A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 185

Sean smelled Renamo before he saw them, an odor of stale native tobacco smoke and dried sweat in unwashed clothing. He froze, listening and staring ahead with all his soul concentrated on it.

A little ahead of him in the darkness, a man coughed softly and cleared his throat, and Sean placed him accurately. He sank down and touched the earth, sweeping a clear spot with his fingertips for his next footstep, so no twig or dry leaf would betray him. One step at a time he moved forward until he had the Renamols head silhouetted against the starry sky. He was sitting behind an RPD machine gun on its bipod, staring out across the river.

Sean waited and the minutes drew out, five, then ten, each one a sep orate age. Then someone else yawned and stretched out on the left flank, and immediately an angry whisper cautioned him to silence.

"Three of them." Sean memorized each position and then withdrew as quietly and cautiously as he had come in.

On the edge of the forest Alphonso was waiting for him, and minutes later Matatu crept back to join them.

"Three," Alphonso whispered.

"Yes, three," Sean agreed.

"Four," Matatu contradicted them both. "There is another one just below the bank." h4latu missed nothing, and Sean accepted his estimate without reservation.

Only four Renamain the ambush. Sean was relieved. He had expected more, but China must be spreading his men thinly to cover every path and every ford of the river.

"No noise," Sean warned them. "One shot and we'll have the entire army doing a war dance on our backs. Matatu, you take the one you found below the bank. Alphonso, the one in the reeds who spoke. I'll take the two in the center." He slipped the wire bangle off his left wrist and unrolled it, once more stretching and testing it between his hands to get the feel of it.

"Wait until you hear my man blow before you strike yours." He reached out and lightly touched their shoulders, the ritual benediction, then they separated and drifted away into the night, back toward the river.

The machine gunner was exactly where Sean had left him, but as Sean moved in behind him a few scattered clouds obscured the stars, and Sean had to wait for them to clear. Every second's delay J increased the chance of discovery, and he was tempted to work only by sense of touch, but he restrained himself. As the sky cleared he was glad he had done so. The sentry had removed his cap and was scratching the back of his head; that raised hand would have blocked the wire and prevented a clean kill. There would have been a scream, gunshots, and every Renamo within miles would have come down on him.

He waited while the sentry relieved his itch and readjusted his cap. Then, as he dropped his hands, Sean reached forward and looped the wire noose around his throat in one swift wrap. In the same movement he hauled back with the full strength of both his arms and shot his right knee between the man's shoulder blades.

The wire sliced through flesh and windpipe as though they were Cheddar cheese. Sean felt the momentary check as the wire came up hard against the vertebrae of the neck, but he sawed with both hands, keeping all his weight on the wire, pushing with his knee.

The wire found the gap between the vertebrae and snicked clearly through it. The man's head fell forward and tumbled into his lap, and the man blew. The air from his lungs rushed out through the open windpipe in a soft sigh. It was the sound he had told Matatu and Alphonso to wait for. He knew they would be taking their victims at this moment, but there was no sound until the man Sean had killed flopped forward and his carotid artery discharged onto the earth with a regular hiss like milk from the teat jetting into a bucket under a milkmaid's practiced fingers.

The sound alerted the fourth Renamo, the only one still alive, and he called out in a puzzled tone, "What is it, Alves? What are you doing?"

The question guided Sean to him, and he had the knife out of its sheath, holding it underhand so the point went up at an acute angle under the man's fibs. Sean pinned Win down with his left hand, holding his throat closed to prevent him screaming, working the knife with his other hand, opening the wound, twisting and turning the blade with all the strength of his right wrist.

In thirty seconds it was over. The last tremors shook the body beneath him, and Sean released him and stood up. Matatu was already beside him, his skinning knife at the ready. The knife and his hands were wet. His own work was done and he had come to help Sean, but it was not necessary.

They waited for a full minute, listening for any alarm; perhaps there was another sentry even Matatu might have overlooked, but apart from the croaking of the frogs in the reed beds and the whine of mosquitoes there was no sound.

"Search them," Sean ordered. "Take whatever we can use."

One of the rifles, all of the ammunition, half a dozen grenades, spare clothing, all the food. They gathered it up swiftly.

"That's it," Sean said. "Dump the rest of it." They dragged the bodies down the bank and pushed them out into the current, then dropped the heavy machine gun and the rest of the discarded equipment into the deep water beyond the reeds.

Sean glanced at his watch. "We are running out of time. We must bring the others across."

Claudia, Miriam, and the children were still in the reed beds on the south bank where they had left them.

"What happened? We didn't hear anything." Claudia hugged Sean's naked wet chest with relief.

"Nothing to hear," Sean told her, and picked up the sleeping children, one on each arm.

They formed a human stanchion across the current, locking arms together, bracing each other against the heavy pull of the water that was as deep as Claudia's chin. Without this support the women would have been swept away. Even with it the crossing was arduous, and they dragged themselves onto the south bank near exhaustion.