A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 147

The ground crews would be completing the refueling and rearming, and the flying crews would be going aboard.

Sean had to judge it exactly; the light must be just right. The Hinds would probably not use landing lights, and the missile gunners must be able to see them clearly against the dawn.

The light bloomed swiftly. Sean closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten before he opened them again. Now he could make out the stark outline of the crest of the hill, like a cutout in black cardboard. The lacework of the msasa trees stood out against the purple sky, swaying gracefully in the dawn breeze.

"Shoot!" he said, and tapped the shoulder of the mortar man beside him. The trooper leaned forward, holding the mortar bomb in both hands, and dropped it into the mouth of the mortar tube.

The charge in the tail ignited and with a polite pop hurled the signal bomb five hundred feet into the sky above the hilltop. It exploded in a twinkling red flare of lights.

Claudia Monterro followed Job down off the ridge, keeping close enough behind him she need only reach out her hand to touch him.

Job carried one of the missile launchers across his shoulders, and behind Claudia the number two of their team was bowed beneath the weight of the spare rocket tubes.

The footing was loose and dangerous, while quartz pebbles as treacherous as hall bearings rolled under foot. It pleased her that she was as steady and surefooted as any of them over this difficult ground.

Nevertheless she was sweating in the night chill as they reached the bottom of the slope and crept forward toward the perimeter of the laager. Only a few short weeks ago she would have felt inept and awkward in these circumstances, but now she oriented herself by the beacon of the evening star above the hilltop and responded instantly to Job's signals, picking her footfalls and anti tracking almost instinctively.

They reached the dense copse of trees that was their attack position and crept in among them. Claudia helped Job set up the Stinger ready for firing, then found herself a comfortable perch at the base of one of the trees to wait out the night.

Job left her there with just the Shangane number two loader for company and disappeared into the darkness like a hunting leopard. She was unhappy to see him go, but not long ago she would have been panic-stricken. She realized how much self-reliance and to learn in these last few weeks.

fortitude she had been forced "Papa will be proud of me," she smiled to herself, using the future tense as though her father still existed. "Of course he does," she assured herself. "He's still out there somewhere, looking out for me. How else would I have made it this far9l" His memory was a comfort, and as she thought about him he became confused in her mind with Sean, so that they seemed to merge into a single entity as though her father had somehow achieved a new existence in her lover. It was a good feeling that alleviated her loneliness, until suddenly Job returned as silently and abruptly as he had left.

"All the other sections are in position," he whispered, settling down beside her. "But it's going to be a long night. Try and get some sleep."

"I'll never be able to sleep," she answered, keeping her voice so low he had to lean close to her to catch the words. "Tell me about Sean Courtney. I want to know everything you know about him."

has' Sometimes he's a hero, and sometimes he's a complete tard." Job thought about it. "But most of the time he's something in between."

"Then why have you stayed with him so lone."

"He's my friend," Job answered simply. Then, slowly and haltingly, he began to tell her about Sean, and they talked the night away.

Claudia listened avidly, encouraging him with quiet questions.

"He was married, wasn't he, Job?"

"Why did he leave his home?

I have heard that his family is enormously wealthy. Why did he choose this life?"

So the night passed, and in those hours they became friends. He was the first true friend she had found in Africa, and in the end he autiful deep African voice, "I shall miss him said to her in that be I can tell."

more than the two of you are parting, and that isn't

"You speak as thoMgh so. It will be the same."

"No," Job denied. "It will never be the same. He will go with you now. Our time together has ended. Yours is begkming."

"Don't hate me for it, Job." She reached out to touch his arm in appeal. good together," he said. "I think your journey

"You two will be with him win be as good as mine has been. My thoughts will go with you, and I wish you both great joy in each other."

"Thank you, Job," she whispered. "You will always our friend."

Job lifted his arm and with fingers spread held his open hand against the dawn.

"The time of the horns," he murmured softly. "Soon now." And as he said it, a flower of bright crimson fire burst open in the sky above the hill.

As the signal flare burst in the dawn sky, the battle was born. Sean always thought of it as the birth of a living thing, a monster that he could only try to direct but that had a life and a will of its own, a terrible thing that swept them all up and carried them along willy-nilly.

He had placed the RPG-7 rocket launchers in the hands of his two best remaining gunners, but the expert marksmen had all gone to man the Stingers. The first rocket flew low, striking the earth twenty feet in front of the nearest fuel tanker; it burst in a vivid yellow flash, and Sean saw one of the Frefirno sentries cartwheel into the air. The second rocket was high, missing the tanker by six feet, reaching the top of its trajectory five hundred yards out, then dropping into the forest beyond, its detonation screened by trees and scrub.