The Seventh Scroll (57 page)

He kissed her, tenderly. Then he drew back with the warmth of her lingering on his lips and studied her face in the starlight. She made no movement to pull away from stead she swayed towards him, and kissed him back., him. In At first it was a staid sisterly kiss, with her mouth tightly losed. He brought his right hand up behind her head and weaved his fingers into her hair, holding her face to his.

He opened his mouth over hers, and she made a little sound of dissent through her closed lips.

Slowly, voluptuously, he worked her lips apart, and her protests died away as he probed her mouth deely with his tongue. She was making a contented little mewling sound now, like a kitten nursing on the teat, and her arms went around him. She kneaded his back with strong supple fingers, her mouth wide open to his kiss, her tongue sinuous and slippery as it twined around his.

He slid his other hand up between their bodies and unhooked the buttons of her shirt down as low as her belt.

She leaned back slightly in his embrace to make it easier for him. With a delicious shock he discovered that her breasts were naked under the thin cotton shirt. He cupped one of them in his hand: it was small and firm, only just filling his hand. When he pinched the nipple gently , it stiffened between his fingers like a tiny ripe strawberry.

He broke off the kiss and bowed his head to her bosom.

She moaned softly, and with one hand guided him down.

When he sucked her nipple into his mouth she gasped and hooked the nails of her other hand into his back, like a cat responding to a caress. Her whole body undulated in his embrace, and after a while she pulled his mouth away. He thought for a moment that she was rejecting him, but then she moved his head across and placed her other nipple in his mouth. Once again she gasped as he sucked it in.

Her movements became mote abandoned, keeping pace with his own arousal. He could restrain himself no longer and he reached up under her khaki culottes and laid his hand on the plump mound of her sex. Then with one swift lithe movement she broke away and sprang to her feet. She stood back from him, smoothing down her culottes and buttoning her shirt with fingers that trembled

"I am so sorry, Nicky. I want to, oh God, you will never know how much I want to. But-' she shook her head and she was panting wildly, "not yet. Please, Nicky, forgive me. I am caught between two worlds. One half of me wants this so very much but the other half will not allow me He stood up and kissed her chastely. "There is no hurry. Good things are worth waiting for," he told her with his mouth just touching hers. "Come! I will take you home now."

while it was still dark the next morning, the first levy of priests that Mai Metemma had promised came filing up the valley. Their chanting awoke the camp, and everyone came sleepily out of their thatched lean-to shelters to welcome the Ion column of holy men.

"Sweet heavens," Nicholas yawned, "it looks as though we have started another crusade. They must have left the monastery in the middle of the night to get here at this hour." He went to find Tessay, and when he did he told her, "You are hereby appointed official translator. Sapper speaks not a word of either Arabic or Amharic. Stick close to him." As soon as it was fully light, Mek and Nicholas left camp to reconnoitr the drop site. By noon they had agreed that there was only one possibility: they would have to use the valley itself Compared to the rocky ridges that surrounded them, the floor of the valley was level and fairly free of obstructions. It was imperative that the drop should take place as close to the dam site as possible, for every mile that the stores must be manhandled would add immeasurably to the time and effort needed for the work.

"Time is the major factor," Nicholas told Mek as they stood in the chosen drop zone the following morning.

"Every day counts from now until the rains break."

Mek looked up at the sky. "Pray God for late rains." They marked out their drop site a mile down from the river, along the stretch where the valley was widest and there was a clear approach through a gap in the hills. Jannie would need to fly straight and level for five miles under full flap and with the loading ramp down.

"Cutting it fine," Mek remarked, as they surveyed the rugged slopes and frowning peaks that surrounded them.

"Can your fat friend fly?"

"Fly? He is half-bird,'Nicholas told him.

They moved down the valley to check the placement of the flares and the markers, The markers consisted of crosses of quartz stones laid out down the centre of the valley floor, and they would be highly visible from the air. Sapper was up at the head of the valley. They could see him there on the skyline as he moved around, setting out his smoke flares to mark the approach to the drop zone.

