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thorn trees and blotched with the leprous white salt pans
The mirage shimmered and tricked the eye so that the stunted trees on the far side of the pan seemed to swim and change shape like dark amoeba under a microscope. A spi
The sound of the Cessna engine rose and fell and rose again on the heat-flawed air. "There!" Sarah pointed out the mosquito speck, low on the horizon.
Craig made a last anxious appraisal of his makeshift landing, strip He had lit the beacon fires at each end of it as soon as they had pick el tip the first throb of the Cessna's motor. He had driven the Land-Rover back and forth between the beacons to mark the hard crust at the edge of the pan. Fifty metres out, the surface was treacherously soft.
Now he looked back at the approaching aircraft. Sally A
"You were gone for ever." Craig seized her as she jumped down from the cockpit.
"Three days," she protested with her feet off the ground.
"That's for ever, "he said and kissed her.
He set her down but kept one arm around her as he led her to the Land-Rover. After she had greeted Sarah, Craig introduced her to the two Matabele who were squatting in the shade of the Land-Rover.
They rose courteously to meet her.
"This is Jonas, and this is Aaron. They led us to the arms cache and they are giving us all the help they can." They were reserved and unsmiling young men with old eyes that had seen unspeakable things, but they were willing and quick.
They pumped the Avgas from the forty-four-gallon drums on the back of the Land-Rover directly into the Cessna's wing tanks, while Craig stripped out the seats from the rear of the cockpit to reduce weight and give them cargo space.
Then they began loading. Sally-A
However, Craig had "hand-sorted it, and test-fired a few rounds from each case without a single misfire.
Most of the rifles had also been corroded and Craig had worked through the nights by gas lantern, stripping and ca
There were also five Tokarev pistols and two cases of fragmentation grenades which seemed in better condition than the rifles. Craig had set off one grenade from each case, popping them down an ant-bear hole to a satisfactory Crump and cloud of dust. That had left forty-eight from the original rift),. Craig packed them in five cheap canvas haversacks that he had bought from a general dealer in Francistown.
The rest of the equipment he had also purchased in Francistown, Wire-cutters and bolt-cutters, nylon rope, pan gas that Jonas and Aaron sharpened to razor edges, flashlights and extra batteries, canteens and water bottles and a dozen or so other items which might prove useful.
Sarah had been appointed medical orderly and had made up a first-aid kit with items purchased at the Francistown pharmacy. The food rations were spartan. Raw maize meal packed in five, kilo plastic bags, the best nourishment-to weight ratio available, and a few bags of coarse salt.
"Okay, that's it," Sally-A
"Another ounce and we won't get off the ground. The rest of it will have to wait for the second trip." When darkness fell, they sat around the campfire and gorged on the steaks and fresh fruit that Sally-A
"Eat hearty, my children," she encouraged them. "It could be a long time." Afterwards Craig and Sally' A
They ate breakfast in the dark, after the moon had set and before the first glimmering of the dawn. They left Jonas and Aaron to guard the Land-Rover and help with loading and refuelling for the second trip and Sally-A
Even in the cool of night it took the overloaded Cessna for ever to unstick, and they climbed away slowly towards the glow of the sunrise.
"Zimbabwe border," Sally-A
Sally-A
"There is the railway." e closed the throttle and they descended Sally-A