The voice on the bullhorn gave a sharp order in dialect to prevent them striking him again, and they closed on either side of him and forced him to his feet. One of them searched him swiftly, stripping him of his knife, belt, and emergency pack and patting his pockets. Then they backed off, leaving him naked except for his khaki shorts and velskoen but keeping their AKs aimed at his belly.
The light bobbed as the man carrying it advanced out of the w all of bush. Sean saw it was one of those portable battle lights powered by a heavy rechargeable battery pack the man carried on his back. Slightly behind him, keeping back in the shadow, Came the man with the bullhorn.
Even through the dazzling beam of the battle light Sean saw he was tall and lean, and that he moved with a catlike grace.
"It's been a long time, Colonel Courtney." He was close enough now not to have to use the bullhorn, and Sean recognized his voice.
"Many years," Sean agreed.
"You'll have to speak up." The man stopped a few paces in front of Sean and jokingly cupped one hand to the side of his head.
"I am deaf in one ear, you know," he said. Sean grinned sardonically at him through his black camouflage cream.
"I should have done a better job and blown your other ear out while I was about it, Comrade China."
"Yes," China agreed. "We really must discuss old times together."
He smiled, and he was even more handsome than Sean remembered, relaxed, charming, and debonair. "However, I'm afraid you have delayed me a little, Colonel. Pleasant though it is to renew acquaintance, I cannot afford more time away from my headquarters. There will be an opportunity to talk later, but now I must leave you. My men will take good care of you."
He turned and disappeared into the darkness beyond the beam of light. Sean wanted to call after him, "My men, the girl, are they safe?" but restrained himself. With a man like this it was best to show no weakness, to give him nothing he could use to his advantage later. Sean forced himself to remain silent when the guards urged him forward with practiced use of their gun butts.
We'll join the main column soon, Sean comforted himself. And I'll see for myself how Claudia and Job are doing.
The thought of Claudia was a refreshing draft that he craved even more than sweet cool water.
There were ten men in his guard detail under the co o a sergeant.
d lean as the Obviously they were picked troops, Powerful an pack of wolves of his nightmare. Soon they intercepted a well to a beaten footpath. They closed up around him and urged him jog trot, heading southward into the night.
None of his captors spoke. It was an eerie experience, just the sound of their light footfalls and quick shallow breathing, the creak of equipment and the hot feral smell of their bodies close around him in the night.
After an hour the sergeant signaled a pause, and they stopped beside the track. Sean reached across to the nearest guerrilla and tapped the water bottle on his belt.
The man spoke to the sergeant, the first words since they had started, and Sean understood him. He was speaking Shangane.
The Shanganes were the remnants of one of the tiny Zulu tribes that had been defeated by King Chaka's imp is at the battle of Mhlatuze River in 1818. Unlike so many of the other lesser chieftains, Soshangane had resisted incorporation into Chaka's empire and fled northward with his shattered imp is to found his own kingdom along the borders of present-day Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
So the Shangane language was Zulu-based. Over the years many of Sean's camp staff had been Shangane for, like their Zulu ancestors, they were a fine and noble people. Sean spoke their language fluently, for it contained many similarities to Sindebele.
He did not, however, make the mistake of letting his captors know this and gave no indication of having understood as the trooper said, "The mabunu wants to drink."
"Give it to him," the sergeant replied. "You know the ink osi wants him alive."
The man handed Sean the bottle, and though the water was brackish and tainted by swamp mud, to Sean it tasted like chilled Veuve Chcquot served in a crystal glass.
"The ink osi wants him alive," the sergeant had said. Sean pondered this as he handed the bottle back. The ink osi or chief, was obviously Comrade China, and they had orders to care for him.
That gave him a little comfort, but he did not have long to savor it. After only a few minutes, the sergeant gave the order and they resumed that mile-eating jog trot toward the south.
They ran up the dawn. At any moment Sean expected them to overhaul the main column that was holding Claudia and Job captive, but mile succeeded mile without any sign of them. Now that it was light, Sean could look for the tracks of the column on the footpath ahead, but there were none. They must have taken a different route.
The sergeant in charge was a veteran. He had flankers out sweeping the verges of the footpath ahead for an ambush by Frelimo, but what seemed to concern him more than attack from the forest was the menace from the sky. At all times they attempted to keep under the canopy of the forest, and whenever they were forced to cross open ground they stopped and searched the sky, listened for the sound of engines before venturing out, then crossed to the next line of trees at a full run.
Once during the first morning they heard the sound of a turboprop engine, faint and very far off, but instantly the sergeant gave an order and they all dived into cover. A trooper lay on each side V
of Sean and forced him to keep his head down and his face to the ground until the last murmur of the aircraft engine faded.
This preoccupation with aerial attack puzzled Sean; all he had heard and read indicated that Frelimo's air force was so weak and scattered as to be almost nonexistent. The types of aircraft they possessed were obsolete and unsuited to ground attack, and a shortage of skilled technicians and spares only compounded their ineffectuality.
These men, however, were taking the threat very seriously indeed.
At midday the sergeant ordered a halt. One of the troopers prepared food on a small fire, which he doused as soon as it was cooked. They moved on a few miles before stopping once more to eat the meal. Sean was given an equal share. The maize meal was cooked stiff and fluffy and was well salted, but the meat was rancid and on the point of putrefying. In the average white man it would have caused an immediate attack of enteritis, but Sean's stomach was as conditioned as any African's. He ate it without relish, but without trepidation either.
"The food is good," the sergeant told Sean in Shangane as he sat beside him. "Do you want more?" Sean made a pantomime of incomprehension and said in English, "I'm sorry, I don't know what you are saying." The sergeant shrugged and went on eating.
A few minutes later he turned back to Sean and said sharply, "Look behind you, there's a snake!" Sean resisted the natural impulse to jump to his feet. Instead he grinned ingratiatingly and repeated, "I'm sorry, I don't understand."