Текст книги "Cry Wolf"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

There were wrinkles in the surface of the plain, sparsely covered with

the pale seared desert grasses, but in their troughs thick coarse bush

had taken root. The bush was tall and dense enough to hide the

hundreds of patiently waiting Harari under its cover.

Gareth had worked out the method of dealing with the Italian tanks, and

it was he who had sent Gregorius up the gorge to the village of Sardi

with a gang of a hundred men and fifty camels. Under Greg's

direction,

they had torn up the rails from the shunting yard of the railway

station, packed the heavy steel rails on to the camels and brought them

down the perilous path to the desert floor.

Gareth had explained how the rails were to be used, split his force

into gangs of twenty men each and exercised them with the rails until

they were as efficient as he could hope for. All that was needed now

was for Priscilla the Pig to lead the Italian tanks into the low

dunes.

Without armour, Gareth estimated they could hold the Italians for a

week at the mouth of the gorge. His order of battle placed the

Harari on the left and centre, in good positions that interlocked with

those of the Galla on the right flank. The Vickers guns had lanes of

fire laid down that would make any infantry assault by the Italians

suicidal without armoured cover.

They would have to blast their way into the gorge with artillery and

aerial bombardment. It would take them a week at the least that is, if

they could dissuade Ras Golam from attacking the Italians, a task which

promised to be difficult, for the old Ras's fighting blood was coursing

through his ancient veins.

Once they forced the mouth of the gorge and drove the Ethiopian forces

into its gut, they had another week's hard pounding to reach the top

and the town of Sardi provided once again that the Ras could be

restrained in the role of defender.

Once the Italians broke out of the head of the gorge, the armoured cars

could be flung in to hold them for a day or two more, but when they

were expended, it was all over. It was an easy drive for the

Italians through the rolling highlands on to the Dessie road, to close

the jaws of the trap hopefully after the prey had fled.

Gareth had reported all this to Lij Mikhael, contacting him by

telegraph at the Emperor's headquarters on the shores of Lake Tona.

The Prince had telegraphed back the Emperor's gratitude and assurances

that within two weeks the destiny of Ethiopia would be decided.

"HOLD THE GORGE FOR TWO WEEKS AND YOUR DUTY WILL BE FULLY

DISCHARGED STOP YOU WILL HAVE EARNED THE GRATITUDE OF THE EMPEROR AND

ALL THE PEOPLES OF ETHIOPIA." A week here on the plains, but it all

depended on this first encounter with the Italian armour. Gareth's

and

Jake's observations, backed up by those of the scouts, placed the total

number of surviving Italian tanks at four. They must take them out at

a single stroke, the whole defence of the gorge pivoted on this.

Jake found that he had been day-dreaming, his mind wandering over the

problems they faced and the chances they must take. It took

Gregorius's hand on his shoulder to rouse him.

"Jake! The signal." Quickly he looked back at the slope of the

mountains, and he did not need the binoculars. Gareth was signalling

with a primitive heliograph he had contrived with the shaving-mirror

from his toilet bag. The bright flashes of light pricked Jake's

eyeballs even at that range.

"They are coming in across the valley, line abreast. All four tanks,

supported by motorized infantry." Jake read the signal, and jumped

into the driver's hatch while Gregorius slid down the side of the hull

and ran to the crank handle.

"That's my darling." Jake thanked Priscilla, as the engine spluttered

busily into life, and then he called up to Gregorius as he climbed into

the turret above him. "I'll warn you every time I tUrn to engage."

"Yes, Jake." The boy's eyes burned with the fire of his anger,

and Jake grinned.

"As bad as his grand pappy He let in the clutch. They gathered speed

swiftly and flew over the crest of the rise, and behind them rolled a

long billow of dust, proclaiming their whereabouts to all the world.

The line of Italian tanks was coming straight in, a mile and a half out

on their flank.

"Engaging now, "shouted Jake.

"Ready." Gregorius was crouched over the Vickers in the turret,

straining it to the limit of its traverse, ready to fire at the very

instant the gun could bear.

Jake put the wheel over hard, and Priscilla swung towards the distant

dark beetle shapes of the Italian armour, sailing jauntily right into

their teeth.

Above Jake the Vickers roared, and the spent cartridges spewed down

into the hull, ringing and pinging against the steel sides, while the

sudden acrid stink of burned cordite made Jake's eyes sting and flood

with tears.

Through blurred eyes he watched the electric white tracer arc out

across the open ground, and fall about the leading tank. Even at that

range, Jake made out the tiny spurting fountains of dust and dirt

kicked up by the hose of bullets.

