and a prisoner of war." The pilot drew himself to attention, his tone stern. "I know my duty."



China was watching the pilot's face as he replied. He smiled coldly as Claudia translated. "Another brave man," he murmured.



"We must now determine just how brave he is."



Without looking at his staff officers he gave them a quiet order in Shangane, and while they trundled forward the chariot that held the oxyacetylene gas cylinders, China smiled steadily at the Russian officer. The man returned his regard with a cold, pale stare as they matched wills.



China was the one who turned away. He went to the workbench and swiftly examined the tools and objects scattered on it. He gave a grunt of approval as he selected a thin steel rod and weighed it in his hand. It was the length and thickness of a rifle ramrod and was pierced at each end for a connecting screw, probably a control fink from the Hind helicopter.



"This will do very nicely," he said aloud. Then he picked up a discarded woven asbestos welding glove. He pulled it onto his right hand and turned his attention to the gas welding set. Claudia, who had watched her father work, realized that China was well versed in the use of the apparatus. He lit the welding flame on the torch and swiftly adjusted the flow of oxygen and acetylene from their separate cylinders until the flame was a brilliant blue feather, hot and unwavering. Then he took up the metal rod in his gloved hand and began to heat the tip of it in the blue flame.



All the Russians watched him uneasily. Claudia saw the pilot's hard stare flicker uncertainly as the shine of nervous sweat de wed on his upper lip.



"This man is an animal," Claudia said softly in Italian. "You must believe me when I tell you he is capable of the vilest acts.



Please, signore, I do not want to watch this."



The pilot shook his head, dismissing her appeal, but he was staring at the tip of the metal rod as it began to glow cherry red.



"I will not be intimidated by brutish threats," he said, but she detected the slightest catch and crack in his voice.



In China's gloved hand, the tip of the rod turned slowly to incandescent crimson and then to translucent white heat. China smiled and turned off the flame of the welding torch. He wove the glowing tip of the rod in a gentle flourish, like a conductor's baton, and smiled at the pilot. It was the humorless, reptilian smile of a cobra.



"I repeat my reqwest. Ask him if he will fly for me."



"Nyet. " Even ihough his voice cracked, the pilot's reply was decisive. In Russian he added, "Obezyana-monkey!"



China stood in front of him and made a slow pass with the tip of the rod a few inches in front of the Russian's eyes.



"Tell him, signora," the pilot whispered, "that without my eyes I cannot fly."



"Very true." China nodded as Claudia translated, and he left the pilot and walked on down the line of white prisoners, waving the glowing tip of the rod in each of their faces in a slow, mesmeric gesture, studying their reactions carefully. The plump mechanic in oil-stained overalls at the end of the line gave China his most satisfying response. He shrank away from the rod until the wall of the dugout stopped him, and sweat ran down his fat rosy cheeks and dripped from the end of his chin. In a squeaky voice he said something in Russian. The pilot answered him with a sharp, mono syllabic order."



"You don't like it, do you? My fat little white slug. China smiled thinly at him and let him feel the radiated heat on his cheek.



The back of the flight engineer's head was pressed against the wall, and he swiveled his eyes in their sockets to watch the rod.



The metal was cooling, and with a small frown of annoyance China left him, and turned back to the workbench, and relit the welding torch. While he carefully reheated the tip of the rod, the mechanic sagged against the sandbags. The sweat showed in dark patches through the cotton of his greasy overalls.



The pilot spoke softly to him in an encouraging tone, and the nodded and straightened up. He glanced at his superior engineer with an expression of patent gratitude, and watching this brief exchange between the two men, China smiled again, this time with satisfaction.



When Claudia saw that smile, she suddenly realized that China had just run a selection test. He had chosen his victim. The mechanic was the least courageous of the five Russians, and the pilot had inadvertently disclosed his concern and friendship for the man.



"Please," she whispered in Italian, "Your friend is in terrible danger.



You must do what this man asks if you wish to save him.



The pilot looked at her, and from his expression Claudia saw he was beginning to waver.



"Please, for my sake. I cannot bear to watch." With despair she saw the Russian's expression change as his resolve firmed once again. He shook his head. China saw that gesture.



He switched off the welding torch and blew softly on the white tip of the metal rod. He let the moment draw out agonizingly; every eye in the bunker was fixed on the point of glowing steel.



Abruptly he gave an order in Portuguese, and two of his men sprang forward and seized the mechanic by his arms. He gave a little squeal of protest, but they hustled him to the workbench and threw him facedown across its top. One of them jumped up and sat between his shoulder blades, pinning him down. He struggled ineffectually, kicking his legs. Swiftly and expertly, they strapped his ankles to the legs of the workbench, and he lay helplessly sprawled face downwards with his backside sticking up in the air, stretching the cotton seat of his overalls.



The Russian pilot shouted a protest and stepped forward, but one of the Renamo officers thrust a pistol into his belly and forced him back against the wall.



"I ask You again," China said, "will you fly for me?"



The pilot shouted at him in Russian. It was clearly an insult. His face was flushed now, the acne purple and shiny as buttons on his chin and cheeks.



China nodded at his men. One of them drew the trench knife from its sheath on his webbing belt and slit the waistband of the mechanic's overalls. Then he seized the severed edges of cotton and ripped them downward, tearing the cloth loose so it hung in tatters around the pinioned man's knees. Under the overalls, the engineer wore a pair of elasticized blue underpants. The Renamo pulled these down as far as they would go.



