There was only one small obstacle in his way, the Renanio army.
It sat astride that vital rail fink, attacking it almost daily, blowing up bridges and culverts, ripping out the tracks and shooting up rolling stock.
The actual damage they caused was minor compared to the fact that their depredations gave the Western governments a fine excuse to withhold the funds needed to restore the main line to the condition in which it would be able to carry all of Zimbabwe's imports and exports.
The Frelimo government's efforts to protect the line were so fumbling and inept that the Zimbabweans themselves were forced to assist them. Over ten thousand of M s own troops were tied up with trying to fend off Renamo attacks on the line. Sean had heard estimates of the cost of these operations to Zimbabwe's economy, already one of the shakiest in sub-Saharan Africa, as high as a million dollars a day.
It was ironic that Mugabe, once the guerrilla, was now forced into the role of passive defender of fixed hardware and permanent positions.
He was experiencing the stings of the flea that he had once so merrily dispensed.
Sean and the Renamo major laughed at the joke and began on the second case of good apartheid lager. This marked the passing of the time for serious conversation.
Now they reminisced happily about the days of the bush war and soon discovered that they had both been at the same contact in the Mavuradonha Mountains on the day when they had killed forty-six guerrillas, a "good kill" as a successful action was always referred to. Sean's Scouts had lain in wait in the gulleys and reentrances to the hills, acting in the role of stop group, while the Pa RAR had dropped on the far side by parachute and formed the sweep line to drive the terrorists onto the Scouts.
"You drove out as many bushbuck as gooks," Sean remembered. "I didn't know which to shoot first." And they laughed and talked of other dangerous sorties, of crazy ops and wild chases and "good kills."
They drank to Ian Smith, the Banantyne scouts, and the Rhodesian African Rifles. There was still plenty of beer remaining, so they drank to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. When they "Damnaran out of conservative leaders to toast, Sean suggested, tion to Gorbachev!"
This was enthusiastically adopted, and the major countered immediately with, "Damnation to Frelinio and Joaquim Chissano."
The list of left-wingers was longer than that of conservatives, but they worked their way steadily down it, damning them all from Neil Kinnock to Teddy Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.
When they finally parted, Sean and the major embraced like brothers. Sean had filled all his pockets with cans of beer, so that when he returned to his Shangane guards they too greeted him affectionately as he distributed the cans among them.
In the morning the Shangane sergeant shook him awake while it was still dark. Sean's headache was terrifying and his mouth tasted as though a hyena had slept in it. It was one of the penances of being superbly physically fit: the body's reaction to the abuse of rtionately violent, the hangovers more fierce alcohol was propo aspirin for solace.
and he had not a single ming Sean had sweated out However, by the middle of the MO the last drops of stale beer. Their route was still south and west, and as they ran they saw many more fortifications and strong points. As the major had told him, they were cunningly dispersed and hidden. He saw light field artillery in sandbagged em placed detachments, together with mortars in their redoubts an armed with RPG sockets, the mobile hand-held stalwarts of the guerrilla arsenaclass="underline" All the troops he saw seemed to be cheerful and of high morale, well fed and equipped. Nearly all of them wore the tiger-striped camouflage and combat boots with rubber soles and canvas uppers.
His escort had replenished their packs from the garrison stores.
aize meal was in two-kilo paper When they stopped to eat, the inch they lit the sacks marked "Premier Mills," the matches with whi fire were "Lion Matches," and the new bars of soap "Sunlight," all with the familiar double legend beneath the name: "Verwaardig in Suid Afrika, Made in South Africa."
"It's almost like being home again," Sean chuckled.
The Renaino defensive lines were in concentric rings like the ripples on a pond, and soon Sean realized they were approaching the center. They passed what were obviously training areas, where fresh-faced black recruits, both male and female, some of them in their early teens, sat in rows under thatched sun shelters like schoolchildren in a classroom, studying the makeshift blackboard so attentively that they barely glanced up as Sean's detachment trotted by.
From the blackboards, Sean saw the subjects they were being taught ranged from the infantry field manual to politic theory.
al Beyond the rear training areas they entered what appeared to be a series of low, sparsely manned kopjes. It was only when they were within a few meters of the side of one of these hills that Sean spotted the entrances to the dugouts.
They were more elaborately constructed and cunningly concealed than the others they had been passing all day. These would be invisible from the air and impervious to aerial bombardment, and Sean could tell, by the changed deportment of his guards and their more severe posture toward him, that they had reached the headquarters area of the Renamo army group.