The Angels Weep (79 page)

Two of the men stepped forward and seized Janine’s
wrists. They dragged her away from the fire, behind the
tail-section of the wreckage. The other comrades laid down their
rifles and followed them. They were laughing and bickering
quietly over the order of preference and beginning to loosen
their clothing.

At first the screams from the darkness were so shrill and
harrowing that Tungata turned away and squatted over the fire,
feeding it with twigs to distract himself, but very soon there
were no more screams, only the soft sound of sobbing, and the
occasional sharper cry immediately muffled.

It went on for a long time, and Tungata’s early disquiet
was submerged and controlled. There was no passion or lust in
this thing. It was an act of violence, of extreme provocation to
a deadly enemy, an act of war, without guilt or compassion, and
Tungata was a warrior.

One by one his men came back to the fire, adjusting their
clothing. Strangely, they were subdued and stony-faced.

‘Is it over?’ Tungata looked up, and one of them
stirred and half rose, looking enquiringly at Tungata. Tungata
nodded.

‘Be quick then,’ he said. ‘It is only seven
hours to first light.’

Not all of them went back behind the wreckage, but when they
were ready to move out, Tungata did so.

Ballantyne’s woman’s naked white body was curled
in the foetal position. She had chewed her lips until they were
raw meat, and she blubbered softly and monotonously through
them.

Tungata squatted beside her and took her face in his hands and
twisted it up until he could look into her eyes. He shone his
flashlight into them. They were the eyes of a wounded and
terrified animal, perhaps she had already crossed over the line
between sanity and madness. He could not be certain, so he spoke
slowly as though to a retarded child.

‘Tell them my name is Tungata Zebiwe, the Seeker after
what has been Stolen – the Seeker after Justice, after
Vengeance,’ he said, and he stood up.

She tried to roll away from him, but pain stopped her and as
she covered her groin with both hands he saw the thin spurt of
fresh blood from between her fingers. He turned from her and
picked up her stained yellow skirt from where it had been tossed
over a bush. As he strode back to the fire, he stuffed the skirt
into his pocket.

‘
Lungela
!’ he said. ‘All right, it is
done. Move out!’

A
t midnight the
pilot yelled across at Roland Ballantyne. ‘We are almost
out of fuel, we must go back. They have a tanker waiting for us
on the apron.’

For a few moments Roland did not seem to understand. In the
greenish reflection of the instrument panel his face was
expressionless, but his mouth was a thin cruel slash and his eyes
were terrible.

‘Go quickly,’ he said. ‘And get back here
quickly.’

On the tarmac the Scouts’ own doctor, Paul Henderson,
was waiting to take over from the GP that Roland had picked up at
Victoria Falls. Once he was aboard, Roland led Sergeant-Major
Gondele a little apart from the other troopers.

‘If only we could know which way the bastards are
headed,’ he murmured. ‘Are they going south, or are
they heading back for the river? Are they going to try the drifts
– and if so, which one?’

Esau Gondele recognized in him the need to talk, to say
something merely to take his mind off the horror of what awaited
them out there in the dark forest.

‘We won’t be able to follow them with the
bird,’ he said. ‘The forest is too thick. They would
hear us from five miles and disappear.’

‘We can’t follow with the chopper,’ Roland
agreed. ‘They have got a SAM-7 with them. They would chop
us out of the sky. The helicopter could be suicide – only
way is to cut their spoor and go after them on foot.’

‘They will have a night’s start, a full
night.’ Esau Gondele shook the great black cannonball of
his head doubtfully.

‘The cat cannot resist mauling the dead bird,’
Roland said. ‘Perhaps they have not yet started to run,
perhaps they are drunk with blood, perhaps we can still take
them.’

‘Ready to go!’ the pilot shouted as the
fuel-tanker started up and backed away from the Super Frelon, and
they ran back to the open port in the fuselage and scrambled
aboard. The helicopter lifted swiftly, not wasting time in
climbing, and roared away low over the dark bush.

