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Armstrong, Willis and Peabody left immediately on the long trudge up to the camp. Forester said, ‘I didn’t know what to make of Willis – he’s not very forthcoming – but I’ve got him tagged now. He’s the practical type; give him something to do and he’ll get it done, come hell or high water. He’ll do.’
Aguillar smiled. ‘Armstrong is surprising, too.’
‘My God!’ said Forester. ‘Crossbows in this day and age!’
O’Hara said, ‘We’ve got to think about making camp. There’s no water here, and besides, our main force is too close to the enemy. There’s a pond about half a mile back – I think that’s a good spot.’
‘Benedetta, you see to that,’ Aguillar commanded. ‘Miss Ponsky will help you.’ He watched the two women go, then turned with a grave face. ‘There is something we must discuss, together with Miguel. Let us go over there.’
Rohde was happy. ‘They have not put a plank in the bridge yet. They ran again like the rabbits they are.’
Aguillar told him what was happening and he said uncertainly, ‘A crossbow?’
‘I think it’s crazy, too,’ said Forester. ‘But Armstrong reckons it’ll work.’
‘Armstrong is a good man,’ said Aguillar. ‘He is thinking of immediate necessities – but I think of the future. Suppose we hold off these men; suppose we destroy the bridge – what then?’
‘We’re not really any better off,’ said O’Hara reflectively. ‘They’ve got us pinned down anyway.’
‘Exactly,’ said Aguillar. ‘True, we have plenty of food, but that means nothing. Time is very valuable to these men, just as it is to me. They gain everything by keeping me inactive.’
‘By keeping you here they’ve removed you from the game,’ agreed Forester. ‘How long do you think it will be before they make their coup d’état?’
Aguillar shrugged. ‘One month – maybe two. Certainly not longer. We advanced our own preparations because the communists showed signs of moving. It is a race between us with the destiny of Cordillera as the prize – maybe the destiny of the whole of Latin America is at stake. And the time is short.’
‘Your map, Señor O’Hara,’ said Rohde suddenly.
O’Hara took out the chart and spread it on a rock, and Rohde traced the course of the river north and south, shaking his head. ‘This river – this gorge – is a trap, pinning us against the mountains,’ he said.
‘We’ve agreed it’s no use going for the bridge downstream,’ said Forester. ‘It’s a hell of a long way and it’s sure to be guarded.’
‘What’s to stop them crossing that bridge and pushing up on this side of the river to outflank us?’ asked O’Hara.
‘As long as they think they can repair this bridge they won’t do that,’ Aguillar said. ‘Communists are not supermen; they are as lazy as other people and they would not relish crossing eighty kilometres of mountain country – that would take at least four days. I think they will be content to stop the bolt hole.’
Rohde’s fingers swept across the map to the west. ‘That leaves the mountains.’
Forester turned and looked at the mountain wall, at the icy peaks. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. I don’t think Señor Aguillar could make it.’
‘I know,’ said Rohde. ‘He must stay here. But someone must cross the mountains for help.’
‘Let’s see if it’s practicable,’ said O’Hara. ‘I was going to fly through the Puerto de las Aguilas. That means that anyone going back would have to go twenty miles north before striking west through the pass. And he’d have to go pretty high to get round this bloody gorge. The pass isn’t so bad – it’s only about fourteen thousand feet.’
‘A total of about thirty miles before he got into the Santos Valley,’ said Forester. ‘That’s on straight line courses. It would probably be fifty over the ground.’
There is another way,’ said Rohde quietly. He pointed to the mountains. ‘This range is high, but not very wide. On the other side lies the Santos Valley. If you draw a line on the map from here to Altemiros in the Santos Valley you will find that it is not more than twenty-five kilometres.’
O’Hara bent over the map and measured the distance. ‘You’re right; about fifteen miles – but it’s all peaks.’
‘There is a pass about two miles north-west of the mine,’ said Rohde. ‘It has no name because no one is so foolish as to use it. It is about five thousand eight hundred metres.’
Forester rapidly translated. ‘Wow! Nineteen thousand feet.’
‘What about lack of oxygen?’ asked O’Hara. ‘We’ve had enough trouble with that already. Could a man go over that pass without oxygen?’
