Десмонд Бэгли - High Citadel

The mist helped, of course. He still had the crossbow and was within hearing distance of the noisy crowd which surrounded the man he had shot through the chest. He judged that they did not relish the task of winkling out a man with a silent killing weapon from the hillside, especially when death could come from the mist. There was a nervous snapping edge to the voices out there and he smiled grimly; knives they knew and guns they understood, but this was something different, something they regarded with awe.

He felt his ankle. It was swollen and painful and he wondered if it would bear his weight, but this was neither the time nor the place to stand. He took his small pocket-knife and slit his trousers, cutting a long strip. He did not take off his shoe because he knew he would not be able to get it on again, so he tied the strip of cloth tightly around the swelling and under the instep of his shoe, supporting his ankle.

He was so intent on this that he did not see the man approach. The first indication was the slither of a kicked pebble and he froze rigid. From the corner of his eye he saw the man standing sideways to him, looking back towards the bridge. O’Hara kept very still, except for his arm which groped for a handy-sized rock. The man scratched his ribs in a reflective sort of way, moved on and was lost in the mist.

O’Hara let loose his pent-up breath in a silent sigh and prepared to move. He had the crossbow and three bolts which had a confounded tendency to clink together unless he was careful. He slid forward on his belly, worming his way among the rocks, trying to go upwards, away from the bridge. Again he was warned of imminent peril by the rattle of a rock and he rolled into a crack between two boulders and then he saw the boots appear before his face and struggled with a tickle in his throat, fighting to suppress the cough.

The man stamped his feet noisily and beat his hands together, breathing heavily. Suddenly he turned with a clatter of boots and O’Hara heard the metallic snap as a safety-catch went off. ‘ Quien? ’

‘Santos.’

O’Hara recognized the voice of the Cuban. So his name was Santos — he’d remember that and look him up if he ever got out of this mess.

The man put the rifle back on safety and Santos said in Spanish, ‘See anything?’

‘Nothing.’

Santos grunted in his throat. ‘Keep moving; go up the hill — they won’t hang about here.’

The other man said, ‘The Russian said we must stay down here.’

‘To hell with him,’ growled Santos. ‘If he had not interfered we would have old Aguillar in our hands right now. Move up the hill — and get the others going too.’

The other did not reply but obediently moved off, and O’Hara heard him climbing higher. Santos stayed only a moment and then clattered away noisily in his steel-shod boots, and again O’Hara let out his breath softly.

He waited a while and thought of what to do next. If Santos was moving the men away up the hill, then his obvious course was to go down. But the enemy seemed to be divided into two factions and the Russian might still have kept some men below. Still, he would have to take that chance.

He slid out of the crack and began to crawl back the way he had come, inching his way along on his belly and being careful of his injured ankle. He was pleased to see that the mist was thickening and through it he heard shouts from the bridge and the knocking of steel on wood. They were getting on with their repairs and traffic in the vicinity of the bridge would be heavy, so it was a good place to stay away from. He wanted to find a lone man far away from his fellows and preferably armed to the teeth. A crossbow was all very well, but he could do with something that had a faster rate of fire.

He altered course and headed for the trebuchet, stopping every few yards to listen and to peer through the mist. As he approached he heard laughter and a few derogatory comments shouted in Spanish. There was a crowd round the trebuchet and apparently they found it a humorous piece of machinery. He stopped and cocked the crossbow awkwardly, using the noise of the crowd as cover for any clinkings he might make. Then he crawled closer and took cover behind a boulder.

Presently he heard the bull-roar of Santos. ‘Up the hill, you lot. In the name of Jesus, what are you doing wasting time here? Juan, you stay here; the rest of you get moving.’

O’Hara flattened behind the boulder as the men moved off to the accompaniment of many grumbles. None of them came close to him, but he waited a few minutes before he began to crawl in a wide circle round the trebuchet, looking for the man left on guard. The bridge was illuminated by headlights and their glow lit the mist with a ghostly radiance, and at last he crept up on the guard who was just in the right position — silhouetted against the light.

Juan, the guard, was very young — not more than twenty — and O’Hara hesitated. Then he steeled himself because there was more at stake here than the life of a misguided youth. He lifted the crossbow and aimed carefully, then hesitated again, his finger on the trigger. His hesitation this time was for a different reason; Juan was playing soldiers, strutting about with his sub-machine-gun at the ready, and, O’Hara suspected, with the safety-catch off. He remembered the man he had shot by the bridge and how a full magazine had emptied in a dead hand, so he waited, not wanting any noise when he pulled the trigger.

At last Juan got tired of standing sentry and became more interested in the trebuchet. He leaned over to look at the mechanism which held down the long arm, found his gun in his way and let it fall to be held by the shouldersling. He never knew what hit him as the heavy bolt struck him between the shoulders at a range of ten yards. It knocked him forward against the long arm, the bolt protruding through his chest and skewering him to the baulk of timber. He was quite dead when O’Hara reached him.

Ten minutes later O’Hara was again esconced among the rocks, examining his booty. He had the sub-machine-gun, three full magazines of ammunition, a loaded pistol and a heavy broad-bladed knife. He grinned in satisfaction — now he was becoming dangerous, he had got himself some sharp teeth.

Benedetta, Armstrong and Willis waited in the cold mist by the cable drum. Willis fidgeted, examining the wedge-shaped chock that prevented the drum from rolling on to the road and estimated the amount of force needed to free it when the time came. But Benedetta and Armstrong were quite still, listening intently for any sound that might come up the hill.

Armstrong was thinking that they would have to be careful; any person coming up might be O’Hara and they would have to make absolutely sure before jumping him, something that would be difficult in this mist. Benedetta’s mind was emptied of everything except a deep sorrow. Why else was O’Hara not at the camp unless he were dead, or worse, captured? She knew his feelings about being captured again and she knew he would resist that, come what may. That made the likelihood of his being dead even more certain, and something within her died at the thought.

Aguillar had been difficult about retreating to the mine. He had wanted to stay and fight, old and unfit as he was, but Benedetta had overruled him. His eyes had widened in surprise as he heard the incisive tone of command in her voice. ‘There are only three of us fit to fight,’ she said. ‘We can’t spare one to help Jenny up to the mine. Someone must help her and you are the one. Besides, it is even higher up there than here, remember — you will have to go slowly so you must get away right now.’

Aguillar glanced at the other two men. Willis was morosely kicking at the ground and Armstrong smiled slightly, and Aguillar saw that they were content to let Benedetta take the lead and give the orders in the absence of O’Hara. She has turned into a young Amazon, he thought; a raging young lioness. He went up to the mine road with Miss Ponsky without further argument.