The Sunbird Page 24

  Louren gave Xhai a cigar, and while we talked the little bushman’s eyes never left our faces, like those of a faithful dog. The talk was fitful, changing from one subject to another without design. Louren told me about the hotel project on the islands. He was very certain of its success.

  ‘It’s one of my really good ones, Ben.’ And when I thought about his other good ones - the cattle ranches, the diamond mines, gold, chrome and copper - I knew how big it must be.

  I touched lightly on his difficulties with Hilary.

  ‘My God, Ben. If only they understood that they don’t buy you with the marriage certificate!’ There were three others who had found that out the hard way, I hoped that Hilary would not be the fourth.

  It was almost dark when MacDonald came down the bank.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Sturvesant. Could I ask you to come into the perimeter now. I don’t like taking unnecessary chances.’ And with good grace Louren flicked the stub of his cigar into the pool, and stood up.

  ‘This used to be a country where a man could range to the full extent of his fancy. Times are changing, Ben.’

  When we entered the camp there was coffee brewing on a low screened fire, and while we sipped from the steaming mugs I saw the precautions MacDonald had taken for our safety and I realized that his competent looks were not deceiving. He finished his sentry rounds and came to sit with us.

  ‘I should have asked you sooner, but do you gentlemen know how to use the FN rifle and the 60-calibre machine-gun?’ Louren and I both told him we did.

  ‘Good.’ MacDonald looked out towards the north. ‘The closer we get to the border the more chance there is of a clash. There has been a big step-up in the terrorist activity recently. Something brewing up there.’

  He poured a mug of coffee and sipped before he asked:

  ‘Well, gentlemen, what are your plans for tomorrow? How far are we from our destination?’

  I looked at Xhai. ‘How far is it to the holes in the rock, my brother?’

  ‘We will be there before the sun stands so,’ indicating noon with one delicate little hand, ‘my people are camped at the waterhole near the holes in the rock. We will go there to find them first, for they have long awaited my coming.’

  I stared at him, realizing for the first time the extent of Xhai’s friendship. Then I turned to Louren. ‘Do you realize, Lo, that this little devil has made a trek of 150 miles on foot merely to tell us something that might give us pleasure.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘As soon as he discovered the old workings he left his tribe and set off to find me.’

  That night Xhai slept between Louren and me. He still didn’t trust the big Matabele troopers one little bit.

  It was eleven o’clock the following morning when we saw the vultures in the northern sky. MacDonald halted the column, and came back to our vehicle.

  ‘Something up ahead. Probably only a lion kill, but we had better not take any chances.’

  Xhai slipped off the seat and clambered onto the roof of the Land-Rover. For a minute he watched the distant birds, then he came down to me.

  ‘My people have killed a large animal. Perhaps even a buffalo, for the birds are above my camp. There is nothing to fear. Let us go forward.’

  I translated for MacDonald, and he nodded.

  ‘Okay, Doctor. But we’ll keep our eyes peeled all the same.’

  The bushmen had erected five rude shelters beside a hole of mud and filthy water. They had merely bent a number of saplings inwards to form the framework, and then thatched it roughly with leaves and grass. There was no smoke and no sign of the little yellow people as we drove towards the encampment. Xhai was looking puzzled, darting little birdlike glances into the thick bush, and whistling softly through his teeth. The vultures sat in the tree-tops all around the camp, and as we approached there was a sudden commotion from amongst the huts and twenty or thirty of the big ugly birds flapped into the air.

  Xhai let out a soft wailing cry. I did not understand what had happened, it merely seemed odd that the vultures were on the ground amongst the huts, but Xhai had guessed it. He began rocking slowly on the seat, hugging his chest and emitting that low-pitched wail.

  MacDonald stopped his Land-Rover and climbed out. He stooped over something on the ground, then he straightened up and shouted an order. His troopers jumped from the vehicle and spread out with their weapons held ready. Louren parked our Land-Rover and we went to where MacDonald was standing amongst the huts. Xhai remained in the back seat, still rocking and wailing.

