Текст книги "Cry Wolf"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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pale blue white sky that it filled the lens. Then his heart jumped

again below the rolling spreading cloud he could make out the dark

insect shapes of many swiftly moving vehicles. Suddenly the viscosity

of the air changed again, and the shapes of the approaching column

altered becoming monstrous, looming through the mist of duSt. closer,

every second closer and more menacing.

Jake shouted, and Gareth was beside him in an instant.

"Are you crazy?" he gasped. "They'll overrun us in a minute."

"Get started," Jake snapped. "Get the engines started," and slid down

into the driver's hatch. There was a flurry of sudden frantic movement

around the cars. The engines were cranked into reluctant life, surging

and missing and backfiring as the volatile fuel turned to vapour in the

heat and starved the engines.

The Ras was lifted into the turret of Gareth's car by half a dozen of

his men at arms, and installed behind the Vickers gun. Their job

accomplished, his men were leaving him and hurrying to mount their

ponies when the Ras let out a series of shrieks in Amharic and pointed

at the empty cave of his own mouth, devoid of teeth and big enough to

hibernate a bear.

There was a brief moment of consternation I until the senior and eldest

man at arms produced a large leather covered box from his saddle bag

and hurried with it to kneel humbly on the sponson of the car and

proffer the open box to the Ras. Mollified, the Ras reached into the

box and brought out a magnificent set of porcelain teeth, big and white

and sharp enough to fit in the mouth of a Derby winner, complete with

bright red gums.

With only a short struggle he forced the set into his mouth, and then

snapped them like a brook trout rising to the fly, before peeling back

his lips in a death's head grin.

His followers cooed and exclaimed with admiration, and Gregorius told

Jake proudly, "My grandfather only wears his teeth when he is fighting

or pleasuring a lady," and Jake spared a brief glance from the

advancing Italian army to admire the dazzling dental display.

"Makes him look younger, not a day over ninety, "he gave his opinion,

and revved the engine, carefully manoeuvring the car into a hull-down

position below the bank from where he could keep the Italians under

observation. Gareth brought the other car up alongside and grinned at

him from the open hatch. It was a wicked grin, and Jake realized that

the Englishman was looking forward to the coming clash with

anticipation.

It was no longer necessary to use binoculars. The Italian column was

less than two miles distant, moving swiftly on a course that was

carrying it parallel to the dry river-bed, beyond the curved horns of

the ambush into the open unprotected funnel of flat land between the

mountains.

Another fifteen minutes at this rate of advance and it would have

turned the Ethiopian flank and would be able to drive without

resistance to the mouth of the gorge and Jake knew better than to hope

to be able to reorganize the rabble of cavalry once their formations

were shattered. Instinctively he knew that they would fight like

giants as long as the tide carried them forward, but any retreat would

become a rout, and they would race for the hills like factory workers

at five o'clock. They were accustomed to fighting as individuals,

avoiding set piece battles, but snatching opportunity as it was

offered, swift as hawks, but giving instantly before any determined

thrust by an enemy.

"Come on!" he muttered to himself, pounding his fist against his thigh

impatiently, and with the first stirring of alarm. Unless the bait was

offered within the next few moments. Because they fought as

individuals, each man his own general, and because the art of ambush

and entrapment came as naturally to the Ethiopian as the feel of a

rifle in his hand, Jake need not have fretted.

Seeming to rise from the flat scorched earth under the wheels of the

leading Italian vehicles, a small galloping knot of horsemen flitted

across the heat-tortured earth, seeming to float above it like a flock

of dark birds. Their shapes wavering and indistinct, wrapped in pale

streamers of dust, they cut back obliquely across the Italian line of

march, running hard for the centre of the hidden Ethiopian line.

Almost instantly a single vehicle detached itself from the head of the

column and headed on a converging course with the flying horsemen.

Its speed was frightening, and it closed so swiftly that the squadron

of cavalry was forced to veer away, forced to edge out towards where

the two armoured cars were hidden.

Behind the single speeding vehicle the Italian column lost its rigid

shape. The front half of it swung away in a long untidy line abreast

in pursuit of the horsemen. These were all larger, heavier vehicles,

with high, canvas-covered cupolas, and their progress was ponderous and

so slow that they could not gain perceptibly on the galloping horses.

