Tungata Zebiwe saw him coming and lifted the rifle one-handed, aiming over the bonnet of the jolting, roaring Land-Rover, but Sally' Anne threw herself across the weapon, clinging to it with both arms, her weight forcing the barrel down and Tungata could not take his other hand from the wheel as it kicked and whipped in his grip.
They were past the road-block now, and Craig was losing round to them; realizing with a slide in his chest that he could not catch them, he floundered along behind the roaring vehicle.
Sally-Anne and Tungata were struggling confusedly together, until the big black man tore his arm free and, using the hand as a blade, chopped her brutally under the ear. She slumped face forward onto the dashboard, and Tungata swung the wheel over. The vehicle swerved, giving Craig a few precious yards" advantage, and then it seemed to hover for an instant on the high bank beyond the road-block before it leapt over the edge and dropped into the roadway with a clangour of metal and spinning tyres.
Craig used the last of his reserves of strength and determination and raced forward to reach the place on the bank an instant after it had disappeared.
Ten feet below him, the Land' Rover was miraculously still the right way up, and Tungata, badly shaken, his mouth bleeding from impact with the steering, wheel was struggling for control.
Craig did not hesitate. He launched himself out over the bank, and the drop sucked his breath away. The Land, Rover was accelerating away, and he dropped half over the tail-gate. He felt his ribs crunch on metal, his breath whistled in his throat as it was driven from his lungs, and his vision starred for an instant but he found a " the radio set and hung on blindly. grip on He felt the Land-Rover surging forward under him, and heard Sally-Anne whimpering with pain and terror. The sound steeled him, his vision cleared. He was hanging over the back of the tail-gate, his feet dangling and dragging.
Behind him the army truck was swinging out of the road-block, engine thundering and headlights glaring in pursuit, while just ahead the main-road T-junction was coming up with a rush as the Land-Rover built up to her top speed again.
Craig braced himself for the turn, but even so when it came his upper arms were almost torn from their shoulder sockets, as Tungata took the left fork on two wheels. Now he was heading north. Of course, the Zambian border was only a hundred miles ahead. The road went down into the great escarpment, and there was no human settlement in that tsetse-fly-infested, heat, baked wilderness before the border post and the bridge over the Zambezi at Chirundu.
With a hostage it was just possible he could reach it. If Craig gave up, he could reach it or get himself and Sally Anne killed in the attempt.
By inches Craig dragged himself back into the Land Rover. Sally-Anne was crumpled down in the seat, her head lolling from side to side with each jerk and sway of the vehicle, and Tungata was tall and heavy-shouldered beside her, his white shirt gleaming in the reflected glare of the headlights.
Craig released his grip with one hand and made a grab for the back of the seat to pull himself on board. Instantly the Land-Rover swerved violently and in that same instant he saw the glint of Tungata's eyes in the rear-view mirror.
He had been watching Craig, waiting to catch him off balance and throw him.
The centrifugal force rolled Craig over and out over the side of the vehicle. He had a hold with his left hand only, and the muscles and tendons crackled with the strain as his full weight was thrown on it. He gasped with the agony as it tore up his arm into his chest, but he held on, hanging injured overboard with the steel edge catching him in his ribs again.
Tungata swerved a second time, running his wheels over the verge, and Craig saw the bank rushing at him in the headlights. Tungata was attempting to wipe him off the Land-Rover on the bank, trying to shred him to pieces between shaly rock and sharp metal. Craig screamed involuntarily with the effort as he jack-knifed his knees up and over. There was a rushing din of metal and stone as the Land-Rover brushed the bank. Something struck his leg a blow that jarred him to his hip and he heard -the straps part as his leg was torn. away. If it had been flesh and bone he would have been fatally maimed. Instead, as the Land' Rover swung back onto the road he used the momentum to roll across the back seat and whip his free arm around Tungata's neck from behind.
it was a strangle-hold and as he threw all his strength into it, he felt the give of Tungata's larynx in the crook of his elbow, and the loaded feel of the vertebrae, like the tension of a dry twig on the point of snapping. He wanted to kill him, he wanted to tear his head off his body, but he could not anchor himself to apply those last few ounces of pressure.
Tungata lifted both hands off the wheel, tearing at Craig's wrist and elbow, making a glottal, cawing sound, and the untended steering-wheel spun wildly. The Land, Rover charged off the road, plunged over the unprotected verge onto the steep rocky slope, and with a rending screech of metal crashed end over end.
Craig's grip was torn open and he was flung clear. He hit hard earth, cartwheeled, and lay for a second, his ears humming and his body crushed and helpless until he rallied and pulled himself to his knees.
The Land' Rover lay on its back. The headlights still blazed, and thirty paces down the slope, full in their beam, lay Sally-Anne. She looked likea little girl asleep. Her eyes closed and he mouth relaxed, the lips very red against her pallor, but from her hairline a thin dark serpent of blood crawled down across her pale brow.
He started to crawl towards her, when another figure rose out of the intervening darkness, a great, dark, wideshouldered figure. Tungata was clearly stunned, staggering in a half-circle, clutching his injured throat. At the sight of him Craig went hers&k with grief. and rage.