The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 136

• Предыдущая
• 136/183
• Следующая

"Do not move," screeched the loudhailers. "Stay where you are."

In the darkness under the spathodea trees Colonel Roland Ballantyne took the unit reports as they came in. With each negative show, his frustration increased. Their information had been good and the scent hot. It was a scent he had followed often before. Comrade Tebe was one of their prime targets. He was a ZIPRA commissar who had been operating within, Matabeleland for almost seven months now. They had been as close to him as this on three other occasions. It always seemed to be the same. The tip from one of the informers or from a member of the Scouts operating under civilian cover. Tebe was in such and such a tide. They would move up silently and surround it, methodically closing every bolt-hole. Then in the darkness and bleakest hour of the night they would go in and sweep. Once they had taken two of his lieutenants, but Tebe was not with them. The regimental sergeant-major of the Scouts, Esau Gondele, had questioned the two terrorists while Roland watched. By dawn neither of them were able to stand up any longer but they had not spoken.

"Use the chopper," Roland ordered.

They hovered at two thousand feet while Sergeant-Major Gondele hung the most defiant terrorist from the belly hatch, holding him by the webbing belt looped under his armpits.

"Tell me, MY friend, where we will find your Comrade Tebe." The man twisted his head up sideways and tried to spit at Esau Gondele, but the down-draught of the spinning rotors had blown his spittle away.

The sergeant-major had glanced at Roland, and when he nodded, opened his fist. The terrorist had fallen two thousand feet, turning slowly end over end. Perhaps he was past screaming or perhaps it was his final defiance, but he was utterly silent during the drop.

Sergeant-Major Gondele had reached for the second terrorist and looped a webbing under his armpits. As he lowered him out of the hatch, his bound feet dangling two thousand feet above the golden Matabele grasslands, the man had looked up and said, "I will tell you."

However, they had held out for just thirty minutes too long. When the Scouts hit the safe house in Hillside Location, Comrade Tebe had moved again.

Roland Ballantyne's frustration was corrosive. The week before, Comrade Tebe had left an explosive device in a supermarket chariot. It had killed seven people, all of them female, two of them under ten years of age. Roland wanted him very badly, so badly that when he realized that once again he had escaped, a kind of heavy black feeling closed down over half his mind.

"Bring the informer," he ordered, and Esau Gondele spoke softly into the portable radio. Within minutes they heard the Land-Rover coming up the hill, and its headlights flickered-through the trees of the forest.

"All right, Sergeant-Major. Get these people lined up." There were sixty or so of them lined up along the verge of the road in front of the long row of staff cottages. The searchlights trapped them in a stark and merciless glare. Colonel Roland Ballantyne vaulted up onto the back of the Land-Rover and held the bull-horn to his lips. He spoke in perfect colloquial Sindebele.

"The evil ones have been amongst you. They have left the stink of death on this village. They have come here to plan destruction, to kill and cripple you and your children. You should have come to us that we might protect you. Because you were afraid to ask for our help, you have brought even greater hardship upon yourselves." The long line of black people, men and women and children still in their night-clothes, stood stolidly and stoically as cattle in the crush.

They were caught between the millstones of the guerrillas on one side and the security forces on the other. They stood in the white searchlights and listened.

"The government is your father. Like a good father it seeks to protect its children. However, there are stupid children amongst you.

Those who conspire with the evil ones, those who feed them and give them news and warn them when we come. We know these things. We know who warned them." At Roland's feet, sitting on the cross-bench of the Lan dRover was a human figure. It was draped from head to foot in a single sheet of cloth so that it was impossible to tell whether it was a man or a woman. There were eye-holes cut in the hood of the cloth.

"We will now smell out the evil ones amongst you, those who give comfort to the dead-bringers," Roland told them. The Land-Rover rolled slowly along the line of villagers, and as it drew level with each man or woman, the soldier shone his flashlight into the person's face at a range of only a few feet. In the open back of the vehicle, the mysteriously robed and masked figure stared out of the eye-holes in the sheet. The dark eyes gleamed in the reflected light of the flashlight as they examined each face.

The veiled informer sat un movingly as the Land-rover came on at a walking pace down towards where Samson and Constance supported the old man between them.

Without moving his lips, Samson asked her, "Is it safe, do they know" you?" "I do not know, "she answered him.

"What can we do-" but by that time-the Land-Rover was drawing level with where they stood, and- Constance did not have time to reply.

In the rear of the vehicle, the masked figure moved for the first time. A long black arm shot out from under the sheet, and pointed directly into Constance's upturned face. Not a word was spoken, but two of the camouflaged Scouts stepped out of the darkness behind her and seized her arms.

"Constance!" Samson ran forward and reached for her. A rifle-butt smashed into his back at the level of his kidneys and flaming agony tore up his spine and burst against the roof of his skull. He dropped to his knees.

Pain distorted his vision, and the flashlight shone into his face, blinding him. He pushed himself upright with a violent effort, but found that the muzzle of an FN rifle was pressed into his stomach.

"We don't want you, my friend. Do not interfere in what does not concern you." The Scouts were leading Constance away. She went docilely. She seemed very small and helpless between the two tall soldiers in full battle-dress. She turned and looked back at Samson.

• Предыдущая
• 136/183
• Следующая