Rhodesia (16 page)

"C'mon," he said. "Follow me."

He led the girls along the dry watercourse at a fast walk If the men ran true to form, they would spread out, crawl up on the flanks of the Volvo. They would waste a half-hour.

When his little patrol was far from the bridge, Nick led them up out of the ravine and into the bush, parallel to the road.

He was thankful that all the girls were wearing sensible shoes. They would need them. He had Wilhelmina with thirteen shells. Was that unlucky? One burp gun and an extra magazine, a compass, some odds and ends, and hope.

The hope was smaller as the sun settled in the west, but he didn't let the girls know that They were hungry and thirsty, he knew. He saved their strength by frequent rests and cheerful comments, but the air was hot-dry and the going rough. They came to a deep crevice and he had to follow it back to the road. It was empty. He said, "On we go. If anyone hears a car or a plane, speak up."

"Where are we going?" Janet asked. She sounded scared and tired.

"According to my map, if I remember it, this road takes us to Bingee. A good-size town." He didn't add that Bingee was perhaps eighty miles away in the jungle valley.

They passed a shallow, murky pool. Ruth said, If only that was drinkable."

"We can't risk it." Nick said. "I'll bet even money you drink it you're dead. Or ruined for life with bilharzja.

Just before dark he led them off the road, swept clear a rough section of ground, and said, "Make yourselves comfortable. Get some sleep if you can. We can't travel at night."

They talked in weary tones, but there were no complaints. He was proud of them.

"Let's set up watches," Booty said. "You've got to get some sleep, Andy."

Not far away an animal made a strange, rumbling roar. Nick said, "Gather round. You're going to get your wish, Ruth."

In the dying light he showed them how to release the burp gun's safety. "Squirt it like a flit gun but don't hold the trigger in."

"I don't understand," Janet said. "Don't hold the trigger in?"

"No. You must correct your aim all the time. I can't demonstrate, so you imagine it. Here — " He unlocked the magazine and levered out the chamber shell. He demonstrated by touching the trigger and making sounds like short bursts.
"Brrr-rup. Brrr-rup."

They each tried it. He said, "Excellent You're all promoted to sergeant."

To his surprise, he got three or four hours of light sleep cuddled between Ruth and Janet, during Booty's watch. It proved he had confidence in her. At the first dim gray light he led them on down the road.

Swinging along at an easy mile-in-ten-minutes they had covered a lot of ground by the time Nick's watch said ten o'clock. But they were tiring. He could keep it up all day, but the girls were nearly finished without a long rest. He let them carry the burp gun by turns. They took the job seriously. He told them, although he didn't believe it, that all they had to do was stay out of the "bandits'" hands until the Edman company in the person of Gus Boyd gave the alarm. The legitimate army and police would be searching for them, and the publicity would make attacking them again too risky for the "bandits." It listened well.

The terrain led downward, and rounding a curve in rough country they came upon a native dozing under a thatch shelter beside the road. He pretended that he could not speak English. Nick herded him along. He was a lookout. Half a mile down the winding track they came upon a small compound of thatch-topped huts, complete with the usual fields of mealies and tobacco, kraals and cattle-dipping pens. The village was cleverly situated. The hillside location presented difficulties, the fields were uneven, and the kraal fences harder to maintain, but what rainfall there was came to the ponds via a network of ditches that spread up the slopes like veins.

As they approached, several men working under a shelter tried to conceal a vehicle under tarps. Nick said to his prisoner, "Where is the boss?
Muhle Itikos?"

The man stubbornly shook his head. One of the gathering, proud of her English, said, "The boss is over there." She spoke flawlessly, pointing at a nearby hut with a wide ramada.

A short, brawny man came out of the hut and looked at them questioningly. When he saw the prisoner in front of Nick's casually held Luger he frowned.

"Bring that vehicle out of that shed. I want to look at it."

Several black men who had gathered began to mutter. Nick took the burp gun from Janet and held it suggestively. The brawny man said, "My name is Ross. Would you mind introducing yourself?"

