The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 90

"We have found another lead," Craig called back. "It must be open to the surface somewhere there are bats."

"What must we do?"

"I am going to drop the rope. There will be a loop in it.

Sarah first. She will have to cross the pole and get into the loop. The two of us will be able to pull her up." It was a long message to shout. "Do you understand?"

"Yes. I'll make her do it." Craig tied a loop in the end of the rope, and then, in complete darkness, crawled back to the anchor point that Sally' Anne had chosen. He ran his hands over it. It was a pinnacle of rock, twelve feet back from the ledge and her knot was good. He went back and dropped the looped end down into the shaft. He lay on his stomach and peered down into the echoing darkness. The fire glow was far below, a dull furnace redness. He could hear the whisper of their voices.

"What's keeping you?" he demanded.

Then he saw the dark shape, only just visible in the firelight, moving out across the pole bridge. It was too big to be one person, and then he realized that both Tungata and Sarah were on the pole together. Tungata was coaxing her across, riding out backwards and drawing her after him.

They moved out of sight, directly below the window.

"Pupho, swing the rope to the left." Craig obeyed, and felt the tug on it as Tungata grabbed the swinging loop.

"All right, Sarah is in the loop."

"Explain to her that she must walk up the rock as we pull her." Sally-Anne sat directly behind Craig, the rope running over his shoulder to her. Craig had his feet braced against the side wall.

"Pull!" he ordered, and quickly she picked up the rhythm of it. Sarah was small and slim, but it was a long haul and Craig's hands were raw. It was five minutes of hard work before they dragged her over the sill and the three of them rested together.

"All right, Sam. We are ready for you now." He dropped the loop into the shaft.

There were three of them on the rope now, sitting one behind the other, but Tungata was a big, heavy man. Craig could hear the girls whimpering and sobbing with the effort.

"Sam, can you jam V6urself into the chimney?" Craig gasped. "Give us a re5tr He felt the weight go off the rope, and the three of them lay in a heap and rested.

"All right, let's go again." Tungata seemed even heavier now, but finally he came tumbling into the window, and none of them could talk for a while.

Craig was the first to find his voice. "Oh, s.h.i.t, we forgot the diamonds! We left the b.l.o.o.d.y diamonds."

PP.

There was a click and a yellow glow of light as Tungata switched on the second lantern that he had brought up with him. They all blinked owlishly at each other, and Tungata chuckled hoa.r.s.ely.

"Why do you think I was so heavy?" He held the canvas bag in his lap, and as he patted it, the diamonds crunched together with a sound likea squirrel chewing nuts.

"Hero!" Craig grunted with relief. "But switch off, there are only a few minutes" life left in that battery." They used the lantern in flashes. The first flash showed them that the rock window opened into a low-roofed cave, so wide that they could not make out the side walls. The roof was coated with a furry ma.s.s of bats. Their eyes were a myriad pinp.r.i.c.ks of reflected light and their naked faces were pink and hideous as they stared down at them, hanging upside down.

The floor of the cave was carpeted with their droppings.

The reeking guano had filled every irregularity, and the floor was level and soft underfoot, deadening their footfalls as they went forward in a group, holding hands to keep contact in the darkness.

Tungata led them, flashing the lantern every few minutes to check the floor ahead and to reorientate himself.

Craig was in the rear with the coiled rope looped over his shoulder. Gradually the floor started to slope upwards under them and the roof hung lower.

Voit," said Sally-Anne. "Don't switch on the light again."

"What is it?"

"Ahead up the slope. Is it my imagination?" There are degrees of darkness. Craig stared into the blackness ahead, and slowly out of it emerged a faint nimbus, a lessening of the utter blackness.

"Light," he whispered. "There is light up there." They started forward, b.u.mping into each other in their haste, running and pushing, laughing as the light strengthened and they could make out each other's shapes, the laughter becoming wild hysteria. The light turned to a golden glory ahead and they fought their way up the soft yielding slope of guano towards it.

Gradually the roof pressed down onto them, forcing them to their knees, and then onto their bellies, and the light was a thin horizontal blade that blinded them with its brilliance. They clawed their way towards the light, stirring the guano dust so that it coated their faces and choked them, but they whooped and shouted hysterically through it.

