High Citadel / Landslide

by Desmond Bagley

  Forester searched the skies and thought—he’s quick off the mark. He felt chilled; these boys would be young and have fast reflexes and they would be trained to a hair. He had not flown for nearly ten years, beyond the few annual hours necessary to keep up his rating, and he wondered grimly how long he would last.

  He found his enemies. One was swooping in a graceful dive towards the ground and the other was climbing in a wide circle to get behind him. As he watched, the pilot fired his rockets aimlessly. ‘Oh, no, you don’t, you bastard,’ said Forester. ‘You don’t catch me like that.’ He knew his opponent had jettisoned his rockets in order to reduce weight and drag and to gain speed. For a moment he was tempted to do the same and to fight it out up there in the clean sky, but he knew he could not take the chance. Besides he had a better use for his rockets.

  Instead, he pushed the control column forward and went into a screaming dive. This was dangerous—his opponent would be faster in the dive and it had been drilled into Forester never, never to lose height while in combat. He kept his eyes on the mirror and soon the Sabre came into view behind, catching up fast. He waited until the very last moment, until he was sure he was about to be fired on, then pushed the stick forward again and went into a suicidal vertical dive.

  His opponent overshot him, taken unaware by the craziness of this manoeuvre performed so near the ground. Forester ignored him, confident that he had lost him for the time being; he was more concerned with preventing his plane from splattering itself all over the mountainside. He felt juddering begin as the Sabre approached the sound barrier; the whole fabric of the plane groaned as he dragged it out of the dive and he hoped the wings would not come off.

  By the time he was flying level the ground was a scant two hundred feet below, snow and rock merging together in a grey blur. He lifted the Sabre up a few hundred feet and circled widely away from the mountains, looking for the gorge and the bridge. He spotted the gorge immediately—it was too unmistakable to be missed, and a minute later he saw the bridge. He turned over it, scanning the ground, but saw no one, and then it was gone behind and he lifted up to the slope of the mountain, flying over the winding road he had laboriously tramped so often.

  Abruptly he changed course, wanting to approach the mine parallel to the mountainside, and as he did so he looked up and saw a Sabre a thousand feet higher, launching two rockets. That’s the second one, he thought. I was too late.

  He turned again and screamed over the mine, the airstrip unwinding close below. Ahead were the huts and some trucks and a great arrow made of piled rocks pointing to the cliff face. And at the head of the arrow a boiling cloud of smoke and dust where the rockets had driven home into the cliff. ‘Jesus!’ he said involuntarily, ‘I hope they survived that.’

  Then he had flashed over and went into a turn to come back. Come back he did with an enemy hammering on his heels. The Sabre he had eluded high in the sky had found him again and its guns were already crackling. But the range was too great and he knew that the other pilot, tricked before, was now waiting for him to play some other trick. This sign of inexperience gave him hope, but the other Sabre was faster and he must drop his rockets.

  He had seen a good, unsuspecting target, yet to hit it he would have to come in on a smooth dive and stood a good chance of being hit by his pursuer. His lips curled back over his teeth and he held his course, sighting on the trucks and the huts and the group of men standing in their shelter. With one hand he flicked the rocket-arming switches and then fired, almost in the same instant.

  The salvo of rockets streaked from under his wings, spearing down towards the trucks and the men who were looking up and waving. At the last moment, when they saw death coming from the sky, they broke and ran—but it was too late. Eight rockets exploded among them and as Forester roared overhead he saw a three-ton truck heave bodily into the air to fall on its side. He laughed out loud; a rocket that would stop a tank dead in its tracks would certainly shatter a truck.

  The Sabre felt more handy immediately the rockets were gone and he felt the increase in speed. He put the nose down and screamed along the airstrip at zero feet, not looking back to see the damage he had done and striving to elude his pursuer by flying as low as he dared. At the end of the runway he dipped even lower over the wreckage of the Dakota and skidded in a frantic sideslip round the mountainside.

  He looked in the mirror and saw his opponent take the corner more widely and much higher. Forester grinned; the bastard hadn’t dared to come down on the deck and so he couldn’t bring his guns to bear and he’d lost distance by his wide turn. Now to do him.

