The Russian pilot shouted a protest and stepped forward but one of the Renamo officers thrust a pistol into his belly and forced him back against the wall.

  ‘I ask you again,’ China told him. ‘Will you fly for me?’

  The pilot shouted at him in Russian. It was clearly an insult. His face was flushed now, the acne purple and shiny as buttons on his chin and cheeks.

  China nodded at his men. One of them drew the trench knife from its sheath on his webbing belt and slit the waistband of the mechanic’s overalls. Then he seized the severed edges of cotton and ripped them downwards, tearing the cloth loose so it hung in tatters around the pinioned man’s knees. Under the overalls, the engineer wore a pair of elasticized blue underpants. The Renamo pulled these down as far as they would go.

  Claudia stared in fascinated horror at the mechanic’s exposed buttocks. They were very white and fat and round, covered with a scraggle of dark curly ginger hair. From between his thighs, his wrinkled hairy scrotum protruded backwards like that of a dog.

  The pilot was shouting in Russian and Claudia found herself pleading weakly.

  ‘Please, General China, please let me leave, I cannot bear this.’ She tried to turn her head away and cover her eyes, but the dreadful fascination of it compelled her to watch through her fingers despite herself.

  China ignored both the pilot’s and Claudia’s pleas, and spoke crisply to the officer who sat between the Russian’s shoulder-blades. Still pinning him to the bench, the Renamo reached over and seized one of his buttocks in each of his hands and drew them sharply apart. Claudia’s protests dried in her throat and she found herself staring dry-mouthed at the Russian’s puckered rosey-brown anus as it nestled like a blind man’s eye between his hairy cheeks.

  China reached out towards it with the tip of the rod, then stopped three inches short of it. The mechanic felt the heat of it on his most intimate flesh, and began to struggle so violently that two more of the Renamo officers had to throw their combined weight on to his back to keep him pinned down.

  ‘Yes?’ China looked across at the Russian pilot. He was raving like a madman, his face contorted with outrage, shouting threats and accusations.

  ‘I regret the necessity,’ China said, and thrust the metal rod forward, his wrist cocked like that of a fencing master going on attack, a flèche.

  As the glowing metal touched the sensitive skin the Russian screamed, a shattering high-pitched shriek that made Claudia cry out pitifully in sympathy.

  The metal smoked and sizzled and spluttered, as China rotated his wrist, twisting the rod deeper and deeper into the Russian’s body. Now his screams were great explosive gusts of sound, and Claudia clapped her hands over her ears to shut them out and turned away, running into the corner of the dugout and pressing her face against the rough sandbags.

  The smoke filled her nostrils, her throat and her lungs, the obscene odour of burning flesh, of charring fat, coated her tongue and her gorge rose. She tried to contain it, but her vomit shot up her throat and in a projectile stream splashed onto the earthen floor between her feet.

  Behind her the screams dropped gradually in volume, and became ghastly rattling groans. However, all the Russians were yelling their protest and fury, and the din was confusing.

  Another whiff of burned flesh and spilled faeces made her retch again and then she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and leaned her forehead against the sandbagged wall. She was trembling wildly, and tears and sweat streamed down her cheeks.

  Slowly the uproar behind her subsided, and the only sounds in the bunker were the mechanic’s groans and gurgles. They were weaker now but nonetheless harrowing. Claudia could tell without looking at him that the Russian was dying.

  ‘Miss Monterro.’ China’s voice was level and calm. ‘Please get a grip on yourself, we still have work to do.’

  ‘You are an animal!’ she blurted. ‘I hate you! Oh God, how I hate you!’

  ‘Your feelings are not of the slightest interest to me,’ China said. ‘Now you will tell the pilot that I await his full co-operation.’

  The flight engineer’s groans distracted her. As she turned to face China, she saw that they had released the stricken man and allowed him to slump to the floor. China had made no effort to withdraw the metal rod from his body, and he was still transfixed. As he rolled weakly about on the earthen floor, he was plucking ineffectually at the protruding end of the rod. The heated metal had adhered to his bowels as it cooled, and was firmly rooted in his flesh. Every time he tugged at it a trickle of liquid faeces bubbled from the terrible wound.

