A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 73

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CAvE. The next word puzzled him. "Cave?" Suddenly he realized it was the old public schoolboy warning from the Latin caveat beware

He smiled despite himself.

"ere did she ever learn a Limey expression like that?" Then he remembered she was a lawyer and read on.

CAVE.

T1 ExPECT You- She and Job would have overheard them discussing the Pursuit. That information was just as valuable.

ALL OK. And she had signed it, C He stared at the scrap of cardboard, holding it in the palm of his hand as though it were a relic of the true cross.

"You little beauty, you," he whispered. "You've got to be the brightest, gutsiest..." He shook his head in wonder, a choking sensation in his throat. For the very first time he admitted his Ion ng for her, then suppressed it firmly as he came to his fee gi t.

There was neither time nor opportunity for such self-indulgence now.

"Renamo," he told Matatu and Purnula. "You were right, the are fifteen of them. They know we are following. We can expect an re ambush."

They both looked grave. Sean anced at his wristwatch. "We can catch them before dark." 91 Within an hour they came upon the first ambush the Renarno had set for them. Four men had lain beside the trail at the point where the causeway across the flood plains joined the main forest on the higher ground. The ambush had been cunningly sited on the far edge of a narrow vlei, across open ground with a good field of I T ; 178 fire. it had been abandoned only a short time before they came up to it.

"They are putting down a rolling rear guard." Sean felt queasy at the risk he had taken with such a reckless pursuit.

in the dust were the distinctive double marks left by the bipod of an RPD light machine gun, one of the simplest and yet the most deadly effective of all guerrilla weapons. If he had led his men into the vlei while that gun was still in position, it would all have been over in a few hellish seconds. He had been pushing too hard, not taking even elementary precautions. His concern for Claudia had unbalanced his judgment.

Renamo had pulled out just before they reached the vlei. They had judged the time of his arrival with disconcerting accuracy, the margin had been far too narrow. The crew of the RPD would have moved back and re sited the ambush farther along the trail in order not to fall too far behind their main party.

"Flankers out," Sean ordered reluctantly. "Ambush precautions." It would slow them to half their previous speed. Now it would be impossible to catch up with Renamo before nightfall.

Three men were too few. It left only Matatu on the spoor and Sean and Pumula on the Banks. They had a single weapon between them, the big-bore, slow-firing double. They were going in against trained bush fighters armed with automatic weapons, and they were expected.

"Just another name for suicide," Sean told himself. But despite the odds he had to restrain himself from quickening the pace.

In the center, Matatu whistled. At that moment he was out of Sean's line of sight. Even though it was not a warning signal, Sean fell flat and carefully checked his front and both flanks before he stood up again and went to join him.

Matatu was squatting beside the trail with his loincloth drawn up modestly between his legs, but his expression was worried. He stabbed a finger at the' spoor without speaking. Sean saw immediately what was trdtibling him.

"Where the hell did they come from?" It was a protest more than a question. The original band of Renarno had been reinforced by an even larger group; at a glance it looked like a full company of infantry. The odds against them had just been multiplied many times, and for the first time Sean felt the lead weight of despair on his shoulders.

"How many" he demanded of Matatu. This time, even he could not give an exact figure. The tracks were overlapped and confused.

Matatu took a little snuff, using the ritual to disguise his uncertainty. He sneezed, and his eyes ran with tears that he wiped away with his thumbs. Then he held up the spread fingers of both hands and shut them four times.

"Forty?"

Matatu grimaced apologetically and showed another set of fingers.

"Between forty and fifty." Sean unscrewed his water bottle and took a mouthful. The water was hot as soup, but he gargled with it before he swallowed.

I will count them later," Matatu promised, "when I have learned them all, but now. He spat on the trampled earth, mortified by his failure.

"How far behind are we?" Sean demanded, and Matatu used his forefinger like the hour hand of a clock to indicate a segment of the sky.

"Three hours," Sean translated. "We'll never catch them before nightfall."

When it was dark Sean said, "We'll eat while we wait for the moon." But when it rose, it was only a sliver of silver, soon blotted out by cloud, and there was not enough light to follow even that broad clear spoor. Sean thought of keeping going blindly through the night, trying to get ahead of them and then shadowing them, hoping for some fortuitous opportunity to reach Claudia and Job and release them.

"That's dreaming in Technicolor," he told himself They had been going hard for days now and were all tottering on the edge of exhaustion. Blunderin around in the dark, they would either run on top of the Renamo night guards or miss them completely.

"We'll sleep now." He was forced to give up at last. As Renarno knew they were being followed, they might send a detachment back to try and surprise them.

Sean went into laager for the night well off the trail, in a thicket of thorn that would snag an attacker attempting to sneak up on them. They all desperately needed rest, and he would rely on the thorn rather than postin sentries. The night was icy cold, and they lay in a huddle, sharing each other's body warmth. Sean was already sliding into the black hole of exhaustion when Matatu's whisper called him back.

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