The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 165

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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." Two of the men stepped forward and seized Janine's wrists. They dragged her away from the fire, behind the tail-section of the wreckage. The other comrades laid down their rifles and followed them. They were laughing and bickering quietly over the order of preference and beginning to loosen their clothing.

At first the screams from the darkness were so shrill and harrowing that Tungata turned away and squatted over the fire, feeding it with twigs to distract himself, but very soon there were no more screams, only the soft sound of sobbing, and the occasional sharper cry immediately muffled.

It went on for a long time, and Tungata's early disquiet was submerged and controlled. There was no passion or lust in this thing.

It was an act of violence, of extreme provocation to a deadly enemy, an act Of war, without guilt or compassion, and Tungata was a warrior.

One by one his men came back to the fire, adjusting their clothing. Strangely, they were subdued and stony-faced.

"Is it over?" Tungata looked up, and one of them stiffed and half rose," looking enquiringly at Tungata. Tungata nodded.

"Be quick then," he said. "It is only seven hours to first light." Not all of them went back behind the wreckage, but when they were ready to move out, Tungata did so. Ballantyne's woman's naked white body was curled in the foetal position. She had chewed her lips until they were raw meat, and she blubbered softly and monotonously through them.

Tungata squatted beside her and took her face in his hands and twisted it up until he could look into her eyes. He shone his flashlight into them. They were the eyes of a wounded and terrified animal, perhaps she had already crossed over the line between sanity and madness. He could not be certain, so he spoke slowly as though to a retarded child.

"Tell them my name is Tungata Zebiwe, the Seeker after what has been Stolen the Seeker after Justice, after Vengeance," he said, and he stood up.

She tried to roll away from him, but pain stopped her and as she covered her groin with both hands he saw the thin spurt of fresh blood from between her fingers. He turned from her and picked up her stained yellow skirt from where it had been tossed over a bush. As he strode back to the fire, he stuffed the skirt into his pocket.

Eungela!" he said. "All right, it is done. Move out!" t midnight the pilot yelled across at Roland Ballantyne. "We are almost out of fuel, we must go back. They have a tanker waiting for us on the apron." For a few moments Roland did not seem to understand. In the greenish reflection of the instrument panel his face was expressionless, but his mouth was a thin cruel slash and his eyes were terrible.

"Go quickly, "he said. "And get back here quickly." On the tarmac the Scouts" own doctor, Paul Henderson, was waiting to take over from the GP that Roland had picked up at Victoria Falls. Once he was aboard, Roland led Sergeant-Major Gondele a little apart from the other troopers.

"If only we could know which way the bastards are headed," he murmured. "Are they going south, or are they heading back for the river? Are they going to try the drifts and if so, which one?" Esau Gondele recognized in him the need to talk, to say something merely to take his mind off the horror of what awaited them out there in the dark forest.

"We won't be able to follow them with the bird, "he said. "The forest is too thick. They would hear us from five miles and disappear." "We canyt follow with the chopper," Roland agreed. "They have got a SAM-7 with them. They would chop us out of the sky. The helicopter could be suicide only way is to cut their spoor and go after them on foot." "They will have a night's start, a full night."

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