The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 47

"Find something to dig with!" He kept on digging frantically.

lit J, LI Timon hunted in the back locker and brought him the jack handle and a broad-bladed pan ga Craig attacked the edge of the hole with them, grunting and panting, his own sweat stinging the open graze on his cheek.

The radio jabbered. "They have found the spot where we left the road,"Timon translated.

"Christ!" Craig sobbed with effort, that was less than two miles back.

"Can I help you?" Timon was lisping through the gap in his teeth.

Craig did not bother to reply. There was only room for one man at a time to work under the cha.s.sis. The earth crumbled and the Land-Rover subsided a few inches, and then the free tyre found purchase in the bottom of the hole. Craig turned his attention to the sharp edge of the hole, cutting it away in a ramp so that it would not block the wheel.

Sally Anne you get behind the steering wheel He spoke jerkily between each blow with the pan ga "Timon and I will try to lift the front." He crawled out from under the body, and wasted a -second to look back. The dust of the pursuit was clearly visible from ground level. "Come on, Timon." They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the radiator, and bent their knees to get a good grip on the front fender.

Sally-Anne sat behind the dugt-smeared windscreen. The lump on her forehead l*oked likea huge, blue, bloodsucking tick clinging to her pale skin. She stared at Craig through the gla.s.s, her eyes and her expression desperate.

"Hit id" Craig grunted and they straightened together, lifting with their knees and all the strength of their bodies.

Craig felt the front end come up a few inches on the suspension and he nodded at Sally-Anne. She let out the clutch and the engine bl.u.s.tered, the wheel spun, and she jerked back and then stuck fast, blocking on the edge of the hole.

"RestP Craig grunted, and they slumped gasping over the bonnet.

Craig saw the dust of the pursuit was so close that he expected the trucks to appear beneath it as he watched.

"Okay, we'll bounce her," he told Timon. "Hit it! One!

Two! Three!" While Sally-Anne raced the engine, they flung their weight on the fender in a short regular rhythm. "One!

Two! Three!" Craig gasped, and the vehicle started surging ! and bouncing wildly against the rim of the hole.

"Keep her going!" Dust boiled around them, and the voice on the radio yelped exultantly likea lead hound taking the scent. They had seen the dust, "Keep it up! Craig found strength and reserves that he had never known were there. His teeth ground together, his breath whined in his throat, his face swelled dark angry red, and his vision starred and filled with shooting light. Still he heaved, and knew that the sinew and muscle in his back was tearing, his spine felt as though it was crushing and suddenly the Land' Rover wheels bounced over the rim and it shot backwards, clear and free.

Deprived of support, Craig fell on his knees, and thought he did not have the strength to rise again.

"Craig! Hurry!" Sally-Anne yelled at him. "Get in! With another vast effort, he heaved himself upright, and staggered to the moving Land-Rover. He dragged himself up onto the bonnet, and Sally-Anne accelerated away; for long seconds Craig clung to the bonnet, as strength oozed back into his limbs. He crawled up onto the roof tack and peered over the back of the cab.

There was only one truck behind them, a five, ton Toyota painted the familiar sand colour. Through the shimmer of heat mirage, it appeared monstrous, seeming to k float towards them, disembodied from the earth. Craig blinked the sweat out of his eyes. How close was it? Hard to tell over level ground and through the mirage.

His vision cleared, and he saw that the ungainly black superstructure above the Toyota's cab was a heavy machine-gun on a ring mount with the gunner's head behind it. It looked at this distance to be the modified Goryunov Stankovy, a nasty weapon.

"Sweet Jesus!" he whispered, as for the first time he became aware of the Land-Rover's altered motion. She was vibrating and shaking brutally, and there was the shrill protest of metal bearing on metal from the left front end where she had hit and the speed was down, way down.

Craig leaned out and yelled into the driver's window.

