Bluebolt One

by Philip McCutchan

  “No, I promise you that. The rains’ll come any time now. I haven’t lost my weather eye entirely!” He grinned down at her. “You’ll be all right. Just trust me from now on. I know I haven’t been much use to you so far—but it won’t be like that again, Gillian.”

  She was a little more composed now. She said, “Oh, I trust you all right.”

  “Even after London? Tell me, Gillian: was it very bad, with Wiley?”

  “It wasn’t—nice.” She caught her breath. “But I’m still in one piece, thanks to you. That’s all that really matters, isn’t it—I mean, as far as I’m concerned. I know you’ve still got your job to do.” Her eyes searched his face and she added, “I—I’d rather not talk about what. . . what they did to me.”

  “I understand that,” he said quietly. “But there’s things I’ve got to ask you, Gillian. I’m sorry. So much depends on us now. I dare say you know what Wiley’s planning to do— to blow up a slice of Africa?”

  “Yes, he told me. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as Bluebolt.”

  He said, “You weren’t supposed to! Look, did you find out anything all that time that’ll help me now? Anything you overheard, say? I know he’s got a fifth column inside—but did you get to hear anything else?”

  She shook her head. “No. You see, I—was kept locked up—most of the time. Sam Wiley just told me the bare fact of what he was going to do, and that’s all. They didn’t come near me much, except when they wanted... a bit of fun. They talked in their own language, anyhow. Sam Wiley seemed to be the only one who spoke English. I just don’t know anything.” She hesitated, then gave a long, shuddering sigh. “What are we going to do now?”

  “First thing is to get away from here! And we’ll have to do it on foot, too . . . we’ve got to make it to the base before Hartog goes into action. I believe it isn’t far from here—”

  He broke off, looked down anxiously at the girl as she gave a small, dry sob. He said, “Try not to think about things. It’s all my worry now.”

  She was beginning to cry again. On a deep exhalation of breath she said, “God. . . all those eyes! Watching us. Just watching us.”

  The ants, as the long minutes dragged past, seemed to know that something was in the air. The ranks were growing more and more restless. It was as though they were debating whether or not to turn and run before the gathering storm. Lanes opened through the mass, thin little lines of scouts and messengers hurried along to the rear, came back again. In better circumstances it would have been fascinating to watch.

  And then, a little before the first crackle of lightning slashed across the lowering sky, in a zigzag of threatening yellow light, the waiting, watching millions began to press backward, thinning out fast to the rear in orderly but useless retreat. Greed had made them leave it a little too long. Once again the surrounding earth began to move, to undulate, as the reddish-brown colouring flowed away like a flood. Seconds later the roar of thunder crashed out to the west, a rolling din accompanied by more lightning, and then another crash as thunder broke almost overhead. There was a gathering whistle of wind, and then Shaw felt the first heavy drops of the tropic downpour to come. With the thunder the oppressive, breathless heat seemed to ease and the air at once grew several degrees cooler, almost striking chill.

  And then the rains made up for lost time.

  Within seconds the visibility was down to a matter of feet. Shaw, in his all-too-brief years at sea, had been in the cold Atlantic storms, and he had seen the African rains over Freetown, sheeting down and lashing at the waters of the bay to send them into a million holes like a gigantic sponge. Recently he had seen the start of the wet season here in Nogolia itself. But in all his experience he had never seen anything to equal this. It was a vertical, solid curtain of water, slashing water which was bringing up the very earth in liquid mud so that the whole surface of the clearing appeared to lift bodily as the rain bounced. In those first few minutes the whole village was inches deep, as though the heavens had kept back their deluge until this day, while the rushing water sought its outlet through the cleared track to the road. That water was filled with the bodies of the ants, caught as they scurried away, and it washed them over the huddled corpses at the entrance to the track, the corpses which they had begun to lay bare to the bone before they were interrupted. The rain ripped into Shaw and Gillian Ross, held shivering in his arms.

