Authors: Wilbur Smith
Once she had the fire ready, she had laid the plastic lighter
beside it, and fallen back to rest. Almost immediately the night
cold struck through her thin clothing and she began to shiver
uncontrollably. It required an enormous effort of will to force
herself to move again, but she started back towards the shattered
tail-section of the Viscount. It was still just light enough to
make out the trail of devastation that the main forward-section
of the aircraft had smashed through the forest.
There were pieces of metal and burst luggage and bodies
littered down this dreadful pathway, although the main wreckage,
carried on by its own weight, was not in sight from where she
lay.
Once again Janine called, ‘Is anybody there, is anybody
else alive?’ But the night was silent. She dragged herself
on.
The lighter tail-section in which Janine had been seated must
have struck one of the larger trees as the fuselage broadsided,
and it had been sheered off neatly. The whiplash of impact had
broken the necks of the passengers around her – only the
fact that Janine had been leaning forward with her face pressed
into her lap had saved her.
Janine reached the severed tail end, and raised herself to
peer in, avoiding looking at the body of the teenage girl which
still hung upside-down from her inverted seat. The storage
cupboards forward of the aircraft’s galley had broken open
and in the gloom she could make out a treasure-house of blankets
and canned food and drink. She dragged herself inchingly towards
it. The feel of a woollen blanket around her shoulders was a
blessed boon, and then thirstily she drank two cans of bitter
lemon before searching further through the spilled and jumbled
contents of the storage cupboard.
She found the first-aid kit and splinted and strapped her leg
as best she could. The relief was immediate. There were
disposable syringes and a dozen ampoules of morphine in the kit.
The prospect of a surcease from agony was an acute temptation,
but she knew it would dull her and inactivity or the inability to
respond swiftly would be mortally dangerous in the long hours of
darkness that lay ahead. She was still playing with the
temptation when she heard the helicopter again.
It was coming swiftly towards her – she dropped the
syringe and lunged clumsily towards the gaping hole in the
fuselage. She tumbled out onto the dusty earth, a fall of almost
three feet, and the pain of her leg anchored her for seconds.
Then, through it, she heard the whistle and throbbing beat of the
helicopter coming towards her.
She clawed her fingers into the earth, and bit into her bottom
lip until she tasted blood in her mouth to subdue the pain as she
dragged herself towards the pile of kindling. By the time she
reached it, the helicopter engine was a vast roaring in her head,
and the sky above the forest was lightening with a bluish-white
glow. She flicked the plastic lighter, and held the tiny flame to
the dried grass. It flared up swiftly.
She lifted her face to the sky and in the light of the fire
and the growing glare of the landing-lights, her cheeks were
smeared with dust and dried blood from the cut in her scalp, and
wet with the new tears of mingled agony and hope that slid from
under her swollen eyelids.
‘Please,’ she prayed. ‘Oh sweet merciful
God, please let them see me.’
The landing-lights grew stronger, dazzling, blinding –
and then suddenly went out. Darkness struck her like a club. The
sound of the helicopter passed over her, and she felt the
buffeting down-draught of air from the rotors. For a brief
instant she saw the black shark-like shape of it silhouetted
against the stars – and then it was gone, and the sound of
the spinning rotors sank swiftly into silence.
In that silence she heard her own wild shrieks of despair.
‘Come back! You can’t leave me! Please come
back!’
She recognized the hysteria in her own voice, and thrust her
fist into her mouth to gag it, but still the savage
uncontrollable sobs racked her whole body, and the coldness of
the night was made unbearable by the icy grip that despair had
upon her.
She crawled closer to the fire. She had been able to gather
only a few handfuls of twigs. It would not last long, but the
cheerful yellow and orange flames gave her a brief warmth and a
moment of comfort in which to regain control. She gave one last
choking gasping sob and bit down upon it. She closed her eyes and
counted slowly to ten, and felt herself steadying.
She opened her eyes, and across the fire from her, at the
level of her own eyes, she saw a pair of canvas jungle boots.
Slowly, she lifted her eyes and shaded them from the fire with
one hand. She made out the form of a man, a tall man, and the
flickering light of the fire lit his face. He was looking down at
her with an expression she could not fathom, perhaps it was
compassion.
