Текст книги "Cry Wolf"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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gunner ducked down into the turret, and the barrel elevated slightly

until the Count found himself staring stupidly into its dark round

aperture but Giuseppe had been watching also in the driving mirror,

and now he spun the wheel and the Rolls flashed aside like a mackerel

before the driving charge of the barracuda. The blast of shot from

the

Vickers tore down its left side lifting a storm of dirt and pebbles in

spurting fountains high into the air.

The armoured car swung heavily to follow the Rolls" manoeuvre, the

leaping dust fountains swinging with it, closing in mercilessly.

However, Giuseppe, faced with the prospect of death, hit the brakes so

hard that the Count was catapulted forward, howling protests, to hang

over the front seat, his ample black-clad buttocks pointing at the

heavens and his glistening boots kicking wildly as he fought for

balance.

The sheet of bullets from the swinging Vickers passed mere inches ahead

of the Rolls, and Giuseppe swung the wheel to hard opposite lock,

released the brakes and trampled hard on the throttle. The Rolls

kicked over hard, wheels spinning for purchase, then bounded ahead with

such impetus that the Count was thrown backwards again, crashing into a

sitting position on the rear leather seat, his helmet falling over his

eyes.

"I'll have you shot," he gasped, as he struggled weakly to adjust the

helmet. Giuseppe was too busy to hear him. His duck and swerve had

beaten the Ethiopian gunner, and the superior speed of the Rolls was

carrying it swiftly out of harm's way. just a few more seconds then

the ancient but splendidly toothed head of the gunner appeared once

more in the turret, and the bows of the armoured car and the questing

muzzle of the Vickers swung back. The gunner dropped back behind the

gun and the roaring clatter of bullets sounded high above the bellow of

straining engines.

Once again, the dust storm of bullets tore up the earth, swinging

rapidly towards the Rolls.

Slightly ahead of the two vehicles, another growling, labouring

troop-carrier loomed out of the dust on a parallel course with them,

but travelling at only half the speed under its heavy load of terrified

troopers.

Giuseppe touched the wheel, swaying out slightly away from the stream

of bullets, then he swung hard the opposite way and as the armoured car

turned to follow him he ducked neatly behind the troop-carrier,

screened by its high unstable bulk from the deadly machine gun. The

Ethiopian kept firing.

As the solid hose of fire tore through the canvas hood of the truck,

ripping and shredding the men crowded shoulder to shoulder beneath it,

the Rolls was pulling away swiftly in its lee. Suddenly,

it was out of the dust clouds into the crystal desert air, with a vista

of open land stretching away to the horizon a horizon which was the

passionate destination of every man in the Rolls. The lumbering troop

carriers were left behind, and the Rolls could make a clean run of it.

The way the Count felt at that moment, they would only stop once he was

safely into his defensive positions above the Wells of Chaldi.

Then quite suddenly, he was aware of the guns on the open plain ahead

of him. They were drawn up neatly in spaced-out triangular batteries,

three vees of three guns each, with the gunners grouped about them and

the long fit barrels covering the approaching mass of fleeing

vehicles.

There was a parade-ground feeling of calm and good order about them

that made the Count blubber with relief after the nightmare from which

he had just emerged.

"Giuseppe, you have saved us," he sobbed. "I am going to give you a

medal. "The threat of capital punishment made a few minutes earlier

was forgotten. "Drive for the guns, my brave boy. You have done good

work and you'll find me grateful." At that moment, emboldened by talk

of safety, Gino lifted himself from the floorboards where he had been

resting these last few minutes. He looked cautiously over the rear of

the Rolls, and what he saw caused him to let out a single strangled cry

and to drop once more into his original position on the floor.

Behind them the Ethiopian armoured car had burst out of the dust clouds

and was bounding determinedly after them.

The Count took one look also, and immediately resumed his encouragement

of Giuseppe, beating on his head with a fist like a judge's gavel.

"Faster, Giuseppe!" he shrieked. "If he kills us, I'll have you

shot." And the Rolls raced for the protection of the guns.

ready now!" intoned Major Castelani gravely, trying by the tone of his

voice to quiet their nerves.

"Steady, my lads. Hold your fire. Hold your fire.

"Remember your drill," he said. "Just remember your range drill,

soldier." He paused a moment beside the nearest gun layer lifting his

binoculars and sweeping the field ahead.

The dust cloud was rolling rapidly towards them, but all the action was

confused and indistinct.