‘I have done so,’ said Rohde. ‘Under more favourable conditions. It is a matter of acclimatization. Mountaineers know this; they stay for days at one level and then move up the mountain to another camp and stay a few days there also before moving to a higher level. It is to attune their bodies to the changing conditions.’ He looked up at the mountains. ‘If I went up to the camp tomorrow and spent a day there then went to the mine and stayed a day there – I think I could cross that pass.’
Forester said, ‘You couldn’t go alone.’
‘I’ll go with you,’ said O’Hara promptly.
‘Hold on there,’ said Forester. ‘Are you a mountaineer?’
‘No,’ said O’Hara.
‘Well, I am. I mean, I’ve scrambled about in the Rockies – that should count for something.’ He appealed to Rohde. ‘Shouldn’t it?’
Aguillar said, ‘You should not go alone, Miguel.’
‘Very well,’ said Rohde. ‘I will take one man – you.’ He nodded to Forester and smiled grimly. ‘But I promise you – you will be sorry.’
Forester grinned cheerfully and said, ‘Well, Tim, that leaves you as garrison commander. You’ll have your hands full.’
‘Si,’ said Rohde. ‘You must hold them off.’
A new sound was added to the noise of the river and Rohde immediately wriggled up to his observation post, then beckoned to O’Hara. ‘They are starting their engines,’ he said. ‘I think they are going away.’
But the vehicles did not move. ‘What are they doing?’ asked Rohde in perplexity.
‘They’re charging their batteries,’ said O’Hara. ‘They’re making sure that they’ll have plenty of light tonight.’
II
O’Hara and Aguillar went back to help the women make camp, leaving Rohde and Forester watching the bridge. There was no immediate danger of the enemy forcing the crossing and any unusual move could soon be reported. Forester’s attitude had changed as soon as the decision to cross the mountains had been made. He no longer drove hard for action, seemingly being content to leave it to O’Hara. It was as though he had tacitly decided that there could be only one commander and the man was O’Hara.
O’Hara’s lips quirked as he mentally reviewed his garrison: An old man and a young girl; two sedentary academic types; a drunk and someone’s maiden aunt; and himself – a broken-down pilot. On the other side of the river were at least twenty ruthless men – with God knows how many more to back them up. His muscles tensed at the thought that they were communists; sloppy South American communists, no doubt – but still communists.
Whatever happens, they’re not going to get me again, he thought.
Benedetta was very quiet and O’Hara knew why. To be shot at for the first time took the pith out of a person – one came to the abrupt realization that one was a soft bag of wind and liquids, vulnerable and defenceless against steel-jacketed bullets which could rend and tear. He remembered the first time he had been in action, and felt very sorry for Benedetta; at least he had been prepared, however inadequately, for the bullets – the bullets and the cannon shells.
He looked across at the scattered rocks on the bleak hillside. ‘I wonder if there’s a cave over there?’ he suggested. ‘That would come in handy right now.’ He glanced at Benedetta. ‘Let’s explore a little.’
She looked at her uncle who was helping Miss Ponsky check the cans of food. ‘All right,’ she said.
They crossed the road and struck off at right angles, making their way diagonally up the slope. The ground was covered with boulders and small pebbles and the going was difficult, their feet slipping as the stones shifted. O’Hara thought that one could break an ankle quite easily and a faint idea stirred at the back of his mind.
After a while they separated, O’Hara to the left and the girl to the right. For an hour they toiled among the rocks, searching for something that would give shelter against the night wind, however small. O’Hara found nothing, but he heard a faint shout from Benedetta and crossed the hillside to see what she had found.
It was not a cave, merely a fortuitous tumbling of the rocks. A large boulder had rolled from above and wedged itself between two others, forming a roof. It reminded O’Hara of a dolmen he had seen on Dartmoor, although the whole thing was very much bigger. He regarded it appreciatively. At least it would be shelter from snow and rain and it gave a little protection from the wind.
He went inside and found a hollow at the back. ‘This is good,’ he said. ‘This will hold a lot of water – maybe twenty gallons.’
He turned and looked at Benedetta. The exercise had brought some colour into her cheeks and she looked better. He produced his cigarettes. ‘Smoke?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t.’
