grip and yelped: 'Turn!
Turn backv Under Sean's direction the helicopter made a wide circle, and Matatu was leaning halfway out of the hatch. His head swung quickly from side to side as he peered downwards, and for the first time he seemed uncertain.
'Down,' he cried suddenly, and pointed to a long streak of darker-green vegetation that filled a shallow kidneyshaped depression in the terrain ahead of them.
The Alouette descended gently, warily. Matatu pointed out a landing-zone at the far side of the depression.
The scrub below them was dense and thorny, and the ground was studded with ant-heaps. These were bare towers of concrete, hard red clay each as high as a man's shoulder, like headstones in a cemetery; they would make the landing difficult and dangerous.
Little bugger is taking us into the worst-possible LZ, Sean thought bitterly. Why does he have to choose this particular spot?
The helicopter checked in mid-air, and Sean turned his head and yelled at Roland: 'Hot guns, man!' And then followed Matatu. They landed side by side and scurried forward, dropping into cover behind one of the antheaps.
He did not turn his head to watch the other Scouts come out of the hatch.
He was watching the tangled thorn scrub out ahead, sweeping his flanks with a darting penetrating scrutiny, holding the FN levelled and his thumb on the safety. Although it was a million-to-one chance that there was a terrorist within five miles of the LZ, still the landing drill was second nature to all of them.
'No gooks here,' Sean assured himself. And then incredibly, stunningly they were under fire.
From the thorn scrub on their left flank AK fire raked them. The sharp distinctive rattle of the fusillades swept over them. Dust and chips of red clay flew from the side of the ant-heap only inches in front of his face.
Sean reacted instantly. He rolled and re-aligned, and as he brought the FN to bear he glimpsed from the corner of his eye a grisly little cameo of death.
One of the Scouts, the last man out of the hatch, was hit. As his feet touched the ground, a burst of AK fire caught him across the belly. It doubled him over and drove him backwards three sharp paces. The bullets exiting from his back pulled his body out of shape. They sucked half his guts out of him, and blew them in a misty pink streak through the stark sunlit air. Then he was down and gone into the scrub.
As Sean returned fire the realization flashed in upon him: Matatu has dropped us into direct contact. He punctuated his thoughts with short measured bursts of the FN. The little bugger has been too bloody good this time. He has dropped us right on their heads.
At the same time he was assessing the contact. Obviously the gang had been taken as unaware as they were. They 43e had not been able to prepare any kind of defence, nor had the time to set up an ambush. Probably they had heard the roar of the approaching helicopter and then only seconds later the Scouts had begun dropping amongst them.
Surprise, Sean thought, and shot at the muzzle-flashes of an AK that were fluttering the leaves of a thorn bush only thirty paces ahead.
From experience he had learnt that the Shona guerrillas facing him were first-class soldiers, doughty and brave and dedicated. They had two weaknesses, however. First, their fire-control was poor; they believed that sheer weight of fire made up for inaccuracy. Their other weakness was the inability to react swiftly to surprise. Sean knew that for another minute or so the terrorists in the scrub in front of him would be disorganized and flustered.
Hit them now, he thought, and snatched a phosphorus grenade from his webbing. As he pulled the pin from the grenade he opened his mouth to yell at Roland Ballantyne: 'Come on, Roland. Sweep line! Charge the sods before they settle down.' Roland beat him to it. The same thoughts must have raced through his mind.
'Take them, boys! Sweep line -on the charge!' Sean leapt to his feet and in the same movement hurled the grenade in a high arcing trajectory. It fell thirty yards ahead of him, and the thorn scrub erupted in a blinding white cloud of phosphorus smoke. Flaming fragments, burning with a dazzling white radiance, showered over the area.
Sean raced forward, conscious of the small dark shape that ran at his heels. Matatu was his shadow. Other grenades were exploding across the front, and the thorn scrub was thrashed by the blasts and lashed by the sheets of automatic fire that the Scouts threw down as they charged.
The gang broke before them. One of them ducked out of the bush ten paces ahead of Sean, a teenager in tattered blue jeans and a soft camouflage-cap.
Burning globules of phosphorus had adhered to his upper body. They sizzled and flared, leaving smoking black spots on his arms and torso. The smoke smelt like barbecueing meat.
