"We'll deal with that one when we come to it."
Matatu pulled up again. "They cooked here last night." He pointed to the remains of a camp fire, and there were the marks where they had sat while they rested and ate. A few black safari ants were scurrying about the site, foraging for the scraps of food they had spilled, and there were more cigarette butts. search! Sean ordered. "Job will have tried to get a message to us. While Matatu and Pumula went over the area carefully but bee quickly, Sean glanced at his watch: 1600 hours; they had. just over three hours. They still had plenty of daylight and going a good chance to catch them before dark.
"Here is where they put the mein's litter." Matatu pointed out the marks in the earth. "Here she stood."
Sean studied her footprints, smaller, neater, and narrower than the boot prints of her captors. When she walked she had favored her leg, dragging the toe.
"Did you find anything?" he demanded roughly. "Did Job leave a message?"
"Nothing." Matatu shook his head.
"All right. We'll drink now," he ordered, handing out salt tablets and caution them to self-control.
Three swallows each from the bottles, then they screwed the stop from his pack. He didn't have topers tightly closed. They had paused for less than five minutes.
"Let's go," said Sean.
An hour later they found where the raiders had slept. The fact t beside their that they had moved on after eating and not slep cooking fire told Sean that they were trained troops.
"Search again," Sean ordered. Any information Job could have left for them would be valuable.
"Nothing," Matatu said back a few minutes later. Sean felt a prick of disappointment. d. He was about to turn away "M right. Keep going," he ordered when something made him pause. He glanced around the camp site. b sleep?" he demanded.
"Where did the memsahi "There." Matatu pointed. Somebody, probably Job, had cut an of leaves and grass for her mattress. Her body had flattened armful the pile. Sean squatted beside it and carefully sifted through it, searching for any clues.
There was nothing. He lifted away the last few leaves and was beginning to rise to his feet. He was disappointed; the feeling that she had left something for him had been very powerful.
"So much for ESP," he grunted. Then he noticed the button, half buried in the dust under the mattress of straw.
He picked it out and stood up. It was a brass button from the waistband of her denim jeans, engraved "Ralph Button."
"Designer jeans, that's my ducky." He slipped it into his pocket.
"But it doesn't tell me anything," he broke off, unless..." H knelt again and gently brushed aside the dust under where the button had lain. He was right; she had used the button as a marker. he Beneath it she had buried a scrap of cardboard, the flap torn from the lid of a packet of cheap Portuguese cigarillos. It was not more than two inches long and half as wide, very little space for the message she had written with a charcoal stick scavenged fire. from the 15 mAma. That was invaluable intelligence, confirming Matatu's estimate of numbers, and now at least he knew who they were dealing with: Renamo.
CAvE. The next word puzzled him. "Cave?" Suddenly he realized it was the old public schoolboy warning from the Latin caveat beware
He smiled despite himself.
"ere did she ever learn a Limey expression like that?" Then he remembered she was a lawyer and read on.
CAVE.
T1 ExPECT You- She and Job would have overheard them discussing the Pursuit. That information was just as valuable.
ALL OK. And she had signed it, C He stared at the scrap of cardboard, holding it in the palm of his hand as though it were a relic of the true cross.
"You little beauty, you," he whispered. "You've got to be the brightest, gutsiest..." He shook his head in wonder, a choking sensation in his throat. For the very first time he admitted his Ion ng for her, then suppressed it firmly as he came to his fee gi t.
There was neither time nor opportunity for such self-indulgence now.
"Renamo," he told Matatu and Purnula. "You were right, the are fifteen of them. They know we are following. We can expect an re ambush."
They both looked grave. Sean anced at his wristwatch. "We can catch them before dark." 91 Within an hour they came upon the first ambush the Renarno had set for them. Four men had lain beside the trail at the point where the causeway across the flood plains joined the main forest on the higher ground. The ambush had been cunningly sited on the far edge of a narrow vlei, across open ground with a good field of I T ; 178 fire. it had been abandoned only a short time before they came up to it.
"They are putting down a rolling rear guard." Sean felt queasy at the risk he had taken with such a reckless pursuit.
in the dust were the distinctive double marks left by the bipod of an RPD light machine gun, one of the simplest and yet the most deadly effective of all guerrilla weapons. If he had led his men into the vlei while that gun was still in position, it would all have been over in a few hellish seconds. He had been pushing too hard, not taking even elementary precautions. His concern for Claudia had unbalanced his judgment.
Renamo had pulled out just before they reached the vlei. They had judged the time of his arrival with disconcerting accuracy, the margin had been far too narrow. The crew of the RPD would have moved back and re sited the ambush farther along the trail in order not to fall too far behind their main party.