Cry Wolf

by Wilbur Smith

  sympathy with the rifle barrel. His recent affliction, forgotten in

  the excitement of the chase, returned suddenly with a force that turned

  his bowels to water and his legs to rubber.

  "Merciful Mary!" he whispered.

  The entire horizon was moving, an Unbroken line from one edge of his

  vision to the other. It took him many seconds to assimilate what he

  was seeing, to realize that instead of fifteen horsemen, there were

  suddenly thousands upon thousands, and that rather than running before

  him they were now moving towards him at a velocity which he would not

  have believed possible. As he stared, he saw rank upon rank of the

  enemy seemingly rising from the very earth ahead of him, and rushing

  towards him through a curtain of fine pale dust. He saw the lowering

  sun glint red as blood upon the naked blades, and the drumming of

  galloping hooves sounded like the thunder of a giant waterfall. Yet

  faintly through the thunder, he heard the blood-freezing war shrieks of

  the horsemen.

  "Giuseppe," he gasped. "Take us away from here fast!

  Very fast." This was the sort of appeal that went directly to the

  driver's heart. He spun the big car so nimbly that the Count's

  considerably weakened legs collapsed and he fell backwards onto the

  leather seat.

  Spread over a front of a quarter of a mile behind and on each side of

  the Rolls came thirty of the dun coloured Fiat troop-carriers.

  Despite their most fervent efforts, they had lost ground steadily to

  the thrusting Rolls and they now lumbered along almost a thousand yards

  behind. However, the excitement of the chase had affected the

  occupants and they had climbed up on the cabs and cupolas, and hung

  there hooting and yelling as they watched the sport, like runners at a

  fox hunt.

  This solid phalanx of vehicles, advancing almost wheel to wheel over

  the rough ground, at a speed which would have horrified the

  manufacturers, was suddenly faced with the urgent necessity of

  reversing its headlong career without any loss of speed.

  The drivers of the two leading trucks whose need was most critical

  solved the problem by spinning_ the wheels to hard lock, one left and

  the other right, and they came together radiator to radiator at a

  combined speed in excess of sixty miles per hour. In a roaring cloud

  of steam, splintering glass and rending metal, their cargoes of black

  shirted infantry men were scattered like wheat upon the earth, or

  impaled on various metal projections of the vehicle bodies. The

  trucks, inextricably locked into each other, settled slowly on their

  shattered suspensions, and no sooner had the dust begun to drift away

  than there was a belly baking thump as the contents of their shattered

  fuel tanks ignited in a tall volcanic spout of flame and black smoke.

  The other vehicles managed to reverse their courses without serious

  collision and streamed away into their own dust-clouds, pursued by a

  horde of galloping, gibbering cavalry.

  Count Aldo Belli could not bring himself to glance back over his

  shoulder, certain that he would find a razor-edged sword swishing

  inches from his cringing rear, and he leaned over his driver, spurring

  him to greater speed by beating on his unprotected head and shoulders

  with a fist clenched like a hammer.

  "Faster!" shouted the Count, his fine baritone rising to an uncertain

  contralto. "Faster, you idiot or I will have you shod" and he hit the

  driver again behind one ear, experiencing a small spark of relief as

  the Rolls overtook the rear vehicles in the disordered herd of fleeing

  trucks.

  Now at last he judged it safe to look back, and his relief was more

  intense when he realized that the Rolls was easily capable of out

  -running a mounted man. He experienced a warm flood of returning

  courage.

  "My rifle, Gino," he shouted. "Give me my rifle." But the

  Sergeant was trying to focus his camera on the pursuing horde, and

  the

  Count hit him a blow over the top of his head.

  "Idiot. This is war," he bellowed. "And I am a warrior give me my

  rifle!" Giuseppe, the driver, hearing him, reluctantly decided that he

  was expected to slow the Rolls to give the Count an opportunity to

  follow his warlike intentions but, at the first diminution of speed,

  he received another lusty crack on the centre of his pate and the

  Count's voice went shrill again.

  "Idiot," he screeched. "Do you want to get us killed?

  Faster, man, faster!" and with unbounded relief the driver pushed his

  foot flat on the throttle and the Rolls leapt forward again.

  Gino was down on his hands and knees at the Count's feet, and now he

  came up with the Mannlicher in his hands and handed it to the Count.

  "It's loaded, my Count."

  "Brave boy!" The Count braced himself with the rifle held at his hip,

  and looked about for something to shoot at.

  The Ethiopian cavalry had fallen well behind at this stage, and the

  Rolls had overtaken most of the troop-carriers they were between the

  Count and the enemy. The Count was considering ordering Giuseppe to

  work his way out on to the flank, and thus give him an open field of

  fire weighing the pleasure of shooting down the black riders at a

  respectable range against any possible physical danger to himself and

  he turned on his precarious perch in the back seat to look out in that

  direction.

