The Angels Weep (80 page)

‘We can catch them before the river – we can have
them for ourselves,’ Esau Gondele thought fiercely, and
resisted the temptation to lengthen his stride. They could move
no faster, an inch more on his stride would put a term on their
endurance, whereas at this pace they could run the sun down and
the moon up.

At two in the afternoon they lost the spoor again. They were
on a long low ridge of black ironstone, and the ground took no
prints. As soon as Esau Gondele lost contact, the line stopped
dead, and went into a defensive attitude, only Roland moved up
and knelt out on his flank, keeping good separation so that a
single burst could not take them both.

‘How does it look?’ Roland brushed the tiny mopani
bees from his eyes and nostrils. They were maddeningly persistent
in their hunt for moisture.

‘I think they are going straight in.’

‘If they are going to twist, this is the place to do
it,’ Roland answered, he wiped his face on his forearm and
the greasy camouflage paint came away in a dirty brown and green
smear.

‘If we cast ahead again we may lose half an hour,’
Esau Gondele pointed out, ‘three kilometres.’

‘If we run blind we may lose more than that, we may
never make them again.’ Roland looked around thoughtfully
at the mopani forest along the ridge. ‘I don’t like
it,’ he decided at last. ‘We will make a
cast.’

The two of them circled out beyond the ridge, and as Esau
Gondele had warned, it cost them half an hour of their gain, but
they did not make the cut. There was no spoor on the direct line
that they had been following, the chase had turned.

‘They can only have followed the ridge, we have a
one-on-one choice. East is away from the drifts, I don’t
believe they would chance it. We will run the western ridge
blind,’ Roland decided, and they turned and went on harder
than before, for they were rested and they had the lost half-hour
to make up. Roland ran with doubt gnawing his guts, and rocky
black ironstone crunching under his boots.

Esau Gondele was far out on his right flank, on the softer
earth below the ridge, watching for the point where the chase
left it and turned northwards towards the river again – if
it ever did.

Roland could not cover the southern edge of the ridge as well,
the ironstone belt was too wide. It would mean splitting his
meagre forces. The south side was his blind side. If they had
doubled, or turned eastwards, then he had lost them. The thought
of that was unbearable. He clenched his jaws until they ached and
it felt as though his teeth might splinter, and he checked his
watch – they had been on the ridge forty-eight minutes. He
was making the conversion of time to distance in his head when he
saw the birds.

There were four of them, two brace of sandgrouse, and they
were flighting in that peculiar quick-winged slant that made
their intention unmistakable.

‘They are going down to water,’ Roland said aloud,
and marked their descent below the tree-tops before signalling to
Esau Gondele.

The water was a pothole in the mopani, a relic of the last
rains. Twenty metres in diameter, most of it black mud, trampled
by the game herds to the consistency of putty. The nine sets of
man-prints were perfectly cast in it, going directly to the
puddle of muddy water in the centre, and then once again heading
directly northwards towards the river. They were onto the chase
again, and Roland’s hatred burned up brightly once
more.

‘Drain your bottles,’ he ordered. There was no
profit in adulterating what remained of their sweet water with
that filthy coffee-coloured liquid in the pan. They drank
greedily and then one man collected their bottles and went out
across the mud to refill them. Roland would not risk more of his
troopers than was necessary out there on the exposed pan.

It was almost four o’clock by the time they were ready
to take the spoor again, and by Roland’s reckoning, they
were still ten miles from the river.

‘We can’t let them get across,
Sergeant-Major,’ he told him quietly. ‘From now on we
won’t hold back, push all out.’

The pace was too hard, even for superbly trained athletes such
as they were. If they ran into contact now, they would be blown,
almost helpless during the long minutes it would take to recover
– but they reached the Kazungula road unchallenged.

There had been no security patrol over the gravel surface for
at least four hours. They found where the chase had taken the
precaution of reconnoitring the road and sweeping away the signs
of their crossing. That had cost them precious minutes, and the
Scouts were within an ace of contact. The patch of earth where
one of the terrorists had urinated was still muddy wet. The sandy
earth had not had time to absorb it, nor the sun to evaporate it.
They were minutes behind. It was folly to go in at the run, but
as they crossed the road, Roland repeated, ‘All out!’
And when he saw the flicker of Esau Gondele’s eyes as he
looked back, Roland went on, ‘Take number two, I will
lead.’

