by John Harris
Tracing the digging to a point near the radio room, he sat back and looked at Pentecost. ‘You can hear the goddam picks,’ he said. ‘You can even hear when they hit stone. They’re after the tower again.’
Fox looked at Pentecost. ‘What’s the answer, sir?’ he asked. ‘A counter-mine?’
‘How far away do you think they are?’ Pentecost demanded.
‘Ten feet,’ Beebe said. ‘That’s all.’
Pentecost looked worried. ‘They could finish it tonight,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ve much time. We’ll have to go out and blow it up. Pity we haven’t Lack. He was our expert on explosives.’
Beebe sat back on his heels. ‘I’m not so goddam amateur at it myself,’ he said. ‘I could make quite a mess with a coupla pounds of plastic.’
Pentecost’s eyes shone. ‘What will you need? We have pentolite in the cellar.’
‘That’s fine,’ Beebe nodded. ‘And I’ll want a battery off one of the cars to set it off. Sandbags to damp it down and picks and crowbars to dig it in.’
Pentecost turned to Fox. ‘How many men, Sergeant’?
Fox looked worried. ‘No good arsing about with a few, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to be able to hold off any rushes they lay on to try to stop us.’
‘Forty?’
‘We’ve got plenty of men, air. How about sixty?’
‘Very well. Sixty. Thirty Dharwas and thirty Toweidas. If we mix the Toweidas in with the Dharwas, they’ll not dare desert. That ought to be enough. We’ll go through the side gate. It’s nearest. One group to give covering fire and act as reserve. Another to go for the stables. How about after dark, Mr Beebe?’
‘I reckon that’d be tricky. We’ve got to be able to see what we’re doing and we’ve got to make no mistake. We’d lose guys in the confusion and probably end up without the battery.’
‘And the Toweidas could sneak off easier,’ Fox agreed. He turned to Pentecost. ‘It’s got to be daylight, sir.’
4
Pentecost watched the preparations grave-faced. Outside in the courtyard Fauzan was going over their instructions with the storming party again and again.
‘I think I’ll lead this one, Sergeant,’ Pentecost said quietly.
Fox looked up quickly. ‘No, sir,’ he said immediately. ‘If anything happened to you, the whole bloody affair would fall apart.’
‘That’s right, I guess,’ Beebe agreed.
‘I ought to go.’
‘No, sir,’ Fox said firmly. ‘If you got hit the Toweidas would be over the wall like a shot. They know who’s holding this place together.’
Pentecost considered the suggestion then he nodded. ‘Whom do you suggest then, Sergeant?’
‘Mr Beebe to attend to the blasting, sir. Me and Sergeant Stone to handle the punch-up. I’ll lead the reserve. Stone to go in and clobber ’em. He’s young and he’s fast.’
‘We shall have to expect casualties, Sergeant. In daylight anyway.’
Fox stared gravely at him. ‘We’ve always had to expect casualties, sir,’ he said. ‘That’s what we’re paid for.’
The drumming from the stables continued but it seemed that there were no large numbers of Hejris there, and the few there were conducted themselves with a great deal of arrogance, shouting and gesturing and waving their flags at the fort.
‘How many do you think there are?’ Beebe asked nervously.
‘Not many,’ Fox said. ‘Thirty perhaps. There are a lot more further out, though.’
Another shout went up and Stone grinned. ‘The bastards’ll be yelling for another reason before long,’ he said.
Carelessness, fatalism, arrogance, pride of race – all made the Hejris vastly underrate the men inside the fortress, and it was decided to make the attempt during the afternoon, when they might be growing slack in the heat.
As the men gathered under the wall near the side gate, armed with rifles, revolvers, bayonets and grenades, they all went over the instructions again.
‘It’s got to be done fast,’ Stone was saying. ‘We’ve got to get there quick and under cover.’
‘Try not to get too far ahead, Mr Beebe,’ Pentecost advised. ‘An isolated man in front of the others would be a shot for a sniper.’
Beebe licked his lips uneasily. ‘OK, I’ll watch it.’
‘And if you can manage it, bring us back a prisoner. We might find out what’s going on outside then.’