Claudia stared in fascinated horror at the mechanic's exposed buttocks. They were very white and fat and round, covered with a scraggle of dark curly reddish hair. From between his thighs, his wrinkled hairy scrotum protruded backward like that of a dog.



The pilot was shouting in Russian, and Claudia found herself pleading weakly. "Please, General China, please let me leave. I cannot bear this." She tried to turn her head away and cover her eyes, but the dreadful fascination of it compelled her to watch through her fingers despite herself.



China ignored both the pilot's and Claudia's pleas and spoke crisply to the officer who sat between the Russian's shoulder blades. Still pinning him to the bench, the Renarno reached over and seized one of his buttocks in each of his hands and drew them sharply apart. Claudia's protests dried in her throat, and she found herself staring dry-mouthed at the Russian's puckered rosy-brown anus as it nestled like a blind man's eye between his hairy cheeks.



China reached out toward it with the tip of the rod, then stopped three inches short of it. T4e mechanic felt the heat of it on his most intimate flesh and begani-to struggle so violently that two more of the Renamo officers bad to throw their combined weight onto his back to keep him -pinned down.



"Yes?" China looked across at the Russian pilot. He was raving like a madman, his face contorted with outrage, shouting threats and accusations.



"I regret the necessity," China said, and thrust the metal rod forward, his wrist cocked like that of a fencing master going on attack, a fl&he.



As the glowing metal touched the sensitive skin the Russian screamed, a shattering high-pitched shriek that made Claudia cry out pitifully in sympathy.



rotated The metal smoked and siuled and spluttered as China his wrist, twstmg the rod deeW and deqw into the Russian's body. Now his screams were great explosive gusts Of sound.



Claudia clapped her hands over her ears to shut them out and turned away, running into the corner of the dugout and pressing her face against the rough sandbags.



The smoke filled her nostrils, ha throat, and her hings, and the obscene odor of burning flesh, of charring fat, coated her tongue, and her gorge rose. She tried to contain it, but vomit shot up her throat and in a projectile stream splashed onto the earthen floor between her feet.



Behind her the screams dropped gradually in volume and became ghastly rattling groans. However, all the Russians were yenmg their protest and fury, and the din was confusing.



Another whiff of burned flesh and spilled feces made her retch again. Then she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and leaned her forehead against the sandbagged wall. She was trembring wildly, and wan and sweat streamed down her cheeks.



Slowly the uproar behind her subsided, and the only sounds in mechanic's groans and gurgles. They were the bunker were the weaker now but nonetheless harrowing. Claudia could tell without looking at him that the Russian was dying.



Miss Monterro." China's voice was level and calm. "Please get a grip on yourself. We still have work to do."



all" she blurted. "I hate you! Oh, God, how You are an animI hate you!"



"Your feelings are not of the slightest interest to me," China said. "Now you will tell the pilot that I await his full cooperation."



The flight engineer's groans distracted her. As she turned to face China, she saw they had released the stricken Man and allowed him to slump to the floor. China had made no effort to withdraw the metal rod from his body, and he was still transfixed. As he rolled weakly about on the earthen floor, he plucked ineffectually at the protruding end of the rod. The heated metal had adhered to his bowels as it cooled and was firmly rooted in his flesh. Every time he tugged at it, a trickle of liquid feces bubbled from the terrible wound.



"Speak to the pilot," China commanded.



Claudia dragged her eyes from the dying man and addressed the pilot. "Please do what he wants."



"I cannot, my duty!" the pilot cried.



"The devil with your duty!" Claudia shouted back furiously.



"You and all your men will end up like this!" She gestured to the floor without looking down again. "That's what will happen to you!" She turned to the other Russians, who were shaken and appalled, pale with horror and terror.



"Look at him!" she screamed in English. "Is that what you want?"



They did not understand the words, but her meaning was clear to all of them. They turned their faces toward the pilot.



The pilot resisted their entreaties for a minute. Then, at a word from China, the Renamo officers seized another one of the ground crew and threw him screaming and kicking facedown across the bench.



The Russian pilot threw up both hands in a gesture of resignation.



"Tell him to stop," he said wearily to Claudia. "We will do as he orders."



"Thank you, Miss Monterro." China smiled at her charmingly.



"You are now free to rejoin Colonel Courtney."



"How will you communicate with the pilot?" she asked uncertainly.



"Already he understands me." China transferred the benevolence of his smile to the Russian. "I assure you that he will learn to speak my language with the utmost fluency in a very short time indeed." He turned back to Claudia. "Please convey my respects to Colonel Courtney and ask him to join me at his earliest convenience. I would like to take my leave of him, to thank him and wish him lion voyage." He gave her a mocking bow. "So Godspeed, Miss Monterro. I hope you will remember all of us, your friends in Africa, with affection."



Claudia could find no words to reply. She turned to the door of the bunker, and her legs were shaky and rubbery beneath her. In a daze of horror she stumbled down the hill. The sights around her, which at another time might have sickened and appalled her, she hardly noticed.