  ‘Speak to the pilot,’ China commanded.

  Claudia dragged her eyes from the dying man and addressed the pilot. ‘Please do what he wants.’

  ‘I cannot, my duty!’ the pilot cried.

  ‘The devil with your duty!’ Claudia shouted back furiously. ‘You and all your men will end up like this!’ She gestured to the floor without looking down again. ‘That’s what will happen to you!’ She turned to the other Russians who were shaken and appalled, pale with horror and terror.

  ‘Look at him!’ she screamed in English. ‘Is that what you want?’

  They did not understand the words but her meaning was clear to all of them. They turned their faces towards the pilot.

  The pilot resisted their entreaties for a minute, and then at a word from China the Renamo officers seized another one of the ground crew and threw him screaming and kicking face down across the bench and the Russian pilot threw up both hands in a gesture of resignation.

  ‘Tell him to stop,’ he said wearily to Claudia. ‘We will do as he orders.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Monterro.’ China smiled at her charmingly. ‘You are now free to rejoin Colonel Courtney.’

  ‘How will you communicate with the pilot?’ she asked uncertainly.

  ‘Already he understands me.’ China transferred the benevolence of his smile to the Russian. ‘I assure you that he will learn to speak my language with the utmost fluency in a very short time indeed.’ He turned back to Claudia. ‘Please convey my respects to Colonel Courtney and ask him to join me at his earliest convenience. I would like to take my leave of him, to thank him and wish him bon voyage.’ He gave her a mocking bow. ‘So God speed, Miss Monterro. I hope that you will remember all of us, your friends in Africa, with affection.’

  Claudia could find no words to reply, she turned to the door of the bunker and her legs were shaky and rubbery beneath her.

  In a daze of horror, she stumbled down the hill. The sights around her which at another time might have sickened and appalled her, she hardly noticed.

  At the foot of the hill, she paused and tried to get a grip on herself. She breathed deeply, trying to quell the intermittent sobs that still caught her unawares and she combed her hair back from her face with her fingers and retied the strip of cloth she was using as a headband. With the tail of her shirt, she wiped the tears and sweat from her face, and was shocked at the grimy smear they left on the cloth.

  ‘I must look like hell,’ she whispered, and clenched her hands to hide her broken fingernails, but she braced her shoulders and lifted her chin. ‘Sean mustn’t see me like this,’ she told herself fiercely. ‘Pull yourself together, woman.’

  Sean looked up as she hurried to where he was still working over Job’s blanket-wrapped body.

  ‘What happened?’ he demanded. ‘What kept you?’

  ‘General China is here. He made me go with him.’

  ‘What did he want? What happened?’

  ‘Nothing, not important. I’ll tell you about it later. How is Job?’

  ‘I’ve got a full litre of plasma into him,’ Sean replied. He had suspended the drip set from a branch above them. ‘His pulse is better. Job is as tough as an old buffalo bull. Help me dress the wound.’

  ‘Is he conscious?’

  ‘He comes and goes,’ Sean warned her.

  Beneath the field dressing was such a terrible injury that neither of them could bring themselves to discuss it, especially as Job might be able to hear and understand them.

  Sean smothered the entire area with iodine paste, and then bound it up again with pressure pads and clean white bandages from the medical pack. The blood and iodine soaked through the white even as he worked.

  Between them they had to roll Job on to his side to pass the bandages over his back. Claudia held the half-severed arm in place, bending the elbow across his chest, and Sean strapped it securely. By the time they finished, Job’s entire upper body was swathed in a cocoon of expertly applied bandage from which only his left arm protruded.

  ‘His pulse is going again.’ Sean looked up from his wrist. ‘I’m going to give him another litre of plasma.’

  There was a scattered outbreak of machine-gun and mortar fire from the forest beyond the hill laager, and Claudia looked up apprehensively. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Frelimo counter-attack.’ Sean was still busy with the drip set. ‘But China has three companies in there, and Frelimo are going to be less than enthusiastic now that they have lost their air support. China’s lads should be able to hold them off with no trouble.’

