High Citadel / Landslide (27 page)

He felt his ankle. It was swollen and painful and he wondered if it would bear his weight, but this was neither the time nor the place to stand. He took his small pocket-knife and slit his trousers, cutting a long strip. He did not take off his shoe because he knew he would not be able to get it on again, so he tied the strip of cloth tightly around the swelling and under the instep of his shoe, supporting his ankle.

He was so intent on this that he did not see the man approach. The first indication was the slither of a kicked pebble and he froze rigid. From the corner of his eye he saw the man standing sideways to him, looking back towards the bridge. O’Hara kept very still, except for his arm which groped for a handy-sized rock. The man scratched his ribs in a reflective sort of way, moved on and was lost in the mist.

O’Hara let loose his pent-up breath in a silent sigh and prepared to move. He had the crossbow and three bolts which had a confounded tendency to clink together unless he was careful. He slid forward on his belly, worming his way among the rocks, trying to go upwards, away from the bridge. Again he was warned of imminent peril by the rattle of a rock and he rolled into a crack between two boulders and then he saw
the boots appear before his face and struggled with a tickle in his throat, fighting to suppress the cough.

The man stamped his feet noisily and beat his hands together, breathing heavily. Suddenly he turned with a clatter of boots and O’Hara heard the metallic snap as a safety-catch went off. ‘
Quien?
’

‘Santos.’

O’Hara recognized the voice of the Cuban. So his name was Santos—he’d remember that and look him up if he ever got out of this mess.

The man put the rifle back on safety and Santos said in Spanish, ‘See anything?’

‘Nothing.’

Santos grunted in his throat. ‘Keep moving; go up the hill—they won’t hang about here.’

The other man said, ‘The Russian said we must stay down here.’

‘To hell with him,’ growled Santos. ‘If he had not interfered we would have old Aguillar in our hands right now. Move up the hill—and get the others going too.’

The other did not reply but obediently moved off, and O’Hara heard him climbing higher. Santos stayed only a moment and then clattered away noisily in his steel-shod boots, and again O’Hara let out his breath softly.

He waited a while and thought of what to do next. If Santos was moving the men away up the hill, then his obvious course was to go down. But the enemy seemed to be divided into two factions and the Russian might still have kept some men below. Still, he would have to take that chance.

He slid out of the crack and began to crawl back the way he had come, inching his way along on his belly and being careful of his injured ankle. He was pleased to see that the mist was thickening and through it he heard shouts from the bridge and the knocking of steel on wood. They were
getting on with their repairs and traffic in the vicinity of the bridge would be heavy, so it was a good place to stay away from. He wanted to find a lone man far away from his fellows and preferably armed to the teeth. A crossbow was all very well, but he could do with something that had a faster rate of fire.

He altered course and headed for the trebuchet, stopping every few yards to listen and to peer through the mist. As he approached he heard laughter and a few derogatory comments shouted in Spanish. There was a crowd round the trebuchet and apparently they found it a humorous piece of machinery. He stopped and cocked the crossbow awkwardly, using the noise of the crowd as cover for any clinkings he might make. Then he crawled closer and took cover behind a boulder.

Presently he heard the bull-roar of Santos. ‘Up the hill, you lot. In the name of Jesus, what are you doing wasting time here? Juan, you stay here; the rest of you get moving.’

O’Hara flattened behind the boulder as the men moved off to the accompaniment of many grumbles. None of them came close to him, but he waited a few minutes before he began to crawl in a wide circle round the trebuchet, looking for the man left on guard. The bridge was illuminated by headlights and their glow lit the mist with a ghostly radiance, and at last he crept up on the guard who was just in the right position—silhouetted against the light.

Juan, the guard, was very young—not more than twenty—and O’Hara hesitated. Then he steeled himself because there was more at stake here than the life of a misguided youth. He lifted the crossbow and aimed carefully, then hesitated again, his finger on the trigger. His hesitation this time was for a different reason; Juan was playing soldiers, strutting about with his sub-machine-gun at the ready, and, O’Hara suspected, with the safety-catch off. He remembered the man he had shot by the bridge and how a
full magazine had emptied in a dead hand, so he waited, not wanting any noise when he pulled the trigger.