"You are loaded with high explosive?" the Major asked quietly, and the

gun-layer gulped nervously and nodded.

"Remember, the first shot is the only one you can aim with care.

Make it count."

"Sir." The man's voice was unsteady, and Castelani felt a stab of

anger and contempt. They were all un blooded boys, unsteady and

nervous. He had been forced to push them to their places and put the

trails of the guns in their hands.

He turned abruptly, and strode to the next battery.

"Steady now, lads. Hold your fire until it counts." They turned

strained, pale faces to him; one of the layers looked as though he

would burst into tears at any moment.

"The only thing you have to be afraid of is me! growled

Castelani. "Let one of you open fire before I give the order and

you'll-" A cry interrupted him, as one of the loaders stood up and

pointed out on to the field.

"Take that man's name," snapped Castelani, and turned with dignity,

making a show of polishing the lens of his binoculars on his sleeve

before raising them to his eyes.

Colonel Count Aldo Belli was leading his men back so enthusiastically

that he had outstripped them by half a mile, and every moment was

widening the gap. He was driving directly at the centre of the

artillery batteries, and he was standing tall in the back seat of the

Rolls, with both arms waving and gesticulating as though he was being

attacked by a swarm of bees.

Even as Castelani watched, from out of the brown curtains of dust

beyond the Rolls burst a machine that he recognized instantly, despite

its new camouflage paint and the unfamiliar weapon in the turret. It

did not need the gay pennant that flew above it to identify his

enemy.

"Very well, lads," he said quietly. "Here they come. High explosive,

and wait for the order. Not a moment before." The speeding armoured

car fired, a long tearing ripping burst. Much too long,

Castelani thought with grim satisfaction. That gun would be

overheating, and they could expect a jam. An experienced gunner laid

down short, spaced bursts of fire the enemy were green also,

Castelani decided.

"Steady, lads, "he snapped, watching his men stir restlessly at the

sound of gunfire and exchange nervous glances.

The car fired again, and he saw the fall of shot around the Rolls,

kicking up swift jumping spurts of dust and earth another long ripping

hail of fire. That ended abruptly and was not repeated.

"Ha!" snorted Castelani, with satisfaction. "She has jammed." His

wavering gunners would not have to receive fire. It was good. It

would steel them, give them confidence to shoot, without being shot

at.

"Steady now. All steady. Not long to wait. Nice and steady now." His

voice lost its jagged, emery-paper tone and became soothing and

crooning like a mother at the cradle.

"Wait for it, lads. Easy now." The Ras did not understand what had

happened, why the gun remained silent, despite all the strength of both

his hands on pistol grip and triggers. The long canvas belt of

ammunition still drooped from the bins and fed into the breech of the

Vickers but it no longer moved.

The Ras swore at the gun, such an oath that, had he hurled it at

another man, would have led immediately to a duel to the death, but the

gun remained silent.

Armed with his two-handed battle sword, the Ras climbed half out of the

turret and brandished it about his head.

It is doubtful if he would have realized what three batteries of modern

100 men field guns would have looked like from the business end,

or, if he had recognized them, whether they would have daunted his

determined pursuit of the fleeing Rolls. As it was, his reason and

vision were clouded with the red mists of battle rage. He did not see

the waiting guns.

Below him, Gareth Swales leaned forward in the driver's seat peering

shortsightedly through the visor, which narrowed his field of vision

and partially obscured it as though he was looking through the

perforated bottom of a kitchen colander. His eyes were swimming from

the cordite smoke, the engine fumes and the dust-motes so that he

blinked rapidly as he concentrated all his efforts in following the

speeding ethereal shape of the Rolls. He did not see the waiting

guns.

"Shoot, damn you," he shouted. "We are going to lose him." But above

him the Vickers was silent, and from his seat low down in the hull, the

slight fold of ground so carefully chosen by Major

Castelani half-hid the batteries.

He raced towards them, drawn on inexorably by the fleeting shape of the

Rolls dancing elusively ahead of him.

Good." Castelani allowed himself a bleak little smile as he watched

the enemy vehicle come on steadily.

Already it was within comfortable range for an experienced gunner, but

he knew it must be half as close again before his own crews could make

any certainty of their practice.

The Rolls, however, was a mere two hundred metres in front of the guns,

and coming on at a speed that could not have been less than sixty miles

an hour. Three terrified and chalky faces were turned towards him in

dreadful appeal and three voices were raised in loud cries for succour.

