by Gavin Lyall
She waited, but he was silent, thinking. She turned away.
“It’s all right. Not asking questions is one of the things I’m best at.”
“Just providing answers.”
She paused, then said: “I suppose so . . . Too often, the answer used to be just me. But now . . .”
She went back to the wounded Arab as Hakim returned to ask: “And is that all we can do?”
“No. If you’ve really got a secret back way out, let me take half a dozen men and I might capture one of those guns for you.”
25
The pass that O’Gilroy found between the foothills and the Peak existed, but nobody had used it before because it was an unnecessary loop, the route up the tributary and then along the dry riverbed being flatter and easier. This way meant weaving around rocks and ducking under tree branches, but on the far side it could also mean the advantage of the high ground and O’Gilroy did know infantry tactics. Anybody who had fought the Boers, and lived, had learnt more than the Army taught.
They had barely started upwards when a faint noise brought their heads up. Bertie listened, then called: “Was that a Maxim gun?”
“Probly. They’ve got one.”
They plodded on, and were still below the crest when they heard the bugle sound, and the first gun went off. All seemed well distant and O’Gilroy scowled to himself; the detour seemed to have been a waste of time.
The bugle called again and a second gun fired – far closer. In fact, just over the crest. He dismounted, tied his horse to a tree, and went forward on foot. By the time he was over the crest, he had guessed at a pattern. The machine-gun had no part in it: it was firing random short bursts, probably replying to the single shots which must come from the monastery. But the bugle calls – from somewhere in sight of the monastery – were controlling the fire of the guns, themselves with no sight of the target.
The first gun was far off to his right. But the second was in the riverbed almost directly below him. It fired again and he placed it exactly. Looking down on it from behind, he was in an infantryman’s dream and a gunner’s nightmare.
* * *
The secret way started by going out of the back of the monastery by the rough-fenced paddock. The dozen horses there – nothing like enough for the whole band – were frightened by the explosions and would soon be hit by them. But what could anybody do? The next step, it seemed, was to climb down a well, an idea which didn’t appeal to Ranklin at all. But it appeared that the wide, irregular-shaped shaft had been hacked down, centuries before, to intercept a small underground stream. So it led to a tunnel rather than just plunged below the local water table.
They swarmed down a knotted rope, sometimes crawling backwards down a slope of rock, sometimes dangling free and going hand over hand. It was perhaps thirty feet in all, one of those distances that doesn’t sound much but is enormous when you’re lowering yourself into increasing darkness and damp. And then he was standing calf-deep in freezing gushing water waiting for the last two men to come down and for one already there to get a storm lantern lit.
In fact they moved off before the last man was down, a devil-take-the-hindmost attitude that assumed each man could keep up and nobody was really in command. For the moment nobody needed to be: they were simply following the tunnel, stumbling and slipping on a downward path. But if any decisions came to be made, Ranklin realised he would have to start imposing his will. Without a common language that could be tricky, particularly if you were to do it in wheezes and grunts from the back of the queue.
Then he realised he could see – vaguely – where he was putting his feet, and another turn brought dull green light ahead: green because the outside world was blocked by a scrawny bush, perhaps growing naturally in the dampness, perhaps planted to hide the fissure through which the stream spilled down into the ravine.
They were still fifty feet up, but away from the spattering water there was enough fallen rock to make it relatively easy to scramble down. Or up, Ranklin reflected, but no invader could count on climbing that well.
With the monastery out of sight above, and the end of the machine-gun trench hidden behind a bend in the ravine, they splashed up it through a small stream to a smaller, steeper ravine in the opposite wall, spilling out a yet smaller stream. The Arabs went light-footed up it, making no pretence of slowing to his panting, puffing pace. And once they reached the top they would have to run perhaps a mile in a wide half-circle beyond sight of the machine-gun, to reach the dry riverbed and the gun.
Already he was breathing through his mouth; God knows what he’d be trying to breathe through in twenty minutes.