At the foot of the hill, she paused and tried to get a grip on herself. She breathed dci$ly, trying to quell the intermittent sobs that still caught her.usawares, and she combed her hair back from her face with her flingers and retied the strip of cloth she was using as a headband. With the tail of her shirt she wiped the tears and sweat from her face, shocked at the grimy smear they left on the cloth.



"I must look like hell," she whispered, clenching her hands to hide her broken fingernails. But she braced her shoulders and lifted her chin. "Sean mustn't see me like this," she told herself fiercely.



"Pull yourself together, woman."



Sean looked up as she hurried to where he was still working over Job's blanket-wrapped body. "What happened?" he demanded.



"What kept you?"



"General China is here. He made me go with him."



"What did he want? What happened?"



"Nothing, not important. I'll tell you about it later. How is Job?"



"I've got a full liter of plasma into him," Sean replied. He had suspended the drip set from a branch above them. "His pulse is better.



Job is as tough as an old buffalo bull. Help me dress the wound.



"Is he consciousT"



"He comes and goes," Sean warned her.



Beneath the field dressing was such a terrible injury that neither of them could bring themselves to discuss it, especially as Job might be able to hear and understand them.



Sean smothered the entire area with iodine paste, then bound it up again with pressure pads and clean white bandages from the medical pack. The blood and iodine soaked through the white even as he worked.



Between them they had to roll Job on to his side to pass the bandages over his back. Claudia held the half-severed arm in place, bending the elbow across his chest, and Sean strapped it securely.



By the time they finished, Job's entire upper body was swathed in a cocoon of expertly applied bandage from which only his left arm protruded.



"His pulse is going again." Sean looked up from his wrist. "I'm going to give him another liter of plasma."



There was a scattered outbreak of machine-gun and mortar fire from the forest beyond the hill laager, and Claudia looked up apprehensively. "What's that?"



"Frelimo counterattack." Sean was still busy with the drip set.



"But China has three companies in there, and Frelimo are going to be less than enthusiastic now that they have lost their air support. China's lads should be able to hold them off with no trouble."



"Sean, where did China come from? I tho "Yes, Sean cut in. "I also thought he was back on the river. The crafty bastard was right on our heels, ready to rush in and grab the spoils." He finished adjusting the plasma flow in the drip set and squatted down beside Claudia, studying her face.



"AB right," he said. "Tell me what happened."



"Nothing." She smiled brightly.



"Don't bullshit me, beautiful," Sean said gently, and put an arm around her. Despite herself she choked on a sob.



"China," she whispered. "Right on top of what happened to Job. He made me translate for the Russian pilot. Oh, God, I hate him. He's an animal. He made me watch-" She broke off.



"Rough stuff?" Sean asked, and she nodded.



"He killed one of the Russians, in the foulest possible way." "He's a lovely lad, our China, but try and put it out of your mind. We've got enough troubles of our own. Let the Russkies worry about theirs."



"He forced the Russian pilot to agree to fly the helicopter. Sean stood up, lifting her to her feet beside him. Don think of China and the Russian anymore. All we have to worry about is getting out of here." He broke off as he saw Sergeant Alphonso and a half-dozen of his Shanganes trotting down the hill toward them. All of them were laden with loot.



"Nkosi!" Alphonso's broad, handsome face was wreathed in a beatific grin. "What a fight, what a victory!"



"You fought like an impi of lions," Sean agreed. "The battle is won, but now you must help us to get away to the border. Captain Job is badly hurt."



Alphonso's smile faded; despite their natural tribal emnity, both men had developed a grudging respect for each other. "How bad?"



He came to stand beside Sean and looked down at Job.



"There was a fiberglass stretcher in the first aid post," Claudia said.



"We can carry Job on that."



"It is two days" march to the border," Alphonso murmured dubiously. "Through Frelimo territory."



"Frelimo are running like dogs with a hot coal under their tails."



Sean's tone was hard. "Send two of your men to fetch the stretcher."



"General China calls for you. He is leaving in the Russian hen shaw He wants to speak to you before he goes," Alphonso said.



"AB right, but I wantiat stretcher here when I get back," Sean warned him. He glowed at his wristwatch. "We will march for the border in one hour from now."



"Nkosi!" Alphonso agreed cheerfully. "We will be ready."



Sean turned back to Claudia. "I'm going to see China. I'm going to try to talk him into flying Job out in the helicopter, but I don't think my chances are particularly rosy. Please stay with Job and keep an eye on his pulse rate. I've found a disposable syringe of adrenaline in the medic pack. Use it only as a last resort."



"Please don't be long," she whispered. "I'm only brave when you're here."



"Matatu will stay with you."



Sean climbed the hill swiftly, passing the first string of Renamo porters. Obviously China was taking everything he could carry, including boxes of helicopter spares and hundreds of jerry cans of avgas. The lines of porters were heading back into the wilderness toward the river, and Sean paid them scant attention. He had played his role. He was eager to get out, reach the border, get Job to where he could receive professional medical attention and get Claudia to safety. However, over all his urgency lay the nagging uncertainty: Was China really going to stand by his word and let them go? Was he not being just a trifle optimistic?



"We'll. see," he told himself grimly, and shouted at one of the Renamo officers who was supervising the loading of the porters.



"Where is General China?"



He found him with his staff and the captured Russians in the laager's command bunker. China looked up from the map he was consulting and smiled affably as Sean entered. "Colonel Courtney, my felicitations. You were magnificent. A famous victory."



