The Leopard Hunts in Darkness (53 page)

He darted another quick glance around the corner of the wall and instantly a burst of machine-gun fire kicked and jarred into the brickwork around his head. He rolled back. It was only a hundred
yards or so to the foot of the kopje, but it could as well have been a hundred miles. They were pinned helplessly, and the gunner up there on the hill commanded the entire compound. Nobody could
move under the floodlights without drawing instant fire or a rocket from the RPG launcher.

Craig looked anxiously for the second truck, but sensibly the driver must have parked it behind one of the buildings as soon as the RPG opened up. There was no sign of any of the other
guerrillas, they were all under cover, but they had taken more casualties than they could afford.

‘It can’t end like this—’ Craig was consumed by his own sense of frustration and helplessness. ‘We’ve got to get that gun!’

The gun up on the hill, without a target, fell silent – and then suddenly in the silence Craig heard the singing begin, low at first, just a few voices, but swelling and growing
strong:

Then the ancient fighting chant crashed into the silence, flung out by hundreds of throats.

And then from the prison huts they came, a motley army of naked figures, some of them staggering with weakness, others running strongly, carrying stones and bricks, and poles torn from the roofs
of their prison. A few, a very few, had picked up the weapons of the dead guards, but all of them were singing with wild defiance as they charged the hill and the machine-gun.

‘Oh, Christ!’ whispered Craig. ‘It’s going to be a massacre.’

In the front rank of the throng brandishing an AK 47 came a tall gaunt figure, looking like a skeletal caricature of death itself, and the army of starvelings and gaol-sweepings rallied to him.
Even altered as he was, Craig would have recognized Tungata Zebiwe anywhere this side of hell.

‘Sam, go back!’ he shouted, using the name by which he had known his friend, but Tungata came on heedlessly, and beside Craig Comrade Lookout said phlegmatically, ‘They will
draw fire, that will be our chance.’

‘Yes, be ready,’ Craig answered. Lookout was right. They must not let them die in vain and, as he spoke, the machine-gun opened up.

‘Wait!’ Craig grabbed Comrade Lookout’s arm. ‘He must change belts soon.’ And while he waited for the gun to fire away its first belt, he watched the terrible havoc
it was playing amongst the throng of released prisoners.

The stream of tracer seemed to wash them away like a fire hose, but as the front rank fell, so the men behind raced forward into the gaps, and still Tungata Zebiwe was coming on, outdistancing
his fellows, firing the AK as he ran – and the gunner on the hilltop singled him out and swung the machine-gun onto him so that he was wreathed in smoking dust, still miraculously untouched
as the machine-gun abruptly fell silent.

‘Gun empty!’ Craig shouted. ‘Go! Go! Go!’

They launched themselves, like sprinters off the blocks, and the open ground seemed to stretch ahead of Craig to the ends of the earth.

Another rocket missile howled over their heads, and Craig ducked on the run, but it was high, aimed in panic. It flew across the parade ground and it hit the silver bulk fuel storage tank next
to the guard barracks. The fuel went up with a vast whooshing detonation. The flames shot up two hundred feet in the air, and Craig felt the hot breath of the blast sweep over him, but he kept
running and firing.

He had been losing ground steadily to Comrade Lookout and the other guerrillas, his bad leg hampering him in the race for the hill, but while he ran he was counting in his head. A good man might
need ten seconds to change ammunition boxes and reload the machine-gun. Since leaving the sheltering wall seven seconds had passed – eight, nine, ten – it must come now! And there were
still twenty paces to cover.

Comrade Lookout reached the sandbagged fortifications and shinned up and over.

Then something hit Craig a crushing hammer-blow and he was thrown violently to the ground as bullets flew all around him. He rolled over and came up again running, but the gunner had seen him go
down and swung the machine-gun away, back to the charging mob of released prisoners.

Hit but unharmed, Craig ran on as strongly as before, and he realized that he had taken it in the leg, the artificial leg. He wanted to laugh, it was so ridiculous and he was so terrified.

‘You can only do that to me once,’ he thought, and suddenly he had reached the foot of the kopje. He jumped up, found a hold on the top of the sandbag parapet with one hand, and
heaved himself up and over. He dropped onto the narrow, deserted firing platform on the other side.

