Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur (бесплатные полные книги .txt) 📗

"Ah! That's it! Timon could not keep the elation from his voice. "Bada has turned off the main road, General.

The target truck has stopped and is parked two miles from the crossroads. It has to be a prearranged meeting, sit."

"Get going," Peter Fungabera ordered. "Follow them!" Now Timon Nbebi drove fast, using the glow of his arking lights to hold the verge of the road.

p "There's the turning!" Peter snapped, as the unmade road showed dusty pale out of the dark.

Timon slowed and swung onto it. A sergeant of the Third Brigade stepped out of the darkness of the encroaching bush. He jumped up onto the foot board and managed to salute with his free hand.

"They passed here a minute ago, General," he blurted.

"The truck is just ahead. We have set up a road-block behind it and we will block here as soon as you are passed, sit. We have them bottled up."

"Carry on, Sergeant," Peter nodded, then turned to Timon Nbebi. "The road drops steeply down from here to the drift. Have the trucks cut their engines as soon as we are rolling. We'll coast down." The silence was eerie after the growl of heavy engines.

The only sound was the squeak of the Land-Rover's suspension, the crunch of the tyres over gravel, and the rustle of the wind around their ears.

The twists in the rough track sprang at them out of the night with unnerving speed, and Timon Nbebi wrenched the wheel through them as they careered down the first drop of the great escarpment. The two trucks were guided by their tail-lights. They made monstrous black shapes looming out of the darkness close behind. Sally-Anne reached out for Craig's hand as they were thrown together into the turns, and she hung on to it tightly all the way down.

"There they are!" Peter Fungabera snarled abruptly, his voice roughened with excitement.

Below them they saw the headlights of the Mercedes flickering beyond the trees. They were closing up swiftly.

For a few seconds the headlights were blanketed by another turn in the winding road, and then they burst out again two long beams burning th pale dust surface of the track, to be answered suddenly 6y another glaring pair of headlights facing in the oppbsite direction, even at this range, blindingly white. The second pair of headlights flashed three times, obviously a recognition signal, and immediately the Mercedes slowed.

"We've got them," Peter Fungabera exulted, and switched off the parking lights.

Below them a canopied truck was trundling slowly from the verge where it had been parked in darkness, into the middle of the road. Its headlights flooded the Mercedes which pulled to a halt. Two men climbed out of the Mercedes and crossed to the cab of the truck. One of them Haiti carried a rifle. They spoke to the driver through the open window.

The Land-Rover raced silently in complete darkness towards the brightly lit tableau in the valley below. Sally Anne was clinging to Craig's hand with startling strength.

In the road below, one of the men began to walk back towards the rear of the parked truck, and then paused and looked up the dark road towards the racing Land-Rover.

They were so close now that even over the engine noise of the Mercedes and truck, he must have heard the crunch of tyres.

Peter Fungabera switched on the headlights of the Land Rover. They blazed out with stunning brilliance and at the same moment he lifted an electronic bull-horn to his mouth.

"Do not move!" his magnified voice bellowed into the night, and came crashing back in echoes from the close pressed hills. "Do not attempt to escape!" The two men whirled and dived back towards the Mercedes. Timon Nbebi started the engine with a roar and the Land' Rover jerked forward.

"Stay where you are! Drop your weapons!" The men hesitated, then the armed one threw down his rifle and they both raised their hands in surrender, blinking into the dazzle of headlights.

Timon Nbebi swung the Land-Rover in front of the Mercedes, blocking it. Then he jumped down and ran to the open window and pointed his Uzi submachine-gun into the interior.

"Oud'he shouted. "Everybody oud" Behind them the two trucks came to a squealing halt, clouds of dust boiling out from under their double rear wheels. Armed troopers swarmed out of them, rushing forward to club down the two unarmed men onto the gravel of the road. They surrounded the Mercedes, tearing open the doors and dragging out the driver and another man from the back seat.

There was no mistaking the tall, wide-shouldered figure.

The headlights floodlit his dark, craggy features and exaggerated the rocky strength of his lantern jaw. Tungata Zebiwe shrugged off the grip of his captors, and glared about him, forcing them to fall back involuntarily.

"Back, you yapping jackals! Do you dare touch me?" He was dressed in dark slacks and a white shirt. His cropped head was round and black as a cannon ball.

"Do you know who I am?" he demanded. "You'll wish your twenty-five fathers had taught you better mariners." His arrogant assurance drove them back another pace, and they looked towards the Land' Rover Peter Fungabera stepped out of the darkness behind the headlights, and Tungata Zebiwe recognized him instantly.

"You!" he growled. "Of course, the chief butcher."

"Open the truck," Peter Fungabera ordered, without taking his eyes off the other man. They stared at each other with such terrible hatred, that it rendered insignificant everything else around them. It was an elemental confrontation, seeming to embody all the savagery of a continent, two powerful men stripped of any vestige of civilized restraint, their antagonism so strong as to be barely supportable to them.