Cry Wolf [047-011-4.8]
By: Wilbur Smith
Category: fiction action adventure
Synopsis:
"Run," he shouted. "Keep running." And he turned back to face the crippled animal as it launched itself from the ledge into the bed of the river. It was only then that Jake realized that he still carried a full bottle of Scrubbs Ammonia in his hand. The lion came bounding swiftly through the shallow stagnant pool towards him. Despite the wounds, it followed with lithe and sinuous menace. it was so close that he could see each stiff white whisker in the curled upper lip and hear the rattle of air in its throat. He let it come on, for to turn and run was suicide. At the last moment he reared back like a baseball pitcher and hurled the bottle.
Jake Barton is an American engineer, Gareth Swalles (a stylish Englishman with a nose for a quick deal. Both have always moved from one escapade to another. Now, as Mussolini prepares to annihilate the people of Ethiopia, the two adventurers come up against Vicky Camberwell, the beautiful but fiery reporter bent on espousing their cause. Striking a bargain with a beleaguered Ethiopian prince, the trio dares to run gauntlet guns and a batch of run-down armoured cars in a final, desperate gamble for freedom..
To Jake Barton, machinery was always feminine with all the female's fascination, wiles and bitchery.
So when he first saw them standing in a row beneath the spreading dark green foliage of the mango trees, they became for him the iron ladies.
There were five of them, standing aloof from the other heaps of worn-out and redundant equipment that His Majesty's Government was offering for sale. Although it was June and the cooler season between the monsoons, yet the heat on this cloudless morning in Dares Salaam was mounting like a force-fed furnace and Jake went thankfully into the shade of the mangoes to stand closer to the ladies and begin his examination.
He glanced around the enclosed yard, and noticed that he seemed to be the only one interested in the five vehicles.
The motley crowd of potential buyers was picking over the heaps of broken shovels and Picks, the rows of battered wheelbarrows and the other mounds of unidentifiable rubbish.
He turned his attention back to the ladies, as he slipped off the light tropical moleskin jacket he wore and hung it on the branch of a mango tree.
The ladies were aristocrats fallen on hard times, their hard but rakish lines were dulled by the faded and scratched paintwork and the cancerous blotches of rust that showed through. The foxy-faced fruit bats that hung inverted in the mango branches above them had splattered them with their dung, and oil and grease had oozed from their elderly joints and caked with dust in unsightly black streaks and blobs.
Jake knew their lineage and their history and as he laid aside the small carpet bag that held his tools, he reviewed it swiftly. Five fine pieces of craftsmanship lying rotting away on the fever coast of Tanganyika. The bodies and chassis had been built by Schreiner the stately high cupola in which the open mounting for the Maxim machine gun now glared like an empty eye-socket, the square sloping platform of the engine housing, with its heavy armour plate and the neat rows of rivets and the steel shutters that could be closed to protect the radiator against incoming enemy fire.
They stood tall on the metal bossed wheels with their solid rubber tyres, and Jake felt a sneaking regret that he would be the one to tear their engines out of them and toss aside the worn-out but gallant old bodies.
They did not deserve such cavalier treatment, these fighting iron ladies who in their youth had chased the wily German commander von Lettow-Vorbeck across the wide plains and over the fierce hills of East Africa. The thorns of the wilderness had deeply scarred the paintwork of the five armoured cars and there were places where rifle fire had glanced off their armour, leaving the distinctive dimple in the steel.
Those were their grandest days, streaming into battle with their cavalry pennants flying, dust billowing behind them, bounding and crashing through the don gas and ant bear holes, their machine guns blazing and the terrified German askaris scattering before them.
After that, the original engines had been replaced by the beautiful new 6 litre Bentleys, and they had begun the long decline of police patrol work on the border, chasing the occasional cattle raider and slowly being pounded by a succession of brutal drivers into the condition which had at last brought them here to the Government sale yards in this fiery May of the year of our Lord 1935. But Jake knew that even the savage abuse to which they had been subjected could not have destroyed the engines completely and that was what interested him.
He rolled up his sleeves like a surgeon about to begin his examination.
"Ready or not, girls, "he muttered, "here comes old Jake." He was a tall man with a big bony frame that was cramped in the confined area of the armoured car's body, but he worked with a quiet concentration so close to rapture that the discomfort went unnoticed. Jake's wide friendly mouth was pursed in a whistle that went on endlessly, the opening bars of "Tiger Rag" repeated over and over again, and his eyes were screwed up against the gloom of the interior.
He worked swiftly, checking the throttle and ignition settings of the controls, tracing out the fuel lines from the rear-mounted fuel tank, finding the cocks under the driver's seat and grunting with satisfaction. He scrambled out of the turret and dropped down the high side of the vehicle, pausing to wipe away with his forearm the thin trickle of sweat that broke from his thick curly black hair and ran down his cheek, then he hurried forward and knocked the clamps open on the side flaps of the armoured engine-cover.
"Oh sweet, sweet!" he whispered, as he saw the fine outlines of the old Bentley engine block beneath the layer of thick dust and greasy filth.
His hands with the big square palms and thick spatulate fingers went out to touch it with what was almost a caress.
"The bastards have beaten you up, darling," he whispered.
"But we will have you singing again as lovely as ever, that's a promise." He pulled the dipstick from the engine sump and took a drop of oil between his fingers.
"Shit!" he grunted with disgust, as he felt the grittiness, and he thrust the stick back into its slot. He pulled the plugs and, with the promise of a shilling, had a loitering African swing the crank for him while he felt the compression against the palm of his hand.
Swiftly he moved along the line of armoured cars, checking, probing and testing, and when he reached the last of them he knew he could have three of them running again for certain and four maybe.
One was shot beyond hope. There was a crack in the engine block through which he could have ridden a horse, and the pistons had seized so solid in their pots that not even the combined muscle upon the crank handle of Jake and his helper could move them.
Two of them had the entire carburettor assemblies missing, but he could cannibalize from the wreck. That left him short of one carburettor and he felt only gloom at his chances of finding another in Dares Salaam.
Three, then, he could reckon on with certainty. At one hundred and ten pounds apiece, that was 030. Less an estimated outlay of one hundred, it gave him a clear profit of two hundred and thirty pounds for surely he would not have to bid more than twenty pounds each for these wrecks.
Jake felt a warm spreading glow of satisfaction as he tossed his African helper the promised shilling. Two hundred and thirty pounds was a great deal of money in these lean and hungry times.
A quick glance at the fob-watch he hauled from his back pocket showed him there was still over two hours before the advertised time of the commencement of the sale. He was impatient to begin work on those Bentleys not only for the money. For Jake it would be a labour of love.
The one in the centre of the line seemed the best bet for quick results. He placed his carpet bag on the armoured wing of the mudguard and selected a Yth-inch spanner.