by Jack Higgins
Poor Sam. So in the end, he had lost all along the line?
'You've been in touch with them?' I said. 'They have a radio?'
'Oh, yes, I insisted they took the one the military left in my care. It seems the girl went into the jungle the day they arrived and has not returned.'
'And that doesn't surprise me.'
'You think the whole thing could be some sort of trap to get them up there?' Mannie asked.
'On her part, perhaps, to put herself right with her people if she wants to return to them permanently. They'd catch on to the idea fast enough.' I turned back to Figueiredo. 'What's the latest development?'
'Huna have been seen near the mission for two days now. Some of Avila's men panicked and insisted on leaving. It seems Sister Maria Teresa stood firm.'
'So they cleared out, anyway?'
'Exactly. Avila was on the radio just before noon. Reception was bad and he soon faded, but he managed to tell me that three of his men had cleared out at dawn in the mission launch, leaving the rest of them stranded.'
'Anything else?'
'He said the drums had started.'
'Which was why you were trying to sober up our friend?' I stirred Hannah with my foot. 'Have you been in touch with Alberto?'
'He's on leave, but I spoke to a young lieutenant at Forte Franco an hour ago who said he'd contact Army Headquarters for instructions. In any case, what can they hope to do? This is something to be handled now or not at all. Tomorrow is too late.'
'All right,' I said. 'I'll leave at once in the Hayley. Is she ready for off, Mannie?'
'Is now. She was having magneto trouble, but I've fixed that.'
'How come the Bristol's here?'
'Sam went down-river by boat and flew her back. Had to just to keep a plane in the air while I fixed the Hayley. Once that penalty clause comes into operation he has a fortnight to find another pilot. He still hoped something would turn up or at least I thought he did.'
He hurried out and Figueiredo said, 'With four to bring back you must go alone, which could be dangerous. Would a machine-gun help?'
'The best idea I've heard today.'
He beckoned and I went round the bar counter and followed him through the bead curtain into the back room. He sat down, grunting, beside an old cabin trunk, took a key from his watch-chain and opened it. There were a dozen rifles, a couple of Thompson guns, a box of Mills bombs and quantities of ammunition.
'And where did you get this little lot?' I demanded.
'Colonel Alberto. In case of attack here, Take what you wish.'
I slung one of the Thompson guns over my shoulder and stuffed half a dozen fifty-round clips of ammunition and a couple of Mills bombs into a military-type canvas haversack. 'If this doesn't do it, nothing will.'
I returned to the bar and paused beside Hannah. He moaned a little and stirred. I turned to Figueiredo who had followed me through. 'I meant what I said. Lock him in the steam house and don't let him out till he's sober.'
'I will see to it, my friend. Go with God.'
I patted the butt of the Thompson gun. 'I prefer something you can rely on. Don't worry about me. I'll be back. Keep trying to raise Avila. Tell him I'm on my way.'
I smiled bravely, but inside, I felt considerably less sanguine about things as I went down the steps into the street.
*
I took the Hayley up and out of there fast. The last time I'd flown her to Santa Helena it had taken me forty minutes. Now, with the wind under my tail, I had every chance of doing it in half an hour.
When I was ten minutes away, I started trying to raise them on the radio without any kind of success. I kept on trying and then, when I was about three miles down-river from Santa Helena, I found the mission launch. I reduced speed, banked in a wide circle and went down low to take a look.
The launch was grounded on a mudbank, her deck tilted steeply to one side. The hull and wheelhouse were peppered with arrows and the man who hung over the stern rail had several in his back. There was no sign of the other two. I could only hope, for their sakes, that the Huna hadn't taken them alive.
So that was very much that. I carried on up-river, my speed right down, and passed low over the mission. There was no sign of life and I tried calling them over the radio again. A moment later and Avila's voice sounded in my ear with reasonable clarity although the strength was weak and there was lots of static.
