The commercial flight landed at Kinshasa in the middle of a tropical downpour. Rainwater cascaded down the windows as the aircraft taxied to its berth, and Isabella was soaked in the few seconds that it took to leave the aircraft and board the airport bus.



As she had been promised, there was someone to meet her as she came through the Customs and Immigration barrier. He was a good-looking young pilot in plain khaki flying-overalls without any insignia or rank. When he greeted her in Spanish she was able to detect the Cuban accent, now that she knew to listen for it.



He insisted on carrying her suitcase and the box of gifts for Nicky and flirted with her brazenly in the ramshackle* taxi that drove them from the main airport building down to the private and charter section of the airfield.



By the time they got there, the rain had stopped. Although heavy cloud still covered the sky, it was stiflingly hot and humid. He loaded her luggage into the back compartment of a small single-engine aircraft. She did not recognize the type. It carried no insignia other than an enigmatic number, and was painted an overall drab sandy colour.



"Are we going to fly in this weather?' she asked him. 'Isn't it dangerous?" 'Ah, sehora, if you die you will die in my arms - what a glorious passing!" As soon as they were airborne he placed his hand on her thigh, the better to point out the passing scenery.



"Keep your hands on the wheel. Keep your eyes on the road.' She lifted his hand and gave it back to him. He flashed his teeth and his eyes and laughed as though he had made a conquest.



She could not remain angry for long. Every minute they kept on this heading confirmed the fact that she was being taken to the base where last she had seen Nicky. Two hours later she made out the grey expanse of the Atlantic beneath the lowering cloud-banks ahead.



The pilot turned south along the coast, and then she sat up straight in the seat and her spirits took wing. She recognized the oxbows in the river and the open mouth to the sea. The pilot pulled on flap and lined up for a landing on the red clay strip.



Nicky, she thought. Soon now, my baby. Soon we'll be free again.



As they taxied in, she saw him. He was standing on the front seat of the jeep. He had shot up at least another two inches, and his legs seemed too gawky and coltish for his body. His hair was longer than she remembered and curled out from under his camo-cap, but his eyes were the same. That marvelous clear green that sparkled even at this distance. As soon as he recognized her behind the windscreen, he waved both hands over his head, and his teeth flashed in the darkly tanned and beautiful face.



In the jeep with him were the driver and Josd, the Cuban paratrooper. They were grinning as widely as Nicky as she climbed out of the front seat of the aircraft.



Nicky jumped out of the jeep and ran to meet her. For a heady moment she thought he might rush into her arms, then he got control of himself and offered her his hand.



"Welcome, Mamma.' She thought the strength of her love might choke her. "It is good to see you again." 'Hello, Nicky.' Her voice was husky. 'You have grown so much I hardly recognized you. You are becoming a man now." It was the right thing to say. He hooked his thumbs into his belt and called imperiously to Josd and the driver: 'Come and take my mother's luggage."



"Right away, General Pele.'Josd gave him a mock salute, and then to Isabella: 'Greetings, sefiora. We have been looking forward to your visit." I'm everybody's favourite aunt now, Isabella thought cynically.



From her box of goodies she gave Jose and the driver each a two-hundred pack of Marlboro cigarettes, and her popularity was enhanced a hundredfold.



In Angola, Western cigarettes were hard currency.



As Nicholas drove them down to the beach he chattered happily, and though she showed flattering interest in everything he had done and achieved since their last meeting she was checking her surroundings with a much more businesslike eye than she had previously. She realized that she had made serious errors in the sketch-map that she had drawn for Sean. The training base had been enlarged since her last visit. There must now be several thousand soldiers here, and she saw some kind of artillery parked under camouflage-nets. They looked like long-barrelled antiaircraft guns. Further on she noticed parked trucks with dish-shaped radar antennae pointed skyward, and she thought of her father and Garry bringing the Lear in overhead. There was no way to warn them of these changes.



When they reached the beach compound, Isabella checked the distance registered on the speedometer. It was only 3.e kilometres from the airstrip to the beach - much closer than she had estimated. She wondered just how this might endanger the rescue operation. Reinforcements could be rushed in more swiftly than Sean had allowed for.



Josd carried her luggage into the guard-house. Waiting for her were the same two women who had met her before. However, their attitude was friendlier and more informal.



"I have brought you a gift,' Isabella greeted them, and gave them each a bottle of perfume which she had chosen for size rather than for subtle aroma. They were delighted and sprayed themselves so liberally that the air in the room was difficult to breathe. It was some minutes before they could get around to searching Isabella's luggage.



This time the camera was passed without comment, though they lingered longingly over her cosmetics. Isabella invited them to try a little of her lipstick, and they accepted with alacrity, and admired the results in the mirror of Isabella's compact. The atmosphere was more that of a gathering of old friends than of a security screening.



By the time they came to examine the box of gifts for Nicholas their hearts were obviously no longer in the task. One of them picked out the deflated soccer ball. 'Ah, Pele will like this,' she cried, and then Isabella's nerves prickled with tension as she handled the pump.



"For the ball,' she explained.



"Sf. I know, to pump air.' The woman gave it a few desultory strokes and then dropped the pump back into the box.



"I am sorry to have inconvenienced you, sefiora. We only do our duty." "Of course. I understand,' Isabella agreed.



"You will stay with us two weeks. That is good. Pele has been very excited that you are coming. He is a good boy. Everybody likes him very much.



Everybody is very proud of him.' She helped Isabella to carry her cases across to the same hut that they had given her on her last visit.



Nicholas was sitting on her bed, already in his swimming-trunks.



"Come, Mamma, we will go for a swim now. I will race you out to the reef." He swam like an otter, and she was hard-pressed to keep up with him.



That evening when just the two of them were alone in her hut, she gave him his gifts from the box. Although the soccer ball was the greatest hit, he also enjoyed her choice of books and clothes. She had brought a selection of colourful surfer's baggies and T-shirts which delighted him. There was also a Sony cassette-playcr and a box of music cassettes. His favourites were Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Beatles.



"Can you rock 'n' roll?' she asked. 'I'll show you.' And she put a Johnny Halliday tape on the player.



They gyrated around the hut in their bathing-suits, shrieking with laughter, until Adra called them for dinner. Adra was as taciturn and withdrawn as ever, and Isabella ignored her and concentrated all her attention on Nicholas. She had stored up a selection of elephant, jokes for him.



"How do you know that the elephant has been in the refrigerator? You see his footprints in the butter.' He loved that one. In return he told her a joke that he had heard from Jose the paratrooper. It left her gasping for air.



"Do you know what that means?' she asked in nervous trepidation.



. 'Of course,' he told her. 'One of the big girls at school showed me." And Isabella thought it prudent not to pursue the subject.



After they had seen him to bed, Adra walked with her to the hut and Isabella whispered: 'Where is Ramsey, the Marquds? Is he here?" Adra looked around carefully before replying. 'No. He will come soon. I think tomorrow or the next day. He says he will come to you. He says to tell you he loves you." Alone in her hut, Isabella found that she was trembling at the prospect of meeting Ramsey again, now that she knew him for what he was. She doubted whether she would be able to act naturally towards him. The thought of making love to him terrified her. Surely he would sense the change in her feelings towards him. He might take Nicholas away, or have her imprisoned.



"Please, God, let Sean reach me before Ramsey does. Keep him away until Sean comes.' She lay awake that night, cold with dread that Ramsey would suddenly appear out of the darkness and she must take him into her bed.



As before, she and Nicholas spent the next two days swimming and fishing and playing with Twenty-Six on the beach. The puppy had grown into a lanky, long-tailed, cross-eyed dog with floppy ears that Nicholas adored. It shared his bed with him; Isabella did not have the authority to forbid it, even though Nicholas's long legs were speckled with flea-bites.



On the Monday night, while she watched Nicholas prepare for bed, she reached up casually and took down the bicycle pump from the shelf above his bed on which the new soccer ball held pride of place. She twisted the handle and heard the faint internal click as the transponder switched on.



She replaced the pump on the shelf just as Nicholas came back from -the bathroom smelling of the peppermint toothpaste she had brought from Cape Town for him.



As she leant over the bed to tuck in the mosquito-net he reached up unexpectedly and threw both arms around her neck. 'I love you, Mamma," he whispered shyly, and she kissed him.



His mouth was soft and moist and warm and tasted of toothpaste, and she thought her heart would burst with love of him. Quickly embarrassed by his own display, Nicholas rolled over, pulled the sheet up to his chin, closed his eyes tightly and made ostentatious snoring sounds.



"Sleep well, Nicky. I love you, too - with all my heart,' she whispered.



As she walked back to her own hut, thunder growled and lightning flickered across the night sky. As she looked up, a heavy drop of warm rain struck her on the centre of her forehead.



It was very quiet in the cockpit of the Lear. They were at forty thousand feet, almost service ceiling, as high as they could get for maximum endurance and speed.



"Enemy coast ahead,' Shasa said softly, and Garry chuckled.



"Come on, Pater. People only say things Re that in World War Two movies." They were high above the cloud mass in a world of enchanted silver moonlight. The cloud below them shone with the peculiar brilliance of an alpine snowfield.



"One hundred nautical miles to run to the mouth of the Congo river." Shasa checked their position on the screen of the satellite nav system. "We should be almost exactly overhead Lancer's station." 'Better give them a call,' Garry suggested, and Shasa switched radio frequencies.



"Hello, Donald Duck. This is the Magic Dragon. Do you read?" 'Hello, Dragon. This is the Duck. Reading you ten and ten,' the reply was immediate, and Shasa smiled with relief as he recognized his eldest son's voice. 'Sean must have had his thumb on the button,' he murmured and keyed his microphone. 'Stand by, Duck. We are heading for Disneyland." 'Have a nice trip. Duck is standing by." Shasa swivelled in the co-pilot's seat and looked back into the Lear's passenger-cabin. The two technicians from Courtney Communications were crouched over their equipment. It had taken them ten days to install all the special electronics. Much of it was state-of-the-art equipment which was still under test with Armscor and had not yet been issued to the air force. It was not built into the Lear's body, but strapped and screwed to the cabin floor. Their intent faces were painted a witch's green by the glow from the display panel, and the enormous headphones distorted the shape of their heads.



Shasa switched to the intercom. 'How you doing, Len?" he head engineer glanced up at him. 'No radar lash. We are receiving normal radio traffic from Luanda, Kinshasa and Brazzaville. No signal from the target." "Carry on.' Shasa turned. He knew that the new frequency-search equipment was skipping through the bands. It should pick up any military traffic from Luanda or Saurimo military bases. The antenna mounted under the Lear's belly would warn them if they were detected by 5xe hostile radar. Len, the radio engineer, had been chosen for his command of Spanish. He would be able to monitor any Cuban radio traffic.



"OK, Garry.' Shasa touched his arm. 'We are overhead the Congo mouth. Your new heading is." 'New heading 175.'Garr-y stood the Lear on one wing-tip as they turned east of south to run parallel with the coastline.



By some freak of wind and weather, a deep hole opened in the cloud mass beneath them. The moon was directly overhead and only two days from its full. Its light beamed down into the chasm, and forty thousand feet below they saw the platinum gleam of water and the dark shape of the African coast.



"Ambriz river-mouth in four minutes,' Shasa warned.



"We have initiated search for target signal,' Len confirmed in his headphones.



"Overhead Ambriz,' Shasa intoned.



"No target signal received." 'Catacanha river-mouth in six minutes," Shasa said.



He hadn't really expected the Ambriz to yield results. It was the outer limit of their search-cone. He looked ahead and grimaced. Directly in their track a gigantic mountain of menacing black cloud rose hammer-headed into the stratosphere. He estimated its height at sixty or seventy thousand feet, 'way above the Lear's ceiling.



"How do you like that Charlie Bravo?' he asked, and Garry shook his head and looked down at the screen of the weather radar set. The enormous tropical thunderstorm showed up as a lurid and ferocious crimson cancer on the screen.



"Ninety-six miles ahead, and it's a real Lulu. Looks like it's sitting right over one of our target river-mouths, the Chicamba." 'If it is, it will wipe out any signal from Bella's transponder.' Shasa was looking worried.



. 'We wouldn't be able to fly through that anyway,' Garry growled.



"Overhead the Catacanha, Len. Are you picking up anything from our target?" 'Negative, Mr. Courtney.' And then his voice changed. 'Hold on! Oh shit!



Somebody is hitting us with radar lash." 'Garry' - Shasa reached across to shake his shoulder -'they've picked us up on radar." 'Switch to the international frequency,' Garry said, 'and listen." They sat frozen in their seats listening to the static of that great turbulent storm ahead.



Suddenly the carrier band hissed and a voice cut in clearly. "Unidentified aircraft. This is Luanda control. You are in restricted airspace. Identify yourself immediately. I say again, you are in restricted airspace." 'Luanda control, this is British Airways Flight BA 051. We have an engine malfunction. Request a position fix.' Shasa began a garbled delaying argument with Luanda. Every second he could gain was crucial. He asked them for a clearance to land at Luanda, and pretended not to be receiving or understanding their refusals and urgent orders to vacate national airspace.



