Tippoo Tip shrugged. "I have already placed three companies here along the Rio Save, keeping watch on the logging in the forests. There are five more companies spread across here, further north. If these whites are trying to reach the Limpopo border, they will have to pass right through my fines and the Frelimo, guards in the forest. I will radio my company commanders to be fully alert for them."
General China's tone was sharp and authoritative. "They must cover every trail, every river crossing. They must stake out a stop line with no gaps in it, and my sweep line coming down from the north will drive them onto it. But warn your section commanders that the white man is a soldier and a good one. He commanded the Ballantyne Scouts at the end of the war."
"Courtney," Tippoo Tip broke in. "I remember him well." He chuckled. "Of course; it was Courtney who led the raid on your base. No small wonder that you want him so badly. You and Colonel Courtney go back many years. You have a long memory, my brother."
"Yes." China nodded and touched the lobe of his deaf ear.
"Many years and a long memory, but then revenge is a dish that tastes best if it is eaten cold."
They both looked up as the sound of the Hind's turbos whistled in from the north of the village. China checked his wristwatch. The pilot was precisely on time for the pickup, and China felt his confidence in the young Portuguese reinforced. He stood up from the stool.
"We will maintain radio contact on 118.4 megahertz," he told Tippoo Tip. "Three schedules daily, Six A.M noon, and six in the evening." But Tippoo Tip was not looking at him-he was looking up longingly at the shape of the Hind as it hovered above the village like some mutated monster from a horror movie.
General China settled himself into the flight engineer's seat and closed the armored-glass canopy. He raised his right thumb toward where Tippoo Tip stood on the veranda of the derelict duka and as he returned the salute, the Hind rose vertically above the village and swung its nose toward the north.
"General, one of the patrols has been calling you urgently on the radio," the pilot said in China's earphones. "They are using the call sign "Twelve Red.""
"Very well, please switch to the patrol frequency," China ordered, and watched the digital display on the panel of his radio transmitter.
"Twelve Red, this is Banana Tree. Do you read?" he said into his helmet microphom'Twelve Red" was one of his crack scouting groups sweeping for spoor south of the railway line. Glancing at the map on his knee, China tried to guess the scouts" exact position. The section leader answered his call almost immediately.
"Banana Tree, this is Twelve Red. We have a confirmed contact.
China felt excitement and triumph rise in his chest, but he kept his voice level. "Report your position," he ordered, and as the section leader read out the coordinates China checked them on his field map and saw that the patrol was about thirty-five miles due north of the village.
"Have you got that, pilot?" he asked. "Get there as fast as you can. " As the engine tone of the Hind rose sharply he called, "Twelve Red, give us a red flare when you have us in sight."
Seven minutes later the flare arced up out of the forest almost directly under the Hind's nose, and the pilot slowed the machine and let it drift down toward the treetops.
The Renamo patrol had cleared a landing zone with their machetes and the pilot maneuvered the Hind into it and let her settle in a cloud of dust and debris. China saw with satisfaction that the scouts had thrown out a protective screen around the ing zone. They were crack bush fighters. He Icaped eagerly out of the cockpit, and the section leader came forward to salute him. He was a lean veteran, festooned with weapons, water bottles, and bandoliers of ammunition.
"They passed this way sometime yesterday," he reported.
"Are you sure it's them?" China demanded.
"The white man and woman." The section leader nodded. "But they buried something over there." He pointed with his chin. "We have not touched it, but I think it is a grave."
"Show me," China ordered, and followed him into the thorn thicket.
The section leader stopped beside a cairn of boulders.
"Yes, a grave," China said with finality. "Open it up."
The section leader snapped an order at two of his men and they laid aside their weapons and went forward. They kicked away the top stones and rolled them down the slope.
"Hurry!" China called. "Work faster!" And the ironstone boulders rang against each other and struck sparks as they were hurled aside.
"There is the corpse," the section leader called as Job's bundled head was exposed. He stepped forward and jerked aside the stained shirt that covered it.
"It's the Matabele." China recognized Job's features immediately.
"I didn't think he'd get this far. Dig him out and feed him to the hyenas," he ordered.
Two of the scouts reached down and seized Job's blanket wrapped shoulders. China watched with ghoulish interest. Mutilation of enemy dead was an ancient Nguni custom; the ritual disembowelment allowed the spirit of the vanquished to escape so it would not plague the victor. There was, however, a vindictive satisfaction in watching his men exhume the Matabele. He understood what grief this act would cause Sean Courtney, and he relished how he would describe it to him on his next radio transmission.
At that moment he spotted the short length of bark twine. It was twisted lightly around the blanket-wrapped shoulders of the corpse. a moment ie stare at it wit Purr len, as saw it tighten and heard the click of the grenade p he realized what it was, and he screamed a warning and hurled himself face forward to the earth.