The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 69

There was a single shot, and then all the troopers were down, scattered along the edge of the bank, but the guerrillas were still working over them, swinging and chopping and hacking.

"Sarah," Craig called to her as she reached the bank.

"Get the girls back into the bush! " She s.n.a.t.c.hed up her shirt, and pushed her s4ters ahead of her, shepherding them away.

Carrying the AK, "Craig ran across the bridge. The guerrillas were already stripping and looting the dead men.

They worked with the dexterity of much practice, wrist, watches first and then the contents of pockets and webbing pouches.

"Was anyone hit?" Craig demanded. That single shot had worried him, but there were no casualties. Craig gave them two minutes to finish with the corpses, and then sent a patrol back to the crest to cover them against surprise.

He turned back to the dead Shana. "Bury them!" They had , and they prepared the ma.s.s grave the previous afternoon dragged the naked bodies away There was blood down the side of one truck where the machine-gunner had hung. "Wash that off!" One of the guerrillas dipped a canteen of water from the river. "And FJ wash off those uniforms." They would dry out in an hour or less.

Sarah returned before the burial party had finished. She was fully dressed again.

the girls back to the village, they know the "I have sent country well. They will be safe."

"You did well," Craig told her and climbed into the cab of the leading truck. The keys were in the ignition.

from out of the thick bush The burial party returned and Craig called in his pickets. The guerrilla detailed to drive the second truck started it, and then the rest of them climbed aboard. The two trucks crossed the bridge and growled up the far slope. The entire operation had taken less than thirty, five minutes. They reached the felled mhoba,hobo tree and Comrade Lookout stepped into the track and directed them off the road. Craig parked in thick cover, and immediately a gang of guerrillas covered both gan vehicles with cut branches, and another gang be unloading the cargo, and clearing the roadblock.

There were two-hundred, pound sacks of maize meal, of canned meat, blankets, medicines, cigarettes, cases to the ammunition, soap, sugar, salt all of it priceless guerrillas. It was all carried away, and Craig knew it would be hidden and retrieved later whenever the opportunity occurred. There were a dozen kit bags containing the dead troopers" personal gear, a treasure trove of Third Brigade uniforms, even two of the famous burgundy berets. While the guerrillas dressed in these uniforms, Craig checked the time. It was a little after five o'clock.

Craig had noted that the radio operator at Tuti camp started the generator and made his routine report at seven o'clock every evening. He checked the radio in the leading truck. It had a fifteen-amp output, more than enough to reach Tuti camp, but not sufficient power to reach Harare headquarters. That was good.

He called Comrade Lookout and Sarah to the cab and they went over their notes. Sally' Anne would be over Tuti airstrip at 5.20 a.m. tomorrow morning, and she could stay in the circuit until 8.30 a.m. Craig allowed three hours for the journey from Tuti camp back to the airstrip at the mission station that would take into account any minor delays or mishaps. Ideally they should leave the camp at 2.30 a.m but not later than 5 a.m.

That meant they should time their arrival at the gates of the camp for midnight, or close to it. Two and a half hours to secure the position, refuel the trucks from the storage tank, release the prisoners, find Tungata and start back.

"All right," Craig said, "I want each group to go over their duties. First you, Sarah-"

"I take my two with the bolt-cutters, and we go straight t o Number One hutment-" He had given her two men.

Tungata might be so weak as to be unable to walk una.s.sisted. Number One hutment was set a little apart from the others behind its own wire and was obviously used as the highest secu cell. Sarah had seen them lead My Tungata from it to their last meeting on the parade ground.

"When we find hi im we bring him back to the a.s.sembly point at the main gate. If he can walk on his own I will leave my two men to open the other cells and release the prisoners."

"Good." She had it perfectly.

"Now the second group."

"Five men for the perimeter guard towers--2 Comrade Lookout went through his instructions.

7i

"That's it then." Craig stood up. "But it all depends on one thing. I've said this fifty times already, but I'm going to say it again. We must get the radio before they can transmit. We have about five minutes from the first shot totes for the operator to realize what is do it, two minu happening, two minutes to start the electric generator and run up to full power, another minute to make his contact pa.s.s the warning. If that with Harare headquarters and " He checked his watch.

happens, we are all dead men.

"Five minutes past seven we can make the call now.

Where is your man who speaks Shana" Carefully Craig coached the man in what he had to say, and was relieved to find him quick-witted.

"I tell them that the convoy is delayed on the road. One but it will be repaired. We of the trucks has broken down, will arrive much later than usual, in the night, "he repeated.

"That's it."

"If they begin asking questions, I reply, "Your message not understood. Your transmission breaking up and unreadable."

