a risk, but then it had all been a risk, from the very moment they crossed the Zambezi carrying the SAM-7 launcher.
The signal flare streaked up into the sunset, and five hundred feet above the river it burst into a crimson ball of fire. Tungata watched it begin to sink gracefully towards the earth again, He found that he had driven his fingernails into the flesh of his palms with the strength of his grip upon the radio microphone.
The flare, fired so tantalizingly close to the river bank, from just behind the first line of trees on the north bank, could frighten them off and make them abandon the pursuit, or it could have the effect that Tungata hoped for. It could convince them how close they were to their quarry, and precipitate the cat-like reflex to follow anything that flees.
Tungata waited and the seconds dragged by. He shook his head, facing at last the prospect of failure, feeling the chill of it begin in the pit of his stomach and beginning to spread. Then the radio crackled, and the observer's voice was strained and hoarse. They are coming! 'he said.
Tungata snatched the microphone to his lips. 'All units. Hold your fire. This is Comrade Tungata. Hold your fire.' He had to pause then, his relief mixed with dread that at this last moment one of his nervous guerrillas might spring the trap prematurely. He had six hundred men deployed on the killing-ground, only regimental strength was sufficient for a detachment of kanka. With his own eyes Tungata had seen them fight, and anything less than odds of twenty to one in his favour would not be acceptable.
He had achieved his numerical advantage, but in his own great numbers there was a concealed danger. Control was weakened, not all of his men were warriors of quality, amongst them there must be many of those who were nervous and susceptible to the mysterious aura, the almost superstitious awe, that surrounded the legend of Ballantyne's Scouts, 'All field commanders, 'he kept repeating into the microphone, 'hold your fire. This is Commissar Comrade Tungata. Hold your fire. 'Then he lowered the microphone and made one long last careful study of the ground in front of him.
The north bank of the river was almost a mile from where he waited. It was marked by a palisade of taller trees, the twisted trunks of great strangler figs and tall mkusi, their branches laden with trailing lianas, and higher even than these were the elegant bottle palms, their spiky fronds silhouetted against the blushing sunset. There was no glimpse of the river through this wall of lush growth.
Then abruptly the line of forest ended on this wide meadow-like opening. It was one of the Zambezi flood plains. In the rainy season, when the river burst its banks, this area would be inundated and transformed into a shallow lagoon filled with water-lilies and reeds, but now it had dried out, and the reeds had witted and fallen, no longer providing cover for a pursuer, or a fugitive.
One of Tungatas main concerns had been to keep the soft surface of this wide pan uncontaminated by spoor and footprints. There had been a regiment encamped along its fringes for almost ten days now, a regiment digging the trench system and batteries for the mortars. just one man wandering across the pan would have left a warning to the pursuers, but it had been kept clean.
The only spoor out there was that of the wild buffalo herds, of the dainty red puku antelope, and the tracks of nine men, the same tracks that led from the crash site of the Viscount, and which Tungata and his cadre had laid only three hours previously. These tracks emerged from the fringe of riverine bush and ran down the centre of the open flood plain to the higher forested ground on this side.
The carrier band of Tungata's radio hummed to life and the whisper of his observer warned, 'They are halfway across the drift.' Tungata imagined the line of dark heads above the sunset-pink waters, looking like a string of beads on a bodice of velvet.
'How many?'Tungata asked. 'Twelve.' Tungata felt a quick drop of disappointment. So few? He had hoped for more. He hesitated for a heartbeat before he asked. 'Is there a white officer?' 'Only one man in camouflage paint, he is at the head of the line.' 'It's Ballantyne,' Tungata told himself. 'It's the great jackal himself, it must be him.'
Again the voice spoke from the radio. 'They are across, into the trees. We have lost sight.' Now, would they commit themselves to cross the flood plain? Tungata focused his night- glasses on the treeline.
The specially ground and coated lens picked up every available ray of light but still even through the lens the shapes of the trees and bushes beneath them were becoming indistinct. The sun had gone, and the last colours of the sunset were fading, the first stars were pricking the dark canopy of the night sky.
'They are still in the trees.' It was a different voice on the radio, deeper and harsher. One of the second line of observers covering the southernmost fringe of the pan.
