Okay, you did it. You’re still alive. But you’re not out of the woods yet, not by a long chalk.
He crawled across to Ziegler’s corpse and fished the keys out of the breast pocket of his shirt. His hands were trembling so much, it was all he could do to get the key into the lock. Once he had the cuffs off, he put on Ziegler’s field cap and his wristwatch, which looked far too expensive not to have been looted from a British officer.
He threw Ziegler’s Thompson on the passenger seat of the Riley and put the survey in the glove compartment. Finally he crossed to MacLeod’s body and took off his webbing. He felt uncomfortable doing it, even though webbing was army issue so it did not count as robbing the dead, but once he had put it on he felt better. He felt like a soldier for the first time in a week; perhaps even longer. Sliding in behind the Riley’s steering wheel, he got the engine started.
Five minutes later, he came to a signpost on the main road: to the right, it was sixty miles to the town of Johore, at the north end of the causeway linking the island of Singapore to the mainland. With the field cap pulled down low on his brow and the Japanese staff pennants on the Riley’s mudguards, he reckoned he could bluff his way through any Japanese roadblocks between here and there.
To his left, it was thirty miles to Labis.
He glanced at the wristwatch: five twenty-two. Enough time to get back to the dredge – assuming he could find his way there – and do… what? Get himself killed? He was lucky enough to have got this far. He had the survey. Safety was within reach. He would have to be some kind of ruddy idiot to piss it all away by going back for Sheridan and Rossi.
‘Sod it!’ he said savagely, and turned left.
It started raining on the drive to Labis. The Riley’s headlights cut through the slashing sheets of rain. He passed other vehicles headed south, but saw only the glare of their headlights. He hoped his own headlights looked equally anonymous to them.
A couple of miles from Labis, he was starting to wonder if he had missed the turn and lost his way when he saw the hoarding advertising Bitter Sweet. ‘Never thought I’d be glad to see you two,’ he muttered to Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald as he turned on to the gravel road leading through the marshes.
Pulling up a few hundred yards short of where the Bedford and the Humber were parked, he glanced at the fuel gauge before switching off the engine. There was enough petrol left to get the Riley to Johore… maybe. He got out of the car, slinging the Thompson from one shoulder. He wished he had some grenades. Those, and a battalion of troops he could send in his place.
The hiss of the rain in the marshes covered his approach as he dashed across to crouch behind the Humber. He could see lights on in the dredge now, on the lower deck beneath the corrugated sides, and behind the windows of the control cabin overlooking the bucket-line. The lights silhouetted two figures on guard at the foot of the gangplank. They were armed with rifles, and looked alert and watchful. Torrance had no intention of tackling them head on.
He looked at the array of chutes projecting from the back of the dredge. One chute emerged from an opening higher up in the corrugated-iron wall than the others. Being longer, it reached further, so its end was suspended over the ground where mounds of spoil were heaped. That, Torrance now saw, was his way in.
He worked his way through the reeds to emerge behind the mounds of spoil. He crept to the mound directly beneath the longest chute. Rainwater streamed off the end of the chute to spatter against the spoil below. From the top of the mound to the chute was a drop of a good ten feet, too high for Torrance to jump up. He tied the end of MacLeod’s log-line to the helve of his entrenching tool, and threw it up. On the first throw, it bounced off altogether. On the second, it landed on the conveyor belt running along the floor of the chute: when he drew it back in, the helve came free and fell back down to the spoil below, narrowly missing his upturned face. On the third attempt, he managed to get it through the angle between the edge of the chute and the steel hawser supporting it from the array of girders above. When he pulled on the log-line, the helve caught against the side of the chute and the hawser. He tested it to make sure it would take his weight.
He pulled himself up, blinking when he swung through the stream of water gushing off the end of the chute, until he could grip one of the hawsers and get a foot high enough to hook an ankle over the end of the conveyor belt. He squirmed up on to the belt, then removed the helve from the end of the log-line, replacing it in its frog on his webbing, coiling his line and replacing that where it usually hung in the small of his back. Unslinging the Thompson, he began to creep along the chute towards the back of the dredge, his boots slithering a little on the wet silt covering the vulcanised rubber of the conveyor belt.