The Major ignored them and swiftly turned his professional eye back to

the enemy. He found it was still two thousand metres out across the

plain but closing satisfactorily. He was on the point of uttering

another reassurance to his edgy gunners, when the Rolls roared through

the narrow gap in the centre of his batteries.

The Count had at that moment temporarily found his feet and replaced

his helmet on his head. Standing on the high platform of the

Rolls, his voice, powered with adrenalin and shrill with terror,

carried clearly to every gunner.

"Open fire!" shrieked the Count. "Open fire immediately! or I

will have you all shot!" and then, realizing that they should be

encouraged to remain at their posts and cover his withdrawal, he

reached frantically for inspiration and flung over his shoulder one

rousing "Death before dishonour!" before the Rolls bore him away,

still at sixty miles an hour, towards the long distant horizon.

The Major lifted his voice in a great bugling bellow to countermand the

order, but even his lungs were no match for the thunderous volley of

nine field guns fired in as close to unison as they had never been in

training. Each gunner took his Colonel at his literal word when he

said "immediately" and such refinements as laying and aiming were

forgotten in the dire urgency of firing as furiously and as fast as

possible.

In the circumstances, it was nothing short of a miracle that one

high-explosive shell found a mark. This was a Fiat troop-carrier which

emerged at that moment from the dust clouds a quarter of a mile behind

the Ethiopian armoured car. The shell was fused to a thousandth of a

second delay; it went in through the radiator, shattered the engine

block, disintegrated the driver, then burst in the midst of the group

of terrified infantrymen huddled under the canvas hood.

The engine and front wheel of the truck kept going forward for a few

seconds before beginning to roll and bounce over the irregular ground

the rest of the truck and twenty men went straight upwards,

fifty feet in the air like a troupe of maniacal acrobats.

Only one other shell came close to hitting the enemy. It burst ten

yards in front of the Hump, emptying in a towering pillar of flame and

yellow earth, and gouging a deep round crater, four feet across,

into which the speeding car plunged.

The Ras, whose head was protruding from the turret, and whose mouth and

eyes were wide open, had all three of these body apertures filled with

flying sand from the explosion and his war whoops were cut off

abruptly, as he choked for breath and tried frantically to wipe his

streaming eyes.

Gareth also had his vision abruptly closed by the pillar of flame and

sand, and he drove blindly into the shell crater.

The impact threw him out of his seat, and the steering wheel hit him in

the chest, driving the wind out of his lungs before snapping off short

at the floorboards.

With another bound, the Hump bounced jauntily out of the shell crater

with streamers of dust and shell smoke swirling about her. She was

hanging over on one side with her springs snapped off by the jolt,

and her front wheels locked firmly to one side, yet her engine still

bellowed at full power and she went into a tight right-hand circle,

around and around like a circus animal.

Wheezing for breath, Gareth dragged himself back into the driver's

seat, only to find that there was no longer a steering column and that

the throttle had jammed at the fully open position. He sat there for

long seconds, shaking his head to clear it, and struggling desperately

for breath, for the hull was filled with dust and smoke.

Another shell, bursting somewhere close beside the hull, roused him

from the stupors of shock, and he reached up, unlatched the driver's

hatch and stuck his head out into the open air. At what seemed like

point-blank range, three full batteries of Italian field guns were

firing at him.

"Oh my God!" he gasped painfully, as another volley of high explosive

erupted around the rapidly circling car, the blast jarring his eyeballs

and rattling his teeth in his head.

"Let's go home!" he said and began to hoist himself out of the narrow

hatch-way. His feet came clear of the steel flooring of the hull only

just in time to save every bone below his knees in both legs from being

shattered into small fragments.

a thousand yards away across the plain Major Castelani was fighting for

control against the panic that the Count had instilled in his gunners.

They were loading and firing with such single-minded passion that all

the other refinements of gunnery were completely forgotten. The layers

were no longer making a pretence of seeking a target, but merely

jerking the lanyard at the very moment the breech block clanged shut.

Castelani's bellows made no impression on the half deafened and almost

completely dazed gunners. The Count's last injunction to death had

shattered their nerves completely and they were all of them beyond

reason.

Castelani dragged the nearest layer from his seat behind the gun

shield, and prised open the man's death grip on the lanyard. Cursing

bitterly at the quality of the men under his command, he pedalled the

traverse and elevating handles of the gun with a smooth expert

action.