Tungata gave another order into the microphone. 'Unscreen the fire!' he said quietly, and seconds later there was a tiny yellow glow of a camp-fire in the treeline furthest from the river. As Tungata. stared at it through the night-glasses, a human figure passed in front of the low flames. It gave the perfect illusion of a quiet camp amongst the trees, where an unsuspecting quarry exhausted from the long chase, but believing themselves safe at last, were resting and preparing the evening meal. But -was it too obvious a lure, Tungata wondered anxiously, was he relying too much upon the unbalanced rage of the pursuers?
His self-doubts were answered almost immediately. The gruff voice on the radio said suddenly, 'They have left the trees, they are crossing the pan.' It was too dark now to make out anything at that range. He had to rely on the sighting of his forward posts, and he turned the luminous dial of his wristwatch so that he could see the sweep of the second-hand. The pan was one and a half kilometres across, at a run the Scouts would take approximately four minutes to cross it.
Without taking his eyes off the dial, Tungata spoke into the microphone. 'Mortars, stand by with star-shell.' 'Mortars, standing by!' The second-hand completed its circuit of the dial, and started around again.
'Mortars, fire!' Tungata ordered.
From the forest behind him came that hollow clunking sound of three-inch mortars, and Tungata heard the flute of the mortar bombs rising swiftly overhead. Then suddenly, at the zenith of their trajectory, the star shells burst.
They hung suspended on their tiny parachutes, and their light was a harsh electric blue. The open flood plain was illuminated like some gigantic sports stadium. The tiny group of running men in the centre were trapped in the naked glare, and their shadows on the earth beneath them seemed black and weighty as solid ironstone.
They went down instantly but there was no cover. Even though they were flattened against the earth, their bodies formed sharply defined hummocks. But they were almost immediately obliterated by the leaping sheets of dust and flying clods of earth that sprang up around them like a bank of pale whirling fog. Tungata had six hundred men in the treeline surrounding the pan. All of them were firing now, and the hurricane of automatic fire swept over the huddled figures in the middle of the open pan.
From the mortar batteries set farther back in the forest, the bombs rose high over Tungata's head and then dropped into the open pan.
The crack of their explosions added a sharp counterpoint to the background thunder of small-arms fire, and the mortar bursts jumped up like pale dust-devils in the light of the star-shells.
Nothing could live out there. The Scouts must long ago all be torn to shreds by shot and shrapnel, but still it went on and on, minute after minute, while more star-shells crackled into eye-searing bright sizzling blue light overhead.
Tungata panned his binoculars slowly over the drifting screen of dust and smoke. He could see no sign of life and at last he shifted the microphone to order the cease fire But before he could speak, he saw movement, directly in front of his position, not two hundred paces distant, and out of the curtain of dust came two ghostly figures.
They came at a run, side by side, seeming to wade through the thick swamp of mortar-smoke and dust, and they appeared monstrous and inhuman in the stark light of the star-shells. One of them was a huge Matabele. He had lost his helmet and his head was round and black as a cannonball, his open mouth was a pink cave lined with ivory teeth, and his bull bellow rose above even that storm of gunfire. The other was a white man, the top of his battle dress torn half off his body, exposing the pale flesh of chest and shoulders, but his face was daubed with fiendish streaks of dark green and brown paint.
The two of them were firing as they came on, and Tungata felt a stir of the superstitious dread that he had despised in his own troops, for they seemed immune to the storm of bullets through which. they charged.
'Kill them!'Tungata heard his own voice screaming, and a burst of FN fire from one of them kicked the top of the bank of loose earth in front of his slit trench.
Tungata ducked and ran to the gunner behind the heavy machine- gun at the end of the trench.
'Aim carefully,' he shouted, and the gunner fired a long thunderous burst, but the two figures ran on towards them unscathed.
Tungata pushed the man away from the gun and took his place. For infinite seconds he peered over the sights, making the tiny adjustments to the gun's elevation, and then he fired.
The tall Matabele was driven backwards, as though he had been hit by a runaway automobile, and then he seemed to disintegrate, breaking up like a straw man in a high wind as the bullets tore him to pieces.
