bit.
Sean and Matatu exited together, jumping the six feet to earth and landing like a pair of cats, in balance with hot guns. They spread out swiftly and took cover while the helicopter soared and hovered two hundred feet above them.
It took them fifteen seconds to make certain that the police had the drop area secure, then Sean ran across to the leader of the pursuit unit.
'OK, Sergeant,' he snapped crisply. 'Hit your bottle. Drink, man, drink.' The sergeant was red-faced, burnt by the sun, and overweight. Even in the valley heat, he had stopped sweating. It had dried on his shirt in irregular white rings of salt. He didn't know enough to keep himself from dehydrating. Another hour and he would be a casualty.
'Water is finished.' The sergeant's voice was hoarse. Sean tossed him a precious water-bottle, and while the man drank asked; 'What's the line of spoor?'
The sergeant pointed to the earth ahead of him, but already Matatu had picked up the sign left by the fleeing gang. He scampered along it, cocking his head to study the fine details which were invisible to any but the truly talented eye. He followed it for a mere fifty paces and then doubled back to where Sean waited.
'Five of them,' he chirped. 'One wounded in the left leg... 'The farmer's widow must have given them a good run.' '... but the spoor is cold. We must play the spring hare.' Sean nodded. The 'spring hare' was a technique that he and Matatu had worked out between them. It could only be effective with a tracker of Matatu's calibre. They had to be able to guess where the chase was heading.
They had to have a good idea of the line and rate of march before they could leap-frog - or spring-hare - down the line.
Here there was no doubt. The band of terrorists must keep northwards towards the Zambezi and the Tribal Trust lands where they could expect to find food and shelter and some rudimentary medical treatment for their wounded. There were many sympathizers amongst the black Shona and Batonka tribesmen who lived along the valley rim. Those who would not co-operate willingly would be forced to do so at the muzzle of an AK assault-rifle.
All right, so they would keep on northwards. However, the wilderness ahead was vast. There was hard going and broken terrain, rocky valleys and jumbled granite kopjes. If the fleeing band turned only a few degrees off the obvious line of march, they could disappear without trace.
Sean ran out into the open glade and signalled the circling Alouette, holding his arms in a crucifix. The helicopter responded instantly.
'OK, Sergeant.' Sean called. 'Keep after them. We'll go ahead and try to cut the spoor. Maintain radio contact -and remember to drink.' 'Right on, sir!' the sergeant grinned. The brief meeting had given him and his men fresh heart. They all knew who Sean was. He and Matatu were legend.
'Give them hell, sirp he yelled up at Sean, and Sean waved from the open hatch of the Alouette as they soared away.
Sean swallowed half a dozen codeine tablets for his ribs, which. were beginning to ache, and washed them down with a swig from his spare water-bottle. He and Matatu crouched together in the opening of the hatchway, peering down at the canopy of the forest five hundred feet below.
Only at moments like these, when the hunt was running hot and hard, could Matatu subdue his terror of flying.
Now he leant so far out of the hatch that Sean had an arm around his waist to hold him from the drop. Matatu was positively shivering in his grip, the way a good gun-dog shivers with the scent of the bird in his nostrils.
Suddenly he pointed, and Sean yelled to the flight engineer: 'Turn ten degrees left.' Over the intercom the engineer relayed the change of course to the pilot in the high cockpit.
Sean could see no possible reason for Matatu's turn to the west. Below them the forest was amorphous and featureless. The rocky kopies that broke the leafy monotony were miles apart, random and indistinguishable one from the other.
Two minutes later Matatu pointed again, and Sean interpreted for him: 'Turn back five degrees right.' The Alouette banked obediently. Matatu was performing his special magic. He was actually tracking the fugitives from five hundred feet above the canopy of trees, not by sight or sign, but by a weird intuitive sense that Sean would not have credited if he had not seen it happen on a hundred other chases over the years.
Matatu quivered in Sean's grip and turned his face up at his master. He was grinning wickedly, his lips trembling with excitement. The blast of the slipstream had filled his eyes with tears, and they streamed down his cheeks.
'Down!' he yelped, and pointed again.
'Downp Sean yelled at the flight engineer. As the helicopter dropped, Sean looked across at Roland Ballantyne.
