A Sparrow Falls c-9

by Wilbur Smith

  Mark hit the brakes and fanned the back of the Rolls through the turn, bounded off the pavement and let her sway out across the road, to further confuse the riflemen in the cottages. Then he tramped down hard on the accelerator, guided her through the turn and went howling down into the dark deserted commercial area of Booysens, leaving the stupefied riflemen staring into the deserted bend, and listening to the receding note of the Rolls-Royce engine.

  Only two miles and they would be through the danger area, over the ridge and into Johannesburg proper.

  Ahead of him, the Cadillac was running through the area of shops and warehouses and small factories, its headlights blazing harshly on the buildings that lined the road, carving a tunnel of light down their avenue to safety.

  in the back seat of the Rolls, the two Generals had not taken Mark's advice to seek cover, and were both sitting bolt upright, discussing the situation objectively in cool measured tones. That was quick thinking, Smuts said. They weren't expecting that turn. He's a good lad, Sean agreed. But you are wasting your time with that pistol. Gives me something to do, Sean explained, as he reloaded the chambers of his revolver. You should have ridden with my commando, old Sean, I would have taught you to save ammunition. Smuts sought revenge for Sean's earlier remarks.

  The headlights of the Cadillac tipped slightly upwards as it charged through the dip and reached the first rising ground. They all saw the road-block at the same moment.

  It was flung up crudely across the road, oil drums, baulks of timber, iron bedsteads, sand-bags and household furniture obviously dragged from the cottages.

  Sean swore loudly and with ferocity. I can turn now, Mark shouted. But they'll get us when we slow down, and we'll have to go back through the ambush. Watch the Cadillac, Sean shouted back.

  The heavy black machine had not hesitated, and it roared up the slope at the barricade, picking the spot which seemed weakest. He's going to open a breach! Follow him, Mark. The Cadillac smashed into the road-block, and tables and chairs flew high into the night. Even above the roar of wind and engine, Mark could hear the tlearing crashing impact, and then the Cadillac was through and going on up the ridge, but its speed was bleeding away and a white cloud of steam plumed from the torn radiator.

  However, they had forged a breach in the barricade and Mark steered for it, bumping over a mangled mass of timber and then accelerating away up the slope, gaining rapidly on the leading vehicle.

  The Cadillac was losing speed, clearly suffering a mortal injury.

  Shall I stop for them? Mark demanded. No, said Sean. We have to get the Prime Minister, Yes, said Smuts. We can't leave them. Make up your bloody minds, yelled Mark, and there was a stunned disbelieving silence in the back, and Mark began to brake for the pick up.

  The machine gun opened from the scrubby bush at the base of the nearest mine dump. The tracer flailed the night, brilliant white fire sweeping down the road in a blinding storm, the high ripping tearing sound was unmistakable and Mark and Sean exclaimed together in appalled disbelief. Vickers! The Prime Minister's green and golden pennant on the bonnet of the Cadillac drew the deadly sheet of fire, and in the horrified micro-seconds that Mark watched, he saw the car begin to break up. The windshield and side windows blew away in a sparkling cloud of glass fragments, the figures of the three occupants were plucked to pieces like chickens caught in the blades of a threshing-machine.

  The Cadillac slewed off the road and crashed headlong into the blank wall of a timber warehouse on the edge of the road, and still the relentless stream of Vickers fire -tore into the carcass, punching neat black holes into the metalwork, holes that were rimmed with bare metal that sparkled in the headlights of the Rolls like newly minted silver dollars.

  It would only be seconds before the gunner swivelled his Vickers on to the Rolls, Mark realized, and he searched the road ahead for a bolthole.

  Between the timber warehouse and the next building was a narrow alleyway, barely wide enough to admit the Rolls. Mark swung out to make a hay-cart turn for the alley, and the gunner guessed his intention, but was stiff and low on his traverse as he swung the Vickers on to the Rolls.

  The sheet of bullets ripped the surface of the road, a boiling teeming play of dust and tarmac that ran down under the side of the car.

  Before the gunner could correct his aim, the petrol tank of the ruined Cadillac exploded in a woofing clap of sound and a vivid rolling cloud of scarlet flame and dense black smoke.