I repeat, "Arriving late", and then I sign off." Craig stood by anxiously while the guerrilla made the radio transmission, listening to the unintelligible bursts of Shana from the operator at Tuti camp, but he was unable to detect any trace of suspicion or alarm in the static distorted voice.

The guerrilla imposter signed off and handed the mi croP phone back to Craig. "He says it is understood. They expect us in the night." "Good. Now we can eat and rest." However, Craig could not eat. His stomach was queasy ith tension for the night ahead and from reaction to the w ghastly violence at the bridge. Those pan gas wielded with pentup hatred, had inflicted hideous mutilation. Many times during the long bush war he had witnessed death in some of its most unlovely forms, but had never become accustomed to it, it still made him sick to the guts.

here is too much moon," Craig thought as he peered out from under the canvas canopy of the leading truck. It was only four days from full and it to shadows de so high and so bright as to cast hard-edged on the earth. The truck lurched and jolted over the rough tracks and dust filtered up and clogged his throat.

He had not dared to ride in the cab, not even with his face blackened. A sharp eye would have picked him out readily. Comrade Lookout sat up beside the driver, dressed in the subaltern's spare uniform complete with beret and shoulder-flashes. Beside him was the Shana-speaker wearing the second beret. The heavy machine-guns were loaded and c.o.c.ked, each served by a picked man, and eight others dressed in looted uniforms rode up on the coach work in plain view, while the remainder crouched with Craig under the canvas canopy.

"So far, everything is going well," Sarah murmured.

"So far," Craig agreed. "But I prefer bad starts and happy endings-" There were three taps on the cab, beside Craig's head.

That was Comrade Lookout's signal that the camp was in sight.

"Well, one way or the other, here we go." Craig twisted round to peer through the pee -hole he had cut in the canvas hood. p He could make out the watchtowers of the camp, looking like oil-rigs againk the moon-bright sky, and there was a glint of barbed wire Then quite suddenly the sky lit up. The floodlights -on their poles around the perimeter of the camp glowed and then bloomed with stark white light.

The entire compound was illuminated with noon-day brilliance.

"The generator," Craig groaned. "Oh, Christ, they've Started the generator to welcome us in." Craig had made his first mistake. He had planned for everything to happen in darkness, with only the truck headlights to dazzle and confuse the camp guards. And yet, he now realized how logical and obvious it was for the guards to light up the camp to check the arrival of the convoy and to facilitate the unloading.

They were committed already. They could only ride on into the glare of floodlights, and Craig was helpless, pinned by the lights beneath the canopy, not even able to communicate with Comrade Lookout in the cab in front of him. Bitterly reviling himself for not having planned for this contingency, he kept his eye to the peepholes The guards were not opening the gates, there was the sandbagged machine-gun emplacement to one side of the guard house, and Craig could see the barrel of the weapon traversing slowly to keep them covered as they approached.

The guard was turning out, four troopers and a noncommissioned officer, falling in outside the guardroom.

The sergeant stepped in front of the leading truck as it drove up to the gate and held up one hand. As the truck pulled up he came round to the offside window, asked a question in Shana, and the bereted guerrilla answered him easily. But immediately the sergeant's tone altered, clearly the reply had been incorrect. His voice rose, became hectoring and strident. He was outside Craig's limited le of vision, but Craig saw the armed guard react. They circ began to unsling their rifles, started to spread out to cover the truck, the bluff was over before it had begun.

Craig tapped the leg of the uniformed guerrilla standing above him. It was the signal, and the guerrilla lobbed the t grenade that he was holding in his right hand with the pin already drawn. It went up in a high, lazy parabola and dropped neatly into the machine-gun emplacement.

At the same instant, Craig said quietly to the man on either side of him, "Kill them." They thrust the muzzles of their AKs through the firing slits in the canopy and the range was less than ten paces.

The volley ripped into the unprepared guards before they could bring up their weapons. The sergeant raced back towards the guard-room door, but Comrade Lookout leaned out of the cab with the Tokarev pistol in a stiffarined double grip and shot him twice in the back.

As the sergeant sprawled, the grenade burst behind the sandbags, and the barrel of the heavy machinegun swivelled aimlessly towards the sky as the hidden gunner was torn by flying shrapnel.

"Drive" Craig stuck his head and shoulders through the slit in the canopy, and yelled at the driver through the open window of the cab. "Smash through the gate!" The powerful diesel of the Toyota bellowed, and the truck surged forward. There was a rending crash, and the vehicle bucked and shuddered, checked for an instant, and then roared into the brightly lit compound, dragging a tangle of barbed-wire and shattered gate-timbers behind it.

Craig scrambled up beside the machine-gunner on the cab.

t(Dri the left-" He directed his fire at the barrack room of adobe and thatch beside the gate. The machine-gunner fired a long burst into the knot of halfnaked troopers as they spilled out of the front door.