"They haven't fallen for it, Mr. Courtney,' Len warned him as he swept the military frequencies. 'They have scrambled a flight of Migs from Saurimo, airfield. They are vectoring them in on us." 'How long before we cross the Chicamba river-mouth?' Garry demanded.



"Fourteen minutes,' Shasa snapped back.



"Well, Lordy, Lordyp Garry grinned. 'We are on a head-on course with those Migs. They are coming in at Mach 2. This is going to be fun." They sped southwards into the silver moonlight.



"Mr. Courtney, we have more radar lash. I think the Migs have got us on their attack radar." 'Thank you, Len. Chicamba river in one minute thirty seconds." 'Mr. Courtney.' There was a strident tone to Len's voice. 'The Mig leader is reporting target acquisition. They are on to us, sir. The attack radar lash is increasing. The Mig leader is requesting weapons-free." 'I thought you said they couldn't intercept us,' Shasa asked Garry mildly.



"I thought we were out of their operational range." 'Hell, Dad, anyone can make a mistake." 'Mr. Courtney!' Len's voice was a shriek. 'I have the target signal, weak and intermittent. About six kilometres. Dead ahead!" 'Are you sure, Len?" 'It's our transponder for surev 'The Chicamba river-mouth. Bella is at the Chicamba!' Shasa shouted. 'Let's get the hell out of here." 'Mr. Courtney, the Migs are weapons-free and attacking. Radar lash is very strong and increasing." 'Hold on,' Garry called. 'Grab your hats." He rolled the Lear wing-over into a dive.



"What the hell are you doing?' Shasa shouted as he was pressed back into the co-pilot's seat by the G force. 'Turn and get out to sea." 'They'd nail us before we'd gone a mile.' Garry held the Lear in the dive.



"Christ, Garry, you'll tear the wings off us." The airspeed indicator revolved swiftly up towards the 'never exceed' barrier.



"Take your choice, Pater. We tear the wings off her - or the Migs shoot the arse off us." 'Mr. Courtney, the Mig leader reports missile-lock." Len was stuttering with terror.



"What- are you going to do, Garry;" Shasa grabbed Garry's arm.



"I'm going in there.' Garry pointed at the soaring moonwashed mountain of the thunderstorm. It was a sheer precipice of turbulent cloud that obscured the heavens ahead of them. The cloud-banks boiled and seethed with the great winds and air-currents within. Lightning flashed and glowed deep in the belly of the storm.



"You are crazy,' Shasa whispered.



"No Mig will follow us in,' Garry said. 'No missile will hold its lock with all that energy and electrical discharge burning around us." "Mr. Courtney, Mig leader has fired a missile - and another. Two missiles running.



"Pray for us sinners,' Garry said, and held the Lear down in its death-dive; the airspeed needle went through the 'never exceed' barrier.



"I think this is it.' Shasa's voice was matter-of fact, and as he said it something struck the Lear a crashing blow. She flipped over on to her back, the ball of the flight director spun like a top in its cage, and then they were into the storm.



All visibility was wiped out instantly and thick grey cloud like wet cottonwool engulfed them. They were thrown on to their safety-harnesses as the storm attacked the Lear. It was a ravening beast that clawed and lashed them.



The Lear tumbled and swirled like a dead leaf in a whirlwind. The instruments on the control-panel spun and toppled, the altimeter yo-yo'd as they dropped into the void and then hit a vicious updraught that hurled them up two thousand feet and twisted them wing over wing.



Suddenly the cloud was lit by internal lightning. It dazzled them, and rumbled through their heads, drowning out the agonized shriek of the Lear's jets. Blue fire danced on the metal skin of the aircraft as though she were aflame. They hit the bottom of another hole with a force that plunged them against the padding of their seats and buckled their spines. Then they were hurled aloft only to plunge once again. All around them the body work of the Lear creaked and groaned as the storm tried to rip her apart.



Garry was helpless. He knew better than to fight the wheel and rudders and increase the brutal stress on her control-surfaces. The Lear was fighting for her life. He whispered encouragement to her and held the controlwheel with a light and loving touch, trying to ease her nose up out of the graveyard spiral.



"Courage, darling,' he whispered. 'Come on, baby. You can do it." Shasa was clinging to the arm-rests of his seat and staring at the altimeter. They were down to fifteen thousand feet and still dropping. None of the other instruments was making any sense. They jerked and wavered and kicked.



He concentrated on the altimeter. It unwound jerkily. Ten thousand, seven, four thousand. The strength of the storm increased; their heads were whipped back and forth, threatening to snap their spines. The shoulder-straps cut painfully into their flesh.



Something broke in the fuselage with a tearing crash. Shasa ignored it and tried to focus on the altimeter. His vision was starred and disorientated by the Lear's vicious plunges.



Two thousand feet, one thousand - zero. They should have hit the ground, but the tremendous changes of barometric pressure within the swirling body of the storm had thrown out the reading.



Suddenly the Lear steadied, the turbulence abated. Garry pressed on rudder and stick, and she responded. The flight director stabilized and rotated towards the vertical as the Lear rolled back on to even keel and they burst out of the cloud.



The change was stunning. The noise of the storm gave way to the low hum of the jets. Moonlight flooded into the cockpit, and Shasa gasped with shock.



They were almost upon the surface of the sea, skimming over it like a flying fish rather than a bird. A drop of another hundred feet would have plunged them beneath the green Atlantic rollers.



"Cutting it a little fine, son.' Shasa's voice was hoarse, and he tried to grin, but his eye-patch had been shaken loose and hung down under his ear.



He adjusted it with fingers that trembled.



"Come on, Navigator,' Garry chuckled unconvincingly. 'Give me a course to fly." 'New course is 2eo degrees. How is she handling?"



"Like a breeze.' Garry turned gently on to the new heading. The Lear came round serenely and sped out into the Atlantic leaving the dark continental mass astern.



"Len.' Shasa turned in the seat and looked back into the cabin. The technicians' faces were pale and washed lightly with the sweat of terror.



"What do you make of the Migs?" Len stared at him like an owl as he tried to adjust to the shock of still being alive.



"Pull yourself together, man,' Shasa snapped at him, and Len stooped quickly to his control-panel.



"Yes, we still have contact. Mig leader is reporting target destroyed. He is short of fuel and returning to base." 'Farewell, Fidel. Thank the Lord that you are a lousy shot,' Garry murmured, and kept the Lear low down in the surface clutter where the shore radar would have difficulty picking them up. 'Where is Lancer?" 'Should be dead ahead.' Shasa thumbed the microphone.



"Donald Duck, this is the Magic Dragon." 'Go ahead, Dragon." 'It's the Chicamba. I repeat the Chicamba. Do you copy that? Over." 'Roger. Chicamba. I say again Chicamba. Did you have any trouble? We heard porn-porn. jet traffic south-east of here. Over." 'Nothing to it. It was a Sunday-school picnic. Now it's your turn to visit Disneyland. Over." 'We are on our way, Dragon." 'Break a leg, Duck. Over and out." It was half-past five on Tuesday morning when Garry put the Lear down on the tarmac at Windhoek Airport. They climbed down stiffly and stood in a group at the foot of the steps, overcome by a sense of anticlimax. Then Garry walked to the nearest engine which was softly crackling and pinking as it cooled.



"Pater,' he called. 'Come and have a look at this." Shasa stared at the alien object that had buried itself in the metal fuselage below the pod of the Garrett turbo-fan engine. It was painted a harsh industrial yellow, a long finned arrow-like tube, that protruded six feet from the torn metal skin of the Lear.



"What the hell is that?' Shasa asked.



"That, Mr. Courtney,'said Len, who had come up behind him, 'that is a Soviet ATOLL air-to-air missile that failed to explode." 'Well, Garry," Shasa murmured, 'Fidel wasn't such a lousy shot after all." 'Bless Russian workmanship,' Garry said. 'Perhaps it's a little early, Dad, but could you stand a glass of champagne?" 'What a splendid idea,' said Shasa.



"The Chicamba river.' Shoulder to shoulder, Sean and Esau Gondele leant over the chart-table. 'There she is." Sean laid his finger on the tiny insignificant nick in the outline of the continent. 'Just south of Catacanha.' He looked up at the trawler skipper.



Van Der Berg was built like a Sumo wrestler, squat and heavy, with a leathery skin burnt and desiccated by sun and wind.



"What do you know about it, Van?' he asked.



"Never been in that close,' Van shrugged. 'Just another piss-willy little river. But I'll get you as close as you want to go." 'A mile. off the reef will do very nicely." 'You've got it,' Van promised. 'When?" 'I want you to keep below the horizon all of tomorrow, then at nightfall you can take us in at o2oo hours." For the Scouts, the witching hour was always two hours after midnight. It was then that the enemy would be at his lowest ebb, both physically and mentally.



At one o'clock in the morning Sean held his final briefing in the crew mess of Lancer. He checked each man separately. They were all dressed in navy-blue fisherman's jerseys and jeans, and black canvas rubber-soled combatboots. On their heads were knitted black woollen caps, and all their faces and hands were black, either naturally or with camo-cream.



The only uniform items they wore were their webbing, all of it supplied by the South African defence force from Cuban equipment captured in the south of Angola. Their weapons were Soviet AKM assault-rifles, Tokarev pistols and Bulgarian M75 anti-personnel grenades. Three men in Esau Gondele's section would carry RPG anti-rank rocket-launchers. Part of the agreement with the South Africans for their co-operation was that nothing would ever be traced back to them.



One at a time, they stepped up to the table and handed over all their personal items, signet rings and dog-tags and pay-books, wallets and wristwatches, and any other form of identification. Esau Gondele sealed them in separate envelopes and issued each of them with an identical black waterproof digital wristwatch to replace their own.



While this was happening the trawler captain called on the intercom from the bridge: 'We are seven nautical miles off the river-mouth. Bottom is shoaling nice and gently. I'll have you in position a few minutes before time." 'Good on you,' Sean told him, and then turned back to the ring of black faces. 'Very well, gentlemen, you know what we are after. just a few airy thoughts to occupy those busy little minds of yours - if you are going to cull anybody, just make sure that you don't take out the woman or the child. She's my sister.' He let that sink in for a moment. "Thought number two. The sketch-maps I have shown you are more fantasy than fact. Don't rely on them. Thought number three. Don't get left behind on the beach when we pull out. Chicamba is no place to spend a holiday. The food and, the accommodation are rotten.' He picked up his rifle from the bunk. 'So, my children, let's go and do it." Lancer groped towards the shore with radar and depthsounder. All her running lights were extinguished. Her engines were ticking over, so she barely maintained steerage. In the darkness ahead Sean could make out the intermittent luminous flare of the surf breaking on the outer reef. There were no lights ashore. The land itself had been absorbed by the night. The cloud overhead was unbroken. No glimmer of star or moon came through.



Van Der Berg straightened up from the radar-hood. 'One mile off,' he said quietly. 'Water is six fathoms and shoaling.' He glanced across at the dark figure of his coloured helmsman. 'Stop engines." The tremble of the engines through the deck beneath their feet ceased, and Lancer wallowed like a log.



"Thanks, Van,' Sean said. 'I'll bring you back a nice present.' He ran lightly down the companionway to the main deck.



They were waiting in the stern, each team standing by its own black rubber landing-boat. Sean smelt the musky odour in the air and grimaced. He didn't like it, but the use of 'boom' before a contact had become a tradition in the Scouts.



"It's an old African custom,' he consoled himself. 'The mad Mahdi's fuzzy-wuzzies smoked it before they revved old Kitchener at Khartoum." "Sergeant-Major, the smoking-light is out,' he grated, and he heard them shuffle in the darkness as they rubbed out their cannabis cigarettes on the deck. Sean realized that the smoke dulled the edge of their fear and bolstered that reckless bravado that was also part of the Scouts tradition, but he had never used it. He relished the sensation of fear; it throbbed in his blood and beat in his brain. He was never more alive than at a time like this, going into battle and mortal danger. He would not wish to shade that pure clean flame of fear.



One at a time the flexible rubber hulls, laden with men and equipment, slid down the stern chute of the trawler and splashed softly on to the water.



The boatme~ started the Toyota outboards and they burbled gently in the night. Even on a still and windless night like this, the sound would not carry a hundred yards.



They formed up into a long black snake, a boat's length between them. Sean was in the leading inflatable with three of his best men. The boatman shone a hooded pen light' over the stern to keep the boats that followed on station.



They moved off quietly towards the land.



Sean was standing in the stern. On a lanyard around his neck was a small luminous compass, but he relied mainly on the nightscope to bring them into the shore. It was a Zeiss image-enhancer. It looked like a large pair of plastic-coated binoculars.



Ahead of him the breaking surf flared green fire in the lens, and he made out clearly the dark spot in the line that marked the river-mouth. He touched the boatman's shoulder to redirect him. The next wave lifted and shoved them as it slid by under the hull, and they heard its hoarse susurration on either hand as they ran through the pass into the calmer waters of the lagoon.



Through the Zeiss lens he saw the shaggy tops of the palms silhouetted against the cloud-banks and the open throat of the river ahead. He flicked the pen light, and Esau Gondele's boat moved up alongside.



"There she is.' He leant over to whisper to the big Matabcle and pointed out the river-mouth.