* * *
To O’Gilroy the firing seemed spaced-out and leisurely. But with nearly six hours of daylight left, Zurga could take his time and get it right. When O’Gilroy got back to Corinna and Bertie he had a firm plan in mind.
“Yeself, ye stay here with the horses,” he told Corinna. “Don’t argue: we’ve only the two rifles so ye’d jest be a target up forward.” He turned to Bertie. “Would I be right in thinking ye’d rather shoot the fellers working that gun’n me?”
Bertie nodded docilely. “I feel much remorse that—”
“Forget that, feel like killing someone.” O’Gilroy took a handful of cartridges from his pocket; Bertie had been carrying his own rifle again, but empty. “Have ye ever shot a man before?”
“In thirty years of the East and deserts—” Bertie was quite incapable of answering Yes or No, and O’Gilroy cut him off.
“The feller ye spare, he’s the one’ll kill ye.”
* * *
Trotting across a rock-strewn slope just below a line of trees, Ranklin had heard through the surf-like roaring from his lungs the occasional thuds of gunfire and chirruping of the bugle.
Now it seemed to have stopped and, thinking back, he realised the last bugle call had been different. A few short notes and one long one. It sounded like the “still”.
Oh God: the guns had ranged. That had been the signal to stop, to stack ammunition to hand, and be ready for the final uncorrected bombardment of the attack – and they were still hundreds of yards short. He was too late for anything but revenge.
* * *
O’Gilroy chose two positions a few yards apart, each shielded by a tree or bushes rather than rock. Rock was a snare and delusion. It was solid enough, but you couldn’t peek through it as you could a bush, and it produced ricochets, giving bullets a second bite at you.
Bertie had wanted to get closer, but O’Gilroy refused. He’d accept the longer range – it was only just over three hundred yards anyway, he judged – and an easier retreat in cover back over the crest. That was the old soldier showing through.
And whatever they did would cause trouble enough, ambushing the gun from above and behind. It was sited on the near side of the dry riverbed, where the pass opened to form ground as near flat as could probably be found. It was important, O’Gilroy remembered, to have both wheels level if possible. You could fire with one wheel high, but had to add in a correction, firing slightly off to the one side. High side or low? He couldn’t remember.
The gun itself was surprisingly small, dwarfed by the four men tending it: two seated either side of the breech, two fetching rounds from boxes set back to the side. They all wore light khaki; Turkish uniform, presumably. A fifth man – the gun captain – wore grey and stood off to the left: O’Gilroy thought he recognised Albrecht, the portly Bavarian. Hard luck, him being on the other side. That was the only way to think of it.
And he was Bertie’s target anyway. “Ye take the one sitting at the gun on the left” O’Gilroy whispered, emphasising with his left hand, “and then next left. I’ll get the feller sitting on the right and work right. Ye got that?”
It should be easy – to start with. The tricky bit might come when the defensive picket came to hunt them down. He couldn’t see such a picket, but they had to be there; probably up among the trees on the far side of the riverbed, guarding
against attack from the direction of the target. He’d send Bertie back, and perhaps stay long enough himself to knock off one of them, to blunt their enthusiasm, but after that the old soldier in him could take over.
“Would it not be better to shoot at the ammunition boxes?” Bertie whispered.
“No. Might not go off and the men’d scatter. They’re what matters. Watch me and I’ll signal ye.”
Bertie nodded and crawled away to his position. The bugle called, a twiddly bit and then one long note.
Albrecht blew a whistle, the little group around the gun relaxed and broke up. The seated men, numbers two and three in the crew, stood up, stretched and lit cigarettes. The loading detail began stacking rounds on a coat laid over the damp, gritty ground beside the gun, and Albrecht bustled. He interfered with the placing of the ammunition, checked the firmness of the trail spade, peered into but didn’t touch the sight. He was the picture of a man with nothing to do, whose job was done. The gun was on target.
