the water until only their nostrils were exposed, and they cowered behind the branch to winch they were clinging.
The helmsman of the Zodiac throttled back and slipped the engine into neutral. The black rubber craft drifted on the current, but twenty feet off, the battle light darted and level with them
'Turn P'
'yourfaime 'away, Sean told Claudia in a tight whisper, and took her in his arms below the surface. Even their tanned faces would shine in the light, and he Screened her and turned the back of his head toward the Zodiac.
'There is nobody there,' somebody aid in Shangane. Although spoken at conversational level, the voice carried clearly across the water to where they were hiding.
r voice ordered in a tone of command.
'Go around!' anothe oozed the shangane sergeant who had been his escort.
Sean rec A white wake spread out behind the Zodiac as it began to circle the floating tree.
The light beam cast stark black shadows from the tangled branches and struck dazzling reflections when it touched the water.
As the Zodiac circled, they padded quietly to the further side of their leafy refuge, and when the beam fastened on them, they slid softly below the surface, trying not to gasp for breath as they came up again The deadly game of hide-and-seek lasted all of eternity before said again. 'There is nobody there. We are the voice in the Zodiac wasting time.'
'Keep circling,' the sergeant's voice answered, and then after another minute, 'Gunner, fire a burst into the tree.'
In the bow of the Zodiac, the muzzle flashes of the RPD light machine gun twinkled like fairy lights, but a storm of shot tore into the floating tree with brutal and stunning savagery. It cracked in their eardrums and thumped into the branches over their heads, cutting loose a shower of leaves and twigs. It ripped away slabs of bark and kicked spray from the surface of the water, odd shots ricocheting into the night, wailing like demented spirits.
Sean pulled Claudia below the surface but still could hear the bullets plunging into the water above them and striking the trunk of the tree. He kept down until his lungs burned as though they were filled with acid and only then pulled himself to the surface to catch another breath.
The gunner in the Zodiac was firing taps, not a single continuous burst. Like a Morse operator on the key, an expert gunner has his own distinctive style that others can recognize. This one fired double taps, five rounds each; it needed a concert pianist's touch on the trigger to achieve such precision.
As Sean and Claudia came back to the surface, straining for the sweet taste of air, Dedan also came up only three feet in front of in. The reflection of the battle light lit his head clearly. His short the woolly beard streamed water, his eyes were like balls of ivory in his ebony face, and his mouth was open, drinking in air.
A bullet touched his temple just above the ear. His head flinched to the shot, and it opened his scalp as cleanly as a saber cut.
Involuntarily he cried out, a glottal bellow like that of a heart-shot bull buffalo, then his head fell forward and he sank facedown into the dark waters.
Sean lunged out and caught his upper arm, pulling him back to the surface before he drifted away, but his head lolled and his eyes had rolled back in their sockets, exposing only the whites. The men in the Zodiac had heard his cry, and the Shangane sergeant shouted to one of himnen, 'Get ready to throw in a grenade,' then to them, 'Come out of there. I'll give you ten seconds.'
'Job, answer him,' Sean ordered with resignation. 'Tell him we are coming out.'
Matabele and Shangane could understand each other, and Job shouted to them not to fire again.
Claudia helped Sean keep Dedans head above the surface, and between them they pulled him toward the Zodiac. The battle light dazzled them, but hands reached down from out of the glare and one at a time dragged them on board.
Shivering like half-drowned puppies, they huddled in the center of the boat. They had Dedans body stretched out between them, and Sean lifted his head gently into his lap. He was unconscious, barely breathing, and gently Sean twisted his head to examine the bullet wound across his temple.
For a moment he did not recognize what he was seeing. From the long shallow wound bulged something that was white and glistening in the lamplight.
Beside him Claudia shuddered violently and whispered, 'Sean, it's his, it's his...' She could not bring herself to say it, and only then did Sean realize that Dedans brain, still contained in the tough white membrane of the dura mater, was bulging out through the rent in his skull like an inner tube through a hole in an auto tire.