"Good lad," grunted Jake; it was accurate shooting from the bouncing,

bounding car at extreme range. Of course, it could do no damage to the

thick steel armour of the CV.3, but it would certainly startle and

anger the crew, goad them into retaliation.

As he thought it, Jake saw the turret of the tank traverse around as

the commander called the target. The stubby barrel of the Spandau

foreshortened rapidly, and then disappeared. Jake was looking directly

down the muzzle.

He counted slowly to three, it would take that long for the gunner to

get on to him, then he yelled, "Disengaging!" and flung Priscilla hard

over, so that she came up on two wheels, ungainly and awkward as she

swung away from the enemy line. From the corner of his eye Jake saw

the glow of the muzzle flash, and almost instantly afterwards heard the

crack of passing shot.

"Son of a gun that was close!" he muttered, and reached up to throw

the hatch and visor open. There was no point in closing down,

these Spandaus could penetrate any point of the car's hull as though it

were made of paper, and Jake would need a good and unlimited view

during the next desperate minutes.

Running parallel to the Italian line, he looked across and saw that all

four tanks were firing now, and they were bunching, each tank turning

towards him as he raced across their front, losing their rigid pattern

of advance in their eagerness to keep Priscilla under fire.

"Come along," muttered Jake. "Three balls for a dollar,

gentlemen, every throw a coconut!" It was too close to the truth to be

funny, but he grinned nevertheless. "Jake Barton's famous coconut

shy." A shell burst close alongside, showering sand and gravel into

the open hatch. They were ranging in on him now, it was time to

confuse the range again.

He spat sand from his mouth and yelled, "Engaging!" Priscilla spun

handily towards the Italian line, and went bounding in towards them

with that prim rocking action, her ugly old silhouette grim and

uncompromising as the visage of a Victorian matron.

They were close, horribly frighteningly close, so that Jake could hear

the Vickers bullets hammering against the black carapace of the leading

tank. Gregorius had picked out the formation leader by his command

pennant, and was concentrating all his fire upon him.

"Good thinking," grunted Jake. "Get the bastard's blood up." As he

spoke, there was a thunderous clank close beside his head, as though a

giant had swung a hammer against the steel hull, and the car reeled to

the blow.

"We've taken a hit," Jake thought desperately, and his ears buzzed from

the impact and there was the hot acrid stench of burned paint and hot

metal in his nostrils. He swung the wheel over and Priscilla responded

as handsomely as ever, turning sharply away from the Italian line.

Jake stood up in his compartment, sticking his head out into the open

and he saw immediately how lucky they had been. The shell had struck

one of the brackets he had welded on to the sponson to carry the arms

crates. It had torn the bracket away, and dented the hull,

leaving the metal glowing with the heat of the strike but the hull was

intact, they had not been penetrated.

"Are you all right, Greg?" he yelled as he dropped back into his

seat.

"They are following, Jake," the boy called down to him, ignoring the

hit. "They are after us all of them."

"Home and mother here we come," Jake said, and turned directly away

from them, once again changing the range and aim of the Italian gunners

abruptly.

Shot burst close, driving the air in upon their eardrums, and making

them both flinch involuntarily.

"We are pulling too far ahead, Jake," called Greg, and Jake glancing up

saw that he had his hatch open and his head out.

"Lame bird," Jake decided reluctantly. If they outstripped the

Italians too rapidly, there was a danger they would abandon the

chase.

Another shell burst close alongside, covering them with a veil of pale

dust, and Jake faked a hit, cutting back the throttle so that their

seed bled off, and he swung Priscilla into an erratic broken pattern of

flight, like a bird with a broken wing.

"They're gaining on us now, "Greg reported gleefully.

"Don't sound so damned happy about it," Jake muttered, but his voice

was lost in the whine and crack of passing shot.

"They're still coming," howled Greg. "And they're still shooting."

"I noticed." Jake peered ahead, still flinging the car mercilessly

from side to side. The ridge of the first dune was half a mile ahead,

but it seemed like an hour later that he felt the earth tilt up under

him and they went slithering and skidding up the slip-face of the dune

and crashed over the crest into safety.

Jake swung Nscilla into a broadside skid, like a skier performing a

christy, bringing her to an abrupt halt in the lee of the dune and then

he backed and manoeuvred up until he was in a hull-down position behind

the sand, with only the turret exposed.

"That's it, Jake," cried Greg delightedly, as he found his Vickers

would bear again. He crouched over it, and fired short crisp bursts at

the four black tanks that roared angrily towards them across the

plain.