"And now you owe me a favor."



"You and your party wish to leave," China agreed. "AD debts between us have been paid in full. You are free to go."



"No," Sean shook his head. "By my calculation you still owe me one. Captain Job has been badly wounded. Ms condition is crit iI want him flown out to Zimbabwe in the captured Hind."



cal.



"You jest, of course." China laughed lightly. "I cannot risk sending such a valuable asset on a nonproductive mission. No, Colonel, all debts are paid. Please don't persist in extravagant demands. With my defective hearing, it only annoys me, and I may be tempted to review my generous offer to allow you and yours to depart unhindered." He smiled and held out his hand. "Come now, Colonel. Let us part as friends. You have the services of Sergeant Alphonso and his men. You are a man of infinite resourcefulness. I am sure you will contrive to get yourself and all your party to safety without any further assistance from me."



Sean ignored the outstretched hand. China glanced at it and then lowered it to his side. "So we part, Colonel. Me to my little war and, who knows, perhaps one day a country of my very own.



You to the tender embraces of your very rich, very beautiful young American." His smile had a sly, foxy slant to it. "I wish YOU JOY, and I am sure you do the same for me." He turned back to his map, leaving Sean for an instant nonplussed and taken off balance. It was incomplete, it couldn't end like this. Sean wondered if there was more to come, but General China began dictating orders to one of his officers in Portuguese, leaving Sean standing uncertainly at the door of the bunker.



Sean waited a few moments longer, then turned abruptly and ducked out through the entrance. Only after he was gone did China lift his head and smile after him, a gloating little smile which, if Sean had seen it, would have answered his question.



Alphonso's men had worked quickly. The fiberglass stretcher was one of those lightweight body-molded types used by mountain rescue teams. Nonetheless it would require four men to carry it over rough ground, and they had a long, hard path to the border.



"Less than a hundred kilometers and not that hard," Sean reassured himself. "Two days, if we push it."



Claudia greeted him with relief. "Job seems stronger. He was conscious, asking for you. He said something about a hill. Hill Thirty-one?"



Sean flickered a smile. "That's where we met. He's wandering a little. Help me to get him onto the stretcher."



Between them they lifted Job gently and settled him onto the stretcher. Sean rigged the drip set on a wire frame above his head and tucked looted gray woolen blankets around him.



"Matatu," he said as he stood up. "Take us home." And he gestured to the first team of stretcher bearers to take their positions.



It was less than two hours since sunrise, but they seemed to have lived an entire lifetime in that short period, Sean thought as he glanced back at the hilltop laager. Streamers of smoke drifted from its crest, and the last column of General China's porters was disappearing into the forest below it, all heavily laden with booty.



The distant sounds of battle had finally dwindled into silence.



The halfhearted Frefirno counterattack had long since fizzled out, and China was withdrawing his forces into the bad ground below the Pungwe River.



As Sean watched, the captured Hind helicopter rose slowly out ng above the hill on its glistening rotor;



0 1 em , then abrul i [y it dipped toward them, the sound of its engine crescendoc 1, and suddenly Sean was staring into the multiple mouths of the Gatling cannon in its nose.



As it raced toward him, he recognized China's face behind the armored glass canopy. He was perched in the flight engineer's seat, at the controls of the 12.7-men cannon. Sean saw the barrels of the cannon swing slightly, coming on to aim. The Hind was only fifty feet above them, so close he could see China's teeth flash in his dark face as he smiled.



Their little column had not reached the edge of the forest. There was no cover, no protection from the blast of that terrible weapon, and instinctively Sean reached out and drew Claudia to him, trying to shield her with his own body.



Above them General China lifted his right hand in an ironic salute, and the Hind banked steeply away into the northwest, dwindled swiftly to a speck, and was gone. They all stared after it silently, seized by a sense of anticlimax, until Sean broke the spell.



"Let's go, brethren!" And once again the stretcher bearers started forward at an easy jog trot, very softly singing one of the ancient marching songs.



Scouting ahead of them, Matatu came across a few scattered parties of Frehmo assault troops, but they were all in headlong retreat from the river wilderness. After the loss of their air support the Frefirno offensive seemed to have collapsed completely and the situation was fluid and confused. Although they were forced to detour further northward than Sean had planned, Matatu steered them out of contact with any Frelimo and the stretcher bearers were rotated regularly so they made swift progress.



At nightfall they stopped to cat and rest. Alphonso made the scheduled radio contact with Renamo headquarters and gave them a position report. He received only a laconic acknowledgement without change of orders. They feasted on canned goods looted from the Russian stores and smoked the perfumed Balkan tobacco in yellow cigarette paper with hollow cardboard filters.



Job was conscious again and complained in a husky whisper, "There is a lion gnawing on my shoulder." Sean injected an ampule of morphine into Rob's drip set, and it eased him so he was even able to eat a fe mouthfuls of the bland-tasting tinned meat.



However, his thirst was far greater than his hunger, and Sean held his head and helped him get down two full mugs of the surprisingly good Russian coffee.



Sean and Claudia sat beside the fitter and waited for the moon in through the Honde Valley again." Sean to rise. "We are going told Job. "Once we get you to Saint Mary's Mission you'll be fine.