‘The radio,’ he fixed his will upon it, ‘got to get the radio.’ And he jumped down into the communication trench and ran down it to the bend in the passage. There was the
sound of a scuffle, and a cry ahead of him, and as he came around the corner, Comrade Lookout was straightening up from the body of the Third Brigade trooper who had been manning the RPG.

‘Go for the gun,’ Craig ordered him. ‘I’ll take the radio room.’

Craig climbed up the sandbagged passageway, passing the dugout where he had been quartered on his last visit.

‘Now, first on the left—’ He dived into the opening, brushing aside the curtain of hessian, and he heard the radio operator in his dugout at the end of the passage shouting
frantically. Craig hurled himself down the narrow passage, and paused in the doorway.

Too late.
His stomach turned over in a despairing convulsion. The radio operator, dressed only in a vest and underpants, was hunched over the radio set on the bench by the far wall of the
dugout. He was holding the microphone to his mouth with both hands, shouting his warning into it in English, repeating it for the third time, and, as Craig hesitated, the acknowledgement boomed
from the speaker, also spoken in clear English.

‘Message received and understood,’ said the voice of the operator at Brigade headquarters in Harare. ‘Hold on! We will reinforce you immediately—’

Craig fired a long burst of the AK, and his bullets smashed into the radio, shattering the housing and ripping the wiring out of it in a glittering tangle. The unarmed radio operator dropped the
microphone and cowered against the sandbag wall, staring at Craig, blubbering with terror. Craig swung the AK onto him, but could not force himself to fire.

Instead, the burst of automatic fire came from the passageway behind Craig, startling him, and then for an instant the operator was pinned to the wall by striking bullets and he slid down into a
huddle on the floor.

‘You always were too soft, Pupho,’ said the deep voice beside Craig and he turned and looked up at the gaunt naked figure that towered over him, into the scarred and desiccated
visage, into the dark, hawk-fierce eyes.

‘Sam!’ Craig said weakly. ‘By God, it’s good to see you again.’

T
he first truck had its entire front section wrecked by the RPG while the rear wheels of the second truck had been destroyed by heavy machine-gun
fire. The fuel tanks of both vehicles were registering empty.

As briefly as he could, Craig explained to Tungata the plans for getting out of the country.

‘Eight o’clock is the deadline. If we don’t make it back to the airstrip by then, the only way out will be on foot.’

‘It’s thirty miles to the airstrip,’ Tungata mused. ‘There is no other vehicle here. Fungabera took the Land-Rover when he left two days ago.’

‘I can pull the rear wheels out of the wrecked truck – but fuel! Sam, we need fuel.’

They both looked towards the blazing tank. The flames were still towering into the night sky and clouds of dense, black smoke rolled across the parade ground. In the light of the flames, the
dead men lay in windrows where the machine-gun had scythed them down, but there were no surviving prison guards either. They had been torn to pieces and beaten to bloody pulp by their prisoners.
How many dead, Craig wondered, and shied away from the answer, for every death was his direct responsibility.

Tungata was watching him. He was now dressed in random items of clothing gleaned from the lockers of the barrack room, most of it too small for his huge frame, and the prison stench still hung
around him like a cloak.

‘You were always like this,’ Tungata told him softly, ‘after an unpleasant task. I remember the elephant culls – you would not eat for days afterwards.’

‘I’ll drain the one tank into the other,’ said Craig quickly. He had forgotten how perceptive Tungata was. He had recognized Craig’s remorse. ‘And I will get them
started on changing the wheels. But, you must find fuel for us, Sam. You must!’ Craig turned and limped towards the nearest truck, thankful to be able to evade Tungata’s scrutiny.

Comrade Lookout was waiting for him. ‘We lost fourteen men, Kuphela,’ he said.

‘I am sorry.’
God! How inadequate.

‘They had to die one day,’ the guerrilla shrugged. ‘What do we do now?’