From the stationary position behind the dune, Gregorius made every

burst of fire sweep the oncoming hulls, driving the Latin tempers of

the crews into frenzy, like the sting of a tsetse fly on the belly of a

bull buffalo.

"That's about close enough," decided Jake, judging the charge of enemy

armour finely. They were less than five hundred yards off now and

already they were dropping shell close around the tiny target afforded

by the car's turret.

"Let's get the hell out of here." He swung Priscilla hard and she

plunged down the side of the dune into the trough. As she crashed

through the dense dark scrub, Jake caught a glimpse of the men lying in

wait under the screen of vegetation. They were stripped to

loin-Cloths, huddled down over the long steel rails, and two of them

had to roll frantically aside to avoid being crushed beneath

Priscilla's tall, heavily bossed wheels.

The momentum of her charge down the side of the dune carried her up on

the second dune with loose sand pouring out in a cloud from her

spinning rear wheels. She reached the crest and went over it at

speed,

dropping with a gut swooping dive down the far side.

Jake cut the engine before she had come to rest, and he and

Gregorius sprang out of the opened hatches and went panting back up the

dune, labouring in the heavy loose footing, and panting as they reached

the crest and looked down into the trough at almost the same instant as

the four Italian tanks came over the crest opposite them.

Their racks boiling in the loose sand, they came crashing over the top

of the dune, and roared down into the trough.

They tore into the thick bank of scrub, and immediately the bush was

alive with naked black figures. They swarmed around the monstrous

wallowing hulls like ants around the bodies of shiny black scarab

beetles.

Twenty men to each steel rail, using it like a battering ram, they

charged in from each side of every tank, thrusting the end of the rail

into the sprocketed jockey wheels of the tracks.

The rail was caught up immediately, and with the screech of metal on

metal was whipped out of the hands of the men who wielded it, hurling

them effortlessly aside. To an engineer, the sound that the machines

made as they tore themselves to pieces was like the anguish of living

things, like that terrible death squeal of a horse.

The steel rails tore the jockey wheels out of them, and the tracks

sprang out of their seating on the sprockets and whipped into the

air,

flogging themselves to death in a cloud of dust and torn vegetation.

It was over very swiftly, the four machines lay silent and stalled,

crippled beyond hope of repair and around them lay the broken bodies of

twenty or more of the Ethiopians who had been caught up by the flailing

tracks as they broke loose. The bodies were torn and shredded, as

though clawed and mauled by some monstrous predator.

Those who had survived the savage death of the tanks, hundreds of

almost naked figures, swarmed over the stranded hulls, loolooing wildly

and pounding on the steel turrets with their bare hands.

The Italian gunners still inside the hulls fired their machine guns

despairingly, but there was no power on their traversing gear and the

turrets were frozen. The guns could not be aimed. They were blinded

also for Jake had armed a dozen Ethiopians each with a bucket of engine

oil and dirt mixed to a thick paste. This they had slapped in gooey

handfuls over the drivers" and gunners" visors. The tank crews were

helplessly imprisoned and the attackers pranced and howled like

demented things. The din was such that Jake did not even hear the

approach of the other car.

It stopped on the crest of the dune opposite where Jake stood.

The hatches were flung open, and Gareth Swales and Ras Golam leaped out

of the hull.

The Ras had his sword with him, and he swung it around his head as he

charged down the slope to join his men around the crippled tanks.

Across the valley that separated them, Gareth threw Jake a cavalier

salute, but beneath the mockery, Jake sensed real respect.

Each of them ran down into the trough and they met where the gallon

cans of gasoline were buried under a fine layer of sand and cut

branches.

Gareth spared a second to punch Jake lightly on the shoulder.

"Hit the beggars for six, what? Good for you," and then they stooped

to drag the cans out of the shallow hole, and with one in each hand

staggered through the waist-deep scrub to the tank carcasses.

Jake passed a can up to Gregorius who was already perched on the turret

of the nearest tank where his grandfather was trying to prise open the

turret hatch with the blade of his broad-sword. His eyes flashed and

rolled wildly in his wrinkled black head, and a high-pitched incoherent

"Looloo" keened from the mouthful of flashing artificial teeth for the

Ras was transported into the fighting mania of the berserker.

Gregorius hefted the gasoline can up on to the tank's sponson, and

plunged his dagger through the thin metal of the lid. The clear liquid

spurted and hissed from the rent, under pressure of its own volatile

gases.

