The current had swept them in under the sheer riverbank, against which the summer floods had piled dead trees and drift wood high. The sandbar was merely a narrow strip below the bank.
"We must move fast," Sean told Job. "We can expect that the Hind was able to transmit a signal to the rest of the squadron, and they'll come looking for us."
"What do you want to do first?"
"Unload the Stingers," Sean answered promptly. "Get them busy." Once Sean climbed aboard again, he found that the hydraulic rams on the cargo door were still operating off the batteries and he lowered the ramp.
The weight of each wooden case was stenciled on it, 152 pounds.
"They are light, two men to a case," Sean ordered, and he and Job rifted them onto the shoulders of each pair as they stepped forward soon as they received it, they trotted down the ramp onto the sandbar and up the bank into the trees. Ferdinand showed them where to stash them and cover them with driftwood.
It took less than twenty minutes to unload the cargo, but every minute Sean was in a ferment of impatience and anxiety. As the last case was carried ashore, he hurried out onto the ramp and peered up at the sky, expecting to hear the approaching whine of rotors and Isotov turbos.
"Our luck isn't going to last," he told Job. "We must get rid of the Hercules."
"What are you going to do, swallow it or bury it?" Job asked sarcastically.
Against the forward bulkhead of the Hercules" hold was a 120ton loading winch, used to drag cargo aboard. Under Sean's instruction four Shanganes ran out the winch cable and used the Hercules" inflatable life raft to take the end of it across the river and shackle it to a tree on the far bank.
While they were doing this, Sean and Job searched the Hercules and stripped it of everykitern of useful equipment, from the first aid kit to the stores of coffee and sugar in the tiny forward galley. With satisfaction, Semi saw that the tropical first aid box was substantial and contained a good supply of malarial prophylactics and antibiotics. He sent it ashore with one of the Shanganes and ran back to the loading ramp.
The dinghy was returning, and still there was no sound or sight of marauding Hind gunships. It was too good to bear thinking about.
"Get everybody ashore," Sean told Job, and went to the winch controls. As he engaged the clutch, the steel cable came up taut and the Hercules" hull, which was heavily beached on the sandbar, if lurched and began to swing. He kept the winch running, and the sand gritted and scraped under her belly as she was dragged into deeper water.
As soon as she was afloat, Sean half closed the ramp to prevent her flooding too rapidly and winched her into the middle of the river, where the current was swiftest. As soon as she took the current and began to drift downstream, Sean grabbed the bolt cutters from their rack on the bulkhead and sheared the cable. The Hercules floated free.
On impulse Sean cut a four-foot length from the end of the severed winch cable. The stainless steel strands immediately began to unravel of their own accord. He rolled three of the separate strands into a tight loop and slipped the roll into his back pocket.
Job would fit hardwood buttons to the strands. The garroting wire was one of the Scouts" favorite clandestine weapons, and Sean had felt half naked since he had lost his in the pack he had dropped down the cliff. He transferred his full attention back to the Hercures.
"The fuel tanks are almost empty," he murmured as he watched her progress downstream. "She should float until she reaches the falls." He stayed on board while at least two miles of riverbank went by.
In the meantime he used the bolt cutters to sever the hydraulic pipes and fuel leads that ran along the roof of the cargo hold. A mixture of hydraulic fluid and Avtur dribbled and spurted and puddled onto the floor of the hold. Satisfied at last that he had done everything possible to throw off the pursuit, he balanced in the open escape hatch and pulled the pin from the phosphorus grenade he had commandeered from Ferdinand.
"Thanks, old girl," he spoke aloud to the Hercules. "You have been a darling. The least I can offer you is a Viking's funeral." He rolled the grenade down the deck of the hold, then leaped out of the hatch and hit the water. He came up swimming, reaching out in a full overarm crawl with the image in his mind of those fat black crocodiles he had seen on the sandbar.
Behind him he heard the muffled bump of the exploding grenade, but he never paused or looked back until he felt ground under his feet. By then the Hercules was a quarter of a mile downstream, burning furiously but still afloat. Black, oily smoke boiled up into the clear morning sky.
Sean waded the last few yards to the steep bank and crawled up it on hands and knees. While he sat there panting and gulping for breath, he heard the familiar and by now well -hated sound of rotors and Isotov turbo engines coming in fast. The smoke of the burning Hercules was a beacon the Hinds would have spotted from fifty miles out.
Sean took a handful of mud from the bank on which he sat and smeared his bare arms and face. He crawled under a dense bush on the bank and watched the Hind come sweeping in over the treetops, banking in a wide circle around the burning hulk of the Hercules and then hovering like an evil vampire two hundred feet above it.
The flames reached one of the fuel tanks and the Hercules exploded in a dragon's breath, scattering pieces of itself across the river, the flames hissing into steam as they hit the water. The Hind hung over the river for almost five minutes, perhaps searching for survivors. Then abruptly it rose high, turned its nose southward, and dwindled to a speck against the blue.
"Limited range and endurance, like the man said." Sean stood up from his hiding place. "Now go home like a good little Russkie and report the target destroyed. Go tell Bobby Mugabe he doesn't have to worry about his precious Stingers falling into the wrong hands."