"I see it.' Esau had his own nightscope held to his eyes.



"Tear their nuts outv The pod of three attack-boats moved off together, and Sean watched them disappear into the river and merge with the loom of the land.



He whispered to the boatman and they turned parallel with the beach. As they ran down the lagoon, Scan scanned the shore through the Zeiss lens.



Half a mile from the mouth he made out in the gloom of the palm grove the square outline of a hut and then beyond it a second. 'It fits with Bella's description,' he decided.



They ran towards the beach. Now he saw the gleam of metal above the nearest hut. It was the tall Christmastree antenna and dish of a satellite communications centre.



"That's it." Sand grated softly beneath the keel of the inflatable and they leapt over the side into blood-warm water that reached 52e to their knees. Sean led them ashore. The beach sand was so white that he could see the little ghost crabs scuttling away ahead of them. The men raced to the edge of the palm grove and dropped into cover below the high-water ridge.



Sean took a few moments to check his bearings. According to Isabella's description of her first visit, the communications centre was where they had received and searched her. She told him there were two or three female radio operators running the centre. In addition she had counted approximately twenty para guards who were billeted in the barracks beyond the wire.



The gate to the compound was always locked at sunset. She had warned him of that. There was always a sentry posted there. He patrolled the wire, and they changed the guard every four hours.



"Here he comes now,' Sean murmured as he saw the dark shape of the sentry moving along the barbed-wire fence. He lowered the nightscope, and whispered to the Scout who lay beside him: 'Twenty paces ahead, Porky. He's moving left to right." 'Got him.' Porky Soaves was a Portuguese Rhodesian whose speciality was the slingshot. He could hit a dove on the wing at fifty metres. At ten metres, he could drive a steel ball-bearing clean through the bone of a man's skull.



He slid forward like a night adder, and as the Cuban sentry came level he rose on one knee and drew like a longbow man. The double surgical-rubber strands of the slingshot snapped, and the sentry collapsed without a sound into the fluffy white sand.



"Gov said Sean softly, and the second Scout ran forward with the heavy wire-cutters. The strands of barbed wire made little musical pinging sounds as they parted. Sean ran to the opening.



As each of the Scouts slipped through the hole in the wire, he slapped their shoulders and pointed them to their targets. He sent two of them to the main gate to take the sentries there, two to shut down the communications centre and the rest of them to hose down the barracks at the rear of the compound and to cull the garrison guards.



If the arrangements were the same as last time, the first hut on the right of the radio room should be Isabella's. Nicky would be in the second one with his Cuban nursemaid. Isabella called her Adra. From Sean's estimate of the situation, the nursemaid was one of the uglies. She would have to go.



He would cull her at the first opportunity.



Sean ran towards the line of huts, but before he reached them a woman started to scream in the communications hut. The sharp hysterical bursts of sound raked Sean's nerve-endings. The screams were cut off by a short burst of automatic fire.



Here we go! Sean thought, and the night erupted with gunfire and flame and the mortal thrill of combat.



Isabella slept fitfully and woke a little before midnight to the sound of thunder and of jet engines passing at altitude overhead. She threw aside the mosquito-net and ran out into the night.



The wind generated by a mighty thunderstorm that was moving up- from the south flapped the skirts of her nightdress around her bare legs and rattled the palm fronds.



The sound of jet engines rose and fell as wind and cloud blanketed it. It seemed to her that there was more than one aircraft up there above the cloud. She hoped that one of them was the Lear with her father and Garry aboard.



"Have you picked up the signal?' she wondered, as she strained her eyes into the black heavens. 'Can you hear me, Daddy? Do you know I'm here?" She saw nothing, not even the shine of a single star, and the sound of engines overhead faded and left only the soughing of the wind and the rumble and crash as the thunderstorm fired its opening broadsides.



The rain began to fall again, and she ran back into the hut. She dried her hair and her bare feet and stood at the window looking down towards the beach.



"Please God. Let them know we are here. Help Sean to find us." At breakfast, Nicholas said to her: 'I haven't had a chance to try out my new soccer ball." 'But we've played with it every day, Nicky." 'Yes, but... I mean with good players.' And then, realizing what he had said: "You are a good player - for a girl. I think you would make an excellent goalkeeper -with some more practice.. But, Mamma, I would like some of my friends from school." 'I don't know.' Isabella looked at Adra. 'Are your friends allowed here?" Adra did not look round from the wood-stove. "Ask Jose,' she said. 'Perhaps it will be allowed." That afternoon Jose and Nicholas arrived at the compound with a jeep-load of small black boys. The soccer match on the beach was noisy and passionately contested. On three occasions Isabella and Jose had to untangle a knot of punching and kicking bodies. After each battle, play was resumed as though nothing had happened.



Isabella was selected as goalkeeper for the Sons of the Revolution. But after she had let through five goals Nicholas, the team captain, came to her tactfully. 'I think you are tired, Mamma, and would like to rest now." And she was sent to the sidelines.



The Sons of the Revolution beat the Angolan Tigers twenty-six goals to five, and Isabella felt very guilty about those five. After the final whistle Isabella produced a twokilo bag of toffees and chocolates from her gift-box, and her lack of athletic prowess was immediately forgiven by her captain and both teams.



At dinner Nicholas chatted easily, and Isabella tried to act as naturally, but her eyes kept straying to the window of the hut and the beach. If Sean were coming, he would come tonight. She noticed Adra watching her thoughtfully.



She made another effort to follow Nicky's conversation, but she was thinking about Adra now.



Could they take her with them? she pondered. Would she want to come? Adra was such a reticent and secretive person that she could never even guess at her true feelings, except her love for Nicky - that was all that was certain.



Could she trust her enough to warn her of the rescue? she wondered. Should she give Adra the choice of coming away or remaining? In fairness, could she take Nicky from her after all these years of devotion to him? Surely it would break her heart, and yet could she trust her enough to tell her?



Could she risk their freedom, hers and Nicky's, and could she risk the lives of her brother and all those other gallant young men who were attempting to rescue them? More than once during the meal she was on the point of speaking to Adra, but each time she shied away from it at the last moment.



When she tucked Nicky into bed he lifted his face to her and she kissed him quite naturally. He held her tightly for a moment.



"Do you have to go away again, Mamma?' he asked.



"Would you come with me, if you could?' she countered.



"And leave Padre and Adra?' He lapsed into silence. It was the first time he had ever spoken to her of Ramsey, and it troubled her deeply. Was it respect or fear she had detected in his voice? She could not be certain.



On an impulse she began: 'Nicky, tonight - if anything happens, don't be afraid." 'What will happen?' He sat up with interest.



"I don't know. Probably nothing.' He looked disappointed and dropped back on the pillow.



"Good night, Nicky,' she whispered.



Adra was waiting for her in the darkness between the huts. It was the opportunity Isabella had waited for.



"Adra,' she whispered. 'I have to talk to you. Tonight...' she broke off.



"Tonight?' Adra prompted her, and when still she hesitated Adra went on: "Yes, tonight he will come. He says to expect him. He could not come before, but tonight he will come to you." Isabella felt panic rise to wash reason away. 'Oh God -are you sure?' Then she caught herself. 'That is wonderful. I have waited so long." All thoughts of warning Adra of the rescue attempt were wiped from her mind. How could she face Ramsey - now that she realized what a cruet and evil monster he truly was? How could she let him touch her without trembling?



"I must go now,' Adra whispered, and slipped away into the darkness, leaving her alone with her terror. She had planned to wear jeans and a jersey beneath her nightdress ready to 1~ave when Sean- came, but she dared not do that now.



She lay so long alone in the darkness beneath the mosquito-net that at last she began to hope that Scan would come to her before Ramsey did, or at least that dawn would save her.



Then suddenly she knew that he was in the hut with her. She smelt him before she heard him. The faint but distinctive odour of his body that had always aroused her so readily. Her nostrils and every nerve in her body jumped tight. Her breathing seized up in her throat.



She heard the whisper of his feet across the floor of the hut, and then his touch upon the bed.



"Ramsey.' Her breath escaped on an explosive gust.



"Yes, it is me.' His voice struck her like a blow in the face.



She felt him lift the mosquito-net and she lay rigid. His finger-tips brushed her face, and she thought she might scream aloud. She did not know how to act, what to say to him. 'He will know.' She realized that she was panicking. She dare not move or speak.



"Bella?' he said, and she heard the first suspicion in his tone. In sudden inspiration she reached up and seized him.



"Don't talk,' she whispered fiercely. 'I cannot wait another moment - don't say anything. Take me now, Ramsey."



She knew she was not acting out of character. Often in that distant happy past she had been like this - urgent, wild with desire, brooking not an instant's delay.



She sat up and began to tear at his clothing. I have to keep him from talking, from asking any questions, she thought desperately. I have to quieten and reassure him that nothing has changed.



With terror in her heart and the smell of him filling her head she let his hands lift her nightdress and then the hard smooth naked length of him slide into the bed beside her.



"Bella,' he whispered harshly. 'I have wanted you too much for too long." And his mouth covered hers. It felt as though he were sucking out her very being from between her lips, the way he might suck the juice and flesh from a ripe orange.



With shame at the perversity and treachery of her own body she felt herself overwhelmed by raw sexual passion. She was making love to a sleek and beautiful animal, something inhuman and cruel and infinitely dangerous.



Fear mingled with lust to spur and goad her. She felt like that doomed creature in the bull-ring of Granada whose tragic struggle and lingering death had moved her so when long ago she and her love had been fresh and young.



At last when they were spent together, he lay on top of her as though he were dead. She could not move; her guilt and his weight threatened to suffocate her. She hated herself almost as much as she hated him.



"It was never like that before,' he whispered. 'You never did that to me before." She could not trust herself to reply. She could not know what might come out once she began to speak. She realized that she was on the verge of a terrible destructive madness - and yet when he lay beside her and he stroked her and gently touched the most intimate parts of her body her thighs fell apart and she felt her flesh melt and her bones soften.



He began to speak softly. He told her how he loved her.



He spoke abut the future, when the three of them would be safe and happy in some secure and secret place. His lies were beautiful; they conjured up wonderful pictures in her mind. Although she knew that they were false, she wanted desperately to believe them.



When at last he fell asleep with his face pressed between her naked breasts, she stroked the crisp springing curls of his head with a terrible regret and a longing for things which she knew did not exist. So deep was her distress that it had driven from her consciousness all other thoughts, until abruptly and shockingly the night was ripped through by the screams of a woman and the sound of gunfire.



She felt Ramsey come awake and at the same instant spring from the bed, naked and lithe as a jungle cat. She heard the metallic snicker of a firearm as he snatched the pistol from the holster that lay on the floor beside the bed. The night was lit by flame and explosion. She saw Ramsey silhouetted against the light from the window. He held the pistol at the level of his eyes, pointed at the roof, ready for instant use.



Then she heard Sean's beloved voice, shouting for her in the darkness beyond the window: 'Bella, where are you?" She saw Ramsey's dark shape dart to the window, and the pistol glinted in the light of an exploding grenade as he levelled it.



"Look out, Sean!' she screamed. 'Man with a gun!" Ramsey fired twice, changing position between each shot. There was no answering fire from beyond the window. She realized that Sean dare not fire for fear of hitting her or Nicky.



She rolled from the bed and dropped to the floor on hands and knees.



Frantically she crawled towards the door. She wanted to get to Nicky, she had to get to Nicky.



Halfway across the hut she felt Ramsey's muscular bare arm whipped around her neck from behind, and he forced her to her feet. With the last of her breath, she screamed: 'Sean! He has got me!" 'Bitch,' Ramsey hissed in her car. 'Treacherous bitch."



And then he raised his voice. 'I'll kill herv he shouted. 'I'll blow her head off." Then he dragged her to the door and forced her down the steps. 'Move, bitch,' he grated. 'Keep moving. I know who Sean is. He won't fire - not with you as a shield. Move!" The pressure on her throat was choking her. She could not resist it. He ran with her towards Nicky's hut. The communications hut was in flames. From its thatched roof flame and sparks towered into the night sky. It was as bright as a stage. The serpentine shadows of the palm trunk writhed upon the pale sandy earth.



They burst into Nicky's hut. Adra and the child were crouched in the centre of the floor. Adra was covering Nicky with her body.



"Padre!' Nicky shrieked.



"Come with Adra,' Ramsey snapped at him. 'Keep close to her. Follow me." In a tight group they left the hut and moved towards the car park. Ramsey held Isabella from behind; with his free hand he pressed the pistol to her head.



"I'll blow her head off,' he called into the dancing. shadows. 'Keep your distance." 'Please, Padre, do not hurt Manuna,' Nicky wailed.



"Keep quiet, boy!' Ramsey snarled at him; and then, raising his voice again: 'Call your dogs off, Sean. Unless you want your sister and her son to die." After a moment, Sean's voice bellowed out of the shadows: "Hold your fire, Scouts! Back off, Scouts!" Ramsey kept them moving towards one of the jeeps. Isabella was choking for breath, the muzzle of the pistol was pressed so hard into her ear that the tender skin tore and a drop of blood ran down her neck.



"Please, you're hurting me,' Isabella gasped.