‘Oh, thank you, God,’ Janine whispered. ‘Oh,
thank you.’ She began to drag herself towards the man.
‘Help me,’ she croaked. ‘My leg is broken
– please help me.’
S
tanding on the
peak of the kopje, Tungata Zebiwe watched the stricken aircraft
tumble down the sky like a high-flying duck hit by shot. He threw
the empty rocket-launcher aside, and he lifted both hands above
his head, fists clenched, and shook them in triumph to the
heavens.
‘It is done,’ he roared, ‘they are
dead!’ His face was swollen with the raging blood of the
berserker, and his eyes were smoky like the glow of slag upon the
tip, when it comes red-hot from the blast furnace.
Behind him his men shook their weapons above their heads,
caught up like Tungata in the divine killing madness of the
victors, the atavistic instinct come down from their forefathers
who had formed the fighting bull, and raced in on the horns to
the stabbing.
As they watched, the Viscount fell towards the forest top, and
then at the very last moment it seemed to check. The nose of the
tiny silver machine came up out of its death dive, and for a
fleeting few seconds it seemed to fly parallel with the earth,
but still sinking fast. Then it touched the tree-tops, and was
instantly snatched from view, but the crash site was so close
that Tungata had been able to hear, if only very faintly, the
shattering impact of metal against trees and earth.
‘Mark it!’ Tungata sobered. ‘Comrade, the
hand-bearing compass! Get a fix on it!’ He re-measured the
distance with his eye. ‘About six miles, we can be there by
dark.’
They moved out from the base of the kopje in their running
formation, in the haft and spearhead, the flanks covering the
bearers of the heavy equipment and the point breaking trail and
clearing for ambush. They moved fast, at a pace just below a
jog-trot that would carry them seven kilometres to the hour.
Tungata was running the point himself, and every fifteen minutes
he halted and went down on one knee to check the bearing on the
hand-compass. Then he was up, and with an overhead pump of his
fist signalled the advance. They went on, swiftly and
relentlessly.
As the light started to fade, they heard the helicopter, and
Tungata gave the side-arm cut-out signal that dropped them into
cover. The helicopter passed a mile to the east, and he got them
up and took them on for ten minutes more, before stopping
again.
He brought in his wing-men, and told them quietly, ‘We
are here, the machine is lying within a few hundred metres of
us.’
They looked around them at the forest, the tall twisted
columns of treetrunks seemed to reach as high as the darkening
heaven. Through a chink in the leafy roof of the forest the
evening star was a bright white prick of light.
‘We will go into extended line,’ Tungata told
them, ‘and sweep along the line of bearing.’
‘Comrade Commissar, if we stay too late, we will not be
able to reach the river tomorrow. The
kanka
will be here
at first light,’ one of his men pointed out
diffidently.
‘We will find the wreck,’ Tungata said. ‘Do
not even think otherwise. That is why we have done this. To lay a
trail for the
kanka
to follow. Now let us begin the
search.’
They moved like grey wolves through the forest, Tungata
keeping them in line and on direction with a code of
bird-whistles like those of a nightjar. They went southwards for
twenty minutes by his watch, and then he pivoted his line, and
they went back, moving silently, bowed under their packs, but
with the AK 47 rifles held at high port across their chests.
Twice more Tungata pivoted his line, and they searched back
and forth, and the minutes drained away. It was past nine
o’clock, there was a limit to how much longer he dared
remain in the area of the wreck. His man had been right. First
light would bring the avengers swarming out of the skies.
‘One hour more,’ he told himself aloud. ‘We
will search one hour more.’ Yet he knew that to leave
without laying a hot scent for the jackals to follow was to
abandon the most important part of the operation. He had to
entice Ballantyne and his
kanka
to the killing ground that
he had chosen so carefully. He had to find the wreck, and leave
something there for the
kanka
that would madden them, that
would bring them rushing after him without regard to any of the
consequences.