There were heavy wheel-wrenches in the toolboxes of the trucks, and enough men to lift the rear end bodily and chock it with timber baulks while they worked. Craig supervised the swopping of
rear axle and wheels, while at the same time he rolled up his trouser leg and stripped off his leg. The machine-gun bullet had ripped through his aluminium shin, leaving a ragged exit hole in the
calf, but the articulated ankle was undamaged. He tapped the sharp petals of torn metal down neatly with a hammer from the toolbox, and strapped the leg back in place. ‘Now, you just hold
together a little longer,’ he told it firmly, gave the leg an affectionate pat and took the wheel-wrench away from Comrade Lookout who had already cross-threaded two of the nuts on the rear
wheel of the truck.

An hour later Tungata came striding up to where Craig and his gang were lowering the truck’s body onto its cannibalized rear axle. Craig was black to the elbows with thick grease. Sarah
hurried to keep up with Tungata. Next to him she seemed slim and girlish, despite the rifle she carried.

‘No fuel,’ Tungata said. ‘We’ve searched the camp.’

‘I reckon we have fifteen litres.’ Craig straightened up and wiped the sweat off his face with his shirt-sleeve. It left a smear of grease down his cheek. ‘That might take us
twenty miles. If we are lucky.’ He checked his watch. ‘Three o’clock – where did the time go? Sally-Anne will be overhead in just over two hours. We aren’t going to
make it—’

‘Craig, Sarah has told me what you have done, the risks, the planning, all of it—’ Tungata said quietly.

‘We haven’t got time for that now, Sam.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I must speak to my people, then we can go.’

The prisoners who had survived the slaughter on the parade ground gathered around him as Tungata stood on the bonnet of the truck. Their faces were upturned towards him, lit by the harsh glare
of the floodlights.

‘I must leave you,’ Tungata told them, and they groaned, ‘but my spirit stays with you, it remains with you until the day that I return. And I swear to you on the beard of my
father and by the milk that I drank from my mother’s breast, that I shall return to you.’

‘Baba!’ they called to him. ‘You are our father.’

‘The Shona
kanka
will be here very soon. You must go into the bush, carry with you all weapons and food you can find and go with these men.’ Tungata pointed to the little
group of guerrillas around Comrade Lookout. ‘They will lead you to a safe place, and you will wait until I return in strength to lead you to what is rightfully yours.’ Tungata held his
arms extended in blessing. ‘Go in peace, my friends!’

They reached up to touch him, some of them weeping like children. Then, in little groups, they began to drift away towards the gate of the compound and the darkness beyond.

Comrade Lookout was the last to go. He came to Craig and smiled that cold white wolfish smile.

‘Though you were in the forefront of the fighting, you did not kill a single Shona – not here nor at the bridge,’ he said. ‘Why is that, Kuphela?’

‘I leave the killing to you,’ Craig told him. ‘You are better at it than I am.’

‘You are a strange man, oh writer of books – but we are grateful to you. If I live that long I will boast to my grandchildren of the things we did together this day.’

‘Goodbye, my friend,’ said Craig, and held out his hand, and when they shook hands it was with the double grip of palm and wrist and palm, a salute of deep significance. Then Comrade
Lookout turned and loped away, carrying his rifle at the trail and the night swallowed him. The three of them, Craig, Tungata and Sarah, stood by the cab of the truck and the loneliness held them
mute.

Craig spoke first. ‘Sam, you heard the radio operator speaking to his headquarters. You know that Fungabera will have already sent in reinforcements. Are there any troopers between here
and Harare?’

‘I do not think so,’ Tungata shook his head. ‘A few men at Karoi, but not a large enough force to respond to an attack like this.’

‘All right – let’s say that it took them an hour to assemble and despatch a force. It will take them another five hours to reach Tuti—’ he looked at Tungata for
confirmation, and he nodded.

‘They will hit the mission at approximately six – and Sally-Anne should be overhead at five. It will be close, especially if we have to make the last few miles on foot –
let’s get moving.’

While the others climbed up into the cab, Craig took a last look around the devastated compound. The flames had died down, but smoke drifted over the deserted hutments and across the parade
ground where the dead men lay. The scene was still brightly lit by the floodlights.

‘The lights—’ Craig said aloud. There was something about the lights that worried him. The generator? Yes, that was it – something about the generator that he must think
of.

‘That’s it!’ he whispered aloud, and jumped up into the cab. ‘Sam, the generator—’