  He fled up the mountainside parallel with the slope and barely twenty feet from the ground. It was risky, for there were jutting outcrops of rock which stretched out black fangs to tear out the belly of the Sabre if he made the slightest miscalculation. During the brief half-minute it took to reach clear sky, sweat formed on his forehead.

  Then he was free of the mountain, and his enemy stooped to make his kill, but Forester was expecting it and went into a soaring vertical climb with a quick roll on top of the loop and was heading away in the opposite direction. He glanced back and grinned in satisfaction; he had tested the enemy and found him wanting—that young man would not take risks and Forester knew he could take him, so he went in for the kill.

  It was brief and brutal. He turned to meet the oncoming plane and made as though to ram deliberately. At the closing speed of nearly fifteen hundred miles an hour the other pilot flinched as Forester knew he would, and swerved aside. By the time he had recovered Forester was on his tail and the end was mercifully quick—a sharp burst from the cannons at minimum range and the inevitable explosion in mid-air. Again Forester swerved to avoid wreckage. As he climbed to get his bearings, he reflected that battle experience still counted for a lot and the assessment of personality for still more.

  VI

  Armstrong was deaf; the echoes of that vast explosion still rumbled in the innermost recesses of the tunnel but he did not hear them. Nor could he see much because of the coils of dust which thickened the air. His hands were vainly clutching the hard rock of the tunnel floor as he pressed himself to the ground and his mind felt shattered.

  It was O’Hara who recovered first. Finding himself still alive and able to move, he raised his head to look at the tunnel entrance. Light showed dimly through the dust. He missed, he thought vacantly; the rockets missed—but not by much. Then he shook his head to clear it and stumbled across to Armstrong who was still grovelling on the ground. He shook him by the shoulder. ‘Back to the truck,’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got to get out. He won’t miss the second time round.’

  Armstrong lifted his head and gazed at O’Hara dumbly, and O’Hara pointed back to the truck and made a dumb show of driving. He got to his feet shakily and followed O’Hara, still feeling his head ringing from the violence of the explosion.

  O’Hara yelled, ‘Benedetta—into the truck.’ He saw her in and handed her the sub-machine-gun, then climbed in himself with her aid and lay down next to Miss Ponsky. Outside he heard the scream of a jet going by and a series of explosions in the distance. He hoped that Armstrong was in a condition to drive.

  Armstrong climbed into the cab and felt the presence of Aguillar in the next seat. ‘On the floor,’ he said, pushing him down, and then his attention was wholly absorbed by the task before him. He pressed the starter-button and the starter whined and groaned. He stabbed it again and again until, just as he was giving up hope, the engine fired with a coughing roar.

  Putting the gears into reverse, he leaned out of the cab and gazed back towards the entrance and let out the clutch. The truck bumped backwards clumsily and scraped the side wall. He hauled on the wheel and tried to steer a straight course for the entrance—as far as he could tell the steering had not been damaged and it did not take long to do the fifty yards. Then he stopped just short of the mouth of the tunnel in preparation for the dash into the open.

  Benedetta gripped the unfam
iliar weapon in her hands and held it ready, crouching down in the back of the truck. O’Hara was sitting up, a pistol in his good hand; he knew that if he lay down he would have difficulty in getting up again—he could only use one arm for leverage. Miss Ponsky was mercifully unaware of what was going on; she babbled a little in her stupor and then fell silent as the truck backed jerkily into the open and turned.

  O’Hara heard Armstrong battering at the useless windscreen and prepared himself for a fusillade of rifle fire. Nothing came and he looked round and what he saw made him blink incredulously. It was a sight he had seen before but he had not expected to see it here. The huts and trucks were shattered and wrecked and bodies lay about them. From a wounded man there came a mournful keening and there were only two men left on their feet, staggering about blindly and in a daze. He looked the awful scene over with a professional eye and knew that an aircraft had fired a ripple of eight rockets at this target, blasting it thoroughly.

