Cry Wolf Part 37

"What about these poor devils?" Jake indicated the few hundreds of Harari who crouched with them behind the wall of rock all that remained of Ras Golam's army.

"As soon as we hear the bombers coming, they can beat it. Off into the mountains like a pack of long dogs-" after a b.i.t.c.h, "Jake finished for him, and grinned.

"Precisely."

"Someone will have to explain it to them."

"I'll go and fetch young Sara to tell them," and he crawled away, using the wall as cover from the Italian snipers who had taken up position in the cliffs above them.

Priscilla the Pig was parked five hundred yards back in a gra.s.sy wrinkle of ground, under a screen of cedar trees, beside the road.

Gareth saw immediately that Vicky had recovered from the state of collapse in which they had found her, although she was haggard and pale, and the torn rags of her clothing were filthy, stained with dried blood from the long flesh wound between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She was helping Sara with the boy who lay on the floorboards of the cabin, and she looked up with an expression which told of regained strength and determination.

"How is he doing? "Gareth asked, leaning forward through the open rear doors. The boy had been hit twice and been carried back from the killing-ground of the gorge by two of his loyal tribes men.

"He will be all right, I think," said Vicky, and Gregorius opened his eyes and whispered, "Yes, I'll be all right."

"Well, that's more than you deserve," grunted Gareth. "I left you in charge not leading the charge."

"Major Swales." Sara looked up fiercely, protective as a mother. "It was the bravest-"

"Spare me from brave and honest men,"

Gareth drawled.

"Cause of all the trouble in the world." And before Sara could flash at him again he went on, "Come along with me, my dear. Need you to do a bit of translating." Reluctantly she left Gregorius and climbed down out of the car. Vicky followed her, and stood close to Gareth beside the side of the hull.

"Are you all right? "she asked.

"Never better," he a.s.sured her, but now she noticed for the first time the flush of unnatural colour in his cheeks and the feverish glitter in his eyes.

Quickly she reached out and before he could prevent it she took the hand of his injured arm. It was swollen like a balloon, and it had turned a sickly greenish purple. She leaned forward to sniff the filthy stained rags that covered the arm, and she felt her gorge rise at the sweet stench of putrefaction.

Alarmed, she reached up and touched his cheek.

"Gareth, you are hot as a furnace."

"Pa.s.sion, old girl. The touch of your lily-white, "Let me look at your arm, "she demanded.

"Better not." He smiled at her, but she caught the iron in his voice. "Let sleeping dogs lie, what? Nothing we can do about it until we get back to civilization."

"Gareth-"

"Then my dear, I will buy you a large bottle of Charlie, and send for the preacher man."

"Gareth, be serious."

"I am serious." Gareth touched her cheek with the fingers of his good hand. "That was a proposal of marriage, "he said, and she could feel the fiery heat of the fever in his finger, tips.

"Oh Gareth! Gareth!"

"By which I take it you mean thanks, but no thanks." She nodded silently, unable to speak.

"Jake?"he asked, and she nodded again.

"Oh well, you could have done a lot better. Me, for instance,"

and he grinned, but the pain was there with the fever in his eyes, deep and poignant. "On the other hand, you could have done a lot worse." He turned away abruptly to Sara, taking her arm. "Come along, my dear."

Then over his shoulder, "We'll be back as soon as the bombers come.

Get ready to run."

"Where to? "she called after them.

"I don't know," he grinned. "But we'll try to think of a pleasant place." Jake heard them first, so far off that it was only the hive-sound of bees on a drowsy summer's day, and almost immediately it was gone again, blanketed by the mountains.

"Here they come," he said, and almost immediately, as if in confirmation, a sh.e.l.l burst under the lee of the rock wall, fired from the Italian battery a mile down the gorge. The yellow smoke from the marker poured a thick column into the still sunlit air.

"Move!" shouted Gareth, and placed the silver command whistle between his lips and blew a series of sharp blasts.

But by the time they had hurried along the wall, making certain that all the Harari had understood and were running back down the valley into the cedar forests, the drone of approaching engines was growing louder.

"Let's go!" called Jake urgently, and caught Gareth's good arm.

They turned and ran, pelting back across the open ground to the lip of the valley, and Jake looked back over his shoulder as they reached it.

The first gigantic bomber came out of the mouth of the gorge, and the spread of its black wings seemed to darken the sky. Two bombs fell from under it; one burst short but the second struck the wall, and the blast knocked them both off their feet, slamming them savagely against the earth.