  Shaw said, “All clear now. We’ll get into one of the huts for a while—just till the worst is over. We wouldn’t make much headway in this, but it’ll ease soon and if my information’s right,” he added, remembering what Stephen Geisler had told him about the time element in target-selection, “we may have up to twelve hours left. They’ll have to wait for Bluebolt to be in the right position again.”

  He bent and picked the girl up, held her waist-high as he waded through the rushing floodwater, making for the nearest of the huts. He carried her through the open door, heard the pounding on the roof, wondered how long the mud walls could stand up to this. The floor of the hut was awash with scummy water, and his feet stirred up soft mud already. He waded across to a raised platform probably used by the former inhabitants for sleeping, and laid the girl gently down on it. His quick eye noted the unexpected cleanliness of the hut, the complete absence of anything edible or of any kind of refuse. There was a curious feeling of utter sterility . . . the ants had been through here, of course, had left nothing behind them at all.

  He said, “Look, Gillian, we can’t do better than to get some rest while we can—be all the fitter when the rains let up. Then we’ll see what’s the best thing to do.”

  She looked up at him and tried to smile. But her face was stiff with anxiety, cold, and hopelessness again now, and the smile didn’t come off very well. Shaw turned away and hunted round, found a rug which some one must have brought in from Jinda or Manalati, and he wrapped this round her body. Then, to give her all the warmth he could, he lay down beside her and put his arms tightly round her. He was in the grip of a terrible and consuming impatience. God alone knew what was happening now at the control-station. Even though he might have that twelve hours in hand, he didn’t know how far Zambi really was from the station—Wiley’s “not far” didn’t necessarily mean much and he’d doubtless been thinking in terms of transport anyway. Shaw wondered if he was right to hold on here, wondered if he should get out and press on as fast as possible through that solid water, but he knew inside himself that they could never get far at present, that they would undoubtedly get fatally bogged down, and that they needed to fortify their strength.

  They were utterly exhausted—physically, emotionally, and mentally.

  They slept for close on a couple of hours, a heavy, drugged sleep, like twin logs on that hard, primitive bed. Then Shaw, conscious even through that deep sleep of a change, a lessening, in the thunder of the rain on the roof, woke up. He had to fight through layers of semiconsciousness, through a near-coma of weariness; and then, after a couple of minutes, he forced his body to a sitting position, slid off into the slimy mud left behind by the decreasing water, glanced at the sleeping girl, and then slopped across to the door and looked out.

  They could get on the move now.

  By English standards the rain was very heavy still, but it had lost its bite and its flood-potential. The compound was relatively clear. They must get away now and push on while they could, before the big rains came back, as they would on and off now for the next six months.

  He went back and shook Gillian.

  He said urgently, “Wake up . . . time to be moving.”

  She gave a slight movement of her body and then a small cry, a muffled sound from the depths of a nightmare. Shaw felt a stab of pity, but he tightened his grip on her shoulder.

  “Come along. We’ve got to get cracking now.”

  She opened her eyes, rolled over, looked up at him. She flinched away, and there was no recognition in her face, only fear. He realized then, if he hadn’t before, just what
she must have gone through all the time she was in Wiley’s hands. After a while she seemed to focus, and then she relaxed and drew the scanty coverings over her breasts. She said, “All right. But—where?”

  “Follow the track out of the village till we hit the road, the one we came along yesterday in the truck. If we head east from there we’re bound to make Manalati sooner or later, if not the naval station itself. Once I get to Manalati I can get things moving. We may even have a bit of luck and get a lift, if there’s anyone on the roads.” He looked down at her anxiously. “Feel fit for a long trek if we don’t?”

  “I—I think so.” She sat up, holding the covering to her throat. “I’ll just have to be, won’t I?”

