‘Quickly!’ Smith shouted. ‘Telephone. Surgeon to the sick-bay.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Colonel Weissner. They got him twice. Through the lungs. For God’s sake, don’t just stand there!’
‘But — but the post-bus!’ the sergeant protested. ‘We had a call from — ‘
‘Drunk, by God!’ Smith swore savagely. ‘He’ll be court-martialled in the morning.’ His voice dropped menacingly. ‘And you, if the Colonel dies. Move!’
Smith engaged gear and drove off, still at walking pace. The sergeant, reassured by the sight of a major’s uniform, the fact that the bus was moving into the barracks, the slow speed with which it was moving and, above all, by the authoritative clamour of the Alpine horn which Smith still had not switched off, ran for the nearest phone.
Still crawling along in first gear, Smith carefully edged the post-bus through the press of men and machines, past a column of booted and gauntleted soldiers mounted on motorcycles, past armoured vehicles and trucks, all with engines already running, some already moving towards the gates — but not moving as quickly towards the gates as Smith would have wished. Ahead of the post-bus was a group of officers, most of them obviously senior, talking animatedly. Smith slowed down the bus even more and leaned from the window.
‘They’re trapped!’ he called excitedly. ‘Upstairs in “Zum Wilden Hirsch”. They’ve got Colonel Weissner as hostage. Hurry, for God’s sake!’
He broke off as he suddenly recognised one of the officers as the Alpenkorps captain to whom in his temporary capacity of Major Bernd Himmler, he’d spoken in ‘Zum Wilden Hirsch’ earlier that evening. A second later the recognition was mutual, the captain’s mouth fell open in total incredulity and before he had time to close it Smith’s foot was flat on the accelerator and the bus heading for the southern gates, soldiers flinging themselves to both sides to avoid the scything sweep of the giant snow-plough. Such was the element of surprise that fully thirty yards had been covered before most of the back windows of the bus were holed and broken, the shattering of glass mingling with the sound of the ragged fusillade of shots from behind. And then Smith, wrenching desperately on the wheel, came careering through the southern gates back on to the main road, giving them at least temporary protection from the sharp-shooters on the parade ground.
But they had, it seemed, only changed from the frying pan to the fire. Temporary protection they might have obtained from one enemy — but from another and far deadlier enemy they had no protection at all. Smith all but lost control of the bus as something struck a glancing blow low down on his cab door, ricocheted off into the night with a viciously screaming whine and exploded in a white Sash of snow-flurried light less than fifty yards ahead.
‘The Tiger tank,’ Schaffer shouted. That goddamned 88-millimetre — ‘
‘Get down!’ Smith jack-knifed down and to one side of the wheel until his eyes were only an inch above the foot of the windscreen. ‘That one was low. The next one — ‘
The next one came through the top of the back door, traversed the length of the bus and exited through the front of the roof, just above the windscreen. This time there was no explosion.
‘A dud?’ Schaffer said hopefully. ‘Or maybe a dummy practice — ‘
‘Dummy nothing!’ Upright again, Smith was swinging the bus madly, dangerously, from side to side of the road in an attempt to confuse the tank gunner’s aim. ‘Armour-piercing shells, laddie, designed to go through two inches of steel plate in a tank before they explode.’ He winced and ducked low as a third shell took out most of the left-hand windows of the bus, showering himself and Schaffer with a flying cloud of shattered glass fragments. ‘Just let one of those shells strike a chassis member, instead of thin sheet metal, or the engine block, or the snow-plough — ‘
‘Don’t!’ Schaffer begged. ‘Just let it creep up on me all unbeknownst, like.’ He paused, then continued: ‘Taking his time, isn’t he? Lining up for the Sunday one.’
‘No.’ Smith glanced in the rear-view mirror and steadied the wildly swaying bus up on a steadier course. ‘Never thought I’d be glad to see a few car-loads or track loads of Alpenkorps coming after me.’ He changed into top gear and pushed the accelerator to the floor. ‘I’m happy to make an exception this time.’
