The Dark Crusader (34 page)

"It's not your fault, Fleck. I know you tried."

"Well, anyway, we came to the blockhouse just as the moon came out. Lucky for us it did. LeClerc had left a guard. We had to hide there two solid hours waiting till it got dark so we could rush him. I've a pistol, so has Krishna here, but the water got through the wrappings. Couldn't have used them anyway."

"You did damn well, Captain Fleck. And we have a gun. Any good with it?"

"Haven't the eyes for it. Want it?"

"Hell no, I couldn't fire a pop-gun tonight." I turned and located Griffiths. "Any good shots among your men, Captain?"

"As it happens, I have. Chalmers here"-he gestured towards the red-haired lieutenant over whose refusal to answer a question a seaman had been shot-"is one of the best shots in the Royal Navy. Would you care to have a go at them, Chalmers, if the need arises?"

"Yes, sir," Chalmers said softly, "I would like that." A cloud was approaching the moon. It wasn't much of a cloud as clouds go, it wasn't half as big as I would have liked it to be, but it was going to have to do, there wasn't another anywhere near the moon.

"Half a minute, Captain Griffiths," I said, "Then we're off."

"We'll have to hurry," he said worriedly. "Single file is best, I think. Fleck to lead the way, then the women and the scientists, so that they can make a break for the cave if anything happens. My men and I will bring up the rear."

"Chalmers and I will do that."

"So that you fade away and go down to the armoury when the moment comes, is that it, Bentall?"

"Come on," I said, "it's time to go."

We almost made it, but Bentall was around and nothing ever went right with Bentall around. We had safely passed the hangar where the two gantry cranes were slowly lowering the Black Shrike into its cradle, and were a good two hundred yards clear when one of the women gave a high-pitched cry of pain. We found later that she'd slipped and sprained a wrist. I glanced back, saw every man in the brightly illuminated space before the hangar stop what they had been doing and whirl round. Within three seconds as many men started running in our direction while others raced for their parked guns.

"Run for it," Griffiths shouted. "Go like hell."

"Not you, Chalmers," I said.

"Not me," he said softly. "No, not me." He sunk down on one knee, lifted, cocked and fired the rifle all in one smooth motion. I saw a puff of white jump up from the concrete two yards ahead of the nearest Chinese. Chalmers adjusted the sights with one quick turn.

"Shooting low," he said unhurriedly. "It won't be low the next time."

It wasn't. With his second shot the leading guard flung his rifle into the air, then pitched forward on his face. A second died, a third rolled over and over like a man in agony and then suddenly all the lights in the front of the hangar went out. Someone had just got on to the fact that they made a perfect target silhouetted against the flood-lit concrete.

"That's enough," Griffiths shouted. "Get back. They'll be fanning out, coming towards us. Get back!"

It was time to get back, nothing surer. A dozen guns, some of them automatic carbines, had opened up on us now. They couldn't see us, it was too dark for that, but they had us roughly located from Chalmers' gun-flashes, and bullets were beginning to smash into the solid rock all around us, half of them lifting in screaming ricochet. Griffiths and Chalmers turned and ran, and so did I, but in the opposite direction, back the way we'd come. I didn't see I'd any chance of getting back to the armoury, the moonlight was beginning to filter through the ragged edges of the cloud, but if I did get back the diversion made a perfect cover-up for smashing my way into the armoury. I took four steps then pitched my length on the rock as something smashed into my knee with tremendous force. Dazed, I pushed myself shakily to my feet, took one step and fell heavily again. I wasn't conscious of any great pain, it was just that my leg refused to support me.

"You bloody fool! Oh, you bloody fool!" Griffiths was by my side, Chalmers close behind him. "What's happened?"

"My leg. They got my leg." I wasn't thinking about my leg, I wasn't caring about my leg, all I was caring about was that my last chance to get to the armoury was gone. Marie was there, alone. She was in the armoury, waiting for me.

Marie would know I would come for her. She knew Johnny Bentall was every kind of fool there was, but she knew I wouldn't leave her to LeClerc. I was on my feet again, Griffiths supporting me, but it was no good, the leg was paralysed, completely without power.

"Are you deaf?" Griffiths shouted. "I'm asking if you can walk."

