Using all his strength, Jake lifted it again, and secured the retaining catch before he scrambled down into the cab.
He was only just in time, for at that moment Vicky drove the car at full throttle out into the valley.
The sun was clear of the horizon now, smearing long dark shadows across the golden sands. Dust and smoke from the mortar barrage still drifted in a stately brown cloud over the ridge, and the bodies of the dead were thrown at random across the bare plain. The women's dresses made bright splashes of colour against the monochrome of the desert.
Jake swept a swift glance around the ridge that commanded the plain, and saw that many of the Italian troopers had left their trenches. They wandered in small groups around the edges of the slaughter ground, and their movements were awed and timid green troops still not hardened to the reality of open wounds and twisted corpses.
They froze in attitudes of surprise as the car burst out of the wadi, and flew on usty wings towards the nearest waterhole. It took many seconds for them to move, and then they turned and pelted for their earthworks, tiny figures in dark uniforms with legs and arms pumping in frantic haste.
"Turn broadside," yelled Jake. "Show them the crosses!" and Vicky reacted swiftly, swinging the car into a tight lefthander that had her up on two wheels, sliding broadside in the sand, displaying to the Italians the huge scarlet crosses on the hull.
"Let me have your shirt," Jake yelled again. It was the only white cloth they had with them. "I need a flag of truce!"
"It's all I have on," Vicky shrieked back. "I'm bare underneath."
"You want to be modest and dead?" howled Jake. "They'll start shooting any moment now." And she steered with one hand as she unbuttoned her shirt front and leaned forward in the seat to yank the tails out of her skirt. She shrugged out of it and reached up into the turret to hand him the bundled shirt. Each time they hit another bump, Vicky's breasts bounced like rubber balls, a sight that distracted Jake for a hundredth part of a second before chivalry and duty recalled him and he stood high in the turret, arms stretched above his head, streaming the white shirt like a flag, balancing with a sailor's legs against the wild antics of the car.
To the hundreds of men who lined the parapet of the Italian trenches Jake displayed two emotive symbols, the red cross and the white flag, symbols so powerful that even men in the white-hot must of the blood lust hesitated with their fingers still curled about the triggers of the machine guns.
"It's working," shrieked Vicky, and swung the car on to its original heading, almost throwing Jake from his precarious roost in the turret.
He dropped the shirt and clutched wildly at the coamings of the turret, the shirt floating away like a white egret on the wing.
"There she is," Vicky cried again. The carcass of the white stallion lay dead ahead, as she braked hard and then pulled the car to a standstill beside it, interposing the armoured body of the car between the pile of bodies and the watching Italians on the ridge.
Jake dropped down into the cab and crawled back to open the rear double doors of the car, knocking open the locking handles as he called over his shoulder.
"Keep your hatch battened and don't, for chrissakes, show your head."
"I'll help you," Vicky stated boldly.
"The hell you will," snapped Jake, tearing his eyes off her magnificent chest. "You'll stay where you are and keep the engine running." The doors flew open and Jake tumbled headfirst out on to the sandy earth.
Spitting grit from his mouth, he crawled swiftly to the carcass of the white horse. Close up, the hide was shaggy and flea-bitten, dappled with faint patches of chestnut. On this pale background the bullet holes were like dark red mouths where already the metallic blue flies clustered delightedly.
The stallion lay heavily across Sara's lower body, pinning her face down to the earth.
The naked boy child had been hit by one of the hooves as the horse fell. The side of the tiny bald skull had been crushed, a deep indentation above the temple into which a baseball would have fitted neatly. There was no chance that he still lived and Jake transferred his attention to the girl.
"Sara," he called, and she lifted herself on her elbows, looking back at him from huge terrified dark eyes. Her face was smeared with dust, the skin shaved from one cheek where she had slid against the ground, exposing the pale pink meat from which lymph leaked in clear liquid beads.
"Are you hit? "Jake reached her.
"I don't know," she whispered huskily, and he saw that the satin of her breeches was soaked with dark blood. He placed both feet against the carcass of the horse and tried to roll it off her legs, but the dead weight of the animal was enormous. He would have to stand, taking his chances with the guns.
Jake came to his feet and felt the cold fingers of fear brush lightly along his spine as he turned his back to the nearest Italian trenches and stooped to the horse.
Crouching with his weight balanced evenly on the balls of both feet, he took the tail and the lower hind leg of the animal; lifting and turning with all his strength, he began to roll the carcass off Sara's legs and pelvis. She cried out in pain, such a sharp high-pitched shriek that he had to stop.
She was praying incoherently in Amharic, weeping slow fat tears of agony that cut tunnels through the pale dust on her cheeks.
Jake panted, "Once more I'm sorry," and he braced himself. At that moment Vicky yelled from the car.
"Jake, they are coming! Hurry, oh God, please hurry!" Jake swung around and ran to the car, peering over the high engine compartment.
With a long plume of pale dust boiling out from behind it, a large open vehicle crowded with armed men was dropping swiftly down towards them from the ridge.
"My God," grunted Jake, screwing up his eyes against the low blinding rays of the morning sun. "It can't be!" But even at that range in the dust and bad light, there was no mistaking the gracious and dignified lines of a Rolls-Royce.
Jake was seized by a feeling of unreality that amid all this horror appear something of such beauty.
"Hurry, Jake." Vicky's voice spurred him on, and he ran back to the dead horse, seized its hind legs and began wrestling it on to its back with the girl's agonized cries as an accompaniment.
Grunting and straining, Jake lifted the horse by main strength until it was balanced critically along its spine with the legs pointed loosely at the morning sky, and now he could hear the approaching engine-beat of the Rolls and the faint but excited voices of its occupants. He denied the temptation to look around again and, instead, let the carcass flop heavily over on to its other flank, freeing the frail body of the child-woman beneath it.
Still panting with his efforts, Jake dropped on one knee beside her.
She was hit in the upper leg, he saw at once, the entry wound was six inches above the knee, and when he felt swiftly for a bone-break, there was another quick flood of dark crimson blood that poured warmly over his fingers and drenched the slick satin of her breeches afresh. Jake found the exit wound in the inside of her thigh, but knew by feel and instinct that it had missed the bone. Still, she was losing blood heavily and he inserted a forefinger into the tear in her breeches and ripped the cloth cleanly to the ankle; he pulled it up exposing her long slim leg to the crutch. The wound was deep and blue in the darkly lustrous flesh, and Jake tore the flapping trouser-leg free and wound a turn of it around the thigh above the wound.
Using both arms and the strength of his shoulders he drew the crude tourniquet so tight that the flow of blood was instantly stemmed and he tied the ends of the bandage with two swift turns, and then looked up just as the RollsRoyce skidded to a violent halt across the front of the armoured car.