terminals and locks it into the firing-position. The missile weighs a little less than ten kilos. It has the conventional rocket shape, but in the front of the nose cone is an opaque glass eye, behind which is located the infra-red sensor. The tail-fins are steerable, enabling the rocket to lock onto and follow a moving target.
The gunner settles the barrel across his shoulder, places the earphones on his head, and switches, on the power pack In the earphones he hears the cyclic tone of his audio-warning. He tunes this down below the background infra-red count, so that it is no longer audible.
The weapon is now loaded and ready to fire. The gunner searches out his target through the cross-hatched gun-sight. As soon as an infra-red source is detected by the missile's sensor, the audio warning begins to sound and a tiny red bulb lights up in the eye-piece of the gun-sight to confirm that the missile is 'locked-on. It remains only for the gunner to press the trigger in the pistol-type grip and the missile launches itself in relentless pursuit of its prey, steering itself to track it accurately through any turns or changes of altitude.
Tungata Zebiwe had held his cadre in position for four days.
Apart from himself, there were eight of them and he had chosen each of them with extreme care. They were all veterans of proven courage and determination, but, more importantly, they were all of superior intelligence and capable of operating under their own initiative.
Every one of them had been trained in the use of the SAM-7 missile launcher in both roles of loader and gunner, and each of them carried one of the finned missiles in addition to their AK 47 assault rifles, and the usual complement of grenades and AP mines. Any two of them could make the attack, and had been thoroughly briefed to do so.
The wind direction would dictate the departure track of any aircraft leaving the main runway of Victoria Falls airport. Wind velocity would also affect the aircraft's altitude as it passed over any specific point on the extended centre-line and crosswind legs of its outward track. Fortunately for Tungata's calculations, the prevailing northeasterly wind had been blowing at a steady fifteen knots during the entire four days in which they had been in position.
He had chosem a small kopje, thickly wooded enough to give them good cover, but not so thick that it impeded the view over the surrounding tree-tops. From the peak in the early mornings, before the heat-haze and dust thickened, Tungata had been able to see the stationary silver cloud of spray that marked the Victoria Falls on the northern horizon.
Each afternoon they had practised the attack drill. Half an hour before the expected time of departure of the scheduled Viscount flight from Victoria Falls to Bulawayo, Tungata had moved them into position. six men in a ring below the summit to guard against surprise attack by security forces, and three men above them in the actual attack group.
Tungata himself was the gunner, and his loader and backup loader had both been chosen for the acuteness of their hearing and the sharpness of their eyesight. On each of the three preceding afternoon drills, they had been able to hear the turbo-prop Rolls-Royce Dart engines minutes after takeoff. They were in climb power-setting, and the whine was distinctive, it drew the eye to the tiny crucifix shape of the aircraft against the blue.
On the first afternoon, the Viscount had climbed almost directly over their kopje, at not more than eight thousand feet in altitude, and Tungata had locked on and tracked it until it passed out of sight and then out of hearing. The second afternoon the aircraft had passed at about the same altitude, but five miles to the east of their position.
That was extreme range for the missile. The audio-signal had been weak and intermittent, and the lock-on -bulb had glowed only fitfully.
Tungata had to admit to himself that an attack would probably have failed. The third day the Viscount had been east of them again, three miles out. It would have been a good kill, so that the odds seemed to be about two to one in their favour.
This fourth day he moved the attack team into position on the summit fifteen minutes early, and tested the SAM launcher by aiming it at the lowering sun. It howled in his ears at the excitation of that immense infra-red source. Tungata switched off the power pack and they settled down to wait, all their faces lifted to the sky.
His loader glanced at his wristwatch and murmured, 'They are late.' Tungata hissed at him viciously. He knew they were late, and already the doubts were crowding in flight delayed or cancelled, even a leak in their own security, the kanka might already be on their way.
'Listen!' said his loader, and seconds later he heard it also, the faint whistling whine in the northern sky.
'Ready!' he ordered, and settled the shoulder-plate into position and switched on the power pack The audio-warning had been pre-set, but he checked it again.
'Load!'he said. He felt the missile go into the breech and weight the barrel slightly tail-heavy. He heard the clunk of the rim seating itself against the terminals.