  ‘Sean, where did China come from? I thought . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ Sean cut in. ‘I also thought he was back on the river. The crafty bastard was right on our heels, ready to rush in and grab the spoils.’ He finished adjusting the plasma flow in the drip set, and squatted down beside Claudia, studying her face.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Nothing.’ She smiled brightly.

  ‘Don’t bullshit me, beautiful,’ Sean said gently, and put an arm around her. Despite herself she choked on a sob.

  ‘China,’ she whispered. ‘Right on top of what happened to Job. He made me translate for the Russian pilot. Oh God, I hate him. He’s an animal. He made me watch . . .’ she broke off.

  ‘Rough stuff?’ Sean asked, and she nodded.

  ‘He killed one of the Russians, in the foulest possible way.’

  ‘He’s a lovely lad, our China, but try and put it out of your mind, we’ve got enough troubles of our own. Let the Ruskies worry about theirs.’

  ‘He forced the Russian pilot to agree to fly the helicopter.’

  Sean stood up, lifting her to her feet beside him. ‘Don’t think of China and the Russian any more. All we have to worry about is getting out of here.’ He broke off as he saw Sergeant Alphonso and a half dozen of his Shanganes trotting down the hill towards them. All of them were laden with loot.

  ‘Nkosi!’ Alphonso’s broad handsome face was wreathed in a beatific grin. ‘What a fight, what a victory!’

  ‘You fought like an impi of lions,’ Sean agreed. ‘The battle is won but now you must help us to get away to the border. Captain Job is badly hurt.’

  Alphonso’s smile faded; despite their natural tribal enmity, both men had developed a grudging respect for each other.

  ‘How bad?’ Alphonso came to stand beside Sean and looked down at Job.

  ‘There was a fibreglass stretcher in the first-aid post,’ Claudia said. ‘We can carry Job on that.’

  ‘It is two days’ march to the border,’ Alphonso murmured dubiously. ‘Through Frelimo territory.’

  ‘Frelimo are running like dogs with a hot coal under their tails.’ Sean’s tone was hard. ‘Send two of your men to fetch the stretcher.’

  ‘General China calls for you. He is leaving in the Russian henshaw. He wants to speak to you before he goes,’ Alphonso said.

  ‘All right, but I want that stretcher here when I get back,’ Sean warned him, and glanced at his wristwatch. ‘We will march for the border in one hour from now.’

  ‘Nkosi!’ Alphonso agreed cheerfully. ‘We will be ready.’ Sean turned back to Claudia.

  ‘I’m going to see China. I’m going to try to talk him into flying Job out in the helicopter, but I don’t think my chances are particularly rosy. Please stay with Job and keep an eye on his pulse rate. I’ve found a disposable syringe of adrenalin in the medic pack, use it only as a last resort.’

  ‘Please don’t be long,’ she whispered. ‘I’m only brave when you’re here.’

  ‘Matatu will stay with you.’

  Sean climbed the hill swiftly, passing the first string of Renamo porters. Obviously China was taking everything he could carry away, including boxes of helicopter spares and hundreds of jerry cans of Avgas. The lines of porters were heading back into the wilderness towards the river, and Sean paid them scant attention. His role was played. He was eager to get out, reach the border, get Job to where he could receive professional medical attention and get Claudia to safety. However, over all his urgency lay the nagging uncertainty, was China really going to stand by his word, and let them go? Was he not being just a trifle optimistic?

  ‘We’ll see,’ he told himself grimly, and shouted at one of the Renamo officers who was supervising the loading of the porters. ‘Where is General China?’

  He found him with his staff and the captured Russians in the laager’s command bunker, and China looked up from the map he was consulting and smiled affably as Sean entered.

  ‘Colonel Courtney, my felicitations. You were magnificent. A famous victory.’

  ‘And now you owe me a favour.’

  ‘You and your party wish to leave,’ China agreed. ‘All debts between us have been paid in full. You are free to go.’

  ‘No,’ Sean shook his head. ‘By my calculation, you still owe me one. Captain Job has been badly wounded. His condition is critical. I want him flown out to Zimbabwe in the captured Hind.’