"Wet it down good!" shouted Jake, and Gregorius; grinned and

splattered gasoline over the hull. The stink of it was sharp, as it

evaporated from the hot metal in a shimmering haze.

Jake ran on to the next tank, unscrewing the cap of the can as he

clambered up over the shattered jockey wheels.

Avoiding the stationary barrel of the forward machine gun, he stood

tall on the top of the turret and splashed gasoline over the hull,

until it shone wetly in the sunlight and little rivulets of the stuff

found the joints and gaps in the plating and splattered into the

interior.

"Get back," shouted Gareth. "Everybody back." He had doused the other

steel carcasses and he stood now on the slope of the dune with an unlit

cheroot in the corner of his mouth and a box of Swan Vestas in his left

hand.

Jake jumped lightly down from the hull, laying a trail of gasoline from

the can he carried as he backed up to where Gareth waited.

"Hurry. Everybody out of the way," Gareth called again.

Gregorius was laying a wet trail of gasoline back to Gareth.

"Somebody go get that old bastard out of the way" Gareth called with

exasperation. A single figure pranced and howled and loolooed on the

nearest tank, and Jake and Gregorius dropped the empty cans and raced

back. Ducking under the swinging arc of the sword, Jake got an arm

around the Ras's skinny, bony chest, swung him bodily off his feet and

passed him down to his grandson. Between them they carried him away to

safety, still how ling and struggling.

Gareth struck one of the Swan Vestas and casually lit the cheroot in

his mouth. When it was drawing nicely, he cupped the match to let the

game flare brightly.

"Here we go, chaps," he murmured. "Guy Fawkes, Guy.

Stick him in the eye. Hang him on a lamp post' he flicked the burning

match on to the gasoline-sodden earth, and leave him there to die." For

a moment nothing happened, and then with a thump that concussed the air

against their eardrums, the gasoline ignited.

Instantly the belt of scrub turned to atoll roaring red inferno, and

the flames boiled and swirled, leaped and drummed high into the desert

air, engulfing the four stranded tanks in sheets of fire that obscured

their menacing silhouettes.

The Ethiopians watched from the dunes, awed by the terrible pageant of

destruction they had created. Only the Ras still danced and howled at

the edge of the flames, the blade of his sword reflecting the red

leaping flames.

The hatches of the nearest tank were thrown open, and out into the

searing air leaped three figures, indistinct and shadowy through the

flames. Beating wildly at their burning uniforms, the tank crew came

staggering out on to the slope of the dune.

The Ras flew to meet them, the sword hissing and glinting as it swung.

The head of the tank commander seemed to leap from his fire-blackened

shoulders, as the blade cut through. The head struck the ground behind

him and rolled back down the dune like a ball, while the decapitated

trunk dropped to its knees with a fine crimson spray from the neck

pumping straight up into the air.

The Ras raced on towards the other survivors, and his men roared

angrily and swarmed forward after him. Jake uttered a horrified oath

and started forward to restrain them.

"Easy, old son." Gareth caught Jake's arm, and swung him away.

"This is no time for one of your boy scout acts." From below them rose

the ugly blood roar of the destroyers, as they fell upon the survivors

of the other tanks, and the Italians" screams cut like a whiplash

across Jake's nerves.

"Let's leave them to it." Gareth drew Jake away. "Not our business,

old boy. The beggars have got to take their own chances.

Rules of the game." Across the crest of the dune they leaned together

against the steel hull of Priscilla. Jake was panting heavily from his

exertions and his horror. Gareth found him a slightly crumpled cheroot

in the inside pocket of his tweed jacket, and straightened it carefully

before placing it between Jake's lips.

"Told you before, your sentimental but endearing ways will get us both

into trouble. They'd have torn you to pieces also if you'd gone down

there." He lit Jake's cheroot.

"Well, old boy-" he changed the subject diplomatically.

"That takes care of our biggest problem. No tanks no worries,

that's an old Swales family motto," and he chuckled lightly. "We'll be

able to hold them at the mouth of the gorge for another week now. No

trouble at all." Abruptly the sunlight was obscured, and instantly the

temperature dropped sharply. Both of them glanced up involuntarily at

the sky, at the gloom and the sudden chill.

In the last hour, the masses of cloud had come slumping down from the

mountains, blotting them out completely, and spreading out on to the

fringes of the Danakil desert.

From this thick, dark mattress of swirling cloud, fine pale streamers

of rain were already spiralling down towards the plain. Jake felt a

droplet splatter against his forehead and he wiped it away with the

back of his hand.

