O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise 02 - Sabre-Tooth, page 28
For the next half-hour they worked steadily and in silence, shifting a little over five tons in that time, never pausing to rest. The clock in Modesty’s head sounded a warning. She straightened up and drew a forearm across her wet brow.
‘That’s all we’ve got time for, Willie love. I’ll go and give Lucille another shot while you start the clever stuff.’
‘Right. I’ll be getting this lot ‘ooked up.’ He turned to his small pack and began to lay out the items he had taken from the technical stores. A long coil of Cordtex detonating fuse; a few composition exploding primers and No. 27 igniferous detonators; three Switch No. 10 time-pencils.
Outside, Modesty was momentarily startled to find that the high clouds had cleared completely and the valley was now bathed in cold bright moonlight. It was unlikely that any chance observer outside the distant guard-house would be able to detect her moving figure, but she hugged the face of the ridge until the Dove screened her from view.
Lucille was still unconscious. Modesty gave her another intramuscular injection of the three-grain phenobarbitone solution. It was not like the last time, thank God.
When she got back to the ammunition store Willie was on his knees, cutting the Cordtex into various lengths. Round his neck hung something like a long limp sausage of yellowish putty. Plastic explosive.
‘Lucille okay?’ he asked without looking up. ‘Yes. She’ll be well under for a few hours yet.’ Modesty saw that he had now distributed eight of the ten anti-tank mines on top of different stacks of ammunition spread around the cave. The remaining two were on top of the main pile of mines and other H.E. stacked at the back of the cave, tight against the wall.
‘Can I help, Willie love?’
‘Sure, Princess.’ He was distributing the lengths of Cordtex to each mine, and when he had finished he broke the plastic explosive in two, giving her half of it. ‘Lay one end of the Cordtex over each mine and wind it round a bit, then tear off a chunk of P.E. and press it down over the Cordtex.’
‘No detonators in the mines?’
He grinned. ‘No, we won’t need ‘em except for the two on the main pile. You take the four mines on this side, I’ll see to the others.’
When they had finished the task he gathered the free ends of the eight lengths of Cordtex together and moved to the main stack of H.E.
“Old the end for me a minute, Princess.’
She took them in her hands. ‘What are you aiming for, Willie?’
‘I want to make sure the ‘ole lot goes up at the same time. These two mines will start it with this stack, and the Cordtex is an instantaneous detonating fuse, so it’ll carry to all the other stacks and set off the mines on top.’
He tilted each of the two mines in turn, inserting a C.E. primer into the cavity and a detonator into the primer. Taking the ends of the Cordtex from her he wound them round both mines and secured them with lumps of plastic explosive.
‘Two mines just to make doubly sure?’ she said.
He smiled. ‘It was you that taught me to be cautious, Princess. And I’m using three time-pencils.’
‘How long will they give us to get clear?’
‘This kind should give twenty minutes, but you can reckon plus or minus five. They’re not that accurate.’
He picked up the time-pencils They were in a casing of thin lead. When the glass phial within each pencil was crushed, acid would be released. The acid would eat into a metal strip, and when the strip gave way a spring-loaded striker would hit the cap and detonate the charge.
Willie crushed the ends of the time-pencils under the heel of his boot and pushed two of them into one mine, the third into the other.
Stepping back, he looked at Modesty and grinned. ‘We’d better go and try our intrepid birdman act, Princess.’
‘I can’t think of anything better to do, Willie.’
They went out, easing the doors shut quietly, and turned west, moving along against the ridge for three hundred yards. Now they could turn to where the Dove stood only a long stone’s-throw away, near the end of the runway which extended down the middle of the valley to the bottleneck. To one side was a cluster of boulders, cleared when the runway had been prepared for the big freighter aircraft.
They were twenty paces from the Dove when a voice to their right said calmly: ‘Hold it. Very still.’
Delgado’s voice.
He was ten paces off by a big rock, holding a .44 Magnum revolver pointed at Modesty. Three men stood behind him with sub-machine guns held in casual but alert readiness. They were men from his own section.
