Mercenary Part 18

The jeep slowed as it approached the bridge in order to negotiate the s.h.i.+ft from tarmac to metal on the road surface.

There was no sign of David and Bernard but Stratton had to a.s.sume they had taken cover.

He placed the rockets at his feet, putting the one he had already prepared to one side and made ready another, all the time keeping an eye on the jeep as it drove across the bridge.

Stratton levelled the rocket on his shoulder while Victor watched the rest of the convoy.

'Victor?' Stratton said without looking behind him.

Victor looked at him and realised with a start why Stratton had called his name. He was looking into the back of the launcher. 'Oh, s.h.i.+t,' he cried as he threw himself out of the way.

As the jeep reached the far side of the bridge the truck approached the other end and slowed to negotiate the hump, the rest of the convoy close behind.

Stratton pressed his face to the tube and looked through the sights, his finger on the firing b.u.t.ton.

The jeep b.u.mped onto the tarmac.

Stratton placed it in his sights and followed it along the road that curved back almost towards him. His peripheral vision kept track of the truck now on the bridge. Stratton was not so much waiting for the jeep to be in a particular place as he was the truck. As it reached the end of the bridge and slowed to ease its wheels over the hump there, Stratton pressed the rubber trigger b.u.t.ton.

The roar shattered the silence and the rocket shot from the end of the tube, a fiery blast belching from its rear to set fire to the gra.s.s behind Stratton. The projectile left a trail of white smoke to mark its track and struck the jeep, exploding and turning the vehicle into a fireball that continued to move forward, the burning bodies limp in their seats. Not surprisingly, it failed to take the bend in the road and plunged down the embankment to hit the river bank, jettisoning its cargo of flaming corpses.

The truck about to drive off the bridge slammed on its brakes.

Stratton dumped the spent launch tube, picked up another, and swivelled through ninety degrees to find the vehicle directly in front of the truck that held the peasants. Smoke from the burning gra.s.s wafted around him but not thickly enough to interfere with his aim. He fired. The rocket streaked across the river and struck the vehicle, which exploded, turned sharply and rolled onto its side. One of the soldiers crawled out and got to his feet, screaming as he staggered, unable to see. His clothes, hands and hair were ablaze and he dropped to the road, where he did not move and continued to burn.

The truck carrying the peasants stopped now, the people inside shrieking as they flung themselves down onto its floor in terror.

Stratton glanced at the bridge. Much of the convoy had stopped on it, b.u.mper to b.u.mper. The most important vehicle, the black Mercedes, was in the centre.

Stratton got to his feet and faced the rise. 'Louisa!' he shouted as he waved his arms.

Louisa had seen the devastation that the rockets had caused, realised what Stratton had achieved, and knew that at any second he would call upon her to administer the coup de grace coup de grace. She'd already gripped the wires even before Stratton had called her name and was now holding them over the battery. If she'd been asked to pick up a gun and fire it she might have hesitated, lacking the confidence to pull the trigger and deal with the subsequent recoil and noise. But to touch the battery terminals with the ends of the wires was simple. She had come to terms with the guilt of sending so many souls to their deaths. Seeing the old man and the woman who'd tried to help him gunned down so callously only minutes before made it easier.

She touched the wire to the terminals and noticed a little spark, but was not even remotely prepared for the thunderous boom that followed. The explosion was tremendous, rocking the ground beneath her, and she covered her head as she slid down the slope.

Stratton grabbed Victor and together they hit the ground as the shock wave roared over them, punching them viciously in their backs as it pa.s.sed.

Thousands of steel ball-bearings had been unleashed at bullet speed against the vehicles. The small metal spheres shredded the men sitting in the backs of the trucks, pulverised their skulls, tore their limbs away. No one inside escaped. Gla.s.s shattered. Every surface was peppered with holes. The vehicles dropped as their tyres burst. Fuel tanks erupted in flames and the bridge struts to which the mines had been tied buckled skywards.

Above the noise of the explosion's echoes countless ricochets could be heard as the claymores' steel b.a.l.l.s hurtled furiously in all directions.

As the ma.s.sive blast reverberated around the valley and began to subside debris rained down from the sky. A chunk of smoking metal hit the ground not far from Stratton and Victor. The steel b.a.l.l.s came back to earth, splas.h.i.+ng into the river and all around.

Stratton covered his head as several fragments of hot shrapnel landed painfully on his torso. As soon as the deluge of metal began to subside he was on his feet and grabbing up the remaining rocket launchers. It was not over yet.

A pick-up truck containing several soldiers behind the peasant's truck began to turn.

