“He’s right, you know,” Griffiths said. He called softly: “Outside, all of you. No talking. Straight up the face of the hill and then cut across. That’s best, eh, Bentall?”
“That’s best.” I stuck the note into my shirt pocket, stood to one side to let the others file quietly out. I peered at Fleck. “What you got there?”
“A rifle.” He turned and spoke softly, and two men came round the corner of the blockhouse, dragging a third. “LeClerc had a man on guard. Gun belongs to him. Everybody out? All right, Krishna, inside with him.”
“Dead?”
“I don’t think so.” Fleck didn’t sound worried one way or the other. There came the sound of something heavy being dumped unceremoniously on the concrete floor inside and the two Indians came out. Fleck pulled the door quietly to and locked it.
“Come on, come on,” Griffiths whispered impatiently. “Time we were off.”
“You go off,” I said. “I’m going to get Miss Hopeman out of the armoury.”
He was already ten feet away, but he stopped, turned and came back to me.
“Are you mad?” he said. “Fleck said there’s no key. That moon comes out any minute now. You’ll be bound to be seen. You won’t have a chance. Come on and don’t be so damned stupid.”
“I’ll take the chance. Leave me.”
“You know you’re almost certain to be seen,” Griffiths said softly. “If you’re out they’ll know we’re all out. They will know that there’s only one place we could go. We have women with us, it’s a mile and a half to that cave entrance, we would be bound to be intercepted and cut off. What it amounts to, Bentall, is that you are prepared to risk the almost certain loss of all our lives on the selfish one in a thousand chance of doing something for Miss Hopeman. Is that it, Bentall? Is that how selfish you are?”
“I’m selfish all right,” I said at last. “But I’m not all that bad, I just hadn’t thought of it. I come with you to the point where there is no further possibility of interception. Then I turn back. Don’t make the mistake of trying to stop me.”
“You’re quite crazy, Bentall.” There was anger and worry both in Griffith’s voice. “All you’ll do is lose your life, and lose it to no purpose.”
“It’s my life.”
We moved straight towards the face of the hill, all in a closely bunched group. No one talked, not even in whispers, though LeClerc and his men were then well over half a mile away. After we’d gone about three hundred yards the hill started to rise steeply. We’d made as much offing as we could so now we turned south and began to skirt the base of the mountain. This was where things began to become dangerous, we had to pass by the hangar and the buildings to get to the cave entrance, and just behind the hangar a sharp spur of the mountain rose above the surrounding level and would force us to come within two hundred yards of where LeClerc and his men were working.
Things went well in the first ten minutes, the moon stayed behind the cloud longer than we had any right to hope, but it wasn’t going to stay there all night, eighty per cent of the sky was quite free from cloud and in those latitudes even the starlight was a factor to be reckoned with. I touched Griffiths on the arm.
“Moon’s coming out any second now. There’s a slight fold in the mountain about a hundred yards further on. If we hurry we might make it.”
We made it, just as the moon broke through, bathing the mountain and the plain below in a harsh white glare. But we were safe, for the moment at least, the ridge that blocked us off from the view of the hangar was only three feet high, but it was enough–Heck and his two Indians, I could now see, were dressed in clothes that were completely sodden. I looked at him and said: “Did you have to take a bath before you came?”
“Damn guard sat on the pier all night with a rifle in his hands,” Fleck growled. “Checking us, checking to see we didn’t go near the radio. We had to slip over the far side, about one o’clock when the moon went in, and swim for it, maybe a quarter mile along the beach. Henry and the boy, of course, went the other way.” I had asked that Henry would make straight for the cave, hurry through the chamber that had served as an armoury and bring back amatol blocks, primers, RDX, chemical fuses, anything he could find. If they were still there, that was: there would certainly be neither arms nor ammunition left now, and though the explosives would be a poor substitute for arms at least they would be better than nothing.
“Getting the keys was dicey,” Fleck went on, “and there were only the two-the inner and outer blockhouse doors. Then we tried to force the door and window on the armoury to get Miss Hopeman out. It was hopeless.” He paused. “I don’t feel so good about that, Bentall. But we tried, honest to God, we tried. But we couldn’t make a noise, you understand that.”
“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.