One of the Catholic fathers is a doctor, and I'll be able to sen a message to my brother Garry in Johannesburg. I'll ask him to send the company jet to Urntafi. We'll fly you into Johannesburg General Hospital before you know what's hit you, mate. There you'll get the best medical attention in the world."



When the moon rose, they went on. It was almost midnight before Sean called a halt for the night. He made a mattress of cut grass beside Job's litter, and as Claudia drifted off to sleep in his arms, he whispered to her, "Tomorrow night I'll give you a hot bath and put you between clean sheets."



Promise?" she sighed.



"Cross my heart."



From deeply ingrained habit, he woke an hour before first light and went to rouse the sentries for dawn standby. Alphonso threw aside his blanket, stood up, and fell in beside him. When they had made the sentry round, they paused on the edge of the camp and Alphonso offered him one of the Russian cigarettes. They smoked from cupped hands, shielding the glow of burning tobacco.



"What you told me about South Africa, is it true?" Alphonso asked unexpectedly.



J "What did I tell you?"



"That men, even black men, eat meat every day?"



Sean smiled in the darkness, amused by Alphonso's concept of paradise, a place where a man could eat meat every day. "Sometimes they get so sick of eating beef," he teased, "that they try chicken and lamb just for a change."



Alphonso shook his head. That was beyond belief-, no African could ever tire of beef.



"How much does a black man earn in South Africa?" he demanded.



About five hundred rand a month if he is an ordinary unskilled laborer, but there are many black millionaires,." Five hundred rand was more than a man earned in Mozambique in a year, even if he were lucky enough to find employment. A million was a figure beyond Alphonso's powers of imagination.



"Five hundred?" He shook his head in wonder. "And paid in rands, not paper escudos or Zimbabwe dollars?" he demanded earnestly.



"Rands," Sean confirmed. Compared to other African currencies, the rand was as good as a gold sovereign.



"And there are things in the stores, things for a man to buy with his rands?" Alphonso demanded suspiciously. It was difficult lo r him to visualize shelves laden with goods for sale, other than a few pathetic bottles of locally produced carbonated soft drinks and packets of cheap cigarettes.



"Whatever you want," Sean assured him. "Soap and sugar, cooking oil, and maize meal." Half-forgotten luxuries in Alphonso's mind.



"As much as I want?" he asked. "No rationing?"



"As much as you can pay for," Sean assured him. "And when sistor your belly is full, you can buy shoes and suits and ties, transister radios and dark glasses-"



"A bicycle?" Alphonso demanded eagerly.



"Only the very lowest men ride bicycles." Sean grinned, enjoying himself. "The others have their own motorcars."



"Black men own their own motorcars?" Alphonso thought about that for a long time. "Would there be work for a man like me?" he asked with a diffidence that was completely out of character.



You?" Sean pretended to consider it, and Alphonso waited apprehensively for his judgment. "You?" Sean repeated. "My brother owns a gold mine. You could be a supervisor on his mine within a year, a shift boss in two years. I could get you a job the same day you arrived at the mine."



"How much does a supervisor earn?"



"thousand, two thousand," Sean assured him. Alphonso was A stunned. His Renamo pay was the equivalent of a rand a day, paid in Mozambican escudos.



"I would like to be a boss supervisor," he murmured thoughtfully.



ant?" Sean teased. Alphonso char' Better than a Renamo serge tied derisively.



"Of course, in South Africa you would not have the vote," Sean efaces get to vote."



ribbed him. "Only pal Vote, what is a vote?" Alphonso demanded, then answered t have the himself. "I don't have a vote in Mozambique. They don" vote in Zambia or Zimbabwe or Angola or Tanzania. Nobody has the vote in Africa, except. perhaps once in a man's life to elect a president-for-life and a one-party government." He shook his head and snorted. "Vote? You can't eat a vote. You can't dress in a or ride to work on it. F or two thousand rand a month and vote, a full belly you can have my vote."



"Anytime you come to South Africa, You come and see me."



d see the trees against Sean stretched and looked at the sky. He could it. Dawn was only a short time away. He crushed out the butt of the cigarette and began to get to his feet.



"There is something I must tell you," Alphonso whispered. His altered tone caught Sean's full attention.



"Yes?" He squatted down again and leaned closer to the Shangane.



Alphonso cleared his throat in embarrassment. "We have traveled a long road together," he murmured.



"A long, hard road," Sean agreed. "But the end is in sight. This time tomorrow-" He did not have to go on, and Alphonso did not reply immediately.



"We have fought side by side," Alphonso said at last.



"Like lions," Sean confirmed.



"I have called you Babo and Nkosi Kakulu."



"You have honored me thus," Sean said formally. "And I have called you friend."



Alphonso nodded in the darkness. "I cannot let you cross the Zimbabwean border," he said with sudden decisiveness, and Sean rocked back on his heels.



"Tell me why not."



"You remember Cuthbert?" Alphonso asked.



It took Sean a moment to place the name. "Cuthbert, you mean the one from Grand Reef air base? The one who helped us on the raid?" It all seemed so long ago.



"General China's nephew." Alphonso nodded. "That is the one I speak of."



"Sammy Davis Junior." Sean smiled. "The cool laid-back cat.



I remember him well."



