Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur - Страница 43

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of the rope.

Exhausted by the long chase and chilled by the cold night wind,

the boy had huddled down on her neck and allowed the mare to pick her

own way back to the water holes. He was half asleep, clinging by

instinct alone to the mare's mane, when a short while before dawn she

wandered into the perimeter of the Italian base.

A nervous sentry had challenged loudly, and the startled animal had

plunged into a full run through the outskirts of the camp. Now,

fully awake, the boy had clung to the galloping horse, and seen the

lines of parked trucks and military tents looming out of the

darkness.

He had seen the stacked rifles, and recognize the shape of the helmet

of another sentry who had challenged again as they passed through the

outer lines.

Peering back under his own arm he had seen the flash of the rifle shot

and heard the crack of the bullet pass his bowed head, and he urged the

horse on with heels and knees.

By the time the groom reached the deep wadi, the Ras's following was at

last succumbing to the effects of a full night's festivities.

Many of them had drifted away to find a place to sleep, others had

merely huddled down in their robes and slept where they had eaten.

Only the hardened few still ate and drank, argued and sang, or sat in

tejnumbed silence about the fires watching the womenfolk begin to

prepare the morning meal.

The boy flung himself off the mare at the entrance to the caves,

ducked under the arms of the sentries who would have restrained him and

ran into the crowded, smoky and dimly lit interior. He was gabbling

with fright and importance, the words tumbling over each other and

making no sense until Lij Mikhael caught him by the upper arms and

shook him to restore his senses.

Then the story he told made sense, and rang with urgent conviction.

Those within earshot shouted it to those further back, and within

seconds the story, distorted and garbled, had flashed through the

gathering and was running wildly through the whole encampment.

The sleepers awakened, every man armed and every woman and child

curious and voluble. They streamed out of the caves and from the rough

tents and shelters in the narrow ravines. Without command, moving like

a shoal of fish without a leader but with as ingle purpose, laughing

sceptic ally or shouting speculation and comment and query, brandishing

shields and ancient firearms, the women clutching their infants, and

the older children dancing around them or darting ahead, the shapeless

mob streamed out of the broken ground and down into the saucer-shaped

valley of the wells.

In the caves, Lij Mikhael was still explaining the boy's story to the

foreigners, and arguing the details and implications with them and his

father. It was Jake Barton who realized the danger.

"If the Italians have sent in a unit to grab the wells, then it's a

calculated act of war. They'll be looking for trouble, Prince.

You'd best forbid any of your men to go down there, until we have sized

up Xhe situation properly." It was too late, far too late. In the

first faint glimmer of dawn, when the light plays weird tricks on a

man's eyes, the Italian sentries peering over their parapets saw a wall

of humanity swarming out of the dark and broken ground, and heard the

rising hubbub of hundreds of excited voices.

When the drumming had begun, many of the black shirts were huddled

below the firing step of their trenches, swaddled in their greatcoats

and sleeping the exhausted sleep of men who had travelled all the

previous day, and worked all the night.

The non-commissioned officers kicked and pulled them to their feet, and

shoved them to their positions along the parapet. From here they

peered, befuddled with sleep, down into the valley.

With the exception of Luigi Castelani, not a single man in the Third

Battalion had ever faced an armed enemy, and now after an infinity of

nerve-tearing waiting, at last the experience was upon them in the dark

before the dawn when a man's vitality is at its lowest ebb.

Their bodies were chilled and their brains unclear. In the uncertain

light, the mob that poured into the valley was as numerous as the sands

of the desert, each figure as large as a giant and as ferocious as a

marauding lion.

It was in this moment that Colonel Aldo Belli, panting with exertion

and nervous strain, stepped out of the narrow communication trench on

to the firing platform of the forward line of emplacements. The

Sergeant in command of the trench recognized him instantly and let out

a cry of relief.

"my Colonel, thank God you have come." And forgetful of rank and

position he seized the Count's arm. Aldo Belli was so busy trying to

fight off the man's sweaty and importunate clutches that it was some

seconds before he actually glanced down into the darkened valley then

his bowels turned to jelly and his legs seemed to buckle under him.

"Merciful Mother of God," he wailed. "All is lost. They are upon us.

With clumsy fingers he unbuckled the flap of his holster and as he fell

to his knees he drew the pistol.

"Fire!" he screamed. "Open fire!" And crouching down well below the

level of the parapet, he emptied the Beretta straight upwards into the

dawn sky.

Manning the Italian parapets were over four hundred combatants; of

these over three hundred and fifty were riflemen, armed with

magazine-loaded bolt-action weapons, while another sixty men in teams

of five serviced the cunningly placed machine guns.

Every man of this force had endured grinding nervous strain, listening

to the war drums and now confronted by a sweeping mob of threatening

figures. They crouched like dark statues behind their weapons, fingers

curled stiffly around the triggers, and squinted over the open sights

of rifle and machine gun.

The Count's-shriek of command and the crackle of the pistol shots were

all that was necessary to snap the paralysing bonds of fear that held

them. The firing was started around Aldo Belli's position, by men

close enough to hear his command. A long line of muzzle flashes

bloomed and twinkled along the forward slope of the valley, and three

machine guns opened with them. The tearing sound of their long

traversing bursts drowned out the crackle of musketry and their tracer

flickered and flew in long white arcs out across the valley to bury

itself in the dark moving blot of humanity.

Taken in the flank, the mob broke and surged away towards the dark

silence of the far slope of the valley, away from the sheets of bright

white tracer and the red rows of rifle fire. Leaving their dead and

wounded scattered behind them, they spread like ispilled oil across the

valley floor.

The silent gunners on the far slope saw them coming, held their fire

for a few more confused panic-soured moments, and then, seeing

themselves threatened, they opened also. The delay had the effect of

allowing the survivors of the first volley to race deeply into the

fields of overlapping fire that Castelani had so cleverly planned.

Caught in the open ground, hemmed in by a murderous storm of fire, the

forward movement of the mob broke down, and they milled aimlessly, the

women shrieking and clutching at their children, the children darting

and doubling like a shoal of fish trapped in a tidal pool, some of the

warriors kneeling in the open and beginning at last to return fire.

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