At ten minutes to five o’clock the following morning,
long before the sun had pushed up above the horizon, but when the
light was already strong enough to make out shapes and colours,
Roland slapped the pilot’s shoulder and pointed to port.
The pilot banked the Super Frelon sharply in that direction. It
was a broken branch, the underside of the leaves were lighter in
colour than those around it, it had been a flag to catch
Roland’s eye. Then there was another fleck of white, the
raw stump of freshly broken branch sticking into the morning
light. The pilot checked the Frelon, and they hovered fifty feet
above it. They were staring down through the leafy canopy, and
something white fluttered in the down-draught of the rotors.

‘Go down!’ Roland shouted, and as they sank lower,
suddenly it was all there, broken wreckage and the debris of the
dead, blowing aimlessly about in the windstorm of the rotors.

‘There is a clearing!’ Roland pointed, and as the
helicopter settled towards it, the Scouts spilled out of her,
jumping from fifteen feet to the earth and immediately spreading
out into a defensive perimeter. Then Roland deployed them into a
line of skirmishers and they went forward into the swath-line in
quick rushes, ready to meet enemy fire. Within minutes they had
cleared the area.

‘Survivors!’ Roland snapped. ‘Search for
survivors!’

They went back down the swath, and in the dawn light the
carnage was horrific. Beside each corpse a Scout paused briefly,
but they were cold and stiff and the men went on. Roland reached
the nose-section, and glanced through the windscreen. There was
nothing to do for the crew until the long green plastic body-bags
arrived. He turned back, searching frantically, looking for a
scrap of bright yellow, the colour of Janine’s skirt.

‘Colonel!’ There was a faint shout from the forest
edge.

Roland sprinted towards it. Sergeant-Major Gondele was
standing by the shattered tail-section of the aircraft.

‘What is it?’ Roland demanded harshly, and then
saw her.

Esau Gondele had covered Janine’s naked body with a blue
airways blanket from the wreck. She lay curled under it like a
sleeping child with just her tousled head showing. Roland dropped
on his knee and gently lifted the corner of the blanket. Her eyes
were closed with swollen purple bruises and her lips were raw
chewed flesh. For seconds he did not recognize her, and when he
did, he believed that she was dead. He laid his open palm upon
her cheek, and the skin was moist and warm.

She opened her eyes. They were mere slits in the abused flesh.
She looked up at him, and the dull lifeless eyes were more
frightening than her torn and battered flesh. Then the eyes came
alive – with terror. Janine screamed, and there was the
ring of madness in the sound.

‘Darling.’ Roland caught her up in his arms, but
she fought him wildly, still screaming. Her eyes were mad and
staring. Fresh blood oozed from the cracked scabs on her
lips.

‘Doctor!’ Roland yelled. ‘Here! On the
double!’ and it took all his strength to hold her. She had
thrown off the blanket, and naked she kicked and lashed out at
him.

Paul Henderson came at the run, and tore open his pack. He
filled a syringe and muttered, ‘Hold her still!’ as
he swabbed her skin. He pressed in the needle and squeezed the
clear contents of the syringe into her arm. She went on fighting
and screaming for almost a minute and then gradually quietened
and relaxed.

The doctor took her from Roland’s arms, and nodded to
his assistant. The young medic orderly held up a blanket as a
screen and the doctor laid Janine on another.

‘Get out of here,’ he snapped at Roland, and began
his examination.

Roland picked up his rifle and stumbled to the tail-section of
the Viscount. He leaned against it, and his breathing was hoarse
and ragged, but slowly it eased and he pushed himself
upright.

‘Colonel, sir.’ Esau Gondele appeared beside him.
‘We have picked up their spoor, incoming and
outgoing.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Five hours at the least, probably longer.’

‘Be ready to move out. We are going after them.’
Roland turned away from him. He needed to be alone just a little
longer, he was not yet entirely under control.

Two of the Scouts came from the helicopter at a trot, carrying
one of the yellow plastic body-moulded stretchers between
them.

‘Colonel!’ Paul Henderson tucked the blue blanket
carefully around Janine’s body and then he and the orderly
lifted her tenderly onto the yellow stretcher and tightened the
straps to hold her. While the orderly prepared the plasma drip,
the doctor led Roland a little aside.

‘It’s not very good news,’ he said,
softly.