  For the Bantu the bushman girls are an object of peculiar lust. I do not know why this should be so, perhaps it is their golden yellow colour, or it may be their tiny doll-like bodies. They had raped Xhai’s women, all of them, even the little immature girls. Then they had bayoneted them and left them lying in that pathetically vulnerable attitude of love. Ghal and the other two males they had shot. Bursts of automatic fire had smashed their bodies so that slivers and chips of bone protruded from the mangled flesh. The blood had dried in black splashes and puddles. There were flies everywhere, big green metallic flies that buzzed like hiving bees and came to settle on my lips and eyes. I struck them away angrily. The birds had been at the bodies, that was the truly horrible part of it, the birds.

  ‘God,’ said Louren. ‘Oh God. Why? Why did they do it?’

  ‘It’s their style,’ MacDonald answered. ‘Frelimo, Mau-Mau, all of them hit their own people hardest.’

  ‘But why?’ repeated Louren.

  ‘They’ve got guns. They want to use them. This is easier than going for white ranchers or police posts.’ Two of the police troopers carried a tarpaulin from one of the Land-Rovers. They began wrapping the bodies. I walked back to our vehicle and leaned against the door. Suddenly I was sick, an acid bitter flood gushing up my throat, and I retched painfully.

  When I was finished I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and looked up to find Xhai watching me. He was a man deprived of everything except the breath of life. There was such agony in those dark eyes, such sorrow twisted that mouth that I felt my own heart breaking for him.

  ‘Let us find who has done this thing, Sunbird,’ he whispered, and he led me into the short grass around the camp. He worked quickly, like a gundog.

  There were spills of the bright brass cartridge cases scattered on the sandy earth. Shoddily manufactured, and stamped with Chinese characters, hundreds of them. The gunners had fired with childish gusto, pouring a torrent of bullets into the camp. Their boots had left the characteristic chevron-patterned imprints. There seemed to be hundreds of them, for the earth was churned and the grass flattened.

  ‘They came in the night,’ Xhai explained softly. ‘See! Here is where they waited.’ He pointed to the scuffed places amongst the bushes. ‘There were many of them.’ And he showed both his hands with fingers spread, three times. Thirty of them. A big party. ‘They struck in the dawn. Yesterday at dawn.’ Thirty-two hours ago. They would be miles away now, I realized. When we returned to the encampment the nine bodies were wrapped in canvas and laid out in a neat line, like parcels ready for posting. Four of the troopers were digging a shallow communal grave.

  Xhai went to squat beside the line of dead. He was silent now, and the silence was more distressing than his despairing wail. Once he leaned forward and timidly touched one of the green canvas-wrapped bundles. How many of these little men had squatted like this in the sun to mourn the massacre of their tribe, I wondered. It is at times such as this that I hate the savage ferocity of this land of ours. I could not watch Xhai’s grief and I turned away and went to where Louren and MacDonald stood together talking quietly.

  ‘It’s a big party, Ben,’ Louren greeted me as 1 came up.

  ‘Xhai says there are thirty of them.’ I told him, and he nodded.

  ‘Very likely. The inspector feels we should turn back, and I reckon I agree with him.’

  MacDonald explained, ‘Should we run into them, they outnumber us heavily, Doctor.
These swine are well trained and armed with the most modern weapons. It’s not like a few years ago when they sent in a half-baked rabble. They are really dangerous now, and we aren’t an offensive patrol. I think we must get out as quickly as possible, and call in the helicopters. Once they locate them the Hunter jets will give them a whiff of napalm.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. The ancient workings were no longer important in the face of this horror. I looked across to where the troopers were lifting the bundles down into the grave. Xhai stood watching them. When the grave was filled with loose earth I went across to Xhai and placed an arm around his shoulder.

  ‘Come, little brother,’ I said and led him to the Land-Rover. The column turned and in the same order made its way back into the south.

  The journey slowly developed into a nightmare of tension and straining nerves. The revving and gear-changing that was necessary to negotiate the rough and broken ground broadcast our progress far ahead of us. Every mile there was a location ideal for an ambush, with thick cover pressing in closely on either hand. Our trail was laid clearly, and we must follow it on our return. They would know this and wait for us there. It was possible they carried landmines and we watched anxiously for disturbed earth in the trail ahead. The strain was on all of us. Louren drove in grim silence, with an unlit stub of cigar rolling restlessly in the corner of his mouth.