'Find a target, Victor,' Stratton called out as he snapped open a launch tube. He placed it on his shoulder and a second later fired. The rocket covered the distance in a second and slammed into the pick-up. The explosion lifted it off the road as it burst into flames.

Stratton dumped the empty launch tube and picked up another. He was operating on full automatic, locked into total kill mode and not giving the enemy a second to recover.

Several soldiers scurried from a largely undamaged truck near the bridge and took up firing positions. Victor snapped open his rocket launchers but as he fiddled with the safety catch a boom nearby signalled that Stratton was ahead of him. The rocket hit the truck and the vehicle disintegrated.

Victor finished preparing his weapon - he was determined to fire the d.a.m.ned thing.

The peasants had at first remained in their truck for fear of being shot while trying to flee. When the nearby vehicle went up they panicked and scrambled over the sides in an attempt to escape the carnage.

Several shots came from around the only vehicle that had escaped destruction other than the peasants' truck. Victor put the weapon on his shoulder, peered through the sights and pressed the trigger b.u.t.ton. The tube shuddered as the rocket shot out to miss the target by inches and thud into the far embankment, showering the soldiers with dirt and shrapnel. Seconds later half a dozen of them walked out of the smoke with their empty hands in the air in the universal gesture of surrender.

Victor was stunned at the power of the device. He marched down the slope towards the river.

David and Bernard appeared, running along the river bank, guns in their hands.

The Indians crept towards the bridge, utterly stunned by the scene of destruction.

Victor crossed the river, keeping his launch tube aimed at the soldiers. 'Anyone moves and I shoot!' he shouted.

Stratton pa.s.sed behind him on his way to the bridge. 'The tube's empty,' he said quietly.

Victor kept the weapon on his shoulder anyway. 'They don't know that,' he replied.

David and Bernard were buzzing with excitement and amazement as they joined their comrades.

'David!' Stratton called out. 'Go round up your people,' he said, referring to the peasants. 'Bernard.'

Bernard was helping Victor cover the enemy soldiers and looked over at him.

'Collect their guns before they realise how few of us there are.'

Stratton climbed the embankment onto the road and walked towards the bridge. The smoke rising from the wreckage was mostly black because of the burning tyres. Ash floated in the air. Every metal span that a mine had been tied to was buckled or shattered.

The bridge creaked and groaned loudly and Stratton wondered how badly weakened it was. He stepped over wreckage to get to the side where he could pull himself up a few feet onto a span for a better view. The vehicles were misshapen wrecks, peppered with countless small holes. Their interiors were laid bare, windows shattered, roofs crushed, engines exposed. The bodies inside were almost unrecognisable as having once been human. Not a single piece of them was untouched by a ball bearing or the blast itself. Some body parts were identifiable - a foot, a hand, a boneless face lying flat on the ground. The rear door of the Mercedes hung open on one hinge and a large piece of flesh, the remains of a man but without any limbs or head attached, lay across the back seat, flopping out onto the road. Only DNA a.n.a.lysis could prove that it was Chemora, but Louisa had seen him. He had been in the Mercedes, and nothing in the car could have survived.

The smoke irritated Stratton's throat and he jumped down and backed away. He slid down the embankment and crossed the river, heading for the rise, his thoughts now on Louisa.

She had not moved and sat near the crest staring at the bridge, unaware of him, a gentle breeze playing through her long hair.

'You okay?' he asked as he came up to her.

Louisa glanced at him and nodded. 'You did it.'

'We,' he corrected.

'Tell me something. And please be straight with me.'

'I've never been anything but.'

'When did you decide that I would be the one to blow the bridge?'

She was distant. It was only to be expected. 'It just worked out that way.'

'As long as you didn't do it.'

'I always hoped to avoid that, but I would've, if I'd had to.'

'That's right. You came here just to teach . . . We owe you an apology, don't we? We abused you.'

'Maybe Victor was right. This is everybody's fight.'

As Louisa watched the peasants gathering together, the women clutching their children, tears formed in her eyes, spilling forth to roll down her face. 'Why does it have to be like this?' she asked softly.

'We're still growing up.'

'We'll always be like this.There'll always be those willing to destroy in order to get what they don't deserve.'

'I don't agree. I can't agree. Otherwise what would be the point in fighting them? I'd just look for a place on this earth to wait out my life. We'll win in the end. Some day.'

Louisa did not look convinced and she got to her feet. 'What shall we do with them?' she asked, looking at the peasants.

'What do you want to do with them?'

She got his point. 'We'll take them back with us.'

'What about the soldiers?'

Victor and Bernard were stripping them of any weaponry, while Kebowa and Mohesiwa kept them covered with their drawn-back arrows.