However, the smaller faster vehicle was gaining rapidly and Jake stood

higher to give himself a better view as he refocused the binoculars. He

recognized instantly the big open Rolls-Royce tourer that he had last

seen at the Wells of Chaldi. Its polished metalwork glittered in the

sunlight, its low rakish lines enhancing the impression of speed and

power, as the dust boiled out from behind its spinning rear wheels with

their huge flashing central bosses.

Even as he watched, the Rolls braked and skidded broadside, coming to a

halt in a furiously billowing cloud of dust. A figure tumbled from the

rear seat.

Jake watched the man brace himself over the sporting rifle and the

spurt of gunsmoke from the muzzle as he fired seven shots in quick

succession, the rifle kicking up abruptly at the recoil and the thud

thud of the discharge reaching Jake only seconds later.

The horsemen were drawing swiftly away from the Rolls, but neither the

changing range nor the dust and mirage affected the marksman. At each

shot a horse went down, sliding against the earth, legs kicking to the

sky or plunging and rolling, as it struggled to regain its legs,

falling back at last and lying still.

Then the rifleman leaped aboard the Rolls again, and the pursuit was

continued, gaining swiftly on the survivors, the heavy phalanx of

trucks and troop transports lumbering on behind it the whole mass of

horses, men and machines rolling steadily deeper into the

killing-ground that Gareth Swales had so carefully surveyed and laid

out for them.

"The bastard!" whispered Jake, as he watched the Rolls skid to a

standstill once more. The Italian was taking no chances of approaching

the horsemen closely. He was standing well off, out of effective range

of their ancient weapons, and he was picking them off one at a time, in

the leisurely fashion of a shot gunner at a grouse shoot in fact, the

whole bloody episode was being played out in the spirit of the hunt.

Even at the range of almost a thousand yards, Jake seemed able to sense

the blood passion of the Italian marksman, the man's burning urge to

kill merely for the sake of inflicting death, for the deep gut thrill

of it.

If they intervened now, cutting into the flank of the widespread and

disordered column, they might save the lives of many of the frantically

fleeing horsemen. But the Italian column was not yet fully enmeshed in

the trap that had been laid. Swiftly, Jake traversed the glasses

across the dust-swirling and heat-distorted plain and for the first

time he noticed that a dozen trucks of the Italian rear guard had not

joined the mad, tear arse helter-skelter stampede after the

Ethiopian horsemen. This small group had halted, seemingly under some

strict control, and now they had been left two miles behind the

roaring, dusty avalanche of heavy vehicles. Jake could spare no more

attention to this group, for now the slaughter was being continued, the

wildly flying horsemen being cut down by the crack rifleman from the

Rolls.

The temptation to intervene now overwhelmed Jake. He knew it was not

the correct tactical moment, but he thought, "The hell with it, I'm not

a general, and those poor bastards out there need help." He shoved his

right foot down hard on the throttle and the engine bellowed, but

before he could pull forward and run at the bank, he was forestalled

by

Gareth Swales. He had been watching Jake, and the play of emotion over

his face was plain to read. At the moment he revved the engine, Gareth

swung the front end of the Hump across his bows, blocking him

effectively.

"I say, old chap, don't be an idiot," Gareth called across the narrow

space. "Calm the savage breast, you'll spoil the whole show."

"Those poor, Jake shouted back angrily.

"They've got to take their chances. "Gareth cut him short.

"I told you once before your sentimental old-fashioned ideas would get

us both into trouble." At this stage the argument was drowned by the

Ras. He was standing tall in the turret above Gareth. He had armed

himself with the broad, two-handed war sword, and now the excitement

became too much for him to bear longer in silence. He let out a series

of shrill ululating war cries, and swung the sword in a great hissing

circle around his head both the silver blade and his brilliant set of

teeth catching the sun and flashing like semaphores.

He punctuated his shrill war cries with wild kicks at his driver,

urging him in heated Amharic to have at the enemy, and Gareth ducked

and twisted out of the way of his flying feet.

"A bunch of maniacs!" protested Gareth as he dodged.

"I've got myself mixed up with a bunch of maniacs!"

"Major

Swales!" shouted Gregorius, unable to stay out of the argument a

moment longer. "My grandfather orders you to advance!"

"You tell your grandfather to-" but Gareth's reply was cut short as a

foot caught him in the ribs.

"Advance!" shouted Gregorius.

"Come on, for chrissake," yelled Jake.