  Under its cover Mark steered for the alleyway, and slammed the Rolls into it although she was suddenly heavy on the steering, and thumping brutally in her front end.

  Fifty feet down, the alley was blocked with a heavy haulage trailer, piled high with newly sawn timber baulks - and Mark skidded to a halt, and jumped out.

  He saw that for the moment they were covered by the corner of the warehouse from the Vickers, but the timber trailer cut off their escape down the alley and it would be only minutes before the strikers realized their predicament and moved the Vickers to enfiltrade the alleyway and shoot them to pieces. One glance showed him that machine-gun fire had shredded the off -side leading wheel. Mark jerked open the rear door and snatched the Mannhcher from Sean, and paused only a moment to snap at the two Generals. Get the wheel changed. I'll try and hold them off. Then he was sprinting back down the alleyway. I shall have to insist that in future, when he gives me an order, he calls me sir, Sean said with thin humour, and turned to Smuts. Have you ever changed a wheel, Jannie? Don't be stupid, old Sean. I'm a horse soldier, and your superior officer, Smuts smiled back at him, with his golden beard looking like a refined Viking in the reflected headlights. Bloody hell! grunted Sean. You can work the jack. Mark reached the corner of the warehouse and crouched againstit, checking the load of the Mannlicher before glancing around.

  The Cadillac burned like a huge pyre, and the stink of burning rubber and oil and human flesh was choking. The body of the driver still sat at the wheel, but the smoky red flames rushed and drummed about him so that his head was blackening and charring, and his body twisted and writhed in a slow macabre ballet of death.

  There was a wind that Mark had not noticed before, a fitful inconstant wind that gusted and puffed down the ridge, rolling thick clouds of the stinking black smoke across the road and then changing strength and direction so that for a few seconds the smoke pall once again poured straight upwards into the night sky.

  Over all blazed the flickering orange wash of the flames, uncertain light which magnified shadow and offered false perspective.

  Mark realized that he had to get across the road into the scrub and eroded ground below the mine dump before he could get a chance at the Vickers gunner. He had to cross fifty open yards before he reached the ground where he could turn the clumsiness and relative immobility of the Vickers to his own account. He waited for the wind.

  He saw it coming, rustling the grass tops in the firelight and rolling a dirty ball of newspaper down the road, then it picked up the smoke and wafted it in a stinking black pall across the open roadway.

  Mark launched himself from the corner of the warehouse and had run twenty paces before he realized that the wind had tricked him. It was merely a gust, passing in seconds and leaving the night still and silent when it had gone, silent except for the snapping, crackling flames of the burning Cadillac.

  He was halfway across as the smoke opened again, and the cold weight of dread in his belly seemed to spread down into his legs and slow them as he ran like a man in shackles; but the battle clock in his head was running clearly, tolling off the seconds, judging finely the instant that the Vickers gunner up on the dump spotted his shadowy running figure, judging the time it took for him to swing and resight the heavy weapon. Now! he thought, and rolled forward from the waist without checking his speed, going on to his shoulder and somersaulting, ducking under the solid blast of machinegun fire that came at the exact second he had expected it.

  The momentum of his fall carried him up on to his feet again,
and he knew he had seconds before the unsighted gunner picked him up again. He plunged onwards and lances of pain shot through the old bullet wounds in his back, wounds which he had not felt in over a year; the pain was in anticipation, as well as from the wrench of his fall.

  The bank of red earth on the far side of the road seemed to loom far off while instinct warned him that the Vickers was on to him again. He launched himself feet first, like a baseball player sliding for the plate, and at the same instant the stream of Vickers bullets tore a leaping sheet of dust off the lip of the bank, and the ricochets screamed like frustrated banshees and wailed away into the night.

  Mark lay under the bank for many seconds with his face cradled in the crook of his arm, sobbing for breath while the pain in his old wounds receded and his heart picked up its normal rhythm. When he lifted his head again, his expression was bleak and his anger was cold and bright and functional.