The thick barrel dropped and swung until the insect speck of the

armoured car loomed suddenly large in the magnifying prism of the

gunsight. It was tearing in a crazy circle, clearly out of control,

and Castelani picked up the rhythm of its circle and hit the lanyard

with a short hard jerk of the wrist. The barrel flew back, arrested at

last by the hydraulic pistons of the shock absorber, and the

fifteen-pound cone-shaped steel shell was hurled on an almost flat

trajectory across the plain.

It was aimed fractionally low. It passed inches below the tall

shuttered bows of the car, between the two front wheels, and struck the

earth directly below the driver's compartment.

The released energy. of the blast was deflected by the earth's surface

up into the soft underbelly of the hull. It blew the engine block off

its seating, tore off the big front wheels like wings from a roast

chicken, and stove in the steel floor of the hull with a great

Thor's hammer stroke.

If Gareth Swales's feet had been in contact with the steel floor of the

hull, the shock would have been transmitted directly into the bones of

his feet and legs, and he would have suffered that dreadful but

characteristic wound of the tank man below the knees his legs would

have been transformed into bags of shattered bone.

He was, however, suspended half in and half out of the driver's hatch

with both legs kicking frantically in the air, and the shock of the

blast came up like carbon dioxide in a bottle of freshly opened

champagne. He was the cork and he was shot out of the hatch, still

kicking.

The effect on the Ras was the same. He came out of the turret,

propelled high by the blast and he met Gareth at the top of his

trajectory. The two of them came down to earth simultaneously, with

the Ras seated between Gareth's shoulder blades, and the wonder of it

was that neither of them was impaled upon the war sword which went with

them and finally pegged deep into the earth six inches from Gareth's

ear as he lay face down and feebly tried to dislodge the Ras from his

back.

"I warn you, old chap," he managed to gasp. "One day you are going to

go too far." The sound of oncoming engines, many of them and all

roaring in high revolutions, made Gareth's efforts to dislodge the

Ras more determined. He sat up spitting sand and blood from his

crushed lips, and looked up to see the remaining Italian transports

bearing down on them like the starting grid of the Le Mans Grand

Prix.

"Oh my God!" gasped Gareth, his scattered wits reassembling hastily,

and he crawled frantically into the shattered and still smoking carcass

of the Hump, beginning to shrink down out of sight before he realized

that the Ras was no longer with him.

"Rassey, you stupid old bastard come back, he shouted despairingly. The

Ras, once again armed with his trusty broadsword,

was staggering out on unsteady stork's legs, stunned by the shell burst

but still fighting mad, and there was no doubting his intentions. He

was going to take on the entire motorized column single-handed, and as

he hurried to meet them, shouting a challenge, he loosened up with a

few hissing two-handed cuts with the sword.

Gareth had to duck under the swinging blade, going in low in a flying

rugby tackle, to bring the old warrior down in an untidy heap.

He dragged him, still shouting and struggling furiously, under cover of

the broken steel hull, just as the first Italian truck roared past

them. The pale-faced occupants paid them not the slightest attention.

they were intent on one thing only and that was following their

Colonel.

"Shut up!" growled Gareth, as the Ras tried to provoke them with some

of the foulest oaths in the Amharic language. Finally he had to hold

the Ras down, wrap his sham ma around his head, and sit on it while the

Italian Fiats thundered past, and the rolling clouds of dust spread

over them as though driven by the khamsin.

Once through the dust and confused stampede of trucks, Gareth thought

he glimpsed the hump-backed shape of Priscilla the Pig, and he released

the Ras for a moment to wave and shout, but the car disappeared almost

instantly, hard on the trail of a lumbering Fiat,

and Gareth heard the short crashing burst of the Vickers clearly, even

above the thunder of many engines.

Then suddenly they were all past, streaming away, the engine sounds

fading, the dust settling and then there was another sound,

faint yet but growing with every second.

Although most of the Harari and Galla horsemen had long ago given up

the pursuit in favour of the more enjoyable and profitable occupation

of looting the capsized and damaged Italian trucks, a few hundred of

the more hardy souls still flogged on their foundering mounts.

This thin line of horsemen came sweeping forward, ululating and

casually cutting down the Italian survivors from the destroyed trucks

who fled before them on foot.

"All right, Rassey." Gareth unwound the sham ma from around his head.