"Don't hurt Mamma,' Nicholas cried, and twisted out of Adra's grip. He ran to Isabella's side, and for a moment Adra was isolated, offering a clear shot.



In the darkness beyond the firelight a yellow flower of gun-flame bloomed, and a single bullet whiplashed across twenty yards of open ground.



The side of Adra's head dissolved in a liquid red smear. She was snatched over backwards to hit the earth with her arms flung wide open.



"Adra!' Nicky screamed, but before he could run to her Ramsey grabbed him around the waist.



"No, leave Adra,' he snapped. 'Stay close to me now, Nicky." The three of them were in the centre of a brightly lit stage. There was no other living soul in view. The corpse of one of the Cuban woman signallers lay curled against the wall of the burning building, and two dead paratroopers lay at the gate to the compound.



Ramsey called out an order in Spanish to any of his paratroopers that might still be alive, but he knew it was a vain effort. He knew the quality of the attackers. He had recognized the name of her brother the instant Isabella called it out. Sean's shouted order addressed to the Scouts had confirmed it. He guessed that his men were all of them dead. They had probably died in that first storm of gunfire.



These were the notorious Ballantyne Scouts, he was certain of that, but how they had got here eluded him. He knew only that Isabella had somehow managed to call them in. They were out there in the shadows, and they would strike the same way they had killed Adra, swiftly and with deadly accuracy, if he gave them the faintest chance.



The only advantage he had on his side now was time. He knew that Raleigh Tabaka would have heard the gunfire and would be leading a relief column of his guerrillas down from the airfield. They would be here in minutes. He backed towards the nearest of the three parked jeeps in the motor pool.



Sean watched them over the sights of the AKM. He lay at the base of one of the palms, the outline of his head broken by a pile of dead fronds. At this range of forty yards the assault-rifle with the rate-of-fire selector on single shot was only accurate enough to put a bullet into a two-inch circle. He had aimed for the bridge of Adra's nose and hit her in the left eye. The bullet had sheared off the side of her skull.



That kind of accuracy was not sufficient to risk a shot at Ramsey Machado.



The man was good. He was using his two hostages for maximum cover, ducking and weaving like a boxer so that Scan could never hold a steady bead on his head.



To Scan, his sister's naked body was disconcerting and shocking in the yellow firelight. Her breasts were very pale and tcndcr-looking; the stark black triangle stood out clearly at the base of her belly. He knew that his Scouts were watching her.



Even in the stress of battle, the way that Ramsey Machado held her against his own naked body infuriated Sean and threatened to impair his judgement.



He was tempted to risk a shot. His finger on the trigger lacked only an ounce of pressure, but Ramsey ducked his head behind Isabella's shoulder as they reached the jeep.



Ramsey slid into the driver's seat and dragged Isabella and the child in with him. The engine started with a bellow, and sand spun from beneath the rear wheels as Ramsey accelerated towards the gate.



Sean fired a burst, low at the nearest back wheel, and saw a bullet strike sparks from the spinning steel hub. Then the jeep crashed into the barrier gate and ripped out one of the poles. The gate crumpled before its rush, and the vehicle bounced through the wreckage and roared down the track dragging a tangle of wire and fencc-poles, behind it like a sleigh.



Sean leapt to his feet and raced to the second jeep. Four of his Scouts were pelting for the same vehicle and they piled into the back of it as Sean started the engine. He spun it in a wide circle and then gunned it through the ruined gate. They jolted over the mangled frame and then roared in pursuit of Ramsey and his hostages.



If Isabella's skctch-map was accurate, this track would 53e take them down along the river towards the airstrip, and Esau Gondelc's road-block.



Esau would hose anything that came down the track, from either direction.



An RPG rocket would turn Isabella and her son to mincemeat.



Scan thrust the palm of his hand down on the horn-ring and blew a long wailing blast. He hoped that Esau Gondelc might understand the warning and hold his fire, but he knew it was a forlorn hope. Smoked up with boom, the Scouts would be hot and quick on the trigger.



He had to overtake them. He shoved the pedal flat and roared into the standing wall of white dust left by the vehicle ahead of him on the narrow track. The track turned abruptly right, and for a second he lost it and slewcd over the verge. The jeep canted over on its outside wheels and they crashed and tore through the light brush before he got her back on to the track.



The angle of the breeze altered as they turned, and the dust was blown aside. Only fifty yards ahead he saw the tail-lights of the escaping vehicle, and he hit it with the full beam of his headlights.



In the front seat Ramsey Machado was driving with one hand. His other arm was locked around Isabella's shoulders, holding her in an awkward cramped position. Her head was twisted around on the long column of her neck. Her hair fluttered and rippled in the wind, and her eyes were dark and wide with terror in the pale oval of her face. She was shouting something at him, but the words were whipped away by the wind.



Nicky was clutching the back of Isabella's seat. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and shorts. He was also looking back at the pursuing jeep, and even in these desperate moments Sean was struck by the resemblance of the child to the~ mother. His fury at the man who threatened them smoked in his brain, and armed him with reckless courage.



Then he realized that the other jeep was down on one side. The burst of fire he had given it had ripped the nearside rear tyre. Long tattered shreds of black rubber peeled from the spinning rim. The tangle of fencing wire and the crumpled pipe-frame of the gate dragged behind the damaged vehicle like a drogue, tearing up a spray of sand and dust from the track and slowing it down.



He was gaining on them rapidly. The track had turned away from the beach and was running alongside the steep bank of the river. The mangrove trees loomed in the headlights of the two racing vehicles, and between their trunks the dark water glinted sullenly.



Ramsey glanced back over his shoulder and realized that the other jeep was only three feet from his tail-gate. He ducked his head and released his grip on Bella. He snatched the pistol from his lap and twisted around to aim at Sean's face. The range was under twelve feet, but both jeeps were pounding and swerving over the rough track. The bullet struck the side-post of the windscreen and ricocheted away into the darkness.



One of the Scouts thrust his rifle forward to return fire, but Scan struck the barrel upwards.



"Hold your fire,' he shouted, and drove into the back of the other jeep with a ringing clash of metal.



The impact snapped their heads backwards, and Nicky was thrown over the rear seat with his legs kicking in the air as he struggled to regain his balance.



Jump,' Sean howled at Isabella, but before she could react Ramsey grabbed her again and pulled her close.



Once again Sean butted his jeep into the back of the other vehicle. It crushed in the tail-gate and slewed it half off the track.



Ramsey was struggling one-handed to hold it on the road. The back end was swinging wildly. Dust boiled out from the rear wheels in a cloud, half-blinding Sean. Isabella was screaming, and Nicky scrambled up and crouched on the rear seat. His face was white and terrified.



Another bend in the track flung the leading vehicle up on to the verge.



While Ramsey tried desperately to control it, Sean saw his chance and gunned his own jeep up alongside it. For a second they were racing side-by-side like a team in harness.



Ramsey Machado and Sean Courtney looked into'each other's eyes at a distance of six feet, and hatred flashed between them like a discharge of static electricity. It was a primeval emotion, a deep atavistic understanding as two dominant males met and recognized that one must kill the other.



Sean spun the wheel hard left and swerved into him, forcing his far wheels off the track. The hole of a palm tree wiped off the paintwork and smeared the metal down the length of the vehicle. Ramsey swerved back and hit Sean as hard.



Then Ramsey released his grip on Isabella and once again snatched the pistol from his naked lap and thrust it into Sean's face, reaching out between the speeding jeeps. Ramsey's face was a dark mask of fury and hatred.



Isabella threw herself sideways and grabbed the steering-wheel. As Ramsey fired she wrenched it over with all her strength. The bullet flew away into the night, and the jeep whipped into a murderous skid and plunged over the riverbank.



In the instant before it disappeared Sean saw both Isabella and Ramsey hurled head first against the windscreen, and from the back seat Nicky's small form was catapulted high into the darkness. Then he was past, braking hard, wrestling with the wheel as the jeep slewed into a broadside skid.



The moment he had her under control, Sean snapped the gear lever into reverse and roared backwards to the point where the other vehicle had disappeared.



Dust still hung in the air, and the earth at the crest of the bank was torn by the spinning tyres. Sean leapt from the driver's seat and ran to the top of the bank. The jeep was in the river below him. The headlights were still burning beneath the surface, like two drowned moons. She had capsized, and her rear wheels were spinning in a froth of white foam. Nicky's small crumpled body lay on the bank at the water's edge.



Sean launched himself down the bank. Sliding and slipping, he kept his footing like a cat and used his momentum to carry him out in a long clean racing dive. He hit the water flat like an Olympic racer.



He drove himself down deep. The headlights burnt through the murk, and his underwater vision was blurred and distorted. He reached the carcass of the submerged jeep and pulled himself down under it. The air in the rear fuel-tank was holding it just clear of the muddy bottom, and he wriggled into the opening.



Something pale loomed in front of him, and he reached out and touched a naked body. Quickly he ran his hands over it and touched large smooth breasts. He reached up and seized a handful of the long floating hair and dragged Isabella out from under the wreck.



He surfaced with her in his arms and found with relief that she was choking and gasping and struggling weakly. He dragged her to the bank. One of the Scouts had shown enough presence of mind to drive the jeep to the lip of the bank so that the beam of the headlights shone down and gave them light.



Isabella crawled naked and running with water to where Nicky lay and drew him into her lap. He began to struggle and kick.



"My father,' he wailed. 'Mi padrep Knee-deep in the mud, Sean peered down into the water. Water had flooded the engine of the jeep and stalled it, but the lights still burnt in the depths.



Swiftly he weighed the need for haste against his desire to find Ramsey Machado. He knew that reinforcements must even now be on the way from the guerrilla camp. They had only minutes in hand. He was about to turn away and go to help Isabella, to get her and the child up the bank, when he saw a flash of movement in the water. A shadow passed as though a shark had swum between him and the submerged headlights.



Bastard! he thought, and shouted to his men on the bank above him: "Bring me my rifle."



One of them came sliding down the bank. Before he could reach Sean and hand him the AKM, there was a swirl in the muddy water. It was far out in the river at the edge of the light, and Ramsey's head burst through.



"Get himp roared Sean. 'Nail the bastard!" Ramsey's hair was slicked down over his eyes, and water streamed down his face as he gasped wildly for air. One of the Scouts on the bank fired a short burst, and the bullets flickered a spray of water from the surface around Ramsey's head. Ramsey drew another breath, and ducked under. For a moment his bare feet showed above the surface, kicking in the air, and then he was gone.



"Bastard! Bastardv Sean swore, and snatched his own AKM from the hands of his Scout as the man reached him. He fired a long angry frustrated burst into the river, and the bullets chopped up a patch of dancing froth on the spot where Ramsey had disappeared.



Then he checked his fury and waited for Ramsey's head to show again, but the tide was ripping downstream carrying everything with it. Out there were dark and twisted mangroves behind which Ramsey could shelter, and beyond the beams of the headlights the waters were dark and obscure.



After another minute he knew he had lost him. He had to let him go. He crushed down his frustration and his hatred and turned back to Isabella.



She was wet and smeared with mud. The edge of the windscreen had opened a cut in her hairline, and a trickle of blood diluted by river-water was spreading down her face.



Sean shrugged out of his sodden jersey and helped her into it.



As she thrust her arms through the sleeves she gasped: 'What happened to Ramsey?



"The bastard gapped it.' Sean hauled her to her feet. 'Time is wasting.



We're out of here." Nicky broke from his mother's grip and darted to the edge of the water.



"My father - I will not. leave my father."



Scan -grabbed him by one arm. 'Come on, Nicky.' Nicholas whirled and sank his small white teeth into Sean's wrist.



"You little swine.' Sean clouted him open-handed across the side of his head, almost knocking him off his feet. 'No more of your little dago tricks, matey." He picked him up, kicking and fighting, and slung him over his shoulder.



"I will not go. I want to stay with mi padre." Sean grabbed Isabella's hand and, carrying Nicky easily, he pulled her up the bank. There were other figures around the jeep, and for a moment Sean did not recognize them. He dropped Isabella's hand and lifted the AKM by the pistol grip.



"Hold it, Sean,' Esau Gondele cautioned him as he ran forward.



"Where did you spring from?" 'You almost ran into our ambush,' Esau told him. 'You were just one second away from getting an RPG rocket up your backside. We are back there.' He pointed up the track.



"Where are your boats?" 'Two hundred yards up-river." 'Pull your men out - we'll hitch a ride back with you.' He broke off and cocked his head.



"Douse those fights,' Esau Gondele snapped at one of his men. He leant into the parked jeep and hit the switch. The headlights faded.



In the darkness they stood listening.



"Trucks coming fast from the direction of the airstrip.' They all heard them clearly in the stillness.



"More gooks,' Esau agreed.



"Take us to the boats,' Sean ordered. 'Tout de suite - and the tooter the sweeter." They ran in a group, keeping to the track. A hundred yards along, Esau Gondele whistled, the sharp double flute of a night-flying dikkop, one of the Scouts' recognitionsignals. The whistle was repeated from the darkness just ahead, and Sean stumbled over the dead palm trunks that they had dragged across the track as a road-block.



"Come on,' Esau Gondele called them off the track. 'The boats are this way." As he spoke they saw the moving headlights through the trees ahead. A convoy of vehicles was speeding down the track towards them from the direction of the airstrip.



