Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur (книга бесплатный формат .TXT) 📗

"As soon as the joints are sealed, we can test it, and then go for the bank."

"How long?"

"It's twenty-four-hour epoxy."

"So long?"

"Rest will increase my resistance to the effects of oxygen poisoning." he forest was too dense to allow the helicopter to alight. It hovered above the tree-tops, and the flight engineer on the winch lowered Genenil Peter Fungabera into a hole in the mat of dark green vegetation below them.

Peter turned slowly on the thin steel cable, and th down-draught from the rotors fluttered his camouflage battle, smock about his torso. Six feet above the earth, he slipped out of the padded sling and dropped clear, landing neatly as a cat. He returned the salute of the Shana sergeant who was waiting for him, cleared the drop area quickly and looked up as the next man was lowered from the hovering helicopter.

Colonel Bukharin was also dressed in camouflage and jump helmet. His scarred face seemed impervious to the tropical sun, it was bloodless and almost as pale as those cold arctic eyes. He shrugged off the helping hands of the Shana sergeant and strode on up the valley. Peter Fungabera fell in beside him and neither man spoke until they reached the crumpled and shattered fuselage of the Cessna.

"There is no doubt?" Bukharin asked.

"The registration, ZS-KYA. You must remember I have flown in this aircraft," Peter Fungabera replied, as he went down on one knee to examine the belly of the fuselage. "If further proof is needed," he touched the neat puncture in the metal skin, "machine-gun fire from directly below."

"No corpses?"

"No." Peter Fungabera straightened up, and leaned into the cockpit. "No blood, no indication that any of the occupants was injured. And the wreck has been stripped."

"It could easily have been looted by local tribesmen."

"Perhaps," Peter agreed. "But I don't think so. The trackers have examined the sign, and this is their reconstruction. After the crash twelve days ago, four people left the site, two of them women, and one of the men with an unbalanced gait. Then within the last thirty-six hours, two men returned to the wreck. They are certain it was the same two the boot prints match, and one of them has the same favour to his left leg." Bukharin nodded.

"On the second visit the wreck was stripped of much loose equipment. The two men left the area carrying heavy packs and joined the footpath that crossed the head of the valley about six miles -from.

here. There the tracks have been confused and covered by other traffic."

"I see," Bukharin was watching him. "Now tell me your other conclusions."

"There are two black and two white persons. With my own eyes I saw them at. Tuti airstrip. The one black is undoubtedly Minister Tdhgata Zebiwe - I recognized him "Wishful thinking? He is your one last hope of making good our bargain."

"I would know that man anywhere."

"Even from an aircraft?"

"Even then."

"Go on," Bukharin invited.

"The other black person I did not recognize. Nor did I get a good enough view to positively identify either of the whites, but the pilot is almost certainly an American OIL Sk woman named Jay. Although the aircraft belongs to the World Wildlife Trust, she had the use of it. The other white is probably her lover, a British writer of sensational fiction, who has an artificial leg, accounting for the unbalanced tracks. These three are unimportant and expendable. The only one of importance is Zebiwe. And now we know that he is still alive."

"We also know that he has eluded you, my dear General," Bukharin pointed out.

J do not think he will continue to do so much longer." Peter Fungabera turned to the sergeant who was standing attentively behind him. "You have done well. Very well, so far."

"Mambo!" "I believe that this Matabele dog and his white friends are being hidden and fed by the local people."

"Mambo!"

"We will question them."

"Mambo!"

"We will start with the nearest village, which is it?"

"The village of Vusamanzi lies beyond this valley and the next."

"You will move in and surround it. Nobody must leave or escape, not a goat, not a child." "Mambo!"

"When you have secured the village, I will come to supervise the interrogation." raig and Tungata made three climbs down to Lobengula's pool at the foot of the grand gallery, carrying the makeshift diving gear, the spare oxygen bottles, the underwater lamps that Craig had made up with the batteries and globes scavenged from the life, jackets, firewood and fur blankets to warm Craig after each dive, and provisions to avoid the necessity of climbing back to the upper cavern for meals.

After discussion it was agreed that the two girls would take turns at remaining in the upper cavern, to meet the messengers from Vusamanzi's village and to carry down a warning to the others in the event of a Shana patrol stumbling on the entrance.

Before testing the diving equipment, Craig and Tungata made a careful survey of the route down to the pool, choosing the positions on which they would fall back if they were ever forced to defend the inner recesses of the cave system against a Shana attack. Although neither of them mentioned it, they were both acutely aware that there was no final position, no ultimate escape hole from the mountain depths, and that any defence must end at the icy waters of the pool.