A Time to Die

Leaving the others to eat and rest well concealed under a shaggy pile of newly cut branches, Sean and Matatu sneaked forward to the edge of a natur#l open glade in the forest, and through the binoculars Sean lay and watched the Frelimo logging gangs at work on the far side of the opening. Hundreds of black men and women, some of them no more than children, were toiling in teams, supervised by guards in Frelimo camouflage battle dress.

The guards all carried AK rifles slung on their shoulders, but they wielded the long hippo-hide whips, the savage African sjambok, which they plied on the naked backs and legs of their charges.

The snap of the lash on bare flesh and the agonized yelps carried across five hundred yards of open ground to where Sean and Matatu lay.

The labor gangs were piling the roughly trimmed logs into tall pyramid-shaped stacks, half of them straining and heaving on the heavy ropes while the others pushed against the huge timber baulks from the lower side. The guards urged them to greater effort, calling out the verses of the work chant to which the gangs responded with a deep melancholy chorus and a concerted heave on the heavy manila ropes.

While Sean watched through his binoculars, one of the huge logs was laboriously hoisted toward the pi

It was too much even for a soldier's hardened stomach. He touched Matatu's shoulder and they crept away, back to where they had left the others.

That afternoon they passed close to the labor camps, a vast AI collection of primitive lean-to huts that stank of wood smoke, open latrines, and human misery.

"The cheapest African commodity these days is black flesh," Sean told Claudia grimly.

"If you told people back home about this, they simply wouldn't understand what you were talking about. It's just so contrary to our own experience, said Claudia.

At this time of day, the camps were almost deserted. All the able-bodied were at work in the forest and only the sick and the dying lay under the crude open shelters. Sean sent Matatu into the camp to scavenge, and he must have found one of the field kitchens and eluded the cooks, for he returned with a half sack of uncooked maize meal slung over his shoulder.

Huddled around the radio, they ate handfuls of maize porridge that evening, listening to General China's voice on the Renamo command frequency.

Once again after General China had made his last transmission ary frequency at nightfall, Sean switched to the South African mi lit and listened for almost half an hour, learning the voices and call signs of the various units within range. At last he felt he had identified the South African border headquarters. It was using the call sign "Kudu," that beautiful spiral-homed antelope of the bush veld

Sean waited patiently for a hill in the military traffic. Then he keyed the microphone and spoke in Afrikaans.

"Kudu, this is Mossie. This is a storm sending. Do you read me, Kudu?

This is Mossie!"

A storm sending was the call for a top-priority message. It was the radio procedure they had used back in the days of the Rhodesian bush war. He hoped the South African commander's military experience went back that far. In Afrikaans a "mossie" was a sparrow. It had been Sean's call sign in those far-off days.

A long silence followed Sean's transmission. The static echoed in the void of the stratosphere, and Sean thought his call had been lost. He lifted the microphone to call again just as the radio came to life.

"Station calling Kudu," said a voice heavy with suspicion. "Say again your call sign."

"Kudu, this is Mossie, I repeat, Mossie. Mike Oscar Sierra Sierra India Echo. I request a relay to General De La Rey, the deputy minister of law and order."

Lothar De La Rey had been Sean's control back in the seventies.

Since then he had risen to high political office "Kudu" would surely know who he was and hesitate to refuse a request for relay to such a source.

It was clear that "Kudu" must be thinking the same thoughts but taking longer to reach a decision. At last he called again.

"Mossie, stand by. We are relaying you to De La Rey."

Almost an hour later, long after dark, "Kudu" called again.

"Mossie, this is Kudu. De La Rey is unobtainable."

"Kudu, this is life and death. I will call you on this frequency every six hours until you reach De La Rey."

"Dood reg, Mossie. We'll keep a six-hour listening watch for you.

Totsiew.

They had abandoned their blankets when they fled before the fire, and tonight it was frosty. Sean and Claudia lay in each other's arms and whispered together softly.

"I didn't understand what you were saying on the radio. Who were you speaking with?" Claudia used the Americanism "with," and Sean corrected it as he replied.

I was speaking to a South African military base, probably on the border where we are headed."

"Will they give us assistance?" she asked hopefully.

"I don't know. They might if I can contact someone I know. I have asked them to try, but they can't get hold of him."