"Oubaas, we are in deep shit here. Request an immediate hot extraction." He was asking for a removal while under enemy fire.
"We are seven par, five adults and two children. Our position is-" He read out the map coordinates of his dead-reckoning position. "We are holding a small kopJe approximately twenty kilometers north of the Limpopo." He raised his head and glanced around quickly. "There are two large kopjes approximately two miles due east of our position. Do you read me, Oubaas?"
"I read you, Mossie." The voice faded and then came back.
"What was your grandmother's maiden name?"
"Oh, sod you!" Sean snarled frustration. Lothar was double checking his identity at a time like this. "My grandmother's maiden name was Centaine De Thiry, and she is your grandmother also, Lothar, you rotten bastard!"
"Okay, Mossie. I'm sending a Puma in for a hot extraction. Can you hold out for one hour longer?"
"Pull finger, Oubaas. We've got gooks all over us."
"Wilco, Mossie." Sean had to put his ear close to the set to catch the last words: "Give them bell, Sean. Then the signal faded and the battery died with a last Ricker.
"They are coming!" Sean looked up from the radio and grinned across at Claudia. "They are sending a Puma helicopter in to take us out." Then his grin faded and all their faces turned slowly toward the north. There was a new sound in the dawn, still faint and far off, but they all recognized it. It was the sound of death.
They watched the Hind come down from the north, sweeping in low over the forest, a great humpbacked monster blotched with camouflage paint, the first rays of the rising sun reflecting off the cockpit canopy like huge glowing red eyes.
Out of the mo pane forest at the foot of the kopJe a signal rocket sailed up in a lazy red parabola, calling the Hind in. It altered course slightly and headed directly toward the crest of the biff on which they lay.
Claudia was at Sean's side, and he placed his arm over her shoulders.
"It's so cruel," she whispered. "It's like dying twice over." She pulled the Tokarev pistol from her belt and tried to place it in his hand.
"No!" he rejected her. "I can't do it! I can't screw myself up to that again!" He pushed the pistol away.
"What then?" she asked, and he showed her the fragmentation grenade he held in his right hand. She glanced at the deeply checkered black metal orb. It looked like some evil poisonous fruit, and she shuddered and averted her eyes.
"It will be as quick and more certain," he whispered reassuringly.
"And we'll go together, at the very same moment."
He knew what he had to do. He would hold the grenade between them as they lay chest to chest.
He looked up again at the approaching Hind. It was very close.
It was almost time, He would not warn her. He would simply kiss her one last time and then Suddenly Sean's eyes narrowed. Something about the Hind's silhouette was different. It was coming in swiftly, swelling in size before his eyes, and he felt the first stirring of a new excitement as he realized what had been changed on the helicopter.
"There is still a chance," he whispered to her. "A small chance, but we are going to take it. Come here, Minnie. Come quickly!" he called in Shangane, and the tiny black girl tottered across to where they lay.
"Hold her," Sean whispered, and he lifted the back of the child's short, ragged skirt. Under the skirt she wore a pair of blue panties.
Sean pulled open the elastic top of the underpants and pushed something down into them, something as round and black as one of her little buttocks between which it nestled.
"Keep that for me, little one," he whispered to the child in Shangane as he adjusted the waistband. "It's a secret. Don't take it out. Just keep it there. Will you do that for me, my little flower?"
Minnie stared at him with dark, adoring eyes and nodded solemnly. Sean gave her a hug.
The sound of the Hind's turbos was almost unbearably shrill as it came in toward them at the level of the hilltop. When it was two hundred meters out, Alphonso opened fire with his AK rifle, pouring a full magazine into the front canopy. The light bullets left no mark on the armored glass, and the helicopter slowed and hung motionless on its shining rotor. General China was sitting up in the high-backed seat of the weapons cockpit, so close they could clearly see the triumphant smirk on his face as he lifted the microphone to his mouth.
His grossly magnified voice boomed out of the speakers of the "sky shout" system slung below the helicopter's stubby wings.
"Good morning, Colonel Courtney. You have led me a merry dance, but the chase is over Tell your men to lay down their weapons, please."
"Do it!" Sean shouted at Alphonso, but he snarled a protest and clipped a fresh magazine onto his rifle. "Do as I tell you!" Sean's voice hardened. "I have a plan. Trust me."
Still Alphonso hesitated. Suddenly the Hind's Gatling cannon thundered, deafening them and kicking up a storm of rock chips and dust from the side of the kopJe just below where they lay.
"Don't try my patience, Colonel. Tell your men to stand up with their hands high above their heads."
"Do it!" Sean repeated, and first Matatu and then Alphonso rose slowly to their feet, arms held high.
"Tell them to turn around. I want to make sure they have no surprises for me."
They shuffled in a circle, and China's voice boomed out again.
"Take your clothes off, all of them."
Slowly they stripped themselves and stood naked before him.
"All right, now move down the hill into the open."
With their hands held high they walked down into the open ground below the crown of rocks.
"Now the two women."
"Be brave," Sean whispered to Claudia. "We've still got a chance, a good chance."
Claudia stood up slowly.
"Miss Monterro." China's voice echoed across the forest tops.
"Will you be good enough to remove your clothing?"
Briskly, defiantly, Claudia unbuttoned her ragged shirt and pulled it over her tousled head. Her breasts were white in the early sunlight.
"Now your trousers," China encouraged her. She let them drop around her ankles and kicked them off.
"Very good, and now the rest of it."
Claudia's lace panties had been washed and worn until they were wispy as spiderweb; her pubic triangle was a dark shadow under the filmy cloth.
"No." She shook her head. "I won't do it." She crossed her hands in front of her. Her refusal was unmistakable.
"Very well. We'll allow you your modesty for the time being.
My men will enjoy it all the more later." China chuckled. "Move down into the open, please."
Claudia walked down the hill, her chin and her small pert breasts held high, and stood between Alphonso and Matatu.