Wyatt's Hurricane / Bahama Crisis

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘She’ll hit about five o’clock.’

  ‘Christ!’ said Manning. ‘It can’t be done.’

  ‘It must be done,’ said Favel curtly. He turned to Wyatt. ‘What do you mean when you say it will hit at five o’clock?’

  ‘You’ll have winds of sixty miles an hour.’

  ‘And the flooding?’

  Wyatt shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘That’s one aspect of hurricanes I haven’t studied. I don’t really know when you can expect the tidal wave—but I wouldn’t put it much after six o’clock.’

  Favel said reflectively, ‘It is two o’clock now—that gives us four hours, or three at the worst. What is likely to happen between now and then?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Wyatt. ‘The clouds will thicken very perceptibly in the next hour and a breeze will spring up. From then on it just gets worse.’

  ‘Charles, how is the evacuation going in the east? Can we withdraw to the second prepared line?’

  Manning nodded unwillingly. ‘I’ve got all that area cleared—but you’ll be pushing it a bit hard. If Rocambeau breaks through—and he could if we aren’t careful on this retreat—he’ll be right in the middle of us and we won’t have a chance.’

  Favel pulled a telephone towards him. ‘We retreat,’ he said firmly. ‘Speed things up, Charles. I want every effort made.’

  ‘All right, Julio,’ said Manning wearily. ‘I’ll do my best.’ He strode out. Wyatt hesitated, wondering if he should go too, but Favel held up his hand while speaking into the telephone, so he leaned on the edge of the table and waited.

  Favel put down the handset gently, and said, ‘You mentioned rain, Mr Wyatt. Is this going to be a serious factor?’

  ‘You can expect a lot of rain—more than you’ve ever seen before; it will add to the flooding problem in the Negrito but I took it into account when you asked me to outline the safe areas. The worst rainfall will occur in the right front quadrant of the hurricane, but I think that will be to the west of here. Still, you can expect between five and ten inches spread over twenty-four hours.’

  ‘A lot of rain,’ observed Favel. ‘That is likely to preclude serious military operations.’

  Wyatt laughed grimly. ‘I hope you aren’t thinking of doing any military operations during the next day or so. The wind will stop you if the rain doesn’t.’

  Favel said, ‘I was thinking of afterwards. Thank you, Mr Wyatt. Keep me informed of any serious developments.’

  So Wyatt went back on the roof and watched the dark line of nimbostratus gather on the horizon.

  Rocambeau’s second blow fell on thin air. True, the shelling was just as severe as before but there was no small-arms fire until his men had penetrated over half a mile into the city. They rushed into this sudden vacuum and became over-extended, and when they came up against opposition they were thin on the ground. The stragglers were lucky, but the enthusiasts in the forefront suffered heavy casualties from strong machine-gun fire and retreated a little way to lick their wounds.

  But they did not mind because they heard the sudden rumble of guns from the other side of the city and knew that Serrurier had begun his attack at last. Now Favel and his rebels would surely be crushed.

  Serrurier was even more brutal and callous about losses than Rocambeau. His bull-headed rush against the pitiful thin line of defenders was overwhelming. Despite the artillery and the plentiful machine-guns he cracked Favel’s line in three places, threatening to split the small force into fragments. Favel took over decisively and ordered an immediate retreat into the city. In the open he had no chance against eight-to-one odds, but street fighting was another matter.

  The fighting became brisk on both fronts and Favel’s men gave way slowly, suffering many losses but not nearly as many as the Government armies. There was a constant coming and going at the Imperiale as Favel demanded news and yet more news of the evacuation, carefully timing his withdrawals on both flanks to accommodate the slow ebbing of the human tide from St Pierre, and grudgingly trading ground for enemy casualties. It was a risky business and it lost him more good men than he liked, but he stubbornly kept to his plan and somehow made it work.

  The city was in flames to east and west as he withdrew. His men had orders to set all buildings on fire to put a barrier of flame before the advancing and victorious Government troops. The flames, fanned by the brisk breeze that had sprung up, roared to the sky and the smoke drifted north to lie over the Negrito.

