A Time to Die c-13 Read online

  Claudia did not realize that she was following a hippo road, one of the wide thoroughfares the great amphibians followed on their nightly forays into the forest. However, the road had not been used for rnny months. The hippopotamus in the area had been decimated along with the other game. She was in a hurry to get back to her father, and she was feeling slightly uneasy at her isolation from the rest of the party. She strode down the pathway, just short of a run.

  Ahead of her an old mat of dried papyrus stems was spread across the road from side to side. It had obviously been placed there by the previous occupants of the village, and although it served no purpose that Claudia could imagine, it was no obstacle to her progress and she stepped onto it without slackening her pace.

  The Pitfall had been dug for the purpose of trapping a hippopotamus. It was ten feet deep with fannelshoped sides that would tumble one of the huge beasts down into its depth and wedge it securely between the earthen walls. The opening was covered by branches strong enough to carry the weight of a man or a lesser animal, but not that of a hippo. Over these branches the builders had spread the papyrus stems.

  However, the pitfall had been built a long time previously and both branches and mat had rotted and weakened. They collapsed under Claudia's weight, and she screamed as she dropped through into the pit beneath, screamed again as she hit the sloping side and bounced off it. The bottom of the pit was covered with a few inches of stagnant water that had seeped into it. Claudia landed awkwardly with one leg twisted up under her and then rolled onto her back in the mud.

  The breath had been driven from her lungs and there was a fierce pain in her left knee. For a few minutes she could not respond to the faint shouts she heard from above. She sat up, clutching her injured knee to her chest and gasping wildly to fill her agonized lungs. At last she managed a strangled shout.

  "Here! I'm here!"

  "Are you all right?" Sean's head appeared above her, peering down anxiously.

  "I think so!" she gasped, and tried to stand up, but the pain shot through her knee and she fell back. "My knee," she said.

  "Hold on. I'm coming down." Sean's head withdrew. She heard voices, Job and Matatu and her father. Then a coil of nylon rope dropped down toward her, unfurling as it fell. Sean lowered himself swiftly down the rope and dropped the last few feet to land with a splash in the mud beside her.

  "I'm sorry," she said contritely. "I guess I've done it again."

  "Don't apologize." He grinned. "I'm not conditioned to it. For once it's not your fault. Let's take a look at your leg."

  He squatted beside her. "Move your foot. Capital! Can you bend your knee? Splendid! At least no bones broken. That's a relief. Let's get you out of this hole." He tied a loop in the end of the rope, slipped it over her head and shoulders, and settled it under her armpits.

  "Okay, Job," he called up. "Take her up. Gently, man, gently."

  As soon as they reached ground level, Sean made a more thorough examination of her knee.

  He rolled up the leg of her jeans and said, "Shit!"

  As a Scout commander he had extensive experience of the type of injury a paratrooper is prone to-broken bones, torn cartilage, sprained ligaments in ankle and knee. Already Claudia's knee was ballooning and the first tinge of bruising colored the smooth tanned skin.

  "This might hurt a little," he warned, and manipulated her leg gently.

  "Ouch!" she said. "That's damned sore."

  "Okay." He nodded. "It's the medial ligament. I don't think you've torn it, it would be more painful if you had. Probably just sprained it."

  "What does that mean?" she asked.

  "Three days," he replied. "You won't be walking on it for at least three days."

  He put his arm around her shoulders. "Can you stand up?" he asked. When she nodded, he helped her to her feet. She leaned against him, standing on her good leg.

  "Try putting a little weight on it," he said.

  immediately she exclaimed with pain. "No, I can't use it."

  He stopped, picked her up in his arms as though she were a child, and carried her back to the village. She was surprised by his strength, and although her knee was beginning to throb, she relaxed in his arms. It was a good feeling. Papa had carried her like this when she was a little girl, and she had to resist the urge to lay her head against Sean's shoulder.

  When they reached the village, he set her down in the clearing, and Matatu ran to fetch his pack. Her injury had diverted Riccardo's attention from his own troubles, and he came to fuss over his little girl in a way which ordinarily would have annoyed her.

  Now she submitted to it, thankful for his revived animation and attention.

  Sean strapped the knee with an elastic bandage from his first aid kit and gave her an anti inflammatory tablet to swallow with hot tea.

  "That's about all we can do for it," he told her, and sat back.

  "Only thing that will fix it is time.

  "Why did you say three days?"

  "It takes that long. I've seen a hundred knees just like yours, except that they were usually a lot more hairy and not nearly as pretty. "That's a compliment." She raised an eyebrow. "You're getting soft, Colonel."