  Fergus MacDonald swore softly with both hands on the firing handles of the Vickers, his forefingers still holding the automatic safety-catch open and his thumbs poised over the firing button. He kept the weapon swinging in short rhythmic traverses back and forth as he peered down the slope, but he was swearing, monotonous profanity in a low tight whisper.

  The man beside him was kneeling, ready to feed the belt to the gun, and now he whispered hoarsely, I think you got him. The hell I did, hissed Fergus, and jerked the gun across as something in shadow caught his eye down on the road.

  He fired a short holding burst, and then muttered. Right, let's pull out. Damn it, comrade, we've got them - protested the loader.

  You bloody fool, didn't you see him? Fergus asked. Didn't you see the way he crossed the road, don't you realize we've got a real ripe one on our hands? Whoever he is, he's a killer. Are we going to let one bastard chase us You're so right, snapped Fergus. When it's that bucko down there, I'm not going to risk this gun. It's worth a hundred trained men, he patted the square steel breech block. We came here to kill Clever Jannie, and he's down there, cooking in his fancy motorcar. Now, let's get the hell out of here, and he started the complicated process of unloading the Vickers, cranking it once to clear the chamber of its live round and then cranking again to clear the round in the feed block. Tell the boys to cover us when we pull back, he grunted, as he extracted the ammunition belt from the breech pawls, and then started uncoupling the Vickers from its tripod. Come on, work quickly, he snapped at his loader. That bastard is on his way, I can feel him breathing down my neck already. There were eight strikers on the slope of the dump, Fergus and two for the Vickers, with five riflemen spread out around the gun to support and cover. Right, let's go. Fergus carried the thick-jacketed barrel over one shoulder and a heavy case of ammunition in his left hand; his number two wrestled with the ungainly fifty-pounds weight of metal tripod and the number three carried the five-gallon can of cooling water and the second case of ammunition. We are pulling out, Fergus called to his riflemen, look lively, that's a dangerous bastard coming after us! They ran in a group, bowed under their burdens, feet slipping in the loose white cyanided sand of the dump.

  The shot was from the left, Fergus had not expected that, and it was impossibly high on the dump. The bastard must have grown wings and flown to get there, Fergus thought.

  The report was a heavy booming clap, some sort of sporting rifle, and behind him the number three made a strange grunting sound as though his lungs had been forcibly emptied by a heavy blow. Fergus glanced back and saw him down, a dark untidy shape on the white sand. Good Christ, gasped Fergus. It had to be flukey shooting at that range, and in this impossible light, just the early stars and the ruddy glow of the burning Cadillac.

  The rifle boom boomed again, and he heard one of his riflemen scream and then thrash about wildly in the undergrowth.

  Fergus knew he had judged his adversary fairly, he was a killer. They were all running now, shouting and firing wildly as they scattered tack under the tee of the dump, and Fergus ran with them, only one thought in his mind, he must get his precious Vickers safely away. It The sweat had soaked through his jacket between the shoulders, and had run down from under his cap so that he was blinded, and unable to speak when at last he tumbled into the cover of a deep donga and sat against the earth of the bank, with the machine gun cradled in his arms like an infant.

  one after another his riflemen reached the donga and fell thankfully into cover.

  How many were there? gasped one of them. I don't know, panted another, must have been a dozen ZARPS, at least. They got Alfie. And they got Henry also, I saw five of them.

  Fergus had recovered his breath enough to speak now. There was one, only one, but a good one. Did we get Slim Jannie? Yes, said Fergus grimly. We got him all right. He was in the first car, I saw his flag and I saw him cooking. We can go home now. It was a little before eleven o'clock when the solitary Rolls-Royce was halted at the gates of police headquarters on Marshall Square by the suspicious sentries, but when the occupants were recognized, half a dozen high-ranking police and military officers hurried down the steps to welcome them.

  The Prime Minister went directly to the large visitors drawing-room on the first floor which had been transformed into the headquarters of the military administration, empowered and entrusted by the declaration of martial law with the Government of the nation. The relief on the faces of the assembled officers was undisguised.

  The situation was a mess, but Smuts was here at last and now they could expect order and direction and sanity to emerge from the chaos.

