A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 159

Sean waited a few moments longer, then turned abruptly and ducked out through the entrance. Only after he was gone did China lift his head and smile after him, a gloating little smile which, if Sean had seen it, would have answered his question.

Alphonso's men had worked quickly. The fiberglass stretcher was one of those lightweight body-molded types used by mountain rescue teams. Nonetheless it would require four men to carry it over rough ground, and they had a long, hard path to the border.

"Less than a hundred kilometers and not that hard," Sean reassured himself. "Two days, if we push it."

Claudia greeted him with relief. "Job seems stronger. He was conscious, asking for you. He said something about a hill. Hill Thirty-one?"

Sean flickered a smile. "That's where we met. He's wandering a little. Help me to get him onto the stretcher."

Between them they lifted Job gently and settled him onto the stretcher. Sean rigged the drip set on a wire frame above his head and tucked looted gray woolen blankets around him.

"Matatu," he said as he stood up. "Take us home." And he gestured to the first team of stretcher bearers to take their positions.

It was less than two hours since sunrise, but they seemed to have lived an entire lifetime in that short period, Sean thought as he glanced back at the hilltop laager. Streamers of smoke drifted from its crest, and the last column of General China's porters was disappearing into the forest below it, all heavily laden with booty.

The distant sounds of battle had finally dwindled into silence.

The halfhearted Frefirno counterattack had long since fizzled out, and China was withdrawing his forces into the bad ground below the Pungwe River.

As Sean watched, the captured Hind helicopter rose slowly out ng above the hill on its glistening rotor;

0 1 em , then abrul i [y it dipped toward them, the sound of its engine crescendoc 1, and suddenly Sean was staring into the multiple mouths of the Gatling cannon in its nose.

As it raced toward him, he recognized China's face behind the armored glass canopy. He was perched in the flight engineer's seat, at the controls of the 12.7-men cannon. Sean saw the barrels of the cannon swing slightly, coming on to aim. The Hind was only fifty feet above them, so close he could see China's teeth flash in his dark face as he smiled.

Their little column had not reached the edge of the forest. There was no cover, no protection from the blast of that terrible weapon, and instinctively Sean reached out and drew Claudia to him, trying to shield her with his own body.

Above them General China lifted his right hand in an ironic salute, and the Hind banked steeply away into the northwest, dwindled swiftly to a speck, and was gone. They all stared after it silently, seized by a sense of anticlimax, until Sean broke the spell.

"Let's go, brethren!" And once again the stretcher bearers started forward at an easy jog trot, very softly singing one of the ancient marching songs.

Scouting ahead of them, Matatu came across a few scattered parties of Frehmo assault troops, but they were all in headlong retreat from the river wilderness. After the loss of their air support the Frefirno offensive seemed to have collapsed completely and the situation was fluid and confused. Although they were forced to detour further northward than Sean had planned, Matatu steered them out of contact with any Frelimo and the stretcher bearers were rotated regularly so they made swift progress.

At nightfall they stopped to cat and rest. Alphonso made the scheduled radio contact with Renamo headquarters and gave them a position report. He received only a laconic acknowledgement without change of orders. They feasted on canned goods looted from the Russian stores and smoked the perfumed Balkan tobacco in yellow cigarette paper with hollow cardboard filters.

Job was conscious again and complained in a husky whisper, "There is a lion gnawing on my shoulder." Sean injected an ampule of morphine into Rob's drip set, and it eased him so he was even able to eat a fe mouthfuls of the bland-tasting tinned meat.

However, his thirst was far greater than his hunger, and Sean held his head and helped him get down two full mugs of the surprisingly good Russian coffee.

Sean and Claudia sat beside the fitter and waited for the moon in through the Honde Valley again." Sean to rise. "We are going told Job. "Once we get you to Saint Mary's Mission you'll be fine.

One of the Catholic fathers is a doctor, and I'll be able to sen a message to my brother Garry in Johannesburg. I'll ask him to send the company jet to Urntafi. We'll fly you into Johannesburg General Hospital before you know what's hit you, mate. There you'll get the best medical attention in the world."

When the moon rose, they went on. It was almost midnight before Sean called a halt for the night. He made a mattress of cut grass beside Job's litter, and as Claudia drifted off to sleep in his arms, he whispered to her, "Tomorrow night I'll give you a hot bath and put you between clean sheets."

Promise?" she sighed.

"Cross my heart."

From deeply ingrained habit, he woke an hour before first light and went to rouse the sentries for dawn standby. Alphonso threw aside his blanket, stood up, and fell in beside him. When they had made the sentry round, they paused on the edge of the camp and Alphonso offered him one of the Russian cigarettes. They smoked from cupped hands, shielding the glow of burning tobacco.

"What you told me about South Africa, is it true?" Alphonso asked unexpectedly.

J "What did I tell you?"

"That men, even black men, eat meat every day?"

Sean smiled in the darkness, amused by Alphonso's concept of paradise, a place where a man could eat meat every day. "Sometimes they get so sick of eating beef," he teased, "that they try chicken and lamb just for a change."