A shot rang out from the opening at the far end of the chute, the bullet whip-cracking past his head. He threw himself flat on the conveyor belt, the Thompson held out before him, firing a burst to where the shot had come from, the dark opening in the back of the dredge from which the chute projected. He began to squirm forward on his stomach, elbows and knees: not very comfortable, but it was only another fifty feet or so. No more shots came his way. At first he thought it must be because his burst had hit the man he had been aiming at. He was still a good thirty feet from the end of the conveyor when he realised nothing could have been further from the truth.
The dredge began to hum. Deep in its bowels, an engine coughed, then began to turn over. Machinery clanked into life. The dark water below the chutes became agitated, and turned brown and turbid. Torrance realised the men who operated it must have abandoned the dredge in a hurry, if they had not even bothered to sabotage it to prevent it from falling into Japanese hands.
Then the conveyor belt started to move, carrying Torrance back towards the piles of spoil on the lake shore.
‘Oh, shit!’ Torrance picked himself up and began to run against the movement of the conveyor. He could outpace it, just, but it was slow progress. Another shot from the opening ahead narrowly missed him. In real terms, he was only inching towards the opening at the back of the dredge: the man shooting at him from there would have all the time in the world to aim his next shot before Torrance could reach him. And to get through that opening, he would have to drop on to his stomach and crawl on his elbows and knees. And if he did that, he would not be moving fast enough to outpace the conveyor belt.
Then the belt started to emerge from its hole piled with spoil. Torrance tried running along the top of the spoil, but it shifted beneath his feet and he fell flat on his stomach. He was carried backwards. He picked himself up again and resumed running. The spoil provided an uneven footing and he could not run as fast as he had done on the empty belt: he was barely making any headway. At least the piles on the belt appeared to block the view of the man who had been shooting at him.
He jumped on to the coaming at the side of the chute, teetered for a moment, then swung one foot over the spoil to rest the sole on the other coaming. Thus he stood with his legs spread, the belt trundling along directly below him. He began to edge his feet forward, first one and then the other, each a few inches at a time, as far as he could slide them when they were spread so far apart.
There was a gantry below, leading to a ladder ascending to the top of the array of girders supporting the chutes. A door in the back of the dredge opened and a Japanese guard emerged on to the gantry. Looking up at the chute above, he braced the butt of his rifle to his shoulder and tried to get a clear shot at Torrance.
There was no time to think. Torrance brought his feet together, bending his knees, and made a leap for the gantry. He hit the guard in the chest with both feet, then his own back slammed agonisingly against the handrail at the side of the gantry and he sprawled on the walkway. Shit, he thought, I think I’ve broken my spine.
The guard still held his rifle and was trying to adjust his grip on it, looking to shoot Torrance from a sitting position. Torrance forced himself to ignore the pain of his back and lunged at the guard, forcing t
he rifle’s muzzle aside. The two of them grappled with the rifle between them. Torrance was on top, but the guard was stronger than he looked, and began to push him off. Torrance realised he was being forced through the gap between two stanchions of the handrail to his side. He threw up an arm and managed to brace it against the handrail before plunging into the churning water below. With his other hand, he gripped the guard by the throat. The guard seized him by the wrist with both hands, trying to pry Torrance’s hand from his neck. That freed up Torrance’s other hand to punch the guard repeatedly in the face. Rising to his feet, he kicked him in the crotch for good measure. The guard sat up sharply, and Torrance kneed him in the face. The man went limp. Torrance shoved his body off the gantry, watching it plunge into the water below. Then he picked up the rifle, and threw that into the water after him.
He made his way to the end of the gantry, stepping inside out of the rain. On the lowermost deck of the dredge, the hum, rattle and clatter of machinery was almost deafening.