Willie Garvin had not put his shirt on yet. It still hung from his hand. The black leather harness with the two sheathed knives lying in echelon across his left breast stood out sharply against his brown glistening body.
‘Don’t try the knives, Willie,’ Delgado said. ‘I know you’re fast, but I can pull this trigger on Modesty even faster.’
He moved forward and halted six paces from Modesty.
‘By the same token, don’t even think about pulling that Colt on me, darling. You just couldn’t make it.’
She did not answer at once. From the corner of his eyes Willie watched her hand, the one nearest to him. He saw the thumb and finger form a circle, with the other three fingers pointed straight down at the ground. His eyes moved and he forgot Delgado, giving his whole attention to the three men beyond.
‘Well….’ Modesty’s voice was very mellow. ‘What brings you out this fine night, Mike?’
‘A nagging little hunch, sweetheart.’ Delgado smiled. ‘I could never quite believe that you and Willie had split up. My God, you made it look good though, I’ll give you that. But I know you better than all the others. Much better, you may remember?’
She said: ‘You’re a very small reception party for us.’
‘But adequate.’ She could see his eyes sparkling with amusement in the moonlight. ‘And I get the kudos this way. I can use a good mark or two in Karz’s book. He seems to feel I should have known you might be Unsound in spite of Lucille.’
She was thinking that Delgado couldn’t know about the time they had spent in the ammunitions store, or he would never have stood here relishing his triumph.
‘So you checked my room in the seraglio?’ she said.
‘Not until just under an hour ago, and after an uneasy night, darling. And I found you gone. Willie likewise. So I gathered these worthy lads and we made quietly for the aircraft, just in case that was the idea. I was a little worried that you’d beat us to it.’
She gave a tired shrug. ‘We came the long way round, by the river and across the valley. Then we had to wait quite a while before we could get the prowlers without any noise.’
‘Too bad.’ He gave a smiling sigh of sympathy but the Magnum did not waver. ‘It just shows how much depends on small details.’
‘Why don’t you join us, Mike?’ she said quietly. The question was asked only to make him believe that she had no other hope.
He chuckled. ‘No thank you, my pet. I like to be on the winning side. So do these stalwarts behind me, no doubt. And you can’t win now, you know. You’re a woman, with all the hindrance of little scruples.’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’
‘I know I’m right. Why look now, I could shoot you and watch you die … and feel a little sad maybe, but I’d lose no sleep over it.’ His smile grew gentle and his voice softer yet, with the Irish brogue sounding more strongly. ‘But you’d find it hard to pull the trigger on me even if you held the gun, darling. D’you know that? I’m the man who first made you happy a long time ago, remember? Ah, sure you remember. Wonderful Mike Delgado. You’d never be able to kill the man who taught you to fly to the stars, would you?’
Her shoulders sagged. ‘That’s something we’ll never know for sure,’ she said wearily, and half turned to look at Willie, her left flank towards Delgado. ‘I’m sorry we didn’t quite make it, Willie…’
Her left hand came up in a small helpless gesture to draw Delgado’s eye, and in the same instant her screened right hand moved in a smooth blur of speed. Her head turned to Delgado as the Colt .32 cleared the holster, and she fired across the small of her backa trick shot with all the dangers of failure and all the virtues of surprise.
The sound of the Magnum followed the sharper crack of the Colt by a split second. She felt a searing pain across her left arm, high up near the shoulder. Delgado was falling. Something glinted across her vision and one of the three men with sub-machine guns reeled back on tottering feet, the black hilt of a knife jutting from his breast.
She threw herself sideways, firing as she fell. It was as if the single shot had hit both remaining men, for they went down together, one spinning round, his reflex action loosing a brief burst of fire high over the ridge as he died. The other simply crumpled, clawing feebly at the three-inch haft protruding from his throat. Willie’s second knife had found its mark.