"I say, we're in for a drop or two," murmured Gareth, and as if in

confirmation the deep mutter of thunder echoed down from the

cloud-shrouded mountains, and lightning flared sulkily, trapped within

the towering cloud masses and lighting them internally with a

smouldering infernal glow.

"That's going to make things-" Gareth cut himself off, and both of them

cocked their heads.

"Hello, that's decidedly odd." Faintly on the brooding air,

carrying above the mutter of thunder, came the popping of musketry and

the sound of machine-gun fire, like the sound of tearing silk, made

indistinct and un warlike by distance and the muting banks of heavy

cloud.

"Deuced odd." Gareth repeated. "There should not be any firing from

there." It was in their rear, seeming to come from the very mouth of

the gorge itself.

"Come on," snapped Jake, picking his binoculars out of Priscilla's

hatch and scrambling through the loose red sand for the crest of the

tallest dune.

The cloud and misty streamers of rain obscured the mouth of the gorge,

but now the sound of gunfire was continuous.

"That's not just a skirmish," muttered Gareth.

"It's a full-scale fire fight," Jake agreed, peering through the

binoculars.

"What is it, Jake?" Gregorius came up the dune to where they stood. He

was followed by his grandfather but the old man moved slowly, exhausted

and stiff with age and the aftermath of burned-out passions.

"We don't know, Greg. "Jake did not lower the binoculars.

"I don't understand it." Gareth shook his head. "Any Italian probe

from the south would have run into our positions in the foothills, and

from the north it would have run into the Gallas. Ras

Kullah is in a pretty strong spot there. We would have heard the

fighting. They can't have gone through there-"

"And we are here in the centre, "Jake added, "they didn't come through

here."

"It doesn't make sense." At that moment, the Ras reached the crest. He

paused wearily and removed the teeth from his mouth, wrapped them

carefully in a kerchief and tucked them away in some secret recess of

his sham ma The mouth collapsed into a dark empty pit, and immediately

he looked his age again.

Quickly Gregorius explained this new phenomenon to the old man,

and while he listened he ran the blade of his sword into the dune

between his feet, scrubbing it clean of the clotted black blood in the

dry friable sand. He spoke suddenly in his tremulou's old man's

voice.

"My grandfather says that Ras Kullah is a piece of dried dung of a

venereal hyena," Gregorius translated quickly.

"And he says my uncle, Lij Mikhael, was wrong to treat with him,

and that you were wrong to trust him."

"Now what the hell does that mean?" Jake demanded fretfully, and

lifted the binoculars sweeping again towards the mouth of the Sardi

Gorge away across the undulating golden plain then he exclaimed again.

"Damn it to hell, everything is blowing up. That crazy woman! She

promised me, she swore on oath that she would keep out of it for once

and now here she comes again!"

Emerging through the curtains of rain, indistinct under the dark

rolling mass of cloud, throwing no dust column on the rain-dampened

earth, the tiny sand-coloured shape of Miss Wobbly came bowling towards

them with its distinctive stately gait. Even at this distance, Jake

could make out the dark speck of Sara's head in the hatch of the

high,

old-fashioned turret.

Jake started to run down the slip-face of the dune to meet the oncoming

car.

"Jake!" Vicky screeched above the engine beat, before she came to a

halt, her head thrust out of the driver's hatch, her golden hair

shaking in the wind and her eyes huge in the pale intense face.

"What the hell are you doing? "Jake shouted back angrily.

"The Gallas," Vicky screeched. "They've gone! Every last man of them!

Gone!" She braked hard and tumbled down to the ground so that

Jake had to catch and steady her.

"What do you mean gone?" Gareth demanded, coming up at that moment and

Sara answered him from Miss Wobbly's turret with her dark eyes

sparkling hotly.

"They went, like smoke, like the dirty hill bandits they are."

"The left flank-"Gareth exclaimed.

"Nobody there. The Italians have come through without firing a shot.

Hundreds and hundreds of them. They are at the gorge, they have

overrun the camp."

"Jake, they would have cut off all our own Harari,

it would have been a massacre Sara gave the order, in her grandfather's

name, she ordered them to abandon the right flank."

"Oh,

good Christ!"

"They are trying to fight their way back into the gorge now but the

Italians are covering the mouth with machine guns. It's terrible,

Jake, oh the desert is thick with the dead."

"We've lost it all. Everything we gained, at a single throw, it's all

gone. This was a feint, the tanks were sent to draw us off. The main

attack was through the left but how did they know the Gallas had

deserted?"

