Elephant Song

She began whining and whimpering loudly and when Cheng raised the pistol threateningly, she screamed, No, please!  Please don't hit me!

She knew her cries would carry, that Sepoo with his sensitive, forest-trained ears would hear her at a distance of quarter of a mile and pin-point her position.

Sepoo picked the shirt button out of the leaf trash of the forest floor, and showed it to Daniel.  See, Kuokoa, Kara-Ki is laying sign for us to follow, he whispered.  She is clever as the colobus, and brave as the forest buffalo.  Keep going.  Daniel prodded him impatiently.  Make your speeches later, old man.  They went on along the spoor, quick, silent and alert.  Sepoo pointed out the sign that Kelly had left, the broken twigs, the heel marks and the places where she had deliberately fallen to her knees.  We are close now.  He touched Daniel's arm.  Very close. .

Be careful not to run into him.  He might lay an ambush.  .

Kelly screamed in the forest ahead of them.  No, please!

Please don't hit me!  And for an instant Daniel lost control.  He lunged forward, rushing to her defence, but Sepoo seized his wrist and hung on doggedly.  - No!  No!  Kara-Ki is not hurt.  She is warning us.

Don't rush in like a stupid wazungu.  Use your head now.  Daniel pulled himself together, but he was still trembling with rage.  All right, he whispered.  He doesn't know I am here but he has seen you.

I'm going to circle round them and lie downstream.  You must drive him on to me, just as you drive the duiker in the net hunt.  Do you understand, Sepoo?

I understand.  give the call of a grey parrot when you are ready.

Daniel screwed the folding bayonet off the muzzle of his AK 47 and propped the rifle against the tree beside him.  Cheng was using Kelly as a shield.

The rifle was useless.  He abandoned it.

Armed only with the bayonet, he circled out swiftly away from the river-bank.  Twice more he heard Kelly's voice, pleading and whining, giving him a pin-point on her position.

It took him less than five minutes to get downstream of Cheng and Kelly and to flatten himself against the hole of one of the trees growing on the bank.  He cupped his hands over his mouth and gave an imitation of the squawk of a roosting parrot.  Then he crouched down with the bayonet at the ready.

Sepoo's voice shrilled through the trees.  He was using the high ventriloquist's tone that would deceive the listener as to direction and distance.  Hey, wazungu - Let Kara-Ki go.  I am watching you from the trees.  Let her go, or I will put a poison arrow into you.  Daniel doubted that Cheng could understand the Swahili words, but the effect would be the same, to concentrate Cheng's attention upstream while driving him down to where Daniel was waiting.

He crouched and listened.  A few minutes later, Sepoo called again, Hey, wazungu, do you hear me?  Silence fell again and Daniel strained his eyes and his hearing.

Then a branch rustled just ahead of him, and he heard Kelly's voice, muffled and terrified.  Please don't.  . . she began, but was cut off by Cheng's brusque whisper.  Shut your mouth, woman, or I will break your arm.

They were very close to where Daniel waited.  He tightened his grip on the hilt of the bayonet.  Then he saw movement in the undergrowth, and a moment later made out the blue of Cheng's jacket.

Cheng was moving backwards, holding Kelly against his chest, facing the direction of Sepoo's voice, aiming the Tokarev pistol over Kelly's shoulder, ready to fire the moment Sepoo showed himself.  He was backing directly towards the tree where Daniel waited.

Daniel knew that Cheng was an exponent of the martial arts.

In any hand-to-hand combat, Daniel would be at a terrible disadvantage.

There was one sure way.  That was to drive the point of the bayonet into his kidneys from behind.  It would cripple him instantly.

He stepped out from behind the tree with the bayonet held low and underhand.  He launched the stroke, but at the same instant Cheng twisted violently sideways.  Daniel never knew what had alerted him, for he had made no sound.  it could only have been the almost supernatural instinct of the Kung Fu fighter.

The bayonet caught Cheng in the flank, an inch above the hip bone.

It went in to the hilt, but Cheng's turn tore the weapon from Daniel's grip.

Cheng released kelly, shoving her away from him and brought the Tokarev round to fire into Daniel's face.  Daniel grabbed the wrist of his pistol hand and forced it upwards.  The first shot went into the branches above their heads.

Cheng twisted in Daniel's grip, and as Daniel tried to hold him, he whipped his body back again and his knee came up, aimed for Daniel's crotch.  Daniel caught the kick on his thigh, but the force of it paralysed his leg.

From the corner of his eye he saw Cheng's left hand, stiff as an axe-blade, flick towards his head, aimed at his neck below the ear.  He hunched his shoulders and caught it on the thick muscle of his upper biceps.  The strength and power of it sickened him.  His grip on Cheng's pistol hand slackened.

The hand flicked at him again, and this time Daniel knew it would snap his neck like a dry twig.  Kelly had not fallen, despite the vicious shove Cheng had given her between the shoulder-blades.  She gathered herself and hurled herself back at him, shoulder first into Cheng's side, into the flank that the bayonet had laid open.  The force of it turned the blow aside from Daniel's exposed neck and Cheng stumbled against him and dropped the pistol with a shout of pain.

Desperately Daniel locked his free arm around the back of Cheng's head and threw himself backwards, in the direction in which Cheng had been thrown by Kelly's charge.  Cheng could not resist and they fell, locked together, down the sheer bank of the river, dropping six feet into the thick red ooze, going under completely.

Almost immediately their heads broke out through the surface.  Both of them were gasping for breath, still locked together.

Daniel's leg was still paralysed.  Cheng was wiry and quick.

Daniel realised that he could not hold him.  Kelly saw he was in distress and stooped.  She picked up the bayonet, and in the same movement threw herself feet first down the bank, sliding on her backside, the bayonet poised.

Cheng squirmed over the top of Daniel, whipping one arm around his neck from behind.  His back was turned to Kelly, the jacket of his safari suit shining wetly with red mud.

Kelly stabbed from as high as she could reach.  Her first blow struck one of Cheng's ribs and was deflected.  Cheng grunted and convulsed.

She lifted the bayonet and stabbed again and this time the point found a gap between his ribs.

Cheng released the armlock from Daniel's neck and wriggled around to face Kelly in the mud.  The bayonet was still lodged high in his back, the blade half buried.

Cheng reached out for Kelly with both hands, his mud daubed features contorted with an animal ferocity.  Daniel recovered and threw himself forward on to Cheng's back, locking both arms around his throat, bearing him down with all his weight.  The hilt of the bayonet was trapped between them and the blade was forced all the way home.  A mouthful of blood burst over Cheng's lips and poured down his chin.

Daniel heaved and shoved his head below the surface, and held it there.

As Cheng was struggling in the red mud, one of his arms broke out and groped blindly for Daniel's face, trying to reach his eyes with hooked fingers.  Daniel held on grimly, and the hand fell away.  Cheng's.