"Yaahooo!" hooted the Ras, and swung around in the turret to wave on

his men at arms. They needed no further invitation. In a loose mob,

they spurred their ponies past the stymied cars and, brandishing their

rifles above their heads, robes streaming in the wind like battle

ensigns, they lunged up the steep bank into the open and galloped

furiously on to the flank of the scattered Italian column.

"Oh my God," sighed Gareth. "Every man a bloody general-"

"Look!"

shouted Jake, pointing back down the course of the dry river-bed, and

they all fell abruptly silent at the spectacle.

It seemed as though the very earth had opened, disgorgeing rank upon

rank of wildly galloping horsemen. Where a moment before the sweep of

land below the mountains had been empty and silent, now it swarmed with

men and horses, hundreds upon hundreds of them, dashing headlong upon

the lumbering Italian column.

The dust hung over it all, rolling forward like the fog off a winter

sea, shrouding the sun, so that horses and machines were dark infernal

shapes below the sombre clouds, and the ruddy sun glinted dully on the

steel of rifle and sword.

"That does it," Gareth agreed bitterly, and reversed his car to clear

Jake's front, before swinging away, engine roaring and the wheels

spinning for purchase in the steep loose earth of the river-bank.

Jake turned wide of the other car and took the bank at an angle to

lessen the gradient, and the two cumbersome machines burst out into the

plain, wheel to wheel.

Before them was the open flank of massed soft-skinned vehicles, as

tempting a target as they had ever been offered in their long and

warlike careers. The two iron ladies swept forward together,

and it seemed to Jake that there was a new tone to the deep engine note

as though they sensed that once again they were fulfilling the true

reason for their existence. Jake glanced quickly at the Hump as she

sailed along beside him. Her angular steelwork, with its flat abrupt

surfaces from which rose the tall turret, still gave her the ugly

old-maidish silhouette, but there was a new majesty in the way she

plunged forward her bright Ethiopian colours fluttered gaily as a

cavalry pennant and the high thin, rimmed wheels spurned the sandy

earth like the hooves of a thoroughbred. Beneath him, Priscilla drove

forward as gamely, and Jake felt a warm flood of affection for his two

old ladies.

"Have at them, girls!" he shouted aloud, and Gareth Swales, head

protruding from the driver's hatch of the Hump, turned towards him.

There was a freshly lit cheroot clamped in the corner of his mouth,

seeming to have sprouted there miraculously of its own accord, and

Gareth grinned around it.

"Nob Xegitind carbomndum!" Jake caught the words faintly above the

roar of wind and motor, then turned his full attention back to

controlling the racing machine, and bringing her as swiftly as possible

into the gaping breach in the Italian line.

Abruptly the pattern of movement ahead of him changed. The exultantly

pursuing Italian warriors had realized belatedly that the roles had

been neatly switched.

The Count picked up the horseman in the sight, and led off just a

touch, a hair's breadth, for the Marmlicher was a high-velocity rifle

and the range was not more than a hundred metres.

He saw the hit clearly, the man lurched in the saddle and sprawled

forward over the horse's neck, but he did not fall. The rifle dropped

from his hands and cartwheeled across the earth, but the man clung

desperately to the horse's mane while quick crimson spread across the

shoulder of his dirty white robe.

The Count fired again, aiming for the junction of the horse's neck and

shoulder, and saw the jarring impact spin the animal off its feet,

so that it fell heavily upon its wounded rider, crushing the air from

his lungs in a short high wail.

The Count laughed, wild with excitement. "How many, Gino? How many is

that?"

"Eight, my Colonel."

"Keep counting. Keep counting," he urged, as he swung the rifle,

seeking the next target, peering eagerly over the open vee sight. Then

suddenly he froze, the rifle barrel wavering and sinking to point at

his glossy toe caps His lower jaw unhinged and slowly sank, as if in

sympathy with the rifle barrel. His recent affliction, forgotten in

the excitement of the chase, returned suddenly with a force that turned

his bowels to water and his legs to rubber.

"Merciful Mary!" he whispered.

The entire horizon was moving, an Unbroken line from one edge of his

vision to the other. It took him many seconds to assimilate what he

was seeing, to realize that instead of fifteen horsemen, there were

suddenly thousands upon thousands, and that rather than running before

him they were now moving towards him at a velocity which he would not

have believed possible. As he stared, he saw rank upon rank of the

enemy seemingly rising from the very earth ahead of him, and rushing

towards him through a curtain of fine pale dust. He saw the lowering

sun glint red as blood upon the naked blades, and the drumming of

galloping hooves sounded like the thunder of a giant waterfall. Yet

faintly through the thunder, he heard the blood-freezing war shrieks of

the horsemen.