'Senhor Hannah, thanks be to God you have come.'
'It's Mallory,' I said. 'How are things down there?'
'Senhorita Martin, the good Sister and I are in the church, senhor. We are all that is left.' In spite of the distortion, the astonishment in his voice was plain. 'But you here, senhor. How can this be?'
'Never mind that now. I found the launch downstream. They didn't get very far, those friends of yours. I'm going to land now. Get ready to bring the women across.'
'An impossibility, senhor. There is no boat.'
I told him to stand by and turned over the jetty. He was right enough, so I crossed the river and went in low over the airstrip. There was no sign of life there, but there was a canoe by the little wooden pier.
I circled the mission again and called up Avila. 'There's a canoe at the landing strip pier. Have the women ready to go and I'll come over for you. I'm going down now.'
I banked steeply and plunged in very fast, going in low over the trees. A final burst of power to level out and I was down. I taxied to the far end of the campo, turned the Hayley into the wind ready for a quick take-off and cut the engine.
I sat there for a couple of minutes waiting for something to happen. Nothing did, so I primed the two Mills bombs, shoved a clip into the Thompson, slipped the haversack over my shoulder, got out and started towards the river.
Except for the path which had been flattened by constant use as a landing strip, the grass over the rest of the campo was three or four feet high. Somewhere on the right, birds lifted in alarm. Enough to warn me in normal circumstances, but then it all happened so fast.
There were suddenly voices high and shrill, a strange crackling noise. When I turned, flames were sweeping across the campo from the edge of the jungle, the long, dry grass flaring like touch paper. Beyond, through the smoke, I caught sight of feathered head-dresses, but no arrows came my way. Presumably they thought me a moth to their flame.
It was certainly the end of the Hayley for as I turned to run, the flames were already flaring around the underbelly. I was halfway to the river when her tanks blew up, burning fuel and fuselage spraying out in a mushroom of flames. That really finished things off and within a few moments the entire campo was a kind of lake of fire.
But at least it put an impassable barrier between myself and the Huna, one flaw in their plan or so it seemed. I scrambled into the canoe at the jetty, pushed off and found half a dozen canoes packed with Huna coming down-river to meet me.
*
Even with the Thompson, there were too many to take on alone and in any case, I couldn't paddle and fire at the same time. There seemed to be only one thing to do which was to push like hell for the other side and that's exactly what I did.
A point in my favour was the numerous shoals and sandbanks in that part of the river. I got to the far side of a particularly large one, ibis rising in a great red cloud, putting what seemed like something of a barrier between us.
They were nothing if not resourceful. Two canoes simply grounded on the sandbank and their occupants jumped out and ran towards me, ankle-deep in water. The other turned and paddled back upstream to cut me off.
The men on the sandbank were too close for comfort by now so I dropped my paddle in the bottom of the canoe for a moment, pulled the pin on one of the Mills bombs and tossed it towards them.
It fell woefully short, but as on a previous occasion, the explosion had exactly the effect I was looking for. They came to a dead stop, shouting angrily so I gave them number two which turned them round and sent them running back the other way.
<
br /> Even at that stage in the game I didn't want to kill any of them, but as I picked up my paddle again I saw that the others were rounding the tip of the sandbank a hundred yards north of me, effectively blocking the channel. Which only left the jungle on my left and I moved towards it as quickly as I could.
Undergrowth and branches spilled out over the bank in a kind of canopy. Inside the light was dim and I was completely hidden as far as anyone on the river was concerned. I paddled upstream for a little way, looking for a suitable landing place and came to a shelving bank of sand where a creek emptied into the river.
I turned the canoe in towards it, aware of the Huna voices drawing nearer, aware in the same moment of another canoe lying high on the mudbank inside the mouth of the creek, as if left there by floodwater, tilted to one side so that I could see it was not empty.
