Elephant Song - Smith Wilbur - Страница 22

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Daniel remembered the surly unnatural behaviour of Gomo and the other driver when he had met them on the road.  Now it made good sense.  They had been sitting on a load of stolen ivory.  No wonder they were acting strangely.

As he slipped behind the wheel of the Landcruiser and ordered Jock to climb aboard, he glanced at his wristwatch.  it was almost ten o'clock, nearly four hours since he had passed Cheng and the trucks on the escarpment road.  Could he catch them before they reached the main highway and disappeared?

He realised that it had been so carefully planned that they must have worked out an escape route and some means of disposing of the ivory.

He started the Landcruiser and hit the gear-lever.  You aren't going to get away with it, you dirty bastard!  In many places the recent storm waters had scoured the escarpment road, gouging knee-deep gulleys across the tracks and exposing boulders the size of cannonballs.

Daniel pushed the Landcruiser over them so violently that Jock seized the grab handle on the dashboard for support.  Slow down, Danny, damn it.

You'll kill us both.  Where the hell are we going?  What's the rush?

In as few words as possible Daniel told him the bare outlines.  You can't touch an ambassador, Jock grunted as the bouncing truck slammed the words out of him.  If you're wrong, they'll crucify you, man.  I'm not wrong, Daniel assured him.  On top of Johnny's note, I feel it in my guts.  The rain waters had rushed down the slope of the escarpment, but when they reached the floor of the valley they slowed and piled up upon themselves.

Only hours before, Daniel had crossed and re-crossed a dry river-bed at the foot of the escarpment.  Now he pulled up on the approach to the ford and stared down the beam of the headlights.

You'll never get through there, Jock muttered with alarm.

Daniel left the motor running and jumped down into ankledeep mud.  He ran to the edge of the crazy water.  It was the colour of creamed coffee, racing past in a muddy blur, carrying small tree-trunks and u rooted bushes with it.  It was almost fifty yards across.

One of the trees growing beside the ford draped its branches out over the torrent, in places just touching the swirling waters with its lowest twigs.  Daniel grabbed the main branch for support and let himself down into the river.  He edged out across the flood and it took all the strength of his arms to prevent himself from being swept away.

The drag of the water was overpowering and his feet were continually lifted clear of the bottom.  However, he worked himself out to the deepest section of the river.

It was as deep as his lowest rib.  The branch to which he was clinging was creaking and bowing like a fishing-rod to the strain as he began to work his way back to the bank.  He emerged from the torrent with water streaming down his lower body, his sodden clothing clinging to his legs and his boots squelching.

It'll go, he told Jock, as he clambered back into the cab.  You're crazy mad, Jock exploded.  I'm not going in there.  Okay!  Fine!

You've got just two seconds to get out, Daniel told him grimly, and changed the gearing of the Toyota into four-wheel drive and low ratio.

You can't leave me here, Jock howled.

The place is lousy with lions.  What happens to me?  That's your problem, mate.  Are you coming or going.  Okay, go ahead!  Drown us!

Jock capitulated and grabbed the sides of his seat.

Daniel rolled the Landcruiser down the steep approach to the ford, and into the brown waters.  He kept her rolling at an even pace and within a few yards the water was above the level of the wheels, but still the nose of the truck was tilted steeply downwards as the bottom fell away.

There was a whoosh of steam as water rushed through the engine compartment and swamped the hot metal of the block.

The headlights were obscured as they sank below the surface, becoming two luminous glows in the turgid water.  A bow wave rose ahead of the bonnet, as the water came up to the level of the windshield.  A petrol engine would have swamped and stalled, but the big diesel pushed them stolidly forward into the flood.  Water was pouring in around the door posts.

They were calf-deep where they sat.  You really are crazy, Jock yelled, and put his feet up on the dashboard.  I want to go home to mother!  Now even the Landcruiser was faltering as the air trapped in the body floated her high and her spinning tires lost traction on the rock-strewn bottom.

Oh, my God!  Jock cried, as a huge up-rooted tree came hurtling down upon them out of the darkness.

It crashed into the side of the truck, hitting one of the windows, and stewing the whole chassis around.  They were hurled downstream, spinning slowly under the weight of the floating tree.  As they made one full revolution the mortal embrace of the tree mass was broken.

Released from its grip, they floated free, but they were sinking fast as the trapped air was expelled from the Landcruiser's body.  Water began to seep in, and soon they were sitting waist-deep.  I'm getting out, Jock yelled, and threw his weight against the door.  it won't budge.  He was panicking, as the pressure of water held the door tightly closed.

Then suddenly Daniel felt the wheels touch bottom again.

The flood had swept them into a bend of the river and pushed them in against the far bank.  The engine was still running.  The modified airintake pipe and filter reached up as high as the cab roof.  Daniel had installed it for just such an emergency.  In the shallows, the wheels caught at the jagged rock bottom and heaved the Landcruiser's bulk forward.  Come on, darling, Daniel pleaded.  Get us out of here.

And the sturdy truck responded.  She shuddered and bounced and tried to drag herself from the waters.  The headlights pushed through the surface and blazed out suddenly, lighting the far bank.  The flood had cast them up on the shelving mudbank and the truck canted steeply nose-up as her spinning front wheels clawed up the slope.

Ahead of them was a low spot in the riverbank.  The Landcruiser slipped and slewed and crabbed up it, the engine roaring, ferociously tearing out small bushes that had survived the flood and ploughing deep ruts in the soft earth, until suddenly her lugged tires gained full purchase and hurled her for-ward up out of the flood.  Sheets of water streamed from her bodywork like a surfacing submarine and the big diesel engine bellowed triumphantly as they roared into the mopane forest.  I'm alive, Jock whispered.  Hallelujah!  Daniel turned parallel with the riverbank, weaving the Landcruiser back and forth between the tree-trunks of the standing mopane until they bumped over the verge on to the roadway.

He kicked her out of low ratio and gunned the motor.  They sped away towards the Mana Pools turn-off.  How many more like that?

Jock asked with trepidation.  For the first time since Johnny's death Daniel smiled, but it was a grim little smile.

Only four or five, he answered.  A Sunday afternoon stroll.

Nothing to it.  He glanced at his watch.  Cheng and the refrigerator trucks had almost four hours start on them.  They must have got through the fords before the drainage of storm waters off the slope of the escarpment had flooded them.  The earth beneath the mopane trees was melted like warm chocolate by the rain.

This black cotton soil was notorious for bogging down vehicles when it was wet.  The Landcruiser slithered and laboured and left deep glutinous ruts behind the churning wheels.  Here's the next river.

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