The Hind would be a magnificent escape vehicle. He, Claudia, Job, and Matatu could get out of here with first-class tickets. Then reality overtook him, and his spirits dropped. He had never flown a helicopter, did not even have the vaguest notion of how to do so.
All he knew was that it required a delicate and expert touch on the controls and was entirely different from piloting a fixed-wing aircraft.
He looked back calculatingly at the Russian pilot. Despite the acne and his unprepossessing appearance, he thought he detected a stubborn, proud streak in the man's pale eyes, and he knew that the air force officers were among the elite of the Soviet armed forces. The Russian was almost certainly a fanatical patriot.
"Not much chance of getting you to act as ferry pilot," he guessed. Then he spoke aloud: "all right, gentlemen, let's get out of here." He indicated the exit from the emplacement, and under the barrel of the AKM they trooped toward it obediently. As the Russian pilot passed, Sean stopped him and lifted the Tokarev pistol from the holster at his hip. "You won't need that, Ivan," he said, and tucked the pistol into his own belt.
There was a fortified workshop almost abutting the Hind's emplacement. It had been excavated into the hillside and roofed with poles and sandbags. Sean herded the Russians down into it, then looked around him.
The battle had fizzled out, though a few desultory shots and the pop and bang of burning ammunition could still be heard.
Through the drifts of smoke and dust, he saw the Shanganes of the Renamo force rounding up the prisoners and searching for loot and booty. He recognized some of the missile crews. Once the Hinds had been destroyed, they must have abandoned their Stingers and rushed up the hill to join the sack of the laager.
He saw one of themWayoneting a Frelimo prisoner in the buttocks and legs and roaring with laughter as the man squirmed in the dirt, kic0big aridocontorting his body in an attempt to avoid the point of the blade. Other Renamo were emerging from the dugouts, rifles slung over their shoulders and arms full of booty.
Sean was accustomed to the ethics of irregular troops in Africa, but this blatant in discipline annoyed him. He snarled at them, and it was a measure of the force of his personality and the authority he wielded over them that even in the heady moments of victory they obeyed him with alacrity. The Renamo who had been torturing his prisoner paused only to dispatch the maimed victim with a bullet in the back of the neck before hurrying t o Sean's bidding.
"Guard these white prisoners," Sean ordered them. "If harm comes to them, General China will roast your testicles on a slow fire and make you eat them," he warned.
Without looking back he strode through the laager, reasserting his command, getting his triumphant howling shrieking Shanganes back to sanity. He saw Sergeant Alphonso ahead of him.
"We can't carry much loot away. Let the men take their pick, and then I want limpet mines in the storerooms after everything has been drenched with avgas from the drums," he ordered Sergeant Alphonso. He glanced at his wristwatch. "We can expect Frelimo to counterattack the laager within the hour. I want to be gone by then."
"No!" Alphonso shook his head. "General China has moved three companies in between us to hold the Frelimo counterattack.
He has ordered you to hold this position until he arrives."
Sean pulled up short and stared at Alphonso. "What the hell are you talking about? China is two days" march away on the river!"
Alphonso grinned and shook his head. "General China will be here in an hour. He followed us with five companies of his best troovs. He has never been more than an hour behind us, not since we lit the river."
"How do you know this?" Sean demanded.
Alphonso grinned again and patted the radio on the back of the trooper who stood beside him. "I spoke to the general ten minutes ago, as soon as we killed the last of the Russian hen shaw
"Why didn't you tell me before this, you bastard?" Sean growled.
"The general ordered me not to. But now he has ordered me to tell you that he is very pleased with the killing of the hen shaw and he says that you are like a son to him. When he arrives he will reward you."
"AB right." Sean changed his orders. "If we have to hold the laager, get your men into the perimeter defenses. We win use the 12.7-men heavy machine guns."
Sean broke off as a Shangane trooper came running up the hill toward him.
"Nkosi!" The man panted. As soon as he saw his face, Sean knew it was bad news.
"The woman?" he demanded, seizing the messenger's arm. "Is the white woman hurt?"
The Shangane shook his head. "She is safe. She sent me to you.
It's the Matabele, Captain Job. He is 4it."
"How bad?" Sean was already starting to run, and he shouted the question over his shoulder.
"He's dying," the Shangane called after him. "The Matabele is dying."
Sean knew where to look; he himself had selected the copse of knob-thorn acacia as Job's attack position. The first rays of the morning sun were turning the tops of the knob-thorns to gold as Sean ran down the hill. With the help of two Shanganes, Claudia had moved Job onto soft level ground beneath one of the trees. She had propped his head on one of the backpacks and had a field dressing over the wound.
She looked up and cried, "Oh, Sean, thank God!" Her shirt was drenched with drying blood, and she saw Sean's expression. "Not my blood," she assured him. "I'm all right."