Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur. Страница 2

He kept them going through the night. Though there was no moon, the fat white stars hung close against the earth, and the herd moved almost soundlessly through the dark forests. Once, after midnight, the old bull fell back and waited beside the trail, letting his herd go on.

Within the hour he caught again the tainted man-smell on the wind, fainter and very much more distant but there, always there, and he hurried forward to catch up with his COWS.

In the dawn they entered the area which he had not visited in ten years. The narrow strip along the river which had been the scene of intense human activity during the long-drawn-out war, and which for that reason he had avoided until now when he was reluctantly driven into it once again.

The herd moved with less urgency. They had left the pursuit far behind, and they slowed so that they could feed as they went. The forest was greener and more lush here on the bottom lands of the valley. The msasa forests had given way to mopani and giant swollen baobabs that ns the flourished in the heat, and the old bull could se e water ahead and he rumbled thirstily deep in his belly. Yet some instinct warned him of other danger ahead as well as that behind him. He paused often, swinging his great grey head slowly from side to side, his ears held out like sounding boards, his small weak eyes gleaming as he searched cautiously before moving on again.

Then abruptly he stopped once more. Something at the limit of his vision had caught his attention, something that glistened metallically in the slanted morning sunlight. He flared back with alarm, and behind him his herd backed up, his fear transmitted to them infectiously.

The bull stared at the speck of reflected light, and slowly his alarm receded, for there was no movement except the soft passage of the breeze through the forest, no sound but the whisper of it in the branches and the lulling chattering and hum of unconcerned bird and insect life around him.

Still the old bull waited, staring ahead, and as the light altered he noticed ther%6;were other identical metal objects in a line across his front and he shifted his weight from one forefoot to die other, making a little fluttering sound of indecision in his throat.

What had alarmed the old bull was a line of small square galvanized sheetmetal plaques. They were each affixed to the" top of an iron dropper that had been hammered into the earth so many years ago that all man, smell had long ago dissipated. On each plaque was painted a laconic warning, which had faded in the brutal sunlight from crimson to pale pink. A stylized skull and crossbones above the words' DANGER

MINEFIELD'.

The minefield had been laid years previously by the security forces of the now defunct white Rhodesian government, as a cordon sanitaire along the Zambezi river, an attempt to prevent the guerrilla forces of ZIPRA and ZANU from entering the territory from their bases acroSs the river in Zambia. Millions of anti-personnel mines and heavier Claymores made up a continuous field so long and deep that it would never be cleared; the cost of doing so would be prohibitive to the country's new black government which was already in serious economic difficulties.

"%%ile the old bull still hesitated, the air became filled with a clattering roar, the wild sound of hurricane winds.

The sound came from behind the herd, from the south again, and the old bull swung away from the minefield to face it.

Low over the forest tops rushed a grotesque dark shape, suspended on a whistling silver disc. Filling the sky with noise, it bore down upon the bunched herd, so low that the down-draught from its spinning rotors churned the branches of the tree-tops into thrashing confusion and flung up a fog of red dust from the earth's dry surface.

Driven by this new menace, the old bull turned and rushed forward beyond the sparse line of metal discs and his terror-stricken herd charged after him into the minefield.

He was fifty metres into the field before the first mine exploded under him. It burst upwards into the thick leather pad of his right hind foot, cut half of it away like an axe, stroke. Raw red meat hung in tatters from it and white bone gleamed deep in the wound as the bull lurched forward on three legs. The next mine hit him squarely in the right fore, and smashed his foot to the ankle into bloody mince. The bull squealed in agony and panic and fell back on his haunches pinned by his shattered limbs, WI while all around him his breeding herd ran on into the minefield.

The thump, thump of detonations was intermittent at first, strung out along the edge of the field, but soon they took on a broken staccato beat like that of a maniac drummer. occasionally four and five mines exploded simultaneously, an intense blurt of sound that struck the hills of the escarpment and shattered into a hundred echoes.

Underlying it all, like the string section of some hellish orchestra, was the whistling clatter of the helicopter rotor as the machine dipped and swung and dropped and rose along the periphery of the minefield, worrying the milling herd likea sheepdog its flock, darting here to head off a bunch of animals that had broken back, racing there to catch a fine young bull who had miraculously run unscathed through the field and reached the clear ground of the river-bank, settling in his path, forcing him to stop and turn, then chasing him back into the minefield until a mine tore his foot away and he went down trumpeting and screaming.

Now the thunder of bursting mines was as continuous as a naval bombardment, and each explosion threw a column of dust high into the still air of the valley, so that the red fog cloaked some of the horror of it. The dust twisted and eddied as high as the tree-tops and transformed the frenzied animals to dark tormented wraiths lit by the flashes of the bursting nilnes.

One old cow with all four feet blown away lay upon her side and flogged her head against the hard earth in her attempts to rise. Another dragged herself forward on her belly, back legs trailing, her trunk flung protectively over the tiny calf beside her until a Claymore went off under her chest and burst her ribs outwards like the staves of a barrel, at the same instant tearing away the hindquarters of the calf at her side.

Other calves, separated from their dams, rushed squealing through the dust fog, ears flattened against their heads in terror, until a clap of sound and a flash of brief fire bowled them over in a tangle of shattered limbs.