Текст книги "Shout at the Devil"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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their coal-bunkers glutted, their magazines crammed with shell, their crews uncontaminated by the fever miasma of the Rufiji.

Against them a single ship with her battle damage hastily patched,

half her men sick with malaria, burning green cordwood in her furnaces,

her fire-power hampered by the desperate shortage of shell.

He remembered the tiers of empty shell racks, the depleted cordite shelves in the forward magazine.

The magazine? That was it! The magazine! It was something about the magazine that he must remember.

That was the thing that had been nagging him. The magazine!

"Oh, my GodV he shouted in horror. In one abrupt movement he had leapt from his prone position on the bunk to stand in the centre of the cabin.

The skin on his bare upper arms prickled with gooseflesh.

That was where he had seen the Englishman before. He had been with the labour party in the forward magazine.

He would have been there for one reason only sabotage.

Kyller burst from his cabin, and raced, half dressed, along the corridor.

"I must get hold of Commander Lochtkamper. We'll need a dozen men strong men stokers. There are tons of explosive to move, we'll have to handle it all to find whatever the Englishman placed there.

Please, God, give us time. Give us time!" Captain Otto von Kleine bit the tip from the end of his cheroot, and removed a flake of black tobacco from the tip of his tongue with thumb and fore finger. His steward held a match for him and von Kleine lit the cheroot. At the wardroom table, the chairs of Lochtkamper, Kyller, Proust and one other were empty.

"Thank you, Schmidt," he said through the smoke. He pushed his chair back and stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles and laying his shoulders against the padded backrest. The breakfast had not been of gourmet standard; bread without butter, fish taken from the river and strong with the taste of the mud, washed down with black unsweetened coffee. Nevertheless, Herr Fleischer seemed to be enjoying it. He was beginning his third plateful.

Von Kleine found his appreciative snuffling distracting.

This would be the last period of relaxation that von Kleine could anticipate in the next many days. He wanted to savour it along with his cheroot, but the wardroom was not the place to do so. Apart from the gusto with which the Herr Commissioner was demolishing his breakfast, and the smell of fish there was a mood among his officers that was almost tangible. This was the last day and it was heavy with the prospect of what the night might bring. They were all of them edgy and tense. They ate in silence, keeping their attention on their plates, and it was obvious that most of them had slept badly. Von

Kleine decided to finish his cheroot alone in his cabin. He stood up.

"Excuse me please, gentlemen." A polite murmur, and von Kleine turned to leave.

"Yes, Schmidt. What is it?" His steward was standing deferentially in his path.

"For you, sir." Von Kleine clamped the cheroot between his teeth and took the note in both hands, screwing up his eyes against the blue spiral of tobacco smoke. He frowned.

This woman, and the man she claimed was her husband, worried him.

They were a drain on the attention which he should be devoting entirely to the problem of getting Blitcher ready for tonight. Now this message what could she mean "He could save your ship'? He felt a prickle of apprehension.

He swung around.

"Herr Commissioner, a moment of your time, please." Fleischer looked up from his food with a smear of grease on his chin.

Ja?"

"Come with me."

"I will just finish.

"Immediately, please." And to avert argument von Kleine stooped out of the wardroom, leaving Herman Fleischer in terrible indecision,

but he was a man for the occasion, he took the remaining piece of fish on his plate and put it in his mouth. It was a tight fit, but he still found space for the half cup of coffee as well. Then he scooped up a slice of bread and wiped his plate hurriedly. With the bread in his hand he lumbered after von Kleine.

He was still masticating as he entered the sickbay behind von

Kleine. He stopped in surprise.

The woman sat on one of the bunks. She had a cloth in her hand and with it she wiped the mouth of a black man who lay there. There was blood on the cloth. She looked up at Fleischer. Her expression was soft with compassion and sorrow, but it changed the moment she saw

Fleischer.

She stood up quickly.

