Десмонд Бэгли - The Spoilers

Warren dumped the silencer next to the wheel. ‘What are we supposed to be doing?’

‘This will be a mortar when we’ve assembled it,’ said Follet. ‘A mortar needs a base plate — that’s the wheel. There’s a flange on it so it makes firm contact with the ground. The silencer is the barrel — you didn’t think Rover silencers are machined like that, did you?’ He began to work rapidly. ‘Those lugs fit here, on the wheel. Help me.’

The lugs slid home sweetly into the slots in the wheel and Follet pushed a pin through the aligned holes. ‘This screw jack is the elevating mechanism,’ he said. ‘It fits in here like this. You fit the wheel brace and turn, and the whole barrel goes up and down. Just fasten those nuts, will you?’

He ran back to the vehicles leaving Warren a little numb with astonishment but not so much as to neglect the urgency of the occasion. Follet came back and tossed down an ordinary transparent plastic protractor. ‘That screws on to the jack — it already has holes drilled.’ Warren screwed the protractor in place and found that he had just installed a simple range scale.

Above his head Metcalfe and Tozier looked across at the small rocky hill. As Metcalfe had said it was about four hundred yards away and he could see quite clearly the half dozen men standing on top. ‘Has Fahrwaz got a telephone line laid on — or anything like it?’

Metcalfe held his head on one side as he heard a distant thud. ‘He won’t need it in the circumstances,’ he said. ‘Those boys can hear what’s going on. They’re getting worried — look at them.’

The men on the hill were gazing at the entrance to the gorge and there was some gesticulating going on. Tozier produced a small prismatic compass and sighted it carefully on the hill. ‘We have a mortar,’ he said. ‘Johnny Follet is assembling it now. We also have a light machine-gun. If we get the machine-gun up here you can hose the top of that hill and draw their fire.’ He turned and took another sight on the mortar. ‘As soon as we know where their machine gun is, then we knock it out with the mortar.’

‘Andy, you’re a tricky bastard,’ said Metcalfe affectionately. ‘I always said so and, by God, I’m right.’

‘Our machine-gun has no belt or drum — just a hopper into which you dump loose rounds. You should be able to handle it.’

‘It sounds like the Japanese Nambu. I can handle it.’

‘You’ll also be artillery spotter,’ said Tozier. ‘We’ll be firing blind from down there. Do you remember the signals we used in the Congo?’

‘I remember,’ said Metcalfe. ‘Let’s get that machine-gun up here. I wouldn’t be surprised if those boys come down the gorge to see what’s happening back there.’

They climbed down and found Warren tightening the last nut on the mortar. Metcalfe looked at it unbelievingly. ‘What a crazy lash-up. Does it really work?’

‘It works,’ said Tozier briefly. ‘See how Johnny’s getting on with the machine-gun. Time is getting few.’

He dropped on one knee, checked the assembly of the mortar, then began to line it up in conformity with the angles he had taken using the compass. ‘We’ll set it at four hundred yards,’ he said. ‘And hope for the best.’

‘I didn’t believe you when you said we had a mortar,’ said Warren. ‘What about shells?’

‘Bombs,’ said Tozier. ‘We’ve got precious few of those. You might have noticed that we’re liberally equipped with fire extinguishers. There’s one under the bonnet in the engine space, one under the dash and another in the back. Six for the two trucks — and that’s all the bombs we have. Help me yank ‘em out.’

Metcalfe climbed up to his perch on top of the gorge again, trailing a rope behind him. Once settled he hauled up the machine-gun, filled up the hopper with rounds of ammunition, and pushed it before him so that it rested firmly on its bipod. He sighted in carefully at the little group on the hill then turned his head and waved.

Tozier held up his hand and jerked his head at Follet. ‘Take that burp-gun which Tom brought along, and go back along the gorge to the first corner. If anything moves, shoot it.’

Follet indicated the mortar. ‘What about this?’

‘Nick and I can handle it. We’re not out for rapid fire — not with only six rounds. Get going. I like to feel that my back’s protected.’

Follet nodded, collected the sub-machine-gun and departed at a trot. Tozier waited two minutes and then waved to Metcalfe.

Metcalfe moved his shoulders to loosen them, set his cheek against the butt and looked through the sights. There were five men clearly in view. Gently he squeezed the trigger and death streaked towards the hill at 2,500 feet per second. At that range he could not miss. Delicately he traversed the gun and a scythe of bullets chopped across the top of the hill and suddenly there was no one to be seen.

He stopped firing and waited for something to happen. Moving very slowly he brought his hand forward and dropped a handful of bullets into the hopper. That first long burst had been ruinously expensive of ammunition. He studied the hill carefully but detected nothing that moved.

A rifle cracked twice but no bullet came near him. It was just random shooting. The outpost’s machine-gun was mounted so as to sweep the open ground in front of the entrance to the gorge. Apparently no one had taken into account an attack on the outpost from the rear, so it would take some little time for them to reorganize. He smiled grimly as he thought of the frantic effort that must be going on behind the hill. There would be quite a bit of consternation, too.

The rifle fired again, twice in quick succession — two of them, he judged. He was there to draw fire so he decided to tickle them up and squeezed the trigger again in a quick and economical burst of five rounds. This time he was answered in like manner by the sustained chatter of a machine-gun, and a hail of bullets swept the rocks thirty yards to his left and ten yards below.

He could not see where the gun was firing from so he squirted another short burst and was answered again. This time he spotted it — they had brought the machine-gun around the curve of the hill and about half way up, sheltered in a tumbled heap of boulders. He signalled to Tozier who bent down to adjust the mortar.

Tozier tugged the lanyard and the mortar barked. Warren saw the thin streak against the sky as the bomb arched in its trajectory and disappeared from sight, but Tozier was already looking at Metcalfe to find the result of the first ranging shot.

He grunted as Metcalfe waved his hand complicatedly. ‘Thirty yards short — twenty to the left.’ He adjusted the elevation and traversed the mortar slightly, then reloaded. ‘This one ought to be better.’ The mortar barked again.

The second bomb exploded dead in line with the machine-gun position but behind it. A man broke from cover and Metcalfe coolly cut him down with a short burst, then signalled to Tozier to reduce the range. The consternation must be just about complete, he thought, but changed his mind as the machine-gun rattled again and the earth just below his position fountained magically and rock splinters whined above his head. He ducked and slipped back into cover as the leaden hail beat the ground where he had been, sending his gun flying under the impact of the bullets.

But by that time the third bomb was in the air. He heard it explode and the machine-gun fire was cut off. He eased himself up and risked a look at the hill. A faint drift of smoke on the still morning air marked where it had fallen — square on the machine-gun position. A flat report sounded from behind him as the mortar fired again, and another bomb dropped in almost the same place.