"No. I'm all right, leave me. I'm going down to the armoury." I didn't know what I was saying, I was too dazed to express the difference between a wish and an intention. "I'm really all right. You must hurry."

"Oh, God!" Griffiths took me by one arm, Chalmers by the other, and they half-hustled, half-dragged me along the flank of the mountain. The others were already out of sight, but after a minute Brookman and a seaman came hurrying back to see what had happened, and lent a hand with the job of dragging me along. I was a great help to everyone. Jonah Bentall. Come with me and you come a cropper. I wondered vaguely what I'd ever done to deserve luck like this.

We arrived at the cave almost three minutes after the last of the others were safely inside. I was told this, but I don't remember it, I don't remember anything about the last half mile. I was told later that we wouldn't have made it had the moon not broken through and Chalmers held up the Chinese by picking off two of them as they came over the last ridge. I was told, too, that I talked to myself all the way, and when they begged me to be quiet in case the pursuers caught us I kept saying: "Who? Me? But I wasn't talking," very hurt and indignant. Or so they told me. I don't remember anything.

What I do remember was coming to inside the cave, very close to the entrance. I was lying against the wall, and the first thing I saw was another man lying beside me, face down. One of the Chinese. He was dead. I lifted my eyes and saw Griffiths, Brookman, Fleck, Henry and some Petty Officer I didn't know, on the other side, pressed close against the wall. At least I thought it was them, it was still dark inside the tunnel. There was room enough for them to shelter. Although the tunnel had been four feet wide and seven high all the way to the end when I'd followed it, the last few feet where Hewell and his men had broken through was no more than three feet high and barely eighteen inches in width. I looked around to see where the others were, but I could see nothing. They would be a hundred yards back in the cavern Hewell had excavated for the temporary storage of the tunnelled-out limestone. I looked out again through the tiny opening of the tunnel. The dawn was in the sky.

"How long have I been lying here?" I asked suddenly. My voice sounded in my ears like the husky quivering of an old old man, but maybe it was just the echo inside the cave.

"About an hour." Funny, Griffith's voice didn't sound a bit like an old man's. "Brookman says you'll be all right. Chipped kneecap, that's all. You'll be walking again in a week."

"Did we-did we all get here all right?"

"Everyone made it." Sure everyone made it. Marie Hope-man didn't make it. Why should they care? What was all the world to me was only a name to them, Marie Hopeman was down there alone in the armoury and I would never see her again but she was only a name. It didn't really matter if you were only a name. And I would never see her again, never. Never was a long time. Even in this last thing, this most important thing I'd ever know, I'd failed. I'd failed Marie. And now it was never. Never was going to be for always.

"Bentall!" Griffith's voice was sharp. "Are you all right?"

"I'm all right."

"You're talking to yourself again."

"Am I?" I reached out and touched the dead man. "What happened?"

"LeClerc sent him in. I don't know whether he thought we'd retreated to the other end of the cave or whether it was a kind of suicide mission. Chalmers waited till he was all the way in. And then we had two guns."

"And what else. An hour is a long time."

"They tried firing into the cave after that. But they had to stand in front if they weren't going to do it blindly. They soon gave it up. Then they tried to blow up the entrance, to seal it off."

"They would try that," I said. "It wouldn't have made much difference, we could have got out. What they meant to do, if things had gone their way, would have been to blow in the tunnel roof for a hundred yards or so. That would really have finished us." I wondered vaguely why I was saying this, none of it mattered anymore.

"They set off one charge, above the entrance," Griffiths was continuing. "Nothing much happened. Then we heard them working just outside, using picks to make holes for more charges. We flung out a couple of fused amatol blocks. I think they lost some men. They didn't try anything like that again."

"The note," I said. "Didn't you tell them about the note."

"Of course," Griffiths said impatiently. I had told Fleck to leave a copy of a faked radio message on the wireless table, saying: 'Message acknowledged: H.M.S. Kandahar proceeding high speed Suva-Vardu. Expect arrive 8:30 a.m.' The inference would be that Fleck had sent an S.O.S. by radio. "We told LeClerc a naval vessel was coming. He wouldn't believe us, saying it was impossible, the sentry had been there to prevent messages from being sent, but Fleck said he'd been asleep. Maybe the sentry was one of those killed, I don't know. We told him he'd find the message on the schooner. He sent someone to fetch it. LeClerc couldn't afford to ignore it, it might mean he had only three hours left. Less, for Fleck says the Captain of the
Grasshopper,
without him to pilot it in, wouldn't attempt the gap in the reef before daybreak."