"General China spoke to him on the radio. This very morning from the laager of the hen shaw after our victory. I was in the outer room of the bunker. I heard everything he said."



Sean felt a cold wind blow down his spine, and the hair at the base of his skull prickled. "What did China tell him?" he asked dreading the reply.



"He ordered Cuthbert to let the Zimbabwean Army know that it was you who led the raid on Grand Reef and stole the indeki full of missiles. He told Cuthbert to tell them that you would be ssing k into Zimbabwe through the Honde Valley at Saint ary's Mission, and they must wait for you there."



Sean's gut knotted with shock, and for long moments he was stunned by the enormity and cunning of the trap China had prepared for him. The cruelty of it was diabolical. To allow them to believe they were being set free, to let them taste the relief of crossing out of harm, when in fact they were going to a fate even worse than China himself could have meted out to them.



The fury of the Zimbabwean high command would know no bounds. Sean was the holder of a Zimbabwean passport, a document of convenience but one that would make him a traitor and murderer beyond any help from outside. He would be handed over to the notorious Zimbabwe Central Intelligence Organization and taken to the interrogation cells at Chikarubi prison, and he would never emerge from there alive. Job, despite his wounds, would share the same fate.



Even though Claudia was an American citizen, officially she no longer existed. It was weeks since she had been reported missing.



By this time, interest in her case, even at the U.S. embassies in Harare and Pretoria, would have cooled. Along with her father, she was presumed dead, so she could expect no protection. She was as vulnerable as they were.



The trap was completely closed; there was no way out. The Renamo army behind them, Frelimo on either hand, and the Zimbabwe CIO ahead of them. They were marooned in a devastated wasteland, doomed to be hunted down Ike wild animals or to starve slowly in the wilderness.



"Think!" Sean told himself. "Find the way out."



They could attempt to cross the Zimbabwean border at some other point than the Honde Valley, but the CIO would have the entire country alerted for them. There were permanent army blocks on every road. Without papers they wouldn't get more than a few miles, and then there was Job--what would he do with Job?



wounded man when every police and How could they transport a r somebody in a stretchers military post would be looking lo we must go southward," Alphonso said. "We must go to South Africa."we?" Sean stared at him. "You want to come with us?"



"I can't go back to General China," he pointed out philosophwill come with you to betrayed him. I ically. "Not after I have South Africa."



"That's a trek of three hundred miles, through two Opposed armies, Frefimo and the southern division of Renamo. And what ut Job?"



abO 99



"We will carry him , Alphonso replied.



"Three hundred miles"



"Then we will leave Sin behind." Alphonso shrugged. "He is only a Matabele and he is dying anyway. It will be no great loss."



Sean caught the angry words that rose to his tongue and re silent while he thought it out. Every way he twisted it and mained examined it, he saw that Alphonso was right. To the north the dubious haven of Malawi was blocked by the waters of Cabora he east lay the Indian Bossa and by General China's division. To t Ocean, and to the west the Zimbabwe



CIO.



t," Sean admitted reluctantly. "South is the only way.



righ Frefimo and the south Perhaps we can squeeze through between heavily em division of Renanio. All we have to do is get across a guarded railway line and the Limpopo River and find enough to eat while we are doing it in a land that has been burned and devastated by ten years of civil war."



"In South Africa we will eat meat every day," Alphonso pointed out cheerfully.



Sean stood up. "Will your men follow you?"



"I will kill those that don't." Alphonso was matter-of-fact. "We can't let them go back to General China."



"Right," Sean agreed. "And you will report on the radio schedule that I have crossed into Zimbabwe. We'll be able to string China along on the radio for four or five days. He won't realize that we have broken away southward until we are well on our way and beyond his range. You had better talk to your men now. We'll have to turn south right away. Talk to them before they realize for themselves that we are up to something."



Alphonso called in the sentries, and in the gray light of dawn the faces of the Shanganes were sober and intent as they squatted in a circle around him and listened to Alphonso describe the southern paradise to which he would lead them.



"We are all weary of fighting, of living like animals in the bush.



It is time we learned to live like men, to find good wives to bear our sons." He was filled with the fiery eloquence of the recent convert, and before he had finished Sean saw the sparkle of anticipation in most of their eyes and felt a lift of relief. For the first time he began to believe the journey ahead might just be possible, with a great deal of endeavor and an even greater deal of luck.



He went to tell Claudia and Job what lay ahead. Claudia was bathing Job's face with a damp rag. "He's much better, a good night's rest." She broke off as she saw his face. Her spirits visibly Plummeted as he explained what they had to do.



"It was too good to be true," she whispered. "I knew deep down it wouldn't be that easy, that General China wasn't Santa Claus in disguise."



Job lay so stiff on his stretcher that Sean thought he had once again slipped over the edge of consciousness, and he reached out to check his pulse. At his touch Job opened his eyes.



"Can you trust those Shanganes?" he whispered.



"We don't have much choice," Sean pointed out and then went on briskly, "We-"



"Leave me here." Job's whisper was barely audible, but Sean's expression hardened and his voice was brittle with anger.



"Cut out that sort of bullshit," he warned Job.



"Without me you might have a chance," Job insisted. "If you have to drag this stretcher-"



"We've got twelve hefty Shanganes," Sean pointed out.