Fox and Stone nodded. Fox looked thin and lean, as though he were a jockey ready for a point-to-point. Stone’s square face was set and he seemed ready for anything.
Pentecost turned to Chestnut and the limping Minto and the zaids. ‘Very well, gentlemen, let’s have the whole garrison on the walls. And silently. We don’t want anyone outside to suspect what we’re up to.’
Beebe’s group gathered under the screen they’d erected near the small side gate, hidden from sight, all of them silent, the Dharwas grinning all over their faces at the prospect of excitement.
With the sun still nailed to the sky, Beebe felt a little sick as he reflected how much depended on him. He still wasn’t sure what had made him volunteer, but the unbending rigid attitude of resistance that Pentecost showed had stirred in him an unwilling admiration that was growing daily, and he had committed himself almost without thinking.
From the ramparts, Minto, sitting in a chair at an embrasure near one of the Martinis, a rifle in his hand, raised his fingers to indicate they were ready. Pentecost looked at Beebe who nodded, and the civilian drivers they had recruited swung the gate back. There was a group of rocks shining metallically just beyond the arch and Beebe and Stone slipped out silently and waited there for everyone to emerge. Then Stone called softly, and the blasting party began running for the stables.
For a moment there was no reaction, either from the lulls or from the stables, then suddenly the Hejris came to life. A green flag went up and a blast of rifle fire burst from the ruins. Two of the Toweidas went down at once, rolling over like shot rabbits, but one of them leapt to his feet again and went after the others, limping heavily, his face twisted with pain.
There had been no attempts to fortify the ruins, and in no time they were against the wall and Stone was lobbing grenades inside the windows.
‘OK.’ He nodded to Beebe as the crashes stopped. ‘Inside!’
5
From the ramparts, Pentecost watched as Stone’s men began to throw out bundles of twigs and stones to form a barrier between themselves and the hills.
Behind them there were already three sprawled silent figures on the ground, and three more limping back towards Fox’s group among the rocks, their heads down to avoid the storm of bullets that had started from the hills and the surrounding folds of land. The silence of the afternoon had been split by the violent outbreak of firing from the walls; and from all sides, from ditches and gullies and the rock piles, men were seen running to reinforce the reims firing on the stables. Occasionally one of them stood and waved, clearly thinking that it was an attempt to cut a way out of the fortress, and a hail of fire was being directed at the gates, as though they expected them to open at any moment and a convoy of lorries to emerge.
The uproar was deafening, with everyone shouting and no one listening. Zaid Fauzan was flourishing a revolver at a loophole with wild gestures, laughing like a maniac, and Owdi was alternately blasting away on his bugle and firing his rifle. Next to him one of the Toweidas, overcome with the excitement, was shooting wildly at the ruins of the stables and Pentecost took him by the shoulders and directed his aim towards the rocks while he kept firing automatically. The wounded Dharwas from the hospital came crawling out with rifles and crept to the parapets, shouting with joy at the prospect of a fight after all the silence, but the Hejris were keeping up a remarkably well-sustained fire and soon there was a steady stream of wounded men heading back again.
In the stables, Stone and his group were crouched low behind the walls shooting towards the rocks, Stone cuffing the Toweidas as
they fired wildly, their heads down. Still sickened by the sight of what Stone’s grenades had done to the defenders, Beebe was searching for the shaft of the mine. He found it just outside the wall on the Hejris side of the stable.
‘You’ve got to cover me,’ he said to Stone. He signalled to his Toweida helpers but as they grasped their picks and crowbars and the explosives, the Deleimi guards began to appear from the hole. They were shot as they emerged by the Dharwas who by this time were dancing and laughing with excitement.
‘OK,’ Beebe yelled as they dragged the last of them out of the way. ‘Let’s go!’
Holding the haversack containing the pentolite, he jumped into the shaft, followed by the men with the battery and the wires. Immediately, out of the darkness a Khadari miner appeared and Beebe shot him with the revolver hanging from the lanyard round his neck. More came out, some with their hands up, and Beebe passed them up the shaft, but they were all killed and dragged away except one, his teeth ripped out by a bullet through the cheek, whom Beebe, remembering Pentecost’s request for prisoners, managed to save. The Dharwas were now almost out of control in their excitement and he had to swing his fists to stop the butchery.
