"It's no good sending horsemen. It worked once, it's not going to work
again." Jake said nothing, but frowned heavily at the complicated
designs that Gareth had traced on the sandy earth.
"We have conditioned the tank commander. The next look he gets at an
armoured car, and he's going to be after it like-"
"Like a long dog after a bitch, "said Jake.
"Exactly," Gareth nodded. "I was just going to say that myself"
"You already did, "Jake reminded him.
"We'll send out one car one is enough and hold another in reserve
here." Gareth touched the sand map. "If anything goes wrong with the
first car"
"Like a high-explosive shell between the buttocks?" Jake asked.
"Precisely. If that happens the second car pops in like this and keeps
them coming on."
"The way you tell it, it sounds great."
"Piece of cake, old son, nothing to it. Trust the celebrated Swales
genius."
"Who takes the first car? "Jake asked.
"Spin you for it," Gareth suggested, and a silver Maria Theresa
appeared as if by magic in his hand.
"Heads," said Jake.
"Oh, tough luck, old son. Heads it is." Jake's hand was quick as a
striking mamba. It snapped closed on Gareth's wrist and held his hand
in which the silver coin was cupped.
"I say," protested Gareth. "Surely you don't believe that I might and
then he shrugged resignedly.
"No offence," Jake assured him, turned Gareth's hand towards him and
examined the coin cupped in his palm.
"Lovely lady, Theresa," murmured Gareth. "Lovely high forehead,
very sensual mouth bet she was a real goer, what?" Jake released his
wrist, and stood up, dusting his breeches to cover his embarrassment.
"Come on, Greg. We'd better get ready," he called across to where the
young Harari was supervising the preparations taking place on the
higher ground above where the cars were parked.
"Good luck, old son," Gareth called after them. "Keep your head well
down." Jake Barton sat on the edge of Priscilla's turret with his long
legs dangling into the hatch, and he looked up at the mountains.
Only their lower slopes were visible, rising steeply into the vast
towering mass of cloud that rose sheer into the sky.
The cloud mass bulged, swelling forward and spilling with the slow
viscosity of treacle down the harsh ranges of rock. The mountains had
disappeared, swallowed by the cloud monster, and the soft mass heaved
like a belly digesting its prey.
For the first time since they had entered the Danakil, the sun was
obscured. The cold came off the clouds in gusts, touching Jake with
icy fingers of air, so that the gooseflesh pimpled his muscular
forearms and he shivered briefly.
Gregorius sat beside him on the turret, looking up also at the silver
and dark blue of the thunderheads.
"The big rains will begin now."
"Here?"
"No, not down here in the desert, but upon the mountains the rain will
fall with great fury." For a few moments longer, Jake stared up at the
pinnacles and glaring slopes of grandeur and menace, then he turned his
back upon them and swept the rolling tree-dotted plains to the
eastward. As yet, there was no) sign of the Italian advance that the
scouts had reported, and he turned again and focused his binoculars on
the lower slopes of the gorge at the point from which Gareth would
signal the enemy's movements to him. There was nothing to be seen but
broken rock and the tumbled slopes of scree and rubble.
He dropped his scrutiny lower to where the last small dunes of red sand
lapped like wavelets against the great rock reef of the mountains.
There were wrinkles in the surface of the plain, sparsely covered with
the pale seared desert grasses, but in their troughs thick coarse bush
had taken root. The bush was tall and dense enough to hide the
hundreds of patiently waiting Harari under its cover.
Gareth had worked out the method of dealing with the Italian tanks, and
it was he who had sent Gregorius up the gorge to the village of Sardi
with a gang of a hundred men and fifty camels. Under Greg's
direction,
they had torn up the rails from the shunting yard of the railway
station, packed the heavy steel rails on to the camels and brought them
down the perilous path to the desert floor.
Gareth had explained how the rails were to be used, split his force
into gangs of twenty men each and exercised them with the rails until
they were as efficient as he could hope for. All that was needed now
was for Priscilla the Pig to lead the Italian tanks into the low
dunes.
Without armour, Gareth estimated they could hold the Italians for a
week at the mouth of the gorge. His order of battle placed the
Harari on the left and centre, in good positions that interlocked with
those of the Galla on the right flank. The Vickers guns had lanes of
fire laid down that would make any infantry assault by the Italians
suicidal without armoured cover.
They would have to blast their way into the gorge with artillery and
aerial bombardment. It would take them a week at the least that is, if
they could dissuade Ras Golam from attacking the Italians, a task which
promised to be difficult, for the old Ras's fighting blood was coursing
