Cry Wolf

by Wilbur Smith

  Long inactivity bored them, and daily small groups of horsemen,

  followed by their wives and pack donkeys, drifted away from the big

  encampment at the foot of the gorge, and began the steep rocky ascent

  to the cooler equable weather of the highlands, and the comforts and

  business of home. Each of them assured the Ras before departure of a

  speedy return as soon as they were needed but nevertheless it irked

  the

  Ras to see his army dwindling and dribbling away while his enemy sat

  invulnerable and unchallenged upon the sacred soil of Ethiopia.

  Tensions in the encampment were running with the strength and passion

  of the groundswell of the ocean, when storms are building out beyond

  the horizon.

  Caught up in the suppressed violence, in the boiling pot of emotion,

  were both Gareth and Jake. Each of them had used the lull to set his

  own department in order.

  Jake had gone out under cover of night behind a screen of

  Ethiopian scouts to the deserted battlefield, where he had stripped the

  carcass of the Hump. Working by the light of a hooded bull's-eye

  lantern, and assisted by Gregorius, he had taken the big Bentley engine

  to pieces, small enough for the donkey packs and lugged it all home to

  the encampment below the camel-thorn trees. Using the replacements,

  he had rebuilt the engine of Tenastefin ruined by the Ras in his first

  flush of enthusiasm. Then he had stripped, overhauled and reassembled

  the other two cars. The Ethiopian armoured forces were now a squadron

  of three, all of them in as fine fettle as they had been for the past

  twenty years.

  Gareth, in the meantime, had selected and trained Harari crews for the

  Vickers guns, and then exercised them with the infantry and cavalry,

  teaching the gunners to lay down sheets of covering fire.

  Foot soldiers were taught to advance or retreat in concert with the

  Vickers.

  Gareth had also found time to complete the survey of the retreat route

  up the gorge, mark each of his defensive positions, and supervise the

  digging of the machine-gun nests and support trenches in the steep

  rocky sides of the gorge. An enemy advancing up the twisting hairpin

  track would come under fire around each bend of the road, and would be

  open to the steam-roller charge of the foot warriors from the concealed

  trenches amongst the lichen-covered rocks above the track.

  The track itself had been smoothed, and the gradients altered to allow

  the escape of the armoured cars once the position on the plains was

  forced by the overwhelming build-up of Italian forces. Now all of them

  waited, as ready as they could be, and the slow passage of time eroded

  all their nerves.

  It was, then, with a certain relief that the scouts who were keeping

  the Italian fortifications under day and night surveillance reported

  back to the Ras's war council that a host of strange vehicles that

  moved at great speed without the benefit of either legs or wheels had

  arrived to swell the already formidable forces arrayed against them,

  and that these vehicles were daily engaged in furious activity, from

  sun-up to sun-down, racing in circles and aimless sweeps across the

  vast empty spaces of the plains.

  "Without wheels," mused Gareth, and cocked an eyebrow at Jake.

  "You know what that sounds like, don't you, old son?"

  "I'm afraid I

  do." Jake nodded. "But we'd better go and take a look." Half a moon

  in the sky gave enough light to show up clearly the deeply torn runners

  of the steel tracks, like the spoor of gigantic centipedes in the soft

  fluffy soil.

  Jake squatted on his haunches, and regarded them broodingly. He knew

  now that what he had dreaded was about to happen. He was going to have

  to take his beloved cars and match them against tracked vehicles with

  heavier armour, and revolving turrets, armed with big-bored,

  quick-firing guns. Guns that could crash a missile into his frontal

  armour, through the engine block, through the hull compartment and any

  crew members in its path, then out through the rear armour with

  sufficient velocity still on it to do the same again to the car

  behind.

  "Tanks," he muttered. "Bloody tanks."

  "I say, an eagle scout in our midst," murmured Gareth, sitting

  comfortably up in the turret of

  Priscilla the Pig. "A tenderfoot might have thought those tracks were

  made by a dinosaur but you can't fool old hawk-eye Barton, son of the

  Texas prairies," and he reached out to stub his cheroot against the"

  side of the turret, an action which he knew would annoy Jake

  intensely.

  Jake grunted and stood up. "I'm going to buy you an ashtray for your

  next birthday." His voice was brittle. It did not matter that his

  beloved cars might be shot at by rifle, machine gun and now by cannon

  that they had been scarred by flying gravel and harsh thorn. The

  deliberate crushing of burning tobacco against the fighting steel

  annoyed him, as he knew it was meant to.

  "Sorry, old son." Gareth grinned easily. "Slipped my mind.

  Won't happen again." Jake swung up the side of the car and dropped

  into the driver's seat. Keeping the engine noise down to a low murmur,

  a sound as sweet and melodious in his ears as a Bach concerto,

  he let Priscilla move away across the moon gilded plain.

