A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 71
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As he reached the edge of the thicket, he dropped to the earth again, flicking over as he hit the ground. He saw the corpse immediately. It lay facedown under a low Thorn bush only a few yards ahead. It was a black man. The body had been stripped of clothing and boots.
"Job!" The name ripped from his throat. He crawled forward until he lay side by side with the body. A single bullet had plowed out of the man's back and the flies crawled over the wound. The blood had dried to a black crust, and he smelled the whiff of corruption.
"Dead twenty-four hours," he estimated, rising to his knees.
There was no further need for caution now. Gently he lifted the dead head. The corpse's neck was stiff with rigor mortis. He grunted with vast relief and let the head drop with a thud. The man was a stranger.
"Job!" he called. "Claudia!" It was a despairing cry, and he ran forward to the lean-to in which he had left her. It was deserted.
"Job!" He looked around him wildly. "Claudia!"
There was another naked black body lying at the edge of the Clearing, and he ran to it. It was another stranger, a skinny little runt of a man with the top shot off his skull. He was also starting to stink, his belly blowing up like a shiny black balloon.
"Two of the bastards," Sean said bitterly. "Nice shooting, Job."
Matatu had followed Sean and was checking the lean-to. He left it and began to work out in circles, darting back and forth like a gun dog quartering for a sitting grouse. Sean and Pumula stood and watched him, not joining his search so that they would not trample the sign.
Within minutes Matatu scurried back. "They are the same shifts who followed us before. There are fifteen of them, they surrounded the hut and came in at a rush. Job shot these two with the 30/06 banduki. " He offered Sean the empty cartridge cases. much struggling, but they took them." "There was "The memsahib?" Sean dreaded the reply.
ARI "Ndio, " Matatu replied in Swahili. "they took her also.
She is still limping, but they led her away, one on each side. She was fighting them all the way. Job was hurt, and so was Dedan. Perhaps they were beaten, and I think their arms are bound. They walk unsteadily." Matatu pointed toward the corpses. They striPPed their dead of uniforms and boots and banduki and then went back." He pointed along the isthmus.
"When?" Sean asked.
"Yesterday, early. Perhaps they rushed the camp at dawn."
Sean nodded grimly, but inside he cried, "Claudia, oh God, if they touch You, I'll rip their guts out."
"Hot Pursuit," he said aloud. "Let's go!"
Pumula ran back to grab the equipment and water bottles from the canoe, and Sean was still shrugging into the shoulder straps of his Pack when he started to run. The near exhaustion of the long night Of Poling the canoe faded away. He felt strong, angry, and indefatigable.
Within the first mile they settled into the pursuit pace of a Scout raiding party. The spoor was stiff cold, and Sean dispensed with any precautions against ambush. He relied entirely on Matatu to Pick UP any sign of a booby trap or antipersonnel mine that might have been laid on the tracks to hinder pursuit, but apart from that they went in single file at a speed not much below that of an Olympic marathon.
Claudia's image seemed to dance ahead of Sean and winged his feet. Fifteen of them, Matatu had said, and they would be tempted by Claudia's sweet white body. There were no signs yet that they had stopped to have sport with her. He accepted without reservation Matatu's interpretation that they had crept up on the camp in the dawn and taken it at a rush, willing to accept casualties without inflicting them. it seemed they had wanted prisoners rather than kills. Other than a few blows with a rifle butt, it looked as though both Dedan and Job had come through it unscathed, but it was Claudia who had his full concern.
They were forcing her to march on her injured leg. That would only aggravate the knee and perhaps cause permanent damage. If she slowed them down too much, they would start to become impatient and threatening. It all depended on just how much they needed a white prisoner as a hostage, probably as a bargaining chip with Western governments. It depended on who they were, Frelimo or Renamo or free-lance bandits. It depended on how much control there was over them, on who commanded them, and how strong his authority was. But any way he considered it, Sean knew that Claudia was in terrible danger.
Did they realize there was a pursuit? They must have read the sign going into the village and known that three men-no, four with Capo--were missing from the original party. The answer was yes. They probably anticipated a pursuit by this group. That would make them nervous and excitable.
Claudia would be no great advocate for her own safety. He could just imagine her arguing with them, demanding her human and legal rights, refusing to follow their orders. Despite his concern, he grinned humorlessly as he thought about it. They probably believed they had caught a pussycat, but they would soon realize they had a full-grown female tiger on their hands.
His grin faded. He was certain she would deal with them in precisely the fashion best designed to antagonize them and jeopardize her chances of survival. If the leader of the group was a weak man, she would push him to the point where he had to demonstrate his authority to his own men. African society was patriarchal, and he would rescp a woman who refused to bow to his will.
If they were the same group that had wiped out the village, they had amply demo'nstated their brutality.
"Just for once, ducky, button those lovely lips of yours," he pleaded with her silently.
Ahead of him, Matatu checked his run and made a sweeping gesture. Sean pulled up.
"Here they rested." Matatu pointed to where the group had sat in the shade of a grove of young mo pane
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