downs.
Sean and Claudia found a hollow screened by a low hook-thorn bush a short distance from where Job lay. Sean spread their blankets to make a nest for them and settled into it thankfully. 'I'm hushed.'
'How hushed?' Claudia asked, and knelt over him to nibble his ear.
'Not that hushed,' he qualified, and pulled her down beside him.
At sunset Sean cooked a pot of maize-meal porridge on a tiny smoker ess fire while Alphonso rigged the aerial and tuned the radio to the Renamo command frequency. There was a clutter of garbled, broken-up traffic on their wavelength, probably Frehmo transmissions, but at last they heard their call sign through the jumble. -Ngulube! Warthog! Come in, Ngulube! This is Banana Tree.'
Alphonso acknowledged and made a fictitious position report that placed them still far north of the railway line, on a march back to the river area. Banana Tree acknowledged and signed off.
'They fell for it,' Sean gave his opinion. 'UDoks like the Shangane deserters haven't reached base and blown the whistle on us, not yet anyway.'
In the last of the daylight, they ate the meal of maize porridge and Sean studied his field map and marked in his dead-reckoning position. According to the map, the hilly ground seemed to extend for another thirty miles or so, then descended gently to a more level plain on which a number of small villages and cultivated lands were marked; beyond that was the first natural barrier, an s their route.
other wide river that ran west to east directly acros He called Alphonso across and asked him, 'The southern division of Renamo under General Tippoo Tip-do you know where his area begins, where his main forces are deployed?'
'Like us, they move all the time to confuse Frelinio. Sometimes they are here, other times down here near the Rio Save.' He shrugged. 'Renanio is wherever the fighting is.'
'And Frelimo? Where are they?'
'They chase after Renamo and then run like frightened rabbits when they catch them,' he guffawed. 'To us now, it doesn't matter who is who and where they are. Everybody we meet down here is going to try and kill us.'
'Great intelligence report,' Sean thanked him, and folded the map into its plastic wallet.
Quickly they finished the frugal meal, and Sean stood up. 'All right, Alphonso. Let's get Job up and moving.'
Alphonso belched softly, then grinned wickedly. 'He's your Matabele dog. If you want him, you carry him, I've had enough.'
Sean hid his dismay behind a neutral expression. 'You are wasting time,' he said softly. 'Get on your feet!' Alphonso only belched again and held his eyes, still grinning.
Slowly Sean reached down to the trench knife in its sheath. Just as deliberately Alphonso reached and touched the Tokarev pistol tucked into his belt. They stared at each other.
'Sean, what is it?' Claudia asked anxiously. 'What is going on?'
She had not understood the exchange in Shangane, but the tension was palpable.
'He's refusing to help me carry Job,' he replied.
'You can't carry him alone, can you?' Claudia said anxiously.
'Alphonso will help-' ,--or I'll kill him!' Sean replied in Shangane.
Alphonso laughed out loud. He stood up and shook himself like a dog, turned his back on Sean, and picked up his radio pack, Sean's AKM rifle, and most of the water bottles. 'I'll carry these,' he chuckled, shaking his head at the joke. 'You can carry your Matabele.' He ambled away southward along the fine of march.
Sean dropped his hand from the hilt of the knife and looked across at Job. He was watching quietly from his mattress of grass, and Sean snarled at him, 'If you say it, I'll kick your black arse for your 'I didn't say nothing.' Job tried to smile, but it was a weak, transient grimace.
'Good,' said Sean grimly, and picked up the nylon sling seat and straps. 'Claudia, give us a hand here.'
Between them they got Job on his feet. Sean rigged the nylon slings around his waist and under his crotch like a parachute harness and looped them over his shoulders. Then he supported Job with an arm around his waist.
'One more river, there's one more river to cross,' he sang hoarsely and un tunefully and grinned at Job. They moved forward. Although Job's feet touched the ground and he tried to take as much of his own weight as possible, he was mainly supported by the straps that crossed over Sean's shoulders and they were locked together like a pair in a harness.
