knocked the drain plug out of the bottom of the gasoline tank and let the remaining fuel run into the sandy soil, to prevent a lucky shot torching the vehicle and Timon with een around the back it. Swiftly he built a rudimentary scr wheels, placing the spare wheels and the steel toolbox to cover Timon's flanks when they started to enfilade him.
He helped Timon out of the back seat and laid him belly down behind the rear wheels. The bleeding started 4 again, soaking the dressing, and Timon was grey as ash and sweating in bright little bubbles across his upper lip. Craig placed one of the AK 47S in his hands and arranged a seat cushion as an aiming rest in front of him. The box of spare magazines he set at Timon's right hand, five hundred rounds.
'I'll last until dark,' Timon promised in a croak. 'But leave me one grenade.' They all knew what that was for. Timon did not want to be taken alive. At the very end he would hold the grenade to his own chest and blow it away.
Craig took the remaining five grenades and packed them into one of the rucksacks. He placed the British Airways bag that contained his papers and the book manuscript on top of them. From the toolbox he took a roll of light gauze wire and a pair of side cutters; from the ammunition box, six spare magazines for the AK 47. He divided the contents of the first-aid box, leaving two field dressings, a blister pack of pain-killers and a disposable syringe of morphine for Timon. The rest he tipped into his rucksack.
He glanced quickly around the interior of the Land Rover. Was there anything else he might need? A rolled plastic ground sheet in camouflage design lay on the door boards He stuffed that into the bag, and hefted it. That was all he could afford to carry. He looked across at Sally Anne She had the canteen slung on one shoulder, and the second rucksack op the other. She had rolled the portfolio of photographs and crammed them into the rucksack. She was very pale and the lump on her forehead seemed to have swelled even larger.
'Right?' Craig asked.
'Okay.' He squatted beside Tiffton. 'Goodbye, Captain,'he said.
'Goodbye, Mr. Mellow.' Craig took his hand and looked into his eyes. He saw no fear there, and he wondered again at the equanimity with which the African can accept death. He had seen it often.
'Thank you, Timon for everything,' he said.
'Hamba gashle,' said Timon gently. 'Go in peace.'
'Shala ease,' Craig returned the traditional response.
'Stay in peace.' He stood up and Sally' Anne knelt in his place.
'You are a good man, Timon,' she said, 'and a brave one.' Timon unfastened the flap of his holster and drew the pistol. It was a Chinese copy of the Tokarev type 51. He reversed it, and handed it to her, butt first. He said nothing, and after a moment she took it from him.
'Thank you, Timon.' kc the grenade, it was for the very They all knew that, Ii nne pushed the weapon end the easier way out. Sally-A into the belt of her jeans, and then impulsively stooped and kissed Timon.
'Thank you,' she said again, and stood up quickly and turned away.
Craig led her away at a trot. He looked back every few yards, keeping the vehicle directly between them and the approaching patrol. If they suspected that two of them had left the vehicle, they would simply leave half their men to attack it, and circle back onto the spoor again with the rest of the force.
Thirty-five minutes later they heard the first burst of automatic fire. Craig stopped to listen. The Land-Rover was just a little black pimple in the distance, with the dusk darkening and drooping down over it. The first burst was d answered by a storm of gunfire, many weapons firing together furiously.
'He's a good soldier,' Craig said. 'He would have made sure of that first shot. There aren't eight of them any more.
I'd bet on that.' With surprise he saw that the tears were running down her cheeks, turning to muddy brown in the dust that coated her skin.
'It's not the dying,' Craig told her quietly, 'but the manner of it.' She flared at him angrily. 'Keep that literary Hemingway crap to yourself, buster! It's not you that's doing the dying.' And then, contrite immediately, 'I'm sorry, darling, my head hurts and I liked him so much.' The sound of gunfire became fainter as they trotted on, until it was just a whisper like footsteps in dry brush far behind them.
'Craig!' Sally-Anne called, and he turned. She had fallen back twenty paces behind him and her distress was apparent. As soon as he stopped, she sank down and put her head between her knees.