At last Juan got tired of standing sentry and became more interested in the trebuchet. He leaned over to look at the mechanism which held down the long arm, found his gun in his way and let it fall to be held by the shouldersling. He never knew what hit him as the heavy bolt struck him between the shoulders at a range of ten yards. It knocked him forward against the long arm, the bolt protruding through his chest and skewering him to the baulk of timber. He was quite dead when O’Hara reached him.

Ten minutes later O’Hara was again esconced among the rocks, examining his booty. He had the sub-machine-gun, three full magazines of ammunition, a loaded pistol and a heavy broad-bladed knife. He grinned in satisfaction—now he was becoming dangerous, he had got himself some sharp teeth.

Benedetta, Armstrong and Willis waited in the cold mist by the cable drum. Willis fidgeted, examining the wedge-shaped chock that prevented the drum from rolling on to the road and estimated the amount of force needed to free it when the time came. But Benedetta and Armstrong were quite still, listening intently for any sound that might come up the hill.

Armstrong was thinking that they would have to be careful; any person coming up might be O’Hara and they would have to make absolutely sure before jumping him, something that would be difficult in this mist. Benedetta’s mind was emptied of everything except a deep sorrow. Why else was O’Hara not at the camp unless he were dead, or worse, captured? She knew his feelings about being captured again
and she knew he would resist that, come what may. That made the likelihood of his being dead even more certain, and something within her died at the thought.

Aguillar had been difficult about retreating to the mine. He had wanted to stay and fight, old and unfit as he was, but Benedetta had overruled him. His eyes had widened in surprise as he heard the incisive tone of command in her voice. ‘There are only three of us fit to fight,’ she said. ‘We can’t spare one to help Jenny up to the mine. Someone must help her and you are the one. Besides, it is even higher up there than here, remember—you will have to go slowly so you must get away right now.’

Aguillar glanced at the other two men. Willis was morosely kicking at the ground and Armstrong smiled slightly, and Aguillar saw that they were content to let Benedetta take the lead and give the orders in the absence of O’Hara. She has turned into a young Amazon, he thought; a raging young lioness. He went up to the mine road with Miss Ponsky without further argument.

Willis stopped fiddling with the chock. ‘Where are they?’ he demanded in a high voice. ‘Why don’t they come and get it over with?’

Benedetta glanced at Armstrong who said, ‘Quiet! Not so loud.’

‘All right,’ said Willis, whispering. ‘But what’s keeping them from attacking us?’

‘We have already discussed that,’ said Benedetta. She turned to Armstrong. ‘Do you think we can defend the camp?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s indefensible. We haven’t a hope. If we can block the road, our next step is to retreat to the mine.’

‘Then the camp must be burned,’ said Benedetta decisively. ‘We must not leave it to give comfort and shelter to them.’ She looked at Willis. ‘Go back and splash kerosene in
the huts—all of them. And when you hear noise and shooting from here, set everything on fire.’

‘And then what?’ he asked.

‘Then you make your way up to the mine as best you can.’ She smiled slightly. ‘I would not come up this way again—go straight up and find the road at a higher level. We will be coming up too—as fast as we can.’

Willis withdrew and she said to Armstrong, ‘That one is frightened. He tries to hide it, but it shows. I cannot trust him here.’

‘I’m frightened too. Aren’t you?’ asked Armstrong curiously.

‘I was,’ she said. ‘I was afraid when the airplane crashed and for a long time afterwards. My bones were jelly—my legs were weak at the thought of fighting and dying. Then I had a talk with Tim and he taught me not to be that way.’ She paused. ‘That was when he told me how frightened he was.’

‘What a damned silly situation this is,’ said Armstrong in wonder. ‘Here we are waiting to kill men whom we don’t know and who don’t know us. But that’s always the way in a war, of course.’ He grinned. ‘But it is damned silly all the same; a middle-aged professor and a young woman lurking on a mountain with murderous intent. I think—’

She put her hand on his arm. ‘Hush!’

He listened. ‘What is it?’

‘I thought I heard something.’

