sheer weight of numbers. Save me wasting ammunition."
It was still dark when the three of them left camp the next morning.
There was no sign of Boris and, when Nicholas asked about him, Tessay
said simply, "After you went to bed last night he finished the bottle.
He won't be out of his hut before noon. He won't miss me."
Carrying the Rigby, Nicholas led them tip into the weathered limestone
hills, retracing the path along which Tamre had taken them the previous
day. As they walked, Nicholas heard the two women talking behind him.
Royan was explaining to Tessay how they had sighted the striped dik-dik,
and what they planned.
The sun was well up by the time they again reached the spot under the
thorn tree on the lip of the chasm, and settled down to wait in ambush.
"How will you retrieve the carcass, if you do manage to shoot the poor
little creature?" Royan asked.
"I made certain of that before we left camp," he explained. "I spoke to
the head tracker. If he hears a shot he will bring up the ropes and help
me get across to the other side."
"I wouldn't like to make the journey across there." Tessay eyed the drop
below them.
"They teach you some useful things in the army, along with all the
rubbish," Nicholas replied. He made himself comfortable against the
thorn tree, the rifle ready in his lap.
The women lay close by him, talking together softly.
It was unlikely that the sound of their low voices would carry across
the ravine, Nicholas decided, so he did not try to hush them.
He expected that if it came at all, the dik-dik would show itself early.
But he was wrong. By noon there was still no sign of it. The valley
sweltered in the midday sun. The distant wall of the escarpment, veiled
in the blue heat haze, looked like jagged blue glass, and the mirage
danced across the rocky ridges and shimmered like the waters of a silver
lake above the tops of the thorn thickets.
The women had long ago given up talking, and they lay somnolent in the
heat. The whole world was silent and heat-struck. Only a bush dove broke
the silence with its mournful lament, "My wife is dead, my children are
dead, Oh, me! Oh, my! Oh, me!'Nicholas found his own eyelids becoming
leaden. His head nodded involuntarily, and he jerked it up only to have
it flop forward again. On the very edge of sleep he heard a sound, close
by in the thorn scrub behind him.
It was a tiny sound, but one that he knew so well. A sound that
whiplashed across his nerve endings and jerked him back to full
consciousness, with his pulse racing and the coppery taste of fear in
the back of his throat. It was the metallic sound of the safety-catch on
an AK-47 assault rifle being slipped forward into the "Fire' position.
In one fluid movement he lifted the rifle out of his lap and rolled
twice, twisting his body to cover the two women who lay beside him. At
the same time he brought the Rigby into his shoulder, aimed into the
scrub behind him from where the sound had come.
"Down!" he hissed at his companions. "Keep your heads down!'
His finger was on the trigger and, even though it was a puny weapon with
which to take on a Kalashnikov, he was ready to return fire. He picked
up his target immediately, and swung on to it.
There was a man crouched twenty paces away, the assault rifle he carried
aimed into Nicholas's face. He was black, dressed in worn and tattered
camouflage fatigues and a soft cap of the same material. His webbing
held a bush-knife and grenades, water bottle' and all the other
accoutrements of a guerrilla fighter.
"Shufta!" thought Nicholas. "A real pro. Don't take chances with this
one." Yet at the same time he realized that if the intention had been to
kill him, then he would be dead already.
He aimed the Rigby an inch over the muzzle of the assault rifle, into
the bloodshot right eye of the shufta behind it. The man acknowledged
the stand-off with a narrowing of his eyes, and then gave an order in
Arabic.
"Salim, cover the women. Shoot them if he moves.
Nicholas heard movement on his flank and glanced in that direction,
still keeping the shufta in his peripheral vision.
Another guerrilla stepped out of the scrub. He was alclass="underline" similarly
dressed, but he carried a Soviet RPD light machine gun on his hip. The
barrel was sawn off short to make the weapon more handy for bush
fighting, and there was a loop of ammunition belt draped around his
neck. He came forward carefully, the RPD aimed point-blank at the two
women. Nicholas knew that, with a touch on the trigger, he could chop
them both to mincemeat.
There were other stealthy rustling sounds in the bush all around them.
These two were not the only ones, Nicholas realized. This was a large
war party. He might be able to get off one shot with the Rigby, but by
then Royan and Tessay would be dead. And he would not be far behind
them.
Very slowly and deliberately he lowered the muzzle of the rifle until it
was pointing at the ground. Then he laid the weapon down and raised his
hands.
"Get your hands up," he told the women. "Do exactly what they tell you."
The guerrilla leader acknowledged his surrender by coming to his full
height and speaking rapidly to his men, still in Arabic.
"Get the rifle and his pack."
"We are British subjects," Nicholas told him loudly, and the guerrilla
looked surprised by his use of Arabic. "We are simple tourists. We are
not military. We are not government people."
Be quiet. Shut your face!" he ordered, as the rest of the guerrilla
patrol emerged from cover. Nicholas counted five of them all told,
though he knew there were probably others who had not come forward. They
were very professional as they rounded up their prisoners. They never
blocked each other's field of fire, nor offered an opportunity of
escape. Quickly they searched them for weapons, then closed in around
them and hustled them on to the path.
"Where are you taking us?"Nicholas demanded.
"No questions!" The butt of an AK-47 smashed between his shoulder blades
and almost knocked him off his feet.
"Steady on, chaps," he murmured mildly in English.
"That wasn't really called for."
They were forced to keep marching through the heat of the afternoon.
Nicholas kept a check on the position of the sun and the distant
glimpses of the escarpment wall.
He realized that they were heading westwards, following the course of
the Nile towards the Sudanese border. It was late afternoon, and
Nicholas estimated that they had covered some ten miles, before they
came upon a side shoot of the main valley. The slopes were heavily
wooded, and the three prisoners were herded into a patch of this forest.
They were actually within the perimeter of the guerrilla camp before
they were aware of its existence. Cunningly camouflaged, it consisted
merely of a few crude lean, to shelters and a ring of weapons
emplacements. The sentries were well placed, and all the light machine
guns in the foxholes were manned.
They were led to one of the shelters in the centre of the camp, where
three men were squatting around a map spread on a low camp table. These
were obviously officers, and there was no mistaking which of the three
was the commander. The leader of the patrol which had captured them went
to this man, saluted him deferentially and then spoke to him urgently,
pointing at his captives.
The guerrilla commander straightened up from the table, and came out
into the sunlight. He was of medium height, but was imbued with such an