I splashed through the water towards it and knelt down, groping amongst the broken bones, the tattered scraps of what had once been nuns' habits. They were both there, but I could only find one identity chain. Sister Anne Josepha. L.S.O.P. It was enough. One mystery was solved at least. I dropped the disc and chain into my pocket and started up the creek as the canoes moved in behind me.
*
I had about three hundred yards to go to the mission and it seemed sensible to get there as quickly as possible. I started to run, holding the Thompson at the high port, ready for action in case of trouble.
I kept as close to the riverbank as possible, mainly because the ground was clearer there and I could see what I was doing. I could hear their voices high and shrill, down on the river, and there was a crashing somewhere behind me in the brush. I turned and loosed off, raking the undergrowth, just to show them I meant business, then ran on, bursting out of the forest into the open a couple of minutes later.
The church was only thirty or forty yards away and I put down my head and ran like hell, yelling at the top of my voice. An arrow whispered past me and buried itself in the door, then another as I went up the steps.
I turned and fired as a reflex action towards the dark shadows at the edge of the trees, each topped by a bright splash of colour. I couldn't tell if I'd hit anything. In any case, at that moment, the door opened behind me, a hand grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me inside so forcibly that I lost my balance.
When I sat up, I found Avila leaning against the door clutching a carbine. Sister Maria Teresa and Joanna Martin on either side of him. The American girl was holding a rifle.
She leaned it against the wall and dropped to her knees beside me. 'Are you all right, Neil?'
'Still in one piece as far as I can tell.'
'What happened out there? We heard a terrific explosion.'
'They set fire to the campo and the Hayley went up with it. I was lucky to get here.'
'Then we are finished, senhor,' Avila cut in. 'Is that what you are saying? That there is nothing to be done?'
'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'You could always ask Sister Maria Teresa to pray.'
A drum started to beat monotonously in the distance.
FIFTEEN
The Last Show
There was still the radio, but according to Avila, he had tried to raise Landro on several occasions since he'd last had contact at noon and I knew Figueiredo had been trying to get through to him which meant something was wrong with the damn thing.
I did what I could considering my limited technical knowledge, unscrewed the top and checked that no wires were loose and that all valves fitted tightly which was very definitely my limit. I left Avila to keep trying and went and sat with my back against the wall beside Joanna Martin who was making coffee on a spirit stove.
Sister Maria Teresa knelt at the altar in prayer. 'Still at it, is she?' I said. 'Faith unshaken.'
Joanna gave me a cigarette and sat back, waiting for the water to boil. 'What happened, Neil?'
'To me?' I said. 'Oh, I jumped ship as the Navy say, before I got to where they were taking me.'
'Won't they be after you - the authorities, I mean?'
'Not any more. You see, strange to relate, I didn't do it. I was framed. Isn't that what Cagney's always saying in those gangster movies?'
She nodded slowly. 'I think I knew from the beginning. It never did make any kind of sense.'
'Thanks for the vote of confidence,' I said. 'You and Mannie both. I could have done with it a little earlier, mind you, but that's all water under the bridge.'
'And Sam?'
'Poured out the whole story in front of Figueiredo and his wife and Mannie in the hotel bar earlier this afternoon when I confronted him. So drunk he didn't know what he was doing. He's finished, Joanna.'
She poured coffee into a mug and handed it to me. 'I think he was finished a long, long time ago, Neil.'
She sat there, sitting on her heels, looking genuinely sad, a different sort of person altogether from the woman I was accustomed to. Somehow it seemed the right moment to break it to her.
'I've got something for you.' I took the identity disc on its chain from my pocket and held it out to her.
The skin of her face tightened visibly before my eyes. She started to tremble. 'Anna?' she said hoarsely.
I nodded. 'I found what was left of her and her friend in a canoe on the riverbank. They must have been killed in the original attack after all and drifted down-river.'
'Thank God,' she whispered. 'Oh, thank God.'