His diction was even better than the little girl's. Nick told him their right names and concluded, "...over to that car."

When the tarp was off Nick blinked. It had concealed an almost new jeep. He inspected it, watching the village men who now numbered nine. He wondered if that was the total. He found four extra cans of gasoline in the rear of the open shed.

He said to Ross, "Please bring us some water and something to eat. Then well leave. No harm to anyone. I'll pay you well and you'll get your jeep back."

One of the men spoke rapidly to Ross in a native tongue. Ross answered shortly. Nick felt uneasy. These cats were too cool. They did as ordered, but as if they were curious, not intimidated. Ross asked, "Would you have connections with Mapolisa — or Rhodesian forces?"

"None."

The black who had spoken said, "Mkiwas..." Nick understood the first word, "white people," and the rest sounded threatening.

"Where are your guns?" he asked Ross.

"The government has taken them all away."

Nick didn't believe it. The government might have gotten some, but this bunch was too self-confident. He felt more and more uneasy. If they jumped him, and he had a hunch they might, he couldn't blast them down no matter how tough he tried to act. Killmaster did not mean mass murderer.

Suddenly Booty stepped closer to Ross and talked in low tones. Nick lost some of it bv the time he moved toward them but he heard, "...Pieter van Prez and Mr. Garfield Todd. John Johnson, too. Zimbabwe seventy-three."

Nick recognized the name of Todd, a former Rhodesian premier who had tried to moderate difficulties between the whites and blacks. The in-group of whites had exiled him to his cattle ranch for his liberal views.

Ross looked at Nick, and the AXEman knew how correct he had been. It wasn't the look of a man you pushed. He had an idea Ross would walk into the burp gun if circumstances called for it Ross said, "Miss DeLong knows friends of mine. You'll get your food and water and I'll drive you to Bingee. You may be a spy for the police. I don't know. I don't think so. But I don't want shooting here."

'There are some people following us" Nick said. Tough men from the THB gang, I think. And there'll be a helicopter overhead any time from the same crowd. You'll know then I'm no police spy. But you'd better dig up some firepower if you have it."

A gleam of appreciation showed on Ross's calm black features. "We took out one of the bridges you crossed. They'll be many hours getting here. That's why our sentry was so careless..." He glanced at the man. The watchman hung his head.

"We surprised him," Nick offered.

"That's kind of you," Ross replied. "I hope it's the first lie you've told me."

Twenty minutes later they rolled toward the northeast in the jeep, Nick at the wheel with Ross beside him, the three girls in the back, Ruth holding the burp gun. She was developing into a real guerrilla. After about two hours of travel over a road that belonged in the Wyoming of 1905, they reached a slightly better road where a sign pointing to the left advised in faded lettering,
Bingee.
Nick glanced at his compass and turned right.

"What's the idea?" Ross asked.

"Bingee is no good for us," Nick explained. "We've got to go across country. Then out to Zambia where Booty's connections are apparently solid. And I imagine yours are. If you can take me by the THB mining properties on the way, so much the better. You must hate them. I hear they work your people like slaves."

"You don't realize what you're suggesting. After the roads give out there's a hundred miles of jungle to cross. And if you don't know it — there's a small war on in there between guerrillas and the Security Army."

"If there's a war on there are roads, right?"

"Oh, a few tracks here and there. But you won't survive."

"Yes we will," Nick answered with more confidence than he felt "With your help."

From the back seat Booty said, "Oh, Andy — you shouldn't. Listen to him."

"I have," Nick replied. "He knows that what I'm doing will help his outfit too. What we tell about THB will shake up the world, and the dust will fall on the government here. Ross will be a hero."

"You're mad," Ross said disgustedly. "The odds are fifty to one against it working out as you say. I should have had you overpowered back in the village."

"You had guns, didn't you?"

"There was a rifle pointed at you all the time you were there. I'm just too soft It's the trouble with idealists."

Nick offered him a cigarette. "If it makes you feel better, I wouldn't have started shooting, either."