"Better some of you get through than all of us die. Leave me, Sean. Save Claudia and yourself."



1419 in getting angry." Sean stood up and said to Claudia, "We leave in ten minutes."



They traveled cautiously southward all that day. It was an intense relief not to have to watch the sky for the Hind gunships, although out of habit the Shanganes occasionally turned their faces upward. The closer they drew to the railway fine, the slower their progress became, and they spent much of their time hiding in the dense wild ebony thickets and clumps of jesse until Matatu came ghosting back to assure them the coast was clear and lead them onward.



In the late afternoon Sean left the main party hiding in a bushy. and went forward with Matatu. He was gone for almost two ravine hours, and the sun was setting when he reappeared silently and suddenly at Claudia's side.



"You startled me!" she gasped. "You're like a cat."



"The railway line is only a mile ahead. The Frehmo guards seem itary traffic to be in a state of confusion still. There is a lot of mil on the line and a great deal of panicky activity all around. The crossing is going to be a trifle tricky. As soon as the moon comes up, I'll go up and take another look."



While they waited for the moon, Alphonso rigged the radio aerial and made his scheduled contact with General China's headquarters.



"The dove is in flight." He gave the prearranged code so China would believe that Sean and his party had crossed the border.



After a brief pause, presumably while he relayed the message, the radio operator came back to Alphonso with the order to return to river.



Alphonso acknowledged and signed off.



the main base on the "They won't expect nw'to arrive back for another two days."



Alphonso grinned as he packed up the radio. "It will be that long before they start getting suspicious."



As the moon pushed its bald silver pate above the trees, Sean and Matatu slipped away into the forest to make a final reconnaissance of the railway line. A mile south of their position they found the place where the line crossed a narrow stream. Although the stream contained only a few shallow puddles, the banks were thick with riverine bush that would afford them good cover. Originally the bush must have been cleared for a hundred yards on each side of the line, but secondary growth had been allowed to spring up to waist height. 391



"Sloppy Frelinio bastards" Scan muttered. "That will give us some cover, and we'll stay in the river-bed."



The main line crossed the stream over an embankment and culvert. There was a guard post on the approaches, fifty yards up track from the culvert. While Sean watched through his bmocuIan, a Frelimo sentry, his AK rifle slung on his back, sauntered ! ! down to the bridge over the culvert. He leaned on the guardrail and fit a cigarette. The glow of the cigarette marked his progress as he ambled back to the guard post. He seemed to Sean to be a little unsteady on his feet, and when he reached the guard post, a faint ripple of fenumne giggles carried to where Sean and Matatu lay.



"They are having a party," Sean chuckled.



"Palm wine and jig-jig," Matatu agreed enviously. In the moonlight he held up his right hand with his thumb trapped between his first two fingers. "I would like some of that myself "You randy little bugger." Sean tweaked his ear. "When we get to Johannesburg, I'll stand you to the biggest, fattest lady we can Bush out." Matatu's taste in amour ran to the mountainous. "Like Sherpa Tensing on Everest," Sean often remarked.



The distractions with which the railway guards had provided themselves promised to make their crossing easier. Sean and Matatu withdrew quietly and started back to where they had left the rest of the party.



They had been gone for three hours, and it was a few minutes before midnight as they approached the camp. At the head of the ravine Sean paused to give the recognition signal, the liquid warble of a fiery-necked nightjar. He didn't want to be shot by one of Alphonso's Shanganes. He waited a full minute for the reply.



When it did not come, he repeated the signal. Still there was silence, and he felt the first tickle of alarm.



Instead of going straight in, they circled the ravine cautiously, and in the moonlight Matatu picked up unexpected spoor and squatted over it, frowning with alarm.



Sean whispered. "Who? Which way?"



"Many men, our own Shanganes!" Matatu lifted his head and pointed to the north. "They are going out, leaving camp."



"Outgoing?" Sean was puzzled. "Doesn't make sense, unless--I Oh, God!



No!"



Swiftly, quietly, he closed in on the camp. The sentries he had set before he left were gone, their posts deserted. Sean felt panic rise in a wave that threatened to suffocate him.



"Claudia!" he whispered, suppressing the urge to shout her name aloud. He wanted to rush into the camp and fiW her, but he drew a series of deep breaths and fought back the panic.



He slipped the AKM on to fully automatic and went down on his belly, creeping in. The five Shanganes he had left asleep in the of the ravine were gone, and all their equipment and weapons gut had disappeared. He went on and made out the shape of Job's stretcher in the dappled moonlight; beside it, exactly as he had left her, was Claudia's body wrapped in a blanket, but just beyond her another body lay sprawled. In the moonlight he saw the sheen of wetness on the back of the man's head.



"Blood!"



Sean threw all caution aside and rushed to Claudia's body, dropping to his knees beside her and sweeping her into his arms.



She gasped and cried out, coming out of a deep sleep. She began to struggle in his arms, then quieted as she realized who he was.



"Sean!" she blurted, still groggy with sleep. "What is it? What "Thank God," he murmured fervently. "I thought-!" He set her down gently, and reached across to where Job lay in the litter.



"Job, are you all right?" He shook him carefully, and Job stirred and murmured.



Sean jumped to his feet and went to where Alphonso lay. He touched his neck. The skin was warm, his pulse strong and even.