She reached out for the disc and chain, got to her feet and fled to the other end of the church. Sister Maria Teresa turned to meet her and I saw Joanna hold out the identity disc to her.
At the same moment Avila called to me urgently. 'I'm getting something. Come quickly.'
He kept the headphones on and turned up the speaker for me. We all heard Figueiredo at once quite clearly in spite of some static.
'Santa Helena, are you receiving me?'
'Mallory here,' I said. 'Can you hear me?'
'I hear you clearly, Senhor Mallory. How are things?'
'As bad as they can be. The Huna were waiting for me when I landed and set fire to the plane. I'm in the church at the mission now, with Avila and the two women. We're completely stranded. No boats.'
'Mother of God.' I could almost see him crossing himself.
'We've only one hope,' I said. 'You'll have to raise some sort of volunteer force and come up-river in that launch of yours. We'll try to hang on till you get here.'
'But even if I managed to find men willing to accompany me, it would take us ten or twelve hours to get there.'
'I know. You'll just have to do the best you can.'
There was more from his end, but so drowned in static that I couldn't make any sense out of it and after a while I lost him altogether. When I turned I found that Joanna and Sister Maria Teresa had joined Avila. They all looked roughly the same, strained, anxious, afraid. Even Sister Maria Teresa had lost her customary expression of quiet joy.
'What happens now, Neil?' Joanna said. 'You'd better tell us the worst.'
'You heard most of it. I've asked Figueiredo to try and raise a few men and attempt to break through to us in the government launch. At least twelve hours if everything goes right for him. To be perfectly frank, my own feeling is we'd be lucky to see them before dawn tomorrow.'
Avila laughed harshly. 'A miracle if they even started, senhor. You think they are heroes in Landro, to come looking for a Huna arrow in the back?'
'You came, Senhor Avila,' Sister Maria Teresa said.
'For money, Sister,' he told her. 'Because you paid well and in the end what has it brought me? Only death.'
*
I stood by the window, peering out through the half-open shutter across the compound, past the hospital and the bungalows to the edge of the forest, dark in the evening light. The sun was a smear of orange beyond the trees and the drum throbbed monotonously.
Joanna Martin leaned against the wall beside me smoking a cigarette. In the distance, voices drifted on the evening air, mingling with the drum
ming, an eerie sound.
'Why are they singing?' she asked.
'To prepare themselves for death. It's what they call a courage chant. It means they'll have a go at us sooner or later, but there's a lot of ritual to be gone through beforehand.'
Sister Maria Teresa moved out of the shadows. 'Are you saying they welcome death, Mr Mallory?'
'The only way for a warrior to die, Sister. As I told you once before, death and life are all part of a greater whole for these people.'
Before she could reply, there was a sudden exclamation from Avila who was sitting at the radio. 'I think I've got Figueiredo again.'
He turned up the speaker and the static was tremendous. I crouched beside it, aware of the voice behind all that interference, trying to make some sense of it all. Quite suddenly it stopped, static and all and there was an uncanny quiet. Avila turned to me, removing the headphones slowly.
'Could you get any of that?' I said.
'Only a few words, senhor, and they made no sense at all.'
'What were they?'
'He said that Captain Hannah was on his way.'
'But that's impossible,' I said. 'You must have got it wrong.'
Outside, the drum stopped beating.
*
The church was a place of shadows now. There was a lantern by the radio and the candles at the other end which Sister Maria Teresa had lit.
It was completely dark outside, just the faint line of the trees discernible against the night sky. There wasn't a sound out there. It was all quite still.
A jaguar coughed somewhere in the distance. Avila said, 'Was that for real, senhor?'
'I don't know. It could be some sort of signal.'
As long as we could keep them out we stood a chance. We were both well armed. There was a rifle for Joanna Martin and a couple of spares, laid out on a table next to the radio to hand for any emergency. But nothing stirred in all that silent world. The only sound was the faint crackle of the radio which Avila had left on with the speaker turned up to full power.
