Kane fell forward on to his face and Jamal’s strong hands lifted him and dragged him towards the cave. They stumbled inside and Cunningham crouched at the entrance, his face clearly illuminated by a broad tracer of moonlight which streamed through, touching the entrance to the passage.
‘That was a pretty close-run thing,’ Kane said after a while.
Cunningham nodded. ‘We couldn’t pour it in hot and strong down there. I was frightened we might hit the women.’
Kane nodded. ‘That’s his trump card and Skiros knows it.’
Several bullets whined through the entrance and spattered against the cave wall and he looked out cautiously. The floor of the valley was dappled with moonlight, and the enemy were clearly visible as they advanced from boulder to boulder.
‘Wait until they’re half-way up the slope and fire when I give the order,’ Kane said.
They waited in silence. Skiros was in the lead and once he looked up towards them, the moonlight falling clearly on his face. Kane grunted. ‘I’ll say this for the bastard. He’s got guts.’
And then Skiros had reached the large boulder splashed with moonlight which Kane had chosen as the half-way mark. ‘Now!’ he said, and pressed the trigger.
The three guns chattered in unison and there were screams and cries of dismay from below as several Arabs rolled down the slope to the floor of the valley.
The rest of them retreated fast, followed by Skiros, cursing at the top of his voice in German.
In the silence which followed, Cunningham sighed deeply. ‘Well, that looks like that for the moment.’
Kane shook his head. ‘He isn’t going to put up with much of this. I’ve a feeling he’ll come up with something nasty at any moment.’
As he spoke, Skiros walked forward. ‘Kane,’ he called. ‘I’m not going to waste words on you. I’ll give you fifteen minutes to come down with your hands up. If you don’t, something unpleasant will happen to the ladies. I’m sure you and Cunningham don’t want that.’
Kane touched Jamal on the shoulder and the three of them got up and moved back from the entrance. ‘He’s got us cold,’ Cunningham said. ‘We can’t let him hurt the women.’
Kane shook his head and his eyes were grim. ‘If he wants to harm them, he will and nothing we do will have any effect on him.’ He shook his head. ‘I think he’s stalling. He’s probably got some scheme cooking.’
At that moment there was a movement high up on the face of the cliff outside and the stones rattled down on to the ledge in a fine spray.
‘I told you the bastard had something up his sleeve.’ Kane said, and then a grenade rolled inside the entrance of the cave, clearly visible in the patch of moonlight.
He turned, pushing Cunningham and the Somali violently backwards into the narrow entrance of the tomb and followed them, dropping to his hands and knees.
The grenade exploded, bringing down a shower of stones into the entrance, then the whole cliff seemed to tremble and the roof started to cave in.
Muller stared up at the cloud of dust clear in the moonlight. ‘Oh my God. Now what?’
‘We get the hell out of here,’ Skiros said. ‘Back to Dahrein. Leave on Selim’s dhow. At least that bastard Kane and his friends have had it. I hope he takes a long time to die entombed in there.’
‘But Berlin, the Fiihrer? What will happen to us?’
‘Nothing, you fool. I’ll get straight on the radio; tell Ritter the Catalina crashed. Hardly our fault and all they need to know.’
‘And the women?’
‘They can come with us for the time being. Now pull yourself together and let’s get moving.’
He turned and went back down to the camp, waving Selim and the remaining Bedouins to follow him.
In Berlin, Canaris was standing at the window of his office having a cognac when there was a knock on the door and Ritter entered. The young major was pale and obviously disturbed.
‘Bad news, Hans?’
‘Operation Sheba, Herr Admiral. I’ve had a rather garbled message from Skiros. He’s closing down and getting out. There was trouble of some sort, the Catalina destroyed, Romero and his men dead.’