Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur (книги онлайн без регистрации полностью .TXT) 📗

Vickers guns, and then exercised them with the infantry and cavalry,

teaching the gunners to lay down sheets of covering fire.

Foot soldiers were taught to advance or retreat in concert with the

Vickers.

Gareth had also found time to complete the survey of the retreat route

up the gorge, mark each of his defensive positions, and supervise the

digging of the machine-gun nests and support trenches in the steep

rocky sides of the gorge. An enemy advancing up the twisting hairpin

track would come under fire around each bend of the road, and would be

open to the steam-roller charge of the foot warriors from the concealed

trenches amongst the lichen-covered rocks above the track.

The track itself had been smoothed, and the gradients altered to allow

the escape of the armoured cars once the position on the plains was

forced by the overwhelming build-up of Italian forces. Now all of them

waited, as ready as they could be, and the slow passage of time eroded

all their nerves.

It was, then, with a certain relief that the scouts who were keeping

the Italian fortifications under day and night surveillance reported

back to the Ras's war council that a host of strange vehicles that

moved at great speed without the benefit of either legs or wheels had

arrived to swell the already formidable forces arrayed against them,

and that these vehicles were daily engaged in furious activity, from

sun-up to sun-down, racing in circles and aimless sweeps across the

vast empty spaces of the plains.

"Without wheels," mused Gareth, and cocked an eyebrow at Jake.

"You know what that sounds like, don't you, old son?"

"I'm afraid I

do." Jake nodded. "But we'd better go and take a look." Half a moon

in the sky gave enough light to show up clearly the deeply torn runners

of the steel tracks, like the spoor of gigantic centipedes in the soft

fluffy soil.

Jake squatted on his haunches, and regarded them broodingly. He knew

now that what he had dreaded was about to happen. He was going to have

to take his beloved cars and match them against tracked vehicles with

heavier armour, and revolving turrets, armed with big-bored,

quick-firing guns. Guns that could crash a missile into his frontal

armour, through the engine block, through the hull compartment and any

crew members in its path, then out through the rear armour with

sufficient velocity still on it to do the same again to the car

behind.

"Tanks," he muttered. "Bloody tanks."

"I say, an eagle scout in our midst," murmured Gareth, sitting

comfortably up in the turret of

Priscilla the Pig. "A tenderfoot might have thought those tracks were

made by a dinosaur but you can't fool old hawk-eye Barton, son of the

Texas prairies," and he reached out to stub his cheroot against the"

side of the turret, an action which he knew would annoy Jake

intensely.

Jake grunted and stood up. "I'm going to buy you an ashtray for your

next birthday." His voice was brittle. It did not matter that his

beloved cars might be shot at by rifle, machine gun and now by cannon

that they had been scarred by flying gravel and harsh thorn. The

deliberate crushing of burning tobacco against the fighting steel

annoyed him, as he knew it was meant to.

"Sorry, old son." Gareth grinned easily. "Slipped my mind.

Won't happen again." Jake swung up the side of the car and dropped

into the driver's seat. Keeping the engine noise down to a low murmur,

a sound as sweet and melodious in his ears as a Bach concerto,

he let Priscilla move away across the moon gilded plain.

When Jake and Gareth were alone like this, out on a reconnaissance or

working together in the gorge, the dagger of rivalry was sheathed and

their relationship was relaxed and comforting, spiced only by the mild

needling and jostling for position. It was only in Vicky

Camberwell's physical presence that the knife came out.

Jake thought about it now, thought about the three of them as he did a

great deal each day. He knew that, after that magical night when he

and Vicky had known each other on the hard desert earth, she was his

woman. It was too wonderful an experience to have shared with another

human being for it not to have marked and changed both of them

profoundly.

Yet in the weeks since then there had been little opportunity for

reaffirmation a single stolen afternoon by a tall mist-smoking

waterfall in the gorge, a narrow ledge of black rock, cool with shadow

and green with soft beds of moss, and screened from prying eyes by the

overhang of the precipice. The moss had been as soft as a feather bed,

and afterwards they swam naked together in the swirling cauldron of the

pool, and her body had been slim and pale and lovely through the dark

water.

Then again, he had watched her with Gareth Swales the way she laughed,

or leaned close to him to listen to a whispered comment, and the

mock-modest shock at his outrageous sallies, the laughter in her eyes

and on her lips.

Once she touched his arm, a thoughtless gesture while in conversation

with Gareth, a gesture so intimate and possessive that

Jake had felt the black jealous anger fill his head.

There was no cause for it, Jake knew that. He could not believe she

was fool enough or so naive as to walk into the obvious web that

Gareth was weaving she was Jake's woman. What they had done together,

their loving was so wonderful, so completely once in a lifetime, that

it was not possible she could turn aside to anyone else.

Yet between Vicky and Gareth there was the laughter and the shared

jokes. Sometimes he had seen them together, standing on a rock

-promontory above the camp or walking in the grove of camel-thorn

trees, leaning towards each other as they talked. Once or twice they

had both been absent from the camp at the same time for as long as a

complete morning. But it meant nothing, he knew that.

Sure, she liked Gareth Swales. He could understand that.

He liked Gareth also more than liked, he realized. It was,

rather, a deep comradely feeling of affection. You could not but be

drawn by his fine looks, his mocking sense of the ridiculous, and the

deep certainty that below that polished exterior and the overplayed

role of the foppish rogue was a different, a real person.

"Yeah. "Jake sardonically grinned in the darkness, steering the car

south and east around the sky glow that marked the Italian

fortifications at the Wells. "I love the guy. I don't trust him,

but

I love him just as long as he keeps the hell away from my woman."

Gareth stooped out of the turret at that moment and tapped his

shoulder.

"There is a ravine ahead and to the left. It should do," he said,

and Jake swung towards it and halted again.

"It's deep enough, "he gave his opinion.

"And we should be able to see across to the ridge and cover all the

ground to the east once the sun comes up." Gareth pointed to the glow

of the Italian searchlights and then swept his arm widely across the

open desert beyond.

"That looks like where they hold their fun and games every day.

We should get a grandstand view from here. We'd better get under cover

now." They intended to spend the whole of that day observing the

activity of the Italian squadron, pulling out again under cover of