Wyatt's Hurricane / Bahama Crisis

by Desmond Bagley

  The shell that had hit the Poste had totally destroyed the next cell and it was only by the mercy of the excellent and forgotten builders of his prison that he had not been blown to kingdom come.

  He had dislodged only two of the heavy ashlar blocks that made up the wall and the hole would be a tight fit, but luckily he was slim and managed to wriggle through with nothing more than a few additional scrapes. It was tricky finding a footing on the other side because half the floor had been blown away, leaving the ground-floor office starkly exposed to the sky. A man looked up at him from down there with shocked brown eyes—but he was quite dead, lying on his back with his chest crushed by a block of masonry.

  Wyatt teetered on the foot-wide ledge that was his only perch and supported himself with his hands while he looked across the square. It was desolate and uninhabited save for the hundreds of corpses that lay strewn about, corpses dressed in the light blue of the Government army uniform. The only movement was from the smoke arising from the dozen or so fiercely burning army trucks grouped round what had been the centrepiece—the heroic statue of Serrurier. But the statue was gone, blown from its plinth by the storm of steel.

  He looked down. It would be quite easy to descend to the ground and to walk away as free as the air. But then he looked across and saw the door of the ruined cell hanging loose with one hinge broken, and although he hesitated, he knew what he must do. He must find Dawson.

  He picked his way carefully along the narrow ledge until he came to a wider and safer part near the door. From then on it was easy and inside thirty seconds he was in the corridor of the cell block. It was strange; apart from the heavy layer of dust which overlay everything, there was not a sign that the building had been hit.

  Walking up the corridor, he called, ‘Dawson!’ and was astonished to hear his voice emerge as a croak. He cleared his throat and called again in a stronger voice, ‘Dawson! Dawson!’

  A confused shouting came from the cells around him, but he could not distinguish Dawson’s voice. Angrily, he shouted, ‘Taisez-vous!’ and the voices died away save for a faint cry from the end of the corridor. He hastened along and called again. ‘Dawson! Are you there?’

  ‘Here!’ a faint voice said, and he traced it to a room next to Roseau’s office. He looked at the door—this was no cell, it would be easy. He took a heavy fire-extinguisher, and, using it as a battering ram, soon shattered the lock and burst into the room.

  Dawson was lying in bed, his head and hands bandaged. Both his eyes were blackened and he seemed to have lost some teeth. Wyatt looked at him. ‘My God! What did they do to you?’

  Dawson looked at him for some seconds without speaking, then he summoned up a grin. ‘Seen yourself lately?’ he asked, speaking painfully through swollen lips.

  ‘Come on,’ said Wyatt. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Dawson with suppressed rage. ‘The bastards strapped me down.’

  Wyatt took a step forward and saw that it was true. Two broad straps ran across Dawson’s body, the buckles well under the bed far beyond the reach of prying hands. He ducked under the bed and began to unfasten them. ‘What happened after you were beaten up?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s the damnedest thing,’ said Dawson with perplexity. ‘I woke up in here and I’d been fixed up with these bandages. Why in hell would they do that?’

  ‘I threw a scare into Roseau,’ said Wyatt. ‘I’m glad it worked.’

  ‘They still didn’t want to lose me, I guess,’ said Dawson. ‘That’s why they strapped me down. I’ve been going through hell, waiting for a shell to bust through the ceiling. I thought it had happened twice.’

  ‘Twice? I thought there was only one hit.’

  Dawson got out of bed. ‘I reckon there were two.’ He nodded to a chair. ‘Help me with my pants; I don’t think I can do it myself—not with these hands. Oh, how I’d like to meet up with that son of a bitch, Roseau.’

  ‘How are your legs?’ asked Wyatt, helping to dress him.

  ‘They’re okay.’

  ‘We’ve got a bit of climbing to do; not much—just enough to get down to street level. I think you’ll be able to do it. Come on.’

  They went out into the corridor. ‘There’s a cell a bit further along that’s been well ventilated,’ said Wyatt. ‘We go out that way.’