Nicholas was still kicking and struggling in Sean's grip, and Isabella was trying desperately to reassure him.



"It will be all right, Nicky darling. These people are our friends. They are taking us home to a safe place." 'This is my home - I want my father. They killed Adra. I hate them! I hate you! I hate themv he screamed in Spanish.



Sean shook him violently. 'One more peep out of you, my old China, and I'll knock your cocky little head right off your shoulders." 'This way.'Esau Gondele led them at a run away from the road-block. Within fifty yards they reached the riverbank where the boats were moored.



Sean glanced back and saw the convoy of trucks come rumbling around a bend in the road. The beams of their headlights swept overhead, but they were hidden from them by the angle of the riverbank. In the lights Sean saw that the back of each truck was crowded with armed men.



Sean lifted Isabella into the nearest inflatable boat, and she tripped on the wet folds of the jersey that hung around her legs and sprawled in the bilges.



"Clumsy hint,' he grunted, and threw Nicky into the boat after her. It was a mistake.



Nicky rebounded like a rubber ball, and as Sean tried to grab him he ducked under his arm and shot up the bank.



"You little devil.' Sean whirled and went after him.



"My baby,' Isabella cried, and jumped out of the boat. She sloshed through the mud and raced up the bank in pursuit of the two of them.



"Come back, Nicky - oh, please, come back." He was running towards the approaching convoy. Like a hare he ducked and dodged through the brush ahead of Sean. He was twenty feet short of the track when Sean dived and caught him by the ankle. Seconds later Isabella tripped over them and sprawled full-length on the soft sandy earth.



The headlights of the convoy swept over them, but the three of them were lying behind a clump of low bush, concealed from the men in the cab of the leading truck. Nicky screamed again and tried to crawl away, but Sean pinned him and covered his mouth with the palm of one hand.



The trucks bore down upon them and then braked as they saw the palm trunks that blocked the road. The leading truck in the convoy drew up only twenty feet from where they lay in darkness.



Still smothering Nicky under him, Sean reached out and pushed Isabella's face down to the earth. A white face shines like a mirror.



From the cab of the truck a man jumped down and ran forward to inspect the road-block, then he turned and shouted an order. A dozen guerrillas in combat camouflage swarmed from the back of the truck and seized the tree trunks.



As they lifted and dragged them clear, the headlights lit the face of the officer who commanded them. Isabella lifted her head and saw his features clearly. She recognized him immediately. It was not a face ever to forget.



The last time she had seen this man he had been a passenger in the van driven by her half-brother, Ben Afrika. The two of them had been on their way to a rendezvous with Michael Courtney. He was probably the finest-looking black man she had ever seen, tall, regal and fierce as a hawk.



He turned his head and, for a moment, seemed to stare directly at her. Then he turned again to watch his men roll the logs aside. The moment the road was clear he strode to the cab of the truck and vaulted into it. He slammed the door, and the truck roared forward.



The troop convoy followed it. As the last pair of head lights swept past them, Sean tucked Nicky under his arm, pulled Isabella to her feet and hurried her back towards the riverbank.



Sean kept a firm grip on the scruff of Nicholas's neck in the leading boat ~ as the flotilla ran back down-river. The glow from the burning huts lit the underbelly of the clouds, and even above the sound of the outboard motors they heard the shouts and the sound of automatic gunfire.



"What are they shooting at?' Isabella asked, as she huddled against Sean for warmth.



"Probably at shadows - or at each other,' he chuckled softly. 'Nothing quite like a nervous gook with a rifle in his hand for burning up ammo." The outgoing tide sped them through the mouth into the lagoon. Through his nightscope Esau Gondele picked up the wake of the other flotilla of inflatables, heading back from the beach. They came together as they reached the pass in the reef and in line ahead headed out into the open sea.



Lancer in her bright yellow paint showed up through the lens of the nightscope at half a mile distance.



As soon as they had recovered the last inflatable through the stern chute of the trawler, she opened up her engines and ran for the open Atlantic.



Sean turned to Esau Gondele. 'What was the butcher bill, Sergeant-Major Gondele?" 'We lost one man, Major Courtney,' he replied as formally. "Jeremiah Masoga. We brought him back with us.' The Scouts always retrieved their dead.



Sean felt that familiar sickening pang; another good man gone. Jeremiah was only nineteen years old. Sean had already decided to give him his second stripe. He wished now that he had done it before this. You can never make amends to the dead.



"Three wounded; nothing bad enough to make them miss the party tonight." "Put Jeremiah in the refrigerated hold,' Sean ordered.



"We'll ship him home as soon as we reach Cape Town. He'll get a regimental burial with full honours." When they were still two hundred nautical miles from Table Bay, Centaine Courtney sent out a Courtney helicopter to pick up Sean and Isabella and Nicky. The old lady could not wait any longer to meet her greatgrandson.



Ramsey clung to the roots of one of the mangrove trees to steady himself against the drag of the outgoing tide as it funnelled through the river-mouth. The razor-edged shells of the fresh-water mussels that covered the stem cut into his hand, but he hardly felt the pain. He was staring out across the river.



The reflection from the flames of the burning compound flecked the surface of the water with sovereigns of gold.



The boats passed within fifty feet of where he crouched chin-deep in the mud and slime of the mangroves. Their motors buzzed softly in the stillness of the night. Their outlines were indistinct, three dark hippo shapes that passed swiftly on the tide heading for the mouth and the open sea - but he imagined that one of the figures in the leading boat was smaller than the others and wore a pale T-shirt.



It was only then, in the moment of losing him, that he realized that he was, after all, just another father. For the first time in his life he acknowledged his love and dependence upon that love. He loved his son and he was losing him. He groaned in anguish.



Then rage boiled up in him and burnt away all other feeling. It was a consuming anger against all those who had inflicted this loss upon him. He stared into the empty darkness that had swallowed his son, and the fire of vengeance burnt through every fibre of his being. He wanted to shout this fury after them. He wanted to rail against the 54e woman, he wknted to curse and scream out his frustration, but he caught himself. That was not his way. He must be cold and sharp as steel now. He must think clearly and with icy purpose.



The first thought that came into his mind was that he had lost his hold on Red Rose. She was no longer of any value to him or the cause. Now she was the sacrifice. He knew how to destroy her and all those around her. The hilt of the weapon was in his head; it only remained to unsheathe it.



He pushed off from the mangrove and let the tide sweep him into the curve of the river, swimming across it with an easy breast-stroke. The bottom shelved gently under him, and he touched sand and waded ashore.



Raleigh Tabaka was waiting for him beside the burnt-out ruins of the communications centre. Ramsey dressed hastily in borrowed trousers and jacket; his hair was still damp and matted with river-mud.



Smoke from the smouldering buildings hazed the first grey light of dawn.



Raleigh Tabaka's men were recovering the corpses and laying them out in a long row under the palms. In rigor mortis they were locked into the attitudes in which they had met their deaths. It was a grotesque charade show.



Jose, the paratrooper, had one arm thrown over his face as though protecting his eyes. His chest was mangled by grenade shrapnel. Adra's arms were extended as though she hung on a crucifix, and half her head was missing.



Ramsey glanced at her without particular interest, as he might at a worn-out article of clothing which no longer had any utility for him.



"How many?' he asked Raleigh Tabaka.



"Twenty-six,' he replied. 'All of them. There were no survivors. Whoever it was, they did a thorough job. Who were they? Do you have any idea?" "Yes,' Ramsey nodded, 'I have a very good idea.' And before Raleigh could speak again Ramsey told him: 'I am taking over the Cyndex project personally."



"Comrade-General' - Raleigh frowned with affront -'that has been my operation from the very beginning. I have controlled the two brothers." "Yes,' Ramsey agreed implacably. 'You have done very well. You will receive all the recognition that you deserve. But I am taking over the direction of the project. I will leave for the south as soon as an aircraft is available. You will accompany me."



"It doesn't end here, Bella,' Shasa said gravely. 'We cannot just pretend that nothing else happened. I did not want to complicate the rescue attempt by considering the full murky depths of this whole dreadful business.



However, now Nicholas is safe here at Weltevreden we are forced to do so.



Many people, including the members of your family, risked their lives for you and Nicholas. One gallant young man, a stranger, a trooper of Sean's regiment, died to save you. Now you owe us the truth." They were assembled in the gun-room once again, and Isabella was on trial before the family.



Her grandmother sat in the chair to one side of the fireplace. She sat very straight. Her hand on the ivory head of her cane was blue-veined beneath the thin parchment of skin. Her hair, once a thick unmanageable bush, was now the purest silver cap washed with a hint of blue. Her expression was severe.



"We want to hear it all, Isabella. You will not leave this room until you have told every detail." 'Nana, I am so ashamed. I had no choice." "I did not ask for excuses and self-abasement, missy. I want the truth." "You must understand, Bella. We know that you have done terrible damage to the national interest, to the family, to yourself Now it is our duty to contain and control that damage.' Shasa stood in front of the fireplace with his hands clasped under the tails of his blazer. His tone had moderated. 'We want to help you, but we must know the truth before we can do so." Isabella looked up at him with a hunted expression. 'Can I talk to you and Nana alone?' She glanced at her brothers. Garry lolled in the armchair under the window with thumbs hooked in his gaudy braces. He rolled an unlit cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. Sean sat on the windowsill, his legs thrust straight out in front of him. His bare arms, tanned and sleek with muscle, were crossed over his chest.



"No,' said Centaine firmly. 'The boys have risked their lives for you and Nicky. If you have stored up more trouble for yourself and the family, they are the ones who will be called upon to bail you out. No, you don't get out of it that easily. They deserve to hear everything you have to tell us.



Don't leave anything out - do you hear me?" Slowly Isabella lowered her face into her hands. 'They gave me the code-name Red Rose." 'Speak up, girl. Don't mumble.' Centaine banged her cane on the floor between her feet, and Isabella started and looked up.



"I did everything they told me to,' she said, looking the old lady in the face. 'When Nicky was still an infant, just over a month old, they made a film and showed it to me. They-almost drowned my baby. They held him by the feet and ducked him... 'She broke off, and then drew a deep breath to steady herself. 'They warned me that in the next film they would cut off parts of his body and then send them to me his fingers, his toes, his arms and legs and then. She choked on the word. 'And then his head." They were all silent and appalled until Centaine spoke.



"Go on." 'They told me I must work for Daddy. I must inveigle myself into his Armscor work.' Shasa winced, and Isabella twisted her fingers together.



"I'm sorry, Daddy. They told me that I must enter politics, stand for Parliament, use the family connection."



"I should have suspected your sudden political aspirations," Centaine said bitterly.



"I'm sorry, Nana." 'Don't keep saying you're sorry,' Centaine snapped. "It does not contribute anything worthwhile and it is damnably irritating. just get on with it, child." 'For a while they asked nothing of me - for almost two years. Then the orders started to come. The first was the Siemens radar chain." Shasa grunted and was about to speak, then he checked himself and reached for the handkerchief in the breast pocket of his blazer.



"Then they wanted more and more." 'The Skylight project?' Shasa asked, and when she nodded he glanced at Centaine.



"You were right, Mater.' He looked back at his daughter. 'You will have to write it all down. Everything you ever gave them. I want a list - dates, documents, meetings, everything. We must know everything that is compromised." 'Daddy. Isabella began, and then for a moment she could not go on.



"Spit it out, missy,' Centaine ordered.



"Cyndex 25,' Isabella said.



"Oh God - nop Shasa breathed.



"That was why they gave me access to Nicky this last time - the Cyndex specifications and Ben." 'Ben?' Garry straightened up in his chair. 'Who is Ben?" 'Ben Gama,' Centaine said harshly. 'Tara's little black bastard, the son of Moses Gama. The man that killed my Blaine, the man that disgraced this family.' She looked at Isabella for confirmation.



"Yes, Nana. My half-brother, Ben.' She looked'at her brothers. 'Your half-brother, too, only he doesn't call himself Ben Gama now, he calls himself Benjamin Afrika." 'Why do I know that name?' Garry asked.



"Because he works for you,' Isabella said. 'They made me arrange a job for him. I recruited him for Capricorn when I was in London. He works for Capricorn Chemicals as a laboratory technician, in the poisons division." 'In the Cyndex plant?' Shasa asked with disbelief. 'You didn't get him in theref 'Yes, Pater, I did.' She was about to apologize again but then looked at her grandmother's face.



Garry leapt out of his chair and strode to the desk. He seized the telephone and spoke to the operator on the Weltevieden exchange.



"Get me a call to Capricorn Chemicals - you've got the number, haven't you?



I want to speak to the managing director immediately - it's urgent, very urgent. Call me back here the moment you have him on the line." He replaced the telephone. 'We'll have to have him, Ben, we'll have to have him taken in for questioning right away. If they placed him in the plant, it was for some good or, rather, for some nefarious reason." 'He is one of them,' Centaine burst out. None of them had ever heard such bitterness in her tone or seen such hatred on her face. They all stared at her in horror. 'He is one of the revolutionaries, the destroyers. With that black Satan as his father and Tara to poison his mind over all the years, he must be one of them. God grant that we can prevent whatever terrible thing they are planning." They were all of them subdued by the horror of their imaginings.