‘Good!’ he said with satisfaction. ‘I was hoping you didn’t.’ He looked into the packet – there were eleven left. ‘I’m a selfish type, you know; I want these for myself.’
He sat down on a rock and lit his cigarette, voluptuously inhaling the smoke. Benedetta sat beside him and said, ‘I’m glad you decided to help my uncle.’
O’Hara grinned. ‘Some of us weren’t too sure. It needed a little tough reasoning to bring them round. But it was finally unanimous.’
She said in a low voice, ‘Do you think there’s any chance of our coming out of this?’
O’Hara bit his lip and was silent for a time. Then he said, ‘There’s no point in hiding the truth – I don’t think we’ve got a cat in hell’s chance. If they bust across the bridge and we’re as defenceless as we are now, we won’t have a hope.’ He waved his hand at the terrain. ‘There’s just one chance – if we split up, every man for himself heading in a different direction, then they’ll have to split up, too. This is rough country and one of us might get away to tell what happened to the rest. But that’s pretty poor consolation.’
‘Then why did you decide to fight?’ she said in wonder.
O’Hara chuckled. ‘Armstrong put up some pretty cogent arguments,’ he said, and told her about it. Then he added, ‘But I’d have fought anyway. I don’t like those boys across the river; I don’t like what they do to people. It makes no difference if their skins are yellow, white or brown – they’re all of the same stripe.’
‘Señor Forester was telling me that you fought together in Korea,’ Benedetta said.
‘We might have – we probably did. He was in an American squadron which we flew with sometimes. But I never met him.’
‘It must have been terrible,’ she said. ‘All that fighting.’
‘It wasn’t too bad,’ said O’Hara. ‘The fighting part of it.’ He smiled. ‘You do get used to being shot at, you know. I think that people can get used to anything if it goes on long enough – most things, anyway. That’s the only way wars can be fought – because people can adapt and treat the craziest things as normal. Otherwise they couldn’t go through with it.’
She nodded. ‘I know. Look at us here. Those men shoot at us and Miguel shoots back – he regards it as the normal thing to do.’
‘It is the normal thing to do,’ said O’Hara harshly. ‘The human being is a fighting animal; it’s that quality which has put him where he is – the king of this planet.’ His lips twisted. ‘It’s also the thing that’s maybe holding him back from bigger things.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘Christ, this is no time for the philosophy of war – I’d better leave that to Armstrong.’
‘You said something strange,’ said Benedetta. ‘You said that Korea wasn’t too bad – the fighting part of it. What was bad, if it wasn’t the fighting?’
O’Hara looked into the distance. ‘It was when the fighting stopped – when I stopped fighting – when I couldn’t fight any more. Then it was bad.’
‘You were a prisoner? In the hands of the Chinese? Forester said something of that.’
O’Hara said slowly, ‘I’ve killed men in combat – in hot blood – and I’ll probably do it again, and soon, at that. But what those communist bastards can do intellectually and with cold purpose is beyond …’ He shook his head irritably. ‘I prefer not to talk about it.’
He had a sudden vision of the bland, expressionless features of the Chinese lieutenant, Feng. It was something that had haunted his dreams and woken him screaming ever since Korea. It was the reason he preferred to go to sleep in a sodden, dreamless and mindless coma. He said, ‘Let’s talk about you. You speak good English – where did you learn it?’
She was aware that she had trodden on forbidden and shaky ground. ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you, Señor O’Hara,’ she said contritely.
‘That’s all right. But less of the Señor O’Hara; my name is Tim.’
She smiled quickly. ‘I was educated in the United States, Tim. My uncle sent me there after Lopez made the revolution.’ She laughed. ‘I was taught English by a teacher very like Miss Ponsky.’
‘Now there’s a game old trout,’ said O’Hara. ‘Your uncle sent you? What about your parents?’
‘My mother died when I was a child. My father – Lopez had him shot.’
O’Hara sighed. ‘We both seem to be scraping on raw nerves, Benedetta. I’m sorry.’
She said sadly, ‘It’s the way the world is, Tim.’
He agreed sombrely. ‘Anyone who expects fair play in this world is a damn fool. That’s why we’re in this jam. Come on, let’s get back; this isn’t getting us anywhere.’ He pinched off his cigarette and carefully put the stub back in the packet.