  At four o’clock he decided that he could not possibly save his artillery and gave orders for the guns to be spiked and abandoned as his commanders thought fit. The road to the Negrito was jammed with refugees and it was impossible to push the guns through at the same time, and he knew the guns would not be needed when the hurricane had passed. Already more than fifteen hundred of the troops Manning had used to evacuate the city were in position in the defence line on the eighty-foot contour, and Serrurier and Rocambeau were pushing in faster and pressing harder.

  Five minutes later he gave the order to abandon headquarters, and an orderly passed the news to Wyatt, who cast one more glance at the dark horizon and hurried downstairs. Favel was waiting in the foyer, watching maps being loaded into a truck standing outside the hotel and seemingly more intent on the lighting of his cigar than on the din of battle.

  ‘We will let Serrurier and Rocambeau join hands,’ he said. ‘I think they will waste time greeting each other, and perhaps they’ll split a bottle of rum together. We will also form one line—but we are united.’ He smiled. ‘I do not think Rocambeau will take kindly to being superseded by Serrurier.’

  A soldier shouted from the truck and Favel, after making sure his cigar was lit, applied the still-burning match to a twist of paper. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, and walked back into the bar. As he came back Wyatt saw the quick glow of fire behind him.

  ‘Come, we must go,’ said Favel, and pushed Wyatt through the door and into the street. As the truck pulled off Wyatt looked back at the Imperiale and saw smoke pouring through the windows to be whipped away in the rising wind.

  It was four-thirty in the afternoon.

  EIGHT

  Wyatt had advocated evacuation—now he saw the reality and was shocked.

  The truck travelled through the deserted streets in the centre of the town, while all around the clamour of battle echoed from the blank faces of the buildings as the rebel army grimly retreated in their narrowing circle. The sky was darkening and a wind had risen which blew tattered papers along dirty pavements. The city smelled of fire and the smoke, instead of rising, was now driven down into the streets to catch in the throat.

  Wyatt coughed and stared at a body lying on the pavement. A little way along the street he saw another, then another—all male, all civilian. He jerked his head round and said to Favel, ‘What the devil has been going on?’

  Favel stared straight ahead. He asked tonelessly, ‘Have you any conception of what is needed to evacuate a city in a few hours? If the people will not move, then they must be made to move.’

  The truck slowed to swerve round another corpse in the middle of the street—a woman in a startlingly patterned red floral dress and a yellow bandanna about her head. She was sprawled like a toy abandoned by a child, her limbs awry in the indecency of violent death. Favel said, ‘We share the guilt, Mr Wyatt. You had the knowledge; I had the power. Without your knowledge this would never have happened, but you brought your knowledge to one who had the power to make it happen.’

  ‘Need there have been killing?’ asked Wyatt in a low voice.

  ‘There was no time to explain, no plans already made, no knowledge in the people themselves.’ Favel’s face was stern. ‘Everyone knows we do not have hurricanes in San Fernandez,’ he said as though he were quoting. ‘The people did not know. That is another crime of President Serrurier—perhaps the worst of all. So the people had to be forced.’

  ‘How many dead?’ asked Wyatt grimly.

  ‘Who knows? But ho
w many shall be saved? Ten thousand? Twenty—thirty thousand? One must make a balance in these things.’

  Wyatt was silent. He knew he would have to live with this thing and that it would hurt. But he could still try to sway Favel in his decision to contain and destroy the Government army. He said, ‘Need there be more killing? Must you still stand and fight around St Pierre? How many will you kill in the city, Julio Favel? Five thousand? Ten—fifteen thousand?’

  ‘It is too late,’ said Favel austerely. ‘I cannot do otherwise if I wished. The evacuation took a long time—it is not yet complete—and my men will be lucky if they can get to their prepared positions in time.’ His voice became sardonic. ‘I am not a Christian—it is a luxury few honest politicians can afford—but I have justification in the Bible. The Lord God parted the waters and let the Israelites through the flood dry-shod; but he stayed his hand and drowned the pursuing Egyptians—every soldier, every horse, every chariot was destroyed in the Red Sea.’

