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

swiftly and flew over the crest of the rise, and behind them rolled a

long billow of dust, proclaiming their whereabouts to all the world.

The line of Italian tanks was coming straight in, a mile and a half out

on their flank.

"Engaging now, "shouted Jake.

"Ready." Gregorius was crouched over the Vickers in the turret,

straining it to the limit of its traverse, ready to fire at the very

instant the gun could bear.

Jake put the wheel over hard, and Priscilla swung towards the distant

dark beetle shapes of the Italian armour, sailing jauntily right into

their teeth.

Above Jake the Vickers roared, and the spent cartridges spewed down

into the hull, ringing and pinging against the steel sides, while the

sudden acrid stink of burned cordite made Jake's eyes sting and flood

with tears.

Through blurred eyes he watched the electric white tracer arc out

across the open ground, and fall about the leading tank. Even at that

range, Jake made out the tiny spurting fountains of dust and dirt

kicked up by the hose of bullets.

"Good lad," grunted Jake; it was accurate shooting from the bouncing,

bounding car at extreme range. Of course, it could do no damage to the

thick steel armour of the CV.3, but it would certainly startle and

anger the crew, goad them into retaliation.

As he thought it, Jake saw the turret of the tank traverse around as

the commander called the target. The stubby barrel of the Spandau

foreshortened rapidly, and then disappeared. Jake was looking directly

down the muzzle.

He counted slowly to three, it would take that long for the gunner to

get on to him, then he yelled, "Disengaging!" and flung Priscilla hard

over, so that she came up on two wheels, ungainly and awkward as she

swung away from the enemy line. From the corner of his eye Jake saw

the glow of the muzzle flash, and almost instantly afterwards heard the

crack of passing shot.

"Son of a gun that was close!" he muttered, and reached up to throw

the hatch and visor open. There was no point in closing down,

these Spandaus could penetrate any point of the car's hull as though it

were made of paper, and Jake would need a good and unlimited view

during the next desperate minutes.

Running parallel to the Italian line, he looked across and saw that all

four tanks were firing now, and they were bunching, each tank turning

towards him as he raced across their front, losing their rigid pattern

of advance in their eagerness to keep Priscilla under fire.

"Come along," muttered Jake. "Three balls for a dollar,

gentlemen, every throw a coconut!" It was too close to the truth to be

funny, but he grinned nevertheless. "Jake Barton's famous coconut

shy." A shell burst close alongside, showering sand and gravel into

the open hatch. They were ranging in on him now, it was time to

confuse the range again.

He spat sand from his mouth and yelled, "Engaging!" Priscilla spun

handily towards the Italian line, and went bounding in towards them

with that prim rocking action, her ugly old silhouette grim and

uncompromising as the visage of a Victorian matron.

They were close, horribly frighteningly close, so that Jake could hear

the Vickers bullets hammering against the black carapace of the leading

tank. Gregorius had picked out the formation leader by his command

pennant, and was concentrating all his fire upon him.

"Good thinking," grunted Jake. "Get the bastard's blood up." As he

spoke, there was a thunderous clank close beside his head, as though a

giant had swung a hammer against the steel hull, and the car reeled to

the blow.

"We've taken a hit," Jake thought desperately, and his ears buzzed from

the impact and there was the hot acrid stench of burned paint and hot

metal in his nostrils. He swung the wheel over and Priscilla responded

as handsomely as ever, turning sharply away from the Italian line.

Jake stood up in his compartment, sticking his head out into the open

and he saw immediately how lucky they had been. The shell had struck

one of the brackets he had welded on to the sponson to carry the arms

crates. It had torn the bracket away, and dented the hull,

leaving the metal glowing with the heat of the strike but the hull was

intact, they had not been penetrated.

"Are you all right, Greg?" he yelled as he dropped back into his

seat.

"They are following, Jake," the boy called down to him, ignoring the

hit. "They are after us all of them."

"Home and mother here we come," Jake said, and turned directly away

from them, once again changing the range and aim of the Italian gunners

abruptly.

Shot burst close, driving the air in upon their eardrums, and making

them both flinch involuntarily.

"We are pulling too far ahead, Jake," called Greg, and Jake glancing up

saw that he had his hatch open and his head out.

"Lame bird," Jake decided reluctantly. If they outstripped the

Italians too rapidly, there was a danger they would abandon the

chase.

Another shell burst close alongside, covering them with a veil of pale

dust, and Jake faked a hit, cutting back the throttle so that their

seed bled off, and he swung Priscilla into an erratic broken pattern of

flight, like a bird with a broken wing.

"They're gaining on us now, "Greg reported gleefully.

"Don't sound so damned happy about it," Jake muttered, but his voice

was lost in the whine and crack of passing shot.

"They're still coming," howled Greg. "And they're still shooting."

"I noticed." Jake peered ahead, still flinging the car mercilessly

from side to side. The ridge of the first dune was half a mile ahead,

but it seemed like an hour later that he felt the earth tilt up under

him and they went slithering and skidding up the slip-face of the dune

and crashed over the crest into safety.

Jake swung Nscilla into a broadside skid, like a skier performing a

christy, bringing her to an abrupt halt in the lee of the dune and then

he backed and manoeuvred up until he was in a hull-down position behind

the sand, with only the turret exposed.

"That's it, Jake," cried Greg delightedly, as he found his Vickers

would bear again. He crouched over it, and fired short crisp bursts at

the four black tanks that roared angrily towards them across the

plain.

From the stationary position behind the dune, Gregorius made every

burst of fire sweep the oncoming hulls, driving the Latin tempers of

the crews into frenzy, like the sting of a tsetse fly on the belly of a

bull buffalo.

"That's about close enough," decided Jake, judging the charge of enemy

armour finely. They were less than five hundred yards off now and

already they were dropping shell close around the tiny target afforded

by the car's turret.

"Let's get the hell out of here." He swung Priscilla hard and she

plunged down the side of the dune into the trough. As she crashed

through the dense dark scrub, Jake caught a glimpse of the men lying in

wait under the screen of vegetation. They were stripped to

loin-Cloths, huddled down over the long steel rails, and two of them

had to roll frantically aside to avoid being crushed beneath

Priscilla's tall, heavily bossed wheels.