Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur - Страница 71
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"Well," Craig switched it off. "That's all you are going to get from Harare." He checked his wrist-watch. "Almost eight o'clock, let's see what the BBC has to say." During the rule of the Smith regime, with its draconian censorship, every thinking man in central Africa had made sure he had access to a short-wave radio receiver. It was still a good rule to follow. Craig's set was a Yaesu Musen, and he got the Africa service of the BBC on 2171 kilohertz.
"The Zimbabwe government has expelled all foreign journalists from Matabeleland. The British High Commission has called upon the prime minister of Zimbabwe to express Her Majesty's government's deep concern at the reports of atrocities being committed by security forces-" Craig switched to Radio South Africa, and it came through sharp and clear' the arrival of hundreds of illegal refugees across the northern border from Zimbabwe. The refugees are all members of the Matabele tribe. A spokesman for one group described a massacre of villagers and civilians that he had witnessed. "They are killing everybody," he said. "The women and the children, even the chickens and the goats." Another refugee said, "Do not s end us back. The soldiers will kill us."" Craig searched the bands and found the Voice of America.
"The leader of the ZAPU party, the Matabele faction of Zimbabwe, Mr. Joshua Nkomo, has arrived in the neighbouring state of Botswana after fleeing the country. "They shot my driver dead," he told our regional reporter.
"Mugabe wants me dead. He's out to get me."
"With the recent imprisonment and detention of all other prominent members of the ZAPU party, Mr. Nkomo's departure from Zimbabwe leaves the Matabele people without a leader or a spokesman.
"In the meantime, the government of Mr. Robert Mugabe has placed a total news blackout over the western part of the country, all foreign journalists have been expelled, and a request by the international Red Cross to send in observers has been refused."
"It's all so familiar," Craig muttered. "I even have the same sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach as I listen to it." he Monday was Sally-Anne's birthday. After breakfast, they drove across to Queen's Lynn together to fetch her present. Craig had left it in the care of Mrs. Groenqvald, the overseer's wife, to preserve the secrecy and surp4ise.
"Oh, Craig, it's beautiful."
"Now you have two of us to keep you at King's Lynn," he told her.
Sally-Anne lifted the honey-coloured puppy in both hands and kissed his wet nose, and the puppy licked her back.
"He's a Rhodesian lion dog," Craig told her, "or now I suppose you'd call him a Zimbabwean lion dog." The puppy's skin was too big for him. It hung down in His back was crested in the distinctive ridge of his breed.
wrinkles over his forehead that gave him a worried frown.
"Look at his paws!" Sally-Anne cried. "He's going to be a monster. What shall I call him?" Craig declared a public holiday to mark the occasion of Sally-Anne's birth. They took the puppy and a picnic lunch down to the main dam below the homestead, and lay on a rug under the trees at the water's edge, and tried to find a name for the puppy. Sally-Anne vetoed Craig's suggested "Do"-.
The black-faced weaver birds fluttered and shrieked and hung upside-down from the basket-shaped nests above their heads, and Joseph had put a cold bottle of white wine in the basket. The puppy chased grasshoppers until he collapsed exhausted on the rug beside Sally-Anne.
They finished the wine, and when they made love on the rug, Sally-Anne whispered seriously, "Shh! Don't wake the PUPPY!" They drove back up the hills and Sally-Anne said suddenly, "We haven't spoken about the troubles all day."
"Don't let's spoil our record."
"I'm going to call him Buster." 419MYP "The first puppy I was ever given I called Buster." They gave Buster his supper in the bowl labelled "Dog" Craig had bought for him, and then made a bed in an empty wine crate near the Ago stove.
They were both happily tired and that evening left the book and the photographs and went to bed immediately after their own meal.
raig woke to the sound of gun-fire. His residual war eflexes hurled him from the bed before he was fully awake. It was automatic rifle-fire, short bursts, ve lose, he noted instinctively, short bursts meant good, trained riflemen. They were down by the farm village, or the workshop. He judged the distance.
He found his leg and clinched the strap, fully awake now, and his first thought was for Sally-Anne. Keeping low, beneath the sill level of the windows, he rolled back to the bed and dragged her down beside him.
She was naked, and muzzy with sleep.
"What is it?"
"Here," he whipped her gown off the foot of the bed.
"Get dressed, but keep down." While she shrugged into the gown, he was trying to marshal his thoughts. There were no weapons in the house, except the kitchen knives and a small hand axe for chopping firewood on the back veranda. There was no sandbagged fallback position, no defensive perimeter of wire and floodlights, no radio transmitter none of even the most elementary -de fences with which every farm homestead had once been provided.
Another burst of rifle, fire and somebody screamed a woman the faint scream abruptly cut off.
"What's happening? Who are they?" Sally-Anne's voice was level and crisp. She was awake and unafraid. He felt a little lift of pride for her. re they dissidents?"
"I don't know, but we aren't going to wait around to find out," he told her grimly.
He glanced up at the new highly inflammable thatch overhead. Their best chance was to get out of the house and into the bush. To do that, they needed a diversion.
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