"Kin hear one real clear. An' mebbe 'nother one way out."
"Search pattern. Let's double time," Mau Mau ordered.
They ran. Bruno was staggering, exhausted and soaked with sweat, before they reached the clearing that was their destination. There was a banked mound of raw dirt around a yard-wide hole in the center of it.
"Chopper, dive down and get the bolo," Mau Mau said. "Then the rest of you get in there with Whitey and keep a close eye on him." He turned to Bruno. "Stick around, I think that you'll enjoy this."
The big Negro vanished over the mound of dirt and reappeared a minute later with a device like a bulge-barreled telescope that was mounted on a tripod.
"The modern technology of war," Mau Mau said. "The military just love gadgetry, they do indeed. All the hardware makes them feel important and is great for explaining their inflated budgets. Over eighty percent of the federal budget is spent by the military, one way or another, and has been for the past forty, fifty years. You record this. Now the military was glad to have black boys for cannon fodder, in Vietnam and the like, and those boys learned real good how to use all the fancy devices. Of course the army is kind of lily-white these days, but an awful lot of blacks learned how to press the buttons before they were booted out for the good of the service." He stopped and listened. The distant rumble of a helicopter could be clearly heard now. Mau Mau smiled.
"Here come the ofay air cavalry now. They know that a lot of people walked off with a lot of their goods and they have to find them right quick. Because by morning those goods will be buried real deep and safe, and the people will be back at their farms and at their jobs and who's to know? So they go flapping around up there with sophisticated electronic sniffers and body-heat detectors and all kind of expensive junk. They'll smell us out soon. And when they do bolo there will sniff them right back. Got a sound detector in its nose. Works simple and is hard to jam."
Louder and louder the copter sounded, obviously coming toward them now. Bruno resisted the temptation to cringe away from its advance. He knew just what the gunship could do with its rapid-firing cannon, rockets, bombs. .
The nose of the bolo missile was turning. Chopper stood off to one side, the control box in his hand with the cable leading to the tripod. "Range!" he called out, and at the same moment the rocket spat out a jet of flame and hurled itself up into the fog. One, two, three seconds passed — and a great explosion sounded from the sky, which lit for an instant with a ruddy flame. Pieces of debris crashed down through the trees and thudded to the ground, and silence followed.
"Scratch a couple million bucks," Mau Mau said, and pointed to the hole. "Now get down because there will be incoming very soon."
By the time Bruno had stowed his camera and clambered up the mound the other two were out of sight below. Thick lengths of branch were set into the shaftlike rungs of a ladder, and he climbed carefully down them. It was completely dark and musty in the deep hole, claustrophobic. He touched bottom and, by feel, found that a low tunnel went off horizontally. He went into it, on his hands and knees and, after turning two right-angle corners, came out into an underground chamber. Battery lamps illuminated it. It was low, he could stand only if he crouched over, and just big enough for all of them to sit against the walls, knees almost touching. It was roofed with heavy logs, which were notched and supported by even thicker sections along the walls. It was dark, the officer's face the only relieving spot of white in the chamber.
"We have three, four minutes at the most," Mau Mau said. "As soon as the chopper was missed from the radio net they send something flying over to look for it. They'll find the wreck. Then they'll call for air support. Then they'll drop a lot of bombs hoping that there are a lot of nice black people just sitting down here waiting for incoming mail."
There was a muffled explosion and dirt shook down from above. Mau Mau smiled. "Three minutes. They're getting very efficient."
Bruno did not know how long the barrage lasted. There were separate explosions at first, but these quickly joined into a continuous hammering roar. The ground shook under them, bigger clouds of earth fill from above and the roaring became so loud they had to cover their ears. The sound eased a bit when an explosion sealed the entrance tunnel. To Bruno's fear of being killed was added the greater fear of being buried alive. He spoke prayers aloud, but could not hear them. The men looked upward, then at each other, turning quickly away when they caught another's eye. The sound went on and on.
Then, an unmeasurable time later, there was an end to it. The explosions became distinct, one from the other, waned, grew again, and finally ceased altogether. The roof had held and they were alive.
"Let's go," Mau Mau said, his voice sounding dim and muffled to their battered ears. "If we start digging now we should be out by dark, and we have a lot of ground to cover tonight."
The guerrillas took turns with the shovels, carrying the dirt back in buckets to dump at the far end of the chamber.
They all helped with this, except for the prisoner and one guard. The atmosphere was stifling and hot before they holed through to the outside again. They emerged, breathing deeply, savoring the indescribable sweetness of the evening air.
Bruno looked about in the twilight and gasped. The rain had stopped and the fog had thinned a good deal. The clearing was gone, as were the trees, in every direction, as far as he could see. In their place was a sea of churned craters and splintered pieces of wood. Pieces of steel casing were scattered over the ground. He bent and picked up a shining steel balclass="underline" there were many of these.
"Antipersonnel bombs," Mau Mau said. "Each bomb has a couple hundred of these balls, and they drop them by the thousands. Cut a person in two they will. Military denied dropping them in Vietnam, they deny using them now. They lied both times."
"Mau Mau — we on de radio!" Chopper called out. He had a small transistor portable held to his ear. "That raid we done on de truck. Dey say de army had three casualties and dat we had thirty-seven killed."
"Turn that damn thing off and get Whitey over here. I want some words with him."
They stood, face-to-face, black and white faces, each mirroring the other's expression of cold hatred.
"Record this, Bruno," Mau Mau said. The camera mechanism whirred as it opened the lens wide in the failing light. "Lieutenant Adkins is now going to tell us what he was doing in Ellenville. Speak up, Lieutenant."
"I have nothing to say."
"Nothing? There was a little boy back at the truck who recognized you. He was hidden in the loft of that country store, and nobody ever looked up there because the ladder had got knocked down. He said that you were in charge of the men that afternoon, that day, that's what he said."
"He's lying!"
"Now why should a little boy lie? He did say that most ofays looked alike to him, white like something dead, but he is never going to forget your face."
The lieutenant turned away contemptuously and said nothing. Mau Mau drew back his fist — then struck him in the side of the head so hard that he was hurled to the ground. He lay there, blood running down his cheek, and cursed.
"See, did you see that, you with the camera, whoever you are? He struck a prisoner, a wounded prisoner. Do you see the kind of creature he is? I'll tell you what happened in Ellenville. There was a girl riding in a car, a sweet girl, a girl I knew, who I even had the privilege of dancing with once. One minute she was alive, and the next minute she was butchered and dead. Maybe killed by this black ape here for all I know!"