"Giuseppe," he gasped. "Take us away from here fast!

Very fast." This was the sort of appeal that went directly to the

driver's heart. He spun the big car so nimbly that the Count's

considerably weakened legs collapsed and he fell backwards onto the

leather seat.

Spread over a front of a quarter of a mile behind and on each side of

the Rolls came thirty of the dun coloured Fiat troop-carriers.

Despite their most fervent efforts, they had lost ground steadily to

the thrusting Rolls and they now lumbered along almost a thousand yards

behind. However, the excitement of the chase had affected the

occupants and they had climbed up on the cabs and cupolas, and hung

there hooting and yelling as they watched the sport, like runners at a

fox hunt.

This solid phalanx of vehicles, advancing almost wheel to wheel over

the rough ground, at a speed which would have horrified the

manufacturers, was suddenly faced with the urgent necessity of

reversing its headlong career without any loss of speed.

The drivers of the two leading trucks whose need was most critical

solved the problem by spinning_ the wheels to hard lock, one left and

the other right, and they came together radiator to radiator at a

combined speed in excess of sixty miles per hour. In a roaring cloud

of steam, splintering glass and rending metal, their cargoes of black

shirted infantry men were scattered like wheat upon the earth, or

impaled on various metal projections of the vehicle bodies. The

trucks, inextricably locked into each other, settled slowly on their

shattered suspensions, and no sooner had the dust begun to drift away

than there was a belly baking thump as the contents of their shattered

fuel tanks ignited in a tall volcanic spout of flame and black smoke.

The other vehicles managed to reverse their courses without serious

collision and streamed away into their own dust-clouds, pursued by a

horde of galloping, gibbering cavalry.

Count Aldo Belli could not bring himself to glance back over his

shoulder, certain that he would find a razor-edged sword swishing

inches from his cringing rear, and he leaned over his driver, spurring

him to greater speed by beating on his unprotected head and shoulders

with a fist clenched like a hammer.

"Faster!" shouted the Count, his fine baritone rising to an uncertain

contralto. "Faster, you idiot or I will have you shod" and he hit the

driver again behind one ear, experiencing a small spark of relief as

the Rolls overtook the rear vehicles in the disordered herd of fleeing

trucks.

Now at last he judged it safe to look back, and his relief was more

intense when he realized that the Rolls was easily capable of out

–running a mounted man. He experienced a warm flood of returning

courage.

"My rifle, Gino," he shouted. "Give me my rifle." But the

Sergeant was trying to focus his camera on the pursuing horde, and

the

Count hit him a blow over the top of his head.

"Idiot. This is war," he bellowed. "And I am a warrior give me my

rifle!" Giuseppe, the driver, hearing him, reluctantly decided that he

was expected to slow the Rolls to give the Count an opportunity to

follow his warlike intentions but, at the first diminution of speed,

he received another lusty crack on the centre of his pate and the

Count's voice went shrill again.

"Idiot," he screeched. "Do you want to get us killed?

Faster, man, faster!" and with unbounded relief the driver pushed his

foot flat on the throttle and the Rolls leapt forward again.

Gino was down on his hands and knees at the Count's feet, and now he

came up with the Mannlicher in his hands and handed it to the Count.

"It's loaded, my Count."

"Brave boy!" The Count braced himself with the rifle held at his hip,

and looked about for something to shoot at.

The Ethiopian cavalry had fallen well behind at this stage, and the

Rolls had overtaken most of the troop-carriers they were between the

Count and the enemy. The Count was considering ordering Giuseppe to

work his way out on to the flank, and thus give him an open field of

fire weighing the pleasure of shooting down the black riders at a

respectable range against any possible physical danger to himself and

he turned on his precarious perch in the back seat to look out in that

direction.

He stared incredulously at what he saw. Two great humpbacked shapes

were sailing in across the open grassland. They looked like two

deformed camels, coming on swiftly with a curious loping progress that

was at once comical and yet dreadfully menacing.

The Count stared at them uncomprehendingly, until with a sudden jolt of

shock and a new warm flood of adrenalin into his bloodstream,

he realized that the two strange vehicles were moving fast enough and

at such an angle as to cut off his retreat.

"Giuseppe!" he shrieked, and hit the driver with the butt of the

Marmlicher. It was not a heavy blow, it was meant merely to attract

his attention, but Giuseppe had already taken much punishment and was

by now lightly concussed.