He led at full run, hurdling the low thorn scrub in his path,
relying only on his own speed to survive the first volley when
they made the contact, knowing that even if the terrs took him
out he could leave Esau Gondele and his men to finish it for him.
Survival no longer was important to Roland, all that mattered was
to make the contact and destroy them, as they had destroyed
Janine.

Yet when he saw the flash of movement and colour in the scrub
ahead of him, he went belly-down from full run and made two quick
rolls to the side, to spoil the aim. He was onto the target an
instant later, and fired a short burst, one light touch on the
trigger and the FN hammered into his shoulder. Then as the echoes
fled there was complete silence. No return fire, and his Scouts
were down in cover behind him, not firing until they had a
target.

He signalled Esau Gondele. ‘Stay and cover me!’
and went up on his feet, keeping low, rushing forward, jinking
and twisting.

He dropped to the ground again beside a thornbush. In the
thorny branches above his head was the thing that had drawn his
fire. It flapped again on the hot little breeze off the river. It
was a woman’s skirt, soft fine cotton, bright buttercup
yellow, but stained with dried blood and dirt.

Roland reached up and tore the skirt off the thorns, he
bundled it in his fist and pressed his face into the cloth. Her
perfume still lingered, very faintly but unmistakably. Roland
found himself on his feet running forward with all his strength,
with all his hatred, driven on by a madness that was at last out
of control.

Ahead of him through the trees he saw the warning markers
along the edge of the
cordon sanitaire
. The little
red-painted skulls seemed to taunt him, to goad him on. He did
not check as he passed them, nothing was going to stop him now,
ahead of him stretched the minefield. Something smashed into the
back of Roland’s knees, and he was thrown to earth, the
wind driven from his lungs, but immediately he was trying to
struggle up. Esau Gondele tackled him again, dragged him back
from the edge, and they swayed together, straining chest to
chest.

‘Let me go!’ Roland panted. ‘I have
to—’

Esau Gondele got his right arm free and crashed his fist into
Roland’s face, into his cheek, knocking his head across,
half-stunning him, then taking instant advantage of his shock by
twisting his arm up between his shoulder-blades and dragging him
back. Clear of the minefield, he threw Roland to earth again, and
dropped down beside him, pinning him with one massive black
arm.

‘You crazy bastard, you’ll get us all
killed,’ he snarled into Roland’s face. ‘You
were into it already – just one more step—’

Roland stared at him uncomprehendingly, like a sleeper waking
from a nightmare.

‘They have gone through the
cordon
,’ Esau
hissed at him. ‘They have got clear. It’s finished.
They have gone.’

‘No,’ Roland shook his head. ‘They
haven’t got away. Get the radio up here. We can’t let
them get away.’

Roland used the security network, the calling channel was
129.7 megahertz.

‘All units, this is Cheetah One – come in, any
station,’ he called quietly, but with the edge of
desperation in his voice. The power on the set was only four
watts, and Victoria Falls was thirty miles or so downriver. The
only reply was the hum and burr of static.

He switched to the aviation frequencies, and tried Vic Falls
approach on 126.9. Still no reply, he clicked over to tower and
keyed the microphone.

‘Tower, this is Cheetah One. Come in, please.’

There was a whisper, scratchy and faint.

‘Cheetah One, this is Victoria Falls tower, you are
transmitting on a restricted frequency.’

‘Tower, we are a unit of Ballantyne’s Scouts, we
are in hot pursuit.’

‘Cheetah One, is your chase the gang that Sammed the
Viscount?’

‘Tower, that’s affirmative!’

‘Cheetah One, you have our full co-operation.’

‘I need a chopper to lift us over the
cordon
sanitaire
. Do you have one on the plot?’

‘Negative, Cheetah One. One fixed-wing aircraft
available.’

‘Stand by.’

Roland lowered the microphone, and stared out across the
minefield. It was so narrow. It would take twenty seconds to
cross it, but it might have been the Sahara.

