The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 164

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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." Standing 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 sidearm 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 tree trunks 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 kilo metre 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 middleaged woman. She lay on her back with no visible injury.

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