He clung to the wheel with white knuckles and roared on directly into

the path of the new enemy.

"Giuseppe!" shrieked the Count again, as he suddenly recognized the

gaily coloured flashes on the turret of the nearest machine, and at the

same instant saw the thick stubby cylindrical shape that protruded

ahead of it. It was fluted vertically and at the far end a short pipe

like muzzle thrust out of the heavy water-jacket.

"Oh, merciful Mother of God!" he howled as the machine altered course

slightly and the muzzle of the Vickers machine gun pointed directly at

him.

"You fool!" he shrieked at Giuseppe, hitting him again.

"Turn! You idiot, turn!" Suddenly through the tears of pain, the

singing in his ears, and the blinding terror that gripped him, Giuseppe

saw the huge camel-like shape looming up ahead of him and he spun the

wheel again just as the muzzle of the Vickers erupted in a fluttering

pillar of bright flame and the air all around them was torn by the hiss

and crack of a thousand bull whips.

Castelani stood on the cab of his truck, and peered disapprovingly

through his binoculars into the distant clouds of rolling dust where

confused movement and shadowy indistinguishable shapes flitted without

seeming purpose or pattern.

It had required all of his presence and authority to restrain the ten

trucks which carried the artillery men and towed their field pieces, to

keep them under his personal command and to prevent them joining in the

wildly enthusiastic rush after the small contingent of

Ethiopian horsemen.

Castelani was about to give the order to mount up and cautiously follow

the Count's charge into history and glory, when he raised the

binoculars again and it seemed that the pattern of dust-obscured

movement out there had altered. Suddenly he saw the unmistakable shape

of a Fiat transport emerge from the dust bank, and move ponderously

back towards him. Through the glasses the men who clung to the canvas

roof were all staring back in the direction from which they were coming

at speed.

He panned the glasses slowly and saw another truck lumber out of the

dust-mist headed back towards him. One of the soldiers on its roof was

aiming and firing his rifle back into the obscuring clouds and his

comrades, clinging to the roof about him, were frozen in attitudes of

trepidation and alarm.

At that moment, Castelani heard something which he recognized

instantly, his skin prickling at the distant ripping tearing sound.

The sound of a British Vickers machine gun.

His eye sought the direction, turning swiftly to the right flank of the

extended Italian column which seemed now to be rushing back towards him

in confused and completely disordered retreat.

He picked up the tall hump-backed shape instantly, standing high on the

open plain, coming in fast with the strange bounding motion of a

rocking horse, cutting boldly into the flank of the mass of

soft-skinned Italian transports.

"Unlimber the guns," shouted Castelani. "Prepare to receive enemy

armour." The Vickers machine guns in the turrets of the two armoured

cars had ball-type mountings. The barrels could be elevated or

depressed, but they could not traverse more than ten degrees to left or

right, this being the limit of the ball mountings" turn. The driver

had of necessity to act as gun-layer, swinging the entire vehicle to

Within the limited traverse aim of the gun, or at least bring it of the

mounting.

The Ras found this frustrating beyond all enduring. He would select a

target, and shout in perfectly clear and coherent Amharic to his

driver. Gareth Swales, not understanding a word of it, had already

selected another target and was doing his best to line up on it while

the Ras delivered a series of wild kicks at his kidneys to register his

royal right of refusing to engage it.

The consequence of this was that the Hump wove a crazy,

unpredictable course through the Italian column, spinning off at sudden

tangents as the two crew members shouted bitter recriminations at each

other, almost ignoring the sheets of rifle fire that thundered upon the

steel hull from point-blank range, like hail on a galvanized roof.

Priscilla the Pig, on the other hand, was doing deadly execution.

She had missed her first burst fired at the speeding Rolls, and it had

ducked away behind the screen of dust and bucking trucks. Now,

however, Jake and Gregoritis were working with all the precision and

mutual understanding that had developed between them.

"Left driver, left, left," called Gregorius, peering down the open

sights of the Vickers at the truck that roared and bounced along a

hundred yards ahead of them.

"All right, I'm on him," shouted Jake, as the vehicle appeared in the

narrow field of his visor. This was a perforated steel plate that

allowed only forward vision but once Jake had the truck centred, he

followed its violent efforts to dislodge him, closing in rapidly until

he was twenty yards behind it.

