“The fool, oh, the bloody fool,” whispered Bruce to himself.
Suddenly he felt very much alone and unprotected here on the north bank with the bridge being mutilated by the incompetence of the truck driver.
He started the tanker moving.
Ahead of him the other driver had panicked. He was racing his engine, the rear wheels spun viciously, blue smoke of scorched tyres, and one of the floorboards tore loose. Then the truck lurched forward and roared up the south bank.
Bruce hesitated, applying the brakes and bringing the tanker to a standstill on the threshold of the bridge.
He thought quickly. The sensible thing would be to repair the damage to the bridge before chancing it with the weight of the tanker.
But that would mean another day’s delay. None of them had eaten since the previous morning. Was he justified in gambling against even odds, for that’s what they were? A fifty-fifty chance, heads you get across, tails you dump the tanker in the middle of the river.
Then unexpectedly the decision was made for him.
From across the river a Bren gun started firing. Bruce jumped in his seat and looked up. Then a dozen other guns joined in and the tracer flew past the tanker. They were firing across towards him, close on eachside of him. Bruce struggled to drag from his uncomprehending brain an explanation of this new development. Suddenly
everything was moving too swiftly. Everything was confusion and chaos.
Movement in the rear-view mirror of the tanker caught his eye. He stared at it blankly. Then he twisted quickly in his seat and looked back.
“Christ!” he swore with fright.
From the edge of the jungle on both sides of the clearing Baluba were swarming into the open. Hundreds of them running towards him, the animal-skin kilts swirling about their legs, feather headdresses fluttering, sun bright on the long blades of their pangas. An arrow rang dully against the metal body of the tanker.
Bruce revved the engine, gripped the wheel hard with both hands and took the tanker out on to the bridge. Above the sound of the guns he could hear the shrill ululation, the excited squealing of two hundred Baluba. It sounded very close, and he snatched a quick look in the mirror. What he saw nearly made him lose his head and give the tanker full throttle. The nearest Baluba, screened from the guns on the south bank by the tanker’s bulk, was only ten paces away.
So close that Bruce could see the tattoo marks on his face and chest.
With an effort Bruce restrained his right foot from pressing down too hard, and instead he bore down on the repaired section of the bridge at a sedate twenty miles an hour. He tried to close his mind to the squealing behind him and the thunder of gunfire ahead of him.
The front wheels hit the new timbers, and above the other sounds he heard them groan loudly, and felt them sag under him.
The tanker rolled on and the rear wheels brought their weight to bear. The groan of wood became a cracking, rending sound. The tanker slowed as the bridge subsided, its wheels spun without purchase, it tilted sideways, no longer moving forward.
A sharp report, as one of the main trusses broke, and Bruce felt the tanker drop sharply at the rear; its nose pointed upwards and it started to slide back.
“Get outv his brain shrieked at him. “Get out, it’s falling!” He reached for the door handle beside him, but at that moment the bridge collapsed completely. The tanker rolled off the edge.
Bruce was hurled across the cab with a force that stunned him, his legs wedged under the passenger seat and his arms tangled in the strap of his rifle. The tanker fell free and Bruce felt his stomach swoop up and press against his chest as though he rode a giant roller coaster.
The sickening drop lasted only an instant, and then the tanker hit the river. Immediately the sounds of gunfire and the screaming of
Baluba were drowned out as the tanker disappeared below the surface.
Through the windscreen Bruce saw now the cool cloudy green of water, as though he looked into the windows of an aquarium. With a gentle rocking motion the tanker sank-down through the green water.
“Oh, my God, not this!” He spoke aloud as he struggled up from the floor of the cab. His ears were filled with the hiss and belch of escaping air bubbles; they rose in silver clouds past the windows.
The truck was still sinking, and Bruce felt the pain in his eardrums as the pressure built up inside the cab. He opened his mouth and swallowed convulsively, and his eardrums squeaked as the pressure equalized and the pain abated.
Water was squirting in through the floor of the cab and jets of it spurted out of the instrument panel of the dashboard.
The cab was flooding.
Bruce twisted the handle of the door beside him and hit it with his shoulder. It would not budge an inch. He flung all his weight against it, anchoring his feet on the dashboard and straining until he felt his eyeballs starting out of their sockets. It was jammed solid
by the immense pressure of water on the outside.
“The windscreen,” he shouted aloud. “Break the windscreen.” He groped for his rifle. The cab had flooded to his waist as he sat in
the passenger’s seat. He found the rifle and brought it dripping to his shoulder. He touched the muzzle to the windscreen and almost fired. But his good sense warned him.
Clearly he saw the danger of firing. The concussion in the confined cab would burst his eardrums, and the avalanche of broken glass that would be thrown into his face by the water pressure outside
would certainly blind and maim him.
He lowered the rifle despondently. He felt his panic being slowly replaced by the cold certainty of defeat. He was trapped fifty feet below the surface of the river. There was no way out.
He thought of turning the rifle on himself, ending the inevitable, but he rejected the idea almost as soon as it had formed. Not that way, never that way!
He flogged his mind, driving it out of the cold lethargic clutch of certain death. There must be something. Think!
Damn you, think!
The tanker was still rocking; it had not yet settled into the ooze of the river bottom. How long had he been under?
About twenty seconds. Surely it should have hit the bottom long ago.
Unless! Bruce felt hope surge into new life within him.
The tank! By God, that was it.
The great, almost empty tank behind him! The fivethousand-gallon
tank which now contained only four hundred gallons of gasoline - it would have a displacement of nearly eighteen tons! It would float.
As if in confirmation of his hope, he felt his eardrums creak and pop. The pressure was falling! He was rising.
Bruce stared out at green water through the glass. The silver clouds of bubbles no longer streamed upwards; they seemed to hang outside the cab. The tanker had overcome the initial impetus that had driven it far below the surface, and now it was floating upwards at the same rate of ascent as its bubbles.
The dark green of deep water paled slowly to the colour of
Chartreuse. And Bruce laughed. It was a gasping hysterical giggle and the sound of it shocked him. He cut it off abruptly.
The tanker bobbed out on to the surface, water streamed from the windscreen and through it Bruce caught a misty distorted glimpse of the south bank.
He twisted the door handle and this time the door burst open readily, water poured into the cab and Bruce floundered out against its rush, With one quick glance he took in his position. The tanker had floated down twenty yards below the bridge, the guns on the south bank
had fallen silent, and he could see no Baluba on the north bank. They must have disappeared back into the jungle.
Bruce plunged into the river and struck out for the south bank.
Vaguely he heard the thin high shouts of encouragement from his gendarmes.