'I'll be all right in a moment. It's just my head.' Craig split open a blister pack of pain-killers from the first-aid box. He made her take two of them and swallow them with a mouthful of water from the canteen. The lump on her forehead frightened him. He put his arm around her and held her tightly.
'Oh, that feels good.' She stumped against him.
On the silence of the desert dusk came the distant woof of an explosion, muted by distance, and Sally-Anne stiffened.
'What's that?'
'Hand grenade,' he told her, and checked his wrist, watch. 'It's over, but he gave us a start of fifty, five minutes.
Bless you, Timon, and God speed you.'
'We mustn't waste it, 'she told him determinedly and pulled herself to her feet. She looked back.
'Poor Timon, she said, and then set off again.
It would take them onTy minutes to discover that there was but one man defending the Land-Rover. They would the outgoing tracks almost immediately, and they would follow. Craig wondered how many Timon had taken out and how many there were left.
'We'll find out soon enough,' he told himself, and the night came down with the swiftness of a theatre firecurtain.
New moon three days past, and the only light was from the stars. Orion stood tall on one hand, and the great cross blazed on the other. Through the dry desert air their brilliance was marvelous, and the milky way smeared the heavens like the phosphorescence from a firefly crushed between a child's fingers. The sky was magnificent, but when Craig looked back he saw that it gave enough light to pick out their footprints.
'Rest!' he told Sally-Anne, and she stretched out full length on the ground. With the bayonet from the AK 47 he chopped a bunch of scrub, wired it together and fastened the wire to the back of his belt.
'Lead!' he told her, saving energy with economy of words. She went ahead of him, no longer at a trot, and he dragged the bunch of dry scrub behind him. It swept the earth, and when he checked again, their footprints had dissolved.
Within the first mile the weight of the scrub dragging like an anchor from his belt was beginning to take its toll on his strength. He leaned forward against it. Three times in the next hour Sally-Anne asked for water. He grudged it to her. Never drink on the first thirst, one of the first survival laws. If you do, it will become insatiable, but she was sick and hurting from the head injury, and he did not have the heart to deny her. He did not drink himself.
Tomorrow, if they lived through it, would be a burning hell of thirst. He took the canteen from her, to remove temptation.
A little before midnight, he untied the wire from his belt; the dragging weight of the scrub thorn brush was too much for him, and if the Shana were still on their spoor, it would not serve much further purpose. Instead, he lifted the rucksack from Sally-Anne's back and slung it over his own shoulder.
J can manage it,' she protested, although she was reeling likea drunkard. she had not complained once, although her face in the starlight was silver as the salt pan they were crossing.
He tried to think of something to comfort her.
'We must have crossed the border hours ago,' he said.
'Does that mean we are saleP she whispered, and he could not bring himself to lie. She shivered.
The night wind cut through their thin clothing. He unfolded the nylon ground sheet and spread it over her shoulders, then he took her weight on his arm and led her on.
A mile further on they reached the far edge of the salt pan and he knew she could go no further that night.
There was a crusty bank eighteen inches high, and then firm ground again.
'We'll stop here.' She sagged to the ground and he covered her with the ground sheet.
'Can I have a drink?'
'No. Not until morning.' The water canteen was light, sloshing more than half, empty as he lowered the pack.
He cut a pile of scrub to break the wind and keep it off her head, and then pulled off her jogging shoes, massaging her feet and examining them by touch, 'Oh, that stings.' Her left heel was rubbed raw. He lifted it to his mouth and licked the abrasion clean, saving water. Then he dripped Mercurochrome on it and strapped it with a band-aid from the first, aid kit. He changed her socks from foot to foot, and then laced up her shoes again.
'You're so gentle, 'she murmured, as he slipped under the ground sheet and took her in his arms, 'and so warm.'
'I love you,' he said. 'Go to sleep.' She sighed and snuggled, and he thought she was asleep until she said softly, 'Craig, I'm so sorry about King's Lynn.' Then, at last, she did sleep, her breathing swelling deeply and evenly against his chest. He eased out from under the ground sheet and left her