They lay quietly, their ears straining and hearing nothing but the sough of the wind on the mist-shrouded mountain. Then Benedetta’s hand tightened on his arm as she heard, far away, the characteristic sound of a gear change. ‘Tim was right,’ she whispered. ‘They’re coming up in a truck or a jeep. We must get ready.’

‘I’ll release the drum,’ Armstrong said. ‘You stay on the edge here, and give a shout when you want it to go.’ He scrambled to his feet and ran back to the drum.

Benedetta ran along the edge of the cutting where she had placed the Molotov cocktails. She lit the wicks of three of them and each flamed with a halo in the mist. The rags, slightly damp with exposure, took a long time to catch alight well. She did not think their light could be seen from the road below; nevertheless, she put them well back from the edge.

The vehicle was labouring heavily, the engine coughing in the thin air. Twice it stopped and she heard the revving of the self-starter. This was no supercharged engine designed for high-altitude operation and the vehicle could not be making more than six or seven miles an hour up the steep slopes of the road. But it was moving much faster than a man could climb under the same conditions.

Benedetta lay on the edge of the cutting and looked down the road towards the bend. The mist was too thick to see that far and she hoped the vehicle had lights strong enough to give her an indication of its position. The growlings of the engine increased and then faded as the vehicle twisted and turned round the hairpin bends, and she thought she heard a double note as of two engines. One or two, she thought; it does not matter.

Armstrong crouched by the cable drum, grasping the short length of electric wire which was fastened to the chock. He peered towards the cutting but saw nothing but a blank wall of grey mist. His face was strained as he waited.

Down the road Benedetta saw a faint glow at the corner of the road and knew that the first vehicle was coming up on the other side of the bend. She glanced back to see if the paraffin wicks were still burning, then turned back and saw two misty eyes of headlamps as the first vehicle made the turn. She had already decided when to shout to Armstrong—a rock was her mark and when the headlights drew level with it, that was the time.

She drew her breath as the engine coughed and died away and the jeep—for through the mist she could now see what it was—drew to a halt. There was a whine from the starter and the jeep began to move again. Behind it two more headlights came into view as a second vehicle pulled round the bend.

Then the headlights of the jeep were level with the rock, and she jumped up, shouting, ‘Now! Now! Now!’

There was a startled shout from below as she turned and grabbed the paraffin bottles, easy to see as they flamed close at hand. There was a rumble as the drum plunged forward and she looked up to see it charging down the slope like a juggernaut to crash over the side of the cutting.

She heard the smash and rending of metal and a man screamed. Then she ran back to the edge and hurled a bottle into the confusion below.

The heavy drum had dropped fifteen feet on to the front of the jeep, crushing the forepart entirely and killing the driver. The bottle broke beside the dazed passenger in the wrecked front seat and the paraffin ignited in a great flare and he screamed again, beating at the flames that enveloped him and trying to release his trapped legs. The two men in the back tumbled out and ran off down the road towards the truck coming up behind.

Armstrong ran up to Benedetta just as she threw the second bottle. He had two more in his hand which he lit from the flaming wick of the remaining one and ran along the edge of the cutting towards the truck, which had drawn to a halt. There was a babble of shouts from below and a couple of wild shots which came nowhere near him as he stood on the rim and looked into the truck full of men.

Deliberately he threw one bottle hard at the top of the cab. It smashed and flaming paraffin spread and dripped down past the open window and there came an alarmed cry from the driver. The other bottle he tossed into the body of
the truck and in the flickering light he saw the mad scramble to get clear. No one had the time or inclination to shoot at him.

He ran back to Benedetta who was attempting to light another bottle, her hand shaking and her breath coming in harsh gasps. Exertion and the reaction of shock were taking equal toll of her fortitude. ‘Enough,’ he panted. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ As he spoke, there was an explosion and a great flaring light from the jeep and he grinned tightly. ‘That wasn’t paraffin—that was petrol. Come on.’

As they ran they saw a glow from the direction of the camp—and then another and another. Willis was doing his job of arson.

O’Hara’s ankle was very painful. Before making his move up the hill he had rebound it, trying to give it some support, but it still could not bear his full weight. It made clambering among the rocks difficult and he made more noise than he liked.