"Oh, thank God, you've come," she cried with joy as though she were greeting a dear friend. Then incongruously she looked up at the clock.

Keeping warily away from her, Fleischer worked his way around to the opposite side of the bunk by which she stood.

He leaned over and studied the face of the dying man.

There was something very familiar about it. He chewed stolidly as he puzzled over it. It was the association with the woman that triggered his memory.

He made a choking sound, and bits of half chewed bread flew from his MOuth.

"Captain!" he shouted. "This is one of them one of the English bandits."

"kno," said von Kleine.

"Why wasn't I told? This man must be exeCuted immediately.

Even now it might be too late. justice will be cheated."

"Please, Herr

Commissioner. The woman has an important message for you."

"This is monstrous. I should have been told..."

"Be still," snapped von Kleine.

Then to Rosa, "You sent for me? What is it you have to tell us?"

With one hand Rosa was stroking Sebastian's head, but she was looking up at the clock.

"You must tell Herr Fleischer that the time is one minute before seven."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Tell him exactly as I say it."

"Is this a joke?"

"Tell him, quickly. There is very little time."

"She says the time is one minute to seven," von Klein(rattled out the translation.

Then in English, "I have told him."

"Tell him that at seven o'clock he will die."

"What is the meaning of that?"

"Tell him first. Tell him!"

insisted Rosa.

"She says that you will die at seven o'clock." And Fleischer interrupted his impatient gobbling over the prone form of Sebastian.

He stared at the woman for a moment, then he giggled uncertainly.

"Tell her I feel very well," he said, and laughed again, "better than this one here." He prodded Sebastian. "Ja, much better." And his laughter came full and strong, booming in the confined space of the sick-bay.

"Tell him my husband has placed a bomb in this ship, and it will explode at seven o'clock."

"Where?"demanded von Kleine.

"Tell him first."

"If this is true you are in danger also where is it?"

"Tell Fleischer what I said."

"There is a bomb in the ship."

And Fleischer stopped laughing.

"She is lying, "he spluttered. "English Lies."

"Where is the bomb? "von Kleine had grasped Rosa's arm.

"It is too late, Rosa smiled complacently. "Look at the clock."

"Where is it?" Von Kleine shook her wildly in his agitation.

"In the magazine. The forward magazine."

"In the Magazine! Sweet merciful Jesus!" von Kleine swore in German, and turned for the door.

"The magazine?" shouted Fleischer and started after him.

"It is impossible it can't be." But he was running, wildly,

desperately, and behind him he heard Rosa Oldsmith's triumphant laughter.

"You are dead. Like my baby dead, like my father. It is too late to run, much too late!" Von Kleine went up the companion-way steps three at a time. He came out into the alleyway that led to the magazine, and stopped abruptly.

The alleyway was almost blocked by a mountain of cordite charges thrown haphazard from the magazine by a knot of frantically busy' stokers

"What are you doing? "he shouted.

"Lieutenant Kyller is looking for a bomb."

"Has he found it?" von

Kleine demanded as he brushed past them.

"Not yet, sir." Von Kleine paused again in the entrance to the magazine. It was a shambles. Led by Kyller, men were tearing at the stacks of cordite, sweeping them from the shelves, ransacking the magazine.

Von Kleine jumped forward to help.

"Why didn't you send for me?" he asked as he reached up to the racks above his head.

"No time, sir, "grunted Kyller beside him.

"How did you know about the bomb?"

"It's a guess I could be wrong, Sir."

"You're right! The woman told us. It's set for seven o'clock."

"Help us, God! Help us!" pleaded Kyller, and hurled himself at the next shelf.

"It could be anywhere anywhere!" Captain von Kleine worked like a stevedore, knee-deep in spilled cylinders of cordite.

"We should clear the ship. Get the men off." Kyller attacked the next rack.

"No time. We've got to find it." Then in the uproar there was a small sound, a muffled tinny buzz. The alarm bell of a travelling-clock.