Ross lit the cigarette, and they looked at each other for a short moment Nick realized that except for shading Ross's expression was much like the one he often saw in his mirror. Lots of confidence and a question.

They covered sixty miles more in the jeep before the helicopter flew over, but they were in jungle country now and the whirly had the problem of searching a thousand miles of road. They parked under overhead vegetation as thick as woven thatch and let it drone past Nick explained to the girls why they must not look up, saying, "Now you know why guerrilla warfare works in Vietnam. You can hide easily."

Once when Nick's compass indicated they should take ;a faint track to their right Ross said, "No, stay on the main road. It bends right beyond the next line of hills. That path dead ends in the false escarpment You'd waste thirty miles."

Beyond the line of hills, Nick found out Ross had told the truth. In the afternoon they reached a small village, and Ross obtained water and mealie cake and biltong to conserve their own small supply. Nick had no choice but to let the man talk with the natives in a language he did not understand.

As they left Nick saw a horse-drawn cart being readied. "Where are they going?"

"They'll go back the way we came, dragging brush. It will wipe out our tracks, not that we're easy to track in this dry weather, but it can be done by a good man."

There were no more bridges, just fords across the creeks in which there remained a trickle of water. Most were dry. As the sun was setting they passed a herd of elephants. The great beasts were active, lumbering into each other, turning to look at the jeep.

"Keep going," Ross said quietly. "They're drank on fermented fruit juice. Sometimes there's a bad one."

"An elephant binge?" Nick asked "I never heard of that."

"It's true. You don't want to meet one when he's high and feeling mean or when he has a bad hangover."

"Do they actually make alcohol? How?"

"In their stomachs."

They forded a wider stream and Janet said, "Can't we soak our feet and wash?"

"Later," Ross advised. "Crocodiles and bad worms in there."

As darkness fell they reached an empty compound, four neat huts with a wall-and-gate courtyard and a corral. Nick inspected the huts approvingly. They had clean hide beds, simple furnishings. "This where you said we'd sleep?"

"Yes. This used to be the last patrol post when they came in on horses. Still used. There's a village about five miles away keeps an eye on it. That's one trouble with my people. So damn law-abiding and obedient."

"Those are supposed to be virtues," Nick said as he unloaded the food box.

"Not for a revolution," Ross said bitterly. "You should stay rough and mean until your rulers get civilized. When you mature and they stay barbaric — with all their tiled baths and mechanical toys — you're screwed. My people are infested with spies because they think it's the right thing to do. Run tell the policeman. They don't realize they're being robbed. They get kaffir beer and ghettos."

"If you were all that mature," Nick said, "you wouldn't be in ghettos."

Ross paused, looked puzzled. "Why?"

"You wouldn't have bred like bugs. From four hundred thousand to four million, wasn't it? You could have beat the game with brains and birth control."

"That's not so..." Ross paused. He knew there was a flaw in the idea somewhere but it hadn't been covered in his revolutionary reading.

He was quiet as night fell. They hid the jeep, ate, and divided up the available quarters. They bathed gratefully in a wash house. Ross said the water was pure.

The next morning they drove thirty miles, and the track ended at a deserted village, unlike the compound. It was falling to pieces. "Resettled," Ross said bitterly. "They were suspect because they wanted to stay independent."

Nick looked at the jungle. "You know the trails? From here — we walk."

Ross nodded. "I might make it alone."

"Then well make it together. Feet were made before jeeps."

Perhaps because of the dry weather, with the animals drawn to the remaining waterholes, the going was dry-misery instead of damp-horror. Nick fashioned head nets for all of them out of his packet, although Ross claimed he could get along without one. They camped the first night on a hillock that showed signs of recent occupancy. There were thatch shelters and firepits. "Guerrillas?" Nick asked.

"Hunters usually."

The night sounds were an uproar of roaring animals and screaming birds; crashing in the forest that sounded near. Ross assured them that most animals had learned by lethal experience to avoid the camp, but they didn't sound like it Just after midnight Nick was awakened by a soft voice coming from the door of his cabin. "Andy?"