She got to her knees. Willie was checking all four men. He looked at Delgado last, then came towards her, tapping a finger to his chest. ‘You got an outer, Princessthrough the ticker.’
‘It’ll do.’ Her eyes rested on the sprawled body. ‘He died of vanity.’
Willie nodded. Then she saw the sudden alarm on his face as he realised she was clutching an arm that poured blood. The heavy bullet had ripped through flesh and muscle, gouging out a very deep two-inch long furrow. ‘Get me aboard, Willie,’ she said harshly.
Already lights were showing by the guard-house two miles down the valley. Three quick shots were fired to raise the general alarm. Willie Garvin lifted her up into the Dove and scrambled in after her. She lay with head swimming, gripping the wound with all the strength she could muster. Blood pulsed out from between her fingers. Willie knelt beside her, ripping a field-dressing from the thigh-pocket of his trousers.
‘Put it down by me and get flying,’ she said in a rasping whisper. ‘Go on, Willie!’
He closed the door and went to the controls, shutting everything from his mind but the task ahead. It would be three to four minutes before the first men on scooters from the guard-house could cover the length of the valley. They would not know what had happened, only that shots had been fired. But they would know what was happening as soon as the Dove’s engines started.
He switched on the instrument lights and the petrol cocks, then put on the master airvalve. With battery and generators switched on he reached down under the seat and operated the pump for priming the engines.
Forty-five seconds.
He opened each throttle slightly, flicked on the magneto switches, and reached out for the starter buttons. The port engine came to life, then the starboard engine. He pressed the brake lever on the control wheel to release the parking lock, and opened the throttle wider.
The Dove began to taxi forward. Now it was turning on to the runway. He opened both throttles wide. The engines roared and the Dove gathered speed. He wished there had been a few minutes’ grace for a warm-up before taking off, but it was no good wishing.
The Gipsy engines did not falter. The air-speed indicator needle rose to seventy, eighty….
Half-a-mile. He pulled back the control wheel. Two figures on scooters ahead were swerving aside, skidding to a halt, unslinging their AR-15’s.
The Dove lifted smoothly. He pushed the knob above the fuel cock to retract the tricycle landing gear. Now the bottleneck lay ahead, its walls sloping back as they rose. There was ample clearance. A row of holes appeared suddenly in the port wing-tip and there came a metallic thrum as a bullet hit some solid part of the fuselage.
He was through. The remaining length of the valley flashed below, and then he was lifting the Dove at fourteen hundred feet over the stepped heights beyond the southern end.
Willie Garvin let out a long breath and banked round in a tight circle to head along the narrow half-moon valley which branched obliquely from the main one. This was the next move in gaining height to climb out from among the lower ridges. He had watched the regular pilots of the Dove make several take-offs over the past two weeks.
Now the aircraft broke out from the confining walls and was above the mountain-hemmed forest that surrounded the lake. Here was the airspace where even the big freighters could circle to gain height.
Willie relaxed a little and looked over his shoulder. Modesty was sitting propped in the open doorway to the cockpit. The field-dressing was bound round her upper arm and she was knotting the ends with one hand and her teeth. But already the blood was soaking through and her face was waxen under her tan. The great yellow bruise on one cheek stood out sharply, and her swollen lips were colourless. The heavy .44 Magnum was a bad bullet to take a hit from.
He saw the broken tooth as she gave him a ghostly smile and crawled into the cockpit, dragging herself up into the copilot’s seat on his right. Slowly and clumsily, using only her sound hand, she fastened the seat-belt.
When he looked at her again she had taken the kongo from her squeeze-pocket and was pushing it hard up into the armpit of her injured arm, against the pressure point there. She gripped the arm just below the dressing and held it tightly against her side.
‘Stopped the bleeding?’ he said anxiously.
‘Enough.’ Her voice was feeble. ‘Can you find the way out, Willie?’
‘It’s a doddle,’ he lied confidently, and banked in a wide curve over the northern edge of the lake, climbing steadily. ‘What about when we’re out, Princess? Kabul?’
