Десмонд Бэгли - High Citadel

‘Okay, okay,’ said Willis impatiently. ‘But I don’t go for this death-or-glory stuff.’

‘Look,’ said O’Hara. ‘You know what I think? I think I’m a dead man as I stand here right now. I don’t think we’ve a hope in hell of stopping those communist bastards crossing the bridge; we might slow them down but we can’t stop them. And once they get across they’ll hunt us down and slaughter us like pigs — that’s why I think I’m a dead man. It’s not that I particularly like Aguillar, but the communists want him and I’m out to stop them — that’s why I’m so tender of him.’

Willis had gone pale. ‘But what about Forester and Rohde?’

‘I think they’re dead too,’ said O’Hara coldly. ‘Have you any idea what it’s like up there? Look, Willis; I flew men and equipment for two Yankee mountaineering expeditions and one German. And with all their modern gadgets they failed in their objectives three-quarters of the time.’ He waved his arm at the mountains. ‘Hell, half these mountains don’t even have names, they’re so inaccessible.’

Armstrong said, ‘You paint a black picture, O’Hara.’

‘Is it a true picture?’

‘I fear it is,’ said Armstrong ruefully.

O’Hara shook his head irritably. ‘This isn’t doing any good. Let’s get that contraption down to the bridge.’

It was not as difficult as O’Hara anticipated getting the trebuchet down the mountain road. Willis had done a good job in mounting it for ease of transportation and it took only three hours to get back, the main difficulty being to manoeuvre the clumsy machine round the hairpin bends. At every bend he half expected to see Miss Ponsky running up to tell them that the communists had made their attack, but all was quiet and he did not even hear the crack of a rifle. Things were too quiet, he thought; maybe they were running out of ammunition — there was none of the desultory firing that had gone on the previous day.

They pushed the trebuchet off the road to the place indicated by Willis, and O’Hara said expressionlessly, ‘Benedetta, relieve Jenny; tell her to come up and see me.’

She looked at him curiously, but he had turned away to help Willis and Armstrong dismantle the trebuchet preparatory to erecting it as a weapon. They were going to mount it on a small knoll in order to get the height, so that the heavy weight on the shorter arm could have a good fall.

Miss Ponsky came up to him and told him that everything had been quiet. He thought for a moment and then said, ‘Did you hear any trucks?’

‘Not since they took away the jeep this morning.’

He rubbed his chin. ‘Maybe we hit them harder than we thought. You’re sure they’re still there?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said brightly. ‘I had that thought myself some hours ago so I waggled something in full view.’ She blushed. ‘I put my hat on a stick — I’ve seen it done in old movies on TV.’

He smiled. ‘Did they hit it?’

‘No — but they came close.’

‘You’re doing all right, Jenny.’

‘You must be hungry — I’ll make a meal.’ Her lips twitched. ‘I think this is fun, you know.’ She turned and hurried up the road, leaving him standing dumbfounded. Fun!

Assembling the trebuchet took two hours and when it was completed Armstrong, begrimed but happy, said with satisfaction, ‘There, now; I never expected to see one of these in action.’ He turned to O’Hara. ‘Forester came upon me sketching a trebuchet for Willis; he asked if I were drawing the scales of justice and I said that I was. He must have thought me mad, but it was perceptive of him.’

He closed his eyes and recited as though quoting a dictionary entry. ‘From the medieval Latin trebuchetum ; old French, trébuchet ; a pair of scales, an assay balance.’ He opened his eyes and pointed. ‘You see the resemblance?’

O’Hara did see. The trebuchet looked like a warped balance, very much out of proportion, with one arm much longer than the other. He said, ‘Does this thing have much of a kick — much recoil?’

‘Nothing detectable; the impact is absorbed by the ground.’

O’Hara looked at the crazy system of ropes and pulleys. ‘The question is now — will the beast work?’

There was an edge of irritability to Willis’s voice. ‘Of course it will work. Let’s chuck this thing.’ He pointed to a round boulder about the size of a man’s head.

‘All right,’ said O’Hara. ‘Let’s give it a bang. What do we do?’

‘First we haul like hell on this rope,’ said Willis.

The rope was connected, through a three-part pulley arrangement, to the end of the long arm. As O’Hara and Willis pulled, the arm came down and the shorter arm with the weight rose into the air. The weight was a big, rusty iron bucket which Willis had found and filled with stones. As the long arm came to the ground, Armstrong stepped forward and threw over a lever and a wooden block dropped over the arm, holding it down. Willis picked up the boulder and placed it in the hub-cap which served as a cup.

‘We’re ready,’ he said. ‘I’ve already aligned the thing in the general direction of the bridge; we need someone down there to call the fall of the shot.’

‘I’ll go,’ said O’Hara. He walked across to where Benedetta was keeping watch and slid down beside her, being careful to keep his head down. ‘They’re going to let fly,’ he said.

She turned her head to look at the trebuchet. ‘Do you think this will work?’

‘I don’t know.’ He grimaced. ‘All I know is that it’s a hell of a way to fight a war.’

‘We’re ready,’ shouted Armstrong.

O’Hara waved and Armstrong pulled the firing lever sharply. The weight dropped and the long arm bearing the missile flipped up into the air. There was an almighty crash as the iron bucket hit the ground, but O’Hara’s attention was on the rock as it arched over his head. It was in the air a long time and went very high; then it reached the top of its trajectory and started to fall to earth, gaining speed appreciably as it plummeted. It fell far on the other side of the bridge, beyond the road and the burned vehicles, into the mountainside. A plume of dust fountained from the side of the hill to mark its fall.

‘Jesus!’ whispered O’Hara. ‘The thing has range.’ He slipped from his place and ran back. ‘Thirty yards over — fifteen to the right. How heavy was that rock?’

‘About thirty pounds,’ said Willis offhandedly. ‘We need a bigger one.’ He heaved on the trebuchet. ‘We’ll swing her a bit to the left.’

O’Hara could hear a babble of voices from across the river and there was a brief rattle of rifle fire. Or should I call it musketry? he thought, just to keep it in period. He laughed and smote Armstrong on the back. ‘You’ve done it again,’ he roared. ‘We’ll pound that bridge to matchwood.’

But it was not to prove as easy as he thought. It took an hour to fire the next six shots — and not one of them hit the bridge. They had two near misses and one that grazed the catenary rope on the left, making the bridge shiver from end to end. But there were no direct hits.

Curiously, too, there was no marked reaction from the enemy. A lot of running about and random shooting followed each attempt, but there was no coherent action. What could they do after all, O’Hara thought; nothing could stop the rocks once they were in flight.

‘Why can’t we get the range right — what the hell’s the matter with this thing?’ he demanded at last.

Armstrong said mildly, ‘I knew a trebuchet wasn’t a precision weapon, in a general way, of course; but this brings it home. It does tend to scatter a bit, doesn’t it?’