When Jake lifted his head again, he saw through the fumes and smoke the gaping breach it had blown in the rock wall.

"Well, now the party is definitely over," he said, and hauled Gareth to his feet.

Where are we going?" shouted Vicky from the cabin below them, and neither Jake in the driver's seat nor Gareth in the turret replied.

"Can't we just drive up the road to Dessie?" Sara demanded; she sat cross-legged on the floor of the cabin with Gregorius's head cus.h.i.+oned on her lap. "We could fight our way through those cowardly Gallas."

"We've got enough gas to take us about another five miles."

"Our best bet is to drive to the foot of Ambo Sacal." Gareth pointed to the towering bulk of the mountain that rose sheer into the southern sky. "Ditch the car there and try and make it on foot across the mountains." Vicky crawled up into the turret beside him, and thrust her head out of the hatch. Together they stared up at the sheer sides of the Ambo.

"What about Gregorius?"she asked.

"We'll have to carry him."

"We'll never make it. The mountains are crawling with Gallas."

"Have you got a better idea?" Gareth asked, and she looked despairingly around her.

Priscilla the Pig was the only thing that moved in the whole valley. The Harari had vanished into the rocky ground on the slopes of the mountains, and behind them the Italian tanks had not yet come in over the lip of the valley.

She lifted her eyes to the sky again, where only a few wreaths of cloud still clung to the peaks, and suddenly her whole mood changed.

Her chin came up, and new colour flooded into her cheeks her hand shook as she pointed up between the peaks.

"Yes," she cried. "Yes, I've got a better idea. Look! Oh, won't "you look!" The tiny blue aircraft caught the sun as it banked in steeply, turning in under the rearing granite cliffs, and it flashed like a dragonfly in flight.

"Italian?" Gareth stared up at it.

"No! No! Vicky shook her head. "It's Lij Mikhael's plane.

I recognize it. It came to fetch him here before." She was laughing almost hysterically, her eyes s.h.i.+ning. "He said he would send it, that's what he was trying to tell me before he was cut off."

"Where will it land?" Gareth demanded, and Vicky scrambled down into the driver's compartment to direct him towards the polo field beyond the burned and still smoking town.

They watched anxiously, all of them except Gregorius, standing on the edge of the open field close beside the bulk of the car, all their heads craning to watch the little blue aircraft circle.

"What the h.e.l.l is he doing? "Jake demanded angrily. "The Eyeties will be here before he makes up his mind."

"He's nervous," Gareth guessed. "He doesn't know what the h.e.l.l is going on down here. From where he is, he can see the town has been destroyed, and he can probably see the tanks and the trucks following us down from the gorge." Vicky turned from them and ran back to the car; she climbed up on to the turret and stood high, waving both arms above her head.

On the next circuit the little blue Puss Moth dropped lower, and they could see the pilot's face in the side window of the c.o.c.kpit peering down at them. He banked steeply over the smoking remains of the town, with the lower wing pointing directly at the earth and then he came back at them, this time only ten feet above the field.

He was staring at Vicky, and with a lift of her heart she recognized the same young white pilot as had flown Lij Mikhael. He recognized her at the same instant, and she saw him grin and lift a hand in salute as he flashed past.

As he came out of his next turn, he was lined up on the field for his landing and he touched down and taxied tail-up to where they stood.

As the light aircraft rolled to a halt, they crowded up to the cabin door. The wash of the propeller buffeted them savagely and the pilot slid back the pane of his window and shouted above the noise of his engine.

"I can take three small ones or two big ones." Jake and Gareth exchanged a single brief glance and then Jake jerked the cabin door and roughly they thrust the two girls into the tiny cramped cabin.

"Hold it," Gareth shouted into the pilot's ear. "We've got another small one for you." They carried Gregorius between them, trying to be as gentle as haste would allow. The pilot was already turning the machine into the wind and they staggered after it lifting the boy's body into the open door as it was moving.

"Jake-"Vicky shouted, and her eyes were wild with grief.

"Don't worry," Jake shouted back, as they tumbled Greg.

onus across the girls" laps. "We'll get out just remember I love you."

"I love you, too," Vicky called back, and her eyes swam with bright tears. "Oh Jake-" He was struggling to close the cabin door, running beside the fuselage as the aircraft gathered speed for the take-off, but one of Gregorius's feet was holding it open. Jake stopped to free the foot, and rifle-fire snapped past his head, and tw.a.n.ged into the canvas fabric of the fuselage.

