Десмонд Бэгли - High Citadel

‘One door — no windows,’ said McGruder. ‘You can come and look at it if you like; but don’t spit on the floor.’

He took the sergeant into the operating theatre and satisfied him that there was only one entrance. ‘Very well,’ said the sergeant. ‘I will put two men outside the door — that will be all right.’

McGruder went into the sluice room and prepared for the operation, putting on his gown and cap and fastening the mask loosely about his neck. Old Pedro was brought up on a stretcher and McGruder stood outside the door while he was pushed into the theatre. The sergeant said, ‘How long will this take?’

McGruder considered. ‘About two hours — maybe longer. It is a serious operation, Sergeant.’

He went into the theatre and closed the door. Five minutes later the empty stretcher was pushed out and the sergeant looked through the open door and saw the doctor masked and bending over the operating table, a scalpel in his hand. The door closed, the sergeant nodded to the sentries and wandered towards the courtyard to find a sunny spot. He quite ignored the empty stretcher being pushed by two chattering nurses down the corridor.

In the safety of the bottom ward McGruder dropped from under the stretcher where he had been clinging and flexed the muscles of his arms. Getting too old for these acrobatics, he thought, and nodded to the nurses who had pushed in the stretcher. They giggled and went out, and he changed his clothes quickly.

He knew of a place where the tide of prickly pear which covered the hillside overflowed into the mission grounds. For weeks he had intended to cut down the growth and tidy it up, but now he was glad that he had let it be. No sentry in his right mind would deliberately patrol in the middle of a grove of sharp-spined cactus, no matter what his orders, and McGruder thought he had a chance of getting through.

He was right. Twenty minutes later he was on the other side of a low rise, the mission out of sight behind him and the houses of Altemiros spread in front. His clothes were torn and so was his flesh — the cactus had not been kind.

He began to run.

Forester was still on his stretcher. He had expected to be taken into a hospital ward and transferred to a bed, but instead the stretcher was taken into an office and laid across two chairs. Then he was left alone, but he could hear the shuffling feet of a sentry outside the door and knew he was well guarded.

It was a large office overlooking the airfield, and he guessed it belonged to the commanding officer. There were many maps on the walls and some aerial photographs, mainly of mountain country. He looked at the décor without interest; he had been in many offices like this when he was in the American Air Force and it was all very familiar, from the group photographs of the squadron to the clock let into the boss of an old wooden propeller.

What interested him was the scene outside. One complete wall of the office was a window and through it he could see the apron outside the control tower and, farther away, a group of hangars. He clicked his tongue as he recognized the aircraft standing on the apron — they were Sabres.

Good old Uncle Sam, he thought in disgust; always willing to give handouts, even military handouts, to potential enemies. He looked at the fighter planes with intense curiosity. They were early model Sabres, now obsolete in the major air forces, but quite adequate for the defence of a country like Cordillera which had no conceivable military enemies of any strength. As far as he could see, they were the identical model he had flown in Korea. I could fly one of those, he thought, if I could just get into the cockpit.

There were four of them standing in a neat line and he saw they were being serviced. Suddenly he sat up — no, not serviced — those were rockets going under the wings. And those men standing on the wings were not mechanics, they were armourers loading cannon shells. He did not have to be close enough to see the shells; he had seen this operation performed many times in Korea and he knew automatically that these planes were being readied for instant action.

Christ! he thought bitterly; it’s like using a steam hammer to crack a nut. O’Hara and the others won’t have a chance against this lot. But then he became aware of something else — this must mean that O’Hara was still holding out; that the communists across the bridge were still baffled. He felt exhilarated and depressed at the same time as he watched the planes being readied.

He lay back again and felt the gun pressing into the small of his back. This was the time to prepare for action, he realized, so he pulled out the gun, keeping a wary eye on the door, and examined it. It was the pistol he had brought over the mountain — Grivas’s pistol. Cold and exposure to the elements had not done it any good — the oil had dried out and the action was stiff — but he thought it would work. He snapped the action several times, catching the rounds as they flipped from the breech, then he reloaded the magazine and worked the action again, putting a round in the breech ready for instant shooting.

He stowed the pistol by his side under the coverlet and laid his hand on the butt. Now he was ready — as ready as he could be.

He waited a long time and began to get edgy. He felt little tics all over his body as small muscles jumped and twitched, and he had never been so wide-awake in his life. That’s McGruder’s stimulant he thought: I wonder what it was and if it’ll mix with all the coca I’ve taken.

He kept an eye on the Sabres outside. The ground crews had completed their work long before someone opened the door of the office, and Forester looked up to see a man with a long, saturnine face looking down at him. The man smiled. ‘ Colonel Coello, a sus ordenes. ’ He clicked his heels.

Forester blinked his eyes, endeavouring to simulate sleepiness. ‘Colonel who?’ he mumbled.

The colonel sat behind the desk. ‘Coello,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I am the commandant of this fighter squadron.’

‘It’s the damnedest thing,’ said Forester with a baffled look. ‘One minute I was in hospital, and the next minute I’m in this office. Familiar surroundings, too; I woke up and became interested in those Sabres.’

‘You have flown?’ asked Coello politely.

‘I sure have,’ said Forester. ‘I was in Korea — I flew Sabres there.’

‘Then we can talk together as comrades,’ said Coello heartily. ‘You remember Doctor McGruder?’

‘Not much,’ said Forester. ‘I woke up and he pumped me full of stuff to put me to sleep again — then I found myself here. Say, shouldn’t I be in hospital or something?’

‘Then you did not talk to McGruder about anything — anything at all?’

‘I didn’t have the chance,’ said Forester. He did not want to implicate McGruder in this. ‘Say, Colonel, am I glad to see you. All hell is breaking loose on the other side of the mountains. There’s a bunch of bandits trying to murder some stranded airline passengers. We were on our way here to tell you.’

‘On your way here? ’

That’s right; there was a South American guy told us to come here — now, what was his name?’ Forester wrinkled his brow.

‘Aguillar — perhaps?’

‘Never heard that name before,’ said Forester. ‘No, this guy was called Montes.’

‘And Montes told you to come here? ’ said Coello incredulously. ‘He must have thought that fool Rodriguez was here. You were two days too late, Mr Forester.’ He began to laugh.

Forester felt a cold chill run through him but pressed on with his act of innocence. ‘What’s so funny?’ he asked plaintively. ‘Why the hell are you sitting there laughing instead of doing something about it?’