Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [62]
There was a great splintering crash, the boxcar rocked from side to side. For the briefest of moments we seemed to stand still and then nudged inexorably onwards, the great double gates falling to each side, torn from their hinges.
We moved on, wheels rattling over the points to a chorus of angry shouts and a great deal of shooting, none of which did any good at all, for a moment later we really started to pick up speed and were away.
12
Night Run
The sky had cleared considerably by now and the moon was very bright, stars strung away to the horizon. Barzini leaned out of the cab and called, "Heh, we showed them, didn't we, Oliver?"
"I'm coming over." I turned to Simone. "How are you doing?"
"Fine. I'm not too sure about Wyatt. He seems very weak to me. They must have given him a terrible time in there."
He lay back, his head on her lap, eyes closed. I said, "All right, do what you can. I'll be back."
I left the assault rifle beside her and worked my way along the side of the boxcar, hanging on to the bars until I reached the tender. From there it was an easy matter to make it to the footplate.
The fire was roaring. Nino shoveling away, covered in sweat, but we were still doing no more than fifteen miles an hour. I said to Talif, "How close do we go to Gela?"
"Half a mile, effendi. No more. There is a tunnel there. Maybe a fifteen-mile run from here."
"Fifteen miles?" Barzini said. "You must be crazy. It's not half that."
"As the crow flies, effendi, but the line loops inland for some distance. It was the easiest way to lay track when the Italians built it."
"So it gets us there what does it matter?" Nino said. "Half an hour ago we were dead men." He laughed out loud and tossed a piece of coal out into the night. "Do you suppose Lazarus felt like this?"
"Don't look now," Barzini said, "but I think someone just threw another spadeful of earth on the lid of your coffin."
I turned to look where he pointed. At that place a road ran parallel to the track perhaps fifty yards away. Three Landrovers followed each other in echelon, each with a light machine gun mounted on a tripod. Masmoudi was in the front one with Husseini and three soldiers, clear in the moonlight.
The machine guns in the two rear Landrovers opened up. As Langley replied, Masmoudi's Landrover picked up speed and forged ahead, disappearing into the night at sixty or seventy miles an hour.
The two remaining Landrovers kept on firing and Langley replied with the RPD. They were scoring hits only occasionally for the road kept swinging away because of the terrain. After a few minutes we ran into an area of low hills studded with olive groves and lost them altogether.
"Do we meet the road again?" I asked Talif.
"Five or six miles from here, effendi."
"And how long does it stay with us?"
"A mile or two--no more. We come together again about five miles after that close to the Gela tunnel. The road stays with the railway then, except for the section through the cut as far as the river crossing. That's two miles further on."
I said to Barzini, "I'd better warn Langley," and I scrambled up over the tender to the top of the boxcar.
He was reloading as I joined him. "How's it going, old stick?"
I filled him in on the situation ahead. He seemed completely unconcerned and lit a cigarette. "Lovely night for it."
Crazy it may sound, but he was right. The sky was clear and bright, stars everywhere and the moon seemed bigger than I'd ever known it before, bathing the countryside in its hard, white light. The hills were like silhouettes cut out of black paper, the valleys and defiles between them very dark. We were picking up speed now and I left him and worked my way back over the tender to the cab.
I said, "So far so good. Things might warm up in another five or ten minutes, but the crunch is going to come when we reach the Gela tunnel."
Barzini stuck one of his Egyptian cheroots between his teeth. "If we simply stop the train and get off they'll see us. We won't last long on foot. Half a mile to the beach. They're certain to run