It went with a ping, and Craig dropped the tool.
"Okay, it's open," he sobbed, and Roland pulled the lanyard out of the vee of his shirt, and lifted the whistle to his lips. He blew a single crisp blast, and pumped his arm over his head.
"Let's go!" The Scouts came through the minefield at a run, keeping their rigid ten-pace separation, following the zigzag of the tape that Craig had laid down the corridor to guide them. As each one of them came to where Craig still lay on his belly, they jumped lightly over his back and melted away into the open bush, beyond the minefield, spreading out into their running formation. Roland lingered a second longer at Craig's side.
"I can't spare anyone to stay with you, Sonny." He laid the medical kit beside his head. "There is morphine for when it gets too bad." He laid something else beside the medical kit. It was a hand-grenade. "The terrs may get to you before our boys do. Don't let them take you. A grenade is messy, but effective." Then Roland leaned forward and kissed Craig on the forehead. "Bless you, Sonny!" he said, and then he was on his feet going forward again at a run ". Within seconds, the thick riverine Zambezi bush had swallowed him, and slowly Craig lowered his face into the crook of his arm.
Then, at last, the pain came at him like a ravening lion.
Commissar Tungata Zebiwe crouched in the bottom of the slit trench, and listened to the husky voice speaking from the portable radio.
"They are through the minefield, coming down to the river.
His observers were on the north bank of the Zambezi, in carefully prepared positions from which they could sweep the opposite bank and the small heavily wooded islands that split the shallows of the wide river-course.
"How many?"Tungata asked into the microphone. "No count yet." Of course, they would be mere flickers of movement in the darkening bush, impossible to get a head count, as they came forward in overlapping covering rushes. Tungata looked up at the sky, there was less than an hour before dark, he estimated, and felt a fresh onslaught of the doubts that had beset him ever since he had brought his cadre through the drifts almost three hours before.
Could he entice the pursuers into crossing the river? Without that the destruction of the Viscount and all else that he had so far achieved would be halved in propaganda and psychological value against the enemy. He had to bring the Scouts across into the carefully prepared killing-ground. He had carried the woman's skirt and left it on the edge of the cordon sanitaire for just that purpose, to bring them on.
Yet he recognized that it would be an irrational act for any commander to take a small force across such a natural barrier as the Zambezi at the close of day with darkness only minutes away, into hostile territory against an enemy of unknown strength who must anticipate his arrival and who had been able to prepare for it at leisure. Tungata could not expect them to come he could only hope.
It would depend chiefly upon who had command of the pursuers. The bait that he had laid to draw them in would be only truly effective on one man, the multiple rape and mutilation of the woman, the bloodied skirt would have their full effect only upon Colonel Roland Ballantyne himself. Tungata tried objectively to assess the chances that it was Ballantyne himself commanding the pursuit.
He had been at Victoria Falls Hotel, ZIPRA agents had made a positive identification. The woman had called herself Ballantyne, the Scouts were the nearest and most effective force in the area. Surely they must be the first to the site of the wreck, and surely Ballantyn would be with them. Tungata had to allow himself a better than even chance that his operation was working as planned.
Tungata's first confirmation that the pursuit was close had been a little before four o'clock that afternoon, when there had been one short burst of automatic fire from the south bank. At that moment, Tungata's cadre had just completed the crossing of the drift. They were still soaked and lying panting, like hunting-dogs too hard run, and Tungata had been chilled to realize how close the Scouts had been behind them, despite the many hours" start they had had and the fierce pace that Tungata had forced on his men. Twenty minutes more and they would have been caught on the south bank at the cordon sanitaire, and Tungata cherished no illusions as to what that would have meant. His men were the elite of the ZIPRA forces, but they were no match for Ballantyne's Scouts. On the south bank they would have been doomed, but now that they were across the Zambezi, the advantage had swung dramatic cally. Tungata's preparations to receive the pursuing force had taken fully ten days, and had been carried out with the full co-operation of the Zambian army and police force.
The radio crackled again and Tungata lifted the microphone to his lips and acknowledged curtly. The observer's voice was lowered, as though he feared it might carry to the dangerous quarry across the river.
"They have not attempted the crossing. Either they are waiting for dark, or they are not coming." "They must come," Tungata whispered to himself, and then he keyed the microphone.
"Put up the flare," he ordered.
"Stand by!" the observer answered, and Tungata lowered the microphone and looked up expectantly into the purple and rose of the evening sky. It was a risk, but then it had all been a risk, from the very moment they crossed the Zambezi carrying the SAM-7 launcher.
The signal flare streaked up into the sunset, and five hundred feet above the river it burst into a crimson ball of fire. Tungata watched it begin to sink gracefully towards the earth again, He found that he had driven his fingernails into the flesh of his palms with the strength of his grip upon the radio microphone.
The flare, fired so tantalizingly close to the river bank, from just behind the first line of trees on the north bank, could frighten them off and make them abandon the pursuit, or it could have the effect that Tungata hoped for. It could convince them how close they were to their quarry, and precipitate the cat-like reflex to follow anything that flees.
Tungata waited and the seconds dragged by. He shook his head, facing at last the prospect of failure, feeling the chill of it begin in the pit of his stomach and beginning to spread. Then the radio crackled, and the observer's voice was strained and hoarse. They are coming! "he said.
Tungata snatched the microphone to his lips. "All units. Hold your fire. This is Comrade Tungata. Hold your fire." He had to pause then, his relief mixed with dread that at this last moment one of his nervous guerrillas might spring the trap prematurely. He had six hundred men deployed on the killing-ground, only regimental strength was sufficient for a detachment of kanka. With his own eyes Tungata had seen them fight, and anything less than odds of twenty to one in his favour would not be acceptable.
He had achieved his numerical advantage, but in his own great numbers there was a concealed danger. Control was weakened, not all of his men were warriors of quality, amongst them there must be many of those who were nervous and susceptible to the mysterious aura, the almost superstitious awe, that surrounded the legend of Ballantyne's Scouts, "All field commanders, "he kept repeating into the microphone, "hold your fire. This is Commissar Comrade Tungata. Hold your fire. "Then he lowered the microphone and made one long last careful study of the ground in front of him.