for the hundredth time that night. Then he went striding back to the open canvas-roofed shelter he was using as his forward headquarters and pored over the large-scale map, once more studying his troop dispositions, brooding over them and muttering to himself.
On the map he had noted the features he had observed from the air, the location of the Frelimo logging camps and the rough roads they had hacked out of the forest. He had very soon realized the scope of the deforestation and the numbers employed in the forced labor battalions. He had swiftly realized the futility of trying to find such a small party among such multitudes. He knew any sign of Sean's progress would have been obliterated by the intense activity in the area. He dared not send trackers or a pursuit into the logging area. He had already lost almost forty men in the Frelimo attack and the subsequent fire.
'No, I must be patient,' he told himself. He moved his hand down across the map. The Frehmo logging operation had not yet reached as far south as the hills that guarded the approaches to the Limpopo River basin; between the hills and the river the forest thinned out and gave way to open mo pane veld. It was a strip fifty kilometers wide, good ground for tracking the fugitives, ground they would be forced t4; traverse in order to reach the Limpopo and the border.
General China had decided to set his final stop fine there. All that day he had ferried in the fresh troops Tippoo Tip had placed at his disposal. In its rear cabin the Hind was able to carry men in full field kit, and they had made eleven sorties. They had hopped over the forest, fully laden with assault troops, and landed them along the fine of hills with orders to set up observation posts on each hill crest and to patrol the gaps between them. He now had almost 150 men in place to cut Sean Courtney off from the Limpopo General China stared at the map as though it were a portrait of the white man's face. Once again he experienced bitter disapPointment and frustration. He had almost had the white man in his grasp, pinned down by his pursuit troops, with no possible avenue of escape, and then had come the Frefimo intervention; the forest below him had been obliterated by the roiling clouds of smoke and the screaming of his men on the radio, crying for help as the flames engulfed them.
Tippoo Tip had tried to convince him that Sean Courtney had perished with them in the forest fire, but General China knew better than that. He had dropped his own trackers from the Hind into the blackened ashes as soon as they had cooled sufficiently for men to walk upon them. They had found the spot where the white man had buried his people to evade the heat-the marks of their bodies were still imprinted in the soft earth-and they had found the tracks leading away southward, ever southward.
For the rest of that day China had searched from the low-flying Hind, but the smoke had hampered him, limiting his vision to the small circle directly beneath the Hind's belly.
If anything, this additional failure had intensified his determination. The white man's cunning and his outrageous good fortune in evading an China's best efforts only aggravated his hatred and inflamed his longing for revenge. During those long hours when they had ferried his last line of assault troops into position, China had sustained himself with fantasies of vengeance, dreaming up the most bizarre ordeals for Sean Courtney and his woman once he had them in his power.
There would be no haste then. He would draw out the pleasure, eking out their suffering and pain as jealously as a miser his shekels.
He would begin with the woman, of course, and the white man would watch it all. After Tippoo Tip had enjoyed her to the full, they would hand her over to the men. China would personally select the most repulsive, those with hideous features, deformed bodies, and elephantine members. Some of his men were truly remarkable in their physical development. He would let them have the woman after Tippoo Tip, and when they were done, he would bring on the sick and diseased, the men with open venereal ulcers and virulent skin disorders, covered with scabs and tropical sores.
Then at last he would give her to the men with the slim sickness, the most dreaded of all. Yes, it would be marvelous sport. He wondered how strong the American woman was, how many she could take. Would her mind go before her body? It would be fascinating to find out, and of course the white man would be forced to watch every second of it.
Only when the woman was finished would he begin on Colonel Sean Courtney. He had not yet decided what it would be- there were so many possibilities. However, the man was tough; he could be expected to last for days, perhaps even weeks. Planning it, gloating over it, brought a smile to General China's bps and calmed his frustration enough to allow him to drop into his canvas chair, draw the lapels of his greatcoat around him, and sink at last into sleep.
He awoke in confusion, unable to orient himself. Somebody was shaking him urgently, and he threw off the hands and struggled out of his chair, glaring around him wildly. It was morning; the trees around his temporary base were gray skeletons against the paler gray of the dawn sky. The light bulbs still glowed on their poles above the squatting helicopter, and the radio on the rough table of hand-planed logs in front of him was squawking urgently.
'Contact! General China, we have a live contact!' It was the commander of the line of men he had placed on the hills at the approaches to the Limpopo. He was calling in clear language, proof of his agitation.
Still half asleep, China stumbled to the radio set and seized the microphone. 'This is Banana Tree, report your position and status correctly,' he snapped, and at the sound of his voice the distant patrol leader steadied himself and corrected his radio procedure.
The fugitives had run into his stop fine at almost precisely the point China had predicted. There had been a brief firelight, and then the fugitive band, had taken refuge on the crest of a small kopje, almost within sight of the Limpopo River.
'I have called for the mortars to come up,' the patrol leader exulted. 'We'll blow them off the top of that hill.'
'Negative.' China spoke very clearly. 'I say again, negative.
Do not open fire on the position with mortars. Do not attack. I want them taken alive. Surround the hill and wait for my arrival.'
He glanced across at thohelicopter. The titanium engine hatches were back in place, aD_d the Portuguese engineer was overseeing the last of the refueling. A line of porters, each of them with a twenty-five-liter drum balanced on his head, was queued up, waiting their turns to empty the drums into the helicopter's main tanks.
China shouted to the engineer in Portuguese, and he came striding across to the tent. 'We must take off immediately,' China ordered.
'I will complete the refueling in half an hour.'
'That's too long. How much fuel have you got on board right now?'
'Auxiliary tanks are full, main tank is three quarters.'
'That will do, call the pilot. Tell him we must take off right away.'
'I must replace the debris suppressors over the turbo intakes,' the engineer protested.
'How long will that take?'
'Not more than half an hour.'
'Too long!' China shouted with agitation. The pilot was stumbeing along the pathway from his tent. Not yet fully awake, he was pulling on his leather flying jacket, and the flaps of his helmet dangled loosely around his ears.
'Hurry!' China yelled at him. 'Get her started!'
'What about the suppressors?' the engineer insisted.
'We can fly without them, they are only precautionary.'
'Yes, but-!'
'No!' China pushed him away. 'I can't wait! Forget about the suppressors We fly at once! Get the engines started!'
With the tails of his greatcoat flapping around his legs, General China ran to the helicopter and scrambled up into his seat in the weapons cockpit.
Sean Courtney lay on his belly between two rocks just below the crest of the kopJe and looked out over the tops of the mo pane forest. Away toward the south, the dark green belt of trees was just visible in the uncertain light. It marked the position of the Limpopo River.
'So close,' he lamented. 'We so very nearly made it.'
It was against all the odds that they had survived this far, almost three hundred miles through a devastated, war-torn land and two murderous opposing armies, only to be stopped here in sight of their goal. There was a burst of AK fire from down the slope of the hill, and a ricochet sang away into the dawn sky.
Matatu, lying among the rocks nearby, was still berating himself. 'I am a stupid old man, my Bwana. You must send me away and get yourself a clever young one who is not blind and decrepit with age.'
Sean guessed that a Renamo observation post must have spotted them as they crossed one of the open glades between the hills.
There had been no warning, no obvious pursuit, no set ambush.
Without warning a sweep line of tiger-striped figures had rushed at them from out of the mo pane
They had all been weary after traveling hard all night. Perhaps their concentration had been eroded, perhaps they should have stayed in the trees instead of cutting across the open vlei, but it was yarn to think about what they might have done.
for There had only been sufficient time to snatch up the children and drag the women up the
