Gavin Lyall - All Honourable Men

With the monastery out of sight above, and the end of the machine-gun trench hidden behind a bend in the ravine, they splashed up it through a small stream to a smaller, steeper ravine in the opposite wall, spilling out a yet smaller stream. The Arabs went light-footed up it, making no pretence of slowing to his panting, puffing pace. And once they reached the top they would have to run perhaps a mile in a wide half-circle beyond sight of the machine-gun, to reach the dry riverbed and the gun.

Already he was breathing through his mouth; God knows what he’d be trying to breathe through in twenty minutes.

* * *

To O’Gilroy the firing seemed spaced-out and leisurely. But with nearly six hours of daylight left, Zurga could take his time and get it right. When O’Gilroy got back to Corinna and Bertie he had a firm plan in mind.

“Yeself, ye stay here with the horses,” he told Corinna. “Don’t argue: we’ve only the two rifles so ye’d jest be a target up forward.” He turned to Bertie. “Would I be right in thinking ye’d rather shoot the fellers working that gun’n me?”

Bertie nodded docilely. “I feel much remorse that-”

“Forget that, feel like killing someone.” O’Gilroy took a handful of cartridges from his pocket; Bertie had been carrying his own rifle again, but empty. “Have ye ever shot a man before?”

“In thirty years of the East and deserts-” Bertie was quite incapable of answering Yes or No, and O’Gilroy cut him off.

“The feller ye spare, he’s the one’ll kill ye.”

* * *

Trotting across a rock-strewn slope just below a line of trees, Ranklin had heard through the surf-like roaring from his lungs the occasional thuds of gunfire and chirruping of the bugle.

Now it seemed to have stopped and, thinking back, he realised the last bugle call had been different. A few short notes and one long one. It sounded like the “still”.

Oh God: the guns had ranged. That had been the signal to stop, to stack ammunition to hand, and be ready for the final uncorrected bombardment of the attack – and they were still hundreds of yards short. He was too late for anything but revenge.

* * *

O’Gilroy chose two positions a few yards apart, each shielded by a tree or bushes rather than rock. Rock was a snare and delusion. It was solid enough, but you couldn’t peek through it as you could a bush, and it produced ricochets, giving bullets a second bite at you.

Bertie had wanted to get closer, but O’Gilroy refused. He’d accept the longer range – it was only just over three hundred yards anyway, he judged – and an easier retreat in cover back over the crest. That was the old soldier showing through.

And whatever they did would cause trouble enough, ambushing the gun from above and behind. It was sited on the near side of the dry riverbed, where the pass opened to form ground as near flat as could probably be found. It was important, O’Gilroy remembered, to have both wheels level if possible. You could fire with one wheel high, but had to add in a correction, firing slightly off to the one side. High side or low? He couldn’t remember.

The gun itself was surprisingly small, dwarfed by the four men tending it: two seated either side of the breech, two fetching rounds from boxes set back to the side. They all wore light khaki; Turkish uniform, presumably. A fifth man – the gun captain – wore grey and stood off to the left: O’Gilroy thought he recognised Albrecht, the portly Bavarian. Hard luck, him being on the other side. That was the only way to think of it.

And he was Bertie’s target anyway. “Ye take the one sitting at the gun on the left ” O’Gilroy whispered, emphasising with his left hand, “and then next left. I’ll get the feller sitting on the right and work right. Ye got that?”

It should be easy – to start with. The tricky bit might come when the defensive picket came to hunt them down. He couldn’t see such a picket, but they had to be there; probably up among the trees on the far side of the riverbed, guarding against attack from the direction of the target. He’d send Bertie back, and perhaps stay long enough himself to knock off one of them, to blunt their enthusiasm, but after that the old soldier in him could take over.

“Would it not be better to shoot at the ammunition boxes?” Bertie whispered.

“No. Might not go off and the men’d scatter. They’re what matters. Watch me and I’ll signal ye.”

Bertie nodded and crawled away to his position. The bugle called, a twiddly bit and then one long note.

Albrecht blew a whistle, the little group around the gun relaxed and broke up. The seated men, numbers two and three in the crew, stood up, stretched and lit cigarettes. The loading detail began stacking rounds on a coat laid over the damp, gritty ground beside the gun, and Albrecht bustled. He interfered with the placing of the ammunition, checked the firmness of the trail spade, peered into but didn’t touch the sight. He was the picture of a man with nothing to do, whose job was done. The gun was on target.

When the bugle sounded again, he whistled and the crew closed up, crouching or sitting. O’Gilroy lifted the Winchester, took a sight, then nodded across to Bertie who snuggled down competently behind his own rifle. Still, it wasn’t the man’s competence O’Gilroy mistrusted. Oh well. . . He sighted, took and let out a breath, then squeezed the trigger.

* * *

Ranklin’s group heard the firing and went to ground immediately. He crawled to the cover of a rock and began remembering and analysing what he had heard. No bullets had come past, and two different rifles had fired. Odd. He looked across to the nearest Arab and he seemed puzzled, too.

The firing stopped. One Arab rose cautiously to his feet, and of course all the rest did. So Ranklin had to. They moved forward in a crouching unsoldierly trot, perhaps three hundred yards from the line of treetops growing on the bank below the rim of the plateau.

They heard shouts and more shots, and the Arabs threw themselves down and this time fired back. Back? – Ranklin wasn’t sure anybody had shot at them yet. But this was a sure way to make them do so.

* * *

The loader just stood there, a shell in his hands, as the numbers two and three slumped off the gun’s seats. He must have heard the shots, he could see the results, he simply didn’t believe it. He was just beginning to turn when O’Gilroy’s second shot took him in the side and he staggered. O’Gilroy was just aware of Albrecht running towards them, for the cover at the bottom of the slope, then sprawling as Bertie fired. His doubts about Bertie’s willingness to kill in cold blood had, O’Gilroy realised, been misplaced.

He himself swung and shot at the second loader, who was heading down-stream at an astonishing pace, perhaps even faster than the Winchester’s low-powered bullet, because it missed. He re-aimed at the first loader just as Bertie finished him off. Then there was no-one left to shoot at.

O’Gilroy waved Bertie back, as planned, before the picket could scramble down from the wooded bank opposite. But Bertie knew just how well he had done with his familiar and high-powered rifle and pretended to be busy reloading. O’Gilroy cursed him and the Winchester both and worked the action. The lever was simple and fast, but by God it cut into his knuckles.

As the ringing of the shots faded, he realised several voices were shouting – questions and orders, it sounded like. Then a Turkish soldier lost his footing and slid out from under the trees onto the open riverbed; O’Gilroy let Bertie slaughter that one while he himself fired three quick shots at a movement among the trees higher up. There was a yelp.

Then, for the first time, several rifles fired in their direction – certainly a bullet howled off a rock nearby. But the shooting had sounded distant. They were high enough to see over the treetops of the bank opposite to the flat, misty rockiness beyond. There O’Gilroy saw the wink of a rifle flash.