When Nicholas turned around and looked in the opposite direction, he could see the two women sitting on a rock together at the far end of the valley. Sapper had already helped them to set up their flares. These would mark the far limit of the zone, and give Jannie a mark for his climb out of the valley.

Nicholas then turned his attention back to Mek's men as they finished laying out the stark white quartz markers.

Once these were all in place, Mek ordered the area to be cleared. Then, lugging the radio, they climbed up to join Sapper on the high ground at the head of the valley. Mek helped Nicholas string out the aerial. Then Nicholas switched on and adjusted the gain carefully before he thumbed the microphone.

"Big Dolly. Come in, Big Dolly!'Nicholas invited, but the static hummed and whined.

"They must be running late." Nicholas tried not to let his disquiet show. Jannie will be coming straight in from Malta on this run. After the first drop he will go back to your base at Roseires and pick up the second load. With luck, both loads should all be dropped before noon tomorrow.

"If the fat man comes at all," Mek remarked.

Jannie is a pro," Nicholas grunted. "He will come." He held the microphone to his lips, "Big Dolly. Do you read?

Over."

Every ten minutes he called -out into the empty echoing silence. Each time his call went unanswered he had visions of Sudanese MiG

interceptors racing in with their missiles cocked and locked, and the old Hercules plunging earthwards in flames.

"Come in, Big Dolly!" he pleaded, and at last a thin, scratchy voice floated into his headset. "Pharaoh. This is Big Dolly. ETA forty-five minutes. Standing by." Jannie's transmission was terse. He was too much of an old hand at the smuggling game to give a hostile listener time to fix his position.

"Big Dolly. Understand four five. Pharaoh standing by." Nicholas grinned at Mek. "Looks like we are in business after all."

Mek heard it first. His ear was battle-tuned. In this i land, if you wanted to go on living it paid to pick up any aircraft long before it arrived. Nicholas was out of training, so it was almost five minutes later that he picked up the distinctive drone of the multi-props echoing weirdly off the Cliffs of the gorge. It was impossible to be certain of the direction, but they shaded their eyes and stared into the west.

"There she is." Nicholas redeemed himself as he spotted the tiny dark speck, so low as almost to blend into the background of the escarpment wall. He nodded at Sapper.

Sapper ran out to his flares and fussed over them briefly. When he backed away they bloomed into clouds of dense marigold-yellow smoke that drifted out sluggishly on the light breeze. The smoke would give Jannie the strength and direction of the wind, as well as his orientation for the drop zone.

Nicholas lifted his binoculars and gazed towards the other end of the narrow valley. He saw that Royan and Tessay were busy with their flares. Suddenly crimson smoke billowed from them, and the women ran back to their original position and stood staring up at the sky.

Nicholas called softly into the microphone. "Big Dolly.

Smoke is up. Do you have it visual?"

"Affirmative. You are visual. For what you are about to receive may you be truly thankful." Jannie's South African accent was unmistakable as he uttered the cheerful blasphemy.

They watched the aircraft grow in size until its wings seemed to fill half the sky, and then its profile altered as the great wing flaps dropped and the ramp below its belly drooped open. Big Dolly slowed her flight so dramatically that she seemed to hang suspended on an invisible thread from the high African sun. Slowly she came around, banking steeply as Jannie tined her up on the smoke flares, dropping lower and still lower, headed directly at where they stood.

With a savage roar that made all three of them duck, she passed so low over their heads that it seemed she would wipe them off the crest. Nicholas had a glimpse of Jannie upwarliov peering down at him from the cockpit, a fat smile on his face and one hand raised in a laconic wave, and then he was past.

Nicholas straightened up and watched Big Dolly sweep majestica Ily down the centre of the valley. The first pallet dropped out of her and plunged earthwards, until at the last moment its parachutes burst open like a bride's bouuet. The fall of the heavy container was arrested abruptly. It. dangled and swung, and seconds later struck the floor of the valley in a cloud of yellow dust and with a crash they could hear up on the ridge. Then two more loads dropped from her, and they too hung for a moment on their chutes before they slammed in.

