reacted swiftly, swinging the car into a tight lefthander that had her
up on two wheels, sliding broadside in the sand, displaying to the
Italians the huge scarlet crosses on the hull.
"Let me have your shirt," Jake yelled again. It was the only white
cloth they had with them. "I need a flag of truce!"
"It's all I have on," Vicky shrieked back. "I'm bare underneath."
"You want to be modest and dead?" howled Jake. "They'll start
shooting any moment now." And she steered with one hand as she
unbuttoned her shirt front and leaned forward in the seat to yank the
tails out of her skirt. She shrugged out of it and reached up into the
turret to hand him the bundled shirt. Each time they hit another bump,
Vicky's breasts bounced like rubber balls, a sight that distracted Jake
for a hundredth part of a second before chivalry and duty recalled him
and he stood high in the turret, arms stretched above his head,
streaming the white shirt like a flag, balancing with a sailor's legs
against the wild antics of the car.
To the hundreds of men who lined the parapet of the Italian trenches
Jake displayed two emotive symbols, the red cross and the white flag,
symbols so powerful that even men in the white-hot must of the blood
lust hesitated with their fingers still curled about the triggers of
the machine guns.
"It's working," shrieked Vicky, and swung the car on to its original
heading, almost throwing Jake from his precarious roost in the turret.
He dropped the shirt and clutched wildly at the coamings of the turret,
the shirt floating away like a white egret on the wing.
"There she is," Vicky cried again. The carcass of the white stallion
lay dead ahead, as she braked hard and then pulled the car to a
standstill beside it, interposing the armoured body of the car between
the pile of bodies and the watching Italians on the ridge.
Jake dropped down into the cab and crawled back to open the rear double
doors of the car, knocking open the locking handles as he called over
his shoulder.
"Keep your hatch battened and don't, for chrissakes, show your head."
"I'll help you," Vicky stated boldly.
"The hell you will," snapped Jake, tearing his eyes off her magnificent
chest. "You'll stay where you are and keep the engine running." The
doors flew open and Jake tumbled headfirst out on to the sandy earth.
Spitting grit from his mouth, he crawled swiftly to the carcass of the
white horse. Close up, the hide was shaggy and flea-bitten, dappled
with faint patches of chestnut. On this pale background the bullet
holes were like dark red mouths where already the metallic blue flies
clustered delightedly.
The stallion lay heavily across Sara's lower body, pinning her face
down to the earth.
The naked boy child had been hit by one of the hooves as the horse
fell. The side of the tiny bald skull had been crushed, a deep
indentation above the temple into which a baseball would have fitted
neatly. There was no chance that he still lived and Jake transferred
his attention to the girl.
"Sara," he called, and she lifted herself on her elbows, looking back
at him from huge terrified dark eyes. Her face was smeared with dust,
the skin shaved from one cheek where she had slid against the ground,
exposing the pale pink meat from which lymph leaked in clear liquid
beads.
"Are you hit? "Jake reached her.
"I don't know," she whispered huskily, and he saw that the satin of her
breeches was soaked with dark blood. He placed both feet against the
carcass of the horse and tried to roll it off her legs, but the dead
weight of the animal was enormous. He would have to stand, taking his
chances with the guns.
Jake came to his feet and felt the cold fingers of fear brush lightly
along his spine as he turned his back to the nearest Italian trenches
and stooped to the horse.
Crouching with his weight balanced evenly on the balls of both feet, he
took the tail and the lower hind leg of the animal; lifting and turning
with all his strength, he began to roll the carcass off Sara's legs and
pelvis. She cried out in pain, such a sharp high-pitched shriek that
he had to stop.
She was praying incoherently in Amharic, weeping slow fat tears of
agony that cut tunnels through the pale dust on her cheeks.
Jake panted, "Once more I'm sorry," and he braced himself. At that
moment Vicky yelled from the car.
"Jake, they are coming! Hurry, oh God, please hurry!" Jake swung
around and ran to the car, peering over the high engine compartment.
With a long plume of pale dust boiling out from behind it, a large open
vehicle crowded with armed men was dropping swiftly down towards them
from the ridge.
"My God," grunted Jake, screwing up his eyes against the low blinding
rays of the morning sun. "It can't be!" But even at that range in the
dust and bad light, there was no mistaking the gracious and dignified
lines of a Rolls-Royce.
Jake was seized by a feeling of unreality that amid all this horror
appear something of such beauty.
"Hurry, Jake." Vicky's voice spurred him on, and he ran back to the
dead horse, seized its hind legs and began wrestling it on to its back
