The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 43

The driver threaded the Land-Rover deeper and deeper into the Thorn veld, and the morning light strengthened.

Outside the cab, the dawn bird chorus was in full voice.

Craig recognized the high clear duet of a pair of collate barbers in an acacia tree beside the track. A brown hare was trapped in the beam of the headlights and lolloped ahead of them with his long pink ears flapping. Then the sky began to b.u.m with the stupendous colours of the African dawn and the driver switched off the headlights.

L J.

"Craig, darling. They are going to kill us, aren't they?" Sally-Anne asked quietly. Her voice was clear and firm now. She had conquered her hysteria and was in control of herself again. She spoke as though they were alone.

"I'm sorry." Craig could find nothing else to say. "I should have known that Peter Fungabera would never let us go."

"There is nothing you could have done. Even if you had known."

"They'll bury us in some remote place and our disappearance will be blamed on the Matabele dissidents," Craig said, and Timon Nbebi sat silent and impa.s.sive, neither admitting nor denying the accusation.

The road forked, the left-hand track barely discernible, and Timon Nbebi indicated it. The driver slowed further and changed to a lower gear. They b.u.mped along it for another twenty minutes. By then it was fully light, the promise of sunrise flaming the tip tops of the acacia.

Timon Nbebi gave another order and the driver turned off the track and drove blindly through the waist-high gra.s.s, skirting the edge of a grey granite kopje, until they were entirely screened from even the rudimentary bush track that they had been following. Another short order, and the driver stopped and switched off the engine.

The silence closed in on them, enhancing their sense of isolation and remoteness.

"No one will ever finds here," Sally-Anne said quietly, and Craig could find rw word of comfort for her.

"You will remain4 here you are,"Timon Nbebi ordered.

"Don't you feel anything for what you are going to do?" Sally-Anne asked him, and he turned his head to her.

Behind the steel rimmed spectacles his eyes were perhaps shaded with misery and regret, but his mouth was set hard.

He did not reply to her question, and after a moment turned from her and alighted. He gave orders in Shana, and the troopers racked their weapons in the back of the r

Land-Rover while the driver climbed up onto the roof tack and brought down three folding trenching-tools.

Timon Nbebi reached through the window and took the keys out of the Land-Rover's engine, then he led his men a short distance away and with the toe of his boot marked out two oblongs on the sandy grey earth. The three Shonas shucked off their webbing and battle-jackets, and began to dig out the graves. They went down swiftly in the loose soil. Timon Nbebi stood aside watching them. He lit a cigarette and the grey smoke spiralled straight up in the still, cool dawn.

"I am going to try to get one of the rifles," Craig whispered. The weapons were in the back of the vehicle.

He would have to crawl over the backs of both seats, then reach the rifles which were standing upright in the racks.

He would have to open the clip on the rack, load the weapon, change the rate-of-fire selector and aim through the back window all with his hands manacled.

"You won't make it," Sally' Anne whispered.

"Probably not," he agreed grimly, "but can you think of anything else? When I say "Go", I want you to throw yourself flat on the floor." Craig wriggled around in the seat, his leg hampering him catching by the ankle on the lever of the four-wheel drive selector. He kicked it free and gathered himself. He took a slow breath, and glanced out of the rear window at the little group of grave-diggers.

"Listen," he told her urgently. "I love you. I have never loved anyone the way I love you." love you, too, my darling," she whispered back.

"Be brave!" he said.

"Good luck!" She was crouching down, and he almost in made his move, but at that moment Timon Nbebi turned towards the Land-Rover. He saw Craig twisted around in the seat, and Sally-Anne down below the sill. He frowned and came back to the vehicle with quick businesslike strides. At the open window he paused and spoke softly in English.

"Don't do it, Mr. Mellow. We are all of us in great danger. Our only chance is for you to remain still and not to interfere or make any unexpected move." He took the ignition keys from his pocket, and with his other hand loosened the flap of the webbing pistol-holster on his belt.

He kept on talking softly, J have effectively disarmed my men, and their attention is on their work. When I enter the Land-Rover, do not hamper me or try to attack me. I am in as great a dancer as you are. You must trust me. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Craig nodded. Christ! Do I have any choice, he thought.

Timon opened the driver's door of the Land' Rover and slid in under the wheel. He glanced once at the three soldiers who were by now waist-deep in the two graves, then Timon slipped the key into the ignition and turned it.