Big Dolly's engines howled under full throttle and her nose lifted as she bored for height while she passed over the crimson smoke clouds, and then climbed out of the deadly trap of the valley. She came round in another wide turn and lined up for the second run. Once again the pallets dropped out of her as she roared over the quartz markers and then climbed out over the end wall of the valley, skimming the rocky spikes that would have clawed her down.

Six times Jannie repeated the dangerous manoeuvre, and each time he dropped three of the heavy rectangular loads. They lay strewn down the length of the valley, shrouded by the tumbled white silk of their own parachutes.

As Jannie climbed away from the last pass, his voice echoed in Nicholas's earphones. "Don't go away, Pharaoh!

I will be back." Then Big Dolly lifted her belly ramp like an old lady hoisting her knickers and headed away westwards.

Nicholas and Mek ran down into the valley, where the monks were already jabbering and laughing. around the pallets. Quickly the two of them took control, sorting the men into gangs and directing them as they broke down the loads and carried them away.

Nicholas and Sapper had planned that the pallets should be dropped in the order that their contents would be needed. The first pallet contained canned and dried food, all their personal effects and camping equipment, along with those other little creature comforts that Nicholas had allowed, including mosquito nets and a case of malt whisky. He was relieved to see that there was no leakage from the precious case: not one of the bottles had been broken in the drop.

Sapper took charge of the building material and heavy equipment. With Tessay relaying his orders, it was dragged and manhandled away to the ancient quarry where it would be packed and stored until needed on site. Darkness fell with More than half the pallets still not unpacked, lying where they had fallen. Mek placed an armed guard over them, and they all traipsed wearily back up the valley to the camp.

That night, with a dram of whisky and a decent meal warming his belly, a mosquito net over his head and a thick foam mattress under him, Nicholas drifted off to sleep with a smile on his face. They were off to a good start. The chanting of the monks at their matins woke him, "We won't need an alarm clock here," he groaned, and staggered down to the river to wash and shave.

As the sun gilded the battlements of the escarpment, he and Mek were already at their post on the heights, searching the western sky. The plan had been for Jannie to spend the night at Roseires, while Mek's men assisted him with the loading of the cargo they had stored-there on their first flight out from Malta. This was one of the vulnerable stages of the operation. Although Mek had assured them that there was little military presence in the area at the moment, it needed only a stray Sudanese government patrol to stumble on Big, Dolly while she was on the ground to plunge them all into disaster. So it was with a leap of the heart that they heard the familiar drone of the turbo-props reverberating off the cliffs. Big Dolly lined up again for her first pass down the valley, and as she flew over the quartz crosses the huge yellow front'end loader tumbled out of her hold. Instinctively Nicholas held his breath as he watched it come the parachute hurtling down and then jerk up short on shrouds. it swayed wildly all over the sky, yoyoing on the nylon ropes, and the monks howled with amazement and excitement as they watched it drop in. it struck in a cloud of dust.

Sapper was standing next to Nicholas, groaning and covering his eyes so that he did not have to watch the "Shit!' he said in a hollow cloud of dust rising into the air.

voice.

"Is that a command, or merely a request?" Nicholas asked, but he wasn't really amused.

As the last pallet dropped, and the aircraft climbed away under full power, Nicholas called Jannie on the radio.

"Many thanks, Big Dolly. Safe flight home."

"Inshallahl If God wills!'Jannie called back.

"I will call you when I need a lift back."

"I'll be waiting." Big Dolly trundled away. "Break a leg!'

"Well now." Nicholas slapped Sapper's back. "Let's go down and see if you still have a front'ender."

The battered yellow machine lay on its side with oil pouring out of her, like blood from a heart-shot dinosaur.

"You can push off. just leave me a dozen of these black guys to help me," Sapper told them as sorrowfully as if he was standing at the graveside of his beloved, Sapper did not return to camp for dinner, so Tessay sent a bowl of wat and some injera bread down to him to

1i eat while he worked. Nicholas considered going down to offer his help with repairing the damaged tractor, but thought better of it. From bitter experience he knew that at certain times Sapper wanted to be left alone, and that this was one of those times.