'Hot guns!' he warned, and Roland signalled his men. They straightened up on the hard benches and leant forward like hunting dogs on the leash. As one man they raised their weapons, muzzles high, and with a metallic clatter that carried above the roar of the turbo engines they locked and loaded.
The helicopter checked and hovered six feet above the baked dry earth. Sean and Matatu jumped together, and cleared the drop zone.
As soon as they were clear they went down into cover, facing outward.
Sean's FN was at his shoulder as he scanned the bush around him. The Scouts came boiling out of the hatchway, and scattered to adopt a defensive perimeter. The helicopter climbed away empty.
The second they were in position Roland Ballantyne signalled across to Sean with clenched fist 'Gov Well separated, Sean and Matatu went forward. The Scouts spread out and covered them, eyes glinting and restless trigger-fingers cocked. Matatu had brought them down in a bottle-neck where a series of steep rocky ridges formed a funnel. The apex of the V was cut through by a dry riverbed. Storm water over the millennium had sculpted a natural staircase that climbed the ridge, and the elephant herds that used this natural pass had worn the contours and levelled the gradients.
Would the fleeing band have traded time for stealth? Would they have chosen the elephant highway, rather than toil up the jagged rocky ridge at another, less obvious point?
Matatu flicked his fingers underhand, signalling Sean to cast the eastern approach to the pass. Sean was as good a tracker as any white man alive. To save precious time Matatu would trust him with such a simple cast as this.
Sean moved across the sun, placing it between him and the ground he was searching. It was the old tracker's trick to highlight the spoor. He concentrated all his attention on the earth, trusting the hovering Scouts to cover his back. They were all good men; he had trained them himself.
He felt the little electric thrill of it as he picked it up. It was close in against the cliff-face. One of the round water-worn river-boulders had been displaced. It was sitting a quarter of an inch askew in the natural dish of earth that had held it. He touched it with a fingertip just to check. He would not call Matatu and risk his scorn until he was certain.
'Little bugger will mock me for a week if I make a bum call.' The boulder was the size of his head and it moved slightly under his finger. Yes, it had been recently dislodged. Sean whistled, and Matatu appeared at his side like the genie of the lamp. Sean did not have to point it out. Matatu saw it instantly and nodded his approbation.
The file of fugitives was anti-tracking skilfully. They had moved up the water-course in Indian file, keeping in close'under the precipitous rocky side. They had used the river- boulders as stepping-stones to hide their tracks, but this one had been slightly dislodged by the weight of the men passing over it.
Matatu darted forward. A hundred or so paces further on he found the spot where the wounded terrorist's foot had slipped off one of the stepping-stones and touched the soft white sand. The foot had left a brush-mark. Only the highly trained eye would have noticed the faint shade of colour difference between the surface grains and the freshly exposed grains of sand from below.
Matatu knelt over it and studied the faint scuff-mark, then he blew gently on the surrounding sand to gauge its friability. He rocked back on his heels while he pondered the factors that had effected the colour difference in the grains - the moisture content of the sand, the angle of the sun, the strength of the breeze and, most important, the time elapsed since the sand had been disturbed.
'Two hours,' he said with utter finality, and Sean accepted it without question.
'Two hours behind them,' Sean reported to Roland Ballantyne.
'How does he do it?' Roland shook his head in wonder. 'He brought us straight here, and now he gives us the exact time. He's gained us eight hours in fifteen minutes. How does he do it, Sean?' 'Beats me,' Sean admitted. 'He's just a chocolate-coated miracle.' 'Can he spring-hare us again?' Roland demanded. He spoke no Swahili; Sean had to translate.
'Spring-hare, Matatu?' 'Ndio, Bwana,' Matatu nodded happily, and preened under the patent admiration of the colonel.
'Leave four men to follow up on the ground,' Sean advised. 'Tell them to follow the water-course and there's a good chance they will pick up the spoor at the top.' Roland gave the orders, and the four Scouts moved away up the funnel in good order. Sean called down the helicopter, and they scrambled aboard.
They flew on into the north. However, they had not been airborne for more than ten minutes before Matatu wriggled in Sean's
