lips formed the words, and Sean gently disentangled Claudia's arms.
'Sleep sweetly, my love,' he murmured, and left her lying on the blanket.
The others were already waiting for him at the entrance of the cave, Matatu and Alphonso and the section leaders, only lightly armed so that they could move swiftly and steathily.
'Four o'clock,' Job told Sean, and he saw that the light in the river-bed had mellowed, the shadows were lengthening.
There was nothing more to say. They had both done this half a hundred times before.
'See you around,' Job said, and Sean nodded as he strapped on his pack.
With Matatu dancing ahead of them like a forest sprite, they slipped out of the cavern and into the trees, immediately turning south and settling into their running formation.
Twice they heard the Hind gunships passing at a distance, and once they were forced into cover as one of the helicopters came directly overhead.
However, it was high-over four thousand feet, Sean estimated-and flying at the top of its speed. Studying the aircraft through his binoculars, Sean guessed it had completed a mission and was racing back to the laager to refuel and rearm. Confirming this, the racks for the Swatter assault missiles below the fuselage were empty, and the nozzles of the rocket pods were scorched with the backblast of discharged rockets.
The Hind was heading on exactly the same bearing as Matatu was leading them, and even as Sean held it in the field of his binoculars, the Hind reduced power on its turbos and commenced its descent, homing in on its laager.
'Not more than five miles ahead,' Sean guessed. He glanced across at Matatu, who was waiting expectantly for Sean's approbation.
'Like a bee to its hive.' Matatu grinned.
'Your eyes are like those of the vulture,' Sean agreed. 'They see all.' Matatu hugged himself with pleasure and rocked on his haunches. Sean's praise was all the reward he ever asked for.
Half an hour later they leopard-crawled up onto the crest of a low, rocky kopje and slid over the skyline into the dead ground below. Sean raised his binoculars, using his cap to shade the lens; a reflected ray of sunlight would telegraph their position like a heliograph.
He picked up the raiNvay line immediately, less than two miles distant; the ballast was of blue granite and the single set of tracks gleamed dully in the late sunshine, polished by the steel wheels of rolling stock.
He followed the tracks for a mile and found the spur onto which two railway tankers had been shunted. They were partially hidden by scraggly trees and rank bush, but minutes later a feather of dust rose out of the forest and a fuel bowser came down a dirt track and pulled in beside the leading tanker. Sean watched though the binoculars as overall-clad workers connected the delivery hose and began to pump fuel between the two vehicles.
While this was happening, a Hind gunship rose with dramatic suddenness from the foreslope of the hill just beyond the railway spur.
At last Sean had a positive fix on the laager.
The Hind rose to three hundred feet above the hill, then turned and bore away, humpbacked and nose-heavy, for one more mission over the battlefield in the north before the light failed and fighting was suspended for the night.
Now that he knew exactly where to look, Sean was able to make out other heavily camouflaged emplacements on the slopes of the hill. He counted six of them and said so to Matatu.
'There are two more.' Matatu grinned patronizingly as he pointed out the hidden emplacements Sean had overlooked. 'And there are three more on the far side of the hill, you cannot see them from here.'
The wisdom of making this reconnaissance in daylight became as Sean was able to pick out the discrepancies between the clearer model with which they had planned the raid and the actual tapa 9raphy of the laager and its surroundings.
Sean jotted the amendments in his notebook, making new estimates of the ranges and fields of fire his missiles could command.
One by one, he called over each of the section leaders and pointed out exactly what positions he wanted them to occupy as soon as their teams arrived and darkness fell to cover them.
Satisfied that Matatu could supply no further information, Sean dispatched him. 'Go back to Job. As soon as it is dark, guide him and all the other soldiers up here.' of daylight When Matatu was gone, Sean devoted the last hour to watching the gunships return out of the north. There were eleven of them, ample proof of the efficiency of the Russian maintenance crews, who must have repaired the two Hinds that Matatu had reported were not flying. The entire squadron, less the single It gunship that Sean had knocked out of the sky, was once again operational and doing dreadful execution among the Renamo guerrillas.