  When Jake and Gareth were alone like this, out on a reconnaissance or

  working together in the gorge, the dagger of rivalry was sheathed and

  their relationship was relaxed and comforting, spiced only by the mild

  needling and jostling for position. It was only in Vicky

  Camberwell's physical presence that the knife came out.

  Jake thought about it now, thought about the three of them as he did a

  great deal each day. He knew that, after that magical night when he

  and Vicky had known each other on the hard desert earth, she was his

  woman. It was too wonderful an experience to have shared with another

  human being for it not to have marked and changed both of them

  profoundly.

  Yet in the weeks since then there had been little opportunity for

  reaffirmation a single stolen afternoon by a tall mist-smoking

  waterfall in the gorge, a narrow ledge of black rock, cool with shadow

  and green with soft beds of moss, and screened from prying eyes by the

  overhang of the precipice. The moss had been as soft as a feather bed,

  and afterwards they swam naked together in the swirling cauldron of the

  pool, and her body had been slim and pale and lovely through the dark

  water.

  Then again, he had watched her with Gareth Swales the way she laughed,

  or leaned close to him to listen to a whispered comment, and the

  mock-modest shock at his outrageous sallies, the laughter in her eyes

  and on her lips.

  Once she touched his arm, a thoughtless gesture while in conversation

  with Gareth, a gesture so intimate and possessive that

  Jake had felt the black jealous anger fill his head.

  There was no cause for it, Jake knew that. He could not believe she

  was fool enough or so naive as to walk into the obvious web
that

  Gareth was weaving she was Jake's woman. What they had done together,

  their loving was so wonderful, so completely once in a lifetime, that

  it was not possible she could turn aside to anyone else.

  Yet between Vicky and Gareth there was the laughter and the shared

  jokes. Sometimes he had seen them together, standing on a rock

  -promontory above the camp or walking in the grove of camel-thorn

  trees, leaning towards each other as they talked. Once or twice they

  had both been absent from the camp at the same time for as long as a

  complete morning. But it meant nothing, he knew that.

  Sure, she liked Gareth Swales. He could understand that.

  He liked Gareth also more than liked, he realized. It was,

  rather, a deep comradely feeling of affection. You could not but be

  drawn by his fine looks, his mocking sense of the ridiculous, and the

  deep certainty that below that polished exterior and the overplayed

  role of the foppish rogue was a different, a real person.

  "Yeah. "Jake sardonically grinned in the darkness, steering the car

  south and east around the sky glow that marked the Italian

  fortifications at the Wells. "I love the guy. I don't trust him,

  but

  I love him just as long as he keeps the hell away from my woman."

  Gareth stooped out of the turret at that moment and tapped his

  shoulder.

  "There is a ravine ahead and to the left. It should do," he said,

  and Jake swung towards it and halted again.

  "It's deep enough, "he gave his opinion.

  "And we should be able to see across to the ridge and cover all the

  ground to the east once the sun comes up." Gareth pointed to the glow

  of the Italian searchlights and then swept his arm widely across the

  open desert beyond.

  "That looks like where they hold their fun and games every day.

  We should get a grandstand view from here. We'd better get under cover

  now." They intended to spend the whole of that day observing the

  activity of the Italian squadron, pulling out again under cover of

  darkness, so Jake reversed Priscilla gingerly down the steep slope of

  the ravine, backing and filling carefully, until she was in a hull-down

  position below the bank with just the top of her turret exposed but

  facing back towards the west with her front wheels at a point in the

  bank which she could climb handily, if a quick start and a fast escape

  were necessary.

  He switched off the engine, and the two of them armed themselves with

  machetes and wandered about in the open, hacking down the small wiry

  desert brush and then piling it over the exposed turret, until from a

  hundred yards it blended into the desert landscape.

  Jake spilled gasoline from one of the spare cans into a bucket of sand,

  then placed the bucket in the bottom of the ravine and put a match to

  it. They crouched over the primitive stove, warming themselves against

  the desert chill, while the coffee brewed. They were silent, thawing

  out slowly, each thinking his own thoughts.

  "I think we've got a problem" said Jake at last, as he stared into the

  fire.

  "With me that condition goes back as far as I can remember,"

  Gareth agreed politely. "But apart from the fact that I am stuck in

  the middle of a horrible desert, with savages and bleeding hearts for

  company, with an army of Eyeties trying to kill me, broke except for a

  post-dated cheque of dubious value, not a bottle of the old Charlie

  within a hundred miles, and no immediate prospect of escape apart from

  that, I'm in very good shape."

  "I was thinking of Vicky."

  "Ah!

  Vicky!"

  "You know that I am in love with her."

  "You surprise me."

  Gareth grinned devilishly in the flickering firelight. "Is that why

  you have been mooning around with that soppy look on your face,

  bellowing like a bull moose in the mating season? Good Lord, I would

  never have guessed, old boy."

  "I'm being serious, Gary."

  "That, old son, is one of your problems. You take everything too

  seriously. I am prepared to offer odds of three to one that your mind

  is already set on the ivy-covered cottage, bulging with ghastly

  brats."