With the last of the Khadari miners hiding in a chamber at the end of the tunnel, Beebe got to work by the light of a torch held by one of the Toweidas. Sandbags, rocks, everything they could find was used to tamp the pentolite in place in the holes Beebe had dug out with a crowbar.
‘Detonators,’ he said, realising he was shouting in the sustained excitement.
The man with the detonators failed to appear, and Beebe found himself shrieking with rage. It was some time before they realised that the man had been killed, and it was Stone who clambered out of the shelter of the stable and dragged the body inside. He was hit in the upper arm as he did so but not disabled and he ignored the wound, searching the dead man’s haversack for the detonators.
‘For Christ’s sake hurry!’ Beebe shouted, in a panic of fear that they would be overwhelmed before they’d finished.
The detonators were passed to him at last and, forcing himself to be calm, he unwrapped them carefully. It was a job that demanded a steady hand, and the thought that they might at any moment be swept away by a rush from the rocks made it difficult to keep his head. He found he was sweating profusely in the stuffy atmosphere of the tunnel and had to keep shaking his head to blink away the moisture that filled his eyes.
He attached the wires at last and pressed the detonators firmly into the plastic pentolite, then driving the other men before him, began to pay out the coils, cursing and sweating every time they became tangled. At the top of the shaft, he attached one of the wires to the battery, his fingers fumbling and clumsy in his haste.
‘The bastards are coming!’
Stone’s words struck his ears but he forced himself to ignore them. The firing redoubled and a Dharwa fell against him, knocking him over, and he had to drag himself clear and paw about in the rubble under the body for the end of the loose wire.
The Hejris had left the sangar now and were running towards the stables with the green flags, aware at last of what was happening and determined to stop the demolition of their work. Firing increased from the ramparts and Fox’s post among the rocks, and Beebe heard the crack of the Martini.
‘For Christ’s sake hurry!’ Stone shouted. ‘We can’t hold ’em much longer!’
‘Nearly ready,’ Beebe shouted back, and he was aware of Stone clambering up the pile of rubble, a Sten gun in his hand. The chattering in his ear almost deafened him, and he became aware of men falling sideways. A bullet hit the ground near his head and whined away, then he looked up as he finally managed to find the end of the wire.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Stand clear.’
Then he realised that Stone had fallen backwards and was sitting among the rubble, still holding the Sten, his legs outspread, a thin trickle of blood coming from his mouth, a bewildered expression on his face, enamelled eyes blankly on the sky. For a second, Beebe stared at him, startled, then he remembered why he was there and clapped the second wire to the battery.
Near the wall of the fort he saw the earth balloon upwards in a cloud of blue smoke, then the blast, travelling along the tunnel and up the shaft, knocked him over on to Stone. Stone didn’t move and it dawned on Beebe that he was dead.
For a second, shocked, he crouched near the body, trying to avoid the falling dirt and stones and small bouncing rocks, then he turned and jerked a hand towards the fort.
6
As the light faded from the sky, the Dharwas were still noisily excited and Minto cheered the shocked Toweidas by giving them all a tot of arrak and doling out cigarettes. As they had all been smoking a mixture of cloves, chopped straw and bark for some time, cigarettes from the store which they kept for the sick were a tremendous reward.
Beebe’s prisoner had died and they lost four men killed and seven wounded but they soberly felt that, despite the loss of Stone, they had done a great deal of damage and still retained the initiative. The scattered corpses of the dead outside troubled them, but they were just beginning to recover from the shock of the fight when the alarm bell rang, and Owdi’s bugle started in a tuneless fanfaronade.
Fox put his head round the corner of Pentecost’s office.
‘Main gate, sir,’ he said. ‘The bastards have got torches and what looks like tar barrels!’
‘Cover the gate, Jim,’ Pentecost said, reaching for his belt. ‘And let’s have the searchlight and some of Chestnut’s fireballs ready.’
The firing burst out as he spoke, a sudden clatter from outside and the sharper, more disciplined, answer from inside.
