A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 56

• Предыдущая
• 56/200
• Следующая

"What about the elephant?" Riccardo demanded. His voice had firmed. "Are you breaking off the hunt? You going to let my elephant get away?"

"For a few lousy gooks armed with a couple of lousy AK-47s?"

Sean chuckled. "Don't be ridiculous, Capo. We will shake them off and be after Tukutela again before you know it."

Sean and Job waited while Matatu assembled his group and then shepherded them away. By now Riccardo and Claudia had learned the basics of anti tracking and went swiftly under Matatu's direction while the tracker brushed and covered the signs behind them.

Once they were clear, Sean and Job trampled the area around the camp, back and forth and around in circles, until they had confused any remaining spoor. Then they fell into single file, Sean leading, and went away at a run. They did not make it too apparent that they were laying a false trail but adopted all the usual precautions, which would not fool a good tracker.

It was the old Scout pursuit pace Sean set, seven miles an hour, and gradually he began to veer off in a southerly direction. Matatu was heading northward toward the river, and Sean would lead the pursuit directly away from them.

While he ran, Sean puzzled over the identity of his pursuers government soldiers or rebels, poachers or simply armed bandits looking for plunder, it was impossible to guess. However, Matatu had been worried when he came into camp.

"They are good, Bwana, " he had told Sean. "They have done well to follow the spoor we left, and they are coming on fast. They move in formation like bush fighters, with flankers out."

"Didn't you get a good look?" Sean had asked.

little Ndorobo ha4 shook his head. "It was getting dark and I wanted to get back to, warn you. They were closing in swiftly."

"Even the best tracker won't be able to follow us in darkness.

We've got the rest of the night to get clear of them."

It was a strange reversal of roles, Sean thought grimly as he and Job trotted through the dark bush. They, the hunters, were now being hunted just as remorselessly.

At first he had considered breaking off the chase after the elephant and doubling back for the border. Riccardo Monterro's condition was causing him real concern, and so was Matatu's warning that their pursuers were skilled and appeared dangerous.

However, he had swiftly rejected the idea; they were beyond the point of no return.

"No turning back," Sean said aloud and grinned as he admitted to himself the true reasons for his determination, two ivory tusks and half a million dollars in cash, By now he was honestly not certain which of those was the most compelling. The tusks were beginning to loom large in his imagination. They represented the old Africa, a symbol of a better world that had vanished. He wanted them more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, except perhaps half a million dollars. He grinned again.

In the first light of dawn they were running directly southward, k and they had covered twenty miles since splitting off from the rest of the party.

"Time to disappear, Job," he grunted without breaking stride.

There must be no indication to the trackers following them that they were about to split again.

"Good place just ahead," Job agreed. He was running exactly in Sean's footprints.

"Do it," Sean said, and as they ran under the low branches of a grevia tree Job reached up and swung himself off the ground.

Sean did not look back, did not alter his stride. Job would work himself through the branches of the closely growing grevia. until he found a good place to drop off and anti track away.

Sean ran on for twenty minutes, once again curving away into the southwest, heading for a low ridge that just showed in the dawn ahead of him. He crossed the ridge and as he had anticipated from the lie of the terrain found a small river in the valley beyond. He drank at the edge of the pool and milled around, splashing water onto the bank as though he were bathing.

A tracker would expect him to choose this as a breakaway point, wading either upstream or downstream before leaving the river again. They would send scouts along both banks to search for SIP.

Sean waded downstream, supporting himself on overhanging branches to give them a trail to confirm their suspicions. Then, without leaving the water, he returned to the exact spot where he had entered the stream and on the bank carefully dried his feet and legs, replaced his dry velskoen shoes that he had hung around his neck on their laces, and backtracked on his incoming spoor.

He retraced his footsteps to the crest of the ridge, walking backward, stepping precisely on his original footprints. At the top of the ridge he employed the same trick Job had. He swung himself into the air from a branch and over handed himself well clear of the spoor before lowering himself to the edge of a rock slab and anti tracking away.

"Even Matatu wouldn't be able to unravel that," he thought with satisfaction as he struck off back toward the north at a run.

Two hours later he joined up with Job at the rendezvous, and in the early afternoon they came up with the other party waiting for them five miles north of the point where they had split up.

"Good to see you, Sean. We were beginning to worry," Riccardo told him as they shook hands. Even Claudia smiled as Sean flopped down beside her and said, "My kingdom for a cup of tea."

As he sipped at the mug Matatu brought him, he listened attentively to the little tracker. Matatu squatted beside Sean and chattered in his excited falsetto.

"Matatu went back and kept an eye on the camp we left," Sean translated for Riccardo and Claudia's benefit. "He didn't dare approach too closely, but he saw the gang that was following us arrive This time he counted twelve of them. They searched the area of the camp, then took the bait and followed the false trail Job and I laid for them."

• Предыдущая
• 56/200
• Следующая