  A shot echoed in the corridor shockingly noisily and a bullet sprayed Wyatt with chips of stone as it ricocheted off the wall by his head. He ducked violently and turned to find Roseau staggering down the corridor after them. He was in terrible shape. His uniform was hanging about him in rags and his right arm was hanging limp as though broken. He held a revolver in his left hand and it was perhaps that which saved Wyatt from the next shot, which went wide.

  He yelled, ‘That cell there,’ and pushed Dawson violently. Dawson ran the few yards to the door and dashed through to halt, staggering, in an attempt to save himself falling over the unexpected drop.

  Wyatt retreated more slowly, keeping a wary eye on Roseau who lurched haltingly down the passage. Roseau said nothing at all; he brushed the blood away from his fanatical eyes with the back of the hand that held the gun, and his jaw worked as he aimed waveringly for another shot. Wyatt ducked through the cell door as the gun went off and heard a distinct thud as the bullet buried itself in the door-jamb.

  ‘Over here!’ yelled Dawson, and Wyatt hastily trod over the rubble and on to the narrow ledge. ‘If that crazy bastard comes out we’ll have to jump for it.’

  ‘It’s as good a way to break a leg as any,’ Wyatt said. He felt his fingers touch something loose and they curled round a fist-sized piece of rock.

  ‘Here he comes,’ said Dawson.

  Roseau shuffled through the door, seemingly oblivious of the drop at his feet. He staggered forward, keeping his eyes on Wyatt, until the tips of his boots were overhanging space, and he lifted the gun in a trembling hand.

  Wyatt threw the rock and it hit Roseau on the side of the head. The gun fired and he spun, losing his footing, to crash face down in the ruins below. His arm lay across the shoulder of the dead man as though he had found a lost comrade, and the newly disturbed dust settled again on the dead man’s open and puzzled eyes.

  Dawson took a deep breath. ‘Jesus! Now there was a persistent son of a bitch. Thanks, Wyatt.’

  Wyatt was shaking. He stood on the ledge with his back to the wall and waited for the quivers to go away. Dawson looked down at Roseau and said, ‘He wanted to implicate you—I didn’t, Wyatt. I didn’t tell him anything.’

  ‘I didn’t think you had,’ said Wyatt quietly. ‘Let’s get down from here. There’s nothing happening here now, but that could change damn’ quickly.’

  Slowly they made their way down to the street. It was difficult for Dawson because his hands hurt, but Wyatt helped him. When they stood on the pavement Dawson asked, ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘I’m going back to the Imperiale,’ said Wyatt. ‘I must find Julie. I must find if she’s still in St Pierre.’

  ‘Which way is it?’

  ‘Across the square,’ said Wyatt, pointing.

  They set off across the Place de la Libération Noire and Dawson stared at the carnage in horror. There were bodies everywhere, cut down in hundreds. They could not walk in a straight line for more than five yards without having to deviate and they gave up trying and stepped over the corpses. Suddenly Dawson turned and retched; he had not drunk or eaten for a long time, and his heavings were dry and laboured.

  Wyatt kicked something which rang with a hollow clang. He looked down to see the decapitated head of a man; the eyes stared blankly and there was a ghastly hole in the left temple.

  It was the bronze head of the statue of Serrurier.

  FIVE

  Causton marched to the sound of the guns.

  He sweated in the hot sun as he stepped out briskly in response to the lashing voice of the sergeant and wondered how he was going to get out of this pickle. If he could get out of the ranks for
a few minutes, all he had to do was to rip off the tunic, drop the rifle and he would be a civilian again; but there did not seem much chance of that. The erstwhile deserters were watched carefully by troopers armed with submachine-guns and the officer, driven in a jeep, passed continually from one end of the column to the other.

  He stumbled a little, then picked up the step again, and the man next to him turned and addressed him in the island patois, obviously asking a question. Causton played dumb—quite literally; he made some complicated gestures with his fingers, hoping to God that the soldier would not know he was faking. The man let out a shrill cackle of laughter and poked the soldier in front in the small of the back. He evidently thought it a good joke that they should have a dumb soldier in their midst and curious eyes were turned on Causton. He hoped the sweat was not making the boot-polish run.