Schaffer turned and looked through the shattered rear windows. He could count at least three pairs of headlights on the road behind them, with two others swinging out through the southern gates: between them, they effectively blotted the post-bus from the view of the tank gunner.
‘Happy isn’t the word for it. Me, I’m ecstatic. Tiger tanks are one thing but little itsy-bitsy trucks are another.’ Schaffer strode rapidly down the central aisle, passing by Mary, Heidi and Carnaby-Jones, all of whom were struggling rather shakily to their feet, and looked at the crates stacked in the rear seats.
‘Six crates!’ he said to Heidi. ‘And we asked for only two. Honey, you’re going to make me the happiest man alive.’ He opened the rear door and began to empty the contents of the crate on to the road. A few of the bottles just bounced harmlessly on ridges of hard-packed snow, but the speed of the bus was now such that most of them shattered on impact.
The first of the two leading pursuit cars was within three hundred yards of the bus when it ran into the area of broken glass. From Schaffer’s point of view it was impossible to tell what exactly happened, but such indications as could be gathered by long-range sight and sound were satisfying enough. The headlights of the leading car suddenly began to slew violently from side to side, the screeching of brakes was clearly audible above the sound of the post-bus’s diesel, but not nearly as loud as the rending crash of metal as the second car smashed into the rear of the first. For a few seconds both cars seemed locked together, then they skidded wildly out of control, coming to rest with the nose of the first car in the right hand ditch, the tail of the second in the left hand ditch. The headlamps of both cars had failed just after the moment of impact but there was more than sufficient illumination from the lamps of the first of the tracks coming up behind them to show that the road was completely blocked.
‘Neat,’ Schaffer said admiringly. ‘Very neat, Schaffer.’ He called to Smith: That’ll hold them, boss.’
‘Sure, it’ll hold them,’ Smith said grimly. ‘It’ll hold them for all of a minute. You can’t burst heavy truck tyres that way and it won’t take them long to bull-doze those cars out of the way. Heidi?’
Heidi walked forward, shivering in the icy gale blowing through both the shattered front and side windows. ‘Yes, Major?’
‘How far to the turn off?’
‘A mile.’
‘And to the wooden bridge — what do you call it, Zur Alten Briicke?’
‘Another mile.’
“Three minutes. At the most, that.’ He raised his voice. Three minutes, Lieutenant. Can you do it?’
‘I can do it.’ Schaffer was already lashing together packages of plastic explosives. He used transparent adhesive tape, leaving long streamers dangling from the bound packages. He had just secured the last package in position when he lurched heavily as the post-bus, now clear of the Blau See and running through a pine forest, swung abruptly to the left on to a side road.
‘Sorry,’ Smith called. ‘Almost missed that one. Less than a mile, Lieutenant.’
‘No panic;,’ Schaffer said cheerfully. He fished out a knife to start cutting the fuses to their ‘shortest possible length, then went very still indeed as he glanced through where the rear windows had once been. In the middle distance were the vertically wavering beams of powerful headlights, closing rapidly. The cheerfulness left Schaffer’s voice. ‘Well, maybe there is a little bit panic, at that. I’ve got bad news, boss.’
‘And I have a rear mirror. How far, Heidi?’
‘Next corner.’
While Schaffer worked quickly on the fuses, Smith concentrated on getting the post-bus round the next corner as quickly as possible without leaving the road. And then they were on and round the corner and the bridge was no more than a hundred yards away.
It was not, Smith thought, a bridge he would have chosen to have crossed with a bicycle, much less a six ton bus. Had it been a bridge crossing some gently meandering stream, then, yes, possibly: but not a bridge such as this one was, a fifty-foot bridge surfaced with untied railway sleepers, spanning a ravine two hundred feet in depth and supported by trestles, very ancient wooden trestles which, from what little he could see of them from his acute angle of approach, he wouldn’t have trusted to support the tables at the vicar’s garden party.