He melted into the surface of the pan.
The second man came on, running and firing, screaming an incoherent challenge, and Tungata swung the machinegun onto him. He paused for a micro-second to make certain of his aim, and he saw the flash of hard white flesh through the gunsight, and the diabolically painted face above it.
Tungata fired, and the heavy gun pounded briefly in his hand, then jammed and was silent.
Tungata was frozen, completely in the grip of supernatural dread, for the man was still coming on. He had dropped his FN rifle, and half his shoulder was shot away. The shattered arm dangled uselessly at his side, but he was on his feet coming straight at Tungata.
Tungata jumped to his feet and pulled the Tokarev pistol from the webbing holster on his side. The man was almost at the trench now, not ten paces away, and Tungata pointed the pistol at him. He fired and saw the bullet strike in the centre of the naked white chest. The man dropped to his knees, no longer able to come forward, but straining to do so, reaching out towards his enemy with his one remaining arm, no sound coming out of the open blood-glutted mouth.
This close, despite the thick mask of camouflage paint, Tungata recognized him from that never-forgotten night at Khami Mission. The two men stared at each other for a second longer, and then Roland Ballantyne fell forward onto his face.
Slowly the great storm of gunfire from around the rim of the pan shrivelled and died away. Tungata Zebiwe climbed stiffly out of the trench and went to where Roland Ballantyne lay. With his foot he rolled him down the bank of earth onto his back, and with a sense of disbelief saw the eyelids quiver and then open slowly. In the light of the star shells the green eyes that stared up at him still seethed with rage and hatred.
Tungata squatted beside the man, and said softly in English, 'Colonel Ballantyne, I am very pleased to meet you again.' Then Tungata leaned forward, placed the muzzle of the Tokarev against his temple, just an inch in front of his ear hole and fired a bullet through Roland Ballantyne's brain.
The paraplegic section of St. Giles' Hospital was a haven, a sanctuary into which Craig Mellow retreated gratefully.
He was more fortunate than some of the other inmates. He suffered only two journeys along the long green-painted corridor, the wheels of the trolley on which he lay squeaking un rhythmically and the masked impersonal faces of the theatre sisters hovering above his, down through the double swing doors at the end, into the stink of asepsis and anaesthetic.
The first time they had built him a fine stump, with a thick cushion of flesh and skin around it to take the artificial limb. The second time they had removed most of the larger fragments of shrapnel that had peppered his crotch and buttocks and lower back. They had also searched, unsuccessfully, for some mechanical reason for the complete paralysis of his body below the waist.
His mutilated flesh recovered from the surgery with the rapidity of that of a healthy young animal, but the leg of plastic and stainless steel stood unused beside his bedside locker, and his arms thickened with muscle from lifting himself on the chain handles and from manipulating the wheelchair.
Swiftly he found his special niches in the sprawling old building and gardens. He spent much of his day in the therapeutic workshop working from the wheelchair. He stripped his old Land-Rover completely and rebuilt the engine, grinding the crankshaft and re boring the block.
Then he converted it to hand controls, fitted handles and adapted the driver's seat to make it easier to swing his paralysed lower body in and out. He built a rack for the folding wheelchair where once the gun racks had been behind the front seat, and he re sprayed the body a lustrous maroon colour.
When he finished work on the Land-Rover, he began designing and machining stainless-steel and bronze fittings for the yacht, working hour after hour on the lathes and drilling presses. While his hands were busy he found he could crowd out the haunting memories, so he lavished care and total concentration on the task, turning out small masterpieces in wood and metal.
In the evenings he had his reading and his writing, though he never read a newspaper, nor watched the television set in the hospital common room. He never took part with the other patients in any discussion of the fighting or of the complicated peace negotiations which commenced with such high hopes and broke down so regularly. That way, Craig could pretend to himself that the wolves of war were not still hunting across the land.
Only at night he could not control the tricks his mind and memory played upon him, and once again he sweated with terror in an endless minefield, with Roly's voice whispering obscenities in his ears, or he saw the electric glare of star-shells in the night sky above the river and heard the storm of gunfire. Then he would wake screaming, with the night nurse beside him, concerned and compassionate.
