by Wilbur Smith
‘I don’t know about that, Bruce. I doubt it. I just want another chance to do the only work I know. I just want a last-minute rally to reduce the formidable score that’s been chalked up against me so far.’
‘I’ll report you “missing, believed killed” – throw your uniform in the river,’ said Bruce.
‘I’ll do that.’ Mike stepped back. ‘Look after each other, you two.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Shermaine informed him primly, trying not to smile.
‘I’m an old dog, not easy to fool,’ said Mike. ‘Go to it with a will.’
Bruce let out the clutch and the Ford slid forward.
‘God speed, my children.’ That smile spread all over Mike’s face as he waved.
‘Au revoir, Doctor Michael.’
‘So long, Mike.’
Bruce watched him in the rear-view mirror, tall in his ill-fitting cassock, something proud and worthwhile in his stance. He waved once more and then turned and hurried back into the hospital.
Neither of them spoke until they had almost reached the main road. Shermaine nestled softly against Bruce, smiling to herself, looking ahead down the tree-lined passage of the road.
‘He’s a good man, Bruce.’
‘Light me a cigarette, please, Shermaine.’ He didn’t want to talk about it. It was one of those things that can only be made grubby by words.
Slowing for the intersection, Bruce dropped her into second gear, automatically glancing to his left to make sure the main road was clear before turning into it.
‘Oh my God!’ he gasped.
‘What is it, Bruce?’ Shermaine looked up with alarm from the cigarette she was lighting.
‘Look!’
A hundred yards up the road, parked close to the edge of the forest, was a convoy of six large vehicles. The first five were heavy canvas-canopied lorries painted dull military olive, the sixth was a gasoline tanker in bright yellow and red with the Shell Company insignia on the barrel-shaped body. Hitched behind the leading lorry was a squat, rubber-tyred 25-pounder anti-tank gun with its long barrel pointed jauntily skywards. Round the vehicles, dressed in an assortment of uniforms and different styled helmets, were at least sixty men. They were all armed, some with automatic weapons and others with obsolete bolt-action rifles. Most of them were urinating carelessly into the grass that lined the road, while the others were standing in small groups smoking and talking.
‘General Moses!’ said Shermaine, her voice small with the shock.
‘Get down,’ ordered Bruce and with his free hand thrust her on to the floor. He rammed the accelerator flat and the Ford roared out into the main road, swerving violently, the back end floating free in the loose dust as he held the wheel over. Correcting the skid, meeting it and straightening out, Bruce glanced at the rear-view mirror. Behind them the men had dissolved into a confused pattern of movement; he heard their shouts high and thin above the racing engine of the Ford. Bruce looked ahead; it was another hundred yards to the bend in the road that would hide them and take them down to the causeway across the swamp.
Shermaine was on her knees pulling herself up to look over the back of the seat.
‘Keep on the floor, damn you!’ shouted Bruce and pushed her head down roughly.
As he spoke the roadside next to them erupted in a rapid series of leaping dust fountains and he heard the high hysterical beat of machine-gun fire.
The bend in the road rushed towards them, just a few more seconds. Then with a succession of jarring crashes that shook the whole body of the car a burst of fire hit them from behind. The windscreen starred into a sheet of opaque diamond lacework, the dashboard clock exploded powdering Shermaine’s hair with particles of glass, two bullets tore through the seat ripping out the stuffing like the entrails of a wounded animal.
‘Close your eyes,’ shouted Bruce and punched his fist through the windscreen. Slitting his own eyes against the chips of flying glass, he could just see through the hole his fist had made. The corner was right on top of them and he dragged the steering-wheel over, skidding into it, his offside wheels bumping into the verge, grass and leaves brushing the side of the car.
Then they were through the corner and racing down towards the causeway.
‘Are you all right, Shermaine?’
‘Yes, are you?’ She emerged from under the dashboard, a smear of blood across one cheek where the glass had scratched her, and her eyes bigger than ever with fright.