"Speed up! "She's busted up front." Sally-Anne stuck her head out of the window. "Any faster and she'll tear herself to pieces." Craig looked back. The truck was closing, not rapidly, but inexorably. He saw the gunner on the cab roof traverse his weapon slightly.

"Go for it, Sally-Armi! he shouted. "Take a chance of it holding.

They've got a heavy machine-gun and they're coming into range." The Land-Rover lumbered forward, and now there was a heavy clattering combined with the whine of metal. The vibration chattered Craig's teeth, and he looked back.

They were holding t1! truck off and then he saw the pursuing vehicle judder" to the recoil of the heavy weapon on the cab.

No sound of gunfire yet, Craig watched with an academic interest. Abruptly dust fountained close down their left flank, jumping six feet into the heated air in a diaphanous curtain, appearing ethereal and harmless, but the sound of pa.s.sing shot spranged viciously likea copper telegraph wire hit with an iron bar.

"Turn left!" Craig yelled. Always turn towards the fall of shot. The gunner will be correcting the opposite way, and the dust will help obscure his aim.

The next burst fell right and very wide.

"Turn right!" Craig shouted.

"Shoot back at them!" Sally' Anne stuck her head out again. She was obviously recovering from the head knock, and getting fighting mad.

"I'm giving the orders," he told her. "You keep driving." The next burst was wide again, a hundred feet out.

"Turn left!" Their weaving was confusing the gunner's aim, and their dust obscuring the range, but it was costing them ground. The truck was gaining on them again.

The salt-pan was close ahead, hundreds of bare acres shimmering silver in the path of the sun. Craig narrowed picked up the tracks where his eyes against the glare, and rface. Their a small herd of zebra had crossed the smooth su hooves had broken through the salt crust into the yellow mush beneath. It would bog any vehicle that attempted that deceptively inviting crossing.

"Angle to miss the right edge of the pan left! More!

More! okay, hold that," he shouted.

There was a narrow horn of salt-pan extending out towards them, perhaps he could tempt the pursuit to take the cut across it. He stared back over their own dust cloud and said, "s.h.i.t!" softly.

The truck commander was too canny to try to cut across the horn. He was following them around, and a burst of I around them. Three rounds machinegun fire fell al ed craters crashed into the metal of the cab, leaving jagg rimmed with shiny metal where the camouflage paint flaked off.

"Are you okay?"

"Okayr Sally-Anne called back, but the tone of her cky. "Craig, I can't keep her voice was no longer so co going. I've got my foot flat and she is slowing down.

Something is binding up! Now Craig could smell red-hot metal from the damaged front end

"Timon, hand me up a rifle! They were still well out of range of the AK 47, but the burst he fired made him feel less helpless, even though he could not even mark the fall of his bullets. They roared around the horn of the salt-pan, in the stink of hot metal and dust, and Craig looked ahead while he reloaded the rifle.

How far to the border now? Ten miles perhaps? But would a punitive patrol of the Third Brigade, given the "leopard" code, stop at an international border? The Israelis and South Africans had long ago set a precedent for "hot pursuit" into neutral territory. He knew they would follow them to the death.

The Land-Rover lurched rhythmically now to her unbalanced suspension and for the first tim Craig knew that they weren't going to make it. The realization made him angry. He fired the- second magazine in short-s.p.a.ced bursts, and at the third burst the Toyota swerved sharply and stopped in a billow of its own dust.

"I got himP he bellowed exultantly.

"Way to go!" Sally-Anne shouted back. "Geronimo!"

"Well done, Mr. Mellow,jolly well done." The truck stood ma.s.s iNly immobile while the wreaths of dust subsided arounf it.

"Eat thad" Craig howled. "Stick that up your rear end, you sons of porcupines!" And he emptied the rifle at the distant vehicle.

Men were swarming around the cab of the truck like black ants around the carca.s.s of a beetle, and the Land Rover limped away from them gamely.

"Oh, no," Craig groaned.