  Searching through the other huts, they found not only Shaw’s Webley still in its holster but also the remainder of the girl’s own clothing, though there was no sign of Shaw’s identity card. Gillian’s clothes were wet through and muddy but that didn’t matter; in any case, she would have been soaked within minutes once she went outside. When she was dressed they started off through the rain and entered the path leading up to the road. It was a morass, a sea of oozy, clinging mud into which their feet sank deep, and they had to go past the remnants of the men who had fallen before the ants. Soggily, slowly, painfully they pushed along the jungle trail, water soaking into them from every dripping branch, every leaf and frond that the ants, interrupted by the rains, had left intact. In here, in this lush green tunnel which had been only just wide enough to let the truck pass and which was crisscrossed with small branches which flipped stingingly at exposed flesh, it was hot, fetid, greenhouse-like, with a humidity which Shaw had never met before. They ran with sweat as they struggled along. Every now and then they were forced to rest aching, mud-heavy legs and arms and backs, and during these rests they picked away from each other the foul, clinging bodies of leeches who had hidden themselves from the ants in the stagnant pools, leeches that were now bloating with their blood.

  It took them almost an hour of hard going before they hit the road and turned to the right, eastward for Manalati and—Shaw hoped—the general direction of the control-station. They would have to head right along the south side of the valley and then across the Naka Hills in order to reach Manalati. It could mean hours of walking, slogging along—if ever they made it at all. And by that time it could so easily be much too late.

  There was only one hope left and Shaw had to face it: transport. Perhaps, as he’d said to Gillian, they might get a lift; but Anne Hartog had said the roads were used as little as possible during the rains and were often impassable anyhow. A little later on he saw why, when the rains came down again with increased violence, biting into their bodies, beating up off the muddy road, cold and chill and utterly desolate. The road was three feet under in places, the water lying in the dips and hollows, and the surface was loose and crumbly and at times thick with that clinging mud into which their stumbling feet penetrated almost to knee height.

  No wheeled transport could ever pass through this.

  Shaw judged that they had been covering little more than a mile an hour.

  On and on and on, lurching, staggering, slogging away with only will-power and sheer determination to keep them moving at all, the knowledge that for the sake of humanity they had to get there and not give up. After a time Shaw had to support the girl every step of the way, and she was crying now with weariness and desperation. Every now and then when they came to a more or less sheltered spot, Shaw called a brief halt and they rested, eating when they came to them such berries and fruit as had been missed by the ants. Glancing constantly at his watch, fuming with impatience at the delay, however short, he knew that a break was essential, and he didn’t let the girl see his anxiety to press on; for her part, she knew the urgency now as well as he did himself, and she stopped only for long enough to ease her exhaustion so that she could make better speed.

  The farther they went, the worse the roadway became. Now it was just a derelict, shifting sea of mud and slime and loose rubble in which all purpose and direction was lost. The track had merged with the surrounding bush. All he could do was to set his sights on a high peak of the Naka Hills whenever he could glimpse it through the trees, and press on that way, and hope.

  Somewhere the other side was Manalati. . . Manalati and a telephone line, and the depot of the Rifles. And—much later—hot food and drink and a bath.

  Shaw decided, after a while when they came clear of the jungle into a kind of plain, that they might just as well strike direct across country. On the plain the road itself could no longer be made out at all, didn’t give them any direction whatever, and there wouldn’t be the slightest hope of picking up any sort of vehicle. So they might just as well take the shortest distance and go on hoping to make it in time. Hoping—though Shaw had realized now that the bringing down of the load on such a vast area as “somewhere in Africa” was not like pinpointing a target. The twelve-hour delay might not be necessary after all.

  It was late afternoon and they were passing through a long tree-belt when Shaw caught sight of the dim, rain-hazed outline of low buildings, and what looked like mine workings. It could be one of the copper-mines . . . but even at this distance there seemed to be a derelict air hanging over the place, as though it had stood there abandoned and deserted for a long, long time.