"As my grandfather says, never trust either a snake or a Galla."

"Oh Jake,

we must hurry." Vicky shook his arm. "They'll cut us off."

"Right," snapped Gareth. "We'll have to get back into the gorge and

rally them on the first line of defence in the gorge itself otherwise

they'll run straight back to Addis Ababa." He swung around to

Gregorius. "If we try and take these men, and he indicated the

hundreds of halfnaked, unarmed Harad who were now straggling out of the

dunes, "if we try to take them back through the mouth of the gorge,

they'll be shot to pieces by the Italian guns. Can they find their own

way on foot up the mountain slopes?"

"They are mountain men,

Gregorius answered simply.

"Good. Tell them to work their way back and assemble at the first

waterfall in the gorge. That's the rallying point the first

waterfall." He turned back to the others. "On the other hand, we'll

have to use the gorge the only way to save the cars. We'll rush the

mouth in a tight formation and pray that the Eyeties haven't had a

chance to bring up their artillery yet. Let's go!" He grabbed Ras

Golam by the shoulder and dragged him, at an awkward run, back towards

where they had left their armoured car parked on the crest of the first

dune.

"Get back in the car," Jake instructed Vicky. "Keep the engine

running. We'll bring up the two other cars. I want you in the centre

of the line, then go like hell. Don't stop for anything until we are

into the gorge. Do you hear me?" Vicky nodded grimly.

"Good girl he said, and would have turned away, but Vicky held his arm

and pressed herself to him. She reached up and kissed him full on the

lips, her mouth open and wet and soft and sweet.

"I love you, "she whispered huskily.

"Oh my darling, what a hell of a time you picked to tell me."

"I

only just found out," she explained, and he crushed her fiercely to his

chest.

"Oh, that's lovely," cried Sara from the turret above them.

"That's beautiful." She clapped her hands delightedly.

"Until later," whispered Jake. "Now get out of here!" and he turned

her away and pushed her towards the car. He turned himself and ran

lightly back into the dunes, with his heart singing.

"Oh, Miss Camberwell, I am so pleased for you." Sara reached down to

help Vicky up on to the hull. "I knew it was going to be Mr. Barton.

I picked him for you long ago, but I wanted you to find out for

yourself."

"Sara, my dear. Please don't say any more." Vicky hugged her briefly

before dropping into the driver's hatch. "Or the whole thing will turn

upside down again." Ras Golam was so tired and drained that he could

move only at a creaking walk up the dune, even though

Gareth tried to prod him into a trot. He plodded on up the dune

dragging the sword behind him.

Suddenly there was a sound in the sky above them, as though the heavens

had been split by all the winds of hell.

A rising, rattling shriek that passed and then erupted in a towering

column of sand and yellow swirling fumes against the side of the dune

ahead of them, fifty paces below the car that was silhouetted upon the

crest.

"Guns,"said Gareth unnecessarily. "Time to go, Grandpa," and he would

have prodded the Ras again, but there was no need. The sound of

gunfire had rejuvenated the Ras instantly; he leaped high in the air,

uttering that dreadful screech of a challenge and hunting frantically

for his teeth in the folds of his sham ma

"Oh no, you don't." Grimly, Gareth forestalled the next wild suicidal

charge by grabbing the Ras and dragging him protestingly towards the

car. The Ras had tasted blood now, and he wanted to go in on foot with

the sword the way a real warrior fights and he was frantically

searching the open horizons for the enemy, as Gareth towed him away

backwards.

The next shell burst beyond the crest, out of sight in the trough.

"The first one under, and the second over," muttered Gareth,

struggling to control the Ras's wild lunges. "Where does the next one

go?" They had almost reached the car when it came in, arcing across

the wide lioncoloured plain, through the low grey cloud, howling and

rattling the heavens; it plunged down at an acute angle, going in

through the thin plating behind the turret of the car, and it burst

against the steel floor of the cab.

The car burst like a paper bag. The entire turret was lifted from its

seating and went high in the air in a flash of crimson flame and sooty

smoke.

Gareth dragged the Ras down on to the sand and held him there while

scraps of flying steel and other debris splattered around them.

It lasted only seconds and the Ras tried to rise again, but Gareth held

him down while the shattered hull of the car brewed up into a fiery

explosion of burning gasoline and the Vickers ammunition in the bins

began popping and flying like fireworks.

It lasted a long time, and when at last the crackle of ammunition died

away, Gareth lifted his head cautiously; immediately another belt

caught and rattled away with white tracer flying and spluttering,