Juggernaut

'I agree,' McGrath said briskly, standing up. 'I. want everybody lined up again, except for a couple of you behind the doors.'

'What about me?' I asked.

'When an officer walks through that door he'll expect to see Maksa, you and Mister Wingstead, because you're the boss men. So you'll be right there in line, under the guns.' He gave his knife to Lang and the cosh to Bert Proctor. 'You two take anyone coming through that door but only after the doors are closed. Harry, you take the other machine-gun and go stand up there where I was. If the guards do come in you can fire over our heads, and if that happens everyone ducks fast. Doctor Kat, you're in line too. Think your voice can carry outside?'

The doctor nodded reluctantly.

'I'll take the shotgun, Mister Mannix, if you don't mind,' McGrath said. I handed it over to him with some hesitation, but he was right, he had to look the part. It left me feeling vulnerable again.

We stood like actors waiting for a curtain to rise. Facing me was McGrath looking surprisingly like Maksa even from where I stood. Just as I had taken over from Kemp and Wingstead in one crisis, so now McGrath had as easily taken over from me. He was a natural leader and afterwards he would be damned hard to control. If there was an afterwards.

CHAPTER 21

McGrath went and opened one of the doors. He put his arm through the narrow opening, holding the shotgun at the ready. Dr Kat stood immediately behind him out of sight, so that the voice should seem to come from the bogus colonel. McGrath's head was averted as though he were keeping an eye on his prisoners, but light fell on his shoulder tabs and brassarded arm. When Dr Kat spoke it didn't sound much like Maksa but we could only hope that the soldiers would accept it. McGrath closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief.

'Right,' he said. Two officers are coming in. You ready, you three?'

The attack team nodded silently, and at the rear of the warehouse Zimmerman waved his machine-gun and dropped out of sight behind the topmost stack of cotton. McGrath strode across to Burns' body and stood beside it with his back to the doors. His legs were apart and he held the shotgun so that it pointed down towards the shattered skull. It was a nice piece of stage setting; anyone entering would see his back and then their eyes would be drawn to Burns, a particularly nasty sight.

McGrath judged it was too quiet.

'Say something, Mister Mannix,' he said. 'Carry on your conversation with the Colonel.'

'I don't want your bloody oil,' I improvised. 'I'm not in the oil business. I work for a firm of electrical engineers.' Behind McGrath Proctor had his ear to the door and the cosh raised. I carried on, 'We're certainly not responsible for how you run your country…'

The door opened and two officers walked in, Mosira still wearing his dark glasses and a much younger officer following him. I went on speaking. 'Colonel Maksa, I demand that you allow our medical people to see their…'

Proctor hit the lieutenant hard with the cosh and he went straight down. Captain Mosira was putting up a struggle, groping for his pistol. Lang had an arm round the Captain's neck but his knife waved wildly in the air. Mosira couldn't shout because of the stranglehold but it was not until McGrath turned and drove the butt of the shotgun against his head that he collapsed.

Outside all was quiet, and in the warehouse nobody spoke either. McGrath turned to Barry Lang and held out his hand for the knife. 'I said, don't be squeamish,' he said coldly.

Lang gave him the knife. 'I'm sorry, Mick, I just — '

'Who can use this?'

'I can,' said Hammond.

McGrath instantly tossed him the knife. 'Right, lads, let's pick up our loot and get this lot out of the way.'

Both officers had worn pistols and the lieutenant had a grenade at his belt. In the distribution I got one of the pistols. We looked to McGrath for guidance.

'Let's get those guards, lads. There are only six or seven of them. It'll be easy.'

It was entirely McGrath who made it work, his drive and coolness that kept the exercise moving. But paradoxically Maksa's own personality also helped us. He was clearly a martinet and no enlisted man was going to question his orders. The guards entered on demand and were easy to deal with.

We looked round the warehouse. The soldiers were laid in a row behind the cotton bales, together with the body of Russ Burns. The door in the rear was opened with ease and we were ready to leave.

McGrath said, 'As soon as possible we get that signal off. You know the drill, Mister Mannix?'

I nodded. The back of the warehouse faced away from our camp so we'd have to go around it and might run into enemy soldiers at any moment. One group was to get the medical team and Dan Atheridge to the rig and then rejoin the rest of us, who'd be in cover as close to the bridge as we could get. We'd leapfrog one another to get in place, ready to protect McGrath and his tractor team-mate. There had been some doubt as to who that would be.

McGrath looked at Barry Lang speculatively. He had jibbed at knifing Mosira and this made McGrath uncertain of his mettle. But they usually teamed up, and it was safer to work with a man one knew, so McGrath said to him, 'Right then, Barry, you're with me in the cab. Just stick close, you hear me?'

'What's the signal for Sadiq to attack? The Very pistol?' I asked.

'Yes, a red flare the way you planned.'

The Very pistol's still in a suitcase by the rig, unless they found it.'

He grinned, swarmed up on top of the cotton and came down again with the Very pistol in his hand. 'Full of surprises, aren't I?' he said.

I didn't ask him how he knew where it was. He'd obviously been hiding nearby when I hid the thing. He might have seen me go off with the shotgun too, and I wondered again how Maksa had come by it.

'You take it,' McGrath said, handing me the signal pistol. 'You'll be in charge of this exercise, Mister Mannix.'

I said, 'Just what are you going to do?'

He grinned. 'I'm going to march Barry out of here at gunpoint. I still look like the Colonel, and I've got Sam as my sergeant. We're going to take Lang down to the bridge and when we're near enough we'll make a break for the tractor. Sam will get into cover and wait for you to come up, if you're not there already.'

It was audacious but it could work. Wingstead said, 'You'll have every eye on you.'

'Well, it's a chance, I'll grant you. But it should get us to the cab. You get off the signal the instant we make our break, so that Sadiq can keep those laddies too busy to think for a bit.'

As quietly as possible we barricaded the front doors with cotton bales, and were ready to go. I opened the rear door a crack and looked out. There was some moonlight, which would help McGrath in the tractor later on, and the night was fairly quiet. We left cautiously.

As we rounded the warehouse we could see the fires from the rebels' camp, and brighter lights around our rig. I could see soldiers in the light near the rig but there weren't many of them. There was plenty of cover all the way to the bridge, just as we had visualized.

'OK, Mick, start walking,' I whispered.

We moved away from the warehouse according to plan. McGrath and his party stepped out, Lang first with a submachine-gun jammed into his spine. Next was Wilson his sergeant's cap pulled well down over his face. McGrath followed with the shotgun. It looked pretty good to me. I paced myself so that I was not too far ahead of McGrath, and the rest passed me to fan out ahead.

The marchers were almost opposite the rig when a soldier called out. I heard an indistinguishable answer from McGrath and a sharp retort, and then the soldier raised his gun. He didn't fire but was clearly puzzled.

Then there came the rip fire of an Uzi from beyond the rig. Someone had been spotted. The soldier turned uncertainly and McGrath cut him down with the shotgun. Then he and Lang bolted for their tractor. Wilson disappeared into the roadside cover. The shotgun blasted again and then gunfire crackled all around us, lighting up the night with flashes. I pointed the Very pistol skywards and the cartridge blossomed as I ran for cover, Bert Proctor at my side.