A Time to Die c-13 Page 22

  Their eardrums were numbed by the thunder of gunfire, and Sean's outraged voice sounded small and hollow after it.

  "Tukutela," Riccardo mouthed. "Don't you see? Why did you stop me?" His face was still flushed and he was shaking like a man with malarial fever. He reached once more for the Rigby in Sean's grasp, but Sean jerked it away from him.

  "Pull yourself together!" he shouted, tossing the empty rifle to Job. "Don't let him get it again." He turned back to Riccardo.

  "Are you out of your mind? He seized him by the shoulders. "The sound of those shots will carry for miles."

  "Leave me!" Riccardo struggled. "Don't you see him?" And Sean shook him viciously.

  "Snap out of it, you're shooting at a tree. You've blown your lid!"

  "Give me the rifle," Riccardo was pleading. Sean shook him again and roughly turned him to face the baobab.

  "Look at it, you bloody madman! There's your elephant!" He shoved him toward it. "Take a good look!"

  Claudia ran forward and tried to restrain Sean. "Leave him alone.

  Can't you see he's sick?"

  "He's gone crazy!" Sean pushed her aside. "He's calling up every Frelimo and Renamo thug within fifty miles, and he's chased any elephant... "

  "Leave him," Claudia came back at him. Sean let go of her father and stepped back.

  "All right, ducky, he's all yours."

  Claudia rushed to her father and embraced him. "It's all right, Papa! It's going to be all right!"

  Riccardo was staring uncomprehendingly at the deep raw oozing sap, in the bark of the baobab.

  "I thought it was... " He shook his head weakly. "Why did I do that?

  I don't... I thought it looked like an elephant."

  "Yes, Papa, yes." Claudia was hugging him. "Don't upset yourself."

  Job and the rest of the hunting team were quiet and unhappy, watching this strange episode that none of them could fathom.

  Sean turned away in disgust. It took him a few seconds to get full control of himself, then he asked Matatu, you think we are close enough for Tukutela to have heard the shooting?"

  "The swamps are close, and the sound carries over this flat earth as it does over water." Matatu shrugged. "Perhaps the elephant heard, who knows?"

  Sean looked back the way they had come. From the ridge they could see out across the floodplain into the dusty distances.

  " Job, what chance that the terrs heard? We'll find out the hard way, Sean. It depends how close behind us they are."

  Sean shook himself, trying to rid himself of his anger the way a spaniel shakes off water, "We'll have to rest here. The mambo is sick.

  Brew a billy of tea, and we'll decide what to do," he ordered.

  He walked back to where Claudia was still holding her father.

  She faced Sean defiantly, turning her body to shield Riccardo from him.

  "Sorry I Pushed YOU around, Capo," Sean said mildly. "You gave me a hell of a fright."

  "I don't understand," Riccardo mumbled. "I could have sworn it was him. I saw him so clearly." We will break for a cup of tea," Sean told him. "I think you've got a touch of the sun. It can turn a man's brain to jelly."

  "He'll be fine in a few minutes," Claudia said confidently. Sean nodded coldly at her.

  "Let's get him into the shade."

  Riccardo leaned back against the hole of the baobab and closed his eyes. He looked pale and bewildered, and sweat droplets sparkled on his chin and upper lip. Claudia knelt beside him and dabbed them away with the corner of her scarf, but when she looked up at Sean he jerked his head in a Peremptory gesture and she stood up and followed him.

  "This doesn't come as any surprise to you, does it?" he accused as soon as they were beyond earshot. She did not reply, and he went on, "Just what kind of daughter are you anyway? You knew he was sick and you let him come out on this jaunt."

  Her lips were trembling and as he stared into them he saw that her honey-colored eyes were swimming. He had not expected tears from her. They took him by surprise. He felt his fury slipping away and he had to make an effort to bolster it.

  "It's too late to start blubbering now, ducky. We've got to find a way to get him home. He's a sick man."

  "He's not going home," she murmured, so low he barely caught All the words. Her tears were hanging on thick dark lashes and he stared at her in silence. She swallowed hard and then said, "He's not a sick man, Sean. He's dying. Cancer. It was diagnosed by a specialist before we left home. He predicted that it could attack the brain like this."

  Sean's fury crumpled. "No," he said. "Not Capo."

  "Why do you think I agreed to let him come and insisted on coming with him? I knew that this was his last hunt-and I wanted to be with him."

  They were silent, staring at each other, then she said, "You care.

  I can see you truly care for him. I didn't expect that."

