Jack was out fast.
Jan passed him the cumbersome shape of the metal tube that he had been cradling in his lap because the shaped charge was armed, then the bag that held the smaller charges and the lengths of Cordtex equivalent and safety fuse and the rope. He laid them on the stones, then took the shotgun that was loaded to capacity, and the opened box of cartridges that he stuffed into his anorak pocket. Last came the heavy wire cutters. Difficult in the dark, because Ros had cut the lights as soon as they had left the Ben Schoeman. He studied the luminous face of his watch. He called the time. The time was 9 o'clock and 32 minutes and 30 seconds, and he counted through to 9.32 and 45 seconds. Three watches synchronised. He had given himself one hour, less three minutes, before the decoying diversions. He slung the bag over his shoulder. He hooked the metal tube into the angle of his elbow, more than forty pounds weight of it, he pushed the wire cutters into his pocket with the shotgun ammunition. He reached his hand into the darkness of the back of the car, he felt Jan's two fists grip his hand. Next he leaned across the front passenger seat and his fingers found Ros's chin and drew it forward so that he could kiss her mouth. Brief, an instant.
"I'll wear it always."
"My mother gave it me. If she knew you she'd like you to have it."
He stepped back. He picked up the shotgun. He pushed the passenger door shut with the toe of his jogging shoe. He didn't know what was in her face, couldn't see her face.
The engine exploded to life, the wheels bit into the loose stones. The car pulled away. She did not turn on her lights until she was back at the main road.
Jack laid down the metal tube and the shotgun and took a handful of earth in his cupped hands and spat on it to make the soil moist and then smeared what was mud over the pale surfaces of his face. He looked into the distance, away to the main road. He saw a single set of headlights and then the red flash of tail lights, between trees and bushes.
He lifted the metal tube and the shotgun, one under each arm, and he started to walk away from the track and towards the start of the slope up Magazine Hill.
There was a sharp wind, small clouds, a half moon.
Enough light for him to move without lumbering into the thicker scrub bushes. He had thought when he had seen the slope in daylight that the ground had been cleared a dozen years or so before then allowed to grow again.
He madehimself pattern.
He climbed for a counted fifteen paces, then stopped to listen for ten seconds. When he stopped he could hear a radio playing music, ahead of him, where the prison service buildings were on top of Magazine. The stream of traffic on the Ben Schoeman was below him and away to the west, a ribbon of fast moving lights. As he climbed the sounds of the main road guttered, and he was alert to the new sounds of the hillside.
The radio playing music, the frantic wing clatter of a disturbed nesting bird, and a drum beat on planks. It took Jack the full ten seconds of a listening pause to identify the drum beat… He remembered that when he had stood with Jan at the Voortrekker Monument and looked across at the slope of Magazine that he had seen a low wooden watchtower half way up the hill, away to the east of where he climbed.
The tower had not been manned in daylight. He realised he had heard the sounds of booted feet stamping on a plank platform, perhaps for warmth, perhaps out of boredom. He couldn't see the tower, not high enough for it to be silhouetted against the grey blue faint light of the night sky. He could sense the general direction of the tower and he could picture what he had seen from the Voortrekker Monument.
He knew that the tower was set the far side of the wire fence that he had identified when he had stood with Jan on reconnaissance. He wondered if the bastard who stamped his feet on the plank platform would have a night sight on his rifle. Sod all use having the bastard there if he didn't have a night sight, because if he didn't have one then the bastard was as blind as Jack. Had to reckon that he had a night sight on his rifle, or infra-red binoculars, or an image intensifier spy glass. The reckoning pushed Jack down on his knees, had him crawling forward. The slope was a dark and indistinct mass above him. He could only see the trees and scrub bushes that were within three, four yards of his face, less when the clouds hid the moon.
The fence seemed to rush at him, to materialise above him when he was on the point of collision.
Very gently he laid down the metal tube and the shotgun.
He wriggled the bag on its strap over into the small of his back so that it would not impede him. His fingers groped forward. So bloody insensitive, his fingers, because they were cold and bruised from when he had crawled on his hands and knees. His fingers stretched to feel the pattern of the wire mesh. A dark mesh fence against dark ground, and his fingers must do the work for him, and he must lie still and move only the barest minimum in case the bastard on the platform had a night sight or an infra-red or an image intensifier. His fingers traced the diamonds of the wire mesh.
He found the strand that he feared.
His forefinger brushed the single strand that ran along the face of the fence a foot above the ground. He touched the first tumbler wire. If the wire were disturbed an alarm would ring. He noted it, stored it, his fingers moved on and traced the mesh above the tumbler, desperately slow. He dared not look at the luminous hands of his watch, dared not see how much of his precious time he was spending in the search for a second tumbler wire.
God, if he was late…
Bloody stupid, Jack. Had the time he needed. Didn't know whether he had the patience he needed. Jack bloody Curwen, second class businessman from the south of England, paid a second class wage to drum up second class work
… What the hell was he at lying on Magazine Hill searching for a second tumbler wire?
He found the second tumbler wire.
The second tumbler wire was four feet above the ground, four feet above where the mesh was buried in the rough soil.
With the wire cutters he made a square hole between the bottom tumbler wire and the second tumbler wire. He lifted the square mesh clear. He could feel the heave of his breath.
He could hear the radio playing and the stamp of the sentry on his platform. He lifted the metal tube through the hole, and then the shotgun and then his bag. He was half way through the hole, head and shoulders and chest through, when a strand of jagged cut mesh caught at his anorak. His knees were on one side of the wire, his elbows on the other.
He squirmed his trunk to reach with his fingers to free himself.
When he was through he lay on his stomach.
He was gasping.
He took his handkerchief from his pocket and looped it through the mesh immediately above the hole.
It was a risk, but everything was a risk. It was necessary to leave a marker.
Jack gathered up his metal tube and his bag and his shotgun and the wire cutters. So tired. He crawled forward.
He was on his knees and using the hand that held the shotgun for leverage. He dared not let the metal tube buffet the ground. The metal tube was twelve pounds of explosive and two detonators and Cordtex equivalent, the metal tube was a primed bomb, held close against his chest. He was going forward.
He saw the light on his hands. His head started up.
The light from the gable end of a concrete building was thrown from his right, fell on him. He had crawled forward, concentration locked, nursing the shotgun and the tube, and he had not realised that he had reached the summit of the slope of Magazine Hill. He moved fast to his left, shuffling as a crab to reach shadow. He could hear the music clearly, he could hear voices and laughter. He lay on his stomach and he heard the sounds of men who had no care, no suspicion.