When the bugle sounded again, he whistled and the crew closed up, crouching or sitting. O’Gilroy lifted the Winchester, took a sight, then nodded across to Bertie who snuggled down competently behind his own rifle. Still, it wasn’t the man’s competence O’Gilroy mistrusted. Oh well. . . He sighted, took and let out a breath, then squeezed the trigger.
* * *
Ranklin’s group heard the firing and went to ground immediately. He crawled to the cover of a rock and began remembering and analysing what he had heard. No bullets had come past, and two different rifles had fired. Odd. He looked across to the nearest Arab and he seemed puzzled, too.
The firing stopped. One Arab rose cautiously to his feet, and of course all the rest did. So Ranklin had to. They moved forward in a crouching unsoldierly trot, perhaps three hundred yards from the line of treetops growing on the bank below the rim of the plateau.
They heard shouts and more shots, and the Arabs threw themselves down and this time fired back. Back? – Ranklin wasn’t sure anybody had shot at them yet. But this was a sure way to make them do so.
* * *
The loader just stood there, a shell in his hands, as the numbers two and three slumped off the gun’s seats. He must have heard the shots, he could see the results, he simply didn’t believe it. He was just beginning to turn when O’Gilroy’s second shot took him in the side and he staggered. O’Gilroy was just aware of Albrecht running towards them, for the cover at the bottom of the slope, then sprawling as Bertie fired. His doubts about Bertie’s willingness to kill in cold blood had, O’Gilroy realised, been misplaced.
He himself swung and shot at the second loader, who was heading down-stream at an astonishing pace, perhaps even faster than the Winchester’s low-powered bullet, because it missed. He re-aimed at the first loader just as Bertie finished him off. Then there was no-one left to shoot at.
O’Gilroy waved Bertie back, as planned, before the picket could scramble down from the wooded bank opposite. But Bertie knew just how well he had done with his familiar and high-powered rifle and pretended to be busy reloading. O’Gilroy cursed him and the Winchester both and worked the action. The lever was simple and fast, but by God it cut into his knuckles.
As the ringing of the shots faded, he realised several voices were shouting – questions and orders, it sounded like. Then a Turkish soldier lost his footing and slid out from under the trees onto the open riverbed; O’Gilroy let Bertie slaughter that one while he himself fired three quick shots at a movement among the trees higher up. There was a yelp.
Then, for the first time, several rifles fired in their direction – certainly a bullet howled off a rock nearby. But the shooting had sounded distant. They were high enough to see over the treetops of the bank opposite to the flat, misty rockiness beyond. There O’Gilroy saw the wink of a rifle flash.
“Jest left of front, beyond the trees, on the top, ’bout five-six hundred yards—”
“Do not shoot,” Bertie said. “They may be friends.”
“Hey?”
“That is the back way to the monastery, up there. It may be Hakim’s men.”
“Whose?”
But Bertie had rolled on his side to give his lungs room, and bellowed in Arabic.
* * *
Abruptly the Arabs around Ranklin had stopped firing and begun listening, but the distant shouts meant nothing to Ranklin. The Arabs explained it to him – but again in Arabic. Then he thought he heard “. . . O’Gilroy . . .”
He yelled: “Is . . . that . . . you?”
“Yes . . . move . . . right.”
The Arabs already were, and Ranklin followed before he realised why: their two groups were almost opposite each other, sandwiching an enemy, and O’Gilroy wanted to send them around the flank to attack down the line of the riverbed . . .
They ended up with four more Turkish dead – two of whom, Ranklin suspected, could have been taken prisoner, if it wasn’t for old scores he preferred not to know about. At the cost of one rashly brave Arab shot clean through the heart. But with the Arabic-speaking Bertie now on hand, he left them to chatter while he listened to O’Gilroy’s news and inspected the gun.
He walked slowly around it, working out where it must break down into mule loads and giving those junctions a good kick or shake to make sure they were locked tight. Meanwhile, O’Gilroy was saying: “The feller Zurga, his real name’s Kazurga, and that means ‘Tornado’ in Turk, which makes him yer old mate from the war, don’t it?”