The engine turned over loudly, and the three soldiers looked up, puzzled. The starter-motor whirred and churned, and the engine would not fire. One of the troopers shouted, and jumped out of the grave. His chest was snaked with sweat and powdered with grey dust. He started towards the stranded Land' Rover Timon Nbebi pumped the accelerator, and kept turning the engine. He had a desperate, terrified look on his face, "You'll flood her, "Craig told him. "Take your foot off!" The trooper broke into a run towards them. He was shouting angry questions, and the starter went on Whirr!

Whirr! Whirr! with Timon frozen to the wheel.

The running trooper was almost alongside, and now the others, slower and less alert, began to follow him. They were shouting also, one of them swinging his trenching tool menacingly.

"Lock the door!" Craig shouted urgently, and Timon pushed down the handle into the lock position just as the trooper threw his weight on it. He heaved at the outside handle with all his weight, and then darted to the rear door and before Sally-Anne could lock it, jerked it open. He reached in and caught Sally-Anne by the upper arm and began dragging her from the open door.

Craig was still hunched around in the front seat and now he lifted both manacled hands high and brought them down on the trooper's shaven head. The sharp steel edge of the cuffs cut down to the bone of the skull, and the man collapsed half in and half out of the open door.

Craig hit him again, in the centre of the forehead, and had a brief glimpse of white bone in the bottom of the wound before quick bright blood obscured it. The other two soldiers were only paces away, baying like wolfhounds and armed with their spades.

At that moment the engine of the Land-Rover fired and roared into life. Timon Nbebi hit the gear-lever, and with a clash of metal it engaged and the Land-Rover shot forward. Craig was thrown over the seat half on top of Sally-Anne, and the bleeding trooper was caught by his dangling legs in a thorn bush and ripped out through the rear door.

The Land-Rover swerved and bucked over the rough ground, with the two screeching black soldiers running behind it, and the open door flapping and banging wildly.

Then Timon Nbebi straightened the wheel and changed gear. "Me Land-Rover accelerated away, cras.h.i.+ng over rock and fallen branches, and the pursuing troopers fell back.

One of them hurled his spade despairingly after them. It shattered the rear window, and broken gla.s.s spilled over the rear of the cab.

Timon Nbebi picked up their own incoming tracks through the high gra.s.s, and at last they were going faster than a man could run. The two troopers gave up and stood A

panting in the tracks, their shouts of recrimination and anger dwindled and then were lost. Timon reached the bush track at the point that they had left it, and turned onto it, picking up speed.

"Give me your hands," he ordered, and when Craig offered his manacled hands, Timon unlocked the cuffs.

"Here! he gave Craig the key. "Do the same for Miss Jay." j She rubbed her wrists. "My G.o.d, Craig, I truly thought that was the end of the line."

"A close, run thing," Timon Nbebi agreed, with all his attention on the track. "Napoleon said that, I think." And then, before Craig could correct him, "Please to arm yourself with one of the rifles, Mr. Mellow, and place the other beside me." Sally-Anne pa.s.sed the short, ugly weapons over to the front seat. The Third Brigade was the only unit of the regular army still armed with AK 47s, a legacy from their North Korean instructors.

"Do you know how to use it, Mr. Mellow?" Timon Nbebi asked.

was an armourer in the Rhodesian Police." iX course, how stupid of me." Swiftly Craig checked the curved "banana" magazine and then reloaded the chamber. The weapon was new and well cared for. The weight of it in Craig's hands changed his whole personality. "Iinutes before, he had been mere flotsam on the stream, "06wept along by events over which he had no control, confused and uncertain and afraid but now he was armed. Now he could fight back, now he could protect his woman and himself, now he could shape events rather than be shaped by them. It was the primeval, atavistic instinct of primitive man, and Craig revelled in it. He reached over the seat and took Sally-Anne's hand.

He squeezed it briefly, and fervently she returned the pressure.

"Now we have a fighting chance, at least." The new tone of his voice reached her. Her spirits lifted a little, and she gave him the first smile he had seen that night. He freed his hand, found the bottle of cane spirit in the cubbyhole, and pa.s.sed it to her. After she had drunk, he gave it to Timon Nbebi.

"All right, Captain, what the h.e.l.l is going on here?" Timon gasped at the sting of the liquor and his voice was roughened by it as he replied.