'We'll let them go,' she said. 'They can tell the story of what a handful of revolutionaries can do.'

Stratton began to walk away down the rise.

'Legend will, of course, include a shadowy Englishman. But no one will really know who he was and why he came here. He was called The Mercenary, but that couldn't have been true. He took no payment for his work. And then he left as mysteriously as he arrived.'

Stratton continued walking.

Louisa watched him go.

The rebels were strangely quiet on the homeward journey. Even Victor did not say much. But they were not really subdued, not in their hearts. What had happened at the bridge had simply made them more serious. In part they could not believe what they had done or, indeed, that they had all survived - and with hardly a scratch, at that. What was more, they had saved a dozen souls. As Victor had said, it was the stuff of legend.

He believed Neravista would be so shocked by the death of his brother that it could take him weeks to react. That was not due to any emotional debilitation, he was quick to point out. The man was incapable of such a thing, even when it came to his own family. Neravista would have been knocked back by the sheer audacity and fury of the a.s.sault.

Those adult peasants unfit to walk rode on the horses and burros with the children. The group travelled during the daytime and rested at night even though there was a possibility that government troops would be mobilised to find them. Stratton decided that the risks of serious injury to the women and children moving at night were far greater. By late afternoon of the third day they reached the plateau and the familiar approaches to their encampment.

Louisa had not given the reunion with her father much thought. But the smell of the campfires seemed to revive the guilt she had originally felt about leaving him, knowing how much he would have worried.

Victor suggested entering the camp the same way they had left, by the rarely used route direct to the stables to avoid the main entrance. It was more than likely that the entire camp already knew about the death of Chemora. News like that travelled fast. Whether or not it was known who precisely had undertaken the task remained to be seen.

As the group approached the stables Yoinakuwa came out to greet them. Victor never ceased to be amazed how that man knew about things before anyone else did. His sons ran to him and after embracing they walked off together, the sons evidently gabbling on about the explosion they had seen and the carnage it had caused.

Louisa lifted off the children who'd been riding on her horse and saw that they were escorted to the main camp. As she unbuckled the animal's saddle she noticed the white stallion running around the corral in an agitated fas.h.i.+on, which was most unlike it. A sudden fear coursed through her - the horse was Sebastian's and such animals were sensitive to a much-loved master's feelings.

As she walked to the top of the track Stratton sensed her concern and watched her. Suddenly she broke into a sprint, and he hurried after her towards the cabins. Sebastian's had a large hole in the side with burn marks around it and the roof had been badly charred.

Louisa reached the front door, pushed it open and hurried inside. The room had been almost destroyed by what appeared to have been a blast of some kind.'Father?' she shouted, clambering over broken furniture to the room at the back. She pushed open the door to find it looking normal other than the bed being dishevelled. The maid always made it up while her father had his breakfast.

Panic gripped her heart and she ran out of the room and back to the front door as Stratton arrived. She hurried past him and raced outside, filled with dread that something had happened to Sebastian. Reaching the door of the smaller cabin she flung it open. Sebastian was seated at a table, calmly writing something. 'Father!' she cried. He got to his feet and she fell into his arms. They hugged tightly.

'I was very worried about you,' Sebastian said.

'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left you,' Louisa said. 'Are you all right?' she asked.

'I'm fine,' he said, happy to see her. 'What about you?'

She nodded, almost overcome with relief. 'I'm fine too.'

They laughed and embraced again.

Stratton stepped into the doorway and, seeing them together, turned away as Victor came running over. 'Where's Sebastian?' he asked with urgency.

'He's in there. Everything is fine,' Stratton said, taking Victor's arm to lead him away. 'Give them a moment together,' he said.

Victor understood and exhaled deeply as his tension eased. He looked back at the main cabin and the damage that had been done to it. 'They tried to kill him. I'm sure of it.'

In their cabin Stratton and Victor ate a meal by the light of a hurricane lamp and some candles. Victor was lost in thought and stared at one of the candle flames.

He looked at Stratton, who also appeared to be deep in thought, and held the wine jug over the Englishman's mug. Stratton did not react and Victor started to pour before realising that Stratton's mug was still full. 'You're not drinking tonight?' he asked.

Stratton shook his head.

'What are you thinking about?' Victor asked.

Stratton did not say.

'I think I know. You're going home tomorrow, for sure this time.'

'For sure.'

'Maybe you'll be lucky and something else will stop you.' Victor inspected the palms of his hands. 'Can I ask you something?'

Stratton didn't seem to care either way.

'If you knew something . . . maybe I should say, if you strongly suspected something that no one else did, and you wanted to reveal it, but if you did it would mean risking ridicule, would you still say it or would you stay silent?'