  The trooper beside him rode with the butt of the machine-gun pulled into his shoulder, and occasionally he traversed the heavy weapon experimentally. All our heads moved constantly, swinging slowly from side to side, searching, searching.

  ‘Have you noticed there is no sign of game, Ben?’ Louren asked suddenly. He was correct. Since leaving the bushman encampment we had seen none of the wild life which had enlivened our outward journey, not even a herd of the dainty brown impala.

  ‘I don’t like it, Lo.’

  ‘Join the club,’ Louren grunted.

  ‘In thirty-two hours the bastards could have moved miles. They could be anywhere.’ I fiddled restlessly with the rate of fire selector on the rifle in my lap. MacDonald had insisted on us taking the spare weapons from two of the troopers on the heavy machine-guns. I was glad of it now. There was much comfort to be drawn from that hunk of wood and steel.

  Suddenly the Land-Rover ahead of us skidded to a halt, and Louren slammed on his own brakes and snatched the automatic rifle from the bracket behind him. We sat with our weapons poised, peering into the wilderness of rock and scrub around us. Waiting for the sudden shuddering roar of machine-guns. The slow seconds passed and my own pulse drummed in my ears deafening me.

  ‘Sorry,’ MacDonald called from up front. ‘False alarm!’

  The engines revved, hideously loud in the vast silence of Africa, and we went on.

  ‘For Christ’s sake stop fiddling with that bloody thing!’ Louren snapped at me with unnecessary violence. I had not realized that I had been clicking the selector of the rifle.

  ‘Sorry,’ I muttered guiltily. The tension was infectious. Louren’s outburst was a symptom of it, but almost immediately he glanced over his shoulder and grinned apologetically.

  ‘This is bloody murder.’

  It seemed hours later that we crossed a ridge and went twisting down amongst the trees to the pool in the dry water course where we had camped the previous night. MacDonald signalled the column to a halt on the far bank, and he came back to us.

  ‘We will top up the fuel tanks here, Mr Sturvesant. I’ll see to that. Will you take a party down to the pool and refill the water containers?’

  Louren went down the bank with two of the troopers lugging the five-gallon jerry cans while I watched MacDonald begin refuelling. The gasoline fumes swirled like a mirage in the heat, and the smell was biting in my throat. One of the troopers splashed the liquid in a spurt down the side of the lead vehicle and MacDonald reprimanded him sharply.

  ‘Stay here,’ I told Xhai. ‘Do not move.’ And he nodded at me from the back seat of the Land-Rover.

  I left him and followed Louren down to the edge of the pool. It was a tranquil scene, so typical of Africa. Tall reeds languidly drooping their fluffy heads, black mud, pocked with the hooves of a thousand beasts, water green and thick with slime bubbling sulkily with marsh gas, the weaver birds hanging upside down below their swinging basket nests. The two troopers were talking quietly as they filled the jerry cans, Louren standing over them with the automatic rifle.

  ‘Another hour’s travel will see us in the clear,’ he remarked as I joined him. He took a cigar from his top pocket and began unwrapping it without interrupting his search of the surrounding trees and brush.

  There was a fleck of white on the rocks at the water’s edge. It caught my eye and I glanced at it, and was about to dismiss it as a splash of bird droppings. Then I noticed something else, and I felt the first cool draught of apprehension blow down my spine. Casually I strolled along the edge of the pool averting my eyes from the white object until it was at my feet. Then I glanced down, and my breath jammed in my throat. My first impulse was to scream a warning to Louren and run for the Land-Rover, but I controlled the urge and forced myself to look away casually. Despite the racing of my heart and the difficulty I had in breathing I managed to stoop and pick up a pebble from the water’s edge and toss it out into the pool where it fell with a plop in a widening ring of ripples. Quickly I glanced down again.

  The white fleck was a piece of domestic soap, with a wet lacework of bubbles still frothing around it. There were damp marks on the rocks, that the sizzling sun had not yet dried, and in the mud at the water’s edge, amongst all the thousands of hoof marks was a print. A strange half-human print, like that of a giant bird. The big toes deeply divided from the rest of the foot, split halfway back to the heel, and I knew that Timothy Mageba was watching me over the sights of an automatic weapon.