Craig saw that Sarah was weeping unashamedly, tears shining on her face. Tungata was bellowing with wild laughter, and Craig flung himself forward and grabbed his ankles just as he reached the low slitted entrance of the cave.

"Wait, Sam. Be careful." Tungata tried to kick his hands away and crawl on, but Craig held him.

"Shana! There are Shana out there." That name halted and silenced them. They lay just within the threshold 4 the cavern, and their euphoria evaporated.

"Craig and I will go ahead to scout the lay of the land." Tungata groped in the guano and pa.s.sed a rock the size of a baseball back to Craig. "It's the best weapon I have. You two girls will stay here until we call you, okay?" Craig took a double handful of the guano and blackened his face and limbs with it. Then he slipped the coil of rope off his shoulder, and crawled up beside Tungata. He was content to let Tungata take control now. In the cavern, Craig had been the leader, but out there was Tungata's world. In the bush Tungata was a leopard man.

They crawled up the last few feet to the entrance. It was a low horizontal slit in the rock, less than eighteen inches high and screened by golden elephant gra.s.s growing just beyond the threshold. It was facing east for the early morning sunshine was blazing into their faces. They lay for a while, letting their eyes adjust to its glare after those days of darkness.

Then Tungata slid forward likea black mambal barely moving the tall gra.s.s as he went through it.

Craig gave him a count of fifty and then followed him.

He came out on a hillside with the stratum of limestone forming b.u.t.tresses across it, over which grew the stunted desiccated brush and wiry elephant gra.s.s. They were just below the summit, and the slope dropped away steeply below them into the heavily forested valley. Already the morning sun was hot and Craig revelled in it.

Tungata was lying below him, and he gave Craig the hand-signal, "Cover my left side." Craig moved carefully into position, walking on his elbows and dragging his legs.

"Search!" Tungata gave him the peremptory signal, and they lay for fully ten minutes scrutinizing the ground below, above and on both sides, covering every inch, every bush and rock and field.

"All clear," Craig signalled, and Tungata began to move along the contour of the slope towards the shoulder of the hill. Craig kept behind and above him, covering him.

A bird came towards them, a black and white bird with a disproportionately large yellow beak, a huge, semitically curved yellow bill that gave it its common name of hornbill, and its nickname of Yiddish canary. Its flight was characteristically erratic and swooping, and it settled on a low bush just ahead and below Tungata but almost immediately it let out a harsh squawk of alarm and hurled itself into the air again, swooping away down the hillside.

"Danger!" Tungata made the urgent hand-signal, and they froze.

Craig stared at the clump of rock and gra.s.s and bush from which the hornbill had fled, trying to discover what had alarmed it.

Something moved, a tiny stirring, and it was so close that Craig clearly heard the flare of a match being struck and lit. A feather of ethereal smoke drifted from the clump of brush and p.r.i.c.kled his nostrils with the stink of tobacco burning. Then he made out the shape of a steel battle helmet covered with camouflage net. It moved away as the man wearing it drew again on his cigarette.

Now Craig saw the whole picture. In his camouflage smock, the man was lying behind a light machine-gun on a tripod, the barrel of the weapon was bound with streamers of hessian to disguise its stark outline.

"How many?" Tungata signalled the question, and then Craig saw the second man. He was sitting with his back to the base of the low Thorn tree. The shadow of the branches over his head blended perfectly with the tiger stripes of his camouflage. He was a big man, bare-headed, with a sergeant's chevrons on his arm, and an Uzi machine-gun laid beside him.

Craig was about to signal, "Two," when the man slipped a soft pack of cigarettes out of his breast-pocket and held it out. A third man who had been lying flat on his back in the shade, sat up and accepted the pack. He tapped out a cigarette and then tossed the pack to a fourth man, who rolled onto his elbow to catch it, revealing himself for the first time.

Tour!" Craig signalled.

It was a machine-gun post, perfectly sited on the shoulder of the hill to cover the slopes below. Peter Fungabera had obviously antic.i.p.ated the existence of bolt holes from the main cavern. The hills must all be staked out with nests of machine guns It was mere fortune that had brought them out above this post. "Me gunner was facing downhill, his mates were stretched out, relaxed and bored from days of unrewarded vigil.