‘I only pray that Boussier and Hendry are ready to pull out. Those bastards won’t be five minutes behind us.’
They went across the causeway with the needle of the speedometer touching eighty, up the far side and into the main street of Port Reprieve. Bruce thrust his hand down on the hooter ring, blowing urgent warning blasts.
‘Please God, let them be ready,’ he muttered. With relief he saw that the street was empty and the hotel seemed deserted. He kept blowing the horn as they roared down towards the station, a great billowing cloud of dust rising behind them. Braking the Ford hard, he turned it in past the station buildings and on to the platform.
Most of Boussier’s people were standing next to the train. Boussier himself was beside the last truck with his wife and the small group of women around him. Bruce shouted at them through the open window.
‘Get those women into the train, the shufta are right behind us, we’re leaving immediately.’
Without question or argument old Boussier gathered them together and hurried them up the steel ladder into the truck. Bruce drove down the station platform shouting as he went.
‘Get in! For Chrissake, hurry up! They’re coming!’
He braked to a standstill next to the cab of the locomotive and shouted up at the bald head of the driver.
‘Get going. Don’t waste a second. Give her everything she’s got. There’s a bunch of shufta not five minutes behind us.’
The driver’s head disappeared into the cab without even the usual polite, ‘Oui monsieur.’
‘Come on, Shermaine.’ Bruce grabbed her hand and dragged her from the car. Together they ran to one of the covered coaches and Bruce pushed her half way up the steel steps.
At that moment the train jerked forward so violently that she lost her grip on the handrails and tumbled backwards on top of Bruce. He was caught off balance and they fell together in a heap on the dusty platform. Above them the train gathered speed, pulling away. He remembered this nightmare from his childhood, running after a train and never catching it. He had to fight down his panic as he and Shermaine scrambled up, both of them panting, clinging to each other, the coaches clackety-clacking past them, the rhythm of their wheels mounting.
‘Run!’ he gasped, ‘Run!’ and with the panic weakening their legs he just managed to catch the handrail of the second coach. He clung to it, stumbling along beside the train, one arm round Shermaine’s waist. Sergeant Major Ruffararo leaned out, took Shermaine by the scruff of her neck and lifted her in like a lost kitten. Then he reached down for Bruce.
‘Boss, some day we going to lose you if you go on playing around like that.’
‘I’m sorry, Bruce,’ she panted, leaning against him.
‘No damage done.’ He could grin at her. ‘Now I want you to get into that compartment and stay there until I tell you to come out. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Bruce.’
‘Off you go.’ He turned from her to Ruffy. ‘Up on to the roof, Sergeant Major! We’re going to have fireworks. Those shufta have got a field gun with them and we’ll be in full view of the town right up to the top of the hills.’
By the time they reached the roof of the train it had pulled out of Port Reprieve and was making its first angling turn up the slope of the hills. The sun was up now, well clear of the horizon, and the mist from the swamp had lifted so that they could see the whole village spread out beneath them.
General Moses’s column had crossed the causeway and was into the main street. As Bruce watched, the leading truck
swung sharply across the road and stopped. Men boiled out from under the canopy and swarmed over the field gun, unhitching it, manhandling it into position.
‘I hope those Arabs haven’t had any drill on that piece,’ grunted Ruffy.
‘We’ll soon find out,’ Bruce assured him grimly and looked back along the train. In the last truck Boussier stood protectively over the small group of four women and their children, like an old white-haired collie with its sheep. Crouched against the steel side of the truck, André de Surrier and half a dozen gendarmes were swinging and sighting the two Bren guns. In the second truck also the gendarmes were preparing to open fire.
‘What are you waiting for?’ roared Ruffy. ‘Get me that field gun – start shooting.’
They fired a ragged volley, then the Bren guns joined in. With every burst André’s helmet slipped forward over his eyes and he had to stop and push it back. Lying on the roof of the leading coach, Wally Hendry was firing short businesslike bursts.