‘What did they do to her?’ Roland asked, and Paul
Henderson told him. Roland gripped the stock of the rifle so hard
that his arms began to shudder and the muscle in his forearms
stood out in ridges and hard knots.

‘She is bleeding internally,’ Henderson finished.
‘I have to get her into theatre very quickly. A theatre
that can handle this type of surgery, Bulawayo.’

‘Take the helicopter,’ Roland ordered
brusquely.

They ran with the stretcher to the Super Frelon. The orderly
holding the drip-bottle high.

‘Colonel,’ Henderson looked back. ‘She is
still conscious. If you want—’ He did not finish. The
little group waited for Roland beside the fuselage, not certain
whether to load the stretcher aboard.

With a strange reluctance, Roland walked heavily towards them.
The enemy had used his woman. She was one thing that was sacred.
How many of them? The thought made him check, and he had to force
himself to go on to where she lay on the stretcher. He looked
down at her. Only her face showed above the blanket. It was
grotesquely swollen, and her mouth was a raw red ruin. Her
once-lustrous hair was stiff with filth and dried blood, but her
eyes were clear. The drug had driven back the madness, and now
she was looking up at him. Only the eyes were the same, dark
indigo blue.

Painfully her damaged lips framed a word, but no sound came.
It was his name she was trying to say.

‘Roland!’

And his revulsion rushed upon him, he could not hold it back.
How many of them had taken her that way, a dozen, more? She had
been his woman, but that had been destroyed. He tried to fight
it, but he felt nauseated, and quick cold sweat chilled his face.
He tried to force himself to stoop over her, to kiss that
terribly battered face, but he could not. He could not speak nor
move, and slowly the light of recognition went out in her eyes.
It was replaced by that dull empty look he had seen before, and
then she closed the livid swollen lids over them and rolled her
head slowly away from him.

‘Take good care of her,’ Roland muttered hoarsely,
and they lifted the stretcher into the helicopter. Paul Henderson
turned to him, his face twisted with pity and helpless anger, and
he laid his hand on Roland’s arm.

‘Roly, it wasn’t her fault,’ he said.

‘If you say anything more, I might kill you.’
Roland’s voice was thickened and coarsened by disgust and
hatred.

Paul Henderson turned from him and clambered into the machine.
Roland made a wind-up signal to the pilot in the bubble
windscreen above him, and the big clumsy aircraft lifted noisily
into the sky.

‘Sergeant-Major,’ Roland called. ‘Take the
spoor!’ and he did not look back as the helicopter rose
high into the pink dawn and then swung away southwards.

T
hey went in
deep formation, so that if they ran into an ambush, the tail
could circle and outflank the attackers to free the head. They
went at storming speed, much too fast for safety, going hard as
marathon runners. Within the first hour Roland had ordered his
Scouts to strip their packs. They abandoned everything but the
radio set, their weapons and water-bottles and first-aid kits,
and Roland pushed the pace still harder.

He and Esau Gondele took turns at point, the one dropping back
each hour as the other came forward. They lost the spoor twice in
stony ground but each time picked it up on the first cast ahead.
It was running true and straight, and they had quickly made the
number of the chase as nine men. Within two hours Roland knew
each of them as individuals by the spoor they left behind them,
the one with a nick in his left heel, flat-foot, long-one with a
gap of over a metre in his stride, and each of the others with
more subtle characteristics to differentiate them. He knew them,
and he hungered for them.

‘They are going for the drifts,’ Esau Gondele
grunted as he came up and took over the point from Roland.
‘We should radio ahead and set a patrol for
them.’

‘There are twelve drifts, forty miles. A thousand men
wouldn’t do it.’ Roland wanted them for himself, all
nine of them. One look at his face and Esau Gondele realized
that. He picked up the run of the spoor. They were crossing an
open glade of golden grass. The chase had left a sweep line
through the grass, the stems still bent in the direction of their
flight, and the sunlight reflected at a different intensity from
these. It was like following a highway. They went down it at a
swinging easy run, and ahead of him Esau Gondele saw some of the
grass stems springing upright again. They were that close
already, and it wasn’t yet noon. They had cut at least
three hours off the lead that the ZIPRA cadres had upon them.