She shook her head slightly. ‘No. We … we don’t know who our friends are there. Once you’re out, fly south-west on the compass and head towards Kandahar. You can follow the Tarnak. The Americans are pushing a road out somewhere around there. Try to find it… and them … while your fuel lasts.’
‘Right.’ Willie looked down. They were three thousand feet up now. Below them the lake lay like a great mirror. ‘It’s about bloody time’ he began.
A vast spurt of flame shot out from the ridge, horizontally, as if an enormous gun had been fired. The forty tons of exploding ammunition had vented a minor part of its fury through the doors of the cave.
Willie banked again, in a tight circle this time, turning his head to watch the ridge. At first it seemed that nothing had changed. Then he saw a thin thread of silver moving away from the middle of the ridge and into the valley … a second and wider thread from another point. He tried vaguely to estimate the tonnage of water that the ridge held back, but gave it up as an academic problem, for now there were a dozen threads, broadening steadily.
Black lines showed against the grey-white rock of the ridge. He saw the black lines widen. As if in slow motion the whole length of the ridge seemed to spread out in fragments. In a great silver mass the waters of the lake began to spill into the valley below.
‘Lovely,’ said Willie with immeasurable satisfaction. ‘Let bloody Karz try an’ get that lot mopped up. Blimey, did you see the way that ridge broke, Princess?’
He stopped. Her head was lolling sideways and her eyes were closed. Only the seat-belt prevented her from falling. The kongo lay on the floor. Her injured arm hung limply. Blood was welling steadily from the dressing again.
Willie Garvin swore in fright. For long moments panic swept him and fresh perspiration beaded his forehead. Modesty was losing blood. There was an auto-pilot on the Dove, but it might well be two hours before they were clear of the mountains. If they ever got clear. Two hours before he could dare to set the controls on auto and attend to Modesty’s arm.
He made another climbing circle, smashing mentally and with hatred at his fear until it was dead and he could think coldly.
It would soon be dawn, and the Dove was an obedient little aircraft. Apart from three or four tricky bits on the route that was stored as if on film in his mind, he could fly well enough with one hand.
Reaching out, he positioned thumb, fingers and palm around her bandaged arm, then closed his big hand like a clamp.
‘Jesus,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t walk away from me now, Princess.’
Locking the muscles of his right hand, he forgot about it and focused all his attention on flying.
The first light of dawn lay over the valley. The lake had dwindled to half its size, with the waters now lapping at the edge of the shattered ridge.
The four-mile length of the valley was flooded. At the airfield end it had settled now to a depth of five or six feet. At the other end, beyond the bottleneck, the depth ranged between two and four feet. The huts and the transport stood up from the great sheet of water, their reflections rippling upon it.
Here and there a few bodies floated. A group of men were gathered on the high ground of the arena, staring down, silent and lost. In the palace, women were wailing.
Many men had already gone, swimming or climbing to get clear of the flood, then setting off into the rising valleys which lay in a convoluted maze around the whole area. The two store-huts for the jet-suits of the Flying Infantry were flooded. The suits were useless.
Sarrat, Brett and Hamid were in the partly flooded food-store of the palace, making silent preparations for their journey. Thamar stood on the steps outside, a sub-machine gun slung over one shoulder, his face still blank with shock. He stared uncomprehendingly as the three men came out laden with heavy packs.
‘What is this?’ he said.
‘We’re going.’ It was Brett who answered. ‘What the hell d’you think?’
‘Butyou cannot leave!’ Astonishment touched Thamar’s heavy face.
‘We can try. Sarrat reckons we can cut round west, do a little climbing, and pick up the river again further south. He might be right.’
‘But you have no orders from Karz!’
‘Karz?’ Brett laughed without mirth. ‘You can ask him for orders, Thamar. Here he comes.’
The square, burly figure was wading towards them, plodding like an automaton. They waited in silence for him as he mounted the steps. His face held no expression, but the pupils of his eyes were contracted to pin-points.
