automatic rifle.
‘Another hour’s travel will see us in the clear,’ he remarked as I joined him. He took a cigar from his top pocket and began unwrapping it without interrupting his search of the surrounding trees and brush.
There was a fleck of white on the rocks at the water’s edge. It caught my eye and I glanced at it, and was about to dismiss it as a splash of bird droppings. Then I noticed something else, and I felt the first cool draught of apprehension blow down my spine. Casually I strolled along the edge of the pool averting my eyes from the white object until it was at my feet. Then I glanced down, and my breath jammed in my throat. My first impulse was to scream a warning to Louren and run for the Land-Rover, but I controlled the urge and forced myself to look away casually. Despite the racing of my heart and the difficulty I had in breathing I managed to stoop and pick up a pebble from the water’s edge and toss it out into the pool where it fell with a plop in a widening ring of ripples. Quickly I glanced down again.
The white fleck was a piece of domestic soap, with a wet lacework of bubbles still frothing around it. There were damp marks on the rocks, that the sizzling sun had not yet dried, and in the mud at the water’s edge, amongst all the thousands of hoof marks was a print. A strange half-human print, like that of a giant bird. The big toes deeply divided from the rest of the foot, split halfway back to the heel, and I knew that Timothy Mageba was watching me over the sights of an automatic weapon.
My skin prickled as from the stings of the myriad insects of fear. They crawled over my body and along the strings of my nerves. Slowly I walked back to Louren. The cigar was in his mouth and he struck a match as I approached. It flared in a puff of blue nitrous smoke in his cupped hands, and he bowed over it.
‘Lo,’ I said softly. ‘Don’t do anything suddenly. Behave as naturally as you can. They are here. Right here, watching us.’
He puffed four times then waved the match to extinguish it, and he looked around naturally.
‘Where?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, but they are very close. We must show ourselves here until Mac is ready.
‘Tell the troopers,’ Lo said.
The troopers were recapping the jerry cans, and as they moved back past us I stopped them.
‘Go very gently. Do not run. Do not look behind you. The evil ones are here. Go to the inspector. Tell him to start the engines, when we hear them we will come running.’
They nodded, expressionlessly, understanding immediately, and I knew then why these were famed as the finest native troops in Africa. They went calmly up the bank, leaning away from the weight of the jerry cans.
‘I feel like one of those little mechanical ducks in a shooting gallery,’ I said, and tried to smile. It hung all crookedly on my face. ‘What are they waiting for?’ I asked.
‘They probably didn’t have time to set it up properly.’ Louren laughed, a very good effort. It rang convincingly. ‘They’ll be moving into position now. Then they will wait until we are all together in a bunch, not spread out like this.’
‘God, I wish I knew where they are, where to expect it to come from.’
‘What tipped you?’ Louren asked, anything to keep this conversation flowing naturally.
‘Piece of soap, and wet footprints on the rocks. They were bathing when they heard us coming.’
Louren tapped ash from his cigar, and glanced at the rocks seeing the soap. Then his eyes flicked back to me. Above the bank we heard the starters whirring loudly in the silence, and then the engines running steadily. One, two, and the third one.
Louren ground the fresh cigar into the mud at the edge of the pool then turned to me. He let his hand fall onto my shoulder.
‘All the way, partner?’ he asked.
‘All the way, Lo.’ And we whirled together and went for the path up the bank, unslinging the rifles as we ran. I felt a lift of relief, the waiting was over. It had begun.
I had the strange sensation of not moving, of marking time, rather than running. The climb up the bank seemed endless, my feet dragging leadenly and a hot hushed silence persisted in which the engines of the Land-Rovers seemed muted, but our footsteps pounded like stampeding hooves.
We came out on top of the bank.
Sergeant Ndabuka was at the wheel of our vehicle swinging in towards us, slowing for the pick up.
The other two Land-Rovers were backing up, ready to cover us, turning for the path with the gunners traversing the heavy machine-guns.
‘Jump!’ shouted MacDonald. ‘Let’s hit out!’
I leapt for the side of the Land-Rover and Louren piled in beside me.
‘Go!’ he snapped urgently at the sergeant. The engine roared and we surged forward. From the moment when we started to run to the moment we boarded the speeding vehicle perhaps six seconds had elapsed. It had all gone very quickly, and I scrambled onto my knees, pushing the automatic rifle forward to cover one flank. In that instant they opened on us. The air around me was torn by the sound of a thousand bull whips, while the gunfire sounded like a stick dragged swiftly across a corrugated-iron fence.
MacDonald’s vehicle was leading us out, back along our tracks. It was drawing fire also. I saw the gunner hit. His head snapping backwards as though from a heavy punch and his hat flying from his head. He collapsed over the seat, his untended weapon spiralling idly on its mounting.
They were below the river bank, lining it, hidden in the reeds and scrub there. I saw the muzzle flashes, glinting like swords. I let off a burst, swinging on them, but with the Land-Rover bucking I was low. Dust flew in a line below the bank as though a whiplash had churned the dust. I corrected my aim and fired, the weapon shuddering in my hands. Seeing the reeds shake and tremble as my bullets raked them. Someone screamed, a thin passionless sound, and my weapon clicked empty.