As Benedetta rose she said, ‘Do you think that Señor Armstrong’s idea of a crossbow will work?’
‘I don’t,’ said O’Hara flatly. ‘I think that Armstrong is a romantic. He’s specialized as a theoretician in wars a thousand years gone, and I can’t think of anything more futile than that. He’s an ivory-tower man – an academician – bloodthirsty in a theoretical way, but the sight of blood will turn his stomach. And I think he’s a little bit nuts.’
III
Armstrong’s pipe gurgled as he watched Willis rooting about in the rubbish of the workshop. His heart was beating rapidly and he felt breathless, although the altitude did not seem to affect him as much as the previous time he had been at the hutted camp. His mind was turning over the minutiae of his profession – the science of killing without gunpowder. He thought coldly and clearly about the ranges, trajectories and penetrations that could be obtained from pieces of bent steel and twisted gut, and he sought to adapt the ingenious mechanisms so clearly diagrammed in his mind to the materials and needs of the moment. He looked up at the roof beams of the hut and a new idea dawned on him. But he put it aside – the crossbow came first.
Willis straightened, holding a flat spring. ‘This came from an auto – will it do for the bow?’
Armstrong tried to flex it and found it very stiff. ‘It’s very strong,’ he said. ‘Probably stronger than anything they had in the Middle Ages. This will be a very powerful weapon. Perhaps this is too strong – we must be able to bend it.’
‘Let’s go over that problem again,’ Willis said.
Armstrong drew on the back of an envelope. ‘For the light sporting bows they had a goat’s-foot lever, but that is not strong enough for the weapon we are considering. For the heavier military bows they had two methods of bending – the cranequin, a ratchet arranged like this, which was demounted for firing, and the other was a windlass built into the bow which worked a series of pulleys.’
Willis looked at the rough sketches and nodded. ‘The windlass is our best bet,’ he said. ‘That ratchet thing would be difficult to make. And if necessary we can weaken the spring by grinding it down.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Peabody?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Armstrong. ‘Let’s get on with this.’
‘You’d better find him,’ Willis said. ‘We’ll put him on to making arrows – that should be an easy job.’
‘Bolts or quarrels,’ said Armstrong patiently.
‘Whatever they’re called, let’s get on with it,’ Willis said.
They found Peabody taking it easy in one of the huts, heating a can of beans. Reluctantly he went along to the workshop and they got to work. Armstrong marvelled at the dexterity of Willis’s fingers as he contrived effective parts from impossible materials and worse tools. They found the old grindstone to be their most efficient cutting tool, although it tended to waste material. Armstrong sweated in turning the crank and could not keep it up for long, so they took it in turns, he and Willis silently, Peabody with much cursing.
They ripped out electric wiring from a hut and tore down conduit tubing. They cut up reinforcing steel into lengths and slotted the ends to take flights. It was cold and their hands were numb and the blood oozed from the cuts made when their makeshift tools slipped.
They worked all night and dawn was brightening the sky as Armstrong took the completed weapon in his hands and looked at it dubiously. ‘It’s a bit different from how I imagined it, but I think it will do.’ He rubbed his eyes wearily. I’ll take it down now – they might need it.’
Willis slumped against the side of the hut. ‘I’ve got an idea for a better one,’ he said. ‘That thing will be a bastard to cock. But I must get some sleep first – and food.’ His voice trailed to a mumble and he blinked his eyes rapidly.
All that night the bridge had been illuminated by the headlamps of the enemy vehicles and it was obviously hopeless to make a sortie in an attempt to cut the cables. The enemy did not work on the bridge at night, not relishing being in a spotlight when a shot could come out of the darkness.
Forester was contemptuous of them. ‘The goddam fools,’ he said. ‘If we can’t hit them in daylight then it’s sure we can’t at night – but if they’d any sense they’d see that they could spot our shooting at night and they’d send a man on to the bridge to draw our fire – then they’d fill our man full of holes.’
But during the daylight hours the enemy had worked on the bridge, and had been less frightened of the shots fired at them. No one had been hit and it had become obvious that there was little danger other than that from a freakishly lucky shot. By morning there were but six bullets left for Rohde’s pistol and there were nine more planks in the bridge.