  "He's my friend," Sean said, puzzled himself by the depth of his own sadness.

  "I didn't think you were capable of gentleness," she went on softly. "I may have misjudged you."

  "Perhaps we misjudged each other," he said.

  She nodded. "Perhaps we did," she said. "But thank you anyway. Thank you for caring about my father."

  She began to turn away to go back to Riccardo, but Sean stopped her. "We still haven't settled anything," he said. "We haven't decided what we are going to do."

  "We go on, of course," she answered. "Right to the bitter end.

  That's what I promised him."

  "You've got guts," he told her softly.

  "If I have, then I got them from him," she replied, and went to her father.

  The mug of tea and a half-dozen aspirin tablets revived Riccardo. He was acting and talking completely rationally again, and none of them made any further reference to his wild behavior, although quite naturally it had thrown a pall over all of them.

  "We must move on, Capo," Sean told him. "Tukutela is walking away from us every minute we sit here."

  They followed the ridge of high ground, and now the odor of the swamps was stronger, brought to them by the fitful, inconstant wind.

  "That's one of the many reasons elephants like the swamps," Sean explained to Riccardo. "The wind is always shifting, turning and switching. It makes it much more difficult to get close to them."

  There was a gap in the trees ahead. Sean stopped and they gazed out through it. "There they are," he said. "The Zambezi swamplands.

  The ridge on which they stood was like the back of a sea serpent, swimming across the open flood plains Now, just ahead of them, it ducked below the surface and disappeared at the point where the open plains gave way to endless expanses of papyrus and reeds.

  Sean raised his binoculars and surveyed the swamps ahead. The reed beds seemed limitless, but he had flown over them and he knew they were interspersed with shallow lagoons of open water and narrow winding channels. Farther out, almost on the horizon, he could see the loom of small islets, dark patches of almost impenetrable bush-crowned islands, and he could just make out the curved palm stems with their high fluffy heads.

  The past season had been particularly dry and the water level would be low, in most places not more than waist deep, but the mud banks would be black and glutinous and the channels much deeper. The going would be arduous, and apart from the mud and water, reeds and water plants would impede each step they took, winding themselves around their legs as they tried to move.

  For them each mile through the swamps would be the equivalent of five on dry land, while the elephant would be in his element. He loved mud and water. It supported his great bulk, and his foot pads were designed by nature to expand as he put his weight upon them, forcing a wide opening, and then to shrink in diameter as he lifted them, freeing themselves readily from the clinging mud.

  Tukutela could gorge on reeds, soft water plants, and swamp grass, and the dense bushy islets would afford variety to his diet.

  The suck of mud and the splash of water would warn him of an app
roaching enemy and the fitfully turning wind would protect him, bringing the scent of a pursuer down to him from every quarter. In all of Tukutela's wide range, this was the most difficult place to hunt him.

  It's going to be a Sunday school picnic, Capo." Sean lowered the binoculars. "Those tusks are as good as hanging over the fireplace in your den already."

  "the old bull's spoor went out to the very end of the land bridge and then down into the papyrus beds, where the undulating sea of green fronds swallowed the trail and left not a sign.

  "Nobody can follow a trail in there." Riccardo stood at the line where dry friable earth ended and damp swamp mud began. "Nobody can find Tukutela in there," he repeated, staring at the wall of swamp growth higher than his head. "Surely they can't?"

  "You are right, nobody can find him in there," Sean agreed.

  "That is, nobody except Matatu."

  % They were standing in the remains of a village that had been built on the end of the isthmus. Clearly the previous occupants had been fishermen, members of one of the small tribes who live along the banks of the Zambezi and make their livelihood from her abundant green waters. The racks on which they had dried their catches of tilapia bream and barbeled catfish still stood, but their huts had been burned to the ground.

  Job was searching the outskirts of the village, and he whistled for Sean. When Sean went to join him he was standing over an object that lay in the short grass. At first glance Sean thought it was a bundle of rags, and then he saw the bones protruding from it. They were still partially covered by shreds of dried skin and flesh.

  "When?" Sean asked.

  "Six months ago, perhaps."

  "How did he die?"

  Job squatted beside the human skeleton. when he turned the skull, it snapped off the vertebrae of the neck like a ripe fruit. Job cupped it in his hands, and it grinned at him with empty eye sockets.

  "Bullet through the back of the head," Job said. "Exit hole this side." It was like a third eye in the bone of the forehead.

