Sam drove the Range Rover across the car-park to the ice-cream van. While Jud lifted the bonnet, Sam brought the jump leads from the boot. In the back seat the Victorian soldiers sat and watched, mystified.
‘At least the rest are waiting for us.’
The bus had stopped at the edge of the car park. But now people were running from vehicle to vehicle to find out the reason for the delay.
Down there on the river bank the Bluebeards were approaching, slowly but surely. Sam guessed it would take them another ten minutes to reach the car park.
Carswell hurried towards them. His barely suppressed rage was quivering to the surface.
‘What’s the hold-up? Why aren’t you moving!’
‘Engine trouble,’ Sam replied.
‘Jesus wept. The thing ran perfectly well last night.’
‘It’s no-one’s fault.’ Sam snapped the big crocodile clips onto the battery terminals of the Range Rover. ‘The van’s battery’s on its last legs.’
‘Get a move on, man! The whole strategy will fall apart unless you hit the enemy at the narrowest part of the pass!’
‘I know. Just give me 30 seconds. Right!’ He called to the van driver. ‘Try it now.’
The van’s starter motor turned. It was a weary sound, like rusty metal plates grating together.
Sam ran back to the Range Rover, swung himself behind the wheel, stamped on the accelerator pedal. Then, revving the car engine until it howled, he nodded to the van driver. Try again.
The van driver twisted the key once more. A moment later his face brightened and he gave a thumbs-up.
Carswell shouted, ‘Now, for crying out loud, move it!’
Vibrating with rage, Carswell marched back to the building.
After Sam had stowed the jump leads in the boot, he climbed back into the driver’s seat and said in a low voice, ‘Here goes.’
They left the car park in line.
Ahead was the snowy strip of land between the river and the rock face.
First in the line of vehicles rumbling at little more than walking speed was the bus.
Sam could see the heads of the soldiers on board as they manned their positions at the field guns. At the front of the bus he recognised Zita by her thick ponytail that swished from side to side as she scanned the road ahead. Lee Burton would be sitting in the driver’s seat inside his armoured compartment. Surprisingly, there were also the red corkscrew curls of Rolle.
The stubby ‘wings’ of the bus’s rocket launchers waggled at each bump in the ground, however slight, as if the bus were some huge ungainly box-shaped bird flapping its wings ready for take-off.
It occurred to Sam once more that if one of those flimsy ‘wings’ hit so much as a branch or even a mound of snow it would shear off, reducing the bus’s firepower.
Again Sam couldn’t decide if the bus resembled a pirate ship, with its guns mounted on what was after all the passenger deck, with the timber mast that served as the king post; or if it was more like one of the old wartime B-17 Flying Fortress bombers that bristled guns from every direction.
Sam wiped his forehead. Despite the cold he was sweating.
Between his vehicle and the bus was the ice-cream van. It still had its garish paintings. Surreally, the plastic ice-cream cones hadn’t been removed and sat at either side of the cannon that was lashed to the roof.
The heavy cannon of foundry-cast iron made the vehicle look top-heavy. Taking a sharp bend at anything more than a crawl would probably turn the van over.
Sam shot a glance at the ‘wings’ on his own car, the rocket tubes shining a dull yellow. They too flapped up and down over the tiniest of bumps. He could even hear the creak of the supporting cables over the roof of the car.
Jud looked at him. ‘You know, Sam, this reminds me of the day when I walked out onto a frozen lake in the middle of winter. There I was, slap in the middle. Ten years old and feeling bloody good about how clever I was. Then I heard all these little cracking sounds. Like hundreds of pencils being snapped in half all at once. I couldn’t see anything. The ice looked perfect. But all the time this snapping sound went on and on, and then… Yes, you guessed it. The ice just gave way under me.’
‘And that’s how you feel now?’
‘Yes, I’m standing on thin ice. I can hear it cracking. It’s just a question of when it gives way.’
‘Sir,’ one of the men barked from the back. ‘When are we going to get a shot at them bastards – sir!’
‘It won’t be long now, corporal,’ Sam said. ‘We’re going to fan out. Then we’re going to let them have it.’
‘Sir – then what?’
‘We turn one way, pause. You fire at the enemy. Then, as we turn round, the private takes his shot.’
‘Sir!’
Sam took the barked ‘Sir’ to be army-ese for ‘Okay, I understand.’
Jud groaned. ‘It all sounds more like choreography than military strategy.’
‘I know… We perform a damn Busby Berkeley number with the cars, while the soldiers fire their guns. Then we dash back to the amphitheatre to reload.’
‘Oh, well, here’s where we find out if Carswell’s plan works.’
With the Bluebeards about three hundred yards away, moving in a great amorphous mob, the vehicles fanned out so that they were travelling side by side. Still, the speed was low, no more than ten miles an hour. Beneath the snow the turf was as hard as concrete.
‘I’m remembering this right?’ Sam asked, his voice rising as tension gripped hard. ‘At a distance of two hundred yards Lee sounds the bus’s horn.’
‘And we fire.’
‘Then we stop, allowing the bus to move forward, turn to the left so it can deliver a broadside.’
‘You’ve got it, Sam.’
Right on cue came the sound of the horn.
A long, booming note, like the war cry of some warrior tribe of long ago.
The Bluebeards were still too far away for Sam to actually see individual faces, but the leading edge of the mob painted a thick black line from the river to the rock face.
‘Here goes.’ Jud pressed the strips of tin to close the contacts.
Sam stared in fascination at the rocket pods, imagining electricity spurting along the wire to the light-bulb igniters. In his mind’s eye he could see the filaments glow white-hot against the wads of gun cotton.
With a gush of smoke and a kind of zwish-sh sound the first rocket left the tube to flash like a shooting star into the faces of the mob in front.
‘One away,’ Jud shouted.
Seven left.
He keyed another strip of tin.
Zwish-sh…
The rocket sped from the tube, trailing smoke and sparks.
Six left.
Jud hit the next switch.
Nothing.
He tried again.
‘It’s a dud,’ Sam said quickly. ‘Go on to the next.’
Then, one after another in quick succession, Jud fired the rockets.
Five, four, three…
Rocket number three, no good. Another dud.
One more away in a flash of red.
Then there was only one rocket left. It left the tube with a whoosh.
Sam shot a glance to his right. Rockets were streaming one after another from the ‘wings’ of the bus.
He couldn’t tell if there were any duds. From the 16 rocket tubes there seemed to be a never-ending stream of blazing rockets.
To his left he heard the brittle thump of the cannon firing from the top of the ice-cream van.
Now he allowed the bus to pull forward and then turn so it could fire an artillery broadside at the still-advancing Bluebeards. Soon a cloud of blue smoke hung over the snow. And two hundred yards away more smoke billowed as the shells exploded in the midst of the Bluebeards.