  He listened to their reports quietly, tugging at his little goatee beard, his expression becoming more grim as the full extent of the situation was explained.

  He was silent a little longer, brooding over the map, and then he looked up at General van Deventer, an old comrade in arms during two wars, a man who had ridden with him on that historic commando into the Cape in igoi and Who had fought beside him against the wily old German, Lettow von Vorbeck, in German East Africa. Jacobus, he said, you command the East Rand. Van Deventer whispered an acknowledgement, his vocal chords damaged by a British bullet in or, Sean, you have the west. I want the Brixton ridge under our control by noon tomorrow. Then, as an afterthought, Have your lads arrived from Natal yet? I hope so, said Sean Courtney. So do I, Smuts smiled thinly. You will have a merry time taking the ridge single-handed. The smile flickered off his face. I want your battle plans presented by breakfast time, gentlemen. I don't have to remind you that, as always, the watchword is speed. We have to cauterize this ulcer and bind it up swiftly. in early autumn, the highveld sun has a peculiar brilliance, pouring down through an atmosphere thinned by altitude out of a sky of purest gayest blue.

  It was weather for picnicking and for lovers in quiet gardens, but on 14th March 1922 it was not calm, but a stillness of a menacing and ominous intensity which hung over the city of Johannesburg and its satellite towns.

  In just two days van Deventer had swept through the East Rand, stunning the strikers with his Boer Commando tactics, rolling up all resistance in Benoni and Dunswart, recapturing Brakpan and the mine, while the Brits column under his command drove through the Madder and Geduld mines and linked with van Deventer at Springs. In two days, they had crushed the revolt on the East Rand, and thousands of strikers came in under the white flag to be marched away to captivity and eventual trial.

  But Fordsburg was the heart and the Brixton ridge which commanded it was the key to the revolt.

  Now at last, Sean Courtney had the ridge, but it had been two days of hard and bitter fighting. With artillery and air support, they had swept the rocky kopjes, the school buildings, brickfields, the cemetery, the public buildings and the cottages, each of which the strikers had turned into a strongpoint; and in the night they had carried in the dead of both sides, and buried them in the Milner Park cemetery, each with his own comrades, soldier with soldier and striker with striker.

  Now Sean was ready for the thrust to the heart, and below them the iron roofs of Fordsbu
rg blinked in the fine clear sunlight. Here he comes now, said Mark Anders, and they all lifted their binoculars and searched for the tiny fleck of black in the immense tall sky.

  The DH. 9 sailed in sedately, banking slowly in from the south and levelling for the run over the cowering cottages of Fordsburg.

  Through the lens of his glasses, Mark could make out the head and shoulders of the navigator in the forward cockpit as he hoisted each stack of pamphlets on to the edge of the cockpit, cut the strings and then pushed them over the side. They flurried out in a white storm behind the slow-moving machine, caught in the slipstream, spreading and spinning and drifting like flocks of white doves.

  A push of the breeze spread some of the papers towards the ridge, and Mark caught one out of the air and glanced at the crude printing on cheap thick paper.

  MARTIAL LAW NOTICE Women and children and all persons well disposed towards the Government are advised to leave before 11 a. m. today that part of Fordsburg and vicinity where the authority of the Government is defied and where military operations are about to take place. No immunity from punishment or arrest is guaranteed to any person coming in under this notice who has broken the law.

  SEAN COURTNEY CONTROL OFFICER It was clumsy syntax. Mark wondered who had composed it as he crumpled the notice and dropped it into the grass at his feet. What if the pickets won't let them come out, sir? he asked quietly.

  I don't pay you to be my conscience, young man, Sean growled warningly, and they stood on in silence for a minute. Then Sean sighed and took the cigars from his breast pocket and offered one to Mark as a conciliatory gesture. What can I do, Mark? Must I send my lads into those streets without artillery support? He bit the tip off his cigar and spat it into the grass. Whose lives are more important, the strikers and their families or men who trust me and honour me with their loyalty? It's much easier to fight people you hate, Mark said softly, and Sean glanced at him sharply. Where did you read that? he demanded, and Mark shook his head.