They were, all three of them, dressed in faded denims the uniform of the bush fighters and the weapons they carried with casual familiarity were the ubiquitous AK 47s with the distinctive curved black magazine and laminated woodwork.
Denim, AK 47s and Matabele there was no doubt in Craig's mind who these were. Regular Zimbabwean troops now w ore jungle fatigues or battle-smocks, most were armed with Nato weapons and spoke the Shana language.
These were former members of the disbanded Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army, now turned political rebels, ubject to no laws, nor higher authority, forged by a men s long murderous and bloody bush war into hard, ruthless men with death in their hands and death in their eyes.
Although Craig had been warned of the possibility, and had indeed been half-expecting this meeting, still the shock made him feel dry-mouthed and nauseated.
"We don't have to take him," said the youngest of the three guerrillas. "We can shoot him and bury him secretly that is good as a hostage." He was under twenty-five years of age, Craig guessed, and had probably killed a man for every year of his life.
"The six hostages we took on the Victoria Falls road gave us weeks of trouble, and in the end we had to shoot them anyway," agreed the second guerrilla, and they both looked to the third man. He was only a few years older than they were, but there was no doubt that he was the leader. A thin scar ran from the corner of his mouth up his cheek into the hairline at the temple. It puckered his mouth into a lopsided, sardonic grin.
Craig remembered the incident that they were discussing. Guerrillas had stopped a tourist bus on the main Victoria Falls road and abducted six men, Canadian, Americans and a Brilbn, and taken them into the bush as hostages for the release of political detainees. Despite an intensive search by police and regular army units, none of the hostages had been recovered.
The scarred leader stared at Craig with smoky dark eyes for long seconds, and then, with his thumb, slid the rate of-fire selector on his rifle to automatic.
"A true Matabele does not kill a blood brother of the tribe." It took Craig an enormous effort to keep his voice steady, devoid of any trace of his terror. His Sindebele was so flawless and easy that it was the leader of the guerrillas who blinked.
"Haul" he said, which is an expression of amazement.
"You speak likea man but who is this blood brother you boast of?"
"Comrade Minister Tungata Zebiwe," Craig answered, an saw the instant shift in the man's gaze, and the sudden discomfiture of his two companions. He had hit a chord that had unbalanced them, and had delayed his own execution for the moment, but the leader's rifle was still cocked and on fully automatic, still pointed at his belly.
It was the youngster who broke the silence, speaking too loudly, to cover his own uncertainty. "It is easy for a baboon to shout the name of the black-maned lion from the hilltop, and claim his protection, but does the lion recognize the baboon? Kill him, I say, and have done with it."
"Yet he speaks likea brother," murmured the leader, "and Comrade Tungata is a hard man-" Craig realized that his life was still at desperate risk, a little push either way was all that was needed.
"will show you, , he said, still without the slightest quaver in his voice. "Let me go to my pack." The leader hesitated.
"I am naked," Craig told him. "No weapons not even a knife and you are three, with guns."
"Go! the Matabele agreed. "But go with care. I have not killed a man for many moons and I feel the lack." Craig stood up carefully from the water and saw the interest in their eyes as they studied his leg foreshortened halfway between knee and ankle, and the compensating muscular development of the other leg and the rest of his body. The interest changed to wary respect as they saw how quickly and easily Craig moved on one leg. He reached his pack with water running down the hard flat muscles of chest and belly. He had come prepared for this meeting, and from the front pocket of his pack he pulled out his wallet and handed a coloured snapshot to the guerrilla leader.
In the photograph two men sat on the bonnet of an ancient Land-Rover. They had their arms around each other's shoulders, and both of them were laughing. Each of them held a beer can in his free hand and with it was saluting the photographer. The accord and camaraderie between them was evident.
The scarred guerrilla studied it for a long time and then slipped the selector on his rifle to lock. "It is Comrade Tungata," he said, and handed the photograph to the others.
"Perhaps," conceded the youngster reluctantly, "but a long time ago. I still think we should shoot him." However, this opinion was now more wistful than determined.
"Comrade Tungata would swallow you without chewing," his companion told him flatly, and slung his rifle over his shoulder.
Craig picked up hi leg and in a moment had fitted it to the stump and instantly all three guerrillas were intrigued, their murderous intentions set aside as they crowded around Craig to examine this marvelous appendage.
Fully aware of the African love of a good joke, Craig clowned for them. Heldanced a jig, pirouetted on the leg, cracked himself across the shin without flinching, and finally took the hat of the youngest, most murderous guerrilla from his head, screwed it into a ball and with a cry of "Pele!" drop-kicked it into the lower branches of the wild fig with the artificial leg. The other two hooted with glee, and laughed until tears ran down their cheeks at the youngster's loss of dignity as he scrambled up into the wild fig to retrieve his hat.
judging the mood finely, Craig opened his pack and brought out mug and whisky bottle. He poured a generous dram and handed the mug to the scar-faced leader.
"Between brothers," he said.