  Job replaced the skull and walked deeper into the grass. "Here's another," he called.

  "Renamo has been through here," Sean gave his opinion. "Either looking for recruits or dried fish or both."

  else it was Frelimo looking for Renamo rebels, and they decided to question them with an AK. "They get it from both sides. There "Poor buggers," Sean said.

  will be plenty more of them lying around. They are the ones who escaped from the huts before they burned." he They started back toward the village and Sean said, ""If they were fishermen-theY would have had their canoes here. They will probably be hidden, but we could certainly use one. Go through the edge of the papyrus beds and then search the bush behind the village."

  Sean crossed to where Riccardo and Claudia were sitting together.

  As he came , he looked at her inquiringly and she nodded and smiled optimistically.

  "Papa's doing fine. What is this place?"

  He explained their reasoning as to the fate of the village.

  "Why would they kill these innocent People?" Claudia was appalled.

  you don't have to have a reason for killing "In Africa these days somebody other than a loaded gun in your hands and a fancy to fire it off."

  "But what harm could they have done?" she insisted.

  Sean shrugged. "Harboring rebels, withholding information,

  hiding food, refusing the services of their women, any one of those crimes or none of them."

  The sun was a red ball through the swamp haze, so low above the tops of the papyrus that Sean could look directly at it without screwing up his eyes.

  "It'll be dark before we can leave," he decided. "We'll have to sleep here tonight and start again at first light tomorrow. One consolation is that now Tukutela has reached the swamps, he will slow down. He's probably not more than a couple of miles ahead of us right now." But as he said it he thought about those shots Riccardo had fired. If the bull had heard them, he would still be running. There was, however, no point in telling that to Riccardo.

  He looked shaken and despondent, and he had been almost silent since the incident.

  "He is just a husk of the Capo I knew, poor old devil. The last thing I can do for him is to get him that elephant." Sean's sympathy was genuine and unaffected and he sat down beside Riccardo and began to draw him out, describing what lay ahead and how they would hunt for the old bull in the papyrus beds.

  The hunt was all that now seemed to interest Riccardo, and for the first time that day he became animated Once he even laughed.

  Claudia flashed a grateful smile at Sean, then stood up and said, "I've got a little private business to attend to."

  "Where are you off to?" Sean demanded immediately"

  "The little girls" room," she told him. "And you are definitely not invited."

  "Don't go wandering off too far, and no swimming this time," he ordered. "You'll get enough of that tomorrow."

  "I hear and obey, O great white Bwana. " She gave him a sarcastic curtsy and set off out of the perimeter of the burned village.

  Sean watched her go uneasily and was about to call another warning after her when there was a shout from the papyrus bed and his attention was diverted from Claudia.

  He jumped up. "What is it, Job?" he yelled, and went down to the water's edge.

  There were more confused shouts and splashing from the depths of the papyrus. Then Job and Matatu emerged, dragging something long and black and waterlogged between them.

  "Our first bit of luck." Sean grinned at Riccardo and slapped him on the shoulder.

  It was a traditional mokorro dugout canoe, about seventeen feet long, hewn from a single log of the sausage tree, Kigeha africana.

  The body of the dugout was just wide enough for a person to sit ISO in it, but it was usually propelled by a man standing in the stem and wielding a long punt pole.

  Job tipped the water out of the craft and they examined it carefully. The hull had been repaired and caulked in a few places but seemed reasonably sound. Search the village," Sean ordered. "They must have had caulking material here. See if you can find it, then send Dedan and Pumula to cut a couple of punt poles. Claudia screamed, and they all spun to face the sound. she screamed again. The sound was strangely muffled and far off, and Sean began to run, snatching up his rifle from where he had left it beside the nearest burned-out hut.

  "Claudia!" he yelled. "Where are you?" Only his echo mocked him from the forest: "Where are you?... are You?"

  nm 9 When Claudia stood up and rebuckled her belt, she found it came in easily a full two notches shorter around her waist. She smiled down at her belly with approval. Now it was no longer flat but definitely concave. The long march and frugal rations had stripped every last ounce of fat from her frame.

  "Strange how in an age of plenty we set out to starve ourselves."

  She smiled again. "I'm going to enjoy putting on those lost pounds, plenty of pasta and red wine when I get home," She started back toward the village, then realized that in her search for privacy she had gone further than she had intended and that a thicket of wiry thorn brush blocked her way back. She turned aside to circumvent it and came upon a broad pathway running directly down through the bush toward the edge of the swarnd. She followed it thankfully.