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

Then, thankfully, the convoy was past, the rumble of engines and the singing dwindling, the pale dust settling.

Timon Nbebi exhaled a long breath. "There will be others," he cautioned, and, with his fingers on the ignition key, waited until the silence was complete once again.

Then he started the Land-Rover, reversed out of the scrub and turned back onto the track.

He swung the Land-Rover in the opposite direction from the convoy, and they drove over the rugged tracks that the trucks had imprinted deeply into the sandy earth.

They drove for another twenty minutes before Timon ducked down abruptly in his seat, to peer up at the sky through the windshield.

"Smoke," he said. "Empandeni is just ahead. Will you have your camera ready, Miss Jay? I believe the Third Brigade will have left something for you." They came to the maize fields that surrounded the mission village. The maize stalks had dried, the cobs in their yellow sheaths were beginning to droop heavily, ready for the harvest. There had been women working in the fields. One of them lay beside the track. She had been shot in the back as she ran, the bullet had exited between her breasts. The unweaned child that she carried on her back had been bayoneted, many times. The flies rose up in a blue hum as they passed and then settled again.

Nobody spoke. Sally-Anne reached into her camera-bag and brought out her Nikon. She was bloodless grey under her freckles.

The other women lay further from the road, mere bundles of gay cloth, heavily stained. There were possibly fifty huts in the village, all of them were burning, the thatched roofs torching up to the clear blue morning sky.

They had thrown most of the corpses into the burning huts, leaving black puddles drying where they had fallen and drag marks in the dust. The smell of seared flesh was very strong, it coated the roofs of their mouths like congealed pork fat. Craig's stomach heaved, and he covered his mouth and nose with his hand.

"These are dissidents?". Sally-Anne whispered. Her lips were icy white. The motor drive of her Nikon whirred as she shot through the open window.

They had killed the chickens, the loose feathers rolled on the light breeze, like the stuffing from a burst pillow.

"Stop!" Sally-Anne ordered.

"It is dangerous to stay, "id Timon.

"Stop," Sally' Anne repeated.

She left the door open, and went among the huts.

Working swiftly, changing roll after roll of film with practised nimble fingers, while her white lips trembled and her eyes behind the lens were huge with horror.

"We must move on," said Timon.

"Wait." Sally-Anne moved quickly forward, doing her job like the professional she was. She moved behind a group of huts. The smell of burning flesh nauseated Craig, and the heat from the fires came at him in great furnace gusts as the breeze veered.

Sally Anne screamed and the two men jumped from the Land-Rover and ran, cocking their rifles, diverging to give each other covering fire, Craig finding his old training returning instinctively. He came around the side of a hut.

Sally-Anne stood in the open, no longer able to use her camera. A naked black woman lay at her feet. The woman is upper ocy was that of a comely, healthy young woman, below her navel she was a pink skinless monstrosity. She had dragged herself back out of the fire into which they had thrown her. There were places on her lower body where the burning was not deep, here the flesh was piebald pink and weeping lymph. Then in other places the bone was exposed; her hipbones charred black as charcoal, protruded obscenely from the scorched meat of her pelvic area. The lining of her stomach had burned through and her entrails bulged from the opening. Miraculously, she was still alive. Her fingers raked the dust with a repetitive, mechanical movement. Her mouth opened and closed convulsively, making no sound, and her eyes were wide open, aware and suffering.

"Go back to the Land' Rover please, Miss Jay," Timon Nbebi said. "There is nothing you can do to help her." Sally-Anne stood stiffly, unable to move. Craig put his arms around her shoulders and turned her away. He led her back towards the Land-Rover.

At the corner of the burning hut Craig glanced back.

Timon Nbebi had moved up close to the maimed woman, he stood over her with the AK 47 held ready on his hip, his whole attention was focused upon her and his face was almost as riven with suffering as was the woman's.

Craig took Sally-Anne around the hut. Behind them there was the whip-crack of a single shot, muted by the crackle of flames all around them. Sally' Anne stumbled and then caught her balance. When they reached the Land' Rover Sally-Anne leaned against the cab and doubled over slowly. She vomited in the dust and then straightened up and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

Craig took the bottle of cane spirit from the cubby hole.

There was an inch of the clear liquor remaining. He gave it to Sally-Anne and she drank it like water. Craig took the empty bottle back from her, and then abruptly and savagely hurled it into the burning hut.

Timon Nbebi came around the hut. Wordlessly he climbed behind the steering, wheel and Craig helped Sally Anne into the rear seat. They drove slowly through the rest of the village, their heads turning from side to side as each fresh horror was revealed.

As they passed the little church of red brick, the roof collapsed in upon itself, and the wooden cross on the spire was swallowed in a belch of sparks and flames and blue smoke. In the bright sunlight the flames were almost colourless.

imon Nbebi used the radio the way a navigator uses an echo sounder to find the channel through shoal water.

The Third Brigade roadblocks and ambushes were reporting over the VHF vast to their area headquarters, giving their positions a* part of their routine reports, and Timon pin-pointed them on his map.