The fire of the Hita paratroopers was blanketed by the roar of their voices. The bullets of the AK 47 assault rifles made no impression on the densely packed ranks, where one man fell a dozen more swarmed forward to replace him. On the MOMU fortress the Hita guards were running out of ammunition. Even at this distance Daniel could sense their panic. They threw aside their empty rifles, the barrels hot as though from the furnace.
Unarmed they climbed the steel ladders to the highest platform of the ungainly yellow rig. Helplessly they stood at the railing and watched the naked red horde reach the machine and climb up towards them.
Daniel recognized Ephrem Taffari amongst the Hita on the upper deck.
He was trying to speak to the slaves, spreading his arms in an oratorical gesture, trying to reason with them. In the end, when the front rank was almost upon him Taffari drew his pistol and fired down into them. He kept firing as they engulfed him.
For a time Daniel lost him in the struggling red mass of naked humanity.
He was like a fly absorbed by a gigantic jelly fish. Then he saw Taffari again, lifted high above the heads of the mob by hundreds of upraised arms. They passed him forward struggling wildly.
Then they hurled him from the top of the MOMU.
Ephrem Taffari turned in the air, ungainly as a bird trying to fly with a broken wing. He dropped seventy feet, into the spinning- silver blades of the excavator head. The blades sucked him in and in a single instant chopped him to a paste so fine that his blood did not leave so much as a stain on the wet earth.
Daniel stood up slowly.
On the MOMU they were killing the Hita paratroopers, tearing them to pieces with their bare hands, swarming over them screaming and exulting.
Daniel turned away. He started back -towards where he had left Kelly.
His progress was slow. Men of the commando clustered around him, shaking his hand, thumping him on the back, laughing and shouting and singing.
There was still some desultory small-arms fire in the forest.
The administrative offices were on fire. Flames leapt high, crackling and pouring out black smoke. A roof collapsed.
People were trapped in there, burning to death. The mob raged everywhere, chasing the guards and officials and engineers and clerks of the company, black and Taiwanese, anybody connected with the hated oppressor. They caught them and killed them, kicking and beating them as they writhed on the earth, hacking at them with spades or machetes, throwing their dismembered bodies into the flames. It was savage. It was Africa.
Daniel turned away from the horror. One man could not stop the orgy.
They had suffered too long; their hatred was too fierce. He left the track and went into the forest to find Kelly.
He had not gone a hundred yards before he saw a small figure running towards him through the trees. Sepoo! he called, and the pygmy darted to his side and seized his arm and shook it. Kara-Ki! he screeched incoherently, there was a gash in his scalp and he was bleeding heavily.
Where is she? Daniel demanded.
What has happened to her? Kara-Ki! He has taken her. He has taken her into the forest.
Kelly knelt in front of the radio set, gently manipulating the fine-tuning knob of, the receiver. Although her transmitter did not have the range to reach the capital of Kahali on the lakeshore, Sepoo had climbed into the silk- cotton tree above her and strung the aerial wire from the top branches. She was picking up the transmission of Radio Ubomo on the twenty-five metre band with very little atmospheric disturbance. This next request is for Miriam Seboki of Kabute who is eighteen years old today, from your boy friend, Abdullah, who wishes you many happy returns and says he loves you very much. He has requested, 'Like a Virgin' by Madonna, so here it is just for you, Miriam. The harsh cacophony of the music was aberrant in the forest silences and Kelly turned down the volume. immediately she was aware of other sounds even more obscene, the distant fusillade of gunfire and the wild screams of fighting and dying men.
She tried to blot the sounds from her mind, tried to calm her anxiety and fear for the progress of the rising. She waited, powerless and afraid, for something to happen.
Suddenly the music was cut off, and the only sound from the speaker was the whistle and crackle of static. Then abruptly a new voice came on the air. People of Ubomo. This station is now under the control of the Freedom Army of Ubomo. We bring you the President of Ubomo, Victor Omeru, speaking to you in person from the radio studio in Kahali.
There was a burst of martial music, the old national anthem, that Ephrem Taffari had banned when he seized power. Then the music ended.
There was a pause and at last the thrilling voice that Kelly loved so well reverberated from the speaker. My beloved people of Ubomo, you who have suffered so much beneath the yoke of the oppressor, this is Victor Omeru.
I know that most of you believed that I was dead. But this is not a voice from the grave. It is indeed i, Victor Omeru, who call upon you now. - Victor was speaking in Swahili, and he went on, I bring you tidings of hope and of great joy. Ephrem Taffari, the bloody tyrant, is dead. A loyal and true band of patriots has overthrown his cruel and brutal regime and given him the punishment he so justly deserves.
Come forth, my people, a new sun rises over Ubomo. His voice was so compelling, so sincere, that for a moment Kelly almost believed what he was saying, that Taffari was already dead and the revolution was secure.
Then she heard the sound of gunfire and she glanced over her shoulder.
There was a man standing close to her. He had come up soundlessly behind her. He was an Asian, almost certainly Chinese. He wore a blue safari suit damp with rain or sweat and stained with mud and blood.
His long straight black hair hung down over his forehead. There was a shallow cut in his cheek from which the blood had dripped to stain the front of his jacket.
He carried a Tokarev pistol in one hand, and there was a wild and hunted look in his eyes, eyes so dark that there was no division between iris and pupil, black eyes like a mako shark. His mouth was contorted with fear or anger, and the hand that held the pistol twitched and trembled.
Although she had never seen him before, Kelly knew who he was. She had heard Daniel speak of him so often. She had seen his photograph in the out-of-date copies of the Ubomo Herald newspaper that occasionally reached Gondola. She knew that he was the Taiwanese managing-director of UDC, the man who had murdered Daniel's friend, Johnny Nzou. Ning, she said, and scrambled to her feet trying to back away from him, but he sprang forward and seized her wrist.
She was shocked by his strength. He twisted her arm up behind her back.