He heard the helicopter then, still far off, but coming back
swiftly. Then he saw the glow of its landing-lights on the
tree-tops, and he gave the signal to put his line into cover. The
helicopter passed within half a kilometre of where they lay. Its
glaring eye confused and jumbled up the shadows beneath the
trees, making them run across the forest floor like ghostly
fugitives.
Abruptly the light was quenched, but the memory of it left a
hot red spot on the retina of Tungata’s eyeballs. They
listened to the engine beat dwindle, and then Tungata whistled
his men to their feet, and they went forward once more. Within
two hundred paces Tungata stopped again, and sniffed the dank
cold air of the forest.
Wood smoke! His heart jumped against his ribs, and he gave the
soft warbling bird-call that presaged danger. He slipped out of
the shoulder-straps of his heavy backpack and lowered it gently
to earth. Then the line went forward again, moving lightly and
silently. Ahead of Tungata something large and pale loomed from
the darkness. He flicked his flashlight on. It was the
nose-section of the Viscount, the wings sheared off it, the
fuselage shattered. It lay on its side, so that he could flash
his beam through the windscreen into the cockpit. The dead crew
were still strapped into their seats. Their faces were bloodless
pale, their eyes staring and glassy.
The line of guerrillas moved on quickly down the swath that
the machine had hacked from the forest for itself. It was strewn
with wreckage and debris, with clothing from the burst
luggage-hold, with books and newspapers that fluttered aimlessly
in the small night breeze. In the litter, the corpses seemed
strangely peaceful and relaxed. Tungata turned his flashlight
into the face of a grey-haired middle-aged woman. She lay on her
back with no visible injury. Her skirts were tucked modestly down
below her knees, and her hands relaxed at her sides. However, her
false teeth had been flung from her mouth and it gave her the
look of an ancient crone.
He passed her and went on. His men were stopping every few
paces to hunt swiftly through the clothing of the dead, or to
examine an abandoned handbag or briefcase. Tungata wanted a live
one. He needed a live one, and the dead were scattered all about
him.
‘The smoke,’ he whispered. ‘I smelled
smoke.’
And then ahead of him, at the very edge of the forest line, he
saw a pretty little flower of flame, flickering and wavering in
the gentle movement of air. He changed his grip on the rifle and
slipped the selector onto semi-automatic fire. From the shadows
he searched the area around the fire carefully and then stepped
up to it. His jungle boots made no sound.
There was a woman lying beside the fire. She wore a thin
yellow skirt, but it was stained with blood and dirt. The woman
lay with her face in her arm. Her whole body was racked with
gasping sobs. Her one leg below the skirt was roughly bound up
with wooden splints and field bandages. Slowly she raised her
head. In the feeble firelight her eyes were dark as those of a
skull, and the pale skin, like her clothing, was smeared with
blood and dirt. She raised her head very slowly until she was
looking up at him, and then words came tumbling out of her
swollen lips.
‘Oh, thank you, God,’ she blurted, and began to
crawl towards Tungata, the leg slithering along behind her.
‘Oh, thank you. Help me!’ Her voice was so hoarse and
broken that he could barely understand the words. ‘My leg
is broken – please help me!’ She reached out and
clasped his ankle.
‘Please,’ she blubbered, and he squatted down
beside her.
‘What is your name?’ he asked very gently, and his
tone touched her, but she could not think – could not even
remember her own name.
He started to stand, but she reached out in dreadful fear of
being left alone again. She seized his hand.
‘Don’t go, please! My name – I’m
Janine Ballantyne.’
He patted her hand, almost tenderly, and he smiled. The
quality of that smile warned her. It was savagely, joyfully
triumphant. She snatched her hand away and pushed herself to her
knees. She looked wildly about her. Then she saw the other dark
figures that crowded out of the night around her. She saw their
faces, the white gleam of teeth as they grinned down at her. She
saw the guns in their hands and the glittering stare in their
eyes.
‘You,’ she gasped. ‘It’s
you!’
‘Yes, Mrs Ballantyne,’ Tungata said softly.
‘It is us.’
He stood up and spoke to the men about him. ‘I give her
to you. She is yours. Use her – but do not kill her. On
your own lives, do not kill her – I want to leave her here
alive.’