  It was a mine right enough, but a tin-mine and not copper, as Shaw discovered when they approached. And it had pretty obviously been abandoned. But it wasn’t quite deserted. Shaw and Gillian were quite close when he caught just a glimpse of the black form coming out from behind the corner of a building and he got an equally brief sight of metal as the man crouched and lifted something in his arms.

  Shaw snapped, “Down, Gillian—quick!”

  He reached out and pulled the girl down beside him roughly, down into the cover of a big tree, and he cocked his gun. As the girl dropped to the ground, they heard the wicked phut-phut-phut of an old Sten gun crashing through the rain. Slivers of wood flew above their heads as the bullets snicked the tree.

  Earlier, during the morning, Sam Wiley had also reached the mine on foot, carrying the portable two-way radio which he had mentioned to Shaw.

  He had only just escaped with his life when the truck, which he had been driving recklessly, had skidded off the road, hung for a moment—long enough for the big Negro to grab the radio and scramble clear—and had then slithered off into a deep, water-filled declivity beside the track. That had been when he was not far from the mine, and he’d walked on, cursing to himself at the further slight delay.

  When he had got to the line of old buildings he had spoken briefly to the man on guard with the Sten, and then he’d run across to the disused working-face and disappeared into a tunnel which led under the sheer drop where the earth had been cut away in the open-cast workings. He flicked on some electric lights. Some way up the tunnel he turned off the lights again and climbed into the same trolley which Julian Hartog had used in the opposite direction some days earlier. He switched on the motor and was carried rumblingly away into the darkness stretching ahead. In due course he reached the widened section of the tunnel, where he left the trolley and went ahead on foot, coming out into the small, overgrown secondary mine encampment not far from the Bluebolt station, the mast of which he could in fact see distantly.

  As he had emerged into view he’d heard the shout:

  “Edo . . . Edo comes at last!”

  Men had moved out from the bush, prostrating themselves before their leader. There was a big gathering of Africans under a headman, men from a near-by village, armed with rifles as well as native weapons; and there was a detachment of twenty-four steel-helmeted, well-armed African riot police under an inspector.

  As Wiley stood there, tight-lipped, just staring back at them with his massive arms folded across his chest, the headman got up from his subservient position and walked across to him. He said, “Master, we have waited since one hour before the dawn, as we were told—-”


  Wiley interrupted bad-temperedly. “Of course. I too was waiting—for the signal from the control-station. What went wrong?”

  The headman bowed low, humbly. “Lord Edo, Bwana Hartog sent a message to my village to explain and to ask me to send a runner to you in the village of Zambi. This I was unable to do because of the march of the ants.”

  “Yes, my friend. . . but what was this message—and why did not Bwana Hartog speak to me himself on the radio?”

  “Lord Edo, he said that he was not yet ready, that there had been much work going on and that his own headman, the Bwana Geisler, was with him all the time, and that there were many other people about as well. For that reason also, he was unable to use the radio at the proper time, and when he could use it, you did not answer him. He feared that you had been overcome by the ants. However, he has sent again to my village to say that he will be ready to bring down the big weapon safely into the sea... ninety minutes after dusk to-night, if you should escape from Zambi. He awaits your order. A man from his African workers is waiting now at my village to convey your commands.”

  Wiley nodded. “Hartog had better be ready. This delay is dangerous, though the biggest of the men working against us will assuredly be dead by now—eaten by the ants, for he was tied up and helpless. Now, you will send a message back to Bwana Hartog that the plan will be put into effect to-night at the time he says... ninety minutes after sunset, as soon as the big bird that flies so high is in the right position. The only other change in the plan will be that now I shall myself be at the station when the big bird releases its offspring, and I shall want the men from the villages to be there also.” He chuckled to himself, then added, “You will also tell Bwana Hartog to speak to me on the radio as soon as it is safe for him to do so. He knows that I cannot call him.”

  He turned then to the inspector of police, who had now joined the group. “Inspector, you know your orders?”