  He stared incredulously at what he saw. Two great humpbacked shapes

  were sailing in across the open grassland. They looked like two

  deformed camels, coming on swiftly with a curious loping progress that

  was at once comical and yet dreadfully menacing.

  The Count stared at them uncomprehendingly, until with a sudden jolt of

  shock and a new warm flood of adrenalin into his bloodstream,

  he realized that the two strange vehicles were moving fast enough and

  at such an angle as to cut off his retreat.

  "Giuseppe!" he shrieked, and hit the driver with the butt of the

  Marmlicher. It was not a heavy blow, it was meant merely to attract

  his attention, but Giuseppe had already taken much punishment and was

  by now lightly concussed.

  He clung to the wheel with white knuckles and roared on directly into

  the path of the new enemy.

  "Giuseppe!" shrieked the Count again, as he suddenly recognized the

  gaily coloured flashes on the turret of the nearest machine, and at the

  same instant saw the thick stubby cylindrical shape that protruded

  ahead of it. It was fluted vertically and at the far end a short pipe

  like muzzle thrust out of the heavy water-jacket.

  "Oh, merciful Mother of God!" he howled as the machine altered course

  slightly and the muzzle of the Vickers machine gun pointed directly at

  him.

  "You fool!" he shrieked at Giuseppe, hitting him again.

  "Turn! You idiot, turn!" Suddenly through the tears of pain, the

  singing in his ears, and the blinding terror that gripped him, Giuseppe

  saw the huge camel-like shape looming up ahead of him and he spun the

  wheel again just as the muzzle of the Vickers erupted
in a fluttering

  pillar of bright flame and the air all around them was torn by the hiss

  and crack of a thousand bull whips.

  Castelani stood on the cab of his truck, and peered disapprovingly

  through his binoculars into the distant clouds of rolling dust where

  confused movement and shadowy indistinguishable shapes flitted without

  seeming purpose or pattern.

  It had required all of his presence and authority to restrain the ten

  trucks which carried the artillery men and towed their field pieces, to

  keep them under his personal command and to prevent them joining in the

  wildly enthusiastic rush after the small contingent of

  Ethiopian horsemen.

  Castelani was about to give the order to mount up and cautiously follow

  the Count's charge into history and glory, when he raised the

  binoculars again and it seemed that the pattern of dust-obscured

  movement out there had altered. Suddenly he saw the unmistakable shape

  of a Fiat transport emerge from the dust bank, and move ponderously

  back towards him. Through the glasses the men who clung to the canvas

  roof were all staring back in the direction from which they were coming

  at speed.

  He panned the glasses slowly and saw another truck lumber out of the

  dust-mist headed back towards him. One of the soldiers on its roof was

  aiming and firing his rifle back into the obscuring clouds and his

  comrades, clinging to the roof about him, were frozen in attitudes of

  trepidation and alarm.

  At that moment, Castelani heard something which he recognized

  instantly, his skin prickling at the distant ripping tearing sound.

  The sound of a British Vickers machine gun.

  His eye sought the direction, turning swiftly to the right flank of the

  extended Italian column which seemed now to be rushing back towards him

  in confused and completely disordered retreat.

  He picked up the tall hump-backed shape instantly, standing high on the

  open plain, coming in fast with the strange bounding motion of a

  rocking horse, cutting boldly into the flank of the mass of

  soft-skinned Italian transports.

  "Unlimber the guns," shouted Castelani. "Prepare to receive enemy

  armour." The Vickers machine guns in the turrets of the two armoured

  cars had ball-type mountings. The barrels could be elevated or

  depressed, but they could not traverse more than ten degrees to left or

  right, this being the limit of the ball mountings" turn. The driver

  had of necessity to act as gun-layer, swinging the entire vehicle to

  Within the limited traverse aim of the gun, or at least bring it of the

  mounting.

  The Ras found this frustrating beyond all enduring. He would select a

  target, and shout in perfectly clear and coherent Amharic to his

  driver. Gareth Swales, not understanding a word of it, had already

  selected another target and was doing his best to line up on it while

  the Ras delivered a series of wild kicks at his kidneys to register his

  royal right of refusing to engage it.

  The consequence of this was that the Hump wove a crazy,

  unpredictable course through the Italian column, spinning off at sudden

  tangents as the two crew members shouted bitter recriminations at each

  other, almost ignoring the sheets of rifle fire that thundered upon the

  steel hull from point-blank range, like hail on a galvanized roof.

  Priscilla the Pig, on the other hand, was doing deadly execution.

  She had missed her first burst fired at the speeding Rolls, and it had

  ducked away behind the screen of dust and bucking trucks. Now,

  however, Jake and Gregoritis were working with all the precision and

  mutual understanding that had developed between them.

  "Left driver, left, left," called Gregorius, peering down the open

  sights of the Vickers at the truck that roared and bounced along a

  hundred yards ahead of them.

