Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur (книга бесплатный формат .TXT) 📗
It hit low into the front end of the truck, that was all that saved them the main blast was absorbed by the solid engine block, but nevertheless, it tore the front end off the truck and stopped it as though it had run into an ironstone cliff. The Toyota somersaulted over its ruined front wheel assembly, hurling Craig out of the open cab door.
Craig crawled up onto his knees, and the machinegun 0 n the hill traversed back towards him. A stream of bullets showered him with chunks of hard, dried clay from the surface of the parade ground and he fell flat again.
There were stunned and wounded guerrillas scattered M around the wrecked Toyota, one man was trapped under it, his legs and pelvis crushed by the steel side and he was screaming likea rabbit in a wire snare.
"Come on," Craig shouted in Sindebele. "Get to the wall the wall run for the wall." He jumped up and started to run. The whitewashed execution wall was off to their right-hand side, seventy ards away, and a handful of men heard him and ran with y him.
4 The machine-gun came hunting back, the whip-crack of passing shot around his head made Craig reel likea drunkard, but he steadied himself and the man just ahead of him went down, both legs shot from under him. As Craig passed him, he rolled on his back and threw his AK up at Craig.
"Here, Kuphela, take it. I am dead." Craig snatched the rifle from the air without missing a step.
"You are a man," he called to the downed guerrilla, and sprinted on. Ahead of him, Comrade Lookout reached the shelter of the wall, but the machine-gunner on the kopje traversed back towards Craig, kicking up curtains of dust and lumps of clay as the stream of bullets reached out for him.
Craig went for the corner of the wall feet first, sliding likea baseball player for home base, and shot flew close around him. He kept rolling until he hit the wall and lay in a tangle of limbs, fighting for breath. Only Comrade Lookout and two others had made it to the wall the rest of them were dead in the truck or lying broken and crumpled on the open ground between.
"We have to get that gun," he gasped, and Comrade Lookout gave him a twisted grin.
"Go to it, Kuphela we will watch you with great interest." Another RPG rocket missile slammed into the wall, deafening them and covering them with a fine haze of white dust.
Craig rolled on his side and checked the AK 47. It had a full magazine. Comrade Lookout passed him another full magazine from the haversack on his shoulder, and Craig had the Tokarev pistol on his belt and two remaining grenades buttoned into his breast pockets.
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-" Craie was consumed by his own sense of frustration and helpi essness. "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 in, low at first, just a few voices, but swelling and growing strong: "Why do you weep, widows of Shangani When the three-legged guns laugh so loudly?" Then the ancient fighting chant crashed into tl)Q silence, flung out by hundreds of throats.
"Why do you weep, little sons of the Moles, When your fathers did the. king bidding?" And then from the prison huts they came, a motley army of naked figures, some of them staggering wih weakness, others running strongly, carrying stones aud 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 machinegun.
"Oh, Christ!" whispered Craig. "It's going to be a mass, acre." In the front rank of the throng brandishing an AK 47 came a tall gaunt figure, looking likea 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 is friend, but Tungata came on bee ss he had known h 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.
"Waid" 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 is playing amongst the throng of released prisoners.
The stream of tracer seemed to wash them away lit, k a fire hose, but as the front rank fell, so the men beEi,id raced forward into the gaps, and still Tungata Zebiwe was coming on, outdistancing his fellows, firing the AK as lie 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.