  The truck pulled up at a checkpoint, beyond which Wyatt could see a long line of refugees debouching from a side road. A rebel officer came up and conferred with Favel, and a white man waved and hurried over. It was Causton. ‘You took your time,’ he said. ‘How far has the Government army got into the city?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Wyatt. He climbed out of the truck. ‘What’s happening up here?’

  Causton indicated the refugees. ‘The last of the many,’ he said. ‘They should be all through in another fifteen minutes.’ He stretched his arms wide. ‘This is where Favel makes his stand—this is the eighty-foot contour line.’ The rising wind plucked at his shirt-sleeves. ‘I’ve got a hole already picked out for us—unless you want to push on up the Negrito.’

  ‘You’re staying here, then?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Causton in surprise. ‘This is where the action will be. Dawson is here, too; he said he was waiting for you.’

  Wyatt turned and looked back at the city. In the distance he could see the sea, no longer a beaten silver plate but the dirty colour of uncleaned pewter. The southern sky was filled with the low iron-grey mass of the coming nimbostratus, bringing with it torrential rain and howling wind. Already it was perceptibly darker because of the lowering clouds and the smoke from the city.

  Above the faint keening of the wind he could hear the sound of battle, mostly small-arms fire and hardly any artillery. The noise fluctuated as the wind gusted, sometimes seeming far away and sometimes very close. The ground sloped away down to the city, and between the top of the low ridge on which he was standing and the nearer houses there was not a soul to be seen.

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ he said abruptly. ‘Though I’m damned if I know why.’ Of course he did know. His desire was a curious amalgam of professional interest in the action of a hurricane on the sea in shallow waters and a macabre fascination at the sight of a doomed city and a doomed army. He looked up the road. ‘Where exactly is Favel making his stand?’

  ‘On this ridge. There are positions dug in on the reverse slope—the men can nip down there when the weather gets really bad.’

  ‘I hope those holes are well drained,’ said Wyatt grimly. ‘It’s going to rain harder than you’ve seen it rain before. Any hole dug without provision for drainage is going to get filled up fast.’

  ‘Favel thought of that one,’ said Causton. ‘He’s pretty bright.’

  ‘He asked me about rainfall,’ said Wyatt. ‘I suppose that was why.’

  Favel called, ‘Mr Wyatt, headquarters has been established about three hundred yards up the road.’

  ‘I’m staying with Causton,’ said Wyatt, moving nearer the truck.

  ‘As you wish.’ Favel’s lips quirked. ‘There is nothing more you or I can do now, except perhaps to send a prayer to Hunraken or any other appropriate god.’ He spoke to his driver and the truck pulled into the thinning line of refugees.

  ‘Let’s join Dawson,’ said Causton. ‘We’ve established our new home just over there.’

  He led the way off the road and down the reverse side of the ridge, where they found Dawson sitting cross-legged by the side of a large foxhole. He looked pleased when he saw Wyatt, and said, ‘Well, hello! I thought you’d been captured again.’

  Wyatt looked at the foxhole. It had a drainage trench at the rear which was obviously going to be inadequate. ‘That wants deepening—and there should be two. Are there any spades around?’

  ‘Those are in short supply,’ said Dawson. ‘But I’ll see what I can find.’

  Wyatt looked along the ridge and saw that it was alive with men, a long, thin line of them burrowing into the earth like moles. At the top of the ridge overlooking the city others were busy, siting machine-guns, excavating more foxholes for cover against enemy fire rather than the coming wind, and keeping careful watch on the city in case Serrurier’s men broke through. Causton said, ‘I hope you’re right about the flooding. If it doesn’t happen all hell will break loose. Favel abandoned his guns—he couldn’t bring these out and the refugees, too.’

  Wyatt said, ‘Mabel is going to hit us head-on. There’ll be floods.’

  ‘There’d better be. From a military point of view Serrurier is right on top. I’ll bet he’s crowing.’

  ‘He won’t if he looks behind him—out to sea.’

  Dawson came back carrying a thin piece of sheet metal under his arm. ‘No spades; but this might do it.’

  Causton and Wyatt deepened the drainage trench and scooped out another while Dawson watched them. Wyatt looked up. ‘How are your hands?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Dawson. ‘A doctor fixed them up.’