"You can come out now. Call your boys up, and tell them to get us out

of here." In the few moments of respite while the main body of

motorized infantry came through the batteries, Major Castelani hurried

from gun to gun, lashing with tongue and cane until he had contained

the infectious panic of his gunners and had them under his hand

again.

Then out of the dust clouds, appearing at short pistol range as

suddenly as a ghost ship, but with the Vickers machine gun in its

turret crackling wickedly and the muzzle blast flickering in an angry

throbbing red glow, was a second Ethiopian armoured car.

It was enough to destroy the semblance of control that Castelani had

forced heavy-handedly upon the gun crews.

As the armoured car swung across their line at point-blank range,

raking the exposed guns with a withering. burst of machine-gun fire,

the loaders dropped their ready shells and almost knocked the layers

from their seats in their anxiety to get behind the armoured shield of

the gun. They all huddled there with their heads well down. The

driver of the armoured car, after that one rapid pass down the front of

the batteries, swung the vehicle abruptly back into the screen of

dust.

Jake had been just as startled by the encounter as were the gunners;

at one moment he had been joyously tearing along after a fat

wallowing

Fiat, and at the next he had emerged from a cloud of dust to be

confronted by the gaping muzzles of the big guns.

"My God, Greg, "Jake shouted up at the boy in the turret.

"We nearly ran right into them."

"Volleyed and thundered do you remember the poem?"

"Poetry, at a time like this?" growled Jake, and he gave Priscilla the

throttle.

"Where are we going?"

"Home, and the sooner the quicker. That's a powerful argument they are

pointing at us."

"Jake-" Gregorius began to protest, when there was a bang and a flash

that glowed briefly even through the shrouds of dust, and close beside

the high turret passed a

100 men. shell. The air slammed against their eardrums and the shriek

of it made both of them flinch violently, the air.

stank of the electric sizzle of its passing, and it burst half a mile

beyond them in a tall tower of flame and dust.

"Do you see what I mean?" asked Jake.

"Yes, Jake oh yes, indeed As he spoke, the dust clouds that had

covered them so securely now subsided and drifted aside, exposing them

unmercifully to the attentions of the Italian guns, but revealed also

was another tempting target. The Ethiopian cavalry were still coming

on, and after a few futile volleys had burst around the tiny elusive

shape of the speeding car, Castelani resigned himself to the

limitations of his gunners and switched targets.

"Shrapnel," he bellowed. "Load with shrapnel fuse for air burst."

He hurried along the battery, repeating the order to each layer,

emphasizing his orders with the cane. "New target. Massed horsemen.

Range two thousand five hundred metres, fire at will." The Ethiopian

ponies were small shaggy beasts, bred for sure-footed ascent of

mountain paths, rather than sustained charges across open plains they

had, moreover, been pastured for weeks now on the dry sour grass of the

desert, and in consequence their strength was by this time almost

expended.

The first shrapnel burst fifty feet above the heads of the leading

riders. It popped open like a gigantic pod of the cotton plant,

blooming with sudden fearsome splendour the milky blue sky. It bloomed

with a crack as though the sky had shattered, and instantly the air was

filled with the humming, hissing knives of flying shrapnel.

A dozen of the ponies went down under the first burst, pitching forward

abruptly over their own heads and flinging their riders free.

Then the sky was filled with the deadly cotton balls, and the

continuous crack of the bursts sent the ponies wheeling and the riders

crouching low on their withers or swinging out of the saddle to hang

low under the bellies of their mounts. Here and there a braver soul

would kick his feet free of the stirrups and pick up a dismounted

comrade on each of the leathers, the gallant little ponies labouring

under their triple burdens. Within seconds, the entire Ethiopian army

its single remaining armoured vehicle and all its cavalry were in a

retreat every bit as headlong as that of the motorized Italian column

which was still on its way back to the Wells of Chaldi. The field was

left entirely to Castelani's artillery and the stranded crew of the

Hump.

From the shelter of the shattered hull, Gareth Swales watched his hopes

of quick rescue fading rapidly in the shape of the dwindling cavalry.

"Don't blame them, not really," he told the Ras, and then he looked

across at the speeding armoured car. Priscilla the Pig was rapidly

overhauling the cavalry.