As each gunship hovered above the hillock, then settled into its emplacement, Sean pointed out the flying characteristics to his section leaders and urged them to mark well the exact position of each emplacement.
'That one is yours, Tendela.' He reinforced the target allocations. 'See how he stands in the sky. You will shoot from that clump of dark trees at the edge of the vlei. Have you marked it well?'
I have marked it, Nkosi Kakulu,' he affirmed. The sky was washed by the blood of the dying day, and as he watched the red orb sink away beneath the trees, Sean wondered how much more blood the dawn would bring.
There was that short period of African twilight during which it was not yet dark enough to move off the ridge. There was nothing further to discuss, and Sean and Alphonso sat close together. The feeling was so familiar. No matter how many times Sean waited like this, he would never be able to control or ignore the tension that pulled like rubber bands across his guts. It was the heady anticipation of the draft of terror that soon he would drink to the dregs. He longed for it as the addict does for the needle, and dreaded it to the limits of his soul.
'We will make a good kill,' Alphonso said quietly. 'It will be a fight for men who are truly men.'
Sean nodded. 'Yes, my friend, it will be a good fight, and if we fail, then you must try to kill me. That also will be a good fight.'
'We will see,' Alphonso growled, his eyes reflecting the smoky red glare of the sunset. 'Yes, we will see.'
The crisp silhouette of the hill on which the Hinds were laagered dissolved with the onset of night. Then Venus, the evening star, appeared, and its cold unwavering light burned directly above the hilltop, seeming to single it out for them.
Within the first hour of darkness, the leading troopers of the raiding column emerged from the trees behind them. Job was at the head of the column with Matatu guiding him and Claudia beside him. Sean met them with a quiet word and immediately began to marshal the troopers into their various units. The section leaders took charge of their missile teams, and the Stinger launchers were unpacked and assembled; the spare missiles in their sealed, frangible tubes were checked and readied.
Sean and Job and Claudia went from team to team, running the final checks on the missile launchers, making certain the battery packs were fully charged and correctly connected, the cylinders of freon gas were open-yak;,ed, and the sighting screens lit up when the actuator was engaged.
At last Sean was ready to deploy the missile teams. But before he did so, he called the section leaders together and for the last time made each repeat his orders. Satisfied at last, he began to dispatch them to their attack positions. He allowed a five-minute interval after each team leaving the ridge.
Alphonso was in charge of the missile teams attacking the eastern perimeter of the laager, and because he had farther to go to get into position, he left first.
When it was time for Job, who would lead the missile attack on the western perimeter, to go, he and Sean shook hands briefly.
There was no exchange of good wishes; they were both superstitious about that. Instead Job asked facetiously, 'Listen, Sean, about that four thousand dollars in bonus and back pay, don't you want to pay me out now?'
'Will you take a check?' Sean grinned at him through the dark mask of his camouflage cream. Job answered his grin, punched his shoulder, and moved away out of earshot so Sean could speak to Claudia in private.
'I don't want to leave you,' she whispered.
Sean hugged her fiercely. 'Stay close to Job,' he ordered.
'Come back to me safely.'
'Yes.
'Promise me.
'I promise,' he said, and she pulled out of his embrace and turned away, disappearing into the darkness after Job.
As Sean stared after her, he found that his hands were trembling. He thrust them into his pockets and clenched his fists. 'Love doesn't do much for one's fighting instincts,' he thought, and tried to dismiss her from his mind. 'She'll be all right with Job.'
The assault party was waiting for him patiently, squatting at the edge of the tree line. Twenty-four men, the cannon fodder, the meat bombs, he thought ruefully, those who had failed the aptitude tests for operating the Stingers. While the missile crews would fire from standoff positions five hundred meters outside the perimeter of the laager, the assault party would attack it head on and frontal, deliberately