The~ telephone split the silence, and Garry snatched up the receiver. 'I have the managing director of Capricorn on the fine." 'Good. Put him on. Hallo, Paul. Thank God, I got you. Hold on one second." He pressed the 'conference' key on the telephone so that they could all hear the conversation.



"Listen, Paul. You have an employee in the poisons division. In the new pesticide plant. Benjamin Afrika." 'Yes, Mr. Courtney. I don't know him personally, but the name is vaguely familiar. Hold on, let me get the computer print on him. Yes, here we go.



Benjamin Afrika. He joined us in April."



"OK, Paul. I want him arrested and held by the company security guards. He is to be held completely incommunicado, do you understand that? No phone calls. No lawyers. No press. Nothing." 'Can we do that, Mr. Courtney?" 'I can do anything I want to, Paul. Bear that in mind. Give the order for his arrest now. I'll hold on while you do it." It will take two seconds,' the managing director agreed. They heard his voice in the background as he spoke to security over the internal circuit.



"All right, Mr. Courtney. They are on their way to get Afrika." 'Now, listen, Paul. What is the position with the Cyndex manufacturing programme? Have you started to ship to the Army yet?" 'Not yet, Mr. Courtney. The first shipment is due to go out next Tuesday.



The ordnance are sending their own trucks." 'OK, Paul. What stocks are you holding at the moment?" 'Let me check the computer.' Paul's voice was starting to betray his agitation. 'At the moment in the five-kilo artillery canisters we have e35 each of Formula A and B, in the fifty-kilo aerial cylinders we have twenty-six of each of both formulas. They will go to the Air Force at the end of next week-" Garry cut him off. 'Paul, I want a physical count of every canister and cylinder. I want some of your senior men in the storage area right away to check the serial numbers of each piece against the plant manifest - and I want it done within the next hour." 'Is something wrong, Mr. Courtney?" 'I'll tell you that when you have the results of your stock-take for me.



I'll be waiting at this number. Come back to me as soon as you can - or come back a damned sight sooner than that." As he hung up Sean demanded: "How soon can you get us to Capricorn?"



"The Lear is out of action. DCA want a full overhaul of the airframe and a new airworthiness certificate after that missile strike." 'How soon, Garry?' Sean insisted, and Garry thought for a second.



"The Queen Air is so slow, but it will be quicker than waiting for the scheduled flight to Johannesburg. At least we will be able to fly directly to the airstrip at the Capricorn plant. If we leave in the next hour, we could be there early this afternoon." 'Shouldn't we notify the police?' Shasa asked, and Centaine banged her stick imperiously.



"No police. Not yet - not ever, if we can help it. Grab Tara's black bastard and beat the truth out of him if we have to, but we must try to keep this in the family.' She broke off as the telephone rang.



Garry picked it up and listened for a few seconds. Then he said: 'I see.



Thank you, Paul. I'm flying up right away. I should be at the Capricorn strip by one this afternoon.' He hung up and looked around their anxious faces. 'The little brown bird has flown. Benjamin Afrika hasn't showed up at the plant for the last four days. Nobody has heard from him. Nobody knows where he is." 'What about the stocks of Cyndex?' Shasa demanded.



"They are checking them. They'll have the results when we land at Capricorn,' Garry told him. 'Pater and Nana must stay here at Weltevreden to liaise at this end. If you need to get a message to us while we are in the air, you can telephone Information at Jan Smuts Airport control and get them to relay.' He looked across at his brother.



"Sean will come with me. I might need some muscle." Sean sauntered across to his father and held out his hand. 'Keys of the gun-safe, please, Pater." Shasa handed them over, and Sean turned the lock on the heavy steel door and swung it open. He stepped into the safe and studied the rack of revolvers and pistols for a moment before he selected a magnum Smith & Wesson revolver. He took down a packet of ammunition from the shelf above it and thrust the revolver into the belt of his jeans.



"I'd better take one as well.' Garry went to the safe.



"Garry,' Isabella called after him, 'I'm coming with you and Sean." "Forget it, Mavourneen.' Garry didn't even look round at her as he selected a Heckler & Koch 9-millimetre parabellum from the rack. 'There is nothing further that you can contribute." 'Yes, there is. You don't know what Ben looks like. I can recognize him and there is something else I haven't told you yet." 'What is it?" 'I'll tell you when we arc in the air."



Garry levelled the twin-cngine Beechcraft Queen Air on her northerly heading and turned in his seat to beckon to Isabella where she sat in the main passenger-cabin.



She unfastened her seat-belt and went up to the cockpit, and Icant over the back of Garry's scat.



"OK, Bella. Let's hear it. What else can you tell us?" She looked across at Sean in the co-pilot's so-at.



"Do you remember the night at the Chicamba river when Nicky tried to escape and you and I ran back to catch him?" Sean nodded and she went on: 'You remember the guerrilla officer in the first truck, the one who supervised the clearing of the road-block? Well, I got a really good look at him and I knew I had seen him before. I was absolutely certain of it, but it didn't make any sense, not until now." 'When and where had you seen him?" 'He was with Ben - and they were going into Michael's farm at Firgrove." 'Michael?' Garry cut in. 'Our Michael?" 'Yes,' she confirmed. 'Michael Courtney." 'You think Michael is mixed up in this?"



"Well, don't you think so? Otherwise what would he be doing with that ANC terrorist commander - and Ben?" They were all silent thinking about it for a while, then Isabella went on: 'Garry, you obviously suspect that Ben has stolen a cylinder or two of Cyndex. If he's mixed up with terrorists, how do you think they would use it? Spray it from an aircraft perhaps?" 'Yes, that is the most likely way." 'Michael has a plane at Firgrove." 'Oh shit,' Garry whispered. 'Please don't let it be true. Not Mickey please, not Mickey." 'Michael has been publishing that commie rag of his for years,' Sean pointed out grimly. 'And he's got very chummy with a lot of the uglies in the process." Nobody answered him. Garry said: 'Bella, get us each a Coke, please." She went back to the refrigerator in the bar and brought two cans. They drank, and Sean lowered the can and belched softly. 'The Rand Easter Show opened this morning,' he said, and Garry looked at him.



"What the hell has that got to do with it?" 'Nothing.' Sean grinned at him wickedly. 'The Rand Easter Show - the biggest, glitziest show in the country. Half a million people all in one place. All of industry showing its products, the farmers, the businessmen - every goddam tinker, tailor and Indian chief will be there. The grand opening this evening at eight o'clock, the fireworks display, and the military tattoo and the stock-car racing and the show jumping. The prime minister making a speech, and all the big shots in their dark suits and carnation button-holes. Hell, of course, it means nothing." 'Don't fool around, Sean,' Garry grated at him.



"You're absolutely right, Garry.' Sean kept on grinning. 'I mean, at heart the ANC are really decent civilized fellows. Just because they let off a few car bombs, and put burning motor-car tyres around people's necks, doesn't mean they don't have beautiful souls. Hell, don't let's judge them too harshly. A Russian limpet mine in a crowded supermarket is one thing, but they'd never dream of spraying the Rand Easter Show with Cyndex would they?" 'No.' Garry shook his head. 'I mean, Ben and Mickey are our own brothers.



They wouldn't - no...' His voice trailed off, and then he said angrily: "Damn it, if only we had the Lear, we'd be there by now." The radio squawked, and Garry adjusted his headphones.



"Charlie Sierra X-Ray, this is Jan Smuts Information. I have a relay for you from Capricorn. Are you ready to copy?" 'Go ahead, Information." "Message reads: All stocks and serial numbers tally. Message ends." "Thank God,' Garry breathed.



"Tell them to check what's inside the cylinders,' Sean suggested mildly, and Garry's expression altered..



"Information, please relay to Capricorn. Message reads: Take samples from all containers. Message ends." Garry removed his headphones. 'I want so badly for it not to be true,' he said. 'But you're right, Sean. They aren't idiots. It would be simple enough to stamp a couple of empty cylinders with false numbers and substitute them in the stock-room." "How much longer?" Garry checked his navigation. 'Another hour - thank the Lord for this tail-wind." Sean looked round at his sister. 'Do me a big favour, sweetheart. Next time you fancy a little bit of nooky, pick somebody a mite tamer - like Jack the Ripper." The Capricorn airstrip was marked by the gigantic figure of the goat laid out artistically in white quartz. It stood out clearly on the brown veld from a distance of five miles. Garry touched down smoothly and taxied to the hangar building where four vehicles and a group of Capricorn employees headed by Paul, the managing director, were waiting to receive them.



As Garry and Sean jumped down from the Queen Air 55e and turned to give Isabella a hand, Paul rushed forward.



"Mr. Courtney, you were right. Two of the small canisters contain only carbon dioxide gas. Somebody has switched them. There are ten kilos of Cyndex out there somewhere!" They stared at him in total horror. Ten kilos could wipe out an army.



"It's time to call in the police. They've got to pick up Ben Afrika. Do we have his address?' Sean asked.



"I have already sent somebody to his home,' Paul cut in. 'He isn't there.



His landlady says she hasn't seen him for the last few days. He hasn't eaten or slept there." 'Firgrove,' Isabella said softly.



"Right,' Garry snapped. 'Sean, you'd better get out there right away. Take Bella with you to show you the way and to identify Ben if you run into him.



I'll run things from this end. I'll be in the boardroom. Call me as soon as you get to Firgrove. I'll get police back-up for you and raise hell all round. We've got to get hold of those missing canisters." Sean turned to Paul. 'I need a car - a fast one." 'Take mine.' He pointed to a new BMW parked next to the hangar. 'The tank is full. Here are the keys." 'Come on, Bella. Let's go.' They ran to the BMW.



"Don't get stopped by the traffic cops, Fangio,' Bella warned him, as he pushed the BMW hard along the highway. 'We should have sent the cops out to Firgrove before we left Cape Town. God, it's three o'clock already." "We couldn't do anything until we were sure that someone had ripped off a couple of Cyndex tanks,' Sean pointed out.



He leant Across and switched on the car radio. Bella glanced at him enquiringly.



"Three o'clock news,' he explained and turned to Radio Highveld. It was the third item on the newscast.



"Since this morning record crowds have been passing through the gates of the Rand Easter Show. Today is the opening day. A spokesman for the show committee stated that by noon today more than two hundred thousand visitors had already entered the grounds." Sean switched off the set and then slammed his clenched fist against the dashboard of the BMW.



"Michaelp he shouted. 'It's always the bleeding hearts that are capable of the wildest excesses. How many innocents have been tortured and murdered in the name of God, peace and the fellowship of men?' He hit the dashboard again, and Bella reached across to touch his arm.



"Slow down, Sean. You take the next exit right.' Bella hung on to the door-handle as he swung the BMW into the bend.



"How much further?" 'Only a couple of miles." Sean pulled back the tail of his coat and drew the Smith & Wesson from his belt. With his thumb he spun the chambers.



"What are you going to do with that?' Bella asked nervously. 'Ben and Mickey-" 'Ben and Mickey have got nice friends,' he said, and slipped the revolver into his belt.



"There it is.' Bella leant forward in the seat and pointed ahead. "That's the gate to Mickey's place." Sean slowed the BMW and turned off on to the dirt track. He drove sedately through the blue-gum plantation until they glimpsed the buildings ahead.



Then he stopped and reversed the BMW across the track.



"Why are you doing that?' Bella asked.



"I'm going in on foot,' Sean told her. 'No point in announcing my arrival." 'But why are you parking across the road?" 'To stop anybody trying to leave in a hurry.' He pulled the keys from the ignition and jumped out. 'You wait here. No, not in the car. Hide in the trees over there, and don't even stick your head up until I call you out, do you hear?" 'Yes, Sean." 'And don't slam the door,' he told her as she slipped out of the passenger-seat. 'Now, give it to me. Where does Mickey keep his plane?" 'Behind the house at the end of the orchard." She pointed. 'You can't see it from here but you won't miss it. It's a big corrupted-tin shed, all rusty and ramshackle." 'Sounds like our Mickey,' Sean muttered. 'Now, remember what I told you.



Stay out of the way.' He began to run.



He stayed off the track and kept the trees of the orchard and the chicken-shed between him and the buildings. It was only a few hundred yards to the veranda of the main house. There were chickens clucking and scratching around his feet as he crouched behind the wall and quickly surveyed the building. The front door and all the windows were wide open, but there was no sign of the occupants.



Sean vaulted easily over the wall and slipped through the front door. The sitting-room and kitchen were empty, although dirty dishes and glasses were piled in the sink. There were three bedrooms, and all of them had been recently occupied. The beds were unmade, and there was discarded clothing on the floor and men's toilet items in the bathrooms and on the dressing-tables.



Sean picked up a shirt and turned the collar. A name-tag embroidered in red thread was stitched into the inside of it: 'B. Afrika." He dropped the shirt and ran back silently to the kitchen door. It stood open on to the orchard of scraggly insectravaged fruit trees. Beyond them rose the corrugated-iron roof of a large shed, and from a stubby roof-mast a sadlooking wind-sock drooped like a used condom.