The shufta round the field gun scattered, leaving one of their number lying in the road, but there were men behind the armour shield – Bruce could see the tops of their helmets.
Suddenly there was a long gush of white smoke from the barrel, and the shell rushed over the top of the train, with a noise like the wings of a giant pheasant.
‘Over!’ said Ruffy.
‘Under!’ to the next shot as it ploughed into the trees below them.
‘And the third one right up the throat,’ said Bruce. But it hit the rear of the train. They were using armour-piercing projectiles, not high explosive, for there was not the burst of yellow cordite fumes but only the crash and jolt as it struck.
Anxiously Bruce tried to assess the damage. The men and women in the rear trucks looked shaken but unharmed and he started a sigh of relief, which changed quickly to a gasp of horror as he realized what had happened.
‘They’ve hit the coupling,’ he said. ‘They’ve sheared the coupling on the last truck.’
Already the gap was widening, as the rear truck started to roll back down the hill, cut off like the tail of a lizard.
‘Jump,’ screamed Bruce, cupping his hands round his mouth. ‘Jump before you gather speed.’
Perhaps they did not hear him, perhaps they were too stunned to obey, but no one moved. The truck rolled back, faster and faster as gravity took it, down the hill towards the village and the waiting army of General Moses.
‘What can we do, boss?’
‘Nothing,’ said Bruce.
The firing round Bruce had petered out into silence as every man, even Wally Hendry, stared down the slope at the receding truck. With a constriction of his throat Bruce saw old Boussier stoop and lift his wife to her feet, hold her close to his side and the two of them looking back at Bruce on the roof of the departing train. Boussier raised his right hand in a gesture of farewell and then he dropped it again and stood very still. Behind him, André de Surrier had left the Bren gun and removed his helmet. He also was looking back at Bruce, but he did not wave.
At intervals the field gun in the village punctuated the stillness with its deep boom and gush of smoke, but Bruce hardly heard it. He was watching the shufta running down towards the station yard to welcome the truck. Losing speed it ran into the platform and halted abruptly as it hit the buffers at the end of the line. The shufta swarmed over it like little black ants over the body of a beetle and faintly Bruce heard the pop, pop, pop of their rifles, saw the low sun glint on their bayonets. He turned away.
They had almost reached the crest of the hills; he could feel the train increasing speed under him. But he felt no relief, only the prickling at the corners of his eyes and the ache of it trapped in his throat.
‘The poor bastards,’ growled Ruffy beside him. ‘The poor bastards.’ And then there was another crashing jolt against the train, another hit from the field gun. This time up forward, on the locomotive. Shriek of escaping steam, the train checking its pace, losing power. But they were over the crest of the hills, the village was out of sight and gradually the train speeded up again as they started down the back slope. But steam spouted out of it, hissing white jets of it, and Bruce knew they had received a mortal wound. He switched on the radio.
‘Driver, can you hear me? How bad is it?’
‘I cannot see, Captain. There is too much steam. But the pressure on the gauge is dropping swiftly.’
‘Use all you can to take us down the hill. It is imperative that we pass the level crossing before we halt. It is absolutely imperative – if we stop this side of the level crossing they will be able to reach us with their lorries.’
‘I will try, Captain.’
They rocketed down the hills but as soon as they reached the level ground their speed began to fall off. Peering through the dwindling clouds of steam Bruce saw the pale brown ribbon of road ahead of them, and they were still travelling at a healthy thirty miles an hour as they passed it. When finally the train trickled to a standstill Bruce estimated that they were three or four miles beyond the level crossing, safely walled in by the forest and hidden from the road by three bends.
‘I doubt they’ll find us here, but if they do they’ll have to come down the line from the level crossing to get at us. We’ll go back a mile and lay an ambush in the forest on each side of the line,’ said Bruce.
‘Those Arabs won’t be following us, boss. They’ve got themselves women and a whole barful of liquor. Be two or three days before old General Moses can sober them up enough to move them on.’
