Part 70 (2/2)

They were pinned helplessly, and the gunner up there on the hill commanded the entire compound. n.o.body 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 ma.s.s, acre.” In the front rank of the throng brandis.h.i.+ng 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 h.e.l.l.

”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 whoos.h.i.+ng 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.

He had been losing ground steadily to Comrade Lookout and the other guerrillas, his bad leg hampering him in the race for the hill, but while he ran he was counting in his head. A good man might need ten seconds to change ammunition boxes and reload the machinegun. Since leaving the sheltering wall seven seconds had pa.s.sed eight, nine, ten it must' come now! And there were still twenty paces to cover.

Comrade Lookout reached the sandbagged fortifications and s.h.i.+nned up and over.

Then something hit Craig a crus.h.i.+ng hammer-blow and he was thrown violently to- the ground as bullets flew all around him. He rolled ov'e4r and came up again running, but the gunner had seen him go down and swung the machine-gun away, back to the charging mob of released prisoners.

Hit but unharmed, Craig ran on as strongly as before, and he realized that he had taken it in the leg, the artificial leg. He wanted to laugh, it was so ridiculous and he was so terrified.

”You can only do that to me once,” he thought, and IT hi

4f suddenly he had reached the foot of the kopie. He jumped up, found a hold on the top of the sandbag parapet wit one hand, and heaved himself up and over. He dropped onto the narrow, deserted firing platform on the other side.

”The radio he fixed his will upon it, ”got to get the radio.” And he jumped down into the communication trench and ran down it to the bend in the pa.s.sage. was the sound of a scuffle, and a cry ahead of him, and is Comrade Lookout was straight he came around the corner, ening up from the body of the Third Brigade trooper who had been manning the RPG.

”Go for the gun,” Craig ordered him. ”I'll take the radio room.

Craig climbed up the sandbagged pa.s.sageway, Pa.s.sing en quartered on his last visit.

the dugout where he had be ”Now, first on the left-” He dived into the opening, brus.h.i.+ng aside the curtain of hessian, and he heard the radio operator in his dugout at the end of the pa.s.sage shouting frantically. Craig hurled himself down the narrow pa.s.sage, and paused in the doorway.

Too late. His stomach turned over in a despairing convulsion. The radio operator, dressed only in a vest and the bench underpants, was hunched over the radio set on by the far wall of the dugout. He was holding the his microphone to his mouth with both hands, shouting warning into it in English, repeating it for the third time, ig hesitated, the acknowledgement boomed and, as Cra from the speaker, also spoken in clear English.

said the voice of the ”Message received and understood,” erat or at Brigade headquarters in Harare. ”Hold on! We op will reinforce you immediately-” Craig fired a long burst of the AK, and his bulb sing and ripp, smashed into the radio, shattering the hou The unarn the wiring out of it in a glittering tangle.

microphone and cOw el radio operator dropped the against the sandbag wall, staring at Craig, blubbering with terror. Craig swung the AK onto him, but could not force himself to fire.

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