bank exposed. On this bank stood a number of boulders that had tumbled
down from the cliff above. Some of them were lying on the beach, while
others had rolled into the river and were half, submerged. The largest
was the size of a cottage, a great round mass of dark rock.
As he watched, a man emerged unexpectedly from the scrub. Boris's pulse
quickened as he watched him scramble down on to one of the smaller
boulders and jump from there on to the gravel bank. He knelt at the
water's edge and filled a canvas bucket -with water, then climbed back
and disappeared into the bush again.
"Ah! The heat is too much even for them. They must drink, and that gives
them away. If it had not been for the birds I would never have known
that they were there." He clucked softly with reluctant admiration.
"Nimmur is a careful man. No wonder he has survived so long. He keeps
tight control. But even he must have water."
Boris kept watching through the glasses as he tried to guess what Mek
Nimmur would do next. "He has lost much time here by sheltering from the
heat. He will march again as soon as it is cooler. He will make a night
march," he decided, as he looked at the sun again. "Three hours until
dark. I must make my move before then. Once it is dark it will be
difficult to pick my targets."
Before he stood up he wriggled back from the skyline.
He retraced his steps back along the Mountainside until a bluff shielded
him from the eyes of Mek Nimmur's sentries.
Then he started down. There was no goat track here and he had to make
his own going, but after a few false starts he discovered an inclined
rock shelf that afforded him a fairly easy path down the face. When he
reached the bottom of the gorge, he took careful stock of the lie and
run of the . stratum so as to be able to find it again in an emergency.
It was a good escape route, and he knew that he might soon be under
pursuit and duress.
It had taken him over an hour to negotiate the descent, and he knew that
he was running out of time. He reached the trail at the water's edge,
and started back along it towards Mek Nimmur's camp. He was in a hurry
now, but even then he was careful to take anti-tracking precautions. He
walked on the edge of the trail, stepping only on the stony ground,
careful to leave no sign of his passing.
But despite his caution, he nearly walked right into them.
He had not covered the first two hundred metres when in the back of his
mind he registered the low, mournful whistle of a pale-winged starting,
and almost ignored it until alarm bells sounded in his mind. The timing
was all wrong. The starling only gave that particular call at dawn when
it left its nesting site high up in the cliffs. This was late afternoon
down in the heated depths of the gorge. He guessed that it was a signal
from one of the scouts coming up the trail towards him. Mek Nimmur's
party was on the move.
Boris reacted instantly. He slipped off the trail, and ran back the way
he had come until he reathed the beginning of the pathway along which he
had descended the cliff. He climbed just high enough to be able to
overlook the trail. However, he realized that he had lost Much of the
advantage that he had built up by cutting across the mountain. This was
not the ideal ambush position, and his escape route was exposed to enemy
fire from below - he would be lucky to make it to the top. But the .
idea of abandoning his vengeance never occurred to him. As soon as his
targets were in'his sights, he would shoot from this stance.
However, he acknowledged to himself that Mek Nimmur had taken him by
surprise. Boris had not anticipated that he would move before the sun
had set. He had expected to be able to take up a position above the camp
in the thorn patch and to be able to get off two careful, well-aimed
shots before he was forced to run.
It was also part of his calculations that, once he had dropped Mek
Nimmur, his men would not be eager to follow up with too much despatch.
Boris planned to make a running retreat, stopping at every defensible
strong point to fire a few shots, knock down one or two of them, and
keep the pursuit circumspect and cautious until they eventually lost
their taste for the game and let him go.
However, all that had now changed. He would have to take the first
opportunity that presented itself - almost certainly a moving target -
and as soon as he had fired he would be exposed on the path up the cliff
face. His one advantage here was that his hunting rifle was a superbly
accurate piece, whereas Mek Nimmur's men were all armed with AK-47
assault rifles, rapid-firing but notoriously wild at longer range, and
more especially in the hands of these shufta. With proper training, the
fighting tribesmen of Africa made some of the finest troops in the
world. They possessed all the necessary skills, with one exception -
they were notoriously poor marksmen.
He lay flat on the ledge, and the rock under him was so hot from the
direct sunlight that it burned painfully even through his clothin - He
pulled the pack from his 9 back and set it up in front of him, settling
the forestock of the, rifle over it to give himself a dead rest. He
peered through the telescope, wriggling into a comfortable position,
sighting on a small rock beside the main trail and then swinging the
barrel from side to side to make certain that he had a clear arc of
fire.
Satisfied that this was the best stance he could find in the short time
left to him, -he set the rifle aside and picked up a handful of dirt. He
rubbed this gently into his face, and the sweat turned it to mud that
coated his pate skin and dulled the shine that an alert scout might pick
out at long range. His last concern was to check the angle of the sun,
and to satisfy himself that it was not reflecting off the lens of his
scope or off any of the metal parts of the rifle.
He reached over and pulled at the branch of the shrub beside him so that
it cast its shadow over the weapon.
At last he settled down behind the rifle and cuddled the butt into his
shoulder, regulating his breathing to a deep slow rhythm, dropping his
pulse rate and steadying his hands. He did not have long to wait. He
heard the bird-call again, but this time much nearer at hand. It was
answered immediately from the far side of the trail, down closer to the
river bank.
"The flankers will be having difficulty maintaining station over this
terrain." He grinned without hurriour, a death's-head grimace. They will
be bunching and straggling." As he thought it, a man came into view
around the bend of the trail, about five hundred metres, dead ahead.
Boris picked him up in the magni of ens.
He was a typical African guerrilla, a shufta dressed in a tattered and
faded motley of camouflage and civilian clothing, festooned with pack
and water bottle, ammunition and grenades, carrying his AK at high port.
He hatted the moment he came through the turn, and crouched into cover
behind a boulder at the side of the trail.
For a long minute he surveyed the lie of the land ahead of him, his head
turning slowly from side to side. At one point he seemed to be staring