'It's all right, Craig, it was just one of your feemies. It's all right.' But it was not all right, he knew it would never be all right.
Aunty Valerie wrote to him. The one thing that tortured her and Uncle Douglas was that Roland's body had never been recovered. They had heard a horror story through the security forces' intelligence that Roland's bullet-riddled corpse had been put on public display in Zambia and that the guerrillas in the training camps had been invited to spit and urinate upon it to convince themselves that he was truly dead.
Afterwards the body had been dumped into one of the pit latrines of the guerrilla training camp.
She hoped Craig would understand that neither she nor Uncle Douglas felt up to visiting him at present, but if there was anything he needed, he had only to write to them.
On the other hand, Jonathan Ballantyne came to visit Craig every Friday. He drove his old silver Bentley and brought a picnic basket with him. It always contained a bottle of gin and half a dozen tonics.
He and Craig shared it, in a sheltered nook at the end of the hospital gardens. Like Craig, the old man wanted to avoid the painful present, and they found escape together into the past. Each week Bawu brought one of the old family journals, and they discussed it avidly, Craig trying to glean every one of the old man's memories of those far-off days.
Only twice did they break their accord of forgetfulness and silence. Once Craig asked, 'Bawu, what has happened to Janine?'
'Valerie and Douglas wanted her to go and live at Queen's Lynn, when she was released from hospital, but she wouldn't go. As far as I know, she is still working at the museum. The next week it was Bawu who paused as he was about to climb back into the Bentley, and said, When they killed Roly, that was the first time I realized that we were going to lose this war.' 'Are we going to lose, Bawu?' 'Yes, said the old man, and drove away leaving Craig in the wheelchair staring after the Bentley.
At the end of the tenth month at St. Giles', Craig was sent for a series of tests that lasted four days. They X-rayed him and stuck electrodes to his body, they tested his eyesight and his reaction time to various stimuli, they scanned the surface of his skin for heat changes that would show nervous malfunction, they gave him a lumbar puncture and sucked out a sample of his spinal fluid. At the end of it, Craig was nervous and exhausted. That night he had another nightmare. He was lying in the minefield again, and he could hear Janine. She was in the darkness ahead of him. They were doing to her what Roland had described and she was screaming for him to help her.
He could not move. When he woke at last, his sweat had formed a tepid puddle in the red rubber under sheet
The next day -the doctor in charge of his case told him, 'You -did wonderfully in your tests, Craig, we are really proud of you. Now I am going to start a new course of treatment, I am sending you to Doctor Davis.' Dr. Davis was a young man with an intense manner and a disconcerting directness in his stare. Craig took an immediate dislike to him, sensing that he would seek to destroy the cocoon of peace which Craig had almost succeeded in weaving about himself. It was only after he had -been in Davis' office for ten minutes that Craig realized that he was a psychiatrist.
'Look here, Doctor, I'm not a funny bunny.' 'No, you are not, but we think you might need a little help, Craig.' 'I am fine. I don't need help.' 'There is nothing wrong with your body or nervous system, we want to find out why you have no function in your lower body.'
'Listen, Doctor, I can save you a lot of trouble. The reason I can't move my stump and my one good kicker is that I stepped on an AP mine and it blew pieces of me all over the scenery.' 'Craig, there is a recognized condition, once they used to call it shell-shock.-' 'Doctor.' Craig interrupted him. 'You say there is nothing wrong with me?' 'Your body has healed perfectly.' 'Fine, why didn't somebody tell me before?'
Craig wheeled his chair down the corridor to his room. It took him five minutes to pack his books and papers, then he wheeled himself out to the shiny maroon Land-Rover, slung his valise into the back, dragged himself up into the driver's seat, loaded the wheelchair into the rack behind him and drove out to the yacht.
In the St. Giles' workshop he had designed and put together a system of pulley and hand winches to lift himself easily up the high side of the hull to deck-level. Now the other modifications to the yacht absorbed all his energy and ingenuity. Firstly he had to install grab handles to pull himself around the deck and cockpit and below decks. He sewed leather patches on the seat of his trousers and skidded around on his backside,