Well, well, well, Ranklin thought. So I’m up against my old enemy; no wonder he brought up the “Warrior Sheep” when he saw this jacket – could he suspect? And I bet he got that scar from my guns, before Salonika. Quite a coincidence – except that he would be sent here because he’s their artillery hero, and I got involved mainly because of my experience in that war. . . What a peaceful world we must live in when so few of us are accustomed to action that we all know each other.
O’Gilroy, who was routing in the pile of captured weapons to replace the Winchester with a proper bolt-action Mauser, suddenly stood up. “Oh shit. I’d best be telling Mrs Finn. Getting her down here.”
“You brought Corinna?”
“She brought me, more like. Ye know how she is,” O’Gilroy protested.
Ranklin let his fury subside and nodded. He knew. “Get her, then.”
And now he could look at the gun properly.
It had no shield, but he guessed why: it would just be a metal plate about a yard square, an awkward load and dispensable if you didn’t expect to come under small-arms fire. That apart, it was small, no higher than its wheels which were about three feet diameter. It looked like a toy – no, crouching with its squat nose slightly raised, it looked like an ugly metal toad. Yet it was beautiful. The Devil may have invented artillery but it took man, created in God’s image, to make guns such lovely things.
He ran his hand lovingly over the breech, warm from the shooting, noted the position of the breech-handle on the right of the horizontal sliding block, the elevating and traversing wheels and dial sight to the left. Very simple, merely the reverse of most British gun layouts.
And the love for such weapons, built up over twenty years and which he thought he had set aside, came back with a rush. Suddenly the knowledge he had acquired as a spy, the tricks of disguise and pretence and mistrust, all became a handful of pennies beside the fortune of understanding he had amassed in the Guns. He had never seen this type before, yet already he knew it, it was part of him, stretching his reach to miles and giving him the power of legions. Alexander, Caesar, even Napoleon, had never known such power. Give me a lever and I will move the world? Hah! Give me a gun and start looking for a new world!
If, in that mist, he could work out which direction to fire the bloody thing.
The Arabs were standing around, chatting to Bertie but all eyeing the gun eagerly. Absently, Ranklin picked up the shell the dead loader had dropped, noted the safety pin had already gone, and began wiping it clean of grit on his
sweater sleeve while he worked out what to do.
Zurga would be forward in the trench with the machine-gun, bugler and all: a commander wanted to see the enemy, not his own guns. So now what would he be thinking? He must have heard the firing from where there should be none, would guess his second gun had been attacked yet not know if the attack had been beaten off. And you hadn’t worked out a bugle call to answer that question, had you?
Still, he’d know this gun hadn’t fired recently, and that itself must have postponed the attack – there had been no shooting, no bugle calls, for minutes now. Zurga wouldn’t launch an attack covered by just one gun and with his rear in doubt. So he’d want to know the situation. Would he send a runner back? Come himself? Wait for the crew of the other gun, which must be closer to here, to investigate? . . . Oh damn: that escaped loader that O’Gilroy had reported, he’d probably have reached that gun and be pouring out the sad tale . . .
. . . And if that gun had protecting troops to spare, they might even now be charging up the riverbed towards him.
“M’sieu Lacan?”
Bertie turned from the Arabs. “Do I still have the pleasure of addressing the Honourable Patrick Snaipe?”
“You don’t, actually, but—”
Bertie shook his head sadly. “Hélas – I made a mistake, so many mistakes . . . You have seen Hakim?”
“Yes. They let the hostages go –” Bertie’s half-closed eyes flicked open “– but Hakim kept the survey map. I’ve got it.” He took it out and shook it open.
Very still now, Bertie stared at it and said: “I hope it will not go back to the Railway.”
“Right now, I need it myself. The problem is . . .” But Bertie understood immediately “. . . so would you take three men forward to give us warning and try to delay an attack? If you can get up on the high ground here, opposite where the dry ravine comes in, you can’t be flanked . . . Don’t be heroic, but send a man back to say when you’re retreating.”
Bertie nodded at the gun. “And will you shoot that?”