While they waited for the moon, Alphonso rigged the radio aerial and made his scheduled contact with General China's headquarters.
"The dove is in flight." He gave the prearranged code so China would believe that Sean and his party had crossed the border.
After a brief pause, presumably while he relayed the message, the radio operator came back to Alphonso with the order to return to river.
Alphonso acknowledged and signed off.
the main base on the "They won't expect nw'to arrive back for another two days."
Alphonso grinned as he packed up the radio. "It will be that long before they start getting suspicious."
As the moon pushed its bald silver pate above the trees, Sean and Matatu slipped away into the forest to make a final reconnaissance of the railway line. A mile south of their position they found the place where the line crossed a narrow stream. Although the stream contained only a few shallow puddles, the banks were thick with riverine bush that would afford them good cover. Originally the bush must have been cleared for a hundred yards on each side of the line, but secondary growth had been allowed to spring up to waist height. 391
"Sloppy Frelinio bastards" Scan muttered. "That will give us some cover, and we'll stay in the river-bed."
The main line crossed the stream over an embankment and culvert. There was a guard post on the approaches, fifty yards up track from the culvert. While Sean watched through his bmocuIan, a Frelimo sentry, his AK rifle slung on his back, sauntered ! ! down to the bridge over the culvert. He leaned on the guardrail and fit a cigarette. The glow of the cigarette marked his progress as he ambled back to the guard post. He seemed to Sean to be a little unsteady on his feet, and when he reached the guard post, a faint ripple of fenumne giggles carried to where Sean and Matatu lay.
"They are having a party," Sean chuckled.
"Palm wine and jig-jig," Matatu agreed enviously. In the moonlight he held up his right hand with his thumb trapped between his first two fingers. "I would like some of that myself "You randy little bugger." Sean tweaked his ear. "When we get to Johannesburg, I'll stand you to the biggest, fattest lady we can Bush out." Matatu's taste in amour ran to the mountainous. "Like Sherpa Tensing on Everest," Sean often remarked.
The distractions with which the railway guards had provided themselves promised to make their crossing easier. Sean and Matatu withdrew quietly and started back to where they had left the rest of the party.
They had been gone for three hours, and it was a few minutes before midnight as they approached the camp. At the head of the ravine Sean paused to give the recognition signal, the liquid warble of a fiery-necked nightjar. He didn't want to be shot by one of Alphonso's Shanganes. He waited a full minute for the reply.
When it did not come, he repeated the signal. Still there was silence, and he felt the first tickle of alarm.
Instead of going straight in, they circled the ravine cautiously, and in the moonlight Matatu picked up unexpected spoor and squatted over it, frowning with alarm.
Sean whispered. "Who? Which way?"
"Many men, our own Shanganes!" Matatu lifted his head and pointed to the north. "They are going out, leaving camp."
"Outgoing?" Sean was puzzled. "Doesn't make sense, unless--I Oh, God!
No!"
Swiftly, quietly, he closed in on the camp. The sentries he had set before he left were gone, their posts deserted. Sean felt panic rise in a wave that threatened to suffocate him.
"Claudia!" he whispered, suppressing the urge to shout her name aloud. He wanted to rush into the camp and fiW her, but he drew a series of deep breaths and fought back the panic.
He slipped the AKM on to fully automatic and went down on his belly, creeping in. The five Shanganes he had left asleep in the of the ravine were gone, and all their equipment and weapons gut had disappeared. He went on and made out the shape of Job's stretcher in the dappled moonlight; beside it, exactly as he had left her, was Claudia's body wrapped in a blanket, but just beyond her another body lay sprawled. In the moonlight he saw the sheen of wetness on the back of the man's head.
"Blood!"
Sean threw all caution aside and rushed to Claudia's body, dropping to his knees beside her and sweeping her into his arms.
She gasped and cried out, coming out of a deep sleep. She began to struggle in his arms, then quieted as she realized who he was.
"Sean!" she blurted, still groggy with sleep. "What is it? What "Thank God," he murmured fervently. "I thought-!" He set her down gently, and reached across to where Job lay in the litter.
"Job, are you all right?" He shook him carefully, and Job stirred and murmured.
Sean jumped to his feet and went to where Alphonso lay. He touched his neck. The skin was warm, his pulse strong and even.
"Claudia!" he called. "Bring the flashlight."
In the beam of the flashlight he examined the laceration in Alphonso's scalp. "A-nice little ding," he grunted. Although the bleeding had stanched spontaneously, he pressed a field dressing over it and bound it in place. "Good thing they hit him on the head, or they might have done some serious damage." He grinned wryly at his own joke.
"What happened, Sean?" Claudia demanded anxiously. "I was fast asleep. I didn't heat a thing."
"Lucky for you." Sean tied the tag ends of the bandage. "Or you might have got thesaine treatment."
"What happened? Where are the others?"
"Gone," he told her. "Flown, deserted. They obviously didn't fancy the walk or the destination. They bashed Alphonso on the noggin and took off back to General China."
She stared at him. "You mean there are only the four of us now.?
All the Shanganes except Alphonso have gone?"
"That's right," Sean agreed. Alphonso groaned and reached up to touch his bandaged head. Sean helped him sit up.
"Sean!" Claudia tugged at his arm and he turned back to her.
"What are we going to do?" Sean glanced across at Job's stretcher.
I" going to do with Job? How are we going to carry him? How are we going to get out of here now/P" 90 "That, My love, is an extremely interesting question, Sean tell you is that by this time tomorrow, our know that we are on the run, and
"We don't seem to have us-we keep on the way we are going."
one road still open to He hauled Alphonso to his feet.
"that's impossible, "Claudia whispered anxiously. "Two of YOU cannot carry the stretcher-" some other or' You right, of course. we'll have to make rangement."
Between them they lifted Job out of the fiberglass stretcher and laid him on Claudia's blanket. Then, while the Others watched, had finished, Sean began to dismantle the stretcher. Before he Matatu appeared silently out of the darkness and whispered a brief report to Sean.