"There!" shouted Kyller. "That's id" And he dived across the magazine at the same moment as von Kleine did. They collided and fell,

but Kyller was up instantly, dragging himself on to his feet with hands clawing at the orderly rack of cordite cylinders.

The buzz of the alarm clock seemed to roar in his ears.

He reached out and his hands fell on the smoothly paper-wrapped parcels of death, and at that instant the two copper terminals within the leather case of the clock which had been creeping infinitesimally slowly towards each other for the past twelve hours, made contact.

Electricity stored in the dry cell battery flowed through the circuit, reached the hair-thin filament in the detonator cap, and heated it white-hot. The detonator fired, transferring its energy into the sticks of gelignite that were packed into the cigar box. The wave of explosion leapt from molecule to molecule with the speed of light so that the entire contents of Blitcher's magazine were consumed in one hundredth part of a second. With it were consumed Lieutenant Kyller and Captain von Kleine and the men about them.

In the centre of that fiery holocaust they burned to vapour.

The blast swept through Blucher. Downwards through two decks with a force that blew the belly out of her as easily as popping a. paper bag, down through ten fathoms of water to strike the bottom of the river and the shock wave bounced up to raise fifteen-foot "waves along the surface.

It blew sideways through Blitcher's watertight bulkheads, crumpling and tearing them like silver paper.

It caught Rosa Oldsmith as she lay across Sebastian's chest,

hugging him. She did not even hear it come.

It caught Herman Fleischer just as he reached the deck, and shredded him to nothingness.

It swept through the engine room and burst the great boilers,

releasing millions of cubic feet of scalding steam to race through the ship.

It blew upwards through the deck, lifting the forward gun-turret off its seating, tossing the hundreds of tons of steel high in a cloud of steam and smoke and debris.

It killed every single human being aboard. It did more than merely kill them, it reduced them to gas and minute particles of flesh or bone. Then still unsatisfied, its fiery unabated, it blew outwards from Blitcher's shattered hulk, a mighty wind that tore the branches from the mangrove forest and stripped it of leaves.

It lifted a column of smoke and flame writhing and twisting into the bright morning sky above the Rufiji delta, and the waves swept out across the river as though from the eye of a hurricane.

They overwhelmed the two launches that were approaching Blitcher,

pouring over them and capsizing them, swirling them over and over and spilling their human cargo into the frightened frothing water.

And the shock waves rolled on across the delta to burst thunderously against the far hills, or to dissipate out on the vastness of the Indian Ocean.

They passed over the British cruiser Renounce as she entered the channel between the mangroves. They rolled overhead like giant cannon-balls across the roof of the sky.

Captain Arthur Joyce leapt to the rail of his bridge, and he saw the column of agonized smoke rise from the swamps ahead of him. A

grotesque living thing, unbelievable in its size, black and silver and shot through with flame.

"They've done it!" shouted Arthur Joyce. "By Jove, they've done it!" He was shaking; his whole body juddering, his face white as ice,

and his eyes which he could not drag from that spinning column of destruction that rose into the sky, filled slowly with tears. He let them overflow his eyelids and run unashamedly down his cheeks.

Two old men walked into a grove of fever trees that stood on the south bank of the Abati river. They stopped beside a pile of gargantuan bones from which the scavengers had picked the flesh,

leaving them scattered and white.

"The tusks are gone, "said Walaka.

"Yes," agreed Mohammed, "the Askari came back and stole them."

Together they walked on through the fever trees and then they stopped again. There was a low mound of earth at the edge of the grove.

Already it had settled and new grass was growing upon it.

"He was a man, "said Walaka.

"Leave me, my cousin. I will stay here a while."

"Stay in peace,

then," said Walaka, and settled the string of his blanket roll more comfortably over his shoulder before he walked on.

Mohammed squatted down beside the grave. He sat there unmoving all that day. Then in the evening Mohammed stood up and walked away towards the south.

The End