  "That's the picture," Jake cut in sharply. "It's that serious, I'm

  afraid. How do we stand?" Gareth drew two cigars from his breast

  pocket, placed one between Jake's lips, lit a dry twig from the fire

  and held it for him.

  The mocking grin dropped from his lips and his voice was suddenly

  thoughtful, but the expression in his eyes was hard to read in the

  uncertain firelight.

  "Down in Cornwall, there's a place I know. A hundred and fifty acres.

  Comfortable old farm house, of course. I'd have to do it up a bit, but

  the cattle sheds are in good nick.

  Always did fancy myself as the country squire, bit of hunting and

  shooting in between tilling the earth and squirting the milk out of the

  cows. Might even run to three or four brats, at that. With fourteen

  thousand quid, and a whacking great mortgage bond, I could just about

  swing it." They were both silent then, as Jake poured the coffee and

  doused the fire, and squatted again facing Gareth.

  "It's that serious," Gareth said at last.

  "So there isn't going to be a truce? No gentlemen's agreement? "Jake

  murmured into his mug.

  "Tooth and claw, I'm afraid," said Gareth. "May the best man win,

  and we'll name the first brat after you. That's a promise." They were

  silent again, each of them lost in his own thoughts, sipping at the

  mugs and sucking on their cheroots.

  "One of us could get some sleep, "said Jake at last.

  "Spin you for it." Gareth flipped a silver Maria Theresa dollar,

  and caught it neatly on his wrist.

  "Heads,"said Jake.

  "Tough luck, old son." Gareth pocketed the coin and flicked out the

  coffee grounds from his mug. Then he went to spread his blanket on the

  sandy ravine bottom, under Priscilla the Pig's chassis.

  Jake shook him gently in the dawn, and cautioned him with a touch on

  the lips. Gareth came swiftly awake, blinking his eyes and smoothing

  back his hair with both hands, then rolling to his feet and following

  Jake quickly up the side of Priscilla's hull.

  The dawn was a silent explosion of red and gold and brilliant apricot

  that fanned out across half the eastern sky, touched the high ground

  with fire but left the long grey blue shadows smeared across the low

  places. The crescent of the sinking moon low on the western horizon

  was white as a shark's tooth.

  "Listen," said Jake, and Gareth turned his head slightly to catch the

  tremble of sound in the silence of the dawn.

  "Hear it?" Gareth nodded, and lifted his binoculars. Slowly he swept

  the distant sun-touched ridges.

  "There," said Jake sharply, and Gareth swung the glasses in the

  direction of Jake's arm.

  Some miles off, a string of dark indefinite blobs were moving through

  one of the depressions in the gently undulating terrain. They looked

  like beads on a rosary; even in the magnifying lens of the gla
sses they

  were too far off and too dimly lit to afford details.

  They watched them, following the almost sinuous line as it snaked

  across their front until the leading blob drew the line up the gentle

  slope of ground. As it reached the crest, it was struck with startling

  suddenness by the low golden sun. In the still cool air there was no

  distortion, and the dramatic side-lighting made every detail of its low

  profile clear and crisp.

  "CV.3 cavalry tanks," said Gareth, without hesitation.

  "Fifty-horse-power Alfa engines. Ten centimetres of frontal armour and

  a top speed of eighteen miles an hour." It was as though he were

  reading the specifications from a catalogue, and Jake remembered that

  these were part of his stock-in-trade. "There's a crew of three,

  driver, loader gunner and commander and it looks as though they are

  mounting the fifty-men. Spandau. They are accurate at a thousand

  yards and the rate of fire is fifteen rounds a minute." As he was

  speaking the leading tank dropped from sight over the reverse slope of

  the ridge, followed in quick succession by the five others and their

  engine noise droned away into silence.

  Gareth lowered his glasses and grinned ruefully. "Well, we are a

  little out of our class. Those Spandaus are in fully revolving

  turrets. We are out-gunned all to hell."

  "We are faster than they are," said Jake hotly, like a mother whose

  children had been scorned.

  "And that, old son, is all we are, "grunted Gareth.

  "How about a bite of breakfast? It's going to be a long hard day to

  sit out before it's dark enough to head for home." They ate tinned

  Irish stew, heated over the bucket, and smeared on thick spongy hunks

  of unleavened bread, washed down by tea, strong and sweet with

  condensed milk and lumpy brown sugar. The sun was well up before they

  finished.

  Jake belched softly. "My turn to sleep," he said, and he curled up

  like a big brown dog in the shade under the hull.

  Gareth tried to make himself comfortable against the turret and keep

  watch out across the open plain, where the mirage was already starting

  to quiver and fume in the rising heat. He congratulated himself

  comfortably on his choice of shift; he'd had a good few hours" sleep in

  the night, and now he had the comparative cool of the morning. By the

  time it was Jake's turn on watch again, the sun would be frizzling, and