The Shangane sergeant gave an order, and the helmsman gunned the outboard motor and swung the Zodiac upstream. They ran at full throttle back toward the Renamo lines.
Sean sat on the floorboards with Dedans head in his lap. There was nothing he could do except chip his wrist and feel his pulse weaker and more erratic, then finally fade away altogether.
grow T
'He s dead,' he said quietly. Job said nothing and Claudia turned her face away.
Sean held the dead head in his lap all the long return. Only when the helmsman cut the engine and coasted in to the bank did he look up. There were lighted lanterns and dark shapes awaiting them at the landing.
The Shangane sergeant gave a brusque order. Two of his men lifted Dedans corpse off Sean's lap and dumped him facedown on the muddy bank. Another trooper grabbed Claudia's arm and dragged her to her feet. He shoved her roughly ashore, and when she whirled on him furiously to protest, he lifted his AK butt to strike her in the center of her chest.
Sean, close beside him, caught the man s arm and siifled the blow.
'Do that again, you son of a syphilitic hyena,' he said softly in Shangane, 'and I'll hack off your mtondo with a blunt ax and make you eat it without salt.'
The trooper stared at him, amazed more by his perfect Shangane than by the threat itself. On the bank the Shangane sergeant let out a bellow of delighted laughter.
'Better do what he says,' he warned his trooper, 'unless you are very hungry. This one means what he says.' Then he grinned at Sean. 'So you talk Shangane like one of us, and you understood everything we said!' He shook his head ruefully. 'I won't let you fool me again!'
Wet, cold, and disheveled, they were dragged unceremoniously into General China's bunker and paraded before Ins desk. One glance at Ins face and Sean saw that the man was in a cold fury.
sin hEr to his seat. Then he said, 'The woman is being moved to another For almost a full minute he stared at sin without r' g 0 camp well away from here. You will have no further opportunity to see her until I order it Sean kept his expression neutral, but Claudia gave a little cry of as though she could prevent the at The two female jailers were standing against the wall us desk, and he glanced at them and nodded. The taller of the two wore sergeant's stripes on her sleeve. She gave an order to the squat toad faced trooper beside her, and the woman came forward.
Stainless steel manaeleLdangled from her hand.
Claudia tightened her'gripon Sean's arm and shrank away from another sharp her. The woman lies ted and the tall sergeant gave command. The jailer grabbed Claudia's wrist and without apparent effort plucked her away from Sean's side.
With the expertise of long practice, she spun Claudia around and thrust her face hard against the sandbagged wall of the bunker, snapping the manacles on one wrist as she did so, then pulling both claudia,s arms behind her back and locking the second cuff on her other wrist.
She stepped back. The tall female sergeant stepped up, took Claudia's hands, and lifted them high between her shoulder blades.
Claudia gasped with pain as she was forced onto her toes. The base sergeant inspected the manacles; they were closed snugly around Claudia's wrists, but she was not satisfied. Deliberately the sergeant tightened them two more notches.
Claudia gasped again. 'That's too tight, they're cutting into me.'
'Tell that bitch to loosen them,' Sean snapped at General China, who smiled for the first time that evening and leaned back in his chair.
'Colonel Courtney, I have given orders that the woman is not to be allowed another chance to escape. Sergeant Cara is only doing her duty.'
'She is cutting off the circulation. Miss Monterro could lose her hands to gangrene.'
'That would be unfortunate,' General China agreed. 'However, I will not interfere, unless-' He paused.
'Unless?' Sean demanded savagely.
'Unless I am assured of your complete cooperation and unless I have your parole that you will not attempt another escape.'
Sean looked down at Claudia's hands. Already they were beginning to swell and change color, darkening to a leaden hue, the bright steel bands cutting into her wrists, the veins puffing up into dark blue cords below the manacles.
'Gangrene is a dangerous condition, and unfortunately our facilities for amputation of limbs are very primitive,' General China remarked.
'All right,' Sean said heavily. 'I give