"Claudia!" he called. "Bring the flashlight."



In the beam of the flashlight he examined the laceration in Alphonso's scalp. "A-nice little ding," he grunted. Although the bleeding had stanched spontaneously, he pressed a field dressing over it and bound it in place. "Good thing they hit him on the head, or they might have done some serious damage." He grinned wryly at his own joke.



"What happened, Sean?" Claudia demanded anxiously. "I was fast asleep. I didn't heat a thing."



"Lucky for you." Sean tied the tag ends of the bandage. "Or you might have got thesaine treatment."



"What happened? Where are the others?"



"Gone," he told her. "Flown, deserted. They obviously didn't fancy the walk or the destination. They bashed Alphonso on the noggin and took off back to General China."



She stared at him. "You mean there are only the four of us now.?



All the Shanganes except Alphonso have gone?"



"That's right," Sean agreed. Alphonso groaned and reached up to touch his bandaged head. Sean helped him sit up.



"Sean!" Claudia tugged at his arm and he turned back to her.



"What are we going to do?" Sean glanced across at Job's stretcher.



I" going to do with Job? How are we going to carry him? How are we going to get out of here now/P" 90 "That, My love, is an extremely interesting question, Sean tell you is that by this time tomorrow, our know that we are on the run, and



"We don't seem to have us-we keep on the way we are going."



one road still open to He hauled Alphonso to his feet.



"that's impossible, "Claudia whispered anxiously. "Two of YOU cannot carry the stretcher-" some other or' You right, of course. we'll have to make rangement."



Between them they lifted Job out of the fiberglass stretcher and laid him on Claudia's blanket. Then, while the Others watched, had finished, Sean began to dismantle the stretcher. Before he Matatu appeared silently out of the darkness and whispered a brief report to Sean.



Sean barely looked up as he told Alphonso, "You taught them well. Your Shanganes have bomb shelled taken off in eleven different directions. If we followed, we might catch one or two of them, but some of them are going to get back to China with the good news."



Alphonso cursed the deserters bitterly, while Sean explained to Claudia and Job, "I'm going to use the nylon webbing from the stretcher to improvise a sling seat."



Claudia looked dubious. "Job isn't strong enough to sit upright.



lee ding--2" She broke The movement will reopen his wound, the b off as Sean glared at her.



"Can you think of a better way?" he snarled, and she shook her head.



Sean doubled the length of heavy green canvas and took the rifle and Alphonso's AK to make carrying loops.



slings from his AKM ted, 1"14 "-We'll have to make adjustments as we go along," he grun "Instead of finding difficulties, make your then looked at Claudia.



self useful by gathering all the equipment the Shanganes left. We'll have to make a selection."



quipment swiftly, discarding all but the most He picked out the e tween us. On vital pieces. "Alphonso and I will be carrying Job be that we'll only be able to manage our basic weapons and a top of blanket each. Claudia and Matatu must lug the medical pack, the water bottles, and a blanket each. Everything else will be left behind."



we are headed."



are we going to do?"



choice," he said. "There is only The canned food?" Claudia asked.



Forget it," Sean told her brusquely. He set about apportioning their loads, cutting everything down to the barest minimum, knowing every pound of weight now would seem like ten after the first few miles. He even made Alphonso abandon his AK rifle and gave him the pistol he had taken from the Russian pilot to replace it. He restricted himself to two spare clips of ammunition for his own AKM, and he and Alphonso retained only a pair of grenades each, one fragmentation and the other phosphorus.



They piled the abandoned equipment in the bottom of the ravine and covered it with loose earth and branches to conceal it from casual discovery by a Frehmo patrol.



"Okay, lad," Sean told Job. "Time to go." He glanced at his wristwatch and found it was a little before three o'clock. They were well behind schedule, and they only had a few hours of darkness left in which to make the crossing.



He knelt beside Job and eased him up into a sitting position, then re strapped his injured arm firmly against his chest.



"This is the bad part," he warned him, and between them he and Alphonso lifted Job to his feet. Job endured the movement in stoic silence and stood supported between them.



Sean and Alphonso adjusted the nylon sling seat over their outer shoulders. They lifted Job into it, and he sat with his feet dangling, his good arm draped around Sean's shoulder, while Sean and Alphonso linked their arms behind his back to support him.



"Ready?" Sean asked. Job grunted softly, trying to conceal the pain that every movement caused him.



"If you think it's bad now"--Sean warned him cheerfully' just give it a couple of hours!"



They started down the ravine toward the railway line. They moved slowly, accustoming themselves to this awkward form of travel. They tried to cushion Job between them, but they stumbled over the broken groun4and Job swung on his seat and bumped against them. He math no sound, but Sean heard his ragged breathing close to. Ills ear, and when the pain stabbed him especially cruelly, he unconsciously dug his fingers into Sean's shoulder.



Slowly they moved down the shallow streambed toward the culvert beneath the railway line. Matatu was a hundred yards ahead of them, just visible in the moonlight. Once he signaled them to halt and then after a few minutes beckoned them to come on.



Claudia trailed fifty paces behind them so she would have a start if they were discovered and forced to run back.



Carrying Job between them, it was not possible for Sean and Alphonso to move silently. Once they splashed into one of the muddy pools of the stream, and they sounded like a herd of cavorting hippos in the silence.

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