  He yelled, ‘Armstrong—get the hell out of here while we can,’ then sagged back and grinned at Benedetta. ‘One of those fighter boys made a mistake and hammered the wrong target; he’s going to get a strip torn off him when he gets back to base.’

  Armstrong smashed enough of the windscreen away so that he could see ahead, then put the truck into gear and went forward, turning to go past the huts and down the road. He looked in fascinated horror at the wreckage until it was past and then applied himself to the task of driving an unfamiliar and awkward vehicle down a rough mountain road with its multitude of hairpin bends. As he went, he heard a jet plane whine overhead very low and he tensed, waiting for the slam of more explosions, but nothing happened and the plane went out of hearing.

  Above, Forester saw the truck move off. One of them still left, he thought; and dived, his thumb ready on the firingbutton. At the last moment he saw the streaming hair of a woman standing in the back and hastily removed his thumb as he screamed over the truck. My God, that was Benedetta—they’ve got themselves a truck.

  He pulled the Sabre into a climb and looked about. He had not forgotten the third plane and hoped it had been scared off because a strange lassitude was creeping over him and he knew that the effects of McGruder’s stimulant were wearing off. He tried to ease the ache in his chest while circling to keep an eye on the truck as it bounced down the mountain road.

  O’Hara looked up at the circling Sabre. ‘I don’t know what to make of that chap,’ he said. ‘He must know we’re here, but he’s doing nothing about it.’

  ‘He must think we’re on his side,’ said Benedetta. ‘He must think that of anyone in a truck.’

  ‘That sounds logical,’ O’Hara agreed. ‘But someone did a good job of working over our friends up on top and it wasn’t a mistake an experienced pilot would make.’ He winced as the truck jolted his shoulder. ‘We’d better prepare to pile out if he shows signs of coming in to strafe us. Can you arrange signals with Armstrong?’

  Benedetta turned and hung over the side, craning her neck to see Armstrong at the wheel. ‘We might be attacked from the air,’ she shouted. ‘How can we stop you?’

  Armstrong slowed for a nasty corner. ‘Thump like hell on top of the cab—I’ll stop quick enough. I’m going to stop before we get to the camp, anyway; there might be someone laying for us down there.’

  Benedetta relayed this to O’Hara and he nodded. ‘A pity I can’t use that thing,’ he said, indicating the sub-machinegun. ‘If you have to shoot, hold it down; it kicks like the devil and you’ll find yourself spraying the sky if you aren’t careful.’

  He looked up at her. The wind was streaming her black hair and moulding the tattered dress to her body. She was cradling the sub-machine-gun in her hands and looking up at the plane and he thought in sudden astonishment, My God, a bloody Amazon—she looks like a recruiting poster for partisans. He thought of Aguillar’s offer of an Air Force commission and had a sudden and irrational conviction that they would come through this nightmare safely.

  Benedetta threw up her hand and cried in a voice of despair, ‘Another one—another plane.’

  O’Hara jerked his head and saw another Sabre curving overhead much higher and the first Sabre going to join it. Benedetta said bitterly, ‘Always they must hunt in packs—even when they know we are defenceless.’

  But O’Hara, studying the manoeuvring of the two aircraft with a war-experienced eye, was not sure about that. ‘They’re going to fight,’ he said with wonder. ‘They’re jockeying for position. By God, they’re going to fight each other.’ His raised and incredulous voice was sharply punctuated by the distant clatter of automatic cannon.

  Forester had almost been caught napping. He had only seen the third enemy Sabre when it was much too close for comfort and he desperately climbed to get the advantage of height. As it was, the enemy fired first and there was a thump and a large, ragged hole magically appeared in his wing as a cannon shell exploded. He side-slipped evasively, then drove his plane into a sharp, climbing turn.

  Below, O’Hara yelled excitedly and thumped with his free hand on the side of the cab. ‘Forester and Rohde—they’ve got across the mountain—they must have.’

  The truck jolted to a sudden stop and Armstrong shot out of the cab like a startled jack-rabbit and dived into the side of the road. From the other side Aguillar stepped down painfully into the road and was walking away slowly when he heard the excited shouts from the truck. He turned and then looked upwards to the embattled Sabres.

