The explosion of the Fiat hitting the earth made the ground around them shake, but the aircraft noise did not diminish. The Potez came flashing low overhead, slightly banked, and the pilot had taken off his flying helmet. Even at a hundred and twenty miles an hour the waving hand, the blond hair and, Alverson was sure, the gleaming teeth of Count Henri de Billancourt were plain to see.
Corrie Littleton was screeching her thanks and jumping up and down as the Frenchman came over for a victory roll, but as soon as he disappeared she went back to her tasks. Tyler Alverson got no more than a look, and a grim one at that.
The site the Italian commander had chosen was, as long as his ammunition and water lasted, in a reasonably good place. The rate of fire on both sides had dropped — to be expected, since to just keep going was a useless expenditure of ammunition — but Critini kept up sporadic mortar fire at a conserving rate, given it was his most effective deterrent weapon. He also wasted no time in seeking to get away a small party of his most fleet-footed askaris to test out an escape route.
Jardine and Vince grabbed rifles from a couple of the returning tribesmen and sought to pick them off, while the machine guns were employed from both sides of the pass. Dodging from boulder to boulder, or seeking shelter behind the scrub that covered the valley floor, made them hard targets, but to cheers, one by one they were brought down, aided by intelligent fire from Aswan’s men opposite.
‘Fitawrari Yoannis wishes to know what will happen now,’ Shalwe asked, pointing to the man in question, who had got back to safety but seemed to want to stay well away from the professional soldier advising him.
The reply was angry. ‘Tell him to look.’
The Carro Veloce CV35s were using their tracks to turn in tight circles, noses pointing north, while some of the askaris were levering a large rock out of the way that blocked the exit route.
‘This is no time to be snooty, is it?’ Vince said. ‘He knows he’s cocked up, guv, an’ he wants your help.’
‘That’s a boot up the arse you owe me, Vince,’ Jardine replied after a pause, for his friend was right.
‘I’d settle for a pint of Bass.’
‘I’ll let you have a sip of water.’
‘Right now that will taste as sweet as best bitter.’
A skin was called for and they both drank from it, refreshed even if it was body temperature warm.
‘OK. They are going to try and break out with those tanks, but if you look at the valley floor I think they will have a tough time of it.’
‘Too many boulders.’
‘Not just that, Vince, it’s bloody uneven. At best they will be slow, so I want you to stay here with half a dozen rifles, and once the tanks are out, keep up a steady fire on the Italian perimeter to stop the infantry following. Use the machine guns if you have to, but we are short on ammo for those. I am going to take Yoannis and most of his men further up the pass. Shalwe, tell Fitawrari Yoannis that we need some grenades and his men are to do what I do. And tell him as well, don’t fire off rifles, it will be a waste of bullets.’
Jardine crawled away to the sound of tanks moving, their engines, lacking silencers, roaring, a sound that echoed and was magnified as it bounced off the faces of the surrounding hills. Slowly, in single file, they emerged from the defensive perimeter and it was obvious what Jardine had said was true.
Tanks were good over rough ground but this was more than that: it was horrendous for such small armoured vehicles powered by not very strong engines, with boulders forcing the drivers to try and take routes that were too steep even for their tracks, and that was before one side dropped into the depressions unseen by a driver peering through a narrow, metal-armoured slit, which gave him no sideways vision.
Regardless of Jardine’s instructions, some of Yoannis’s warriors were wasting ammo on the tank armour, but that, pinging on the side and exaggerated in what must be a baking hellhole of an interior, was enough to keep those driver slits closed. They were well away from the main Italian position now, and behind them they could hear the steady crack of rifle fire as the men with Vince kept up enough of a threat to ensure that infantry did not support the tanks.
It only took one to break down and get into trouble to show what would happen. Tank Number Three got stuck, and regardless of how hard it revved and bucked to and fro, stuck it stayed. Those to the rear tried to go round it and that meant a second tank ended up in difficulty, though it looked as though the driver was about to reverse and extricate himself, this while those to his rear stopped to see if he could manage it, for if he could not, they must reverse.
Now it was Cal Jardine on his feet and waving, as he plunged down the hillside, firing off single shots from his sub-machine gun, more for effect than to kill. With no turret to swing, the CV35s were sitting ducks from the rear, their machine guns only able to fire forward in a constrained arc, which he avoided by coming in behind them. He was yelling as hard as he could to draw the attention of those he was leading, as he dragged a pin out of a grenade and jammed it into the track of the rear tank, diving under the spitting machine guns to get out of the way of the blast.
The explosion sounded tremendous, but it was the clanking sound of a destroyed metal track that was music to Cal Jardine’s ears. Now his sword-wielding warriors were on top of the tank, beating with the flat of their blades on the armour, while one sought to lever open the hatch to drop in a grenade, another jabbing his weapon through the driving slit. The Italian gunner should have kept up his fire, if only to aid those ahead of him, but either he or the driver panicked and the hatch swung open, with two hands coming out as the first one tried to surrender.
He was grabbed by the hands of his enemies and dragged onto the side of the tank, where one yanked at his hair while another caught hold of his feet, then the sword came flashing down to take his head off in one sweep, with his driver being lugged into daylight just in time to see his mate die. His screams seemed as ear-splitting as the explosion of that grenade, but they were stopped as he too was decapitated. Jardine was shouting as loud as he could to let him be and take him prisoner; it was wasted breath.
One by one they moved up the line of tanks and each crew suffered the same fate, which sickened a man who knew that to seek to interfere was to risk the same himself. These warriors had their blood up and for them this primitive form of retribution was the norm, not some exception. Someone must have had the means to light a fire, for first one tank burst into flames, then another, with Jardine now yelling for them to get clear before the ammunition went up. By the time they left, all six tanks were ablaze.
Down the pass Vince could see the smoke and he knew that the Italian commander would see it too, so he called on his riflemen to cease fire; those askaris were going nowhere. Yet even he, and he considered himself immune, nearly puked when some of Yoannis’s warriors came loping along carrying Italian heads, which they threw in a blood-dripping arc into the enemy defences.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Down below, Major Critini, arm now in a sling, was on his radio, a piece of equipment not functioning well because of the high surrounding hills, seeking aid from headquarters to extricate the remainder of his battalion from the Dembeguina Pass, aware merely by the garbled replies that his messages were not being fully understood. His remaining officers, two lieutenants being wounded, had reported to him that casualty numbers were high, supplies of ammunition adequate, and water supplies were worrying, given they were trapped in a spot that intensified the heat of the sun.