Десмонд Бэгли - High Citadel

Instead, he pushed the control column forward and went into a screaming dive. This was dangerous — his opponent would be faster in the dive and it had been drilled into Forester never, never to lose height while in combat. He kept his eyes on the mirror and soon the Sabre came into view behind, catching up fast. He waited until the very last moment, until he was sure he was about to be fired on, then pushed the stick forward again and went into a suicidal vertical dive.

His opponent overshot him, taken unaware by the craziness of this manoeuvre performed so near the ground. Forester ignored him, confident that he had lost him for the time being; he was more concerned with preventing his plane from splattering itself all over the mountainside. He felt juddering begin as the Sabre approached the sound barrier; the whole fabric of the plane groaned as he dragged it out of the dive and he hoped the wings would not come off.

By the time he was flying level the ground was a scant two hundred feet below, snow and rock merging together in a grey blur. He lifted the Sabre up a few hundred feet and circled widely away from the mountains, looking for the gorge and the bridge. He spotted the gorge immediately — it was too unmistakable to be missed, and a minute later he saw the bridge. He turned over it, scanning the ground, but saw no one, and then it was gone behind and he lifted up to the slope of the mountain, flying over the winding road he had laboriously tramped so often.

Abruptly he changed course, wanting to approach the mine parallel to the mountainside, and as he did so he looked up and saw a Sabre a thousand feet higher, launching two rockets. That’s the second one, he thought. I was too late.

He turned again and screamed over the mine, the airstrip unwinding close below. Ahead were the huts and some trucks and a great arrow made of piled rocks pointing to the cliff face. And at the head of the arrow a boiling cloud of smoke and dust where the rockets had driven home into the cliff. ‘Jesus!’ he said involuntarily, ‘I hope they survived that.’

Then he had flashed over and went into a turn to come back. Come back he did with an enemy hammering on his heels. The Sabre he had eluded high in the sky had found him again and its guns were already crackling. But the range was too great and he knew that the other pilot, tricked before, was now waiting for him to play some other trick. This sign of inexperience gave him hope, but the other Sabre was faster and he must drop his rockets.

He had seen a good, unsuspecting target, yet to hit it he would have to come in on a smooth dive and stood a good chance of being hit by his pursuer. His lips curled back over his teeth and he held his course, sighting on the trucks and the huts and the group of men standing in their shelter. With one hand he flicked the rocket-arming switches and then fired, almost in the same instant.

The salvo of rockets streaked from under his wings, spearing down towards the trucks and the men who were looking up and waving. At the last moment, when they saw death coming from the sky, they broke and ran — but it was too late. Eight rockets exploded among them and as Forester roared overhead he saw a three-ton truck heave bodily into the air to fall on its side. He laughed out loud; a rocket that would stop a tank dead in its tracks would certainly shatter a truck.

The Sabre felt more handy immediately the rockets were gone and he felt the increase in speed. He put the nose down and screamed along the airstrip at zero feet, not looking back to see the damage he had done and striving to elude his pursuer by flying as low as he dared. At the end of the runway he dipped even lower over the wreckage of the Dakota and skidded in a frantic sideslip round the mountainside.

He looked in the mirror and saw his opponent take the corner more widely and much higher. Forester grinned; the bastard hadn’t dared to come down on the deck and so he couldn’t bring his guns to bear and he’d lost distance by his wide turn. Now to do him.

He fled up the mountainside parallel with the slope and barely twenty feet from the ground. It was risky, for there were jutting outcrops of rock which stretched out black fangs to tear out the belly of the Sabre if he made the slightest miscalculation. During the brief half-minute it took to reach clear sky, sweat formed on his forehead.

Then he was free of the mountain, and his enemy stooped to make his kill, but Forester was expecting it and went into a soaring vertical climb with a quick roll on top of the loop and was heading away in the opposite direction. He glanced back and grinned in satisfaction; he had tested the enemy and found him wanting — that young man would not take risks and Forester knew he could take him, so he went in for the kill.

It was brief and brutal. He turned to meet the oncoming plane and made as though to ram deliberately. At the closing speed of nearly fifteen hundred miles an hour the other pilot flinched as Forester knew he would, and swerved aside. By the time he had recovered Forester was on his tail and the end was mercifully quick — a sharp burst from the cannons at minimum range and the inevitable explosion in mid-air. Again Forester swerved to avoid wreckage. As he climbed to get his bearings, he reflected that battle experience still counted for a lot and the assessment of personality for still more.

Armstrong was deaf; the echoes of that vast explosion still rumbled in the innermost recesses of the tunnel but he did not hear them. Nor could he see much because of the coils of dust which thickened the air. His hands were vainly clutching the hard rock of the tunnel floor as he pressed himself to the ground and his mind felt shattered.

It was O’Hara who recovered first. Finding himself still alive and able to move, he raised his head to look at the tunnel entrance. Light showed dimly through the dust. He missed, he thought vacantly; the rockets missed — but not by much. Then he shook his head to clear it and stumbled across to Armstrong who was still grovelling on the ground. He shook him by the shoulder. ‘Back to the truck,’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got to get out. He won’t miss the second time round.’

Armstrong lifted his head and gazed at O’Hara dumbly, and O’Hara pointed back to the truck and made a dumb show of driving. He got to his feet shakily and followed O’Hara, still feeling his head ringing from the violence of the explosion.

O’Hara yelled, ‘Benedetta — into the truck.’ He saw her in and handed her the sub-machine-gun, then climbed in himself with her aid and lay down next to Miss Ponsky. Outside he heard the scream of a jet going by and a series of explosions in the distance. He hoped that Armstrong was in a condition to drive.

Armstrong climbed into the cab and felt the presence of Aguillar in the next seat. ‘On the floor,’ he said, pushing him down, and then his attention was wholly absorbed by the task before him. He pressed the starter-button and the starter whined and groaned. He stabbed it again and again until, just as he was giving up hope, the engine fired with a coughing roar.

Putting the gears into reverse, he leaned out of the cab and gazed back towards the entrance and let out the clutch. The truck bumped backwards clumsily and scraped the side wall. He hauled on the wheel and tried to steer a straight course for the entrance — as far as he could tell the steering had not been damaged and it did not take long to do the fifty yards. Then he stopped just short of the mouth of the tunnel in preparation for the dash into the open.

Benedetta gripped the unfamiliar weapon in her hands and held it ready, crouching down in the back of the truck. O’Hara was sitting up, a pistol in his good hand; he knew that if he lay down he would have difficulty in getting up again — he could only use one arm for leverage. Miss Ponsky was mercifully unaware of what was going on; she babbled a little in her stupor and then fell silent as the truck backed jerkily into the open and turned.