The guerrilla leaned his rifle against the trunk of the tree and accepted the mug. He drained it at one swallow, and blew the fumes ecstatically out of his nose and mouth. The other two took their turn at the mug with as much gusto.
When Craig pulled on his trousers and sat down on his pack, placing the bottle in front of him, they all laid their weapons aside and squatted in a half circle facing him.
"My name is Craig Mellow,"he said.
"We will call you Kuphela," the leader told him, "for the leg walks on its own." And the others clapped their hands IJ in approbation, and Craig poured each of them a whisky to celebrate his christening.
"My name is Comrade Lookout," the leader told him.
Most of the guerrillas had adopted noyw-de-gue7Te. "This is Comrade Peking." A tribute to his Chinese instructors, Craig guessed. "And this," the leader indicated the young, est, "is Comrade Dollar." Craig had difficulty remaining straight-faced at this unlikely juxtaposition of ideologies.
"Comrade Lookout, "Craig said, "the kanka marked you." The kanka were the jackals, the security forces, and Craig guessed the leader would be proud of his battle scars.
Comrade Lookout caressed his cheek. "A bayonet. They thought I was dead and they left me for the hyena."
"Your leg?" Dollar asked in return. "From the war also?" An affirmative would tell them that he had fought against them. Their reaction was unpredictable, but Craig paused only a second before he nodded. "I trod on one of our own mines."
"Your own mine!" Lookout crowed with delight at the joke. "He stood on his own mine!" And the others thought it was funny, but Craig detected no residual resentment.
"Where?" Peking wanted to know.
"On the river, between Kazungula and Victoria Falls."
"Ah, yes," they nodded at each other. "That was a bad place. We crossed there often, Lookout remembered. "That is where we fought the Scouts." The Ballantyne Scouts had been one of the elite units of the security forces, and Craig had been attached to them as an armourer.
"The day I trod on the mine was the day the Scouts followed your people across the river. There was a terrible fight on the Zambian side, and all the Scouts were wiped out."
"Haul Haul" they exclaimed with amazement. "That was the day! We were there we fought with Comrade Tungata on that day."
"What a fight what a fine and beautiful killing when we trapped them," Dollar remembered with the killing light in his eyes again.
"They fought! Mother of Nkulu kulu how they fought!
Those were real men!" Craig's stomach churned queasily with the memory. His own cousin, Roland Ballantyne, had led the Scouts across the river that fateful -day. While Craig lay shattered and bleeding on the edge of the minefield, Roland and all his men had fought to the death a few miles further on. Their bodies had been abused and desecrated by these men, and now they were discussing it likea memorable football match.
Craig poured morel whisky for them. How he had loathed d-iem and their fellows terrs', they called them, terrorists loathed them with the special hatred reserved for something that threatens your very existence and all that you hold dear. But now, in his turn, he saluted them with the mug, and drank. He had heard of R.A.F and Luftwaffe pilots meeting after the war and reminiscing as they were doing, more like comrades than deadly enemies.
"Where were you when we rocketed the storage tanks in Harare and burned the fuel?" they asked.
"Do you remember when the Scouts jumped from the sky onto our camp at Molingushi? They killed eight hundred of us that day and I was there!" Peking recalled with pride. "But they did not catch me!" Yet now Craig found that he could not sustain that hatred any longer. Under the veneer of cruelty and savagery imposed upon them by war, they were the true Matabele that he had always loved, with that irrepressible sense of fun, that deep pride in themselves and their tribe, that abounding sense of personal honour, of loyalty and their own peculiar code of morals. As they chatted, Craig warmed to them, and they sensed it and responded to him in turn.
"So what makes you come here, Kuphela? A sensible man like you, walking without even a stick into the leopard's cave? You must have heard about us and yet you came here?"
"Yes, I have heard about you. I heard that you were hard men, like old Mzilikazi's warriors." They preened a little at the compliment.
"But I came here to meet you and talk with you," Craig went on.
"Why?"demanded Lookout.
41 will write a book, and in the book I will write truly the way you are and the things for which you are still fighting."
"A book?" Peking was suspicious immediately.
"What kind of book?" Dollar backed him.
"Who are you to write a book?" Lookout's voice was openly scornful. "You are too young. Book-writers are great and learned people." Like all barely literate Africans, he had an almost superstitious awe of the printed word, and reverence for the grey hairs of age.
"A one-legged book-writer," Dollar scoffed, and Peking giggled and picked up his rifle. He placed it across his lap and giggled again. The mood had changed once more. "If he lies about this book, then perhaps he lies about his friendship with Comrade Tungata," Dollar suggested with relish.
Craig had prepared for this also. He took a large manila envelope from the flap of his pack and shook from it a thick sheaf of newspaper cuttings. He shuffled through them slowly, letting their disbelieving mockery change to interest, then he selected one and handed it to Lookout.
The serial of the book had been shown on Zimbabwe television two years previously, before these guerrillas had returned to the bush, and it had enjoyed an avid following throughout its run.