His whole attention was fixed on the dwindling speck of blue, so that he did not see the three CV.3 tanks crawl out of the main street of the village five hundred yards away.

He was still staring upwards as the tanks stopped, rocking gently on their suspensions, and the turrets with the long Spandaus traversed around towards him.

He did not hear the crash of cannon for the sh.e.l.l struck long before the sound carried to him. There was only the earth stopping impact and the burst of sh.e.l.l that hurled him from the hatch.

He lay on the earth beside the shattered hull, and he felt downwards with his good hand, for there was something wrong with his stomach. He groped down, and there was nothing where his stomach should have been, just a gaping hole into which his hand sunk, as though into the soft warm flesh of a rotten fruit.

He tried to withdraw his hand, but it would not move.

There was no longer muscular control, and it grew darker.

He tried to open his eyes and then realized that they were wide open, staring up at the bright sky. The darkness was in his head, and the cold was in his whole body.

In the darkness and the icy cold, he heard a voice say in Italian, "E marta he is dead." And he thought with mild surprise, "Yes, I am.

This time, I am," and he tried to grin, but his lips would not move and he went on staring up at the sky with pale blue eyes.

He is dead," repeated Gino.

"Are you certain?" Count Aldo Belli demanded from the turret of the tank.

"Si, I am certain." Warily the Count climbed down the hull.

"You are right," he agreed, studying the man. "He is truly dead. "Then he straightened up and puffed out his chest.

"Gino," he commanded. "Get a picture of me with the cadaver of the English bandit." And Gino backed away, staring into the viewfinder of the big black camera.

"Chin up a little, my Colonel," he instructed.

Vicky Camberwell brought the Puss Moth out over the final crest of the pa.s.s, with a mere two hundred feet to spare, for the small overladen aircraft was fast approaching its ceiling.

Ahead of her, the highlands stretched away to Addis Ababa in the south. Below her pa.s.sed the thin raw muddy bisecting lines of the Dessie road. She saw the road was deserted. The army of Ethiopia had pa.s.sed. The fish had slipped through the net but the thought gave her no pleasure.

She turned in her seat and looked back, down the long gloomy corridor of the Sardi Gorge. From the cliffs on each side of the gorge, the rain waters still fell in silver white waterfalls and muddy cataracts so that it seemed that even the mountains wept.

She straightened up in her seat, and lifting her hand to her face she found without surprise that her own cheek was wet and slick with tears.

The novels of Wilbur Smith

The Courtney Novels:

When the Lion Feeds

The Sound of Thunder

A Sparrow Falls

The Burning Sh.o.r.e

Power of the Sword

Rage

A Time to Die

The Ballantyne novels:

A Falcon Flies

Men of Men

The Angels Weep

The Leopard Hunts in Darkness

Also:

The Dark of the Sun

Shout at the Devil

Gold Mine

The Diamond Hunters

The Sunbird

Eagle in the Sky

The Eye of the Tiger

Cry Wolf

Hungry as the Sea

Wild Justice

Golden Fox