  "Part of the treatment, and of course totally insincere," he assured her with a grin. "The only question now, ducky, is what on earth are we going to do with you?"

  "Leave me here," she said promptly.

  "Are you out of your mind?" he asked. Riccardo backed him up immediately.

  "That's out of the question."

  "Look at it this way," she reasoned calmly. "I can't move for three days, by which time your elephant will be long gone, Papa."

  She held up her hand to forestall his argument. "We can't go back.

  You can't carry me. I can't walk. We would have to sit here anyway."

  "We can't leave you alone. Don't be ridiculous."

  "No," she agreed. "But you can leave someone to look after me while you go on after Tukutela."

  "No." Riccardo shook his head.

  "Sean," she appealed to him. "Make him see that it's the sensible thing to do."

  He stared at her, and the admiration she saw in his gaze gave her a full warm feeling in her chest.

  "Damn it" he said softly. "You're all right."

  "Tell him it'll only be for a few days, Sean. We all know how much that elephant means to Papa. I want to give it to him as She almost said "last gift," but then she changed it to "as MY my special gift to him."

  "I can't accept it, tesoro. " Riccardo's voice was gruff but blurred, and he lowered his head to hide his feelings.

  "Make him go, Sean," Claudia insisted, gripping his forearm firmly. "Tell him I'll be as safe here with Job to look after me as I would be in the swamp with the two of you."

  "She just may have a point, Capo," Sean said. "But, hell, it's not my business. It's between the two of you."

  "Will you leave us alone, Sean?" Claudia asked. Without waiting for a reply, she turned to her father. "Come and sit here next to me, Papa." She patted the ground beside her. Sean stood up and walked away, leaving them together in the gathering darkness.

  He went to sit beside Job. They sat in the companionable silence of old friends, drinking tea and smoking one of Sean's last cheroots, passing it back and forth between them.

  An hour passed. It was dark before Riccardo came to where the two of them sat. he stood over them and his voice was rough and drawn with sadness.

  "All right, Sean," he said. "She has convinced me to do as she wants. Will you make the arrangements to go on with the hunt first thing tomorrow morning? And, Job, will you stay here and look after my little girl for me?"

  "I'll look after her for you, sir," he agreed. "You just go kill that elephant. We'll be here when you come back."

  Working in the moonlight, they moved out of the burned-out village and built a fly camp a few hundred meters back in the forest.

  They made a lean-to shelter for Claudia and under it placed a mattress of cut grass. Sea
n left the medical kit and most of their remaining provisions in the shelter with her. He detailed both Job and Dedan to remain with Claudia. Job would keep the light 30/06 rifle with the fiberglass stock, and Dedan had his ax and skinning knife.

  "Send Dedan back to keep an eye on the isthmus. Any Frelimo or Renamo patrols will come that way. At the first sign of trouble, get the girl into the swamp and hide out on one of the islands."

  Sean gave Job his final orders, then sauntered across to where Riccardo was taking leave of his daughter.

  "Are you ready, Capo?"

  Riccardo stood up quickly and walked away from Claudia without looking back.

  "Don't get into any more trouble," Sean told her.

  "You neither." She looked up at him. "And Sean, take care of Papa for me."

  He squatted down in front of her and offered her his hand as he would have if she had been a man. He tried to think of something witty to say but could not.

  "Okay, then?" he asked instead.

  "Okay, then," she agreed. He stood up and walked down to the edge of the swamp where Matatu, Pumula, and Riccardo were waiting for him beside the dugout canoe.

  Matatu took up his position in the bow of the frail craft, while Sean and Riccardo were amidships, sitting on their depleted packs and holding their rifles across their laps. Pumula stood in the stern with one of the freshly cut punt poles and propelled the dugout in response to Matatu's hand signals.

  Within seconds of pushing off from the bank they were surrounded by a high palisade of papyrus and their view was restricted to the wall of reeds and the small patch of lemon-yellow dawn sky overhead. As they passed, the sharp, pointed leaves of the reeds dashed into their faces, threatening their eyes, and the webs the tiny swamp spiders had spun between the stems of the reeds wrapped over their faces, sticky and irritating. The night's clammy chill hung over the swamp, and when they came out suddenly into an open lagoon, there was a heavy mist lying over the surface and a flock of whistling ducks alarmed the dawn with the clatter of their wings.

  The dugout was heavily overloaded with the four men aboard.