‘You’re probably right, Ruffy. But we’ll take no chances. Get that ambush laid and then we’ll try and think up some idea for getting home.’
Suddenly a thought occurred to him: Martin Boussier had the diamonds with him. They would not be too pleased about that in Elisabethville.
Almost immediately Bruce was disgusted with himself. The diamonds were by far the least important thing that they had left behind in Port Reprieve.
– 14 –
André de Surrier held his steel helmet against his chest the way a man holds his hat at a funeral, the wind blew cool and caressing through his dark sweat-damp hair. His hearing was dulled by the strike of the shell that had cut the truck loose from the rear of the train, he could hear one of the children crying and the crooning, gentling voice of its mother. He stared back up the railway line at the train, saw the great bulk of Ruffy beside Bruce Curry on the roof of the second coach.
‘They can’t help us now.’ Boussier spoke softly. ‘There’s nothing they can do.’ He lifted his hand stiffly in almost a military salute and then dropped it to his side. ‘Be brave, ma chère,’ he said to his wife. ‘Please be brave,’ and she clung to him.
André let the helmet drop from his hands. It clanged on to the metal floor of the truck. He wiped the sweat from his face with nervous fluttering hands and then turned slowly to look down at the village.
‘I don’t want to die,’ he whispered. ‘Not like this, not now, please not now.’ One of his gendarmes laughed, a sound without mirth, and stepped across to the Bren. He pushed André away from it and started firing at the tiny running figures of the men in the station yard.
‘No,’ shrilled André. ‘Don’t do that, no, don’t antagonize them. They’ll kill us if you do that—’
‘They’ll kill us anyway,’ laughed the gendarme and emptied the magazine in one long despairing burst. André started towards him, perhaps to pull him away from the gun, but his resolve did not carry him that far. His hands dropped to his sides, clenching and unclenching. His lips quivered and then opened to spill out his terror.
‘No!’ he screamed. ‘Please, no! No! Oh, God have mercy. Oh, save me, don’t let this happen to me, please, God. Oh, my God.’
He stumbled to the side of the truck and clambered on to it. The truck was slowing as it ran into the platform. He could see men coming with rifles in their hands, shouting as they ran, black men in dirty tattered uniforms, their faces working with excitement, pink shouting mou
ths, baying like hounds in a pack.
André jumped and the dusty concrete of the platform grazed his cheek and knocked the wind out of him. He crawled to his knees, clutching his stomach and trying to scream. A rifle butt hit him between the shoulder-blades and he collapsed. Above him a voice shouted in French.
‘He is white, keep him for the general. Don’t kill him.’ And again the rifle butt hit him, this time across the side of the head. He lay in the dust, dazed, with the taste of blood in his mouth and watched them drag the others from the truck.
They shot the black gendarmes on the platform, without ceremony, laughing as they competed with each other to use their bayonets on the corpses. The two children died quickly torn from their mothers, held by the feet and swung head first against the steel side of the truck.
Old Boussier tried to prevent them stripping his wife and was bayoneted from behind in anger, and then shot twice with a pistol held to his head as he lay on the platform.
All this happened in the first few minutes before the officers arrived to control them; by that time André and the four women were the only occupants of the truck left alive.
André lay where he had fallen, watching in fascinated skin-crawling horror as they tore the clothing off the women and with a man to each arm and each leg held them down on the platform as though they were calves to be branded, hooting with laughter at their struggling naked bodies, bickering for position, already unbuckling belts, pushing each other, arguing, some of them with fresh blood on their clothing.
But then two men, who by their air of authority and the red sashes across their chests were clearly officers, joined the crowd. One of them fired his pistol in the air to gain their attention and both of them started a harangue that slowly had effect. The women were dragged up and herded off towards the hotel.
One of the officers came across to where André lay, stooped over him and lifted his head by taking a handful of hair.
‘Welcome, mon ami. The general will be very pleased to see you. It is a pity that your other white friends have left us, but then, one is better than nothing.’