‘If they send a vehicle to pick us up – we can fly
from Vic Falls and make a para-jump on the far bank,’ Esau
Gondele muttered beside his ear.

‘No good. It will take two hours—’ Roland
broke off. ‘By God, that’s it!’ He thumbed the
key of the microphone.

‘Tower, this is Cheetah One.’

‘Go ahead, Cheetah One.’

‘There is a police armourer at Victoria Falls Hotel.
Name, Sergeant Craig Mellow. I want him dropped on my position
soonest possible to open the minefield. Telephone the
hotel.’

‘Stand by, Cheetah One.’ Tower’s thin
whisper faded and they lay in the sun and sweated, burned up by
the heat and their hatred.

‘Cheetah One, we have Mellow. He is already
en
route
to the field. We will make the delivery with a silver
Beechcraft Baron. RUAC markings. Give us a position and a
recognition.’

‘Tower, we are on the
cordon sanitaire
, estimate
thirty miles upstream from the falls. We will give you a white
phosphorous grenade.’

‘Roger, Cheetah One. I understand white smoke marker. In
view of SAM danger, we can only make one pass at low level.
Expect delivery in twenty minutes.’

‘Tower, we are running out of daylight, tell them to
hurry it up, for God’s sake, those bastards are going to
get clean away.’

E
sau Gondele
had the grenade-launcher fitted to the muzzle of his FN rifle.
They heard the faint beat of twin aircraft engines coming from
downstream, and Roland touched Esau’s arm.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

The sound of the engines built up swiftly. Roland raised
himself into a kneeling position and stared into the east. He saw
the flash of silver just on the tree-tops and he tapped
Esau’s shoulder.

‘Now!’

There was the crack of the blank cartridge and the grenade
lobbed up and over in a lazy parabola, fired away from the
minefield towards the Kazungula road. The grenade exploded, and a
column of white smoke leaped above the brown sun-seared bush. The
small twin-engine aircraft banked gently towards the marker, and
then steadied again.

The passenger door had been removed, leaving a square opening
above the wing root. In the opening crouched a familiar lanky
figure with the cross-webbing of the parachute harness coming out
of his crotch over his chest and shoulders. The bulky chute
package dangled low against the back of his legs. He wore a
paratrooper’s helmet and goggles, but his legs were brown
and bare and his feet were thrust into plain suede velskoen.

The Beechcraft was very low – perhaps too low. Roland
felt a stab of anxiety, Sonny was no Scout. He had done his eight
jumps for his paratrooper wings, but they were standard jumps
from four thousand feet. The Beechcraft was barely two hundred
feet above the bush. The pilot was taking no chances with
incoming SAM fire.

‘Make another pass,’ Roland shouted. ‘You
are too low.’

He crossed his arms overhead, waving them off, but as he did
it the wind-battered figure in the hatch of the Beechcraft
dropped head-first over the trailing edge of the silver wing. The
tail seemed to slash at him like an executioner’s axe,
skimming his back, and the long ribbon of the rip-cord flirted
out behind him, still attached to the speeding machine like an
umbilical cord.

Craig dropped like a stone towards the earth, and watching him
Roland felt his breath jam in his throat. Abruptly the silk
streamed from the chute pack, flared open with an audible snap
like a whiplash and Craig was plucked violently erect, his legs
rodding out stiffly under him, almost touching the earth. For a
long second he seemed to be suspended there like a man on the
gallows, and then he dropped and rolled on his back with his feet
together but high above him. Another roll and he was on his feet,
sawing the parachute cords to collapse the blooming silk
mushroom.

Roland let his breath out. ‘Bring him in,’ he
ordered.

Two of the Scouts hustled Craig forward, with a grip on each
arm, forcing him to crouch and run. He dropped beside Roland who
greeted him harshly. ‘You have to get us through, Sonny, as
quick as you can.’

‘Roly, was Janine on the Viscount?’

‘Yes, damn you, now get us through.’

Craig had opened his light pack, and was assembling his tools,
probe and side-cutters and rolls of coloured tape, steel
tape-measure and hand-compass.

‘Is she alive?’ Craig could not look at
Roland’s face for the answer, but he started to tremble as
he heard it.