He could expect the Sikh to act swiftly and ruthlessly. Bonny was right.
He had to get out of Sengi-Sengi within the next few minutes, before the executioners arrived.
From the angle of the building he threw a quick glance down the verandah and around the compound. All was quiet and dark. He slipped back into his room, and lifted his small travel bag down from the cupboard. It contained all his personal documents, passport, airline tickets, credit cards and travellers cheques. Apart from his clothing and toilet bag there was nothing else of value in the room.
He pulled on a light wind-cheater and checked that the key of the Landrover was in his pocket. He extinguished the lights and went out.
The Landrover was parked at the far end of the verandah. He opened the door quietly and threw his bag on to the passenger seat. All the hired VTR equipment was packed into the rear compartment and there was a selection of basic camping and first-aid equipment in the lockers, but there was no weapon of any kind, apart from his old hunting-knife.
He started the Landrover. The engine noise seemed excessively loud in the darkness. He did not switch on the headlights and he let in the clutch gently, keeping the engine revs down.
He drove slowly through the darkened compound towards the main gates.
He knew that the gates were never closed at night, and that a single guard was on duty there.
Daniel was under no illusion as to just how far he was going to get in the Landrover. There was only one road from SengiSengi to the Ubomo river ferry, and there was a road-block every five miles.
A radio call from Sengi-Sengi would alert every one of them.
The guards would be waiting for him with their fingers on the triggers of their AK 47s. No, he would be lucky to make it through the first block, and then he would have to take to the jungle. He didn't relish that prospect. He had been trained for survival and warfare in the drier bushveld of Rhodesia, a long way further south. He would not be nearly as adept in the rain forest, but there was no other way open to him.
The first thing was to get clear of Sengi-Sengi. After that he would face each problem as it arose.
And this is number one, he thought grimly as suddenly the floodlights at the main gates switched on in a bright halogen dawn. The entire compound was brightly lit.
There were half a dozen figures running from the barrack area where guards were quartered. It was obvious they had dressed hastily; some were in undervests and shorts. Daniel recognized both Captain Kajo and Chetti Singh.
Kajo was brandishing an automatic pistol and Chetti Singh was trotting along behind him, shouting and waving at the approaching Landrover, his white turban very visible in the glare of the floodlights. One of the guards was trying to shut the gates. He already had one wing of the steel-framed mesh gate half across the roadway.
Daniel switched on his headlights, put his hand flat on the horn and drove hard at him, the hooter blaring. The guard dived nimbly aside, and the Landrover slammed into the unlocked leaf of the gate and whipped it aside. He roared through.
Behind him he heard the rattling clamour of automatic riflefire. He felt half a dozen bullets slam into the aluminium bodywork of the Landrover, but he crouched low over the wheel and kept his foot hard down on the accelerator.
The first bend in the roadway rushed towards him in the headlights.
Another burst of automatic fire splattered against the rear of the vehicle. The rear window exploded in a storm of glass splinters and something struck him high in the back within an inch of his spine. He had been hit by a bullet before, in that long-ago war, and he recognized the sensation. From the position of the wound, high and close to the spine, it had to be a lung shot, a mortal wound. He expected to feel the choking flood of arterial blood into his lungs.
Keep going as long as you can, he thought, and swung the Landrover into the bend at full throttle. She went up on two wheels but didn't roll.
When he glanced in the rear-view mirror the camp lights were obscured by forest trails, a dwindling glow in the darkness behind.
He could feel hot blood, running down his back, but there was no choking, no weakness, not yet anyway. The wound was numb. He could think clearly, He could keep going.
He knew exactly where the first road-block was situated.
Approximately five miles ahead, he reminded himself. On the first river crossing. He tried to remember how the road ran to reach it. He had driven over it half a dozen times during the last three days filming.
He could remember almost every twist, every track that led off it.
He made his decision. He leaned back against the seat. The wound stabbed him like a knife in the back, but he wasn't losing much blood.
Internal bleeding, he thought. You aren't going to walk away from this one, Danny boy. But he kept going, waiting for the weakness to overcome him.
There were five logging roads branching off from the main highway before it reached the first road-block. Some of them were disused and overgrown, but at least two were still being subjected to heavy daily traffic. He chose the first of these, two miles from Sengi-Sengi and turned on to it, heading westwards.
The Zaire border was ninety miles in that direction, but the logging track only ran five miles through the forest before it intersected the MOMU excavation.
He would have to dump the Landrover and try to make the remaining eighty miles on foot through uncharted forest. The last part of the journey would be over high mountains, glaciers and alpine snowfields.
Then he thought about the bullet wound in his back and knew he was dreaming. He wasn't going to get that far.
The logging track he was on had been deeply rutted and chopped up by the gigantic treaded tyres of the trucks and heavy trailers. It was a morass of mud the consistency and colour of faeces, and the Landrover churned through it in fourwheel drive, pounding through the knee-deep ruts.
Flying mud stuck to the glass of the headlights and dimmed the beams to a murky glow that barely lit the roadway twenty paces ahead.
The wound in his back was beginning to ache, but his head was still clear. He touched the end of his own nose with his forefinger to check his coordination. No sign of losing it yet.
Suddenly he-was aware of lights far ahead of him on the track. One of the logging trucks was coming towards him, and instantly he realised the possibility it offered. He slowed the Landrover and searched the verge of unbroken jungle that pressed in upon the track. He sensed rather than saw a break in the foliage and swung the Landrover boldly into-it.
For fifty paces or so he forced his way through almost impenetrable undergrowth. It scraped along both sides of the bodywork, and small trees and branches thumped along beneath the chassis. The soft forest floor sucked at the wheels and the Landrover's speed bled off until at last she was high-centred and stranded.
Daniel cut the engine and switched off the headlights. He sat in the darkness and listened to the logging truck rumble past, headed eastwards towards Sengi-Sengi along the road he had come. When the sound of the huge diesel engine had dwindled into silence, he leaned forward in the seat and steeled himself to examine the bullet wound in his back.
Reluctantly he twisted one arm up behind him and groped towards the centre of pain.
Suddenly he exclaimed and jerked his hand away. He switched on the interior lights and examined the razor scratch on his forefinger. Then quickly he reached behind himself again, and cautiously fingered the wound. He laughed aloud with relief. A shard of flying glass from the rear window had sliced open his back, and lodged against his ribs. It was a long superficial wound with the sharp glass still buried in it.