A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 36

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He turned away from the river and started down the path to Job's tent. Job was eating alone at his own camp fire, served by his younger wife. He gave her a quiet order to leave when he saw Sean coming. Then he took the coffee pot off the coals, poured a second mug, and dribbled condensed milk from the can into it.

Sean sat on the carved native stool beside him and took the mug from him. He spoke in Sindebele.

"What would you think of a man who followed a great elephant like Tukutela to his secret place in the swamps along the Zambezi?" "A man of such stupidity does not bear thinking of." Job blew on his coffee to cool it, and they were silent for a long while.

Matatu, who had been sleeping in his hut nearby, sensed the presence of his master, and came out, blinking and yawning in the early sunlight, to squat at Sean's feet. Sean let his hand rest on the little man's shoulder for a moment. He felt him wriggle with pleasure under the touch. He did not even have to ask Matatu. He would go where Sean went, without question, without a moment's hesitation, so Sean spoke directly to Job.

"Job, old friend of many years, I give you something else to think on. Monterro wants to follow the elephant. He is offering half a million dollar. What do you think of half a million dollars?"

Job sighed. "I do not have to think too long on that. When do we leave?"

Sean squeezed his arm hard and stood up.

Riccardo was seated at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee and a cigar. Claudia was beside him, and he could see they had been arguing. The girl's face was still flushed and her eyes asparkle, but she lapsed into silence as Sean entered the tent.

"Capo," Sean said, you have no idea what it will be like across there. It will be Vietnam all over again, but this time without the backup of the U.S. Army. Do you understand that?"

Riccardo nodded. "I want to go."

"All right. Here are my terms. You will sign an indemnity for whatever happens to you. I am not responsible."

"Agreed."

"Then I want a written acknowledgement of debt for the full amount, binding on your estate in the event of your death."

"Give me the paper."

"You are crazy, Capo, do you know that?"

"Sure." Riccardo grinned. "But what about you?"

"Oh, I was born crazy." Sean laughed with him as they shook hands, and then he sobered. "I want to fly a reconnaissance along the border to make sure there are no surprises waiting for us. If all is clear, we'll cross tonight. It will mean forced marches and traveling light. I want to be in and out in under ten days."

Riccardo nodded. Sean told him, "Get some rest now. You are going to need it."

He was about to turn away when he caught Claudia's furious gaze. "I'll radio Reema to send down another charter flight to pick you up tomorrow. She'll wangle you on the first commercial flight back to Anchorage."

Claudia seemed about to reply when Riccardo laid his hand over hers. "Okay," he said. "She'll go. I'll see to it."

"Damn right she'll go," Sean said. "She certainly isn't coming into Mozambique with us."

Sean taped over the identification markings on the Beechcraft's wings and fuselage, obliterating them from the scrutiny of any ground observer. He made certain the tape was so firmly adhered to the metalwork that the slipstream could not strip it away. While he worked, Job checked the emergency stores aboard the aircraft in case they were forced down. Rather than the heavy double barreled rifle, he loaded Sean's lightweight 30/06 with the black fiberglass stock.

They took off and Sean banked onto an easterly heading, keeping barely fifty feet above the treetops. He flew with the map on his lap, checking each landmark as it appeared ahead of them. Job sat beside him in the right-hand seat, while Matatu was in the seat behind Job. Even after all these years, Matatu was terrified of flying and still occasionally suffered from airsickness. Sean refused to allow him to sit in the seat behind him.

"Silly little bugger will puke down the back of my neck again."

So Job had to run that risk.

They reached the border and turned northward along it, searching for troop movements or any evidence of human presence. They found nothing, and thirty minutes later they saw the sheen of water on the horizon, an inland sea formed by the man-made dam on the Zambezi River.

"Cabora Bossa," Sean grunted. The hydroelectric scheme, one of the biggest and most expensive in Africa, had been built by the Portuguese before they relinquished the colony to self-government.

Although the South Africans would have taken all the power the project could supply, transporting it southward across the grids to their great mines at Palabora in the Transvaal, and although the revenue would have gone a long way toward alleviating Mozambique's desperate economic plight, Cabora Bossa no longer sold a single kilowatt of electricity. The southbound power lines were so continually being sabotaged by the rebel forces, and the government troops were so demoralized that they made little attempt to protect the repair crews from attack. Thus it had been years since a repair had even been attempted.

"By now the turbines are probably just piles of rust. Score another sweeping triumph for African Marxism." Sean chuckled and dropped a wing to turn 180 degrees and head back southward.

On this leg he flew deeper into Mozambique, setting a zigzag course to cover more ground, once again searching for occupied villages or mobile military units.

They found only the patterns of old cultivated lands, now gone back to weed and bush, and burned-out deserted villages with no sign of human life around the shells of roofless huts.

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