Sean shot hijrn, but the burst was low. It broke his left hip, and the boy dropped. The AK rifle flew from his grip, and he rolled on to his back and held his hands in front of his face.
'No, Mambo!' he screamed in English. 'Don't kill me! I am a Christian - for the love of God, spare me!' 'Matatu,' Sean snapped without checking or looking round. 'Kufa!' He jumped over the maimed guerrilla. The magazine of his FN was half-empty.
He could not afford to waste a single rounds and Matatu had his skinning-knife. He spent hours each day honing the blade. If he had been a section leader, Sean might have saved him for interrogation; but Matatu could cut this one's throat. Cannon-fodder like him was of no use to them, and medical attention was expensive.
The Scouts swept the bush, and it was over in less than two minutes. It was no contest. It was like pitting Pekinese puppies against a pack of wild dogs. The Scouts charged through and then whirled and came back.
'Secure the area,' Roland Ballantyne ordered. He was standing less than twenty yards from Sean. He held the muzzle of his rifle pointed at the sky, and the heated metal distorted the air around it in a watery mirage. 'Well done, Sean. That little black devil of yours is a charm.' He glanced across at Matatu.
Matatu was straightening up from the corpse of the hip-shot terrorist. He had slit his throat with a single stroke, across the side of the throat and up under the ear to catch the carotid artery.
He was wiping the blade of his skinning-knife on his thigh as he scurried back to his rightful place at Sean's side, but he grinned an acknowledgement at Roland Ballantyne. Both of them were distracted, still heady with the euphoria of violence and blood.
The corpse of one of the other guerrillas lay in the scrub between them.
The flesh and clothing still smouldered with burnt-out phosphorus, and the man's clothing was splattered with bright blood from his gunshot wounds. Roland Ballantyne walked past him with barely a glance. It was impossible that the terrorist could have survived such terrible injuries.
The terrorist rolled over abruptly. He had been concealing a Tokarev pistol under his shattered chest. With his last flutter of life he lifted the Tokarev and he was close enough to touch Roland with the muzzle.
'Roland!' Sean screamed a warning, and although Roland reacted instantly it was too late. The shot would take him in the spine from a range of three feet.
Sean did not have time to raise the FN to his shoulder. He fired from the hip, pointing and aiming instinctively. The bullet caught the terrorist in the face. His head burst like an over-ripe water-melon hit with a Pick-handle, and he flopped over on his back. The Tokarev slipped unfired from his nerveless fingers.
Roland Ballantyne straightened up slowly, and for a long moment he stared down at the corpse. The man's legs were kicking and trembling convulsively.
Roland contemplated his own mortality and saw the agony of his own death reflected in the man's bulging eyeballs.
He tore his gaze away and looked across at Sean.
'I owe you one,' he said curtly. 'You can collect any time.' And he turned away to shout orders at his Scouts to gather the kill. There were green plastic body-bags in the hovering Alouette.
Le Morne Brabant was a jagged mountain of black volcanic lava that seemed to tower over them threateningly, even though they were almost four miles out on the oceanic stream.
These sapphire currents that eddied around the toe of the island of Mauritius created an enrichment of marine life that big-game anglers around the world recognized as a 'hot spot'. There were other famous grounds such as those off the ribbons of the Great Barrier Reef, at Cabo San Lucas on the Californian peninsula or in the lee of the island of Nova Scotia. At all these points the concentrations of vast shoals of bait-fish attracted the ocean predators -the giant marlin and the tuna species. The sports anglers of the world came to pit their skill and their strength against these sleek monsters.
Shasa Courtney always insisted on chartering the same boat and the same island crew. Each boat sets up its own individual vibration in the water, a combination of engine and propeller and hull configuration which is as unique to that boat as a fingerprint is to the man. That vibration either attracts or repels fish.
Le Bonkeur was a lucky boat. She pulled fish, and her skipper had eyes like a gannet. He could spot the flash of a single sea-bird diving on a school of bait-fish on the horizon, or at a mile's distance pick out the sickle-shaped dorsal fin of a cruising marlin and estimate the fish's weight to within ten kilos.
