Free The Leopard Hunts in Darkness by Wilbur Smith

mouthful of the sweet clear water. The Chizarira was a lesser tributary of the great Zambezi, so he was drinking Zambezi waters again, as he had told Henry Pickering
he must. ‘Chizarira’ was a hell of a mouthful for a tourist to pronounce, let alone remember. He needed a name under which to sell his little African paradise.
    ‘Zambezi Waters,’ he said aloud. ‘I’ll call it Zambezi Waters,’ and then almost choked as very close to where he lay a voice said clearly. ‘He must be a mad
man.’
    It was a deep melodious Matabele voice. ‘First, he comes here alone and unarmed, and then he sits amongst the crocodiles and talks to the trees!’
    Craig rolled over swiftly onto his belly, and stared at the three men who had come silently out of the forest and now stood on the bank, ten paces away, watching him with closed, expressionless
faces.
    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 wore jungle fatigues or battle-smocks, most were armed with Nato weapons
and spoke the Shona language. These were former members of the disbanded Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army, now turned political rebels, men subject to no laws, nor higher authority,
forged by a 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 Briton, 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.
    ‘Hau!’ he said, which is an expression of amazement. ‘You speak like a man – but who is this blood brother you boast of?’
    ‘Comrade Minister Tungata Zebiwe,’ Craig answered, and 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