Within the first hundred paces they had established some sort of rhythm, but still their progress was unsteady and painfully slow, set by Job's uncertain footsteps. There could be no attempt at stealth or anti tracking fair Sean had to pick the easiest and most obvious route.
Theystuck to the open game trails, that complex network that like th4Tveins in a dried leaf meshes the African veld.
Behind them Claudia followed laden with the medical pack and the rest of the water bottles, but even so she carried a leafy branch with which she tried to sweep away their tracks. Her efforts might conceal their passing from a casual observer, but a Frelimo tracker would follow them as though he were on the MI motorway. It was hardly worth the effort, but Sean did not discourage her, for he knew how important it was to her to feel she was pulling her weight and making a useful contribution to their escape.
Sean counted their paces against the second hand of his wristwatch and estimated that they were down to less than a mile an hour. Eight miles a day was all the progress they could hope for.
He started to divide that into three hundred but gave up before he reached the depressing answer.
Both Matatu and Alphonso had disappeared into the cornbreturn forest ahead of them, and Sean glanced at his watch again.
They had been going only a little over thirty minutes, but already their momentum was winding down. Job's weight was heavier, the straps cutting painfully into the flesh of Sean's shoulders, and Job's footsteps were dragging and catching on every irregularity of the game path.
I, I'm cutting down to thirty-minute stages,' Sean told Job.
'We'll take five minutes now.'
When Sean lowered him to a sitting position against the hole of a tree, Job leaned his head back against the rough bark and closed his eyes. His breathing sobbed in his chest, and droplets of sweat made slow runners down his cheeks. Like tiny black pearls, the drops reflected the color of his skin.
Sean let the five minutes run over to ten, then told Job cheerfully, 'On your feet, soldier, let's eat some ground.'
Getting Job up on his feet again was torture for both of them, and Sean realized that in trying to be gentle on him, he had allowed Job to rest too long. The wound had begun to stiffen.
The next thirty-minute stage endured so long that Sean was convinced his watch had stopped. He had to check the sweep of the second hand to reassure himself.
When at last he lowered him to a sitting position, Job grimaced.
'Sorry, Sean, cramps. Left calf.'
Sean squatted in front of him and felt the knots of tortured muscle in Job's leg. While he massaged it, he spoke quietly to Claudia. 'There are salt tablets in the medic pack, front pocket.'
Job swallowed them, and Claudia held the water bottle to his lips.
After two swallows he pushed it away.
More,' Claudia urged him, but he shook his head.
'Don't waste it,' he murmured.
'How's that feel?' Sean gave his calf a couple of hard slaps.
'Good for another few miles.'
'Let's go,' Sean said. 'Before it seizes up again.'
It amazed Claudia how the two of them kept going through the night with only those five-minute breaks and the frugal drafts from the water bottles.
'Three hundred miles of this,' she thought. 'It simply is not possible. Flesh and blood can't take it. It will kill both of them.'
A little before dawn, Matatu popped up like a small black shadow out of the forest and whispered to Sean.
'He has found a water hole about two or three miles ahead,' Sean told them. 'Can you make it, Job?'
The sun had risen and cleared the tops of the trees, and the day's heat was building up like a stoked furnace. When Job collapsed and hung suspended at Sean's side, dangling with his full weight on the cross straps, they were still half a mile from the water hole.
Sean lowered him to the ground and sat beside him. He was so exhausted himself that for a few minutes he could not find the energy to talk or move.
'Well, at least you picked a good place to pass out,' he congratulated Job a in hoarse whisper. They were in a patch of thick thorn bush that would give them shade and cover for the rest of the day.
The made a bed of cut grass for Job in the shade and settled him on it. He was only half conscious, his speech slurred and andering and his eyes continually slipping out of focus. Claudia tried to feed him, but he turned his face away. However, he drank thirstily when at last Matatu and Alphonso returned from the water hole with all the water