He was making his way along the deck to the cell where he had been locked up with Rossi – where presumably they now also held Sheridan – when he saw a couple of guards up ahead. He ducked behind a partition of corrugated iron and found himself standing at the foot of a companion ladder. Climbing it, he ascended into the eaves of the dredge’s corrugated shell. He followed a gantry forward, over the array of wide, shallow, sloping trays where water was pumped over the silty ore, washing away the silt and leaving behind the tin, much like a prospector panning for gold but mechanised on an industrial scale.
He was halfway along the gantry when a shot rang out. He hadn’t heard it above the incessant din of the machinery, but there was no mistaking the whine of a ricochet bouncing off the handrail of the gantry he was walking along.
The gantry was too exposed. He vaulted over the rail, landing on the trays a few feet below, dirty water washing over his boots every couple of seconds. He splashed across to swing himself down another companion ladder, out of the shooter’s line of fire.
No sooner did his feet hit the lower deck than a hail of bullets rattled against a stout steel pipe immediately to his right. Throwing himself to the deck, he crawled behind the cover of a green machine with the words ‘Aux Pump’ stencilled on it. Peering around the side of the auxiliary pump, he made out the bulky figure of Sergeant Ogata levelling a Thompson of his own around a stout iron girder. Then the muzzle flamed white in the gloom, and Torrance pulled his head out of the way as bullets pattered against the pump.
Trying to keep it between himself and Ogata, Torrance scurried up the deck and took up a new position behind a mass of gears. Unslinging his Thompson, he levelled it back towards the pump. Ogata appeared, making an ungainly lunge around it to point his gun at where Torrance had crouched not thirty seconds earlier.
Got you, you bastard! Torrance slipped his safety catch forward and was about to squeeze the trigger when a burst of sub-machine-gun fire came from above, clanging into the gears inches from where he crouched. He flung himself backwards, ducking behind a massive winch. Peering around the other side of it, he gazed up into the shadows beneath the eaves far above him, trying to work out where the other shooter had taken up position. Then Ogata fired at him from behind the gears, forcing Torrance to retreat again. A companion ladder led up to the control cabin, which would have given him an excellent position from which to pin down and perhaps kill Ogata, but the stairs were too exposed as long as the tommy-gunner above was taking potshots at him from who-knew-where.
Dashing under the control cabin, Torrance found himself outside again, at the very front of the dredge: to his left, the bucket-line was in operation, a bucket filled with silt rising from the depths of the lake every few seconds, to disappear into the bowels of the processing plant amidships. A railing ran around the front of the pontoon: there was nowhere left to run. Hurrying back to peer around one of the stanchions supporting the control cabin, he saw Ogata advancing around the winch, which Torrance now realised must control the bucket-line.
Retreating to the front of the pontoon, he looked around in despair. He was trapped! In a few seconds, Ogata would follow him out, and it would all be over.
Unless…
It was crazy. But he had no other option.
He climbed over the railing next to the bucket-line, and then perched on a horizontal stanchion next to the gap in the pontoon where the empty buckets descended into the water on the underside of the dredging arm. From there, it was a step rather than a leap to the arm itself: every few feet, steel girders ran horizontally across the top of the dredger arm to support the bucket-line. Torrance was able to stand on one and cling to the other above it. The line was rising so slowly, it was the easiest thing in the world to step from there on to one of the buckets. Like all the others, it was filled with silt, so there was no hiding inside it, but he could stand on top without his boots sinking too deep.
Ogata emerged from beneath the control cabin, another Japanese from the cabin itself, called down to him from a gantry above. The sergeant shrugged expressively in response. Bewildered, the other man looked around, trying to work out where Torrance had disappeared to. Then he saw him riding one of the buckets into the bowels of the processing plant.
The man brought his Thompson up to his shoulder, swinging the barrel towards Torrance. Torrance fired first, catching the man in the chest and toppling him backwards over the guard rail to smash against the pontoon below.
Ogata fired a burst. Bullets clanged against the iron buckets. One smashed against Torrance’s Thompson, jarring his arm. Ogata took careful aim now, the butt braced to his shoulder. Nothing happened. He tore out the magazine, saw it was empty, and tossed it over the railing into the water. He patted himself down for another magazine, found none.