  ‘You jest, of course,’ China laughed lightly. ‘I cannot risk sending such a valuable asset on a non-productive mission. No, Colonel, all debts are paid, please don’t persist in extravagant demands. With my defective hearing, it only annoys me and I may be tempted to review my generous offer to allow you and yours to depart unhindered.’ He smiled and held out his hand. ‘Come now, Colonel. Let us part as friends. You have the services of Sergeant Alphonso and his men. You are a man of infinite resourcefulness. I am sure that you will contrive to get yourself and all your party to safety without any further assistance from me.’

  Sean ignored the outstretched hand and China glanced at it and then lowered it to his side. ‘So we part, Colonel. Me to my little war and, who knows, perhaps one day, a country of my very own. You to the tender embraces of your very rich, very beautiful young American.’ His smile had a sly and foxy slant to it. ‘I wish you joy and I am sure you do the same for me.’ He turned back to his map, leaving Sean for an instant nonplussed and taken off balance. It was incomplete, it couldn’t end like this. Sean knew there was more to come, but General China began dictating orders to one of his officers in Portuguese, leaving Sean standing uncertainly at the door of the bunker.

  Sean waited a few moments longer, and then turned abruptly and ducked out through the entrance. Only after he was gone, China lifted his head and smiled after him, a gloating little smile which if Sean had seen it, would have answered his question.

  Alphonso’s men had worked quickly. The litter was a fibreglass stretcher, one of those lightweight body-moulded types used by mountain rescue teams. Nonetheless it would still require four men to carry it over rough ground, and they had a long hard path to the border.

  ‘Less than a hundred kilometres and not that hard,’ Sean reassured himself. ‘Two days, if we push it.’

  Claudia greeted him with relief. ‘Job seems stronger. He was conscious, asking for you, he said something about a hill, Hill 31?’

  Sean flickered a smile. ‘That’s where we met. He’s wandering a little, help me to get him onto the stretcher.’

  Between them they lifted Job gently and settled him onto the fibreglass stretcher. Sean rigged the drip set on a wire frame above his head, and tucked looted grey woollen blankets around him.

  ‘Matatu,’ he said as he stood up. ‘Take us home.’ And he gestured to the first team of stretcher-bearers to take their positions.

  It was less than two hours since sunrise, but they seemed to have lived an entire lifetime in that short period, Sean thought as he glanced back at the hilltop laager. Streamers of smoke drifted from its crest and the last column of General China’s porters was disappearing into the forest below it, all heavily laden with booty.

  The distant sounds of battle had finally dwindled into silence. The half-hearted Frelimo counter-attack had long ago fizzled out, and China was withdrawing his forces into the bad ground below the Pungwe river.

  As Sean watched, the captured Hind helicopter rose slowly out of its emplacement and hung above the hill on its glistening rotor; then abruptly it dipped towards them, the sound of its engine crescendoed and suddenly Sean was staring into the multiple mouths of the Gatling-cannon in its nose.

  As it raced towards him, he recognized China’s face behind the armoured glass canopy. He was perched in the flight engineer’s seat, at the controls of the 12.7mm cannon. Sean saw the barrels of the cannon traverse slightly, coming on to aim. The Hind was only fifty feet above them, so close he could see China’s teeth flash in his dark face as he smiled.

  Their little column had not reached the edge of the forest. There was no cover, no protection from the blast of that terrible weapon, and instinctively Sean reached out and drew Claudia to him, trying to shield her with his own body.

  Above them General China lifted his right hand in an ironic salute, and the Hind banked steeply away into the north-west, dwindled swiftly to a speck and was gone. They all stared after it silently, seized by a sense of anti-climax, until Sean broke the spell.

  ‘Let’s go, brethren!’ And once again the stretcher-bearers started forward at an easy jog-trot, singing very softly one of the ancient marching songs.

  Scouting ahead of them, Matatu came across a few scattered parties of Frelimo assault troops, but they were all in headlong retreat from the river wilderness. After the loss of their air support the Frelimo offensive seemed to have collapsed completely and the situation was fluid and confused. Although they were forced to detour further northwards than Sean had planned, Matatu steered them out of contact with any Frelimo and the stretcher-bearers were rotated regularly so they made swift progress.