"It's no good sending horsemen. It worked once, it's not going to work again." Jake said nothing, but frowned heavily at the complicated designs that Gareth had traced on the sandy earth.
"We have conditioned the tank commander. The next look he gets at an armoured car, and he's going to be after it like-" "Like a long dog after a bitch, "said Jake.
"Exactly," Gareth nodded. "I was just going to say that myself" "You already did, "Jake reminded him.
"We'll send out one car one is enough and hold another in reserve here." Gareth touched the sand map. "If anything goes wrong with the first car" "Like a high-explosive shell between the buttocks?" Jake asked.
"Precisely. If that happens the second car pops in like this and keeps them coming on."
"The way you tell it, it sounds great."
"Piece of cake, old son, nothing to it. Trust the celebrated Swales genius."
"Who takes the first car? "Jake asked.
"Spin you for it," Gareth suggested, and a silver Maria Theresa appeared as if by magic in his hand.
"Heads," said Jake.
"Oh, tough luck, old son. Heads it is." Jake's hand was quick as a striking mamba. It snapped closed on Gareth's wrist and held his hand in which the silver coin was cupped.
"I say," protested Gareth. "Surely you don't believe that I might and then he shrugged resignedly.
"No offence," Jake assured him, turned Gareth's hand towards him and examined the coin cupped in his palm.
"Lovely lady, Theresa," murmured Gareth. "Lovely high forehead, very sensual mouth bet she was a real goer, what?" Jake released his wrist, and stood up, dusting his breeches to cover his embarrassment.
"Come on, Greg. We'd better get ready," he called across to where the young Harari was supervising the preparations taking place on the higher ground above where the cars were parked.
"Good luck, old son," Gareth called after them. "Keep your head well down." Jake Barton sat on the edge of Priscilla's turret with his long legs dangling into the hatch, and he looked up at the mountains.
Only their lower slopes were visible, rising steeply into the vast towering mass of cloud that rose sheer into the sky.
The cloud mass bulged, swelling forward and spilling with the slow viscosity of treacle down the harsh ranges of rock. The mountains had disappeared, swallowed by the cloud monster, and the soft mass heaved like a belly digesting its prey.
For the first time since they had entered the Danakil, the sun was obscured. The cold came off the clouds in gusts, touching Jake with icy fingers of air, so that the gooseflesh pimpled his muscular forearms and he shivered briefly.
Gregorius sat beside him on the turret, looking up also at the silver and dark blue of the thunderheads.
"The big rains will begin now."
"Here?"
"No, not down here in the desert, but upon the mountains the rain will fall with great fury." For a few moments longer, Jake stared up at the pinnacles and glaring slopes of grandeur and menace, then he turned his back upon them and swept the rolling tree-dotted plains to the eastward. As yet, there was no) sign of the Italian advance that the scouts had reported, and he turned again and focused his binoculars on the lower slopes of the gorge at the point from which Gareth would signal the enemy's movements to him. There was nothing to be seen but broken rock and the tumbled slopes of scree and rubble.
He dropped his scrutiny lower to where the last small dunes of red sand lapped like wavelets against the great rock reef of the mountains.
There were wrinkles in the surface of the plain, sparsely covered with the pale seared desert grasses, but in their troughs thick coarse bush had taken root. The bush was tall and dense enough to hide the hundreds of patiently waiting Harari under its cover.
Gareth had worked out the method of dealing with the Italian tanks, and it was he who had sent Gregorius up the gorge to the village of Sardi with a gang of a hundred men and fifty camels. Under Greg's direction, they had torn up the rails from the shunting yard of the railway station, packed the heavy steel rails on to the camels and brought them down the perilous path to the desert floor.
Gareth had explained how the rails were to be used, split his force into gangs of twenty men each and exercised them with the rails until they were as efficient as he could hope for. All that was needed now was for Priscilla the Pig to lead the Italian tanks into the low dunes.
Without armour, Gareth estimated they could hold the Italians for a week at the mouth of the gorge. His order of battle placed the Harari on the left and centre, in good positions that interlocked with those of the Galla on the right flank. The Vickers guns had lanes of fire laid down that would make any infantry assault by the Italians suicidal without armoured cover.
They would have to blast their way into the gorge with artillery and aerial bombardment. It would take them a week at the least that is, if they could dissuade Ras Golam from attacking the Italians, a task which promised to be difficult, for the old Ras's fighting blood was coursing through his ancient veins.
Once they forced the mouth of the gorge and drove the Ethiopian forces into its gut, they had another week's hard pounding to reach the top and the town of Sardi provided once again that the Ras could be restrained in the role of defender.
Once the Italians broke out of the head of the gorge, the armoured cars could be flung in to hold them for a day or two more, but when they were expended, it was all over. It was an easy drive for the Italians through the rolling highlands on to the Dessie road, to close the jaws of the trap hopefully after the prey had fled.
Gareth had reported all this to Lij Mikhael, contacting him by telegraph at the Emperor's headquarters on the shores of Lake Tona.
The Prince had telegraphed back the Emperor's gratitude and assurances that within two weeks the destiny of Ethiopia would be decided.
"HOLD THE GORGE FOR TWO WEEKS AND YOUR DUTY WILL BE FULLY DISCHARGED STOP YOU WILL HAVE EARNED THE GRATITUDE OF THE EMPEROR AND ALL THE PEOPLES OF ETHIOPIA." A week here on the plains, but it all depended on this first encounter with the Italian armour. Gareth's and Jake's observations, backed up by those of the scouts, placed the total number of surviving Italian tanks at four. They must take them out at a single stroke, the whole defence of the gorge pivoted on this.
Jake found that he had been day-dreaming, his mind wandering over the problems they faced and the chances they must take. It took Gregorius's hand on his shoulder to rouse him.
"Jake! The signal." Quickly he looked back at the slope of the mountains, and he did not need the binoculars. Gareth was signalling with a primitive heliograph he had contrived with the shaving-mirror from his toilet bag. The bright flashes of light pricked Jake's eyeballs even at that range.
"They are coming in across the valley, line abreast. All four tanks, supported by motorized infantry." Jake read the signal, and jumped into the driver's hatch while Gregorius slid down the side of the hull and ran to the crank handle.
"That's my darling." Jake thanked Priscilla, as the engine spluttered busily into life, and then he called up to Gregorius as he climbed into the turret above him. "I'll warn you every time I tUrn to engage."
"Yes, Jake." The boy's eyes burned with the fire of his anger, and Jake grinned.
"As bad as his grand pappy He let in the clutch. They gathered speed swiftly and flew over the crest of the rise, and behind them rolled a long billow of dust, proclaiming their whereabouts to all the world.
The line of Italian tanks was coming straight in, a mile and a half out on their flank.
"Engaging now, "shouted Jake.
"Ready." Gregorius was crouched over the Vickers in the turret, straining it to the limit of its traverse, ready to fire at the very instant the gun could bear.
Jake put the wheel over hard, and Priscilla swung towards the distant dark beetle shapes of the Italian armour, sailing jauntily right into their teeth.