The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 39

"Only military permit-holders allowed to pa.s.s."

"I have to get into town."

AOINE.

"Not today," the man shook his head. "Bulawayo is not a good place to be today." As if to confirm this, there was a faint popping sound from the direction of the town. It sounded like green twigs in a fire, and the hair on Craig's forearms lifted instinctively. He knew that sound so well, and it brought nightmarish memories from the war days crowding back. It was the sound of distant automatic rifle-fire.

"Go back home, mambo," said the sergeant in a kindly tone. "This is not your indaba any more." Suddenly Craig was very anxious to get the truckload of his people safely back to King's Lynn.

He ran back to the Land-Rover, and swung it out of the line of parked vehicles in a hard 180-degree turn.

"What is it, Craig?"

"I think it has started," he told her grimly, and thrust the accelerator flat to the floorboards.

They met the King's Lynn truck barrelling merrily along towards them, the women singing and clapping, their dresses fluttering brightly in the wind. Craig flagged them down, and jumped up onto the running, board Shadrach, in the cast-off grey suit that Craig had given him, was sitting up in his place of honour beside the driver.

"Turn around," Craig ordered. "Go back to Kingi Lingi.

There is big trouble. n.o.body must leave Kingi Lingi until it is over."

"Is it the Mashona. sol dit rs "Yes," Craig told h rif "The Third Brigade."

"Jackals and sons of dung-eating jackals," said Shadrach, and spat out of the open window.

o say that thousands of innocent persons have been killed by the state security forces is a nonsense-" The Zimbabwean minister of justice looked likea successful stockbroker in his dark suit and white s.h.i.+rt. He smiled blandly out of the television screen, his face s.h.i.+ning with a light sheen of sweat from the brute arc lamps which only enhanced the coaly blackness of his skin. "One or two civilians have been killed in the crossfire between the security forces and the outlaw Matebele dissidents but thousands! Ha, ha, ha!" he chuckled jovially. "If thousands have been killed, then I wish somebody would show me the bodies I know nothing about them."

"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 censors.h.i.+p, 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 ma.s.sacre 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 gra.s.shoppers 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.

"Stay here," he ordered. "Get your shoes on and be ready to run. I'll be back in a minute." He rolled under the window to the wall, and came to his feet. The bedroom door was unlocked and he darted into the pa.s.sage. He wasted ten seconds on the telephone J. he knew they would have cut the wires, and that was confirmed immediately by the dead echoless void in the earpiece. He dropped it dangling on the cord and ran through to the kitchens.

Hi There was only one diversion he could think of light.

I!;.

He hit the remote-control switch of the diesel generator, and there was the faint ripple of sound from the engine room across the yard and the overhead bulbs glowed yellow and then flared into full brilliance. He tore open the fuse box above the control-board, tripped out the house-lights, and then switched on the veranda and front garden lights.

h That would leave the back of the house in darkness. They would make their break that way, he decided, and it would have to be quick. The attackers hadn't hit the house yet, but they could only be seconds away.

He ran back out of the kitchen, paused at the door of the lounge, and glanced through it to check the lighting in the front garden and veranda. The lawns were a peculiarly lush green in the artificial light, the jacaranda trees domed over them like the roof of a cathedral. The firing had ceased, but down near the labourers" village a woman was keening, that doleful sound of African mourning- It made his skin creep.

Craig knew that they would be coming up the hill already, and he was turning away to go back to Sally-Anne when he caught the flicker of movement at the edge of the light and he narrowed his eyes and tried to identify it. To know who was attacking would give him some small advantage, but he was wasting precious seconds.

The movement was a running man, coming up towards the house. A black man, naked no, he was wearing a loin-cloth. Not really running, but staggering and weaving !I! drunkenly. In the veranda lights half his body glinted as I.4 though it had been freshly oiled, and then Craig realized R that it was blood. The man was painted with his own blood, and it was falling in scattered drops from him like water from the coat of a retriever when it comes ash.o.r.e with the duck in its jaws.