A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur (читать книги полные .txt) 📗

He knelt beside Job and eased him up into a sitting position, then re strapped his injured arm firmly against his chest.

"This is the bad part," he warned him, and between them he and Alphonso lifted Job to his feet. Job endured the movement in stoic silence and stood supported between them.

Sean and Alphonso adjusted the nylon sling seat over their outer shoulders. They lifted Job into it, and he sat with his feet dangling, his good arm draped around Sean's shoulder, while Sean and Alphonso linked their arms behind his back to support him.

"Ready?" Sean asked. Job grunted softly, trying to conceal the pain that every movement caused him.

"If you think it's bad now"--Sean warned him cheerfully' just give it a couple of hours!"

They started down the ravine toward the railway line. They moved slowly, accustoming themselves to this awkward form of travel. They tried to cushion Job between them, but they stumbled over the broken groun4and Job swung on his seat and bumped against them. He math no sound, but Sean heard his ragged breathing close to. Ills ear, and when the pain stabbed him especially cruelly, he unconsciously dug his fingers into Sean's shoulder.

Slowly they moved down the shallow streambed toward the culvert beneath the railway line. Matatu was a hundred yards ahead of them, just visible in the moonlight. Once he signaled them to halt and then after a few minutes beckoned them to come on.

Claudia trailed fifty paces behind them so she would have a start if they were discovered and forced to run back.

Carrying Job between them, it was not possible for Sean and Alphonso to move silently. Once they splashed into one of the muddy pools of the stream, and they sounded like a herd of cavorting hippos in the silence.

Matatu had reached the culvert ahead of them, and he signaled them frantically to hurry. They staggered forward under Job's weight and were in the open, when on the embankment above them there was a sudden crunch of footsteps in the gravel and a sound of voices.

Trying to keep low, they kept going at a clumsy run. They reached the culvert and carried Job into the dark concrete tunnel.

ly a few yards behind them, Claudia was running doubled over on and Sean reached back with his free hand and dragged her in out of the pale moonlight into the blessed darkness of the culvertk They leaned against the concrete wan, stooped below the curved roof, trying to quiet their breathing, all of them panting wildly from the charge through the mud and sand of the stream bottom. K The footsteps and voices above them grew louder and finally stopped almost directly overhead. It sounded like a man and a an. The Frelimo garrison had either brought their own camp worn followers with them or had found lady friends in the refugee camps that had sprung up along the guarded railway fine.

s There was a spirited argument going on out there, the man" voice slurred with drink and the woman's shrill and shrewish as she protested and haggled. At last they heard the man's voice raised in exasperation. "Dollar shwni, ten dollars," he said. Immediately the woman's voice softened and cooed agreement.

Then there was the sound of feet sliding in gravel and a few pebbles rattled down the embankment in the streambed. "They are coming down here!" Claudia breathed in horror, and they instinctively drew back deeper into the dark culvert.

"Quiet!" Sean whispered, and stooped to case Job out of the canvas sling and prop him against the wall of the culvert.

As he drew the trench knife from the sheath on his webbing, two figures appeared in the mouth of the culvert, silhouetted by the moonlight. They were clinging together and laughing softly, the woman half supporting the man as they staggered forward. Sean gripped the knife underhand, the point of the blade belly high, ready to receive them, but they advanced only a few paces into the intimate darkness of the tunnel, then turned to face each other, still giggling and whispering, both of them outlined against the moonlit exterior.

The Freffino sentry pushed the woman against the wall and propped his rifle beside her while he fumbled to open his own clothing. The woman leaned back against the wall and with a Practiced gesture lifted the front of her skirt above her waist.

Laughing and muttering drunkenly, the sentry reeled against her and she used one hand to steady and guide him, the other still holding up her skirt.

If Claudia had reached out a hand, she could have touched the couple, but they were locked together, oblivious of all around them. The man began to push against her, his voice rising as he exhorted himself to greater effort, his movements becoming more frenzied. The woman clucked like a rider urging a mount forward, and the Frelimo went from a canter to a full gallop, pounding away with abandon.

Suddenly the man threw his head back, stiffening into rigidity, and crowed like an asthmatic rooster. Slowly he drooped and the woman laughed and pushed him away briskly. Stiff laughing, she smoothed down her skirt and seized the man's arm. The two of them staggered out into the sandy river-bed and disappeared around the corner of the culvert. The sounds of their scrambled ascent up the embankment dwindled, and Sean slid the knife back into its sheath on his belt and said softly, "That's what we call a tumble in the jungle!"

Claudia giggled with nervous relief. "Two seconds flat. atj t Th us has to be a new world record," she whispered, and Sean hugged her briefly.

"Shall we also be friends?" he whispered. "Sorry I snarled at you "I was being a dismal Jane. I deserved it. You won't have any more moaning and whining from me."

"Stay close." He turned back to grope for Job and found he had slid weakly down the wall and was sitting on the sandy floor of the culvert.

As he stooped to help him to his feet, Sean's fingers touched his shoulder. The bandage Was damp, and his smile faded. "Me bleeding had started again. 4

"Nothing we can do about it now," he thought, and gently eased Job to his feet.