"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?"
None of those seemed likely. This one was awake and alert, almost certainly a sentry. As Sean reached that conclusion, he sensed other movement farther out, and he flattened against the earth.
Another man emerged from the forest and came directly to where the sentry was rising to his feet to meet him. As soon as he stood. Sean could make out the AK-47 rifle slung over his shoulder, muzzle down. The two men talked softly together.
IT', "Changing the guard," Sean thought as the new sentry leaned against the tree and the other man sauntered back into the forest.
"That is where the camp is," Sean guessed.
Still on his belly, he leopard-crawled forward, passing well wide of the sentry, who would be fresh and vigilant. Once he was within the perimeter, Sean rose into a crouch and went forward swiftly.
He found the camp in a fold of ground up against the hills. It was a fly camp no huts or shelters, only two small fires that had burned down to coals. He counted eleven men lying around the fires, all of them with a blanket pulled completely over their heads in typical African fashion. There might be five or six others on guard duty, but it was a small band.
Even lacking automatic weapons, Sean and his men could have dealt with them. All of Sean's men still carried their piano-wire no loses and Matatu his skinning knife with the blade so sharp it was honed down to half its original width. Nobody in the camp would even have woken up.
Sean shook his head with regret. He was certain now that these were either Frelimo regular troops or Renamo guerrillas. He had no quarrel with them, whoever they were. Just as long as they did not interfere with his elephant hunt. Sean backed away to where Job was waiting for him at the perimeter.
"Eleven of them at the fires," Sean breathed.
"I found two more sentries," Job said, nodding.
"Frelimo?"
"Who knows?" Job shrugged. Sean touched his arm and they crept away farther out of earshot of the camp so they could speak more freely.
"What do you think, Job?"
"A small group, they mean little. We can go around them."
"They could be the advance guard for a bigger party," Sean suggested.
"These are not crack troops," Job muttered contemptuously.
"Smoking on guard duty, sleeping next to a fire. They aren't soldiers, they are tourists." Sean smiled at the term of derision. He knew that Job's determination was more Anglo-Saxon than African. Once he had decided, it was difficult to dissuade him.
"You want to go on?" he asked.
"For five hundred thousand dollars?" Job whispered. "You're damned right I want to go on!"
Claudia was afraid. The African night was so charged with mystery, uncertainty, and menace. The wait aggravated her feeling of apprehension. Sean had been gone for almost an hour, and though her father was close beside her she felt alone and very vulnerable.
Suddenly Sean was back, and she experienced a rush of relief.
She wanted to reach out and cling to him and was ashamed of herself for the weakness. Sean was whispering to her father, and she drew close to listen. Her arm touched Sean's bare arm, but he did not seem to notice, so she left it there for the feeling of security and comfort it gave her.