Jake shifted his grip again, forcing the man farther off balance, and hustled him on more urgently. Ahead of them, through the trees, he could make out the ugly humped shapes of the cars, silver grey in the moonlight and silhouetted by the dying ash heaps of the camp fires.
"Vicky, we'll use Miss Wobbly. I'm not taking a chance on Priscilla starting first kick," he grated. "Use the driver's hatch.
Don't worry about anything else but getting behind that wheel."
"What about the prisoners?"
"Do what you're told, don't argue, damn it." They were within twenty feet of the car now, and he told her, "Now, go, fast as you can." She darted away, reaching the high side of Miss Wobbly before any of the Gallas could intervene and she went up it with a single agile bound.
"Close down," Jake shouted after her, and felt a quick lift of relief as the hatch clanged shut. The ( gal las growled like the wolf-pack denied its prey and they swarmed forward, pressing hard and surrounding the car.
Jake fired a single shot in the air, and Ras Kullah screamed a command.
The Gallas drew back fractionally and fell into a sullen silence.
"Vicky, can you hear me?" Jake called, as he shepherded the Italian prisoners close in against the hull.
Her voice was muffled and remote from behind the steel plate as she acknowledged.
"The rear doors," he told her urgently. "Get them open but not before I tell you." He pushed the Italians around towards the rear of the car, but it was slow work, for they were confused and stupid with terror.
Now, "Jake shouted and knocked impatiently against the hull with the pistol. The lock grated and the doors swung outwards, and came up against the packed bodies outside.
"Goddamn it," growled Jake, an got his shoulder to one leaf of the door. He shoved it open, knocking down two Of the closest Gallas and in the same movement boosted one of the Italians through the opening into the dark interior of the car. In a panicky scramble, the other two followed him and Jake swung the door closed on them and put his back flat against it, and heard the bolts shot closed on the inside, facing the hating dark faces, and the surging press of their hundreds of bodies. Voices were raised at the rear of the crowd and violence was seconds away they had seen most of their prey escape, and it needed little more to trigger the mob reflex.
Jake found he was panting as though he had run a long way, and his heart pounded, so that he could feel it jump against his rib cage but he held Ras Kullah, changing his grip from the pudgy upper arm to the thick wiry bush of his hair, twining his fingers deeply into the stiff, dark halo at the back of his skull and twisting the head so that Ras Kullah faced his men. With the other hand Jake thrust the pistol deeply into the aperture of the man's ear hole "Speak to them, sweet lips He made his voice vicious and menacing.
"Otherwise I'm going to push this piece right out through the other ear." Ras Kullah understood the tone, if not the words, and he gabbled out a few hysterical words Of Amharic; the front warriors drew back a pace and Jake slid slowly along the hull, keeping his back to the steel and Ras Kullah pinned helplessly by his hair to cover his front. The crowd moved with them, keeping station with them, their faces glowering in the moonlight, cruel and angry, balancing critically on the pinnacle of violence. A voice rang out from the darkness, an authoritative voice urging action, the crowd growled, and Ras Kullah whimpered in Jake's grip.
The sound of Ras Kullah's terror warned Jake that they would be frustrated no longer, the moment was upon them.
"Vicky, are you ready to start?" he called urgently, and her voice was just audible.
"Ready to start." He felt the fixed crank handle catch him in the back of the legs, and at that instant a woman's voice shrilled and echoed through the grove of camel-thorn trees. In that heart-stopping ululation of the blood trill, the invocation to violence that the heart of the African warrior cannot resist, the sound struck the jostling press of Gallas like a whip, stroke and their bodies convulsed and their voices rose in an answering blood roar.
"Oh Jesus, here they come," thought Jake, and put all his strength into the arm and shoulder that took Ras Kullah between the shoulder blades and hurled him forward into the front rank of his own men. He crashed into them, bringing down half a dozen of them in a sprawling tangle over which the next rank tumbled and fell.
Jake turned swiftly and stooped to the crank handle. He had chosen Miss Wobbly for this moment, knowing that she was the most gentle and well-intentioned of all the cars.
He would have trembled to put the same trust in Priscilla and as it was, even she coughed and hesitated at the first swing.
"Please, my darling, please, "Jake pleaded desperately, and at the next swing of the handle she hacked, choked and fired then suddenly she was running sweetly. Jake jumped for the sponson, just as a great two-handed sword swung down at him from on high.
He heard the hiss of the blade, passing like the flight of a bat in the darkness, and he ducked under it. The sword struck the steel hull of the car and sprayed a fiery burst of sparks, and Jake rolled and fired the Beretta as the Galla raised the sword to swing again.
He heard the bullet slog into flesh, a meaty thump, and the man collapsed backwards, the sword spinning from his hand as he went down but from every direction, robed figures were swarming up the hull of the car, like safari ants over the carcass of a helpless scarab beetle, and the roar of voices was a storm surf of anger.
Drive, Vicky for God's sake, drive," he yelled and slammed the pistol over the woolly head of a Galla as it rose beside him. The man fell away and the engine bellowed, the car bounded forward with a jerk that threw most of the Gallas from the hull, and Jake was himself thrown half clear, snatching at one of the welded brackets as he went over and saving himself from falling into the swarming pack of Gallas but the pistol dropped out of his hand as he clung grimly to his precarious hold.
Miss Wobbly, under Vicky's thrusting foot, roared into the thick wall of men ahead of her and few of them had a chance to avoid her charge.
Their bodies went down before her, thudding against the frontal plate of the car, their blood roar changing swiftly to yells and shrieks of consternation as they scattered away into the darkness and the car burst free of the press and tore on down the slope.
Jake draiwed himself back on board and steadied himself against the turret, as he rose to his knees. Beside him a Galla clung like a tick to the back of an ox, wailing in terror while his sham ma swirled over his head in the stream of racing air. Jake put one foot against the man's raised buttocks and thrust hard. The man shot head first over the side of the speeding car, and hit the earth with a crunch that was audible even above the roaring engine.
Jake crawled back along the heaving, violently rocking hull and with fist and foot he threw over side one at a time her deck cargo of terrified Gallas. Vicky took the car down the slope under full throttle, weaving wildly through the trees of the grove and at last out on to the open moonlit plain.
Here at last, by pounding with his fist on the driver's hatch, Jake managed to arrest Vicky's wild drive, and she braked the car to a cautious halt.
She came out through the hatch and embraced him with both arms wound tightly around his neck. Jake made no attempt to avoid the circle of her arms, and a silence settled over them disturbed only by their breathing. They had both almost forgotten about their prisoners in the pleasure of the moment, but were reminded by the scuffling and muttering in the depths of the car. Slowly they drew apart, and Vicky's eyes were soft and lustrous in the moonlight.
"The poor things," she whispered. "You saved them from that-" and words failed her as she remembered the one they had been too late to save.