  The fight was drifting westward and presently the two aircraft disappeared from sight over the mountain, leaving only the white inscription of vapour trails in the blue sky. Armstrong came up to the side of the truck. ‘What the devil’s happening?’ he asked with annoyance. ‘I got the fright of my life when you thumped on the cab.’

  ‘I’m damned if I know,’ said O’Hara helplessly. ‘But some of these planes seem to be on our side; a couple are having a dogfight now.’ He threw out his arm. ‘Look, here they come again.’

  The two Sabres were much lower as they came in sight round the mountain, one in hot pursuit of the other. There was a flickering on the wings of the rear plane as the cannon hammered and suddenly a stream of oily smoke burst from the leading craft. It dropped lower and a black speck shot upwards. ‘He’s bailed out,’ said O’Hara. ‘He’s had it.’

  The pursuing Sabre pulled up in a climb, but the crippled plane settled into a steepening dive to crash on the mountainside. A pillar of black, greasy smoke marked the wreck and a parachute, suddenly opened, drifted across the sky like a blown dandelion seed.

  Armstrong looked up and watched the departing victor which was easing into a long turn, obviously intent on coming back. ‘That’s all very well,’ he said worriedly. ‘But who won—us or them?’

  ‘Everyone out,’ said O’Hara decisively. ‘Armstrong, give Benedetta a hand with Jenny.’

  But they had no time, for suddenly the Sabre was upon them, roaring overhead in a slow roll. O’Hara, who was cradling Miss Ponsky’s head with his free arm, blew out his breath expressively. ‘Our side seems to have won that one,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to know who the hell our side is.’ He watched the Sabre coming back, dipping its wings from side to side. ‘Of course, it couldn’t be Forester—that’s impossible. A pity. He always wanted to become an ace, to make his fifth kill.’

  The plane dipped and turned as it came over again and headed down the mountain and presently they heard cannon-fire again. ‘Everyone in the truck,’ commanded O’Hara. ‘He’s shooting up the camp—we’ll have no trouble there. Armstrong, you get going and don’t stop for a damned thing until we’re on the other side of the bridge.’ He laughed delightedly. ‘We’ve got air cover now.’

  They pressed on and passed the camp. There was a fiercely burning truck by the side of the road, but no sign of anyone living. Half an hour later they approached the bridge and Armstrong drew to a slow halt by the abutments, looking about him anxiously. He heard the Sabre going over again and wa
s reassured, so he put the truck into gear and slowly inched his way on to the frail and unsubstantial structure.

  Overhead, Forester watched the slow progress of the truck as it crossed the bridge. He thought there was a wind blowing down there because the bridge seemed to sway and shiver, but perhaps it was only his tired eyes playing tricks. He cast an anxious eye on his fuel gauges and decided it was time to put the plane down—and he hoped he could put it down in one piece. He felt desperately tired and his whole body ached.

  Making one last pass at the bridge to make sure that all was well, he headed away following the road, and had gone only a few miles when he saw a convoy of vehicles coming up, some of them conspicuously marked with the RedCross. So that’s that, he thought; McGruder got through and someone got on the phone to this side of the mountains and stirred things up. It couldn’t possibly be another batch of communists—what would they want with ambulances?

  He lifted his eyes and looked ahead for flat ground and a place to land.

  Aguillar watched Armstrong’s face lighten as the wheels of the truck rolled off the bridge and they were at last on the other side of the river. So many good people, he thought; and so many good ones dead—the Coughlins, Señor Willis—Miss Ponsky so dreadfully wounded and O’Hara also. But O’Hara would be all right; Benedetta would see to that. He smiled as he thought of them, of all the years of their future happiness. And then there were the others, too—Miguel and the two Americans, Forester and Peabody. The State of Cordillera would honour them all—yes, even Peabody, and especially Miguel Rohde.

  It would be much later that he heard of what had happened to Peabody—and to Rohde.

  O’Hara looked at Miss Ponsky. ‘Will she be all right?’

  ‘The wound is clean—not as bad as yours, Tim. A hospital will do you both a lot of good.’ Benedetta fell silent.