Sean darted into the orchard and dodged between the fruit trees until he reached the wall of the shed. He flattened himself against it and laid his ear to the thin corrugated galvanized sheet. Through it he heard the murmur of men's voices, too indistinct to understand the words. He checked the revolver in his belt, making certain the butt was at hand for a quick draw, and he eased himself along the back wall of the shed towards the small green wooden door.



Before he reached it, the door swung open and two men stepped out into the sunlight.



Ben Afrika was good with his hands and prided himself on the quality of his workmanship. He knelt on the pilot's seat of the Cessna Centurion aircraft and tightened the final bolts that held the twin cylinders to the deck in front of the right-hand passenger-seat.



He had drilled the bolt-holes with care so as not to damage any of the control cables which ran under the floorboards. Of course, he could have let the cylinders lie loose on the cabin floor, but that would have offended his engineering sense. There was always a danger of air turbulence in flight that might damage the valve or the tubing. He had positioned the steel bottles so that, while in flight, either the pilot or his passenger could reach the valve-handle readily.



The bottle that contained element A was painted in a black-and-white chequered pattern with three red rings around the middle. Element B was in a crimson bottle with a single black ring. Each bottle was stamped with its unique serial number.



It had taken all Ben's skill to forge two ordinary medical oxygen-bottles to exactly the same exterior appearance. He had engraved the serial numbers by hand. The bottles were small enough to be smuggled in and out of the Capricorn plant in pockets specially sewn into his overcoat. It had called for ingenuity and immaculate timing to get them through the security check at the main gate of the plant.



The bottles were joined by a stainless-steel T-piece that screwed into the special left-hand thread in the necks. Ben had turned the fittings on' the small secondhand lathe in the rear of the hangar. To operate them, first the taps on each bottle were screwed open, and after that a half-turn on the swinging valve-handle of the T-piece allowed the twin elements to mingle and become active. From there the 5eo nerve gas flowed under pressure into the flexible armoured hose. The hose led back between the front seats into the rear luggage-compartment.



Ben had drilled a three-centimetre hole clean through both the floorboards of the compartment and the outer metal skin of the Centurion. The end of the gas-hose passed out of this hole and protruded ten centimetres below the fuselage. He had fixed the hose in place, and sealed the narrow gap where it passed through the fuselage with Pratleys putty that dried as hard as iron.



The gas would spray from below the aircraft well behind the line of the front seats, and would be carried back in the slipstream without any danger of reaching the occupants of the Centurion. However, as an added protection they would wear safety-suits and breathe bottled oxygen during the release of the gas.



The suits hung on the hangar wall, ready to be donned in minutes. They were commercially marketed full-length protection-suits approved by the Fire Department for use by proto rescue teams in the gold mines.



For a second time Ben put a spanner on each of the hose connections and the joints of the T-piece to satisfy himself that there were no leaks. At last he grunted with satisfaction and backed out of the open cabin-door. He wiped his hands on a piece of cotton waste and went across to the workbench against the nearest wall.



The other two men were leaning over the bench studying the map. Ben came up behind Michael Courtney and draped his arm affectionately over his brother's shoulders.



"All set, Mickey,' he said in his incongruous south London accent.



Then he gave his full attention to Ramsey Machado. Ben hero-worshipped this man. When he was alone with Michael he often discussed him with the awe of an acolyte discussing the omnipotence of the Pope. Michael, on the other hand, realized the hideous nature of their mission, and it had taken many months of soul-searching for him to convince himself that this was something that had to be done if the struggle was to succeed.



Ramsey seemed to sense his lingering reluctance and turned to him now.



"Michael, I want you to ring Met and get a final weather forecast for this evening." Michael picked up the telephone from the bench in front of him and dialled the number of the weather information services at Jan Smuts Airport and listened to the prerecorded announcement.



"Wind is Still 29o degrees at five knots,' he repeated. 'No change since this morning. Weather is settled. Barometric pressure steady." 'Very well.' Ramsey picked up his red marker-pencil and circled the position of the showgrounds on the large-scale aeronautical map. Then he marked in the wind direction.



"OK. This will be your line of approach, about a mile up-wind of the target. Try to maintain a thousand feet above ground-level. Open the gas-valve as you pass the water-towers. They are very prominently lit with navigational warning lights." 'Yes,' Michael said. 'I flew over the area yesterday. The stadium will be floodlit, and there will be a laser show - I can't possibly miss it." 'Well done, Comrade.' Ramsey gave him one of his rare irresistible smiles.



"Your preparations have been excellent." Michael looked down, and Ben interjected: 'I heard on the one o'clock news that by noon more than two hundred thousand visitors had already passed through the show ground turnstiles. It will be more like half a million by the time Vorster starts his official opening speech. What a blow we'll strike for freedom today." 'Vorster's speech is scheduled to start at seven p. m.' Ramsey picked up one of the advertizing brochures issued by the show committee. He studied the opening programme. 'But it might be a few minutes late. We must allow for that. He will probably talk for between forty minutes and an hour. The military tattoo begins at eight p. m. When will you take off?" 'If we take off from here at hours,' Michael worked it out, 'it's4bout forty-eight minutes' flying. I timed it yesterday. That will get me over the target at thirty-three minutes past seven." "That would be about right,' Ramsey agreed. 'Vorster should still be speaking. You will make two passes across the range. A thousand feet above ground-level, one mile up-wind. After the second pass you turn west and head directly for the Botswana border. What is your estimated flying time to the rendezvous with Raleigh Tabaka?" 'Three hours fifteen minutes,' Michael replied. 'That gets me there approximately eleven o'clock tonight. By that time any residual gas will have degraded." "Raleigh Tabaka will light the airstrip with flares. As soon as you land remove all the gas equipment and set fire to the plane. From there it's up to Raleigh to get you out to Zambia and Tercio base." Ramsey studied their faces. 'That's it, then. I know that we've gone over it a dozen times, but are there any questions?" The brothers shook their heads, and Ramsey smiled wryly. Despite the difference in the colour of their skins and the texture of their hair, there was a strong resemblance.



The revolution could never go forward without this kind of obedience and unquestioning faith, Ramsey thought, and he felt an unaccustomed envy of such uncomplicated trust. Let them believe that this single act would change the world and herald the perfect dawn of universal socialism and brotherly love. Ramsey knew that nothing was so simple.



He envied them their faith, but he wondered if they truly had the stomach to live through the stark reality of the slaughter of half a million lambs, and the Red Terror which must follow the successful onslaught of the revol ution. Sublime belief in the ultimate rightness of their action might permit them to turn the valve on a pair of innocent-looking steel bottles, but could they endure the reality of half a million corpses twisted and contorted in piles of hideous death? he wondered.



Only the steel men survived. These two were not of that temper. The Red Terror would claim them as it did all weaklings. After tonight their usefulness would be reduced. They would be expendable.



He touched Michael's shoulder gently. He knew that Michael liked to be touched by another man. He let the touch become a caress.



"You have done wonderfully well. Now you must eat and rest. I will leave you before you take off this evening. I salute you both." They walked in a group to the door in the rear of the shed, but before they reached it Michael stopped.



"I want to look at Ben's installation of the bottles, and go over my own checks,' he said diffidently. 'I want to be absolutely certain." 'You are right to want everything perfect, Comrade,' Ramsey agreed. 'We'll have something for you to eat when you come up to the house." They watched him climb into the cockpit of the Centurion, and begin checking the instruments before they walked together to the door.



Ramsey threw open the small back door in the rear wall of the hangar, and as he and Ben stepped through into the sunlight together Sean Courtney was crouched against the side-wall on their left-hand side, staring at them.



Only six feet separated Ramsey and Sean, and their mutual recognition was instantaneous. Sean reached under his coat and plucked out the big magnum revolver. The double-action pull on the trigger delayed the shot a fleeting part of a second, and Ramsey seized Ben Afrika's arm and pulled him forward between them. With a muzzle-flash that was bright even in the sunlight, Sean's shot crashed into Ben's body.



The hollow-point bullet struck him on the tip of the left elbow and mushroomed instantly. It ploughed through his arm and into his flank. The entry-wound into his body was the size of an egg-cup. The bullet struck his last rib and began to break up. Fragments were deflected into his lung; others tore through his entrails. A splinter of the copper jacket cut between the vertebrae of the spine and halfsevered his spinal cord.



Ben was flung sideways by the impact and he slid down the wall, leaving a bright smear of his blood across the rusty corrugated iron. Ramsey Machado ducked back into the hangar before Sean could bring the revolvei down from the head-high recoil. He kicked the door closed behind him and snatched the Tokarev automatic from his shoulder holster.



He snapped two quick shots through the thin wall, aiming for where he judged Sean was standing. Sean had anticipated this, and had dropped flat and flipped over twice. He estimated Ramsey's stance from the sound of the shots and the angle of the bullets cutting through the corrupted-iron wall.



He fired double-handed, and the heavy bullet punched a hole through the wall and missed Ramsey's head by a foot.



Ramsey ducked behind a drum of Avgas and shouted across the hangar at Michael as he sat at the controls of the aircraft.



"Start upv Michael had been frozen with shock in the pilot seat of the Centurion, but at Ramsey's order he recovered and flipped on both master switches and both magnetos and turned the key. The Centurion's engine fired and caught. He pushed the throttle open, and she roared eagerly and strained against the wheel-brakes.



"Get her rolling,' Ramsey shouted, and fired two more shots through the wall at random.



The Centurion moved forward towards the open hangar-door, gathering speed swiftly, and Ramsey raced after her, ducked under the wing and jerked open the passenger-door.



"Where is Ben?' Michael shouted at him as he scrambled into the seat.



"Ben is finished,' Ramsey shouted back. 'Keep going." 'What do you mean, finished?' Michael twisted in the seat and closed the throttle. "We can't leave him." 'Ben is dead, man.' Ramsey caught his hand on the throttle. 'Ben has been shot. He's finished. We have to get out of here." 'Ben-" 'Keep her going." Michael pushed the throttle open once again and swung the Centurion on to the runway. His face was twisted with grief.



"Ben,' he whispered, and let the speed build up until the Centurion was taxiing tail-up along the strip. They reached the end, and he used brake and engine to swing her around, facing back down the runway into the wind.



"The engine is cold,' he said. 'She hasn't had a chance to warm up." "We've got to chance it,' Ramsey told him. 'The police are going to be swarming in. They're on to us; somehow they've tumbled to it." 413en? y "Forget about Ben,' Ramsey snapped. 'Get us into the air.$ 'Where are we going - Botswana?'Michael still hesitated.



"Yes,' Ramsey told him. 'But first we are going to finish this operation.



Head for the showgrounds." 'But... but you say the police are on to us,' Michael protested.



"How can they stop us now? It will take an hour to get an air-force Impala into the air - go, man, gov Michael pushed the pitch fully fine and opened the throttle wide. The Centurion bounded down the strip.



As the speed built up they saw a figure run out from behind, the hangar.



Michael recognized his brother.



"Sean!' he exclaimed.



"Keep going,' Ramsey told him.



Sean dropped on one knee at the verge of the runway, and as the Centurion raced towards him he thrust out both 5ee arms towards it in the classic double-handled grip and fired three deliberate shots. Each time the heavy recoil threw the muzzle of the revolver towards the sky.



The last shot struck the windscreen, and they both ducked instinctively. It left a silver cobweb in the Perspex pane, and then Michael rotated the Centurion's nose and they skimmed over the boundary fence and bore up into the clear blue highveld sky.



At two hundred feet the cold motor stuttered and coughed, then it caught again and ran smoothly.



"Head for the showgrounds,'Ramsey repeated. 'We won't get Vorster, but it's still a good target. There are two hundred thousand of them." Michael levelled out at a thousand feet and turned on to his track.



As the Centurion soared overhead, Sean emptied the revolver, blazing up at its belly. He saw no sign of his bullets striking, and the landing-wheels of the Centurion retracted as she rose unharmed into the sky.



Sean jumped to his feet and sprinted into the hangar. He saw the telephone on the workbench.



"Thank Godv He ran to the bench and snatched it up.



As he dialled the Capricorn number, he noticed the open map under his hands and the Rand Easter Show brochure. The red-marked notations on the map ringed the location of the showgrounds, and a broad arrow indicated the wind direction and speed.



The operator on the switchboard answered on the third ring. 'Capricorn Chemical Industries, good day. How may I help you?" 'Get me Mr. Garry Courtney in the boardroom. I'm his brother. This is an emergency." 'He is expecting your call. You are going straight through." As he waited Sean glanced quickly around the hangar.



He saw the safety-suits hanging on the wall beside the door.



"Is that you, Sean?' Garry's voice was strained.



"Yes, it's me. I'm at Firgrove. It's as bad as we feared. Michael and Ben and the Fox. The target is the showgrounds." 'Did you stop them, Sean?" 'No. Michael and the Fox are airborne. They took off two minutes ago. They are almost certainly heading for the showgrounds." 'Are you sure, Sean?" 'Of course I'm bloody sure. I'm in Mickey's hangar and I'm looking at a map right now. The showgrounds are marked and the wind speed and direction.