"He saw us, – I know he did." There had "Him I do," he muttered.

been a moment when Priscilla the Pig had passed within a quarter of a

mile of them, had in fact turned directly towards them for a few

moments. "Do you know something, Rassey old fellow, I do believe we

are being set up for a couple of Patsys." He glanced at the Ras, who

lay beside him like an old hunting dog that has been worked too hard;

his chest laboured like a blacksmith's bellows, and his breathing

whistled shrilly in his throat.

"Better take those choppers out of your mouth, old chap or else you're

going to swallow them. The fighting's over for the day. Take it nice

and easy now. We've got a long walk home tonight." And Gareth

Swales transferred all his attention back to the disappearing car.

"Big-hearted Jake Barton is leaving us here and going home to spoon up

the honey. Who was the chap that David pulled the same trick on? Come

on, Rassey, you are the Old Testament expert wasn't it

Uriah the Hittite?" He shook his head sadly. Gareth was already ready

to believe the worst. "I take it very much amiss, Rassey, I can tell

you.

Probably have done exactly the same myself, mind you but I do take it

amiss gaming from a fine upright citizen like Jake Barton." The Ras

had not listened to a word of it. He was the only man in the two

armies for whom the battle had not ended.

He was just having a short rest, as behave a warrior of his advanced

years. Now, with a single bound, he was on his feet again,

snatching up his sword and heading directly for the centre of the

Italian batteries. Gareth was taken completely off balance, and the

Ras had covered fifty yards of the necessary two thousand to the enemy

positions before Gareth could overtake him.

It was unfortunate that one of the Italian gun-layers had his

binoculars focused on the derelict hull of the Hump at that moment.

The belligerence of the Italian gunners was in inverse proportion to

the number and proximity of the enemy and all of them were giddy with

elation at the total and unexpected victory that had dropped into their

laps.

The first shell dropped close beside the broken hull of the Hump,

as Gareth caught up with the Ras. Gareth stooped and picked up a

rounded stone, about the size of a cricket ball.

"Frightfully sorry, old chap," he panted, as he cupped the stone in his

right hand. "But we really can't go on like this." He made allowance

for the brittle old bone of the Ras's skull, and with the stone he

tapped him carefully, almost tenderly, above the ear, on the polished

black bald curve of the Ras's pate.

As the Ras dropped, Gareth caught him, one arm under his knees and the

other around the shoulders, as though he was a sleeping child. The

shells were falling heavily about him as Gareth ran back for cover,

carrying the Ras's unconscious form across his chest.

Jake Barton heard the crumping explosion of the shells, and shouted up

at Gregorius, "What are they shooting at now?" Gregorius climbed

higher out of the turret and peered back. The crushed hull of the Hump

would have been unnoticed at that range, just another speck like a

clump of camel-thorn or an amorphous pile of black rock.

Indeed, both men had looked at it fifty times in the last few minutes

without recognizing it, but the shell bursts, which began to leap about

it in fleeting graceful ostrich feathers of dust and smoke, drew

Gregorius's eye immediately.

"My grandfather!" he cried . anxiously. "They have been hit, Jake."

Jake swung the car and halted it, clambering out of the hatch, blowing

dust from the lens of his binoculars and then focusing them. The

picture of the destroyed car leaped into close-up and he recognized

instantly the two distant figures, one in tailored tweeds, the other in

flowing robes and swirling skirts; the two of them were locked together

breast to breast and for an unbelieving moment

Jake thought they were doing a Strauss waltz in the midst of an

artillery barrage. Then he saw Gareth lift the Ras off the ground and

stagger with him to the shelter of the overturned car.

"We must rescue them, Jake," Gregorius exclaimed passionately.

"They will be killed out there, if we do not." Perhaps it was the

telepathic transfer of Gareth Swales's suspicions, but Jake experienced

the sudden guilty prick of temptation. At that moment he knew he

loved

Vicky Camberwell, and there was an easy way to clear the field.

"Jake!" Gregorius called again, and suddenly Jake felt himself so

sickened by his own treacherous thoughts that there was a hollow

nauseous feeling in the centre of his gut, and he felt the swift flow

of saliva from under his tongue.

"Let's go," he said, and dropped down into the driver's hatch. He

swung Priscilla the Pig in a tight skidding turn and ran straight for

the forest of shell-bursts.

They drew no fire, the Italians were concentrating on the stationary

target and they seemed to be making better practice as they figured the

range. It was a matter of seconds before the Hump took a direct hit,

and Jake pressed the throttle flat to the floorboards, but Priscilla

the Pig chose this moment to show her true nature. He felt her baulk,