Torrance grinned, taking careful aim, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He checked the safety was off and there were bullets in the magazine. Everything was as it should be, the gun just would not fire: the bullet that had struck it must have damaged the mechanism.
Ogata’s expression turned from dismay to delight. He clambered over the guard rail and swung himself on to one of the buckets below Torrance, then began to clamber up. Torrance hurled the damaged tommy gun at his head but Ogata batted it away with a brawny arm.
Torrance wanted to get off the ride. He looked around for a stanchion he could jump to, but it was too late: he barely had time to duck his head below a low girder before the buckets had carried him into a narrow, unlit shaft sloping diagonally up into the heart of the dredge. If he did not find a way off soon, he was going to find out what happened to silt rich in iron-ore when it was processed, from the point of view of the silt.
The prospect did not seem to bother Ogata: he was clambering from bucket to bucket as he sought to catch up with Torrance. The sight put Torrance in mind of King Kong climbing up the side of the Empire State Building. When Ogata came within range, Torrance slammed the heel of a boot into the giant’s face. Ogata’s head was snapped around; when he turned back, Torrance saw his nose had been pulped and the lower half of his face was a mask of blood. Anyone else who had had their nose smashed in like that would have been curled up in a foetal position, whimpering, but Ogata just grinned through the pain and blood.
Torrance aimed a second kick at him. Ogata dodged it nimbly, and seized Torrance’s ankle in a vice-like grip. Torrance kicked him in the jaw with his other foot. Rolling on to his front, he started to rise, then quickly ducked again as the buckets passed under another low girder.
There was more light on the other side of the girder, sunshine flooding through a skylight in the corrugated roof of the dredge. They were close to the top of the bucket-line now, and a hissing noise filled Torrance’s ears over and above the clank of machinery. At the top tumbler, four high-powered hoses sprayed each bucket as it flopped over, tipping its contents onto a grid of stout iron bars.
Level with the highest tumbler, above the third bucket from the top, were two narr
ow platforms, just large enough for a man to stand on, on either side of the bucket-line, with an access hatch to one side. Torrance grasped the railing around one of the platforms and tried to pull himself up, but at that moment Ogata ducked under the girder and seized him by the ankle again. Sprawled across the top of one of the silt-filled buckets, he tried to kick Ogata in the face , but the Japanese evaded the kick and placed a hand over Torrance’s throat, pinning him to the top of the bucket. As the bucket reached the top, Torrance twisted his body away from Ogata, so he would go over feet-first. Ogata was shouting something in Japanese over the hiss of the hoses, taunting Torrance. Feeling the bucket tip beneath him, Torrance managed to hook a foot under one of the hose nozzles, directing the jet of water up into Ogata’s face. The Japanese reeled with a cry, letting go of Torrance’s throat. Torrance leaped up, grabbing hold of one of the stanchions above the top tumbler. Beneath him, Ogata was still cuffing water out of his eyes when the bucket he was kneeling on toppled, pitching the Japanese through the three remaining jets of water. He fell against the bars below, and then two tonnes of silt landed on him, followed by the scooping edge of the bucket. Torrance was grateful the jets of water partially screened the scene from his eyes; what little he had seen would probably haunt him to his dying days.
Swinging his legs down, he dropped on to the next bucket, stepping off it before it started to topple and on to the one below, and then one below that, until four steps later he was able to hop up on to the platform. Opening the access hatch, he swung through to find himself standing on a gantry high up in the eaves of the dredge. Feeling used up and worn out, he shuffled to the end of the gantry and climbed down a ladder, moving with all the vigour and urgency of a geriatric sloth. Reaching the next gantry, he staggered along its length, leaning heavily on the handrail. Mitsumoto reached the top of the ladder at the far end of the gantry. Torrance turned and stumbled to the door at his end, emerging into the rain and slamming it behind him a split second before a burst of fire riddled it with holes, very nearly riddling Torrance too.
The Name of Valour Page 27