In a fury at the loss of the mine, Thawab had flung his men against the gate with everything he possessed. But the attack was ill-organised, and though the tar barrels were fired, under the sustained fire of the fortress and a sortie led by Pentecost they had not been pushed hard enough against the woodwork and the hurriedly mounted attack was driven off. For ten minutes there was a frantic free-for-all and in the darkness one of the Deleimis actually managed to scramble into the fortress. Just as the infuriated Fauzan knocked him flying and was on the point of blowing his brains out with the revolver, Fox pushed up the weapon.
‘Take him down to the cells,’ he said. ‘Billy’ll want to talk to him.’
As the dazed and sullen man was dragged away by a couple of none-too-gentle Dharwas, sporadic firing was still going on at the Deleimis crouching among the rocks. Still shuddering from the violence of the attacks, Beebe could hear a man wailing near the gate and he wondered if it were the prelude to another attempt at a mine.
‘What’s he saying?’ he asked Fauzan who was waiting alongside him.
‘He says, Abassi, that his brother has been killed in the fight and that as life means nothing more to him, he wishes to die also.’
He moved Chestnut’s searchlight nearer and, cocking his head to listen, directed it carefully and hefted his rifle in his hand.
Beebe shivered. He was still overwhelmed by Stone’s death that afternoon, still wanted to weep at the shock and horror of the killing inside the stables. The raging excitement of the Dharwas as they had returned, their boasting of their prowess as warriors, the ecstatic joy of fanaticism they had felt at the fight as they had exhibited their stained bayonets and blood-splashed clothes, had not touched him. He felt drained and lonely in his misery.
Fauzan glanced at him, guessing what was troubling him, and gestured at the searchlight.
‘Abassi,’ he whispered. ‘Press the switch.’
As Beebe’s hand moved and the light flared they caught a glimpse of a red Deleimi cloak and black headcloth among the rocks, then Fauzan’s rifle cracked near Beebe’s ear and the red cloak disappeared with a jerk.
‘You can switch off the light, Abassi,’ Fauzan said with a grim smile. ‘We have helped him join his brother.’
When everything was quiet, Pentecost sent Chestnut to fetch the prisoner and Ali,
the Toweida interpreter, from where he was cowering among the civilian workers, his head under a blanket. It was hard to say who was more worried. Certainly the Deleimi, a lean tigerish man with a curled beard and a vast bruise on his cheek where Fauzan had hit him with his revolver, showed no fear.
‘Ask him how many of the Hejris and Deleimis there are outside,’ Pentecost said.
The answer came back quickly. ‘More than Bin T’Khass can stop.’
‘And where did the miners come from? The men who dug the mine?’
The Deleimi spat. ‘They came from the Khadari,’ he said.
‘Does Wintle know?’
Yes, the Deleimi said, Owinda-el knew all right. A Khaswe official had been visiting the Khadaris in an attempt to negotiate their loyalty for another year and they had sent him back with a message that the Ridwha and the Fajir passes were closed to Sultan Tafas.
‘Who else is with Aziz?’
A list of tribal names and leaders followed, quoted by the Deleimi with a fierce pride, as though he were determined to frighten them. Among them they noticed that of the Muleimat.
Minto looked at Pentecost. ‘That m-means every bloody pass through the Dharwa range is l-locked up, Billy,’ he said.
Pentecost frowned for a moment. ‘Does Owinda-el know this too?’ he asked the prisoner.
The Deleimi sneered. ‘The Muleimat are cleverer than the treacherous Khadari,’ he said. ‘They have not told him. They have taken the Sultan’s subsidy.’
Pentecost was silent for a moment. He had noticed the Deleimi’s contempt for the Khadari. ‘Many Khadari miners were killed when we blew up the mine,’ he pointed out. ‘This would not please the Khadari.’
The Deleimi sneered. ‘The Khadari are cowards and turncoats. They have taken their dead and gone back to open their pass. They are going to take Tafas’ money again.’
They were silent while the prisoner was led away, then Pentecost turned to Chestnut. ‘Take his weapons and ammunition from him, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Then give him a meal and turn him loose.’