leaden. His head nodded involuntarily, and he jerked it up only to have
it flop forward again. On the very edge of sleep he heard a sound, close
by in the thorn scrub behind him.
It was a tiny sound, but one that he knew so well. A sound that
whiplashed across his nerve endings and jerked him back to full
consciousness, with his pulse racing and the coppery taste of fear in
the back of his throat. It was the metallic sound of the safety-catch on
an AK-47 assault rifle being slipped forward into the 'Fire' position.
In one fluid movement he lifted the rifle out of his lap and rolled
twice, twisting his body to cover the two women who lay beside him. At
the same time he brought the Rigby into his shoulder, aimed into the
scrub behind him from where the sound had come.
'Down!' he hissed at his companions. 'Keep your heads down!'
His finger was on the trigger and, even though it was a puny weapon with
which to take on a Kalashnikov, he was ready to return fire. He picked
up his target immediately, and swung on to it.
There was a man crouched twenty paces away, the assault rifle he carried
aimed into Nicholas's face. He was black, dressed in worn and tattered
camouflage fatigues and a soft cap of the same material. His webbing
held a bush-knife and grenades, water bottle' and all the other
accoutrements of a guerrilla fighter.
'Shufta!' thought Nicholas. 'A real pro. Don't take chances with this
one.' Yet at the same time he realized that if the intention had been to
kill him, then he would be dead already.
He aimed the Rigby an inch over the muzzle of the assault rifle, into
the bloodshot right eye of the shufta behind it. The man acknowledged
the stand-off with a narrowing of his eyes, and then gave an order in
Arabic.
'Salim, cover the women. Shoot them if he moves.
Nicholas heard movement on his flank and glanced in that direction,
still keeping the shufta in his peripheral vision.
Another guerrilla stepped out of the scrub. He was all: similarly
dressed, but he carried a Soviet RPD light machine gun on his hip. The
barrel was sawn off short to make the weapon more handy for bush
fighting, and there was a loop of ammunition belt draped around his
neck. He came forward carefully, the RPD aimed point-blank at the two
women. Nicholas knew that, with a touch on the trigger, he could chop
them both to mincemeat.
There were other stealthy rustling sounds in the bush all around them.
These two were not the only ones, Nicholas realized. This was a large
war party. He might be able to get off one shot with the Rigby, but by
then Royan and Tessay would be dead. And he would not be far behind
them.
Very slowly and deliberately he lowered the muzzle of the rifle until it
was pointing at the ground. Then he laid the weapon down and raised his
hands.
'Get your hands up,' he told the women. 'Do exactly what they tell you.'
The guerrilla leader acknowledged his surrender by coming to his full
height and speaking rapidly to his men, still in Arabic.
