A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 45

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None of those seemed likely. This one was awake and alert, almost certainly a sentry. As Sean reached that conclusion, he sensed other movement farther out, and he flattened against the earth.

Another man emerged from the forest and came directly to where the sentry was rising to his feet to meet him. As soon as he stood. Sean could make out the AK-47 rifle slung over his shoulder, muzzle down. The two men talked softly together.

IT', "Changing the guard," Sean thought as the new sentry leaned against the tree and the other man sauntered back into the forest.

"That is where the camp is," Sean guessed.

Still on his belly, he leopard-crawled forward, passing well wide of the sentry, who would be fresh and vigilant. Once he was within the perimeter, Sean rose into a crouch and went forward swiftly.

He found the camp in a fold of ground up against the hills. It was a fly camp no huts or shelters, only two small fires that had burned down to coals. He counted eleven men lying around the fires, all of them with a blanket pulled completely over their heads in typical African fashion. There might be five or six others on guard duty, but it was a small band.

Even lacking automatic weapons, Sean and his men could have dealt with them. All of Sean's men still carried their piano-wire no loses and Matatu his skinning knife with the blade so sharp it was honed down to half its original width. Nobody in the camp would even have woken up.

Sean shook his head with regret. He was certain now that these were either Frelimo regular troops or Renamo guerrillas. He had no quarrel with them, whoever they were. Just as long as they did not interfere with his elephant hunt. Sean backed away to where Job was waiting for him at the perimeter.

"Eleven of them at the fires," Sean breathed.

"I found two more sentries," Job said, nodding.

"Frelimo?"

"Who knows?" Job shrugged. Sean touched his arm and they crept away farther out of earshot of the camp so they could speak more freely.

"What do you think, Job?"

"A small group, they mean little. We can go around them."

"They could be the advance guard for a bigger party," Sean suggested.

"These are not crack troops," Job muttered contemptuously.

"Smoking on guard duty, sleeping next to a fire. They aren't soldiers, they are tourists." Sean smiled at the term of derision. He knew that Job's determination was more Anglo-Saxon than African. Once he had decided, it was difficult to dissuade him.

"You want to go on?" he asked.

"For five hundred thousand dollars?" Job whispered. "You're damned right I want to go on!"

Claudia was afraid. The African night was so charged with mystery, uncertainty, and menace. The wait aggravated her feeling of apprehension. Sean had been gone for almost an hour, and though her father was close beside her she felt alone and very vulnerable.

Suddenly Sean was back, and she experienced a rush of relief.

She wanted to reach out and cling to him and was ashamed of herself for the weakness. Sean was whispering to her father, and she drew close to listen. Her arm touched Sean's bare arm, but he did not seem to notice, so she left it there for the feeling of security and comfort it gave her.

"Small party of armed men camped up ahead," Sean was explaining. "Not more than twenty of them. We don't know who the hell they are, but we can circle around them and keep going, or we can turn back. It's up to you, Capo."

"I want that elephant!"

"This is probably your last chance to pull out," Sean warned him.

"You're wasting time," Riccardo said. Claudia was torn by her father's decision. It would have been such an anticlimax to turn back now, and yet her first taste of the real flavor of Africa had been disconcerting. She realized as the march resumed and she fell in behind Sean that this was the first time in her life that she had been beyond the trappings and buttresses of civilization, the first time there was no police force to protect her, no recourse to law or justice or mercy. Here she was as vulnerable as an antelope to the leopard, in a forest full of predators.

She quickened her step, closing up behind Sean, and found to her surprise that in some bizarre fashion she was more alive and aware than she had ever been before. For the first time in her life she was on the bottom rung of existence, the level of survival. It was a novel and quite overwhelming sensation. She was glad her father had not decided to turn back. Claudia had long since lost all sense of direction, for Sean led unpredictably. They turned and twisted through the forest, at times moving swiftly and at others creeping forward a stealthy pace at a time and then freezing into absolute stillness at a signal from the flank which she often had not even heard. She noticed that Sean looked up at the night sky every few minutes and guessed he was navigating by the stars, but to her their whorls and blazes and fields were as confused as the lights of a foreign city.

Then, after a while, she realized they had not turned or paused for a long while and were once again heading in a straight line.

Obviously they were clear of danger for the moment. With the excitement over, she soon felt the weight of her legs and the weariness in the small of her back. The pack between her shoulders seemed to have quadrupled in weight, and she glanced at her wristwatch. The luminous dial showed her that they had been going for almost five hours since circling around that hidden camp.

"When will we rest?" she wondered, but made it a point of honor to keep close behind Sean and not to lag by a single pace.

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