  There was only an inch or so of freeboard, and if any one of them moved suddenly, water slopped on board. They were forced to use the tea billy to bail almost continually, but Matatu signaled them on.

  The sun rose above the papyrus, and immediately the mist twisted into rising tendrils and was gone. The water lilies opened their cerulean blossoms and turned them to face the sunrise. Twice the four saw large crocodiles lying with just their eye knuckles exposed. They sank below the surface as the dugout slid toward them.

  The swamp was alive with birds. Bitterns and secretive night herons lurked in the reed beds and little chocolate-brown jacanas danced over the lily pads on their long legs, while goliath herons as tall as a man fished the back waters of the lagoons. Overhead flew formations of pelicans and white egrets, cormorants and darters with serpentine necks, and huge flocks of wild ducks of a dozen Merent species.

  The heat built up swiftly and was reflected from the surface of the water into their faces so that the two white men were soon sweating through their shirts. At places the water was only a few inches deep and they were forced to climb out and drag the dugout through to the next channel or lagoon. Under the matted reeds the mud was black and foul-smelling and reached to their knees.

  In the shallower places the elephant's pads had left deep circular water-filled craters in the mud banks The spoor of the old bull led them ever deeper into the swamplands, but there was consolation in the swift progress the dugout made across the lagoons and channels, thrust on by the long punt pole. For a while Sean spelled Pumula in the stern, but soon Pumula could no longer abide his clumsy strokes and took the pole away from him.

  There was room for only one man to stretch out in the bottom of the dugout. Riccardo slept in it that night while the others sat waist deep in the mud, leaning against the hull of the canoe and taking what rest the clouds of mosquitoes allowed them.

  Early the following morning, when Sean stood up out of the mud, he found that his bare legs were swarming with black leeches.

  The repulsive worms were attached to his skin, bloated with the blood they had sucked from him. Sean used a little of their precious supply of salt to rid himself of them. To pull them loose would leave a wound into which the leech had injected anticoagulants and which would continue to bleed profusely and probably become infected. However, a dab of salt on each leech made them twist and contort with agony and then fall off, leaving only a scaled wound on the skin.

  When he opened his trousers, Sean found they had crawled up into the cleft between his buttocks and were hanging like black grapes from his genitalia. He shuddered with horror as he worked on them, while safely in the dugout Riccardo watched with interest and made a facetious comment: Hey, Sean, this must be the first time you've ever objected to a bit of head!"

  Sean set the end of the punt pole in the mud and steadied it while Matatu shinned up it like a monkey and peered ahead. When he came down he told Sean, "I can see the islands. We are very close.

  We will be there before noon, and unless Tukutela has heard us, he will be on one of the islands."

  Sean knew from flights over the area and from study of his large-scale map that the islands formed a chain between the swamplands and the main channel of the Zambezi. They dragged the dugout through the shallows, Sean hauling on the nylon rope tied to the bow and Purnula and Matatu shoving in the stern.

  When Riccardo offered to assist, Sean told him, "Take a free ride, Capo. I want you nicely rested so you don't have any excuses if you mess up your shot at Tukutela."

  At last Sean saw the fronds of the palm trees rising above the screen of papyrus ahead. Abruptly the water deepened, and he went under to his chin. He dragged himself out and they all clambered back on board. Pumula poled them through to the first island. The vegetation was so dense that it overhung the water, and they had to push their way through to reach the shore.

  The earth was gray and sandy, leached by a million floods, but it was good to have dry land underfoot. Sean spread out their wet clothing and equipment to dry while Matatu slipped away to make a circuit of the island. The water had just boiled in the billy when Matatu was back.

  "Yes." He nodded at Sean. "He passed here yesterday early, while we were leaving the village, but he has settled down now. The peace of the river is upon him, and he feeds quietly. He left this island at sunrise this morning."

  "Which way did he go?" Sean asked.

  Matatu pointed. "There is another larger island close by."

  AMULet's take a look."

  Hill, Sean poured a mug of tea for Riccardo and left him with Pumula while he and Matatu skirted the northern shore, forcing their way through the dense growth until they reached the base of the tallest tree on the island and climbed into its top branches.

  Sean settled into a high crotch of the tree, snapped off the few leafy twigs that obscured his view, and gazed out on a scene of magnificent desolation.

  He was sixty feet above the island and could see to the misty horizon. The Zambezi flowed past the island. Its waters were an opaque glassy green so wide that distance had reduced the great trees that lined the far bank to a dark band that separated green water from the high alps of cumulus cloud that soared anvilheaded into the blue African sky.