Where are we going?" shouted Vicky from the cabin below them, and neither Jake in the driver's seat nor Gareth in the turret replied.
"Can't we just drive up the road to Dessie?" Sara demanded; she sat cross-legged on the floor of the cabin with Gregorius's head cushioned on her lap. "We could fight our way through those cowardly Gallas."
"We've got enough gas to take us about another five miles."
"Our best bet is to drive to the foot of Ambo Sacal." Gareth pointed to the towering bulk of the mountain that rose sheer into the southern sky. "Ditch the car there and try and make it on foot across the mountains." Vicky crawled up into the turret beside him, and thrust her head out of the hatch. Together they stared up at the sheer sides of the Ambo.
"What about Gregorius?"she asked.
"We'll have to carry him."
"We'll never make it. The mountains are crawling with Gallas."
"Have you got a better idea?" Gareth asked, and she looked despairingly around her.
Priscilla the Pig was the only thing that moved in the whole valley.
The Harari had vanished into the rocky ground on the slopes of the mountains, and behind them the Italian tanks had not yet come in over the lip of the valley.
She lifted her eyes to the sky again, where only a few wreaths of cloud still clung to the peaks, and suddenly her whole mood changed.
Her chin came up, and new colour flooded into her cheeks her hand shook as she pointed up between the peaks.
"Yes," she cried. "Yes, I've got a better idea. Look! Oh, won't "you look!" The tiny blue aircraft caught the sun as it banked in steeply, turning in under the rearing granite cliffs, and it flashed like a dragonfly in flight.
"Italian?" Gareth stared up at it.
"No! No! Vicky shook her head. "It's Lij Mikhael's plane.
I recognize it. It came to fetch him here before." She was laughing almost hysterically, her eyes shining. "He said he would send it, that's what he was trying to tell me before he was cut off."
"Where will it land?" Gareth demanded, and Vicky scrambled down into the driver's compartment to direct him towards the polo field beyond the burned and still smoking town.
They watched anxiously, all of them except Gregorius, standing on the edge of the open field close beside the bulk of the car, all their heads craning to watch the little blue aircraft circle.
"What the hell is he doing? "Jake demanded angrily. "The Eyeties will be here before he makes up his mind."
"He's nervous," Gareth guessed. "He doesn't know what the hell is going on down here. From where he is, he can see the town has been destroyed, and he can probably see the tanks and the trucks following us down from the gorge." Vicky turned from them and ran back to the car; she climbed up on to the turret and stood high, waving both arms above her head.
On the next circuit the little blue Puss Moth dropped lower, and they could see the pilot's face in the side window of the cockpit peering down at them. He banked steeply over the smoking remains of the town, with the lower wing pointing directly at the earth and then he came back at them, this time only ten feet above the field.
He was staring at Vicky, and with a lift of her heart she recognized the same young white pilot as had flown Lij Mikhael. He recognized her at the same instant, and she saw him grin and lift a hand in salute as he flashed past.
As he came out of his next turn, he was lined up on the field for his landing and he touched down and taxied tail-up to where they stood.
As the light aircraft rolled to a halt, they crowded up to the cabin door. The wash of the propeller buffeted them savagely and the pilot slid back the pane of his window and shouted above the noise of his engine.
"I can take three small ones or two big ones." Jake and Gareth exchanged a single brief glance and then Jake jerked the cabin door and roughly they thrust the two girls into the tiny cramped cabin.
"Hold it," Gareth shouted into the pilot's ear. "We've got another small one for you." They carried Gregorius between them, trying to be as gentle as haste would allow. The pilot was already turning the machine into the wind and they staggered after it lifting the boy's body into the open door as it was moving.
"Jake-"Vicky shouted, and her eyes were wild with grief.
"Don't worry," Jake shouted back, as they tumbled Greg. onus across the girls" laps. "We'll get out just remember I love you."
"I love you, too," Vicky called back, and her eyes swam with bright tears. "Oh Jake-" He was struggling to close the cabin door, running beside the fuselage as the aircraft gathered speed for the take-off, but one of Gregorius's feet was holding it open. Jake stopped to free the foot, and rifle-fire snapped past his head, and twanged into the canvas fabric of the fuselage.
He looked up in time to see the next shot star the side window of the cockpit and then go on to strike the young pilot in the temple, killing him instantly, and knocking his body sideways so that it hung drunkenly out of the seat, held only by the shoulder straps.
The aircraft slewed sideways at the loss of control, and Jake saw Vicky reach over the pilot's body and close the throttle, but he was turning away and running back towards Priscilla the Pig.
More rifle-fire kicked up spurts of dust around them as they ran.
"Where are they? "he shouted at Gareth.
"On the left." Jake twisted his head and glimpsed the Italians in the scrub and grass two hundred yards away on the edge of the field.
Beyond them was parked the transport that had carried them ahead of the lumbering tank formation.
Priscilla's engine was still running, and he headed her in . k turn for the riflemen in the grass. Above him, a qUIC Gareth fired the Vickers and the Italians jumped up and ran like rabbits.
One quick pass scattered them and a burst of Vickers fire exploded the transport in a dragon's breath of flame, and then Jake swung the car back to where the little blue aircraft stood forlornly on the edge of the field. He parked the tall steel hull close beside her to screen her from Italian snipers.
Sara and Vicky between them had dragged the pilot's body out of the cockpit. He was a big man, heavy in the shoulder and belly, and the blood oozed from the bullet hole in his temple into the thick mop of his hair as he lay on his back in the short grass under the wing.
Vicky turned away from him and scrambled up into the cockpit settling herself behind the controls.
"Jesus!" said Jake, relief shining on his face. "She said she could fly." A . rifle bullet spranged against Priscilla's hull and went wailing away over their heads.
Gareth glanced down at the pilot's body. "He was a big one, poor beggar."
"There's room for one more now," Vicky shouted from the cockpit; "with both of you we'd never make it over the mountains," and they saw what torture the words caused her.
Another bullet clanged against steel. "We can take only one more."
"Spin you for it." Gareth had the silver Maria Theresa on his thumb and he grinned at Jake.
"Heads," said Jake and it spun silver in the sunlight and Gareth caught it in the palm of his good hand and glanced at Jake..
"It had to come your turn at last." Gareth's grin lifted the corners of his mouth. "Well done, old son. off you go." But Jake caught the wrist, and twisted it. He glanced at the coin.
"Tails," he snapped. "I always knew you were a cheat, you bastard," and he turned away towards Vicky. "I'll cover the take-off, Vicky, I'll keep Priscilla between you and the Eyeties as long as I can." Behind him, Gareth stooped and picked up a stone the size of a gull's egg out of the grass.
"Sorry, old son," he drawled. "But I owe you two already," and tenderly he tapped Jake above the right ear with the stone held in the cup of his hand, and then dropped the stone and caught him under the armpits as his legs sagged and he began to collapse.