There are two smoke-proof suits hanging on the wall - they didn't have a chance to get into them." 'I'll warn the police, the Air Force." 'Don't be a prick, Garry. It will take an order from the chief of the defence force and the minister before they'll send up a fighter or a helicopter gunship. That could take a month of Sundays. By then two hundred thousand people will be dead." 'What must we do, Sean?' At last the administrator deferred to the man of action.



"Take the Queen Air,' Sean told him. 'She's faster and bigger and more powerful than the little Centurion. You have to intercept them and force them down before they reach the show." 'Describe Mickey's Centurion," Garry ordered crisply.



"Blue on top. White belly. Her markings are ZS - RRW, Romeo Romeo Whisky.



You know the location of Firgrove and their course to reach the show." "I'm on my way,' said Garry, and the connection clicked and went dead.



Sean picked up the Smith & Wesson from the bench-top where he had dropped it, and spilled the empty cases from the chambers. From his pocket he pulled the box of ammunition and reloaded swiftly. He ran back to the door and with the revolver held ready he stood clear and kicked it open.



Immediately he dropped into a gunfighter's crouch and aimed through the doorway.



Ben had dragged his paralysed legs only a few yards before he collapsed. He lay in a huddle at the foot of one of the peach trees. He was bleeding copiously; bright arterial blood had soaked his shirt and the tops of his trousers. His left arm hung by a taller of mangled flesh. The shattered bone was spiked through the meat like a skewer.



Sean straightened up and safed the Smith & Wesson. He walked through the door and stood looking down at Ben.



Ben was still alive. He rolled over painfully to look up at Sean. His eyes were brown as burnt sugar and filled with a dreadful anguish.



"They got away, didn't they?' he whispered. 'They will succeed. You cannot stop us. The future belongs to us." Isabella came running through the trees. She saw Sean and swerved towards him.



"I told you to keep out of the way,' he growled at her. 'Why can't you ever do as you're told?" She saw Ben lying at his feet and stopped short.



"It's Ben. Oh God, what have you done to him?" She started forwa - rd again and dropped to her knees beside the prostrate body.



Carefully she lifted Ben's head into her lap, but the movement tore something in his injured lung and he began to cough. A mouthful of blood spilled between his open lips and poured down his chin.



"Oh God, Sean. You've killed him!' Isabella sobbed.



"I hope so,' Sean said softly. 'With all my heart, I hope SO." 'Sean, he's your brother." 'No,' said Sean. 'He's not my brother. He's just a lump of shit." As Garry Courtney started the engines of the Queen Air, he was calculating furiously.



Capricorn was almost sixty miles closer to the showgrounds than Firgrove, and in addition the Queen Air was seventy or eighty knots faster than the Centurion at the cruise. It was seven minutes since Sean had called him, nine minutes since Mickey had taken off.



It was all running very close. He dared not try to guess where to intercept the Centurion and try to cut its track. There was only one sure course open to him. He had to fly directly to the showgrounds, then turn and head back on the reciprocal of Michael's heading. He had to risk everything on a head-on interception.



As he opened the throttles and ran the Queen Air out on to the runway, he found with mild surprise that he still had a half-smoked cigar between his teeth. In the panic of getting to the aircraft he had forgotten all about it. As he lifted the big twin-engined machine into the air, he drew deeply on the cigar. It was the very best Havana, and he smiled at the irony. The fragrant smoke calmed his nerves a little.



"I'm not as good at this as Sean is.' He spoke to himself. 'Give me a hectic day on the Stock Exchange or a nice bloody takeover deal any day." He pushed the Queen Air right over the manual, squeezing an extra fifteen knots out of her.



He picked out the showgrounds from almost seven miles out. A pod of giant balloons floated above it like colourful. whales. The vast carparks were a-glitter with reflected sunlight from thousands of vehicles.



He turned back on to a direct heading for Firgrove and leant forward in his seat, peering ahead through the windscreen and puffing on the fat cigar. He was still running calculations of speed and time and distance through his head.



"If I'm going to meet them, it should be five or six minutes-' He broke off as a beam of sunlight reflected from something ahead and below caught his eye. He pushed his horn-rimmed spectacles up on his nose, once again hating his weak myopic eyes and peered fretfully down, trying to find it again.



He had left the built-up residential areas behind, and was flying over the open countryside, studded with small villages and criss-crossed with roads.



The patterns of ploughed lands and plantations of trees disturbed his eye, and threw up a hundred decoys and optical tricks to confuse him. He searched frantically, sweeping the open sky briefly and then concentrating on the earth below. He expected the Centurion to be well under him.



He saw the shadow first. It flitted and jumped like a grasshopper across the fields. A moment later he saw the tiny blue aircraft. It was a thousand feet below him and two miles directly ahead. He pushed the nose of the Queen Air down into a dangerous altitude and dived to intercept.



The two aircraft were converging at almost five hundred knots, and before Garry could get the Queen Air down to the same altitude as the Centurion it had passed like a blue flash below him.



Garry hauled up one wing into a maximum-rate turn and came round behind the Centurion. He used the Queen Air's superior speed and the dive to overhaul the smaller aircraft.



"We'll be there in about ten minutes,' Michael warned Ramsey. 'You'd better get ready." Ramsey leant forward and reached down to the gaudily painted cylinders bolted to the floorboards between his feet. Carefully he opened the tap on the neck of each of the bottles. He felt the rush of internal pressure checked immediately by the gate of the main valve in the connecting T-piece.



Now it needed only to thumb the valve-lever across, half a turn in an anticlockwise direction, to send the mixed and activated gas hissing into the long hose and spraying out through the nozzle under the Centurion's belly.



Ramsey straightened up and glanced across at Michael in the pilot's seat beside him.



"All set-' he began, and then broke off and stared with astonishment through the side-window beside Michael's head.



An enormous silver fuselage filled the entire frame of the window. Another aircraft was flying wing-tip to wing-tip with them, and the pilot peered across at them. He was a large baby-faced man with dark horn-rimmed glasses and the stub of a cigar clamped in one corner of his mouth.



"Garry!' shouted Michael in consternation. Garry lifted his right hand and stabbed downwards with his thumb, an unmistakable gesture.



Instinctively Michael flung the Centurion into a tight descending turn, and dropped away towards the earth like a stone. He levelled out just above the tree-tops.



He glanced in his rearview mirror and saw the Queen Air's round silver nose a hundred yards from his tail and closing rapidly. He hauled the Centurion up and around hard, but the moment he levelled out the silver machine loomed up beside him. Garry had always been a far better pilot than he was, and the Queen Air had the wings to out fly him.



"I can't get away from him." 'Fly straight for the target,' Ramsey ordered brusquely. 'There is nothing he can do." Michael had hoped that Ramsey would abandon the operation now, but reluctantly he turned back on to his original track. He was down to two hundred feet above the tops of the tallest trees. Garry followed him round and came up alongside him. Their wing-tips were only a yard apart.



Once again Garry signalled him to land. Instead, Michael snatched up the microphone of his radio, knowing that Garry would be tuned to i 18,7 megahertz.



"I'm sorry, Garry,' he cried. 'I have to do it. I'm sorry." Garry's voice boomed through the radio speaker into the cabin. 'Land immediately, Mickey. It's not too late. We can still get you out of this.



Don't be a fool, man."



Michael shook his head vehemently and pointed ahead. Garry's expression hardened. He dropped back, and before Michael could react he slid in sideways and thrust the Queen Air's wing-tip under the Centurion's tail.



Then he came back hard on the control-wheel and flicked the smaller plane's tail up, so she tumbled forward into an almost vertical dive.



The Centurion was too low and the dive too steep for Michael to recover before he hit the top branches of a tall blue-gum tree.



Michael threw up his hands as he saw it coming, but a dry branch as thick as a man's arm stabbed through the windscreen that had been weakened by Sean's bullet. The point of the branch caught Michael at the base of his throat. It found the notch between his collar-bones and went through with the ease of a hypodermic needle, transfixing his upper torso and coming out between his shoulder-blades.



The momentum of the falling aircraft snapped the branch off, and the jagged butt protruded from his throat like an ugly twisted lance.



The Centurion drove on, crashing and crackling through the tree-tops. First one wing then the other were ripped away, braking the aircraft's speed, until it fell clear of the trees and the wingless fuselage hit the ground, and bounced and skidded to rest at the edge of a field of standing maize stalks.



Ramsey Machado dragged himself upright in the seat, amazed that he was still alive. He looked across at Michael. Michael's mouth was wide open in a silent shriek; the jagged branch stuck out of his throat, and a fountain of his blood spurted over the remains of the shattered windscreen.



Ramsey released the catch of his seat-belt and tried to lift himself out of his seat. He found himself anchored, and he looked down. His left leg was broken. It was twisted like a piece of boiled spaghetti between the seat and the gas-cylinders. The leg of his trousers was ripped up to the knee, and the stainless-steel valve-handle was buried deeply in the flesh of his calf.



As he stared at it, he became aware of the faint hiss of escaping gas. His leg had twisted the valve-handle into the open position. Cyndex was spurting into the hose and spraying from the nozzle under the fuselage.



Ramsey grabbed at the door-handle and threw all his weight upon it. It was jammed solid. He placed both hands under the knee of his injured leg and hauled upon it, trying to pull it free. The leg elongated, and he heard the ends of shattered bone-shards grate together deep in his flesh, but it was held inexorably as in a bear-trap by the stainless-steel valve-handle.



Suddenly he smelt the odour of almonds; his nostrils began to burn and sting. Silver mucus flooded from both nostrils and drooled over his lips and down his chin. In their sockets his eyes turned to coals of fire and his vision dimmed.



In the darkness the agony assailed him. It surpassed any conception that he had ever had of pain. He began to scream. He screamed and screamed sitting in a puddle of his own urine and faeces until at last his lungs collapsed and he could scream no more.



Centaine Courtney-Malcomess sat on a fallen log at the edge of the forest and watched the puppy and the child at play.



The puppy was the pick of Dandy Lass of Weltevreden's last litter before Centaine had been forced to have the gallant old bitch put down. The puppy had inherited all her mother's best points. She would be a champion also, Centaine was convinced of it.



Nicky was working her with an old silk stocking stuffed with guinea-fowl feathers. He learnt as quickly as the puppy. He seemed to have a way with dogs and horses.



It's in his blood, Centaine thought complacently. He's a true Courtney, despite the name and the fancy Spanish title.



She went on to think of her other Courtneys.



Tomorrow Shasa and Elsa Pignatelli were marrying in the little slave church that Centaine had so lovingly restored. It would be one of the biggest weddings to be held in the Cape of Good Hope for at least a decade. Guests were coming from England and Europe and Israel and America.



There would have been a time not so many years ago when Centaine would have wanted to make all the plans and supervise all the preparations for the wedding herself Now she was content to leave it all to Bella and Elsa Pignatelli.



"Let them get on with it,' she told herself firmly. 'I've got my hands full with my roses and my dogs and Nicky." She thought about Bella. Bella was contrite and chastened, but Centaine was not satisfied that it was enough. She had debated long and hard with herself and with Shasa before at last agreeing to cover for the girl and shield her from the full consequences of her treason and the righteous fury of the law.



Still, she has a penance to perform. Grimly Centaine justified her leniency. Isabella will dedicate the rest of her life to 'Making amends.



She owes a lifetime of service to every member of this family and to all the people of this wonderful land of ours whom she betrayed. I'll see to it that she pays all her debts in full, she thought purposefully, and then turned to watch the puppy find the feather-bag that Nicky had hidden in the reeds down by the stream, the puppy's long silky tail waving like a triumphant banner as she came to deliver it to her young master.



At last the boy and the dog came to sit at her feet together, and Nicky putone tanned bare arm around the puppy's neck and hugged her.



"Have you decided on a name for her yet?' Centaine asked. It had taken her almost two years to break down the child's resistance to her, but she felt that now she had at last won him over from his memories of Adra and his previous life.



"Yes, Nana. I want to call her Twenty-Six.' Nicxy's English had improved vastly since she had enrolled him at Western Province junior School.



"That's an unusual name. Why did you choose it?" 'I had another dog once - he was called Twenty-Six.' And yet Nicky's memories of that other time had almost faded.



"Well, that is an excellent reason - and it's a fine name. Dandy Twenty-Six of Weltevreden." 'Yes! Yes!' Nicky hugged the puppy's neck. "Dandy Twenty-Six." Centaine looked down on him fondly. He was still a mixed-up and confused little boy, but he was a thoroughbred with the blood of champions in his veins.



Give us time, she thought. just give me a little more time with him.



"Shall I tell you a story, Nicholas?' she asked. She had the most wonderful family stories, of elephant hunts and lions, of wars with Boers and Zulus and Germans, of lost diamond mines and of fighter planes and a thousand other things to thrill the soul of a small boy.



So now she told him a story of shipwreck and of a castaway on a burning shore. She told him of a journey through a cruel desert with little yellow pixies as companions - and he walked every step of the enchanted way beside them.



At last she looked at her wristwatch and said: 'That's enough for today, young master Nicholas. Your mother will be wondering whatever has become of us." Nicholas sprang up to help her to her feet, and the two of them walked down the hill towards the big house with the puppy gambolling around them.



They walked quite slowly, because Nana had a sore leg, and Nicky took her hand to help her over the rough places.



The End



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