A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 32

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"They will be carrying AKs." Job looked at him. "And there are probably more than two men. They will have out flankers We are outnumbered and outgunned, Sean. What do you want to do?"

"This is my concession," Sean said. "And Tukutela is my elephant."

"Then you might have to fight them for both." Job's noble Matabele features were solemn, but his eyes sparkled; he could not conceal the battle lust in them.

Sean stood up. "Damned right, Job. If we catch them, we are going to fight them. "Then we must hurry." Matatu stood up beside him. "They are two hours ahead of us, and Tukutela must stop soon to feed. They will have him before we get there."

Sean strode across to where Riccardo and Claudia were resting in the shade.

"Poachers!" he told them. "Probably armed with automatic weapons. Two at least, possibly more, all of them ruthless killers."

"We will have They stared at him wordlessly, and Sean went on.

to move fast to prevent them getting to Tukutela before we do. I'll leave you and Claudia to follow with Pumula at your own speed.

Job and Matatu and I are going to run the spoor and try to drive them off before they get to the elephant. You keep the Rigby, Capo, and Job will take the Weatherby."

As he began to turn away, Riccardo caught his arm. "Sean, I want this elephant. More than anything left in my life, I want this elephant."

"I will try and save him for you." Sean nodded. He understood entirely. He felt the same way.

"Thank you." Riccardo let his hand fall to his side, and Sean went to where Job and Matatu were waiting. They had handed over their field packs to Pumula. and carried only their water bottles. Sean glanced at his stainless steel Rolex. Four minutes Since they had picked up the poachers" spoor, four minutes wasted.

"Hot pursuit!" Sean ordered. "And expect ambush!"

Job smiled at him. "Old times," he said. "It makes me feel young again."

Matatu pulled his loincloth up between his legs and tucked the skirt under his belt, then whirled and went away on the spoor at a loping trot. Sean had seen him keep up that pace from sunup to sundown. He went out onto the right flank, and Job, who was left-handed, took his natural side. Sean changed the cartridges in the577 and began to run. Within seconds Riccardo's group was out of sight in the forest behind them, and Sean concentrated all his attention ahead.

It required special skills and vast experience to keep the formation intact in this type of broken country. The flankers had to keep Slightly ahead of the tracker, anticipating the line of the spoor, sweeping the terrain for ambush, covering and protecting Matatu yet keeping fifty paces out on each side, breaking their own trail and still maintaining contact with the opposite flanker, all this while on the run and mostly out of sight of each other, with Matatu setting a furious pace in the center.

When the spoor turned, the man on the outer flank had to wheel on the center, covering twice the distance of his opposite number, and when the spoor crossed open ground, they had to increase the angle on the flank, forming an inverted spearhead formation, always protecting the center, keeping contact with subtle birdcalls the flute of a wood dove, the whistle of a bulbul, the warble of a shrike, the pipe of a black kite--each had meaning, each was a command or a warning.

All this and two other essentials: silence and speed. Job and Sean ran lightly and soundlessly like a pair of kudu bulls, ducking and weaving under branches and through thickets and thorns, quick and vigilant.

After the first hour, Matatu flashed a hand signal down a break in the forest. Sean $mderstood it readily. "Two more," the signal said.

Another pair of poachers had joined the first two, and they also were closing swiftly with the elephant.

They ran for another hour, never slackening for a moment, and Matatu signaled again from the center.

"Very close." An eloquent flash of his pink palm. "Beware.

Danger." Sean whistled like a sand grouse, checking the pace. It was the signal for imminent contact, and they came down to a wary trot.

The trail had led them up the side of a low tableland, along an ancient elephant trail that was well trodden into the iron-hard earth. When they came out on top of the flat plateau, they felt the stir of the evening breeze, cool and blessed out of the east, and Sean held his sweaty face up to it.

The plateau was less than a mile wide. They crossed it quickly and reached the far rim, dropping to their bellies and sliding over the skyline without showing a silhouette against the blue. Then, crouching below the crest and sweeping the ground below them, they saw a shallow valley with another forested tableland beyond.

A river-bed meandered down the center of the valley, its course marked with a narrow ribbon of dark green riverine bush. The rest A of the valley was fairly open: pale winter grass shining in the sunlight, dotted anthills, each the size of a cottage, widely separated umbrella acacia with flat tops and lemon yellow trunks. Sean surveyed it all swiftly.

Out on the left, Job gave the penny-whistle snort of a reedbuck, one of the most urgent alarm calls in their repertoire. He was pointing down into the valley, half left from their front. Sean followed the gesture. For a moment he saw nothing, and then suddenly Tukutela, the Angry One, stepped into view.

He had been hidden from Sean by one of the huge anthills, but now he strode out into the open meadow and Sean gasped aloud.

Even from almost a mile away, Sean realized that he had only poorly remembered the magnificence of this animal.

Tukutela was the dark gray of volcanic rock, tall and gaunt; even at this distance Sean could make out the folds and tucks of his ancient riven hide and the knotted outline of his spine beneath it. His ears, their edges tattered and eroded like a pair of battle ensigns torn with shot and blackened with the smoke of cannon, fanned gently out with each stride.

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