He looked up in time to see the next shot star the side window of the c.o.c.kpit and then go on to strike the young pilot in the temple, killing him instantly, and knocking his body sideways so that it hung drunkenly out of the seat, held only by the shoulder straps.

The aircraft slewed sideways at the loss of control, and Jake saw Vicky reach over the pilot's body and close the throttle, but he was turning away and running back towards Priscilla the Pig.

More rifle-fire kicked up spurts of dust around them as they ran.

"Where are they? "he shouted at Gareth.

"On the left." Jake twisted his head and glimpsed the Italians in the scrub and gra.s.s two hundred yards away on the edge of the field.

Beyond them was parked the transport that had carried them ahead of the lumbering tank formation.

Priscilla's engine was still running, and he headed her in . k turn for the riflemen in the gra.s.s. Above him, a qUIC Gareth fired the Vickers and the Italians jumped up and ran like rabbits.

One quick pa.s.s scattered them and a burst of Vickers fire exploded the transport in a dragon's breath of flame, and then Jake swung the car back to where the little blue aircraft stood forlornly on the edge of the field. He parked the tall steel hull close beside her to screen her from Italian snipers.

Sara and Vicky between them had dragged the pilot's body out of the c.o.c.kpit. He was a big man, heavy in the shoulder and belly, and the blood oozed from the bullet hole in his temple into the thick mop of his hair as he lay on his back in the short gra.s.s under the wing.

Vicky turned away from him and scrambled up into the c.o.c.kpit settling herself behind the controls.

"Jesus!" said Jake, relief s.h.i.+ning on his face. "She said she could fly." A . rifle bullet spranged against Priscilla's hull and went wailing away over their heads.

Gareth glanced down at the pilot's body. "He was a big one, poor beggar."

"There's room for one more now," Vicky shouted from the c.o.c.kpit; "with both of you we'd never make it over the mountains," and they saw what torture the words caused her.

Another bullet clanged against steel. "We can take only one more."

"Spin you for it." Gareth had the silver Maria Theresa on his thumb and he grinned at Jake.

"Heads," said Jake and it spun silver in the sunlight and Gareth caught it in the palm of his good hand and glanced at Jake..

"It had to come your turn at last." Gareth's grin lifted the corners of his mouth. "Well done, old son. off you go." But Jake caught the wrist, and twisted it. He glanced at the coin.

"Tails," he snapped. "I always knew you were a cheat, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d," and he turned away towards Vicky. "I'll cover the take-off, Vicky, I'll keep Priscilla between you and the Eyeties as long as I can." Behind him, Gareth stooped and picked up a stone the size of a gull's egg out of the gra.s.s.

"Sorry, old son," he drawled. "But I owe you two already," and tenderly he tapped Jake above the right ear with the stone held in the cup of his hand, and then dropped the stone and caught him under the armpits as his legs sagged and he began to collapse.

He put his knee under Jake's backside and with a heave boosted him headfirst and unconscious through the cabin door. Then he put his foot on Jake's protruding posterior and thrust him farther into the cramped cabin until he could slam and lock the door.

Rifle-fire pounded and crashed against the screening hull of Priscilla. Gareth reached into his inside pocket and pulled out the pigskin wallet. He dropped it through the side window into Vicky's lap as she sat at the controls.

"Tell Jake if I'm not there on the first to cash the Lijs cheque and buy You a bottle of Charlie from me, and when you drink it, remember I really did love you,-" Before she could reply he had turned and darted back to the armoured car and scrambled up into the driver's hatch.

Like a team in harness, the car and the little blue aircraft ran side by side down the open field and the Italian fire drummed against the steel hull of the car.

Then slowly the heavily laden aircraft drew ahead of the speeding car, but by then they were beyond effective rifle range, and as Vicky felt the Puss Moth come alive and the wheels b.u.mped clear of the rough turf, she glanced quickly backwards.

Gareth stood in the driver's hatch, and she saw his lips Move as he shouted after her, and he lifted his bandaged arm in a gesture of farewell.

She did not hear the words, but she read them upon his lips.

"Noli il legitimi carborundum," and saw the flash of that devilish buccaneer smile, before the aircraft lifted away from the earth and she must turn all her attention back to it.

are th halted Priscilla at the edge of the field and he stood in the hatch, s.h.i.+elding his eyes with his good 3hand, and watched the little blue aircraft climb laboriously into the thin mountain air.

Again it caught the sun and flashed as it turned unsteadily towards the gap in the mountains where the pa.s.s led up into the highlands.