appraisal of her protegee, and she opened her small personal pack and dug out her one spare shirt, a camouflage Renamo sweatshirt from General China's stores.
The shirt hung half down MtriajVs thighs and satisfied Claudia's sense of decorum. The black girl was delighted, her terror of a few minutes before forgotten as she Preened in her new finery.
'Thank you, Donna, think you very much. You good lady.'
'All right,' Sean intervened. 'The fashion show is over. Let's move out.' And Alphonso took Miriam's arm.
only then did the girl realize she was being abducted, and she pulled away and broke into a passionate protest.
'Damn it!' Sean exploded. 'Now we are really in trouble! 'what is it?' Claudia demanded.
'She isn't alone. She's got others with her.'
'I thought she had lost her parents!'
'That's right, but she's got a brother and sister hidden in the selves. Damn swamps. Two kids so young they can't fend for them it! Damn it!'
Sean repeated bitterly. 'Now what the hell do we do?'
with us also,' Claudia 'We fetch the children and take them stated simply.
'Two brats! Are you crazy? We aren,t running an orphanage.'
'Do we have to go over this one more time?' Claudia turned her back on him in exasperation and took Miriam's hand. 'It's all right. You can trust me. We'll look after all of YOU.'
The black girl quieted and stared at Claudia with a puppy's trust and adoration.
'I'ere are the children? We'll fetch them.' hand into
'Come, Donna. I show you.' Miriam led her by the the swamp.
It was almost dark when they reached the tiny island where Miriam had hidden the children in a clump of papyrus. When she parted the thick green stems, two pairs of huge dark eyes stared out at them like owlets from the nest.
'A boy.' Claudia lifted him out. He was five or six years of age skinny and shivering with fright. 'And a girl.' She was younger: not more than four, and Claudia exclaimed as she touched her.
sick'' The little girl was too 'She's burning up. This child is very weak to stand, and she lay curled like a dying kitten, trembling and mewling softly.
'Malaria,' said Sean, and squatted beside the child. 'She's riddled with it.'
'We've got chloroquine in the medical pack.' Claudia reached for it briskly.
'This is madness!' Sean growled. 'We can't lumber ourselves with this bunch. It's a nightmare!'
'Do shut up!' Claudia snapped. 'How many chloroquine do I give her? The instructions say, 'For children under six years, consult a physician.' Thanks a lot, we'll try two tablets.'
As they worked over the child, Claudia asked Miriam, 'What are their names? What do you call the children?'
The answer was so long and complicated that even Claudia looked daunted, but she recovered quickly. 'I'll never pronounce that,' she said finally. 'We'll call them Mickey and Minnie.'
'Walt Disney will sue,' Sean warned, but she ignored him and wrapped Minnie in her own blanket.
'You'll have to carry her,' she told Sean matter-of-factly.
'If the little bugger pees on me, I'll wring her neck,' he protested.
'And Alphonso can carry Mickey.'
ts were thor Sean could see that Claudia's maternal inst inc additional burden that oughly aroused, and his resentment of this had been thrust upon them was tempered by seeing how the new responsibilities had changed her. Claudia had sloughed off her exhaustion and lethargy and was more vigorous and incisive than she had been since Job's death.
Sean lifted the child's almost weightless little body onto his back and strapped it there with a strip of the blanket. The heat of the fever soaked through the blanket as though she were a hot-water bottle. However, it was a familiar experience to the child, who had been carried since infancy in this fashion, and she was immediately quiet and somnolent. 'I still can't believe what's happening to me,' Sean muttered. 'A goddamned unpaid nursemaid at my age.' But he plunged into the swamp once more.
Before the night had h#ll run out, Miriam proved to be an asset that far outweighed the additional burden she and the two children had placed on them. She knew the river area with the intimacy of a swamp creature. She went ahead with Matatu and guided him through the labyrinth of islands and lagoons, picking out the secret pathways that saved them hours of wearisome exploration.