  My skin prickled as from the stings of the myriad insects of fear. They crawled over my body and along the strings of my nerves. Slowly I walked back to Louren. The cigar was in his mouth and he struck a match as I approached. It flared in a puff of blue nitrous smoke in his cupped hands, and he bowed over it.

  ‘Lo,’ I said softly. ‘Don’t do anything suddenly. Behave as naturally as you can. They are here. Right here, watching us.’

  He puffed four times then waved the match to extinguish it, and he looked around naturally.

  ‘Where?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but they are very close. We must show ourselves here until Mac is ready.

  ‘Tell the troopers,’ Lo said.

  The troopers were recapping the jerry cans, and as they moved back past us I stopped them.

  ‘Go very gently. Do not run. Do not look behind you. The evil ones are here. Go to the inspector. Tell him to start the engines, when we hear them we will come running.’

  They nodded, expressionlessly, understanding immediately, and I knew then why these were famed as the finest native troops in Africa. They went calmly up the bank, leaning away from the weight of the jerry cans.

  ‘I feel like one of those little mechanical ducks in a shooting gallery,’ I said, and tried to smile. It hung all crookedly on my face. ‘What are they waiting for?’ I asked.

  ‘They probably didn’t have time to set it up properly.’ Louren laughed, a very good effort. It rang convincingly. ‘They’ll be moving into position now. Then they will wait until we are all together in a bunch, not spread out like this.’

  ‘God, I wish I knew where they are, where to expect it to come from.’

  ‘What tipped you?’ Louren asked, anything to keep this conversation flowing naturally.

  ‘Piece of soap, and wet footprints on the rocks. They were bathing when they heard us coming.’

  Louren tapped ash from his cigar, and glanced at the rocks seeing the soap. Then his eyes flicked back to me. Above the bank we heard the starters whirring loudly in the silence, and then the engines running steadily. One, two, and the third one.

  Louren ground t
he fresh cigar into the mud at the edge of the pool then turned to me. He let his hand fall onto my shoulder.

  ‘All the way, partner?’ he asked.

  ‘All the way, Lo.’ And we whirled together and went for the path up the bank, unslinging the rifles as we ran. I felt a lift of relief, the waiting was over. It had begun.

  I had the strange sensation of not moving, of marking time, rather than running. The climb up the bank seemed endless, my feet dragging leadenly and a hot hushed silence persisted in which the engines of the Land-Rovers seemed muted, but our footsteps pounded like stampeding hooves.

  We came out on top of the bank.

  Sergeant Ndabuka was at the wheel of our vehicle swinging in towards us, slowing for the pick up.

  The other two Land-Rovers were backing up, ready to cover us, turning for the path with the gunners traversing the heavy machine-guns.

  ‘Jump!’ shouted MacDonald. ‘Let’s hit out!’

  I leapt for the side of the Land-Rover and Louren piled in beside me.

  ‘Go!’ he snapped urgently at the sergeant. The engine roared and we surged forward. From the moment when we started to run to the moment we boarded the speeding vehicle perhaps six seconds had elapsed. It had all gone very quickly, and I scrambled onto my knees, pushing the automatic rifle forward to cover one flank. In that instant they opened on us. The air around me was torn by the sound of a thousand bull whips, while the gunfire sounded like a stick dragged swiftly across a corrugated-iron fence.

  MacDonald’s vehicle was leading us out, back along our tracks. It was drawing fire also. I saw the gunner hit. His head snapping backwards as though from a heavy punch and his hat flying from his head. He collapsed over the seat, his untended weapon spiralling idly on its mounting.

  They were below the river bank, lining it, hidden in the reeds and scrub there. I saw the muzzle flashes, glinting like swords. I let off a burst, swinging on them, but with the Land-Rover bucking I was low. Dust flew in a line below the bank as though a whiplash had churned the dust. I corrected my aim and fired, the weapon shuddering in my hands. Seeing the reeds shake and tremble as my bullets raked them. Someone screamed, a thin passionless sound, and my weapon clicked empty.