  Not far ahead he could hear the sound of small-arms firing—the tac-a-tac of machine-guns and the more uncoordinated and sporadic rattle of rifles—much closer than he had expected. Favel had pushed the firing line far into the suburbs of St Pierre and, from the sound of it, was expending ammunition at a fantastic rate. Causton winced as a shell burst a hundred yards to the right, ruining a shack, and there came a perceptible and hesitant slowing down of the column of men.

  The sergeant screamed, the officer cursed, the column speeded up again. Presently they turned off into a side street and the column halted. Causton looked with interest at the army trucks which were parked nose to tail along the street, noting that most of them were empty. He also saw that men were siphoning petrol from the tanks of some of the trucks and refilling the tanks of others.

  The officer stepped forward and harangued them again. At what was apparently a question several of the men in the ranks lifted rifles and waved them, so Causton did the same. At a curt command from the officer, those men broke ranks and lined up on the other side of the street, Causton with them. The officer was evidently sorting out the armed men from those who had thrown away their rifles.

  A sergeant passed along the thin line of armed men. To every man he put a question and doled out ammunition from a box carried by two men who followed along behind. When he came to Causton and snapped out his question Causton merely snapped open the breech of his rifle to show that the magazine was empty. The sergeant thrust two clips of ammunition into his hands and passed on.

  Causton looked across at the trucks. Rifles were being unloaded from one of them and issued to the unarmed men. There were not nearly enough to go round. He tossed the two clips of ammunition in his hand thoughtfully and looked at one lorry as it pulled away, replenished with petrol at the sacrifice of the others. Serrurier was running short of petrol, guns and ammunition, or, more probably, he had plenty but in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was very likely that his supply corps was in a hell of a mess, disrupted by Favel’s unexpectedly successful thrust.

  He loaded the rifle and put the other clip in his pocket. Serrurier’s logistic difficulties were likely to be the death of a good foreign correspondent; this was definitely not a good place to be. Despite his aversion to guns, he thought it would be as well to be prepared. He looked about and weighed his chances of getting away and decided dismally that they were nil. But who knew what a change in the fortunes of war would bring?

  More orders were barked and the men tramped off again, this time at right angles to their original march from the centre of the town, and Causton judged that they were moving parallel to the firing line. They entered one of the poorest areas of St Pierre, a shanty town of huts built from kerosene cans beaten flat and corrugated iron. There were no civilians visible; either they were cowering in the ram-shackle dwellings or they had hurriedly departed.

  The line of march changed again towards the noise of battle and they emerged on to an open place, an incursive tongue of the countryside licking into the suburbs. Here they were halted and spread out into a long line, and Causton judged that this was where they would make their stand. The men started to dig in, using no tools but their bayonets, and Causton, with alacrity, followed suit.

  He found that a malodorous spot had been picked for him to die in. This open ground, so near to the shanty town, was a rubbish dump in which the unhygienic citizens deposited anything for which they had no further use. Incautiously he stabbed a borrowed bayonet into the bloated corpse of a dead dog which lay half-buried under a pile of ashes—the gases burst from it with a soft sigh and a terrible stench and Causton gagged. He moved away slightly and attacked the ground again, this time with better results, and found that digging in a rubbish dump did have advantages—it was very easy to excavate a man-sized hole.

  Having got dug-in, he looked around, first to the rear in search of an avenue of escape. Directly behind him was the sergeant, tough-looking and implacable, the muzzle of whose rifle poked forward, perhaps intentionally, right at Causton. Behind the sergeant and just in front of the first line of shacks were the captain’s bully-boys spread in a thin line, their submachine-guns ready to cut down any man who attempted to run; and behind the troopers was the captain himself, leading from the rear and sheltering in the lee of a shack. Beside the shack the jeep stood with idling engine and Causton judged that the captain was ready to take off if the line broke. No joy there.