The back of the truck was packed with black-shirted infantry men. Some

of them were directing wild but rapid rifle fire at the pursuing car,

the bullets clanging and whining off the hull, but most of them clung

white-faced to the sides of the truck and stared back with stricken

eyes as the armoured death carrier bore down inexorably upon them.

"Shoot, Greg!" called Jake. Even through the cold anger that gripped

him, he was pleased that the boy had obeyed his orders and held his

fire until this moment. There would be no wastage now, at so short a

range every round ripped into the Italian truck, tearing through

canvas, flesh, bone and steel at the rate of seven hundred rounds a

minute.

The truck swerved violently and its front end collapsed; it went over

broadside, crashing over and over, flinging the men high in the air,

the way a spaniel throws off the droplets from its back as it leaps

from water to land.

"Driver, right," called Gregorius immediately. "Another truck,

right, a little more right that's it, you're on." And they roared in

pursuit of another panic-stricken load of Italians.

A hundred yards away on their flank the Hump scored its first success.

Gareth Swales was no longer able to accept the indignity of the Ras's

flying feet, and his frenzied and completely unintelligible commands.

He left the controls of the racing car to swing an angry punch at the

Ras.

"Cut that out, old chap," he snapped. "Play the game I'm on your side,

damn it." The car, no longer under control, jinked suddenly.

Almost side by side with them sped a Fiat truck, filled with

Italians, and the driver had not yet realized that there was another

enemy apart from the pursuing hordes of Ethiopian horsemen. His head

was twisted around over his shoulder at an impossible angle, and he

drove by instinct alone.

The two uncontrolled vehicles came together at an acute angle and at

the top of their combined speeds. Steel met steel in a storm of sparks

and they staggered away from the blow, both of them veering over

steeply. For a moment it" seemed that the Hump would go over; she

teetered at the extreme end of her centre of gravity and then came back

on to all four wheels with a crash that threw the men inside her

unmercifully against her steel sides, before racing on again with

Gareth wrestling at the wheel for control.

The Fiat truck was lighter and stood higher; the armoured car had

caught her neatly under the cab and she did not even waver, but flipped

over on her back, All four wheels still spinning as they "pointed at

the sky, and the cab and canvas-covered hood were torn away instantly,

the men beneath them smeared between steel and hard earth.

It was all too much for the Ras. He could no longer contain his

frustration at being enclosed in a hot metal box from which he could

see almost nothing, while all around hundreds of his hated enemies were

escaping with complete impunity. He flung open the hatch of the turret

and stuck out his head and shoulders, yipping shrilly with bloodlust,

frustration, anger and excitement.

At that moment, an open sky-blue and glistening black Rolls-Royce

tourer flashed across the front of the Hump. In the rear seat was an

Italian officer bedecked with the glittering insignia of rank instantly

Gareth Swales and the Ras were in perfect accord once again.

They had found a target eminently acceptable to both of them.

"I say, tally-ho!" cried Gareth, to be answered by a bloodcurdling

"How do you do!" like the crowing of an enraged rooster from the

turret above him.

Count Aldo Belli was in hysterics, for the driver seemed to have lost

all sense of direction; now more than just a little concussed, he had

turned at right angles across the line of flight of the Italian column.

This was as hazardous as running an ocean liner at full speed through a

field of icebergs for the rolling dust-clouds had reduced visibility to

less than fifty feet, and out of this brown fog the lumbering

troop-carriers appeared without warning, the drivers in no fit

condition to take evasive action, all looking back over their

shoulders.

Ahead of them, two more monstrous shapes appeared out of the dust;

one was an Italian truck and the other was one of the cumbersome

camel-backed vehicles with the Ethiopian colours splashed upon its hull

and a Vickers machine gun protruding from its turret.

Suddenly the armoured car swerved and crashed heavily into the side of

the truck, capsizing it instantly and then swerving back towards the

Rolls. It came so close, towering over them so threateningly, that it

entered even Giuseppe's limited field of vision.

The effect was miraculous. Giuseppe shot bolt upright in his seat and,

with the touch of an inspired Nuvolari, brought the Rolls round on two

wheels, cutting finely across the armoured bows just at the moment that

the hatch of the turret flew open and a wizened brown face, filled with

the largest, whitest and most flashing teeth the Count had ever seen,

popped out of the turret and emitted a war cry so shrill and

heart-chilling that the Count's bowels flopped over like a stranded

fish.

As the barrel of the Vickers swung on to the Rolls, the Ethiopian