'Loaded!'his No. 2 confirmed and tapped his shoulder. He traversed left and right, making certain he was firmly settled, and his loader spoke again. 'Nansi! There!' He extended his arm over Tungata's left shoulder, and pointed upwards with his forefinger.
Tungata searched, and then caught the high silver spark as the sunlight reflected off burnished metal.
'Target identified!' he said, and heard his two loaders move aside softly to avoid the backblast of the rocket.
The tiny speck grew swiftly in size, and Tungata saw that it was tracking to pass less than half a mile to the west of the hillock, and that it was at least a thousand feet lower than it had been on the preceding afternoons. It was in a perfect position for attack. He picked it up in the cross, wires of the gun-sight, and the missile howled lustfully in his earphones, a wicked sound like a wolf-pack hunting at full moon. The missile had sensed the infra-red burn from the exhausts of the Rolls-Royce engines. In the gun-sight the lock-on bulb burned like a fiery red Cyclops' eye, and Tungata pressed the trigger.
There was a stunning whoosh of sound, but almost no recoil from the weapon across his shoulder as it exhausted through the funnel vent in the rear. He was enveloped for micro-seconds in white fumes and whirling dust, but when they were whipped away by their own velocity, he saw the little silver missile going upwards into the blue on the feather of its own rocket vapours. It was like a hunting falcon bating from the gloved fist, going up to tower above its quarry. Its speed was dazzling, so that it seemed to dwindle miraculously into nothingness, and there was only the faint drumming rumble of its rocket-burn.
Tungata knew that there was no time for a second launch. By the time they could re-load, the Viscount would be well out of range.
They stared up at the tiny shiny aircraft and the seconds seemed to flow with the slow viscosity of honey.
Then there was a little flick of liquid silver that distorted the perfect cruciform of the aircraft's wing profile. It popped open like a ripe cotton pod, and the Viscount seemed to lurch and yaw, then steady again. Seconds later they heard the crack of the strike to confirm what they had seen, and a hoarse roar of triumph burst up out of Tungata Zebiwe's throat.
As he watched, the Viscount banked into a gentle turn, then abruptly something large and black detached itself from the port wing, and fell away towards the earth. The aircraft dropped its nose sharply, and the engine noise rose into a shrill wild whine.
Standing in the control tower, staring out through the floor-to-ceiling non-reflective glass window into the mellow evening sky, and listening to the rapid tense exchanges between the flight controller and the Viscount pilot, Roland Ballantyne was held in a paralysing-vice of helplessness and rage.
'Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Viscount 782, do you copy, tower?' 'Viscount 782, what is the nature of your emergency?' 'We have taken a missile strike on our port engine housing. We are engine out.'
'Viscount 782, I query your assessment.' The pilot's tension and stress flared. 'Damn you, tower, I was in 'Nam. It's a SAM hit, I tell you.
I have activated -the fire-extinguishers and we still have control. I am initiating a one hundred and eighty-degree turn!' 'We will have all emergency standby here, Viscount 782. What is your position?' 'We are eighty nautical miles outbound.' The pilot's voice cracked. 'Oh God!
The port engine has gone. It's fallen clean out of her.' There was a long silence. They knew the pilot was fighting for control of the crippled machine, fighting the asymmetrical thrust of the remaining engine which was trying to flip the Viscount over into a graveyard spiral, fighting the enormous weight transfer caused by the loss of the port engine. In the cOntrol tower they were all frozen in silent agony, and then the radio speaker crackled and croaked. 'Rate of descent three thousand feet a minute. Too fast. I can't hold her. We are going in. Trees, too fast. Too many trees. This is it! Oh mother, this is it!' Then there was no more.
In the control tower Roland sprang back to the flight planning desk, and snapped at the assistant controller. 'Rescue helicopters!'
'There's only one helicopter within three hundred miles. That's your one coming in from Wankie.' 'The only one, are you sure?' 'They have all been pulled out for a special op. in the Vumba mountains, yours is the only one in this zone.' 'Get me in touch with it,' he ordered, and took the microphone from the controller as soon as contact was established.
'This is Ballantyne, we have lost a Viscount with forty-six crew and passengers, 'he said.
