A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 44
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The chef had come with them to drive the truck back to the camp. "Go in peace, Mambo!" he called to Sean as he puffed away.
"Fat hope," Sean laughed, sending him off with a wave. Then to Job: "Antitracking, let's go!"
Neither Riccardo nor Claudia had ever watched anti tracking procedure, for while hunting they had always run free in pursuit.
The formation for anti tracking was Indian file, Job leading and everyone else stepping in his footprints. Behind them all Matatu, the old maestro, was covering the signs, replacing a pebble lichen side up, stroking a blade of grass into its original position, flicking at the earth with his grass switch, picking up a leaf dislodged from a low-hanging branch or the bruised blade of grass on which a foot had trodden.
Job avoided the gaime paths and soft ground, always choosing the line of march that was most obscure and yet moving surprisingly fast, so that within half an hour Claudia felt the chill of fresh sweat between her shoulder blades and at the cleavage of her shirt front.
Job led them to the top of a low kopJe, and Sean motioned to them to conceal themselves below the skyline with the sunset behind them.
Watching them work, Riccardo remarked softly, "Pumula and Dedan seem to know what they're doing." The two of them had moved out to guard the flanks without being ordered to do so.
"Yes." Sean settled down between him and Claudia, using the same low bush for cover. "They were both noncoms in the Scouts.
They've done this before."
"Why are we stopping here? Claudia asked.
"We are sitting on the border," Sean explained, "and we'll spend the last of the daylight studying the ground ahead. As soon as the moon comes up, we'll move in. You can relax until then."
He lifted his Zeiss binoculars and stared through them; a few yards away Job lay on his belly and focused his own pair of binoculars in the same direction. They lowered the binoculars from time to time to blink their vision clear or polish an imaginary speck from the lens. Claudia had noticed how they protected and looked after these most essential tools of their craft, but apart from that, their concentration on the terrain ahead was absolute and ended only when the last gleam of the sunset faded. Then Sean buttoned the binoculars into his top pocket and turned to her.
"Time for your makeup," he said. For a moment she did not understand. Then she felt the greasy touch of camouflage cream on her cheek and instinctively pulled away.
"Hold still," he snapped. "Your white face shines like a iniffor.
It's good for insects and sunburn also."
He daubed her face and the backs of her hands.
"Here comes the moon." Sean finished working on his own camouflage and screwed the top back on the tube of cream. "We can go in now."
Sean changed the formation once again, putting out Job and Pumula as flankers while he led the center. Once again Matatu brought up the rear, diligently sweeping their tracks.
Once Sean stopped and checked Claudia's equipment. A loose buckle on her pack had been tapping regularly in time with her stride, a noise so small that she had not noticed it.
"You sound like the charge of the Light Brigade," he breathed in her ear as he adjusted it.
"Arrogant bastard," she thought.
They went on in silence, an hour and then another hour without pausing. She never knew the exact moment when she crossed the border. The moonlight through the forest was silvery, and the shadows of the trees flickered over Sean's broad shoulders ahead of her.
Gradually the silence and the moonlight gave the march a dreamlike unreality, and she found herself mesmerized by it, her movements were like-those of a sleepwalker, so that when Sean stopped abruptly she bumped into him and might have fallen had he not whipped. a hard, muscular arm around her and held her.
They stood frozen, listening, staring into the dark forest. After almost five minutes Claudia moved slightly to free herself from his arm, but instantly his grip tightened and she submitted to it. Out on the right flank, Job gave a bird call, and noiselessly Sean sank to the ground, drawing her down with him. Her nerves strained tighter as she realized there must be real danger out there. Now his arm no longer annoyed her. Instinctively she relaxed and pressed a little closer to him. It felt good.
Another soft bird call from the darkness, and Sean put his lips to her ear. "Stay!" he breathed. She felt lonely and exposed as he released her and she watched him disappear like a ghost into the forest.
Sean moved in a low crouch, rifle in one hand, reaching forward to touch the earth with the fingers of his left hand, brushing away the dry twigs and leaves that might crackle under his foot before stepping forward. He sank down ten feet from where Job lay and glanced across at his dark shape. The pale palm of Job's hand flashed a signal, and Sean concentrated on the left front that Job had indicated, For long minutes he neither saw nor sensed anything untoward, but he trusted Job completely and he waited with a hunter's patience. Suddenly he caught a taint on the night air and he lifted his nose and sniffed at it. Both his confidence and his patience were repaid. It was the acrid stink of burning tobacco, one of those cheap black Portuguese cigarillos. He remembered them so well they had been issued to the guerrillas in the days of the bush war and were probably Frelimo issue still.
He signaled Job and they went forward, leopard-crawling, absolutely silently, for forty paces. Sean picked out the glow of the cigarette as a man drew on it. Then the man coughed, a soft phlegmy sound, and spat. He was at the base of one of the large trees directly ahead; now Sean could make out his shape. He was sitting with his back to the trunk.
"Who is he? Local tribesman? Poacher? Bee hunter? Refugee?"
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