  ‘What are you hanging round here for?’ asked Wyatt. ‘You should get away up the Negrito while you have the chance.’

  Dawson shook his head. ‘Have you seen those people? I’ve never seen a more beaten, dispirited crowd. I’m scared that if I joined them I’d get to feeling like that. Anyway, maybe I can help out here, somehow.’

  ‘What do you think you can do?’ asked Causton. ‘You can’t use your hands, so you can’t fire a gun or dig a hole. I don’t see the point of it.’

  Dawson shrugged. ‘I’m not running any more,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I’ve been running like hell for a long time, a lot of years. Well, I’m stopping right here on top of this ridge.’

  Causton looked across at Wyatt and raised his eyebrows, then smiled faintly, but he merely said, ‘I think that’s all we can do here. Let’s go up and see what trouble is coming.’

  The last of the people of St Pierre had passed by on their way up into the Negrito Valley, but the road in the far distance was speckled with trudging figures making their way to high ground. The verdant greenness of the sugar-cane fields looked like a raging sea as the strengthening wind blew waves across the springy canes. Only the soldiers were left, and very few of those in the thin line of trenches scored across the ridge, but there would soon be more as the embattled army in St Pierre retreated on this position.

  Wyatt strode to the top of the ridge and dropped flat near a rebel soldier, who turned and grinned at him. He said, ‘What is happening, soldier?’

  The man’s grin widened. ‘There,’ he said, and stabbed out a finger. ‘They come soon—maybe ten minutes.’ He checked the breech of his rifle and laid some clips of ammunition before him.

  Wyatt looked down the bare slope of the ridge towards the city. The sound of firing was very close and an occasional stray bullet whistled overhead. Soon he saw movement at the bottom of the slope and a group of men began to trudge up the hill, unhurriedly but making good time. From behind him an officer called out an order and the three men grouped round a machine-gun a dozen yards away got busy and swivelled the gun in the direction of the officer’s pointing finger.

  The men climbing the ridge reached the top and passed over. They were carrying a mortar which they assembled quickly on the reverse slope. Causton watched them and said critically, ‘Not many mortar bombs left.’

  More men were climbing the ridge
now, moving steadily in disciplined retreat and covered by their comrades still fighting the confused battle among the houses below. Causton guessed he was witnessing the last jump in the controlled and planned leap-frogging movement which had brought Favel’s defending force across St Pierre, and he was impressed by the steady bearing of the men. This was no rout in undisciplined panic like the debacle he had been involved in earlier, but an orderly withdrawal in the face of the enemy, one of the most difficult of military operations.

  Wyatt, after casting a brief glance at the retreating men, had lifted his eyes to the south. The horizon was dark, nearly black, lit only by the dim flickering of distant lightning embedded in thick cloud, and the nearer nimbo-stratus was a sickly yellow, seemingly illuminated from the inside. The wind was backing to the west and was now much stronger. He estimated it to be a force seven verging on force eight—about forty miles an hour and gusting up to fifty miles an hour. It was nothing to worry anyone who did not know what was coming and was merely a gale such as San Fernandez had known many times. Probably Rocambeau, if he was still in command, would welcome it as bringing rain to extinguish the many fires in the city.

  The retreating soldiers were now streaming over the ridge and were marshalled by their non-coms into the firing line and issued with more ammunition. They lay on the crest of the ridge in the shallow foxholes that had been dug for them and again set their faces towards the oncoming enemy.

  Causton nudged Wyatt. ‘Those houses down there—how high are they above sea-level?’

  Wyatt considered. The ridge was not very high and the slope to the city was long. He said, ‘If this ridge is on the eighty-foot contour, then they shouldn’t be more than fifty feet up.’

  ‘Then the tidal wave should wash as high as that, then?’

  ‘It will,’ said Wyatt. ‘It will probably wash half-way up the slope.’

  Causton pulled at his lower lip. ‘I think the idea here is to pin the Government troops against those houses. They’re three hundred yards away and the troops will have to attack uphill and across open ground. Maybe Favel will be able to do it, after all. But it’ll be tricky disengaging the last of his men.’