  He turned his attention to the front. The strip of open ground stretched as far as he could see on either side, and was about a quarter of a mile across—maybe four hundred yards. On the other side were the better constructed houses of the more prosperous citizens of St Pierre whose exclusiveness was accentuated and protected from the shanties by this strip of no-man’s-land. A battle seemed to be going on across there; shells and mortar bombs were exploding with frightful regularity, tossing pieces of desirable residence about with abandon; the fusillade of small-arms fire was continuous, and once a badly aimed projectile landed only fifty yards to Causton’s front and he drew in his head and felt the patter of earth fragments all about him.

  He judged that this was the front line and that the Government forces were losing. Why else would the army have whipped together a hasty second line of ill-equipped deserters? Still, the position was not badly chosen; if the front line broke then Favel’s men would have to advance across four hundred yards of open ground. But then he thought of the meagre two clips of ammunition with which he had been issued—perhaps Favel’s men would not find it too difficult, after all. It depended on whether the Government troops over there could retreat in good order.

  Nothing happened for a long time and Causton, lying there in the hot sun, actually began to feel sleepy. He had been informed by soldiers that war is a period during which long stretches of boredom are punctuated by brief moments of fright, and he was quite prepared to believe this, although he had not encountered it in his own experience. But then, his own job had mainly consisted of flitting from one hot spot to another, the intervals being filled in by a judicious sampling of the flesh-pots of a dozen assorted countries. He definitely found this small sample of soldiering very dreary.

  Occasionally he turned to see if his chance of escape had improved, but there was never any change. The sergeant stared at him, stony-faced, and the rearguard troopers were always in position. The captain alternated between smoking cigarettes with quick puffs and gazing across at the front line through field glasses. Once, in order to ingratiate himself with the sergeant and in hope of future favours, Causton tossed him a cigarette. The sergeant stretched out an arm, looked at the cigarette in puzzlement, then smiled and lit it. Causton smiled back, then turned again to his front, hoping that a small bond of friendship had been joined.

  Presently the uproar in the front line rose to a crescendo and Causton caught the first sight of human movement—a few distant figures flitting furtively on the nearside of the distant houses. He strained his eyes and wished he had the captain’s binoculars. From behind him he heard the captain’s voice issuing sharp orders and the nearer brazen scream of the sergeant, but he took no notice because he
had just identified the distant figures as Government troops and they were running as hard as they could—the front line had broken.

  The man nearest to him pushed his rifle forward and cocked it, and Causton heard a series of metallic clicks run down the line, but he did not take his eyes from the scene before him. The nearest blue-clad figure was half-way across—about two hundred yards away—when he suddenly threw up his hands and pitched helplessly forward as though he had stumbled over something. He collapsed into a crumpled heap, heaved convulsively and then lay still.

  The field was now filled with running men, retreating in no form of order. Some ran with experience born of battle in short, scuttling zigzags, constantly changing direction in order to throw the marksmen behind off their aim; these were the more intelligent. The stupid ones, or those crazed with fear, ran straight across, and it was these who were picked off by the rattling machine-guns and the cracking rifles.

  Causton was abruptly astonished to find himself under fire. There was a constant twittering in the air about him which, at first, he could not identify. But when the dog in the periphery of his vision suddenly jerked its hind leg as though chasing rabbits in its sleep and the dry ground ten yards ahead of him fountained into a row of spurts of dust, he drew himself into his foxhole like a tortoise drawing into its shell. However, his journalist’s curiosity got the better of him, and he raised his head once more to see what was going on.

  Mortar shells were beginning to drop into the field, raising huge dust plumes which drifted slowly with the wind. The first of the retreating men was quite near and Causton could see his wide-open mouth and staring eyes and could hear the hard thud of his boots on the dry earth. He was not ten yards away when he fell, a flailing tangle of arms and legs, and as he lurched into stillness Causton saw the gaping hole in the back of his head.

  The soldier behind him swerved and came on, legs working like pistons. He jumped clear over Causton and disappeared behind in a panic of terror. Then there was another —and another—and still more—all bolting in panic throughthe second line of defence. The sergeant’s voice rose in a scream as the men in the foxholes nervously twitched as though to run, and there was a near-by shot. We get killed if we run and killed if we don’t—later on, thought Causton. Better not to run—yet.