The crisp silhouette of the hill on which the Hinds were laagered dissolved with the onset of night. Then Venus, the evening star, appeared, and its cold unwavering light burned directly above the hilltop, seeming to single it out for them.
Within the first hour of darkness, the leading troopers of the raiding column emerged from the trees behind them. Job was at the head of the column with Matatu guiding him and Claudia beside him. Sean met them with a quiet word and immediately began to marshal the troopers into their various units. The section leaders took charge of their missile teams, and the Stinger launchers were unpacked and assembled; the spare missiles in their sealed, frangible tubes were checked and readied.
Sean and Job and Claudia went from team to team, running the final checks on the missile launchers, making certain the battery packs were fully charged and correctly connected, the cylinders of freon gas were open-yak;,ed, and the sighting screens lit up when the actuator was engaged.
At last Sean was ready to deploy the missile teams. But before he did so, he called the section leaders together and for the last time made each repeat his orders. Satisfied at last, he began to dispatch them to their attack positions. He allowed a five-minute interval after each team leaving the ridge.
Alphonso was in charge of the missile teams attacking the eastern perimeter of the laager, and because he had farther to go to get into position, he left first.
When it was time for Job, who would lead the missile attack on the western perimeter, to go, he and Sean shook hands briefly.
There was no exchange of good wishes; they were both superstitious about that. Instead Job asked facetiously, "Listen, Sean, about that four thousand dollars in bonus and back pay, don't you want to pay me out now?"
"Will you take a check?" Sean grinned at him through the dark mask of his camouflage cream. Job answered his grin, punched his shoulder, and moved away out of earshot so Sean could speak to Claudia in private.
"I don't want to leave you," she whispered.
Sean hugged her fiercely. "Stay close to Job," he ordered.
"Come back to me safely."
"Yes.
"Promise me.
"I promise," he said, and she pulled out of his embrace and turned away, disappearing into the darkness after Job.
As Sean stared after her, he found that his hands were trembling. He thrust them into his pockets and clenched his fists. "Love doesn't do much for one's fighting instincts," he thought, and tried to dismiss her from his mind. "She'll be all right with Job."
The assault party was waiting for him patiently, squatting at the edge of the tree line. Twenty-four men, the cannon fodder, the meat bombs, he thought ruefully, those who had failed the aptitude tests for operating the Stingers. While the missile crews would fire from standoff positions five hundred meters outside the perimeter of the laager, the assault party would attack it head on and frontal, deliberately drawing fire while trying to flush the Hinds up into the air for the missile gunners to get a fair shot at them. It was this unit that would meet the 12.7-men cannons in their fortified positions, as well as all the other dangers and obstacles that certainly guarded the laager. Theirs was the most dangerous task, and for that reason alone Sean could not delegate the command of them to another. He himself would lead them in.
"Come on, Matatu," he said quietly. When there was real danger at hand, wounded game in thick cover or an enemy position to attack, Matatu's self-chosen place was always at Sean's side. Nothing could dislodge him from it.
As a mark of his esteem, Alphonso had presented Sean with an AKM assault rifle, the improved and updated version of the ubiquitous AK-47 that was much prized and sought after by the Renamo guerrillas. Sean carried this weapon now as he led the assault team down off the ridge. With Matatu guiding them through the night, they circled out to get in between the main railway line and the laager, as close as was prudent to the spur of line on which the railway fuel tankers stood.
There was no urgency-they had an night to get into position so they went with a stealth that increased the closer they came to the enemy positions.
It was after two in the morning, and the small slice of the moon had set before Sean had them in their jump-off positions, spread out at precise intervals so that at his command, they could sweep forward in skirmishing formation.
He made one final inspection of their dispositions, crawling silently from man to man, personally sighting in the 60-men M4 command o mortars for them, checking their equipment by sense of touch alone, making absolutely certain each of them clearly understood his objective, then leaving them with a whisper of encouragement and a brief but firm clasp of the shoulder. At last, with everything done that could be done, he settled down to wait.
This was always both the worst and the best part of the hunt. As he lay in the silence, he wondered how much of his life he had spent like this, waiting for it to began waiting for shooting light, waiting in the blind for that breath-stopping moment when a leopard would appear with magical suddenness in the bait tree, an elegant silhouette against the pale backdrop of the dawn.
His mind went back over the years to those other adventures and wild endeavors, to the terrible risks and almost unbearable thrills, and suddenly it dawned on him that this was probably the last time it would happen. He was over forty years of age and Claudia Monterro had entered his life; it was time for it to change.
There was sadness and, at the same time, satisfaction in that thought.
"Let the last be the best of all the game," he thought, and in the utter darkness of predawn he heard a sound at once thrilling and terrifying, the shrill high whine of a mighty turbo engine, howling like a man-eating wolf in the night. Almost at once it was joined by another and then another. The Hind squadron was starting their engines, warming up for their first sortie in the dawn.