at a draft and then asked, breathless from the effort, 'You were supposed to be here last night.
Where you been, man?'
'We were delayed.'
you should have been here last night. Would have been easy, man.
Tonight, well, tonight is different.' - 'What has changed?' Sean asked with a sink of dread in his chest.
'Everything changed.' Cuthbert said. 'The Hercules arrived seventeen hundred hours. Come to pick up the goods.'
'Has it left yet?' Sean demanded anxiously.
Don't know for sure. She was still there when I left the base at twenty hundred hours. Sitting out there in front of number three hangar. Perhaps she still there now, perhaps she long gone. Who knows?'
'Thanks a lot,' Sean said. 'That's a great help.'
'That's not all, man.' Cuthbert clearly enjoyed being the bearer of evil tidings.
'Hit us with it, Cuthbert.'
He finished the beer in another long swallow and held up the empty can. Sean ordered another and Cuthbert waited for it, drawing out the suspense masterfully.
'Two full para commandos of the Fifth Brigade came down from Harare in the Hercules. They real cool, those Fifth Brigade cats,' Cuthbert said with relish. 'They real mean dudes, no shit.'
'Cuthbert, you've been watching too much Miami Vice on television,' Sean accused, but he was worried. The Fifth Brigade were the elite of the Zimbabwean Army, converted by their North Korean instructors into ruthlessly efficient killing machines. Two full para commandos of a hundred men each, added to the standing garrison of Third Brigade troops-almost a thousand crack veterans on base.
'Your uncle says you are going to take us in, Cuthbert. Pass us through the gates.'
'No way, man!' C#thbert was vehement. 'Not with those Fifth Brigade cats in there.'
'Your uncle will be pissed off with you, Cuthbert. He's a pretty al cat himself, man, Uncle China is.' Sean imitated Cuthbert's co hip jargon.
Cuthbert looked worried. 'Man, I've fixed your pass,' he explained hurriedly. 'You'll have no trouble getting in. The guards are expecting you. You don't need me, man. No sense I should compromise myself, no sense at all.'
'You've got the pass here?'
'Right on. The password too. You'll have no trouble.'
'Let's go.' Sean took Job's arm and steered him toward the door. 'That Hercules could take off any time.'
Cuthbert hurried between them down the lane to where the three Unitnogs were parked.
'Here's the pass.' He handed the plastic-covered card to Sean.
It was slashed with a scarlet 'Top Priority' cross.
'The password is a number, 'fifty-seven,' and your reply is 'Samara Machel.' Then you show the pass and sign the book.
Simple as a pimple, man. You in like Flynn.'
'I'll tell your uncle you couldn't bring yourself to come with US.
'Hey, give me a break, will you? No sense me getting culled, man.
I'm more use to my uncle alive and kicking than dead meat.'
'Cuthbert, you are wasted in signals. You definitely should be on television.' Sean shook hands with him and watched him scurry back into the Stardust Club.
There were clusters of women around the back of each of the three trucks, giggling and joking with the troopers who hung out over the tailgates. One of the girls was climbing aboard, boosted by eager hands, her miniskirt tucked up high on her long thin black legs.
'Get those whores out of there, Sergeant,' Job snapped at Alphonso. The women around the tailgates scattered and three or four others descended hastily from the backs of the Uniniogs with their skimpy clothing in varying states of disarray.
Sean and Job climbed into the cab of the lead truck, and as they drove off Sean buttoned on his tunic and tipped his cap over one eye at a rakish angle.
'What are we going to do?' Job asked.
'Number three hangar at Grand Reef is in full view of the main road. We will drive up the highway. If the Hercules is still there, we go in. If not, well, we'll go back the way we came.'
'What about the Fifth Brigade?'
'They're just a bunch of ex-gooks,' said Sean. 'You weren't afraid of them before, so what's changed?'
'Just asking to pass the time.' Job grinned at him sideways.
'You want to tell Alphonso about them?'
'What Alphonso doesn't know won't hurt him,' Sean said.
'Just keep going.'
The column of three trucks drove sedately through the sleeping town of Unitali. The streets were deserted but Job obeyed the traffic fights punctiliously, and then they were out on the open highway.
'Twelve minutes past eleven.' Sean checked his watch, then read the road sign in the beam of the headlights. 'Grand Reef Military Base, fifteen kilometers.'
tightness in his stomach muscles, the short He felt the familiarness in his breath, and consciously slowed and regulated his breathing.
It was always like this before a scene.
'There she is,' Job said softly as they topped a rise in the highway.
The airfield was fully lit, the beacon lights glowing orange and the blue and green dotted lines of the taxiways and runway beyond them.
In the stark white light of the floods, even at a distance of almost two miles, the Hercules looked gigantic. its forty-foot-high tail fin towered above the roof of number three hangar.
The Royal Air Force rounders were painted on the monstrous silver fuselage and on the high tail fin, and Sean immediately that it was one of the Marshall stretched-out converrecognized of Lockheed's Hercules original C-MK3 transports made for sions the R.A.F.
Pun over,' Sean ordered. Job flicked his taillight indicators and pulled into the side of the road. He switched off his headlights, and one after the other the following Unimogs did the same.
In the silence Sean said softly, 'So the Hercules is still here. We are going in.'
'Let's do it,' Job agreed.
and ran back to the second Sean jumped down from the cab truck just as Alphonso climbed down to the roadside.
'Sergeant, you knoW' what to do. I'll give you forty-five minutes to get into position. Then I want exactly ten minutes of diversionary fire, everything you've got.'
'The first plan was twenty minutes of diversion.'
'That's changed,' Sean told him. 'We expect a much stronger response than we first thought possible. Ten minutes and then pull out fast. Head straight -back for Saint Mary's Mission, we are abandoning the RZ ;nlthe Umtali pass. Hit them hard and then get out. Understoo&'
'Yehbo.
'Go!' Sean said, and Alphonso jumped up into the cab.
Through the open window he saluted Sean and gave him a cheery grin.
'Break a leg,' Sean said softly, and the Uniniog pulled out and headed down the highway toward the brightly lit base.
Sean watched the headlights turn off the main highway onto the secondary road that bypassed the perimeter fence of the airfield.
Then he lost them among the trees. Sean marked the time with the bevel ring on his Rolex and walked back to join Job in the leading truck.
He lay back in the passenger seat, pushed his cap to the back of his head, and focused his binoculars through the open window at the huge aircraft that squatted on the tarmac under the floodlights.
The tail ramp at the rear of the fuselage was lowered like a drawbridge, and he could see into the cavernous cargo hold. There were four or five human figures moving about inside the hold and two more at the foot of the ramp. As he watched, a forklift truck trundled out of the open doors of number three hangar. Its fork arms were loaded with a stack of long wooden cases, four of them, one on top of the other. The cases were of raw white wood, and stenciled on them in black paint were letters and numerals he could not decipher. He did not need to-the shape and size of the crates were unmistakable.
'They are loading the Stingers,' Sean said, and Job sat up straight in the driver's seat.
The forklift truck wheeled around the stern of the Hercules, then climbed the open ramp and disappeared into the cargo hold. Minutes later it reappeared, drove down the ramp, and wheeled into the hangar. Sean glanced at his watch. Only five minutes had passed since Alphonso had driven ahead to set up the mock attack.
'Come on,' Sean muttered, and shook the Rolex on his wrist as if to speed up the mechanism.
Twice more they watched the loaded forklift truck make the journey from out of the hangar and up into the belly of the Hercules and return empty.
Then it turned aside