  "All right, I'm on him," shouted Jake, as the vehicle appeared in the

  narrow field of his visor. This was a perforated steel plate that

  allowed only forward vision but once Jake had the truck centred, he

  followed its violent efforts to dislodge him, closing in rapidly until

  he was twenty yards behind it.

  The back of the truck was packed with black-shirted infantry men. Some

  of them were directing wild but rapid rifle fire at the pursuing car,

  the bullets clanging and whining off the hull, but most of them clung

  white-faced to the sides of the truck and stared back with stricken

  eyes as the armoured death carrier bore down inexorably upon them.

  "Shoot, Greg!" called Jake. Even through the cold anger that gripped

  him, he was pleased that the boy had obeyed his orders and held his

  fire until this moment. There would be no wastage now, at so short a

  range every round ripped into the Italian truck, tearing through

  canvas, flesh, bone and steel at the rate of seven hundred rounds a

  minute.

  The truck swerved violently and its front end collapsed; it went over

  broadside, crashing over and over, flinging the men high in the air,

  the way a spaniel throws off the droplets from its back as it leaps

  from water to land.

  "Driver, right," called Gregorius immediately. "Another truck,

  right, a little more right that's it, you're on." And they roared in

  pursuit of another panic-stricken load of Italians.

  A hundred yards away on their flank the Hump scored its first success.

  Gareth Swales was no longer able to accept the indignity of the Ras's

  flying feet, and his frenzied and completely unintelligible commands.

  He left the controls of the racing car to swing an angry punch at the

  Ras.

  "Cut that out, old chap," he snapped. "Play the game I'm on your side,

  damn it." The car, no longer under control, jinked suddenly.

  Almost side by side with them sped a Fiat truck, filled with

  Italians, and the driver had not yet realized that there was another

  enemy apart from the pursuing hordes of Ethiopian horsemen. His head

  was twisted around over his shoulder at an impossible angle, and he

  drove by instinct alone.

  The two uncontrolled vehicles came together at an acute angle and at

  the top of their combined speeds. Steel met steel in a storm of sparks

  and they staggered away from the blow, both of them veering over

  steeply. For a moment it" seemed that the Hump would go over; she

  teetered at the extreme end of her centre of gravity and then came back

  on to all four wheels with a crash that threw the men inside her

  unmercifully against her steel sides, before racing on again with

  Gareth wrestling at the wheel for control.

  The Fiat truck was lighter and stood higher; the armoured car had

  caught her neatly under the cab and she did not even waver, but flipped

  over on her back, All four wheels still spinning as they "pointed at

  the sky, and the cab and canvas-covered hood were torn away instantly,

  the men beneath them smeared between steel and hard earth.

  It was all too much for the Ras. He could no longer contain his

  frustration at being enclosed in a hot metal box from which he could

  see almost nothing, while all around
hundreds of his hated enemies were

  escaping with complete impunity. He flung open the hatch of the turret

  and stuck out his head and shoulders, yipping shrilly with bloodlust,

  frustration, anger and excitement.

  At that moment, an open sky-blue and glistening black Rolls-Royce

  tourer flashed across the front of the Hump. In the rear seat was an

  Italian officer bedecked with the glittering insignia of rank instantly

  Gareth Swales and the Ras were in perfect accord once again.

  They had found a target eminently acceptable to both of them.

  "I say, tally-ho!" cried Gareth, to be answered by a bloodcurdling

  "How do you do!" like the crowing of an enraged rooster from the

  turret above him.

  Count Aldo Belli was in hysterics, for the driver seemed to have lost

  all sense of direction; now more than just a little concussed, he had

  turned at right angles across the line of flight of the Italian column.

  This was as hazardous as running an ocean liner at full speed through a

  field of icebergs for the rolling dust-clouds had reduced visibility to

  less than fifty feet, and out of this brown fog the lumbering

  troop-carriers appeared without warning, the drivers in no fit

  condition to take evasive action, all looking back over their

  shoulders.

  Ahead of them, two more monstrous shapes appeared out of the dust;

  one was an Italian truck and the other was one of the cumbersome

  camel-backed vehicles with the Ethiopian colours splashed upon its hull

  and a Vickers machine gun protruding from its turret.

  Suddenly the armoured car swerved and crashed heavily into the side of

  the truck, capsizing it instantly and then swerving back towards the

  Rolls. It came so close, towering over them so threateningly, that it

  entered even Giuseppe's limited field of vision.

  The effect was miraculous. Giuseppe shot bolt upright in his seat and,

  with the touch of an inspired Nuvolari, brought the Rolls round on two

  wheels, cutting finely across the armoured bows just at the moment that

  the hatch of the turret flew open and a wizened brown face, filled with

  the largest, whitest and most flashing teeth the Count had ever seen,

  popped out of the turret and emitted a war cry so shrill and

  heart-chilling that the Count's bowels flopped over like a stranded

  fish.

  As the barrel of the Vickers swung on to the Rolls, the Ethiopian