They reached the bar. "Don't risk the whisky!" Job yelled. "And make them open the beer in front of you."

They drank directly from the cans, besieged in a corner of the bar with the ocean of humanity pressing hard against them.

There were a few white faces, all male, tourists and Peace Corps and military advisors, but most of the clientele were black soldiers still in uniform so that Sean and Job blended into their surroundings.

"Where are you, Cuthbert, in your Superman shirt?" Sean pushed away one of the more persistent bar girls and peered over the heads of the dancers. "We'll never find him in here."

"Ask one of the harm en Job suggested.

"Good thinking." Sean reached across and grabbed the front of the Barman's shirt to get his attention, then stuck a five-dollar bank note into his top pocket and shouted the question in his ear.

The Barman grinned and yelled back, "Wait! I find him."

Ten minutes later they saw Cuthbert working his way down the bar toward them, a skinny little man wearing a Superman T-shirt at least two sizes too large for him.

"Hey, Cuthbert, anybody ever tell you that you look like Sammy Davis Junior?" Sean greeted him.

"All the time, man." Cuthbert looked pleased. Sean had obviously picked out his pet vanity.

"Your uncle sends his love. Can we go somewhere to talk?"

Sean suggested as they shook hands.

"Best place to talk is here," Cuthbert answered. "Nobody else going to hear a thing you say. Get me a beer, can't talk with a dry throat."

Cuthbert downed half his beer at a draft and then asked, breathless from the effort, "You were supposed to be here last night.

Where you been, man?"

"We were delayed."

you should have been here last night. Would have been easy, man.

Tonight, well, tonight is different." - "What has changed?" Sean asked with a sink of dread in his chest.

"Everything changed." Cuthbert said. "The Hercules arrived seventeen hundred hours. Come to pick up the goods."

"Has it left yet?" Sean demanded anxiously.

Don't know for sure. She was still there when I left the base at twenty hundred hours. Sitting out there in front of number three hangar. Perhaps she still there now, perhaps she long gone. Who knows?"

"Thanks a lot," Sean said. "That's a great help."

"That's not all, man." Cuthbert clearly enjoyed being the bearer of evil tidings.

"Hit us with it, Cuthbert."

He finished the beer in another long swallow and held up the empty can. Sean ordered another and Cuthbert waited for it, drawing out the suspense masterfully.

"Two full para commandos of the Fifth Brigade came down from Harare in the Hercules. They real cool, those Fifth Brigade cats," Cuthbert said with relish. "They real mean dudes, no shit."

"Cuthbert, you've been watching too much Miami Vice on television," Sean accused, but he was worried. The Fifth Brigade were the elite of the Zimbabwean Army, converted by their North Korean instructors into ruthlessly efficient killing machines. Two full para commandos of a hundred men each, added to the standing garrison of Third Brigade troops-almost a thousand crack veterans on base.

"Your uncle says you are going to take us in, Cuthbert. Pass us through the gates."

"No way, man!" C#thbert was vehement. "Not with those Fifth Brigade cats in there."

"Your uncle will be pissed off with you, Cuthbert. He's a pretty al cat himself, man, Uncle China is." Sean imitated Cuthbert's co hip jargon.

Cuthbert looked worried. "Man, I've fixed your pass," he explained hurriedly. "You'll have no trouble getting in. The guards are expecting you. You don't need me, man. No sense I should compromise myself, no sense at all."

"You've got the pass here?"

"Right on. The password too. You'll have no trouble."

"Let's go." Sean took Job's arm and steered him toward the door. "That Hercules could take off any time."

Cuthbert hurried between them down the lane to where the three Unitnogs were parked.

"Here's the pass." He handed the plastic-covered card to Sean.

It was slashed with a scarlet "Top Priority" cross.

"The password is a number, "fifty-seven," and your reply is "Samara Machel." Then you show the pass and sign the book.

Simple as a pimple, man. You in like Flynn."

"I'll tell your uncle you couldn't bring yourself to come with US.

"Hey, give me a break, will you? No sense me getting culled, man.

I'm more use to my uncle alive and kicking than dead meat."

"Cuthbert, you are wasted in signals. You definitely should be on television." Sean shook hands with him and watched him scurry back into the Stardust Club.