A little after midnight, when Orion the great hunter stood directly overhead with his bow at full draw, Miriam led them out onto the bank of the Rio Save and pointed out the ford through which a man could wade to the far bank.
They rested, and the women tended the children and fed them morsels of leguan meat. The chloroquine had taken effect, and the little girl was cooler and less fretful. After a hurried meal the men concealed themselves in the reed beds and stared out across the black waters in which the stars were reflected like drowning fireflies.
'This is the most dangerous point,' Sean whispered. 'China was patrolling the river all day yesterday in the Hind, and he'll be back at first light. We don't dare waste time here. We have to get across and get clear before sunrise.'
'They'll be waiting on the far side,' Alphonso demurred.
'They'll be expecting us.'
'That's right,' Sean agreed. 'They are here, but we know they are here. We'll leave the women on this side and go across to clear the far bank. We can't use firearms, it will have to be knives and wire. It's wet work tonight.' He used the old Scout term for it.
'Sebenza enamanzi. In more ways than one, it will be wet work tonight.'
Sean's wire was a four-foot length of stainless steel, the single strand he had cut from the winch cable of the Hercules aircraft before abandoning it. Job had carved two hardwood buttons and fixed them to either end of the wire to form grips. It rolled into a coil the size of a silver dollar and slipped easily into the grenade pocket of his webbing. Now Sean fished it out and unrolled it. He tested it, settling the wooden buttons between his fingers and jerking it tight, grunting with satisfaction at the familiar tension in the single resilient strand. Then he recoiled the wire and slipped it over his left wrist like a ban e.
The three of them stripped completely naked; wet clothing dripped water to alert an enemy or give him a hold in a hand-to hand struggle. Each of them wore his knife on a short cord around his bare neck.
Sean went to where Claudia waited with the children in the reeds. When he kissed her, her lips were soft and warm and she clung to him briefly.
'Have you forgiven me?' he asked. As answer UM again.
'Come back soon,' she whispered.
The three men slid into the water soundlessly, keeping close contact, and dog-paddled quietly out from the bank, letting the current carry them well down below the ford.
They landed in a bed of papyrus on the south bank and slid ashore on their bellies. Sean's naked white body gleamed in the starlight. He rolled in the sticky black swamp mud until it coated every inch of his skin, then scooped a double handful and rubbed it over his face.
'Ready?' he asked quietly. He freed the trench knife in its sheath at his throat. 'Let's go!'
They moved out away from the river and circled back upstream toward the ford. The swamps were confined to the north bank, while this side of the river was drier and the forests grew almost to the river's edge. They stayed in the shadows beneath the trees for concealment. As they drew closer to the ford they moved more cautiously, spreading out, Sean in the middle and Alphonso and Matatu on the flanks.
Sean smelled Renamo before he saw them, an odor of stale native tobacco smoke and dried sweat in unwashed clothing. He froze, listening and staring ahead with all his soul concentrated on it.
A little ahead of him in the darkness, a man coughed softly and cleared his throat, and Sean placed him accurately. He sank down and touched the earth, sweeping a clear spot with his fingertips for his next footstep, so no twig or dry leaf would betray him. One step at a time he moved forward until he had the Renamols head silhouetted against the starry sky. He was sitting behind an RPD machine gun on its bipod, staring out across the river.
Sean waited and the minutes drew out, five, then ten, each one a sep orate age. Then someone else yawned and stretched out on the left flank, and immediately an angry whisper cautioned him to silence.
'Three of them.' Sean memorized each position and then withdrew as quietly and cautiously as he had come in.
On the edge of the forest Alphonso was waiting for him, and minutes later Matatu crept back to join them.
'Three,' Alphonso whispered.
'Yes, three,' Sean agreed.
'Four,' Matatu contradicted them both. 'There is another one just below the bank.' h4latu missed nothing, and Sean accepted his estimate without reservation.
Only four Renamain the ambush. Sean was relieved. He had expected more, but China must be spreading his men thinly to cover every
