The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 169

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It would take twenty seconds to cross it, but it might have been the Sahara.

"If they send a vehicle to pick us up we can fly from Vic Falls and make a para.-jump on the far bank," Esau Gondele muttered beside his ear.

"No good. It will take two hours-" Roland broke off. "By God, that's it!" He thumbed the key of the microphone. "Tower, this is Cheetah One." "Go ahead, Cheetah One." "There is a police armourer at Victoria Falls Hotel. Name, Sergeant Craig Mellow. I want him dropped on my position soonest possible to open the minefield. Telephone the hotel." "Stand by, Cheetah One." Tower's thin whisper faded and they lay in the sun and sweated, burned up by the heat and their hatred.

"Cheetah One, we have Mellow. He is already en route to the field. We will make the delivery with a silver Beechcraft Baron. RUAC markings. Give us a position and a recognition." "Tower, we are on the cordon sanitaire, estimate thirty miles upstream from the falls. We will give you a white phosphorous grenade "Roger, Cheetah One. I understand white smoke marker. In view of SAM danger, we can only make one pass at low level. Expect delivery in twenty minutes." "Tower, we are running out of daylight, tell them to hurry it up, for God's sake, those bastards are going to get clean away. Esau Gondele had the grenade-launcher fitted to the muzzle of his FN rifle. They heard the faint beat of Erwin aircraft engines coming from downstream, and Roland touched Esau's arm.

"Ready?" he asked.

The sound of the engines built up swiftly. Roland raised himself into a kneeling position and stared into the east. He saw the flash of silver just on the tree-tops and he tapped Esau's shoulder.

"Now!" There was the crack of the blank cartridge and the grenade lobbed up and over in a lazy parabola, fired away from the minefield towards the Kazungula road. The grenade exploded, and a column of white smoke leaped above the brown sun-seared bush. The small twin-engine aircraft banked gently towards the marker, and then steadied again.

The passenger door had been removed, leaving a square opening above the wing root. In the opening crouched a familiar lanky figure with the cross-webbing of the parachute harness coming out of his crotch over his chest and shoulders. The bulky chute package dangled low against the back of his legs. He wore a paratrooper's helmet and goggles, but his legs were brown and bare and his feet were thrust into plain suede velskoen.

The Beechcraft was very low perhaps too low. Roland felt a stab of anxiety, Sonny was no Scout. He had done his eight jumps for his paratrooper wings, but they were standard jumps from four thousand feet. The Beechcraft was barely two hundred feet above the bush. The pilot was taking no chances with incoming SAM fire.

"Make another pass," Roland shouted. "You are too low." He crossed his arms overhead, waving them off, but as he did it the wind-battered figure in. the hatch of the Beechcraft dropped head-first over the trailing edge of the silver wing. The tail seemed to slash at him like an executioner's axe, skimming his back, and the long ribbon of the rip-cord flirted out behind him, still attached to the speeding machine like an umbilical cord.

Craig dropped like a stone towards the earth, and watching him Roland felt his breath jam in his throat. Abruptly the silk streamed from the chute pack, flared open with an audible snap like a whiplash and Craig was plucked violently erect, his legs rodding out stiffly under him, almost touching the earth. For a long second he seemed to be suspended there like a man on the gallows, and then he dropped and rolled on his back with his feet together but high above him. Another roll and he was on his feet, sawing the parachute cords to collapse the blooming silk mushroom.

Roland let his breath out. "Bring him in,"he ordered.

Two of the Scouts hustled Craig forward, with a grip on each arm, forcing him to crouch and run. He dropped beside Roland who greeted him harshly. "You have to get us through, Sonny, as quick as you can."

"Roly, was Janine on the Viscount?" "Yes, damn you, now get us through." Craig had opened his light pack, and was assembling his tools, probe-and side-cutters and rolls of coloured. tape, steel tape-measure and hand-compass.

"Is she alive?" Craig could not look at Roland's face for the answer, but he started to tremble as he heard it.

"She's alive, but only just-" "Thank God, oh thank God," Craig whispered, and Roland studied his face thoughtfully.

"I didn't realize that you felt that way, Sonny." "You never were very perceptive." At last Craig looked up at him defiantly. "I loved her from the first moment I saw her." "All right, then you will want to get these bastards as much as I do. Open that field, and hurry."

Roland signalled and his Scouts moved up quickly and lay along the edge of the minefield, their weapons pointing forward. Roland turned back to Craig.

"Ready?" Craig nodded.

"You know the pattern?" "You'd better pray I do." "Get in there, Sonny," Roland ordered, and Craig stood up and walked into the minefield and started to work with the probe and the tape-measure.

Roland contained his impatience for less than five minutes, then he called, "Christ, Sonny, we have two hours of daylight how long is this going to take?" Craig did not even look around. He was stooped like a potato harvester, probing the earth gently, and the sweat had soaked through the back of his khaki shirt in a long dark stain.

"Can't you hurry it up?" With all the concentration of a surgeon clamping off an artery, Craig snipped the piano-wire trip of a Claymore mine, and then laid the coloured tape on the earth behind him, as he moved forward a pace. It was their thread through the labyrinth that Craig was laying.

Craig probed again. He had chosen an unfortunate point to enter the pattern on an overlap of two separate systems. Ordinarily he would have retraced his steps along the coloured. tape, and begun again at another point on the perimeter, but that could cost him precious time, perhaps as much as twenty minutes.

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