"LeClerc would be pleased."

"He was mad. He was out there talking to us and we could hear his voice shaking with fury. He kept asking for you but we told him you were unconscious. He said he would shoot Miss Hopeman if you didn't come out, so I told
him
you were dying."

"That would cheer him up," I said drearily.

"It seemed to," Griffiths admitted. "Then he went away. Perhaps he took his men with him. We don't know."

"Yes," Fleck said heavily. "And the first man to stick his head out the entrance gets it blown off."

Time passed. The light at the mouth of the tunnel steadily brightened through all stages of dawn, until finally we could see a washed-out patch of blue. The sun was up.

"Griffiths." It was LeClerc's voice from outside and it had us all jumping. "Do you hear me?"

"I hear you."

"Is Bentall there?"

Griffiths waved a cautionary hand to silence me, but I ignored it.

"I'm here, LeClerc."

"I thought you were dying, Bentall?" His voice held a vicious overtone, the first time I'd heard anything of the kind from him.

"What do you want?"

"I want you, Bentall."

"I'm here. Come in and take me out."

"Listen, Bentall. Don't you want to save Miss Hopeman's life?"

This was it. I should have expected this last desperate move to force my hand. LeClerc wanted me badly, he wanted me very badly indeed.

"And then you've got us both, is that it, LeClerc?" I'd no doubt that was it.

"I give you my word. I'll send her in."

"Don't listen," Captain Griffiths warned me in an urgent whisper. "Once he's got you, he'll use you as bait to get someone like me out, and so on. Or he'll just kill you both."

I knew which it would be. He'd just kill us both. He wasn't interested in the others, but he had to kill us both. Me, at any rate. But it was a chance I had to take. Maybe he wouldn't dispose of us straight away, he might take us aboard the ship with him, it was one last chance, it wasn't a chance in a million, but it was a chance. That was all I asked, a chance. I might save us both yet and as the thought came I knew I never could. It wasn't even that million to one chance, but it was like what Marie had said, sitting in the electric chair, and the man pulling the switch, and still hoping. I said: "All right, LeClerc, I'm coming out."

I hadn't seen the signal. Fleck, Henry and Griffiths reached me in the same instant, pinning me to the ground. For a few seconds I struggled like a madman, but I hadn't the strength left to struggle any longer.

"Let me go," I whispered. "For God's sake let me go."

"We're not letting you go," Griffiths said. He raised his voice. "All right, LeClerc, you can leave. We've got Bentall, and we're keeping him. You know why."

"Then I shall have to kill Miss Hopeman," LeClerc said savagely. "I'm going to kill her, do you hear, Bentall? I'm going to kill her. But not today, not for some time yet. Or perhaps she'll kill herself first. Goodbye, Bentall. Thank you for the Black Shrike."

We heard the sound of departing footsteps and then there was only the silence ... The three men took their hands away and Fleck said: "I'm sorry, boy, I'm more sorry than I can say."

I didn't answer. I just sat there, wondering why the world didn't come to an end. By and by I heaved myself painfully on to my hands and one knee and said: "I'm going out."

"Don't be so damn stupid." I could see by the expression on Griffith's face that he was regaining his first impression of me, one that had been far from favourable. "They'll be waiting."

"He can't afford to wait any longer. It's what time, now?"

"Almost seven."

"He'll be on his way. He wouldn't risk the Black Shrike for a chance at my life. Don't try to stop me, please. I've something to do."

I crawled out through the narrow mouth of the tunnel and looked around. For a few seconds I couldn't see anything, the shooting stabs from my kneecap blurred my eyes and put everything out of focus. Then the focus came back. There was no one there. No living person, that was.

There were three dead men lying outside the entrance. Two Chinese and Hewell, of course it would have been Hewell who would have been supervising the placing of the charges to blow in the mouth of the tunnel, and the exploding blocks of amatol had torn half the giant's chest away, anything less than that would never have taken his life. I saw the metallic snout of a gun barrel sticking out from under his body. I bent and pulled it clear with difficulty. It was fully loaded.