Frederick Forsyth - Avenger

"What's wrong with it? Screw the tail rotor. I need it back up in the air. Well, hurry it up."

He flicked off his machine, listened to McBride, glared and snapped, "Your fellow countryman simply made a mistake, that is all, an expensive mistake. It's going to cost him his life."

An hour passed. Even without field glasses McBride could see the first columns of white cotton-clad workers being forcemarched back to the double gates to their village. Beside the lines of men, the uniformed guards were shouting them on. Midday. The heat was a hammer on the back of the head.

The milling crowd of men in front of the gates grew ever bigger. The chitchat on the radio never stopped, as sector after sector was cleared of workers, buildings searched, declared clear, sealed, and manned from inside.

At 1:30 the number checking began. Van Rensberg insisted on the five checkers resuming their places behind the tables and passing the workers through, one after another, two hundred per column.

The men normally worked in the cool of the dawn or the evening. They were baking alive in the heat. Two or three peons fainted and were helped through by friends. Every tag was checked until its number matched one passed through that same morning. When the last white-bloused figure stumbled toward the village, rest, shade, and water, the senior checker nodded.

"One missing," he called.

Van Rensberg walked to his desk to peer over his shoulder.

"Number five-three-one-oh-eight."

"Name?"

"Ramon Gutierrez."

"Release the dogs."

Van Rensberg strolled across to McBride. "Every single technician must by now be inside, locked in, and guarded. The dogs will never touch my men, you know. They recognise the uniform. That leaves one man out there. A stranger, white cotton pants and floppy shirt, wrong smell. It's like a lunch bell to the Dobermans. Up a tree? In a pond? They'll still find him. Then they will surround him and bay until the handlers come. I give this mercenary half an hour to get up a tree and surrender, or die."

The man he sought was in the middle of the estate, running lightly between rows of maize higher than his own head. He judged the direction of his run by the sun and crests of the sierra.

It had taken two hours of steady jogging earlier in the morning to bring him from his allotted work patch to the base of the mansion's protective wall. Not that the distance was a problem for a man accustomed to half a marathon, but he had to dodge the other work parties and the guards. He was still dodging.

He came to a track across the maize field, dropped to his belly, and peered out. Down the track, two guards on four-wheelers roared away in the direction of the main gate. He waited till they were around a corner, then sprinted across the track and was lost in a peach orchard. His study of the layout of the estate from above had given him a route that would take him from where he had started near the mansion wall to where he wanted to be, without ever crossing a knee-high crop.

The equipment he had brought in that morning, either in his supposed lunch bag or inside the tight briefs he wore beneath the boxer shorts, was almost expended. The tough dive watch was back on his wrist, his belt round his waist, and his knife was up against the small of his back, out of the way but easy to reach. The bandage, sticky plaster, and the rest were in the flat pouch forming part of his belt.

He checked the peaks of the hills again, altered course by a few degrees, and stopped, tilting his head until he heard the gurgle of the flowing water ahead. He came to the stream's edge, backtracked fifteen yards, then stripped, retaining only belt, knife, and briefs.

Across the crops, in the dull, numbing heat, he heard the first hounds baying toward him. What little sea breeze there was would take his odour to the muzzles of the hounds in a few more minutes.

He worked carefully but fast, until he was satisfied, then tiptoed away toward the stream, slipped into the cool water, and began to let the current take him, slanting across the estate toward the airfield and the cliff.

Despite his assertion that the killer dogs would never touch him, Van Rensberg had wound all the windows up as he drove slowly down one of the main avenues from the gate into the heartland.

Behind him came the deputy dog handler at the wheel of a truck with a completely enclosed rear made of steelwire mesh. The senior handler was beside him in the Land Rover, head stuck out on the passenger side. It was he who heard the sudden change in pitch of his hounds' baying, from deepthroated bark to excited yelping.

"They have found something," he shouted.

Van Rensberg grinned. "Where, man, where?"

"Over there."

McBride crouched in the rear, glad of the walls and windows on the Land Rover Defender. He did not like savage dogs, and for him twelve was a dozen too many.

The dogs had found something all right, but their yelping was more from pain than excitement. The South African came upon the entire pack after swerving round the corner of a peach orchard. They were milling around the centre of the track. A bundle of bloody clothes was the object of their attention.

"Get them into the truck," shouted Van Rensberg. The senior handler got down, closed the door, and whistled his pack to order. Without protest, still yelping, they bounded into the rear of the dog truck and were locked in. Only then did Van Rensberg and McBride descend.

"So, this is where they caught him," said Van Rensberg.

The handler, still puzzled by the behaviour of his pack, scooped up the bloodstained cotton blouse and held it to his nose. Then he jerked his face away.

"Bloody man!" he screamed. "Chilli powder, fine-ground green chilli powder. It's stiff with the stuff. No wonder the poor bastards are screaming. That's not excitement; they're in pain."

"When will their muzzles work again?"

"Well, not today, boss, maybe not tomorrow."

They found the cotton pants, also impregnated with chilli powder, and the straw hat, even the canvas espadrilles. But no body, no bones, nothing but the stains on the shirt.

"What did he do here?" Van Rensberg asked the handler.

"He cut himself, that's what the swine did. He cut himself with a knife, then bled over the shirt. He knew that would drive the dogs crazy. Man blood always does when they're on a kill patrol. So they would smell the blood, and inhale the chilli."

Van Rensberg counted up the items of clothing.

"He also stripped down," he said. "We're looking for someone stark naked."

"Maybe not," said McBride.

The South African had outfitted his force along military lines. They all wore the same uniform. Into canvas, midcalf combat boots, they tucked khaki drill trousers. Each had a broad leather belt with a buckle. Above the waist each man had a shirt in the pale African-bush camouflage known as "leopard." Sleeves were cut at the midforearm, then rolled up to the bicep and ironed flat.

One or two inverted chevrons indicated corporal or sergeant, while the four junior officers had cloth "pips" on the epaulettes of their shirts.

What McBride had discovered, snagged on a thorn near the path where evidently a struggle must have taken place, was an epaulette, ripped off a shirt. It had no pips.

"I don't think our man is naked at all," said McBride. "I think he's wearing a camouflage shirt, minus one epaulette, khaki drill pants, and combat boots. Not to mention a bush hat like yours, Major."

Van Rensberg was the colour of raw terra-cotta. But the evidence told its own story. Two scars along the grit showed where a pair of heels had apparently been dragged through the long grass. At the end of the trail was the stream.

"Throw a body in there," muttered the major, "it'll be over the cliff edge by now."